Basic Trope: An extremely nihilistic character, oftentimes a villain.
- Straight: The Philosophical Recurring Traveler Hermann keeps ranting on about how the 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.
- Fully committed to his ideas, Hermann does not care one way or the other if he succeeds or fails in his goals.
- Downplayed:
- While he isn't antagonistic about it, Hermann refuses to delight himself in believing idealism, morality, justice, hope, love, friendship, etc.
- Hermann uses his nihilism to act like a Jerkass to others, and when they turn the tables on him, he praises them for "finally getting it."
- Justified:
- It's a Crapsack World and/or Cosmic Horror Story.
- Hermann had a horrible childhood, no wonder he became a Straw Nihilist.
- Hermann was a former Wide-Eyed Idealist. You know what happened.
- Hermann was a Butt-Monkey. Life is meaningless if bad things always happen to you.
- 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.
- Herman is a true sociopath, with just the right amount of narcissism to make him want to start ranting.
- Herman is an Emo Teen that tries to act more "mature" than he actually is.
- Being Tortured Makes You Evil
- Hermann is an alien with a brain that's very different from that of a human, and he is incapable of understanding the concept of meaning and why humans believe in such a thing.
- Hermann has lost all hope.
- Inverted:
- Hermann is an Anti Nihilist who firmly believes in The Power of Love and that Rousseau Was Right.
- Hermann believes that the world is a cold and uncaring place, that humans are basically vicious animals, and that God is uncaring at best... and this is why we need RULES, to turn this wilderness into a civilization, to put the beast known as Man on a leash, and to deliver the justice God will not!
- Hermann is nihilistic in a paradoxical way. He always claims that there is a higher meaning and a reason for existence but because of that higher meaning he views the current life and existence to be worthless.
- Hermann is an Übermensch who has developed his own morality from events that might have left others empty, and learns from his own experience and way of thinking.
- Passion Is Evil
- 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.
- Hermann is a nihilist, but doesn't feel the need to rant about it unless goaded and generally lives a completely normal life.
- Hermann starts off ranting about how the world is cold is a cold and miserable place... so it's up to us to make it suck less.
- Hermann claims to be a nihilist, but really is just a jerk who cloaks himself in philosophy to excuse his behavior, and doesn't genuinely believe in the philosophical views he espouses.
- 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.
- 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.
- Hermann is said to be a nihilist... but what he says he lets others interpret how they wish, no matter what he says. This means to some he is a Straw Nihilist, to others The Cynic, and to some a Knight in Sour Armor or The Anti-Nihilist.
- Averted:
- There are no nihilistic villains around.
- There's a real Übermensch around.
- Hermann is a nihilist, but simply believes that there's no true purpose to life, feeling instead each person should find their own.
- 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."
- "Friedrich Nietzsche rolls in his fucking grave with the amount of idiots that "worship" him."
- 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."
- Herman is a Nihilist, but he knows not to waste his breath ranting to people he knows he's not going to convince.
- Boom, Headshot! "If he's so big about saying we all should die, I guess he's better off leading the way."
- Exploited: The creator begins marketing shirts with Herman's lines on them to edgy teenagers.
- 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 Straw Nihilist."
- Conversed: "Straw Nihilists. I hate those guys." "How come?" "Well, first and foremost - Nietzsche does not work that way. They just give him a bad name."
- Deconstructed: Rant-prone 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 are wise to know that it's a Crapsack World, but they waste their philosophical intellect on fauxlosophic wangst and being assholes, instead of making something actually useful. As a result, people just don't want to listen to them anymore.
- 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 an Übermensch- all while holding a grim dark nihilistic philosophy.
- Implied: Hermann is a Generic Doomsday Villain, but occasionally he will make a statement like "nothing matters or "we'll all die anyway".
- Played For Laughs: Hermann is a comical Emo Teen.
- Played For Drama: Hermann became a nihilist because of his horrible experiences as a child, and his dark views of the world thus seem scarily true to the heroes.
- Played For Horror: Hermann casually slaughters everybody inside of a supermarket while saying that "it doesn't matter" and makes clear in every released statement after being captured that he has no hatred, he doesn't support any stupid political or religious ideology, he was not on drugs, he was not some stupid kid in over his head, all psych checks came out clean and he doesn't like the quote about how "some people just want to watch the world burn" because it implies setting fire to forests and such and that doesn't feel right to him. He just murdered a hundred people because he thinks humanity, as a whole, is a waste of air. There is something utterly inhuman about this that a demented racist, trigger-happy burglar, drugged maniac, Ax-Crazy "axed postman" or road rage-fueled psycho can't really bring out.
Back to Straw Nihilist.
