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- A Walk Through Hell deconstructs Easily Forgiven. McGregor has a past story told to Shaw of him confronting a fellow classmate who had raped him and faked his suicide attempt to make sure no one believed him. McGregor says to the former classmate that he's gotten past this and forgives him. The classmate, however, is completely unrepentant and shoves it in McGregor's face, telling him that he has a cushy job that pays him really well and he actively partakes in constant sex and drug parties where he likely still keeps on raping. Even if you can get past something horrible that was done to you, you still need to stop the one who actually did the horrible act to prevent others from suffering the same.
- Anya's Ghost
- deconstructs Alpha Bitch with Elizabeth Standard. If you are familiar with high school tropes you'll think she'll be one, however she doesn't have the mean-spirited personality that typically defines them. It soon becomes obvious that Anya is the nasty one and she and the other girls are jealous of Elizabeth for being all around "perfect". However, when we get to the party we find out Sean likes to sleep around with other girls and Elizabeth not only knows about it, she goes along with it, because she only feels good about herself if she and Sean are together and desperately wants to keep him in her life. All her positive traits mean very little to her and it only shows she probably has little to no self esteem.
- deconstructs Insecure Love Interest. Elizabeth Standard is one of the prettiest, most athletic girls in school, dating one of the more popular boys, Sean. Everything about her seems to be perfect, and despite how jealous Anya and the other girls are of her she appears to be a nice and carefree girl. Then at a party Anya learns that Sean is a creep who sleeps around with other girls (even his friend's girlfriend) with Elizabeth not only knowing but keeping watch; Anya, who come to the party to steal Sean from Elizabeth, couldn't bring herself to sleep with Sean and hurt Elizabeth. Before Anya leaves the party, she asks Elizabeth why she lets Sean treat her like that, and Elizabeth tells her that while she appears happy, she really is miserable and insecure, and the only person that makes her really happy is Sean. Because she loves him, or as she admits, thinks she loves him, she's willing to do anything to keep him in her life, even though his cheating and her covering for his cheating is hurting her.
- Birthright deconstructs Invincible Villain with Lore. Not only is he an extremely powerful mage, but he commands seemingly endless resources and armies that never seem to run out. Many heroes spent years fighting non-stop against him, but they never seem to make any progress - on the contrary, their fighting led to many innocents getting caught in the crossfire and making things worse. In the end, the ones that opposed him have either fled Terrenos or willingly sided with Lore to stop the carnage. And as it turns out, being an invincible villain also takes a toll on Lore himself, who also wants to stop the fighting so he can establish peace in this realm.
- In The Boys, Garth Ennis quite interestingly deconstructs his own previous and preferred protagonists. What happens when a Nominal Hero who is also The Unfettered actually manages to fulfill his goal? He sets a new, bigger and more destructive one, and continues to damage everything around him to fulfill these goals, until everything that made the character heroic or sympathetic is gone and the Protagonists Journey To Villain is complete.
- Brat Pack is an extremely brutal deconstruction of everything about being a Kid Sidekick. To quote ComicTropes:—"Buying into the idea of a superhero is one thing, but the idea of a teenager operating in that world becomes especially absurd if you apply some logic to the situation. They would have to grow up and lose their innocence if they had to fight crime everyday. Their minds would be shattered."
C-I
- Courtney Crumrin and the Night Things: At first, The Power of Love is deconstructed, showing idealism alone accomplishes nothing, and even fighting for what you love may often fail. Reconstructed again when Courtney connects with the few friends she's made to help her through the climax, relying on Calpurnia's insistence that friends are important — and when The Power of Friendship unlocks her Secret Art, and makes her more powerful than ever.
- Criminal (2006) deconstructs Betty and Veronica in "The Last of the Innocent", and in particular deconstructing the Trope Namer; Riley Richards, a clear analogue of Archie, after years of unhappy marriage to the shallow, manipulative and adulterous "Veronica", realises he really should have stayed with the "Betty" instead. His solution to the problem... gets ugly.
- Crossed deconstructs Indispensable Scoundrel horrifically with the Gamekeeper. While he is no doubt a skillful and adapted man, the Gamekeeper constantly torments the luxury couple for whom he used to work before the Crossed pandemic (even raping the female repeatedly) and treats every other member of his group of survivors as expendable, showing no sympathy to people dying around him. Even without the Crossed nearby, the Gamekeeper is still a horrible person, but the scariest thing is that he is necessary for the other members of his group to survive and he knows it, freely abusing his power and brutalizing them all the time. The survivors don't dare to stop him because none of them have his survivorship skills against the Crossed.
- Demo: This story deconstructs a few tropes.
- Manchild / The Slacker: Jace, Jill and Brad from "Midnight to Six" are deconstructions, having stuck to a Slacker Pledge for ten years from the age of thirteen. By the present, all three are working at the same low pay menial labour job, with only Jace being happy about their situation. Brad is secretly trying to apply for a community college, and even Jill, who derogatorily refers to them as "retard colleges", is aiming to get more out of life by publishing some novels.
- Manic Pixie Dream Girl: Deconstructed in "Mixtape" and "Damaged".
- From "Mixtape", Jess seemed to have been this to Nick, until her suicide in the opening. Thing is, as Nick realises, while Jess knew Nick extremely well, to the point that she could accurately record responses to Nick's actions and questions in advance, Nick knew very little of her, having assumed that she just liked the same things he did and went to. The fact that he still doesn't know why she committed suicide, and initially assumed that she did it to hurt him is the ultimate symbol that he never really knew the real Jess at all - just a facsimile that made him smile.
- "Damaged" brings us the nameless girl, who meets Thomas by chance, and in subsequent meetings, reveals that through a "gift", she knows his lifestyle, his problems, and gives advice on how to deal with women and other issues, generally helping him get more out of life. Turns out, this is due to having spied on Thomas for what is implied to be over several years, meaning that much of her antics were largely an act to string him along. On top of that, its all but outright stated that Thomas was The Sociopath, implying that the sort of person who would need a Manic Pixie Dream Girl in their life would be less bored and brooding, and more screwed up mentally. In the end, whether the gifted girl was scamming him, or legitimately had his best interests at heart, her involvement with Thomas leads to tragedy for everyone, herself included.
- The Sociopath: Arguably deconstructed with Thomas Martins from "Damaged", given what his mother described of his childhood, and his difficulties forming friendships and lasting relationships in the present. Instead of coming across as villainous, Thomas largely comes across as maladjusted and pitiful, as his sociopathy has meant that he's been unable to connect with anyone and has been left with a comfortable but ultimately empty lifestyle. It's a testament to how tragic his life actually is when the closest thing to a friend he finds is a con artist who's been spying on him for several years, and has been playing the role of a Manic Pixie Dream Girl for a while.
- Dynamo5 deconstructs the Dating Catwoman trope. Captain Dynamo had an affair with one of his enemies, a supervillain named Chrysalis, and had a daughter with her, who he help raise. While Chrysalis herself said that they were in love, that did not stop her and her daughter from taking advantage of his death to impersonate him to increase their power base. Ultimately, Chrysalis is an amoral and ruthless criminal who is willing to murder anyone in her way, who only escapes justice because of her affair with Captain Dynamo.
- Irredeemable deconstructs Face–Heel Turn by exploring reasons behind superhero making such decision as well as consequences of world's greatest protector turning into the bad guy -Plutonian's entire life was full of experiencing fear, mistrust and alienation, followed by a nasty case of Samaritan Syndrome and a disaster he unintentionally caused which turned his best friend against him and which he himself considers his Moral Event Horizon and his rampage brings Type I Apocalypse. Its Spin-Off series, Incorruptible does the same with Heel–Face Turn - Max Damage turns into a good guy because of cold logical calculation that with all the damage Plutonian did and typical threats any superhero universe faces, without somebody taking his place humanity would be at the edge of extinction, rather than Power of Love or Power of Friendship. He also has no idea how to be a hero, aside doing opposite of what he was doing before (He is however Genre Savvy enough to gather several people to be his Morality Pets and teach him).
- Invincible deconstructs Villain Has a Point. While yes Robot has made a utopia after taking over the world, and spends a majority of his time trying to convince everyone, especially Mark that he's right. And several heroes surrender to agree with him, with even Allen's allies not attacking Earth because they also agree. With finally even Mark agreeing by Issue #142... before he punches a hole through him and reducing him to a brain in a jar. Mark rightfully calls out that while Robot does have brilliant ideas, the biggest issue is his morality or lack thereof. Thus they need to be filtered and implemented by someone with a strong sense of morals and a conscience, such as the Immortal. Who, abrasive personality aside, is one of the most consistently righteous characters in the series.
L-Y
- Life Sucks deconstructs every vampire trope it can get its hands on (and its fangs sunk into), and towards the end it lists them off as it does so. The main thrust of it is that most vampire stories portray ordinary humans as mindless cattle and vampires as liberated beings that can do whatever they want, whereas the protagonist is enslaved both by the rules necessary to uphold The Masquerade, and by the older vampire who sired him and can kill him at will. It also touches on just how alienating the inability to go out in sunlight can be, how humiliating it is to steal from blood banks (and how dehumanizing it is to obtain blood more directly), and how the ability to charm and enslave humans is tantamount to rape, with an ultimate message that nobody should ever want to be a vampire. Whew!
- My Little Pony: Legends of Magic: Issue #2 deconstructs the Big Eater trope. Rockhoof's downtime from his training sessions is spent pigging out night after night with his friends. His gluttony nearly causes his undoing when the volcano starts showing signs of life. Rockhoof is sent to investigate despite putting on so much weight from partying, and his lack of speed and stamina puts himself and two other guards in danger. He ultimately gets a shrill talking to from his captain for letting his eating habits get the better of him.
- Pashmina deconstructs Tell Me About My Father. Protagonist Pri has been raised by a single mother, an immigrant from India. Pri tries to ask her about her Disappeared Dad, but her mother first changes the subject and then eventually outright tells her that the subject of her father is permanently closed. Pri still persists and she eventually finds the truth on a trip to India to visit her aunt… the father she idealized was actually a Jerkass who not only broke his engagement to her mother after she got pregnant with Pri, he then married another woman and had his family pay her mother off to leave him and never speak to him again. After that, Pri understands why her mother didn’t want to tell her about him, and apologizes for harassing her.
- Peter Cannon: Thunderbolt (2019) deconstructs Watchmen, albeit respectfully, examining its influence on a subsequent generation of comics. The author appears to feel that the problem is the habits displayed by comics which repeat Watchmen's own deconstruction of superhero comics to diminishing effect. The Anti-Villain Thunderbolt believes that the best way of showing violent apes (in superhero uniforms or otherwise) the errors of their ways is by repeating Veidt's plan from Watchmennote ad infinitum with no regard for the worlds he now controls. In fact, it's what ultimately defeats Thunderbolt: a violent anti-hero obsessed with spreading his brand of "realism" even to worlds that either really are idealistic or even where its tropes and concepts can't apply is literally torn apart when he attempts to enter these other universes.Cannon: See, Tabu... the dangers of unrelenting deconstruction.
- Princess Ugg deconstructs the (slightly Übermensch-flavoured) Proud Warrior Race Guy archetype: The frost giants and Ulga's people have been fighting each other for centuries, not even remembering (or caring about) what caused the feud in the first place. They are all very good at war, which makes up most of their culture, but it's slowly driving both to extinction, and neither know how to stop.
- Sonic the Hedgehog (Archie Comics):
- The comic has a deconstruction of Invincible Hero. After failing to beat Sonic after so many years, Dr. Eggman is driven insane, unable to comprehend how Sonic does it. He regains control once he realizes that something was enabling Sonic to win all those times, akin to an unpredictable chaotic factor in every experiment. Specifically, that Sonic has absorbed so much Chaos Energy, and had so many transformations, that he's become an embodiment of chaos.
- The comics also examine how Eggman's robots have a tendency to betray him. After three betrayals, (the last of which was hacked by another robot) Eggman resolves to never give his robots the capacity to learn. This makes Metal Sonic more reliable... but does nothing against his fragility. After 20 years, Eggman finally finds a way to let Metal Sonic learn while keeping him loyal. This brilliant AI decides to self-destruct immediately after it's weak point is found. These changes affect the heroes as well: while it happens frequently, Sonic never relies on the possibility of the robots helping him like he does in the games. Additionally, when Nicole gets hacked, she develops PTSD and nobody trusts her as a result. After the reboot, Scratch and Grounder have defected from Eggman as well... but they aren't competent enough to be a significant loss.
- Southern Bastards deconstructs Clean Up the Town. Earl attempts a Walking Tall style uprising against Boss's fiefdom and dies almost immediately.
- The Transformers: More than Meets the Eye:
- Easily Forgiven: Much of the plot of Season 2 revolves around the Autobots struggling to come to terms with the fact that Megatron, the guy who's killed more of his fellow Cybertronians than anyone alive, is onboard their ship and wearing their badge. Not everyone believes it, even himself. It eventually gets so severe that Getaway mutinies against the rest of High Command and leaves them to die at the hands of the DJD.
- Forever War: The series takes place after the Autobot-Decepticon War and nobody really knows what the hell to do with their lives. Swerve is implied to simply be bouncing from one random quest to another because he just plain doesn't know what else to do. The Scavengers get into a discussion about the war and Fulcrum expresses his disbelief that the war could actually be over since it was already in full swing when he was born. The war is older than at least half the people fighting it, meaning that for most Autobots and Decepticons war is quite literally all they know.
- Properly Paranoid: Red Alert's paranoia helps him find out things that people dismiss, but it also severely hinders his effectiveness. Case in point, he believes that he's hearing voices in the basement. He checks it out, finding Overlord, but he doesn't tell anyone because he believes that they're out to get him. To say nothing of what he's like when there is no conspiracy to uncover; his hobbies basically amount to finding secret messages that say "do not trust these messages" and analyzing people's sentences like an overachieving English student.
- Y: The Last Man is, among other things, a very thorough deconstruction of the male sexual fantasy of being the last man on earth. Virtually all of society has broken down in the absence of men, and Yorick is constantly at the mercy of those who want to use his scarce genes and reproductive ability for their own ends.
