Basic Trope: Doing evil is far easier than doing good.
- Straight: Bob has to choose between going to the virtuous path which is difficult and afflicting or go to the evil path which is easy and efficient. He chooses evil.
- Exaggerated: Bob has to choose between going the perilous and painful path which will benefit him for a lifetime or go to the pleasurable and convenient path which is counted as unforgivably evil and will permanently destroy his life. He chooses the latter.
- Downplayed: Bob has to choose between doing good and doing evil. Both carry a lot of difficulty and hardship, but the evil path is slightly less difficult.
- Justified:
- Being good means that Bob has to sacrifice everything that he cherishes for the good of everyone else; being evil means that Bob doesn't have to sacrifice anything although this can and will hurt people along the way, even if Bob doesn't intend in doing that.
- The gods constructed morality in this manner, usually for their own amusement.
- Inverted: Bob finds doing good to be as easy as breathing, it never costs anything, and it always makes him feel happy. Evil, on the other hand, is difficult, always comes at great cost, and leaves him feeling awful.
- Subverted: The evil thing to do seems as if it would be the easiest with the least amount of loss and the most amount of gain, but then complications arise which make the evil act much more difficult.
- Double Subverted: ...so Bob travels back in time to Set Right What Once Went Wrong, only to discover that the good act causes even more complications.
- Parodied:
- Bob chooses the evil path because it provides smoking, the coolest gadgets and clothing, sexy women, and only requires that he Poke the Poodle occasionally. Otherwise for the good path, he will be the source of ridicule for not following said path.
- The gods give Bob the choice to go into either the good door or the evil door. Inside the good door is a bleak city filled with deadly traps, vicious, flesh-eating animals and insects, and a stinky smell of shit, but if Bob chooses to go inside and stay there for 2 hours, he will be rewarded. Inside the bad door is a luxurious area filled with sweet-tasting foods, drinks, and hot women, and the deity doesn't bother to tell Bob what will happen to him if he stays there. Intrigued by the evil door, Bob enters inside and he enjoys himself for a few hours until the paradise-like area transforms into a deadly wasteland and Bob is being chased by the same animals and insects from the good door, much to the amusement of the gods.
- Zig Zagged: Bob switches alignments because the circumstances of either side become more difficult once he approaches his goals.
- Averted: Nothing is said about good and evil being easy or hard. Or they're equally easy or hard to do.
- Enforced:
- The producer wants to justify his own bad habits, so he forces the script to be rewritten to make those bad things look easier.
- The author wants to highlight the morality of his good characters by showing that they made the much harder choice to be good.
- Lampshaded: Bob asks his mentor why so many people choose to be evil even though it hurts others. Bob's mentor explains that evil is easier than good.
- Invoked: Bob's mentor needs Bob to be immune to temptation if he's going to train him, so before he begins he presents Bob with a series of temptations designed to show that evil is easier, to see if Bob will go down that path.
- Exploited: The resident Corrupter shows newbie heroes exactly how hard their lives of good will be... and how much easier things would be if they took the path of evil.
- Defied:Bob: What do you mean "evil is easy"?! Do you even know how many times I've had my ass kicked by superheroes this week alone!?
- Discussed:Alice: Bob, why would you do something like that?!
Bob: Because it's easy. Why would I do anything else? - Conversed: "Are they teaching our kids to take the evil yet easy side?"
- Deconstructed:
- The story shows the parallel lives of Bob and Alice. Bob takes the evil path which is easy and painless at first, but soon lies stack on top of lies until he can't remember what's true and false anymore, he loses the support of his friends and family, gains powerful enemies, and eventually his life becomes a daily struggle just to stay alive. Meanwhile, Alice chooses the good path, she has to struggle at first but it gets easier over time as she gains allies who love and respect her, until eventually she has everything that she could ever want.
- Bob does not have the resources to choose the difficult but virtuous path. He can either hold to his honor and die on the spot or throw away his morals so he can at least have some comfort in the here and now before it all inevitably goes back to shit.
- Reconstructed: But Bob enjoys his evil life and regains his knowledge of what's true and false, while sticking to doing things that are false. He could care less about his family, and the powers that were once his enemies would respect him. Meanwhile, Alice gets too obsessed with being good and when her allies question her, she silences them by killing them, losing their respect in the process and turning her evil at the realization that being good takes her nowhere.
- Played For Laughs: Bob comes across a circus tent set up on the side of the road with a sign that reads: "kick this puppy and win $1,000,000."
- Played For Drama: Evil is so easy and good is so difficult, that no one in their right mind would ever bother doing a good action. As a result the whole world is a lawless wasteland (except the parts that are fascist dictatorships), the average life expectancy is 24 years, rape and murder are an everyday occurrence, and every puppy has a permanent bootprint on its side.
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