Wouldn't Hurt a Child/Playing With

• Main
• Laconic
• Playing With
• All Subpages
• Create New

Basic Trope: A villain predisposed to immoral acts is nonetheless morally opposed to harming children.

• Straight: Professional Killer Eve will assassinate just about anyone for money, but children are strictly off limits.
• Exaggerated: Galactic Empress Eve will annihilate an entire planet along with any adults on its surface, but she'll take the time to beam all the children to safety first.
• Downplayed: Con-artist Eve will happily drive her victims to financial ruin, but she'll never pull a scam on a child.
• Justified: Eve is part of an organized crime ring. Nobody wants to work with a child-killer, so she always spares children for the sake of her reputation.
• Inverted: Eve preys exclusively on children.
• Subverted: Eve claims she is above killing a child, but later does so when she thinks no-one is looking.
• Double Subverted: ...because only she knows that said "child" is really a 700-year-old demon in human disguise.
• Parodied: Eve is so determined to never kill children on the job, that she can actually warp reality. When she sets off a bomb in a room full of people, all the adults die, but all the children magically survive.
• Zig Zagged: Eve claims that she would never hurt children. Many years ago, she took a job which involved gunning a room full of people, including one child. She was so consumed by guilt that she made a vow to never take any job that might involve children. But lately she's finding herself strapped for cash, and her only son will die from a terminal illness unless treated. When she's offered a hefty sum to send an entire school bus of children to her death, she's torn between her willingness to stick by her principles, or to commit the ultimate atrocity to save the one child she loves most.
• Averted: Eve kills adults and children indiscriminately.
• Enforced: Killing children is a guaranteed way to make a villain completely unsympathetic to the audience, and the writers want Eve to be a Sympathetic Criminal.
• Lampshaded: ???
• Invoked: ???
• Exploited: Inspector Alice knows that Eve won't dare to harm a child, so to protect the target of an upcoming assassination, she surrounds him with children.
• Defied: In the unforgiving wasteland where it's every man for himself, Eve forces herself to ignore her conscience so that she can kill anyone and everyone that stands between her and survival, children included.
• Discussed: A client putting out a hit contacts Eve. As they discuss the nature of the job, she makes it perfectly clear that she will not accept any job that involves harming children.
• Conversed: ???