- Played straight: Marcus is a gladiator who fights for the amusement of the masses.
- Exaggerated:
- Logical extreme:
- Downplayed:
- Justified:
- Inverted:
- Subverted:
- Double-subverted:
- Invoked:
- Defied: Marcus makes a fool of himself during training so that lanista Lucius will get rid of him.
- Lampshaded:
- Exploited:
- Imperator Evulzus sends someone who is both unpopular with the people and a threat to himself to both get rid of the threat and to boost his own popularity.
- Marcus uses the opportunity to inflict a No-Holds-Barred Beatdown on his rival.
- Discussed:
- Conversed:
- Parodied:
- Deconstructed:
- Reconstructed:
- Zig Zagged:
- Averted:
- Enforced: "Marcus needs to know how to fight, but he can't be a soldier." "What about a gladiator?"
- Implied: Marcus knows how to fight, but he was never in the army.
- Played for laughs: Marcus is both a pacifist and a ridiculously incompetent fighter. Lanista Lucius pits him against a few vicious gladiators, and Marcus ends up accidentally beating the crap out of them as he tries to merely deflect their blows.
- Played for drama: The story shows in detail the toll that the harsh training, draconian authority, and constantly having to fight and kill friends that he's lived and trained with for years takes on Marcus.
- Played for horror: The story shows in detail the harsh training and draconian authority that the gladiators live under, and they're forced to brutally beat each other to within an inch of their lives every time they fight.
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