Basic Trope: A story of how the villain
became evil in the first place.
- Straight: Alex sees his girlfriend, Betty, got killed and becomes a murderer to avenge her death.
- Exaggerated: Alex is forced to kill Betty, the only person who cares about his existence, and as a result, goes on a rampage around the world.
- Justified: No one is born evil, after all. Something had to change Alex into a villain.
- Alternately, Alex, who originally had good or neutral intentions, has been working for the Big Bad for so long that he lost all of his original morals and descended into a state of apathy toward his work, allowing him to do things which he once would never have considered without a twinge of guilt or remorse.
- Inverted: The story is about Alex, a Card-Carrying Villain who spends his days poking poodles and kicking dogs, and discovers that he is Good All Along.
- Subverted: Alex is telling the story himself, and he isn't exactly being honest.
- Alex sees his girlfriend get killed and kills the murderer, He then sees how horrible it is to be evil and becomes The Messiah
- Double Subverted: However, he is in fact telling the truth... as he sees it, of course.
- Parodied: Alex, upon capturing The Hero, reveals a ridiculously non-nonsensical backstory that doesn't really explain anything about Alex or how he became evil.
- Deconstructed: Alex's reasons for becoming evil, although true, are not the reason he became evil - he was a Jerkass long before Betty was killed.
- Reconstructed: However, Betty was Alex's Morality Chain and, with her dead, Alex has crossed the Moral Event Horizon from simply being a Jerkass to being a Complete Monster.
- Zig Zagged: Alex tells The Hero that the reason that he became a psychopath is to avenge the death of Betty, who he loved. However, The Hero later learns that Bob lied about his Freudian Excuse. He recaptures Alex and is told a completely different story altogether.
- Averted: The reason why Alex is evil or amoral is never revealed.
- Enforced: "We really ought to explain why Alex does what he does. Otherwise he'll just look like just another Card-Carrying Villain."
- Lampshaded: "You don't know why I'm this way, do you? This looks like a good time for me to tell you my tragic and unhappy backstory."
- Invoked: "All right, Alex, tell us what made you the slime you are!"
- Defied: Alex outright refuses to explain his Start of Darkness.
- Discussed: "Why is Alex evil, anyway? Childhood trauma? The tragic death of a loved one? Parental Abandonment? His upbringing? Just because he could?"
- Conversed: "What made Alex so utterly heartless?" "Bad parenting."
Return to
Start of Darkness... and be sure to watch the path...
