Basic Trope: A heroic main character turns into a Villain Protagonist over the course of the story.
- Straight: In Bob the Strong, the titular Bob starts out as an idealistic vigilante. However, a series of hard decisions with no clear positive outcome, several personal tragedies and crossing the Despair Event Horizon ultimately leads him to abandon his ideals and become a revenge-driven madman.
- Exaggerated:
- The All-Loving Hero Bob has become an irredeemable racist Right-Wing Militia Fanatic who wanted to Take Over the World and unleash Apocalypse How by the end of the story.
- The Kid Hero Bob becomes an Evil Old Folk by the end of the story.
- Bob, once a Incorruptible Pure Pureness hero in the beginning, ends up becoming a Complete Monster feared by the entire universe.
- Downplayed:
- Bob becomes a brutal, cynical Anti-Hero, but nonetheless remains true to his original motives.
- Bob, an Ideal Hero, becomes more of an Anti-Villain through the events, but retains his standards of moral codes.
- Bob, an Ideal Hero, becomes a sarcastic and wise-cracking Mr. Vice Guy, who while still on the heroes' side, either becomes a little more self-serving or has looser moral standards.
- Justified: Bob's grasp on his morals are not as strong as he thinks.
- Inverted: Redemption Quest
- Subverted: Bob has a Heel Realization.
- Double Subverted: But his anger and resentment towards the world leads him to ignore it.
- Parodied: Bob is driven to villainy by a series of terrible tragedies that include traffic jams, being late for work, the subway train arriving too late and someone vandalizing his car. By the end of the story, he decides to become an Omnicidal Maniac because he slipped on a banana peel.
- Zig Zagged: Bob's descent into villainy leads to a Heel–Face Revolving Door.
- Averted:
- Bob starts out as the Ideal Hero and keeps true to his ideals through the entire story.
- Bob starts out as a Villain Protagonist.
- Enforced: Bob the Strong is a prequel to Lightspeed Alice focusing on the Big Bad. Because of accusations of Bob being a flat, uninteresting character, the writers decide to give him a compelling backstory.
- Lampshaded: "What has Bob become? He's not the lovable honeybun he used to be."
- Invoked: The other Big Bad, Maligno, sets up Bob for a string of failures to coax him down a villainous path.
- Exploited:
- Maligno recruits the now villainous Bob and with their combined strength create a veritable crime empire.
- Alice goads a hateful Bob into killing her, knowing that her death will turn Bob to the dark side.
- Defied: Bob refuses to let his anger get the better of him.
- Discussed: ???
- Conversed: ???
- Implied: As far as the audience can tell, Bob remains fairly stable. But as time goes by, more and more progressively worse crimes are taking place, and Bob is the prime suspect of each one.
- Deconstructed:
- Bob began the story as a hero or at least neutral, but because of what would be deemed as morally right actions he is put on the wrong side of the law. Hunted by the law enforcement, he has to continue to break laws to try and clear everything, only to find out that he is the scapegoat for a government cover-up that would rather destroy him than reveal the truth.
- After seeing Bob's morality and sanity ground to a pulp, would-be heroes are reluctant to rise up against evil for fear of the same fate befalling them.
- While Bob is the protagonist, he is also an Anti-Hero with several prominent flaws. Throughout his journey and the losses he suffers, his flaws take over until he has a full-on mental breakdown and gives into his darker nature. While he is the protagonist, he was never a truly good person in the first place, allowing him to be corrupted easier.
- Reconstructed: But because Bob is deemed an enemy by the government, he is given the advantage of allying himself with an enemy nation, to whom he can betray whatever secrets on the government he possesses. With his knowledge, the enemy nation accept him in their counter-intelligence program, giving him the means by which he can exact his revenge.
Back to Protagonist Journey to Villain
