Basic Trope: A monster who used to be human.
- Straight: The Evil Thing used to be Bob Throperz, an ordinary man.
- Exaggerated:
- All monsters were once humans.
- The Evil Thing is a horrifying Eldritch Abomination whose true form cannot be even comprehended by gods, let alone humans; those who even look at it are driven mad and reality itself breaks down in its surroundings. Yet the Evil Thing was once Bob, a Ridiculously Average Guy.
- Downplayed:
- Bob becoming Alice is treated as this.
- Bob was never actually a human to begin with, but was at least humanoid.
- The Evil Thing is a Humanoid Abomination.
- Justified:
- This is the only way new monsters can be created.
- The Big Bad converts humans into monsters as punishment and uses them as shock troops.
- Bob ran afoul of something that horribly mutated his body, but left his mind intact. His new form is hideous enough that he's usually attacked on sight, but it's also Immune to Bullets.
- Bob was infected by The Corruption.
- Inverted: Bob is a human who used to be a monster.
- Subverted: Bob Troperz dissipated around the time the Evil Thing appeared, and people assume Bob became it. But no, it turns out that the Evil Thing was always a monster.
- Double Subverted: ...Or so everyone thinks. It turns out the Evil Thing is so far gone it doesn't even remember being a man.
- Parodied:
- Bob gets turned into a cute bunny rabbit.
- A friendly monster character mentions in passing that it used to be human, but didn't much like it.
- The monster was once named A. Mann, but had its name legally changed.
- The Evil Thing insists it was once a man, despite clearly being a woman.
- Zig Zagged: Bob keeps repeatedly changing between his human form and his monster form.
- Averted:
- Bob stays human.
- No monsters were previously human.
- Enforced: The writers wanted to give a psychological aspect to the horror by having it being once a man.
- Lampshaded: "That thing... it wasn't always like this."
- Invoked: Bob does everything he needs to do to become the Evil Thing.
- Exploited: Since Bob used to be human, Alice obtaining this information lets her know that he still has a mostly-human psyche and makes it easier to talk to him.
- Defied: Knowing that there is a very real chance that he may turn into a monster, Bob seeks to prevent it.
- Discussed: "Oh my god... now we know what happened to Bob."
- Conversed: "In stories like this, the most inhuman monsters were all once humans."
- Deconstructed: Bob has a very hard time convincing anyone that he used to be a human. As such, he is no longer allowed access to his favorite places because of their humans-only policy.
- People don't empathize with his fate due to him being an Asshole Victim as a human.
- Reconstructed: Bob uses his Lovecraftian Superpower to intimidate shopkeepers into service.
- Implied: The Evil Thing stops a rampage at some point to wistfully look at a photo of a man. This is never explained.
- Played For Laughs: The transformation is Faux Horrific. Nothing bad really happened, but Bob acts like he became a monster.
- Played For Drama: The Evil Thing is a Tragic Monster.
Back to Was Once a Man
