Tin Tyrant/Playing With
Basic Trope: The Evil Overlord has a tendency to wear concealing plate armor.
- Straight: The Dark Lord Diabolus wears a suit of jet-black armor with a black cape and spiked shoulder pads.
- Exaggerated: The Dark Lord Diabolus also has a face-concealing helmet shaped like a grinning skull, the shoulder pads are bigger than the helmet (and are also shaped like skulls), and the entire suit of armor has so many spikes that people wonder how he's able to move around in it.
- Justified: The Dark Lord conceals his face either because The Dark Side has made it monstrously ugly, or because he doesn't want to be recognized. The armor is for the protection and intimidation factor.
- Or it's empty
- Or he is very paranoid.
- Or he's a robot or a cyborg, and the armor is part of him.
- Or he wants to avoid injury at all cost.
- Inverted: The hero is a Black Knight who walks the earth in concealing plate mail to avoid being recognized by the Dark Lord's goons.
- The villain wears a skimpy loincloth.
- Subverted: The heroes finally bring down the Dark Lord in the black spiky armor... only to discover that it was a body double used to make the populace believe the Dark Lord himself was leading the evil army.
- Double Subverted: The real Dark Lord's armor is even more ornate, and decorated with spikes and skulls.
- Parodied: The Dark Lord Diabolus never takes off his helmet or armor, even when he's in the shower.
- Deconstructed: The Dark Lord Diabolus is really paranoid about someone trying to harm him, so he has heavily fortified armor look fearsome to protect himself while intimidating everyone from attacking him. Alternatively he could be making up for something.
- The Dark Lord Diabolus, while imposing, can barely move and is easily defeated.
- Reconstructed:The Dark Lord Diabolus wears his deliberately over-spiked, oversized, and under-flexible armor all the time in order to limit his own power. Anyone thinking that the armor-wearing is based around paranoia and weakness is in for a nasty surprise…
- Zig Zagged: Diabolus only wears the armor on special occasions.
- Averted: The Dark Lord Diabolus prefers a fashionable Black Cloak to all that bulky armor.
- Enforced: The author was a fan of Saruon in the The Lord of the Rings movie.
- Lampshaded: "Diabolus is wearing a gigantic suit of armor. Gee, no surprises here."
- Invoked: Diabolus dresses as a Tin Tyrant so that his side can recognise him upon the Battlefeild.
- Defied: "I'm not wearing that! Don't you realize how hot a suit of black armor gets in the summertime? It's like an oven in there!"
- Discussed: "What is it with overlords and armor fetishes? Are the two related or what?"
- Conversed: See disscussed.
- Played For Laughs: Diabolus ends up plummeting through the floor due to the weight of his bulky armor.
- Played For Drama: The Scary Impractical Armour is in fact Scary, and Diabolus is The Feared largley due to the armour's fearsome reputation.
Back to Tin Tyrant. Don't forget to dress properly first, though.