Basic Trope: A being, force, or ideal that The Hero fights for that has little to no direct role in the story.
- Straight: Alex, The Hero of the story, fights for the ideals that Bob set in place, saving people and petting kittens along the way.
- Exaggerated: Bob is a God of Good who has influence on every hero in every continuity.
- Downplayed: Bob is merely Alex's boss, where Alex is the sidekick.
- Justified:
- The world Alex lives in is a Crapsack World. The stories about Bob and his adventures inspire Alex to try and better the world.
- Bob for some reason literally can't intervene directly in the story's events, whether because he's dead, entered a higher plane of existence, or dealing with some other problem at the same time.
- Inverted: Bob is a Greater-Scope Villain, while Alex is the Big Bad.
- Subverted:
- During the final fight with Emperor Evulz, Alex is pinned down and it seems as though Emperor Evulz has won...cue Bob making a grand entrance, pulling a Big Damn Heroes moment.
- When Alex finds out more about Bob's history, he finds out Bob was in fact a Knight Templar who saw himself as good, but he was actually a Greater-Scope Villain instead.
- Double Subverted:
- It's then revealed that the person who pulled the Big Damn Heroes moment was only someone who looked like Bob. It wasn't really Bob.
- The "truth" was an elaborate ruse constructed by Emperor Evulz to try and demoralize Alex.
- Parodied: Any time Bob is on screen, he tries to hide from the camera while holding up a sign saying "Not supposed to be here". Shame he can't hide because of his halo and wings.
- Zig Zagged: Sometimes, Alex accredits his deeds to Bob, but to others its clear Alex committed a good deed of his own volition, without any influence from Bob or his ideals.
- Averted: Alex isn't inspired by any past hero.
- Enforced: In Bob's story, he dies at the hands of Emperor Evulz. The audience really doesn't like that, so the executives make a sequel where someone inspired by Bob sets out to successfully defeat Emperor Evulz.
- Lampshaded:Emperor Evulz: What is this feeling? This amount of good could only be matched by...Bob...
- "Say, shouldn't a man so heroic have a more direct role in the quest we just had against Emperor Evulz?”
- Invoked: ???
- Exploited: ???
- Defied: In order to defeat Bob, Alex's greater scope paragon, Emperor Evulz, the Big Bad, turns another greater scope paragon to the dark side or calls upon his own greater scope villain to help him against Bob (like a Sealed Evil in a Can, for example).
- Discussed: ???
- Conversed: ???
- Deconstructed: Bob's legacy is so thoroughly enmeshed in Alex' ideals he has trouble thinking for himself. While this Bob-centric worldview does inspire Alex to great heights of heroism in the short term, it's neither healthy nor conducive to personal growth. Especially if Bob falls short of Alex' expectations or has a dark side.
- Played For Drama:
- Bob doesn't play much of a role in the story, but he helps Alex, the main character, by unintentionally inspiring him and giving him hope. Later on, in the story, Bob gets killed by Emperor Evulz (or a Greater-Scope Villain, if there is one). Learning of this, Alex's allies try to keep Bob's death a secret from him out of fear that if Alex learns of Bob's death, he'll lose hope and give up.
- Emperor Evulz (or his greater scope villain, if he has one) manages to capture Bob and turns him to the dark side, thus forcing the hero to fight against his fallen greater scope paragon.
Back to Greater-Scope Paragon.
