Basic Trope: A character struggles with their religious belief. They're usually back to normal at the end of the story.
- Straight: After Agnes Dei's baby dies, she can't reconcile the way she feels with the existence of a loving God. Once she learns to cope with her loss, she returns to the fold.
- Exaggerated: Faith–Heel Turn - Agnes turns overnight into a militant atheist terrorist.
- Downplayed: Agnes expresses doubts about her religion, but it doesn't cause her any serious angst.
- Justified: Rather than being one setback away from becoming a Nay-Theist, Agnes had been doubting her faith for some time, and her personal grief just pushes her over the edge into outright questioning it. From there she begins to Pull the Thread on the question of whether there's a God at all.
- Inverted:
- After witnessing a miracle, Bob becomes deeply religious. Once Agent Scully explains the perfectly logical explanation, he loses all interest in religion.
- Bob briefly becomes a Strawman Christian, but his atheist friends bombard him with the benefits of atheism and he switches straight back.
- Subverted: Agnes has a brief Rage Against the Heavens, but never questions her belief itself.
- Double Subverted: ...but when her religious friends are more interested in telling her off for her blasphemy than helping her through her personal tragedy, she starts to wonder if the church is any use to her at all.
- Parodied: Agnes finds herself questioning whether Professional Wrestling is actually staged. Her believing friends do their best to help her through this crisis, while the non-believers look on in bemusement.
- Zig Zagged: Agnes' struggle with her faith is an ongoing character trait, and she flip-flops one way or the other depending on the plot.
- Averted: Whatever the religious background of the characters, everyone stays where they started without question.
- Enforced:
- The writers want to set up an atheist strawman for an Author Tract, but introducing a brand new character just to convert him wouldn't be as effective.
- It's a Very Special Episode on an issue many religious people deal with at some point in their lives.
- The writers want to give Agnes some Character Development, and making her question her religion sounds like a good idea.
- Lampshaded: ???
- Invoked: Jack Chick was right: Satan really does go around manipulating people into questioning their faith.
- Exploited: ...Or at least, he pounces on those who are already questioning it, and convinces them to give it up altogether.
- Defied: The Fundamentalist sees any such doubts as the influence of the Devil, and they just make him ever more zealous.
- Discussed: "Man, for someone as devout as Alice to go through something like that... if I were her, I'd be having serious doubts about my faith."
- Conversed: "Somehow, I can't see a lighthearted family sitcom dealing with a character permanently losing their religion. And I kinda hope they don't try to."
- Implied: Agnes has a long dark night of the soul after hearing the news. The next morning, we see her walking towards her regular church, as people sing joyfully inside... and she scowls, and keeps on walking.
- Played For Laughs: Finally free from judgement, Agnes goes on a bender, with a checklist of the Seven Deadly Sins that she ticks off as she goes.Agnes: "Still in bed at two in the afternoon, wearing nothing but my new diamond necklace while my sister's boyfriend feeds me strawberries and cream and tells me I'm beautiful? That's a six-pointer! Now God DAMN it, how the hell am I supposed to fit wrath in?"
- Played For Drama: The beginning of a long and traumatic arc of Character Development as Agnes drifts away from the religion that's helped her through life, and that is tied up with her whole circle of family and friends.
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