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• Straight: The Philosophical Recurring Traveler Hermann keeps ranting on about how world is cold and miserable and we can as well start murdering each other for all it's worth.
• Exaggerated: Hermann is the Anthropomorphic Personification of hate, chaos and despair.
• Justified: It's a Crapsack World and/or Cosmic Horror Story.
  • Hermann had a horrible childhood, no wonder he became a Nietzsche Wannabe
  • Hermann was a former Wide-Eyed Idealist. You know what happened.
  • Hermann was a Butt Monkey. What do you expect?
  • Hermann has read too many cynical works while thinking too much about how idealistic premises are easily deconstructed, and he begins to see parallels between those that he read and reality.
• Inverted: Hermann is an Anti Nihilist who firmly believes in The Power of Love and that Rousseau Was Right.
• Subverted: Hermann is stated to be a big fan of Nietzsche's philosophy - but then it's revealed he actually read his works and did research. So he's not really a nihilist, merely a pessimist.
• Double Subverted: This is not revealed to the heroes, though. Hermann acts like a nihilist when around them simply because he's a bit of a jerk, and does not like them.
• Parodied: Hermann hates the world because he lost a toy train.
• Deconstructed: Nihilists like Hermann are just as pathetic, if not even more, than the "wide-eyed idealists" they're constantly debunking and bullying, sometimes with their speeches being just a projection of their own self-hatred, depression and death seeking tendencies on the idealists. Sure the nihilists are smarter and/or more savvy, and do know that the world is crappy, but they waste their philosophical intellect on fauxlosophic wangst and being assholes.
• Reconstructed: He finds renewed motivation in life through trying to prove to everyone that "Silly Rabbit, Idealism Is for Kids!". The strong motivation makes him a less pathetic villain than an ordinary Omnicidal Maniac, while he himself, through finding more motivations in life, is gradually transformed into The Übermensch- all while holding a grim dark nihilistic philosophy.
• Zig Zagged: The author needed a character to be a nihilist, with a heavy cultural backbone, so he made him a Nietzsche follower. Only, the author doesn't care to read anything about Nietzsche, so the character's beliefs vary at every needs of the story. Wildly.
• Averted: There are no nihilistic villains around.
  • Alternatively, there's a real The Übermensch
• Enforced: Author includes Nietzsche and Nihilism only to prove or disprove some points.
• Lampshaded: "That guy sounds like he tries to rip off good ol' Friedrich Nietzsche... and fails at it."
  • "He sounds like Schopenhauer"
• Invoked: "I know I'm a pessimist, but I don't want to be called an emo. I'll read this Nietzsche's work to give myself some more mature credit"
• Defied: "Hermann's wrong, if the world was as bad as he says it is, there wouldn't be people like us around."
• Discussed: "Mr Villain gloated about his plans to wipe half of humanity. Let's see if he's the real thing, or just a deluded Nietzsche Wannabe."
• Conversed: "Nietzsche Wannabes. I hate those guys." "How come?" "Well, first and foremost - Nietzsche does not work that way. They just give him a bad name."