Basic Trope: A character who is initially heroic, but is slowly becoming as evil as the things he fights.
- Straight: Norbert is a Serial Killer Killer who becomes a pitiless Knight Templar.
- Exaggerated: Norbert ices one bad guy and instantly becomes one.
- Downplayed: Norbert goes from being a traditional hero to a typical Anti-Hero as he fights more enemies.
- Justified:
- Inverted: Heel Realization.
- Subverted:
- Norbert learns valuable lessons from his battles with evil.
- Norbert doesn't become evil. He was always evil. He's just gotten worse at controlling his impulses and/or justifying his actions, so his mask is starting to slip.
- Double Subverted: ...but becomes evil anyway.
- Parodied:
- Norbert starts to look and speak like his enemies, and by the end of the story, it's impossible to tell who's Norbert and who's the enemy.
- Norbert writes a note to a bad guy telling him to stop being evil, Norbert then immediately kills random people for no reason
- Zigzagged: Norbert's morality seems to jump between good and evil whenever he kills a monster.
- Averted:
- Norbert is unchanged by his work.
- Norbert was always evil, and only targets people worse than he is as a way of trying to keep the heat off himself.
- Once Norbert has gotten his revenge, he does, in fact, stop fighting.
- Enforced:
- "We can't have one of the good guys killing people. Let's make him one of the bad guys instead!"
- The author is writing a Tragedy.
- Lampshaded: "You are Not So Different!"
- Invoked:
- Serial Killer Alice knows that, eventually, she's going to be caught by Norbert. She kills his little sister in order to make Norbert more like herself as revenge.
- Norbert is killing the monsters for the sake of becoming one, either physically or mentally.
- Exploited: A Manipulative Bastard uses the fact that Norbert is turning into a villain to create discord within The Team which Norbert is part of.
- Defied: Norbert vows to never become like his enemies, even if it means subjecting himself to a Fate Worse Than Death.
- Dicussed: "Well, what did you expect? Norbert was always the best at his job."
- Conversed: "If you are planning revenge, don't. You'll become exactly like your enemies, like what happened in this show."
- Deconstructed:
- Every day, his foes show him new depths of horror, keeping him on the straight and narrow.
- Norbert's goals are sympathetic enough that the heroes show reluctance in interfering with them; by doing so, they fear that they're helping the one he's after get a Karma Houdini, as the justice system won't give him the proper retribution.
- Reconstructed:
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He Who Fights Monsters
