Basic Trope: A character who is initially heroic slowly becomes as evil or amoral as the things they fight.
- Straight: Norbert is a Serial-Killer Killer who becomes a pitiless Knight Templar as he continues to kill more of his enemies, ultimately becoming no different from a regular Serial Killer.
- Exaggerated:
- Norbert ices one bad guy and instantly becomes one.
- Norbert vows to hunt down bloodthirsty beasts plaguing the world, he gradually becomes more and more bloodthirsty until he becomes a beast himself.
- Norbert eventually suffers from severe Motive Decay and starts killing millions for the sake of evil, turning him into a Complete Monster.
- Downplayed:
- Norbert goes from being a traditional hero to a typical Anti-Hero as he fights more enemies.
- Norbert goes from a Bully Hunter to bullying everyone in school.
- Justified:
- Norbert, despite his justifications, in truth has always had deeply dark desires and urges to punish the people who he saw as evil, even when he was the one who was the victim. Being able to finally kill the people he hated satiated his bloodlust that he was always able to hide behind a veneer of decency, but eventually faded away when he realized he could get away with his cruelty and be hailed a hero for it...until he couldn't anymore. By that point, people were too busy trying to justify enabling his cruel actions and saving their own hides from persecution, and Norbert was too entrenched in his own selfishness to stop.
- It's a Crapsack World where ruthlessness is rewarded and No Good Deed Goes Unpunished.
- He is starting to doubt the existence of morality due to the existence of these monsters, while cynicism and pure desire takes over.
- The constant fighting leaves its scars on Norbert, physically and mentally. He becomes increasingly brutal and ruthless because that's what happens to someone when they're going from one battle to the next and There Are No Therapists to keep them from Slowly Slipping Into Evil, or at least slowly slipping into jerkassery.
- Black-and-White Morality slowly shifts to Grey-and-Gray Moralitynote during the battles, turning Norbert mad from doubt about what he is doing.
- He's heard too many breaking speeches from the villains he's taken down, and they're starting to stick.
- Norbert is catching The Virus from his kills.
- Norbert was a sociopath to begin with, but kept up appearances as a hero and got hired to hunt monsters due to his skills. As the years go by, he slowly lets his ugly side out more and more until it was all that anyone could see.
- The monsters in question, when dispatched, can transfer some of their monstrous energy to their killer. Since Norbert is a dedicated monster-hunter, it's little wonder that he absorbed a bit too much of the monstrous essence.
- Inverted:
- Heel Realization.
- Norbert set out as a bloodthirsty ruthless Vigilante Man inflicting violent punishments on criminals; however, seeing the pain and horror brought by him, he became The Atoner and pushed for peaceful resolutions of conflicts whenever possible.
- Contagious Heroism: Norbert used to be a career criminal with little to no regard to the victims of his misdeeds, but after all the time spent on duty with Inspector Alice he transformed into a man of virtue, compassion and high moral standing, possibly even abandoning crime altogether.
- Emperor Evulz started out on the edge of being a Complete Monster, but he becomes steadily more noble and honourable as he fights the heroes, until at the end he has become a Hero Antagonist.
- Subverted:
- Just as his violent impulses start to manifest, Norbert's True Companions remind him of his goals and virtues, thus preventing him from going too far astray.
- Upon seeing the aftermath of his violent streaks, Norbert feels a wave of horror, guilt and remorse.
- 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 of Sanity is starting to slip.
- Norbert simply lays down his sword and goes home when the last monster is slain, after taking extensive care to avoid any collateral damage along the way. After all, the whole point of fighting monsters was to stop them and perhaps Make an Example of Them to others who aspire to monsterhood. What does it say about you that you consider killing monsters morally comparable to killing their victims? Did You Actually Believe...? he'd lose sight of his goals that easily?
- Double Subverted:
- He gets separated from his friends during a mission and, without anyone to keep him in check, is immediately consumed by his own bloodlust.
- However, he dismisses the unpleasant reflections time and time again, to the point of a Tautological Templar.
- Despite his immorality, Norbert wouldn't cross certain lines before going on his crusade. Now, he's slowly getting closer to becoming the worst kind of monster.
- 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.
- Norbert is a Bully Hunter who automatically becomes The Bully.
- Norbert defeats a Chess champion, but in doing so became a chess champion himself. He is horrified by what he has become.
- Zig-Zagged: 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.
- "Humans Are the Real Monsters. Let's show how the humans slowly become the very evil they sought to kill to enforce An Aesop on how Humans and Monsters are the same."
- Lampshaded: "I regret that I have to say it, Norbert, but after all the things you've done... You and Evulz are not so different anymore!"
- 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.
- Norbert is being influenced by Emperor Evulz subconsciously.
- 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.
- "It's war, and if you want to survive and win, you have to be just as brutal as your enemy."
- "Oh, you're gonna give me this damn speech about 'What Is Evil?' and how me kicking your ass makes me just as much of a monster as you are? You're the asshole that killed a thousand people, raped a hundred, terrorized the entire country, and now you're here attacking a school; all because you literally hate hope and anything that represents it, even little girls that have done you no wrong other than existing and having the name "Hope", and giving you a concussion makes me a monster?!? COME ON!!!"
- Discussed: "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 has tried being good, fighting back against evil while maintaining the moral high ground. Unfortunately, in this setting Good Is Impotent: Adults Are Useless, Police Are Useless, Militaries Are Useless, Cardboard Prisons are the norm so imprisonement is all but worthless, the government is made up of Lawful Pushovers, and the other heroes keep allowing the villains to live so they could resume their mayhem another day. He realizes that Bad Guys Do the Dirty Work and that it Takes One to Kill One, so he decides to swear off the If You Kill Him, You Will Be Just Like Him! lesson and willingly embraces becoming evil to put an end to the monsters he sees.
- Norbert is very conscious of this trope and is constantly examining himself and his actions because he is so afraid of sliding down the slippery slope and into the deep end, and the keepsake that he always carries with him that is directly tied to the original event that started his fight against evil is there to remind him of why he's fighting, lest he fall victim to Motive Decay.
- Reconstructed:
- The depression caused by what he sees causes him to despair and give in to evil.
- While Norbert may destroy other villains, he doesn't actually reduce the evil in the world, but fill in the vacuum they have left behind. He may try to concentrate his efforts on other villains, but his unscrupulous methods endanger many innocent lives as collateral damage. He eventually becomes a Knight Templar that crosses the Moral Event Horizon, and is forced to be put down by the heroes. They realize the fault they have in Norbert's descent into evil, and vow to better themselves so that no more desperate people follow his path.
- Norbert fell off the slippery slope a long time ago, but absolutely does not see it, and his self-examinations and questioning are worthless because they are being filtered through the lens of someone who cannot recognize the reality of what they are doing. Oh, and that keepsake? It makes him worse, as it feeds into his increasingly dogmatic mindset and allows him to find a way to connect everything he does to his original cause and thus justify it, no matter how tenuous a connection (if there even is a connection, half of it is all in his head) it may be.
- Played Literally: And Then John Was a Zombie
Back to He Who Fights Monsters
