Basic: A Professional Killer who's good at their job... and also has standards.
- Straight: Alexa is an assassin who is often hired to kill and is very good at it. She won't kill a child or an innocent person, she makes sure all her killings are painless, and she takes any child who she makes an orphan under her wing.
- Exaggerated: Alexa is the sweetest person ever — she teaches kindergarten, supervises a Girl Scout Troop, runs a food bank that diverts food from garbage, adores her cute little twin daughters... and she's an assassin with a four-figure body count.
- Downplayed:
- Alexa is an assassin who's a Jerk with a Heart of Gold.
- Alexa is a mob enforcer who will kill people if necessary, though she would much rather let them live. Despite this, she's a pretty nice person.
- Justified:
- Alexa was raised with good morals and is only a hitwoman because she can't get a job anywhere else.
- Brendan, who was a Hitman with a Heart, raised Alexa, and she'll never forget the kindness he showed her.
- It's more out of Pragmatic Villainy than anything — avoiding people that aren't her targets means she can reduce the risk of collateral; ensuring painless deaths means said deaths tend to be quick or at least won't draw attention to her; and she can take care of the orphans for a while before handing them off to people who aren't assassins.
- Inverted:
- Alexa's as heartless as they come, and she's a charity worker.
- Alexa loves to kill and feels no remorse, but she's very, very bad at her job.
- Alexa is a paramedic who saves many people's lives, but she's secretly a sociopath who does it all for the thrill.
- Subverted:
- Alexa appears to be this when she takes young orphan Bella under her wing, but she's actually a heartless beast and only adopted Bella to train her to be evil.
- Alexa appears to have a heart when she refuses to kill seven-year-old Carlos, but turns out she only refused because she forgot her knife and she'd love to kill him at a later date.
- Alexa is a sweet, kind woman, and evidence starts piling up that she might be secretly assassinating people. But then it turns out that she was just planning a surprise party and there were some unfortunate misunderstandings.
- Alexa offers her services as an assassin, but it turns out to be a sting operation.
- Double Subverted:
- She really does love Bella and is training her to be a Hitman with a Heart, just like her.
- She's only killing Carlos because she has prophetic abilities and knows he will grow up to be the Big Bad, and she would never kill any other child.
- She is actually an assassin and she threw together the surprise party at the last minute to cover it up.
- It's a sting to catch rival assassins who are more evil than her.
- Parodied: Alexa's the most polite killer you'll ever meet, and introduces herself with "Hello there! I'm Alexa, what's your name? My apologies, but I must kill you now."
- Zig-Zagged: Alexa has qualms about some things, but not others. (For example, she makes her killings as painless as possible but she will kill a child.)
- Averted:
- Alexa's a completely heartless killing machine.
- Alexa is a Nice Girl who has never dreamed of killing other humans in her life.
- Enforced:
- Alexa is a hitwoman, but she's also the main character and she must be sympathetic. Thus, the producers make her a soft-hearted assassin.
- Alexa was originally supposed to be a minor villain, but she's become such an Ensemble Dark Horse that she starts getting more focus, requiring the addition of sympathetic character traits to flesh her out.
- Lampshaded: "Yes, I'm a Professional Killer. Yes, I have moral codes. We exist."
- Invoked: Alexa's employer Gianna hires her because of her morals, having had some unfortunate experiences with the trigger-happy type of killer.
- Exploited: Gianna got an order from her boss to kill Harley, an eleven-year-old child. Gianna assigns Alexa to kill him, knowing she won't go through with it, and thus, when the boss asks, she can blame Alexa for him not being dead.
- Defied:
- No organization involving hires anyone with morals to prevent this.
- An assassin training organization completely breaks all the morals from everyone it recruits.
- Discussed: "Alexa's not that kind of murderer. She's got a heart — ever seen that on TV? It's less common, but it exists."
- Conversed: "I think Alexa's my favorite character. Yeah, I know she's a murderer — but she's so kind!"
- Implied: Bella is talking to her friend Dara. She tells Dara that Alexa isn't her real mother; she killed Bella's parents.
- Deconstructed:
- Alexa suffers a Heroic BSoD due to her guilt — no one with morals could kill that many people without feeling guilty.
- Alexa is the sweet assassin who won't kill women or children and tries to kill her targets painlessly … which Murder, Inc. has some issues with, so they have Bradley to take the targets (and ultra-violent methods of execution) Alexa won't do.
- Reconstructed:
- Alexa's targets are primarily hate sinks, asshole victims, scrappies, and complete monsters. At least she's doing the world a service.
- Bradley's methods are so ludicrously over-the-top and so blatant that he gets caught within seconds after killing his marks, and soon replace him with a middle ground between him and Alexa, Charles, who takes on targets Alexa wouldn't take, but would also kill his marks in a manner more discreet and painless than Bradley.
- Played for Laughs: Elijah introduces Alexa as "the sweetest person you'll ever meet, she holds doors for old ladies, babysits children, donates to St. Jude's ... and she's also an assassin, but that's just fine print."
- Played for Drama: Elijah wants to date Alexa because she has such a delightful personality, but he's conflicted because not only is she a killer, but she killed Elijah's best friend.
- Played for Horror: Alexa loves to kill and even goes on unauthorized sprees, but still considers herself a good person because she won't touch a child and won't make deaths painful.
Back to Hitman with a Heart. Don't worry, I won't hurt you — it's against my morals.
