Basic Trope: Villains possess qualities that would be virtuous in a different context.
- Straight: The Evil Overlord Maleus, despite his cruelty and manipulation, is honest, brave, generous, and will risk any personal danger to accomplish his goals.
- Exaggerated: Despite being Made of Evil, Maleus is the nicest, kindest, most forthright guy around.
- Downplayed: Maleus is thoroughly evil, and commits his evil acts openly, but still possesses a weird sense of honor.
- Justified: The goals Maleus has are not totally depraved, and some may even consider them admirable.
- Honesty, charity and kindness are things people respond well to, and Maleus would be a dope not to take advantage of them.
- Maleus doesn't think he's a villain despite having clearly crossed the Moral Event Horizon. In his own deluded views, he thinks he's doing what's right, and that the heroes are getting in the way for no good reason.
- The moral compass of Maleus has several dimensions to it.
- Inverted: Instead of using virtue to serve his vices, Maleus uses his vices to try and become a better person–emphasis on "try."
- Subverted:
- No matter how adroitly villains may emulate virtues, they do not genuinely believe in them. As soon as his goals are accomplished, Maleus discards notions of "honor" and "fair play" in favor of indulging his true nature.
- Maleus may genuinely have said virtues, but they end up creating or contributing to faults to their character and motivations, setting them up for weaknesses that can be exploited, leading to their defeat.
- Parodied:
- Maleus's good qualities come from his Split Personality, which consists of vile darkness on one side and sweetness and light on the other.
- Maleus knows that having some good traits is advantageous. Too bad for him that his idea of "good traits" is rather uninformed.
- Zig Zagged: The more power Maleus garners, the more unstable he becomes mentally, and the crueler his actions become.
- Averted: Maleus is your bog-standard evildoer whose better angels show up rarely, if at all.
- Enforced: The creators of the show want to show a more nuanced take on evil and/or demonstrate the qualities needed for it to succeed.
- Lampshaded: Maleus questions the heroes' resolve to destroy him, since they seem to share many of the same qualities.
- Invoked: To keep him from being too Drunk with Power to accomplish anything useful, Maleus's creator instilled him with a rudimentary sense of ethics to keep him focused.
- Defied: Maleus doesn't have the slightest shade of morality, making him less of a man and more of a beast.
- Exploited: The appearance of virtue is a crucial part of Maleus's cover.
- Discussed: Maleus freely admits he doesn't really know what to make of his morality.
- Conversed: "You know, if it weren't for the glowing yellow eyes, red devil horns, and the fact that he goes around in a black cloak with red streaks on it, Maleus would be a pretty stand-up guy."
- Implied: Despite having the power to destroy the heroes outright, Maleus always seems to let them escape their confrontations.
- Deconstructed: The fact that Maleus is capable of virtue at all suggests he isn't irredeemably evil, which leaves the door open for redemption.
- Maleus's virtues steadily begin to encroach on his evil character, leading to a crisis of conscience and his eventual downfall.
- Maleus actually has very similar if not almost identical moral standards to the hero, to explore a work's theme that no traits are inherently virtuous or inherently sinful; it's how they're practiced that matters.
- Reconstructed: Maleus fully understands the virtues he harnesses for his own gain, and because of that doesn't pay them any credence, seeking only the power they allow him to wield over others.
Continue to deceive the main page through guile and cunning.
