Basic Trope: A villain destroys and gloats to celebrate becoming all-powerful.
- Straight: Alice sets her house on fire and laughs maniacally.
- Exaggerated: Alice gleefully starts to set all the houses in the neighborhood on fire without an ounce of empathy.
- Downplayed: Alice shrugs her shoulders and comments about how her new powers are neat.
- Justified:
- Alice discovers that her new evil powers give her the power of a god.
- Alice has been powerless and abused all her life. When she finally gets the power she craves, she loses any sense of self-control.
- Inverted:
- Alice discovers that her new powers are ineffective and gets incredibly angry.
- Alice is The Heroine who one day gets superpowers. To celebrate it, she goes on a day-long spree of saving kittens and treating injured kids with her Healing Hands, and squees with joy all the way.
- Subverted:
- Alice is depressed upon calling upon the dark side and doesn't feel insane pleasure.
- Alice might be more confident but doesn't gloat in evilness or undergo a rapid change in personality.
- Double Subverted: But over time, she starts to relish the new powers and enjoys using them.
- Parodied:
- Alice decides to sing a song called "I like to be bad!"
- Alice starts Chewing the Scenery after buying Park Place and Boardwalk during a game of Monopoly.
- Alice uses her new powers to hold up the line at the DMV.
- Zig Zagged: Alice becomes insane when she unlocks the dark side...but gets bored until the next spell is unlocked...insists that she's normal...but has fits of laughter from time to time...says that she needs to be responsible...before she promptly ignores that responsibility.
- Averted: Alice uses the dark side without dramatic effect.
- Enforced: Alice's new powers damage her mental health and cognitive ability, to the point that she loses self control and does great damage to both herself and the world around her.
- Lampshaded: "Okay, we get it, you're evil. Can you quit laughing like the Joker?"
- Implied: Bob leaves the room, hears a faint giggling from the other side before Alice's laughter can be faintly heard as unspeakable acts occur.
- Exploited: Knowing that Alice is prone to insane fits, Bob gives her a chance to lose control and gloat in evilness as she becomes careless and vulnerable.
- Defied: Alice refuses to indulge in the power of the dark side and vows to use it responsibly if at all.
- Discussed: "You want to know how someone is evil? Just tell them a joke or let them hit you and watch as they laugh their ass off."
- Conversed: "You think if we told her that every evil spell cost her a year of life, she'd stop laughing?"
- Deconstructed: Alice begins to laugh with her new strength but upon realizing what she has done she condemns herself for being able to laugh and gloat at the destruction she caused, feeling tremendous shame and realizing she has lost her humanity.
- Reconstructed: However, the more she uses these dark powers the more her mind slips away to the point that her humanity disappears and vanishes altogether, which prompts her to start laughing maniacally once more as she feels that shedding her humanity has made her far stronger than any puny mortal.
- Played For Laughs: Alice acts like a giddy school child and destroys an entire town with her new powers as cheerful music plays in the background.
- Played For Drama: Alice realizes how far she has fallen with the raw release of the dark side, but because she has nothing left and that her fate is sealed, she can only laugh even if tears stream from her face in regret for what she's done.
