Basic Trope:
- Characters in conflict with each other are neither good nor evil.
- The heroes of the story are flawed and don’t border onto completely good, and the villains likewise have redeeming qualities and don’t border into completely evil.
- Straight:
- Alice, the protagonist, is in conflict with Bob, an antagonist, but both characters are neither good nor evil.
- Despite being The Hero of the story, Officer Alice is Brutal, Jaded, Pragmatic, and Mean. Conversely, despite being The Antagonist, Bob is a Gentleman Thief who is Nice, Honorable, and is willing to give a good number of the money he robs from others to the poor, as well as having a tragic backstory.
- Exaggerated:
- Silly Reason for War
- Alice and Bob's fight incorporates so many Shades of Conflict, even Blue/Orange and Green/Purple at times, that the conflict becomes more of a single murky shade of brown (i.e. the exact same actions) than anything resembling grey and gray.
- Both sides are True Neutral.
- Downplayed:
- A Lighter Shade of Grey: Alice is more well-meaning than Bob, but that doesn't make her completely good.
- White-and-Grey Morality: Alice is a Clear-Cut Heroine while Bob is an Anti-Villain.
- Black-and-Gray Morality: Alice is an Anti-Heroine while Bob is a Diabolical Villain.
- Polite Villains, Rude Heroes: While Bob is nice, he’s still unquestionably evil while Alice is jerkass, but still obviously on the side of good.
- Morality Kitchen Sink: There are unambiguously good and unambiguously evil characters on both sides, but no side overall can be called worse.
- Alice is a Jerk with a Heart of Gold, and so is Bob.
- Justified:
- The world has no built in moral system. Good and Evil are what you make of it.
- The plot is just a Slice of Life; there is conflict and people have varying levels of principles, but there aren't any heroes or villains, just ordinary people with ordinary morals.
- Alice and Bob both believe that morality is just a concept that holds everyone else back. Alice discards morality because it gets in the way of true justice. Bob disregards morality because it gets in the way of his goals.
- Alice is Lawful Neutral while Bob is Chaotic Neutral.
- Graying Morality
- Inverted: Black-and-White Morality, where some characters are clearly good and some are clearly evil.
- Subverted:
- Alice and Bob are honourable soldiers who love their respective countries, which are at war for reason they don't understand. It turns out that Alice's country is deeply committed to the well-being of all its citizens and Bob's country is deeply committed to racial purity, slaughtering millions of its own people in giant death camps.
- The conflict becomes either White-and-Grey Morality or Black-and-Gray Morality.
- Double Subverted: Alice's country slaughters similar numbers of its own people over ideological purity. But it's not Evil Versus Evil because Alice and Bob are still honorable soldiers, fighting for countries they love despite evil governments. (Real Life wasn't this simple — this is a fictional example).
- Parodied: Alice and Bob are fighting over the last piece of cupcake.
- Zig Zagged: Motive Decay means that, at different times, Alice and Bob fight over different things - sometimes Grey and Gray, sometimes Black and White.
- Averted:
- Alice and Bob are equally good.
- Alice and Bob are equally evil.
- See Inverted.
- There is no conflict between Alice and Bob whatsoever.
- Enforced:
- The author grew tired of good versus evil battles, so he wants to throw in a conflict where morality is subjective.
- The author wanted to show a realistic conflict between Good Versus Evil, and that we all have our flaws/virtue.
- Lampshaded:Alice: "Who are the good guys? Who are the bad guys?"
Bob: "They left the scenario a long time ago... Now, there's only us."- “Why are the “heroes” mean and violent, while the “villains” are polite and honorable?”
- Invoked: Charlie hates objective morality and wants to convince the world that morality is subjective by making his own moral philosophy.
- Exploited:
- A Manipulative Bastard claims that all morality is relative, so he's free to Kick the Dog whenever he feels like it, and if anyone tries to confront him, he claims that it is only wrong from their perspective.
- Bob uses Alice’s anti heroism and his nobility in order for him to become a Villain with Good Publicity and Alice a Hero with Bad Publicity.
- Defied:
- Discussed: "I think it's better for the world to be this way than being forced to pick a side."
- Conversed: "I know that they're trying to pretend that their world runs on Black-and-White Morality, but I keep seeing the protagonists commit immoral acts while I never see any proof that The Empire is as oppressive as the narrator claims."
- Deconstructed:
- People in-universe begin believing that the world runs on shifty grey morality. Consistent moral perspective breaks down, leading to highly destructive thinking like "What Is Evil?", "It's only evil if someone else does it" and "I'm only the bad guy if I lose in the end". The world consequently develops into a Crapsack World.
- Good and bad are a sliding scale rather than stark absolutes, that is true, but the baselines for what can be considered bad should not be set to the worst possible atrocity by default!
- Grey-and-Gray Insanity: Everyone believes that everyone, no matter what is no better than each other in moral perspectives, no matter how deranged these may be.
- Reconstructed: Alice and Bob learned to analyze the consequences of their opposing moral perspectives and come to the conclusion that while people will not agree with each other's philosophy, they can agree that the black and white morality will appear if they go overboard with them.
Back to Grey-and-Gray Morality
