Basic Trope: An extremely nihilistic character, oftentimes a villain.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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."
Back to
Nietzsche Wannabe