Was Once a Man/Playing With
Basic Trope: A monster who used to be human.
- Played Straight: The Evil Bob-Thing used to be Bob.
- Exaggerated: All monsters were once humans.
- Downplayed: Bob becoming Alice is treated as this.
- Justified: This is the only way new monsters can be created.
- Inverted: Bob is a human who used to be a monster.
- Subverted: The Bob-Thing was always a monster.
- Double Subverted: The Bob-Thing was lying.
- Parodied: Bob gets turned into a cute bunny rabbit. Or, a friendly monster character mentions in passing that it used to be human, but didn't much like it.
- The monster was once named "A. Man", but had it legally changed.
- The Bob-Thing was once a man, despite being a woman.
- Zig Zagged: Bob keeps repeatedly changing between his human form and his monster form.
- Averted: Bob stays human.
- Enforced: The writers wanted to give a psychological aspect to the horror by having it being once a man.
- Lampshaded: "That thing... it wasn't always like this."
- Invoked: Bob does everything he needs to do to become a Bob-Thing.
- Defied: Knowing that there is a very real chance that he may turn into a monster, Bob seeks to prevent it.
- Discussed: "Oh my god... now we know what happened to Bob."
- Conversed: "In stories like this, the most inhuman monsters were all once humans."
- Played for Laughs: ...
- Played for Drama: Due to the nature of this trope, almost every example will already be played as this.