Basic Trope: Somebody dooms their own hometown.
- Straight: Losing control of his awakening powers, Hector destroys his hometown of Redvale.
- Exaggerated:
- Hector wipes Redvale completely off the map, along with his parents, siblings, Unlucky Childhood Friends, neighbors and acquaintances. He also takes out most of the surrounding countryside, including a nearby village and a large chunk of forest, and wakes up in a smoking crater.
- Hector becomes a Last of His Kind Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds when his awakening powers destroy his home planet.
- Downplayed:
- Hector kills a large number of people in Redvale, including several family members, and is banished by the survivors.
- Hector's powers force the town to evacuate - nobody died but they all lost their homes.
- Justified:
- Hector has incredibly destructive powers and completely lost control of them, wrecking everything around him in the process.
- Hector has a Superpowered Evil Side who loves to screw him over.
- Hector's family and friends are abusive to him, so he promptly blows up his hometown.
- Hector's hometown is a Wretched Hive, and since he can't tolerate the villagers' wicked lifestyle, he blows them up.
- Hector's hometown is being overrun by zombies, so he has no choice but to blow it up.
- Inverted:
- Hector's power produces a hugely powerful explosion outside a certain radius, protecting anything inside it - the Hidden Elf Village in which he lives is saved, but left in the middle of an endless, blasted wasteland.
- Hector is the child of a couple in a nomadic tribe wandering the desert. A recent sandstorm has uncovered a strange glowing green staff. Hector digs it up and grabs it, setting off a World-Healing Wave that turns the surrounding desert into fertile grassland. His tribe decide that, while their nomadic tradition is still very important to them, it would be wise to set up a home town in this newly-formed area.
- Subverted: Redvale wasn't destroyed by Hector, but by The Empire's forces invading.
- Double Subverted:
- While the empire invading didn't help, it was Hector's attempts to fight them off — and his losing control in the process — that led to Redvale's demise.
- When they find out that the Empire was only invading to capture Hector, the angry villagers horsewhip him out of town.
- Parodied: Hector's powers go out of control, forcing him to Walk the Earth, forever repenting his crime: breaking a window in his house.
- Zig Zagged: Hector's awakening, which happens as The Empire is invading, destroys Redvale. Hector then wanders the Earth out of guilt. One day he finds himself at his Doomed Hometown, only to find that it was never destroyed. But then Hector figures out that it's just a magical simulacrum, and destroys it ("again"). But few years later, he hears of an underground city said to be built by the people of Redvale, who managed to escape deep underground as The Empire invaded...
- Averted: The awakening of Hector's continent-torching power didn't affect his hometown.
- Enforced: "We need to get Hector to Walk the Earth. How about we make him destroy his own hometown by accident?"
- Lampshaded: "Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds." Cue Skyward Scream.
- Invoked:
- Hector's townsfolk want him to leave and never come back, so they brainwash him into thinking he destroyed the place.
- The Empire didn't actually have the power to destroy Redvale, so they piss Hector off to make him do their job, and hopefully leave him . It's just a few Mooks lost, after all.
- Exploited: ???
- Defied: When they see signs that their son has some sort of untapped, raw potential, Hector's parents send him off for training under an Old Master, both to help him learn how to control it and to keep him away from Redvale, just in case.
- Discussed: ???
- Conversed: ???
- Deconstructed: The soul-crushing guilt drives Hector into being a very careful person, anxious about exercising his potentially world-destroying powers. This leads to his initial Refusal of the Call, and later situations when he hesitates to act and suffers as a result.
- Reconstructed: Hector and his Evil Counterpart both discovered their powers in the same traumatic way. While it caused his rival to Madden Into Misanthropy, it spurred Hector to find a way to control his powers.
- Played for Laughs: Hector Did Not Know His Own Strength and kept inflicting Amusing Injuries on everyone around him. Eventually, everyone moved away... including his own parents. Who didn't bother telling him first.
- Played for Drama:
- Hector was fully aware of what he was doing the whole time, but completely unable to stop his Superpowered Evil Side from burning Redvale to the ground. His inability to stop himself or save anyone causes him no end of Survivor Guilt and Angst.
- The cruel treatment he received from his Abusive Parents and the townsfolk triggered Hector's Start of Darkness when he finally lashed out at everyone who had hurt him.
Back to Where I Was Born and Razed.
