What the Hell, Hero?/Playing With
Basic Trope: The hero gets called out for acting like a bad guy.
- Straight: The Hero Kicked A Dog and his teammates object.
- Exaggerated: The action was so henious, that even the big bad calls him out.
- Downplayed: The Hero steals a cookie from the cookie jar and gets scolded over it.
- Justified: If the Hero hadn't been called out, he would have kept sliding down the slippery slope.
- Inverted: The Hero does something awful, but rather than be called out for it, someone (the villain or The Rival) says "Way to go!" which causes the Hero to regret his actions.
- Alternatively, the villain or Token Evil Teammate Pets The Dog, which comes so out of left field that no one can help but point it out.
- Subverted: The hero has a perfectly good justification for what he did, and the one calling him out retracts his complaint.
- Double Subverted: The hero has a justification for what he did... but after hearing it, the one calling him out still says he shouldn't have done it.
- Parodied: The hero Pokes The Poodle, and everyone formed an angry mob over it.
- Deconstructed: The objector incessantly points out even the least objectionable action, treating it as Designated Evil even though almost everyone else sees it as a necessary Shoot the Dog. He thinks he's an Only Sane Man and bastion of Incorruptible Pure Pureness, but it's apparent that his rampant objection marks him as a Commander Contrarian Knight Templar and he does more harm than good.
- The objector is a Wide-Eyed Idealist who's Wrong Genre Savvy about which end of the Sliding Scale of Idealism Versus Cynicism this work is in and gets shown clearly that he doesn't know what he's talking about.
- Reconstructed: The objector may be over-reactive and a holder of too-high moral standards, but in a world of Black and Grey Morality, he's the only thing keeping his Heroic Sociopath teammates from falling into true villainy.
- The objector then points out that just because he's an idealist doesn't mean he's wrong-and that the Big Bad followed the same line of logic for similarly justifiable reasons. He just doesn't want the Hero to think some of the worse actions are okay.
- Zig Zagged: The objector tends to overreact to the smallest thing; however, when the hero commits a truly horrible act, he's the only one to call him out. The hero justifies his actions with I Did What I Had to Do, which the objector agrees with... until pointing out there was another way. Said option was workable, but involved massive risk and could have resulted in Heroic Sacrifice; it's left unanswered whether the hero's solution was more pragmatic or not.
- Averted: The Hero does his immoral act and no one complains.
- The Hero commits no reprehensible acts.
- Enforced: "We must create tension. Quick, call him out for doing something bad!"
- Lampshaded: "Aw, man! This is gonna be one of those talks where you guys yell at me for needless property damage again, isn't it?"
- Invoked: The Hero specifically selects a Lancer who will call him out so as to prevent himself from falling freely to evil.
- Defied: The Designated Hero surrounds himself with yes-men who will not complain about his actions.
- Alternately, The Hero, before undertaking any Dirty Business, talks with his team about it before going through with it.
- Discussed: "Ugh, The Hero might be "good and all", but you know he's going to slip up and we are not going to let him get away with it then."
- Conversed: "Finally! Someone called out the hero for being a douche."
Back to What the Hell, Hero??