Basic Trope: A character is evil without realizing it.
- Straight: Bob thinks he's helping to save the world from ruthless criminals, but what he doesn't realize is that he's actually killing innocent people.
- Exaggerated: Bob thinks he's saving the entire universe from an Eldritch Abomination, but he's really destroying it.
- Downplayed:
- Bob thinks he's being a Nice Guy by always being completely honest to everybody, but he isn't aware that he's really offending people.
- Bob has noticed that other people either fear and shun him or treat him with scorn, but he can't understand why.
- Bob believes that his actions, while vicious, are justified, but is actually indulging in Disproportionate Retribution.
- But for Me, It Was Tuesday
- Justified:
- Bob is just Ax-Crazy.
- Bob is too self-centered to realize his actions are hurting others.
- Bob has an entirely alien set of values.
- Bob is some combination of naïve and oblivious, missing the obvious clues to the harm he's doing while expanding the "good" he's doing in his head.
- Bob's actions seem good at first, but a century later scientists discover that he unwittingly doomed us all. Whoops.
- Bob is being manipulated by his Evil Mentor.
- Bob is under the employ of a Villain with Good Publicity
- Bob is a Knight Templar.
- Inverted:
- Obliviously Good: Bob thinks he's destroying the planet, but is really saving it.
- Bob is a Card-Carrying Villain.
- Bob is an Accidental Hero.
- Ignorant of the Call.
- Subverted:
- Bob sees a pile of corpses behind him from his latest escapade, then asks himself "My God, What Have I Done?"
- Bob clearly knows his action can cause many innocents dead. He merely makes an excuse to escape from his responsibilities.
- It's not revealed until the last page, but Bob is a non-sentient hurricane, not a person.
- Double Subverted: ...only to shrug it off as All Just a Dream.
- Parodied: Bob doesn't realize that he has Poked The Poodle even though he believes he's petting it.
- Zig Zagged: Bob dips in and out of self-awareness and total cluelessness.
- Averted: Bob is aware that his actions are evil and continues to do them either because he thinks they are necessary, profits from them, makes him happy, or simply because he wants to and feels good doing it.
- Enforced:
- "We have villains who achieve goals through extreme measures and villains who enjoys the suffering and deaths of people. Let's create a villain who doesn't even know he's a villain."
- It's a PSA about consequences
- Lampshaded: "Bob is evil, but I don't think he's able to realize it."
- Invoked: An Affably Evil Villain with Good Publicity mentors Bob, a Stupid Good child.
- Exploited: A gang of robbers follow Bob around so they can steal every material possession from the people he accidentally kills.
- Defied: Alice snaps Bob out of his killing spree the moment she sees strange blood on his hands.
- Discussed: "Does Bob know that what he's doing is wrong?"
- Conversed: ???
- Deconstructed: Just because Bob doesn't realize he is committing evil acts doesn't change the fact that it makes him a villain, and so he is confronted by the heroes.
- Reconstructed: After a scathing lecture by the heroes, Bob finally has a Heel Realization and becomes The Atoner.
- Played For Drama:
- Bob displays a casually horrifying set of norms disturbingly reminiscent of children with norms set by abuse.
- Bob is traumatized once he realized he was fighting for the wrong side.
- Played For Horror: Bob's inability to recognize how evil he is causes him to commit worse atrocities over time under the delusion that his actions are justified or acceptable, no matter how much evidence there is to the contrary and how many people tell him what he's doing is wrong. This arguably makes him worse than someone who is aware of the immorality of their actions.
Back to Obliviously Evil.
