Jumping Off The Slippery Slope - Television Tropes & Idioms

Slipery slopes can be fun — kind of like a water slide

The road to Hell is paved with good intentions.

— Old proverb

He who fights with monsters should look to it that he himself does not become a monster. And when you gaze long into an abyss the abyss also gazes into you.

— Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil

The heroes encounter someone who engages in behavior that is an uncomfortable shade of gray. Someone who is just killing off enemies/criminals, or fighting an ally-of-convenience of the good guys.

There is an implication that what that "someone" is willing to do makes the good guys look negligent and a little under-committed to the cause of good.

Thankfully, before the heroes have to question their own morality too much, said gray suddenly turns black. The "gray" start engaging in obvious "too far" behavior, usually with a touch of fanaticism, becoming Well Intentioned Extremists. The good guys no longer have to ponder the ramifications of the original behavior. Status quo is restored.

The Aesop here is supposed to be the Slippery Slope Argument

, but it is fast-forwarded due to time constraints.

This is the opposite of a series recognizing that some people have to Shoot The Dog.

Compare with Contrived Coincidence and Motive Decay.

Sometimes this happens with the protagonist, leading to Moral Dissonance.

Examples

Anime

Death Note: Yagami Light begins using the supernatural notebook to rid society of criminals, but soon his black list expands to include anyone who stands in his way for any reason, starting with the FBI. Along the way, he coolly manipulates the feelings of both people and shinigami. Repeatedly stating that he plans to become the god of the new world he is trying to create doesn't help matters, either.
- For that matter, Mikami Teru uses the notebook to eliminate minor and reformed criminals.
Recently in Naruto Sasuke went from betraying his village to kill Itachi for killing his clan to wanting to destroy the entire village because some (but not all) of the higher ups of it convince him to do it (even though his clan was planning to start a civil war).
- Even more recently, though, Sasuke stated his team would be after the top brass of Konoha, not the entire village. He HAS sided with Konoha's enemies for the moment, but there are signs he intends to eventually turn against them. His motives are open for debate.
  - And most recently, Sasuke told Madara that he only told his team he was going for the elders only, and he really wants to destroy the whole village. Men, women and children.
In Code Geass, Lelouch Lamperouge wanted to destroy the Empire of Britannia (despite being an ex-Imperial Prince) and started to organize La Resistance. However, as time passes, he becomes more hardened and crazy, going as far as massacring children and unnarmed people for possessing Geass powers and being a part of a Britannian-sponsored cult... which trained or brainwashed the children in it to use theirGeass to make a guy murder his own allies. Let us not forget Rolo, THE Tyke Bomb of the series, was raised there too.
- Then there's Suzaku who finally decide to have end justify means and drug Kallen to get a confession out of her. Unlike Lelouch, he doesn't go through it.
- And of course, we have The Emperor and V.V, who after suffering all his pain in the childhood, do the exact same thing fifty years later, even though they said they will eliminate lies. Not to mention V.V. is to blame for ordering the brainwashing and training of Rolo and the kids....
- In general, everyone in Geass flew off slippery slopes.
  - Except, ironically, Euphemia, who actually goes on a rampage, killing Japanese people... but only because she was under the power of Geass and was unable to stop herself.

Comic Books

The majority of heroes who meet The Punisher in the Marvel Universe are usually Technical Pacifists, so most of them think that this Anti Hero has jumped off and is now gaily frolicking at the bottom. In fact, any Anti Hero who lives in a verse that's on the idealistic side of the Sliding Scale Of Idealism Versus Cynicism could be said to have jumped, at least from an in-universe perspective.
- Averted sometimes in the Marvel Universe when he doesn't kill (for various reasons, mainly when having to team with the majority of the protagonists), and averted in his MAX series where to date things have been almost entirely on the cynical side and... Then again, arguably he's not treated that nicely there either, it's just that his targets are apparently much, much worse, and the reason that he keeps a select few alive? Well...
  - Garth Ennis admitted that his sheer anger regarding human trafficking and sex slavery led to the infamous arc "The Slavers," which has Frank Castle graphically disembowel a slaver, throw his sister face first into a window repeatedly until the shatterproof window breaks off from the frame, and then set their father on fire... even after Frank admits that this won't make a big difference and that he's just going after their group, and at the end his inability to really help the victims.
Iron Man started the Marvel Comics Civil War Crisis Crossover with a perfectly valid idea: that superheroes should be held legally accountable for their actions, and should all register their identities with the government to help enforce that. Then they started conscripting registered heroes, arresting everyone with powers who didn't register (whether they intended to use them or not), restraining former friends in secret prisons, turning loose mass-murdering supervillains so they can work as government-sanctioned enforcement agents, cloning a god, etc. etc., turning supporters of registration into strawman politicals. (Tony's fans complain that he didn't jump, he was pushed by the writers.)
- The complaining fans have a point; the original intentions of the story were to show that both sides had good point, but the people writing the anti-registration side inserted Author Filibuster after Author Filibuster about how eeeeevil The Government is, and made Tony look worse by comparison. Though, to be fair, imprisoning people without a trial in the mainline unbiased story...In the negative zone...yeah.)
- They built a fraggin' concentration camp, and registered superhumans were essentially forced into slavery. The idea that the 'two sides' idea would ever have a snowball's chance in hell, in this troper's opinion, speaks mostly to the skewed morality of certain Marvel editors.
  - The basic idea behind registration is not obviously wrong. In the Marvel universe, there are all these superhumans flying around with as much power as a small army. Some kind of system to ensure accountability is in order. It's an idea that has caused all kinds of Fridge Logic issues with comic books over the years: who holds the supers responsible for the collateral damage their Battle Royale With Cheese caused? The Civil War story could easily have been played sympathetically for both sides, even though it didn't work out that way.
- The Clusterfutz is made only more mindbending when Mark Millar, the man who wrote most of the mainline story, is basically on the record that, at least in the main book, the people we were supposed to agree with were the Pro-registration people. Even after countless upon countless What The Hell Hero moments. And Sally Floyd....Oh, Sally Floyd...
Often happens in X-Men comics, with debates about the rights and wrongs of mutant cures being short-circuited by revealing the cure is poisonous, or was created by illegal experiments on mutants, or something similar.

Film

Anakin in Star Wars.
- Also, in the EU, Jacen Solo's means to an end actually make sense, even after he becomes a Sith. However, you realize a few books before the finale that he's completely lost touch with his original philosophy and is just retroactively trying to justify his insane actions.
The character of Amanda in the Saw movie series makes Jigsaw look downright merciful by the third movie.
Magnum Force has Dirty Harry dealing with cops who have been executing guilty criminals who escaped justice due to technicalities. When he refuses an offer to join them, they try to murder Harry, thus proving they didn't have a complex or unorthodox sense of justice after all, they just like killing. Just once this troper would like to see this theme revisited in a film or tv show where the criminal-executing folks actually just end up facing the music for their actions, because it turns out they really are idealistic and refuse to murder innocents or people who get in their way.
- Dexter comes close. But this troper finds Yagami Light a lot more realistic.
Crimson Tide is often noted as quite admirably morally complex for a Jerry Bruckheimer film, with Gene Hackman's character given quite a bit of sympathy in wanting to launch the missiles. At least until the ending, when he makes a thinly veiled racist comment to Denzel Washington, which Washington promptly reverses on him.
The Dark Knight, Harvey Dent wasn't so much "jumping off" as much as the Joker kicked him off it.
- Then there's the Joker himself, who has some very good points about the futility of fascism & violence... which he makes by murdering people & blowing up buildings.
The Brave One showcases a woman's gradual escalation from being a rape victim to buying a gun to feel safe, to inserting herself into dangerous situations so she can shoot predators in self-defence to killing a crimelord in the heat of the moment after being shoved to outright premeditated revenge killing of her rapists.
- Which is actually less of a jump and more of the slippery slope slide into violence.

Literature

This trope is Older Than They Think. It appears in the classic adventure book, Around The World In Eighty Days, where the heroes, a British officer and a native guide secretly observe a procession to suttee, the ritual self-immolation of a widow in the funeral pyre of her husband. Phileas Fogg is outraged at this, but persuaded not to interfere in part because he has no right to dictate his values to a woman in another culture doing this by her own choice. However, the native guide realizes that the woman is drugged and thus obviously not doing this voluntarily. Thus the suttee to be performed is revealed to actually an act of mere murder and thus the heroes are now free to intervene.
- Possible example of Truth In Television; some Hindu widows were indeed compelled to commit sati, either by social pressure or by physical force.
  - Some? How do you take social pressure out of the equation, in the days when it was legal, traditions permeated everything, and the alternative to to the pyre was.... what?
  - If the widow did not throw herself on the pyre, tradition states that she will become a part of the "unclean" caste, and be doomed to a life of poverty, ect. The pyre, in some ways, was better than the alternative.
In Damon Knight's short story "The Analogues", a scientist invents a procedure to create a "better conscience" in the form of hallucinations that prevent you from committing crimes. This raises a lot of questions about the morality of removing free choice, but then it turns out the scientist plans to use it to take over the world, and has already used it on the protagonist to prevent him from stopping the plot.
King Erius in Lynn Flewelling's Tamir trilogy starts by taking the throne from his insane mother, who was executing people left and right, in defiance of the divine edict that for no apparent reason essentially promises Bad Things if a man ever rules the country. Bad Things happen. He then proceeds to institute sexist practices and start killing off his female relatives...

Live Action TV

Star Trek had numerous cases of this. For example, in Star Trek Voyager a race of holograms rebel against a race that had been hunting them, and start freeing all other holograms in the area. Even Voyager's holographic doctor joins them. But then they start killing off anyone who might enslave an intelligent hologram.
Xena Warrior Princess had Najara, a character who either converted or killed criminals. Rather quickly, Najara is revealed to be insane, and can't tell the difference between obvious criminals and lesser offenders.
Supernatural had an episode where the Winchester brothers met a rogue vampire hunter. Despite seeming like a decent enough chap and a worthy ally, the more experienced hunters tell the boys the guy is bad news. The new character makes a swandive off the slope when the local vampires turn out to actually be peaceful and swear not to kill humans, yet he still attempts to slaughter them - then goes out of his way to attack the protagonists for no adequately explained reason.
Buffy The Vampire Slayer: Soon after Faith's arrival, the enjoyment she gets from slaying begins to make Buffy question the job. But just as Buffy is coming round to Faith's way of thinking, she does something that cements her position at the bottom of the slope, and Buffy's dilemma is over... although she still agonizes about it, until Faith makes a point of attacking Buffy's circle of friends directly.
- Another example occurs in the season 2 episode "Changes". A werewolf hunter shows up and at first there appears to be a moral dilemma over whether it is morally acceptable to kill werewolves (who kill people, but aren't in control of their actions). Fortunately, the hunter quickly reveals himself to be evil, and so an exploration of whether it is moral to shoot the dog is avoided.
Battlestar Galactica: The "Pegasus" arc has been accused of this by some critics, with Admiral Cain taking about twenty minutes to go from merely being a hardassed martinet, to mass-murdering civilians, ordering the rape of a pregnant woman as a Jack Bauer Interrogation Technique, and sentencing the crewmen who interfered to summary execution. In fact, the episode "Pegasus" had had to be radically trimmed to fit network time constraints; some of the footage that was lost (and reinstated on the DVD) implied the passing of more time than seems to go by in the episode as aired. The Razor movie, which came later, gave Cain a Psycho Lesbian backstory to explain her excesses.
- There's also the episode where the woman put in charge of a tribunal takes about 24 hours to go completely nuts with power, and attempt to accuse the commanding officer who appointed her of the crime she's investigating.
- Similarly, in the 'Black Market' episode, the leader of the organisation running it does a pretty good job of defending the need for a black market in the fleet. Then he talks about having child prostitutes, so Lee can shoot him withour feeling guilty
Seems to happen about once a season in Doctor Who. A few notable examples;
- "The Mind of Evil"; a scientist invents a machine that removes criminal impulses from the human mind, and offers it to the government as a means of dealing with dangerous criminals without resorting to the death penalty. Turns out its inventor is actually the Master and the device brainwashes people to serve him.
- "Genesis of the Daleks"; Davros invents the Dalek (or "Mark III Travel Machine, as he initially calls it) ostensibly for the purpose of making life easier for mutated Kaleds. When his superiors start getting cold feet about the research, he has the entire Kaled race wiped out.
- "Rise of the Cybermen"; When the British government refuses to fund John Lumic's Cyberman research, he kills the leadership and begins forcibly cyber-converting the British population.
- "The Lazarus Experiment": The Doctor and Martha's initial objections to Lazarus's rejuvenation machine are the standard "man shouldn't live forever" stuff. Then it turns Lazarus into a giant scorpion-thing who sucks the life out of people.
- "Planet of the Ood": Donna protests the use of the Ood as a slave race, which forces the Doctor to admit he never gave it much thought (he was and is more curious about the how the Ood are allegedly naturally born to serve). Fortunately, the Doctor gets off the fence once it's learned that the Ood aren't born to be subservient, but are actually lobotomized into being so, allowing him to fight against the corporation selling the race out.
Holly in Slings And Arrows wants to streamline the Festival's business end and replace most of its Shakespeare with musicals. This is only marks her as a villain in the context of a show where Shakespeare is Serious Business, until she starts abusing her boyfriend and deliberately aggravating the heart problem of a board member who disagrees with her.
Gerak in season 9 of Stargate SG 1. At least he got a redemptive death, though.
Similar to the Magnum Force example, season two of Murder One featured a storyline about Clifford Banks, a serial killer who tracked down and executed criminals who escaped justice, or had an unsuitably short prison sentence. He started out on this path through the murder of his retarded brother, he never kills innocent people, and throughout the arc a few people comment that "sometimes the streets need sweeping." Any moral ambiguity is then done away with by the lawyers finding out that Clifford actually killed his brother himself over his frustration about giving up his whole life to care for him, causing a mental breakdown that directed his guilt outwards onto other criminals.

Tabletop RPG

Vampire The Masquerade has an actual mechanic for this: acting like an inhuman, unprincipled bastard will make you more of an inhuman, unprincipled bastard.

Video Games

In Bioshock, harvesting even one of the Little Sisters gives you the bad ending; it is simply implied that you jumped off the slope and became ADAM and power-hungry the moment you first harvested.
- To be fair, ripping the guts out of a little girl is hardly an innocent first step onto the slippery slope. And I'm not sure, but I believe the game might let you get the good ending with just one Sister harvested - so it's more of a case of "anyone who, having experienced that, would do it again, is definitely evil."

Western Animation

The Batman The Animated Series episode "Lock-Up" introduced Lyle Bolton, ruthless head of security at Arkham Asylum, who eventually goes crazy and becomes the supervillain Lock-Up. He starts off making some good points about his regime bringing Arkham's role as a Cardboard Prison to a halt. Fortunately - so to speak - he also turns out to be a sadistic monster who steps way past his boundaries and abuses his inmates, allowing Batman to take him down without any worries.
- When new-vigilante-in-town The Judge shows up later on, attacking the villains and not caring whether or not he kills them, this is never even brought up; it is taken for granted that his actions are wrong. (The big jump probably comes moments before Batman intervenes, when he is about to kill a small-time corrupt politician, but still.)

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