Basic Trope: Something that is normally a subject of terror is afraid of something else even more dangerous, or at least by something that seems more dangerous.
- Straight: Bob is fighting a huge monster. An even huger one shows up, and the first one flees screaming.
- Exaggerated: The huge monster is frightened off by just the mere mention of an even larger monster showing up.
- Downplayed:
- Bob is fighting a huge monster. When a slightly more frightening monster shows up, the first monster politely steps aside to let the scarier monster kill Bob.
- Bob is fighting a huge monster. A more frightening monster appears and while the first monster is scared, it is still willing to fight the other monster.
- Even Evil Has Standards
- Justified: There is a Food Chain of Evil, and the smaller monster is prey of the larger.
- Inverted: The smaller monster was afraid of Bob, but is reassured when the larger monster shows up.
- Subverted: (continued from straight)... because it was the first to realize that Alice had shown up to help Bob, and she is way scarier than even the larger monster.
- Double Subverted: The large monster runs off to chase the smaller one. The smaller one keeps running.
- Parodied:
- A clown shows up. The monster runs away.
- Bad Vibrations happen, and the monster looks visibly terrified. All of a sudden, an identical monster appears, only this one has Tertiary Sexual Characteristics to indicate it is a female. It's the monster's wife... Ouch.
- Zig Zagged: Vampires are scared of a monster that shows up - a glowing figure of light known as Sunwalkers. They are horribly dangerous to vampires because of their sunlight. However they also attack humans, but their powers aren't as deadly to humans so while they might cause a more painful death by burning instead of simply getting torn apart they are actually slightly less of a threat to humans.
- Averted: The monsters team up and keep attacking.
- Enforced: The fight would be too hard for Bob to realistically win if he had to fight both monsters at once.
- The writers want to make the final monster more frightening to the audience by making all the other monsters frightened of it.
- Lampshaded: "Huh. There's Always a Bigger Fish."
- Invoked:
- The larger monster deliberately scared off the smaller one so it wouldn't have to share its meal of Bob.
- Bob summoned the larger monster to help him fight the smaller one.
- Exploited: Bob only plans of fighting one monster at once, knowing that whichever one is smaller will just run off.
- Defied:
- Bob kills off the larger monster first so that the smaller ones won't run away and will be easier to hunt.
- The smaller monsters exploit their greater numbers to gang up and tear apart the larger one, establishing their dominance.
- The smaller monster immediately stands its ground against the bigger monster. If it dies, it dies, but there will be no running away, not now, not ever.
- The smaller monster, knowing it has no chance alone, attempts to team up with Bob to defeat the larger one, no matter how temporary the alliance may be.
- Discussed: ???
- Conversed: ???
- Implied: Bob notes that there aren't any ogres in this part of the world. Alice points out that while this may be true, there are still vampires to worry about. (One can infer that the latter drove the former out.)
- Deconstructed:
- The man who horrifies the horror today will definitely become The World's Expert (on Getting Killed) tomorrow. That is just the way the world (or writers trying to prop up their pet creation) works.
- The horrifying animals from beyond time and space are animals still, and even when they are smarter than humans they are still as capable of animalistic thought as humans — and not everything chooses flight when facing off a bigger threat. Some become even more murderous in an attempt at establishing dominance. Some decide they are going to die fighting. Many of those who choose flight are definitely not going to choose paths with little collateral damage. And some of those who are clever, well, they may decide to paint the scary hoo-mahn as the "real monster" and get the authorities to take care of them… or rile up a really big crowd of equally scared monsters "to show the hoo-mahn what he makes them feel" and enact a death by a thousand cuts. To make it short: becoming the boogeyman's boogeyman is an impractical tactic.
- Reconstructed: Oh, well. At least it will make for an interesting bar story.
- Played For Laughs:
- Monsters are cowardly and run in fear of just slightly larger monsters.
- Bob spends the Halloween Episode dressed as a slasher villain and accidentally kills the strongest of the monsters hounding the heroes, which up to that moment was virtually invincible, by stumbling on its Weaksauce Weakness. The remaining monsters immediately stampede away from him.
- Bob just happens to be accidentally carrying or manages to discover (through sheer luck) the monster's Absurd Phobia.
- The things that horrifies the horror are humans... represented as Ben Stein-looking ultra-boring milquetoasts, straw geeks who take "Admiring the Abomination" to Hollywood starlet-stalker levels or trailer trash-types who are too drunk and mean to be afraid of anything.
- Played For Drama:
- The monster rampages are on the rise because the monsters are fleeing from the bigger monsters and entering settled territories, which supply food and safe places (for the monsters, not people), which make the bigger monsters come, which make the smaller monsters flee, which causes rampages to escalate elsewhere and things to get worse overall.
- Bob has spent two acts running away from the monsters and begins the third having had just about more than enough. After his climactic Roaring Rampage of Revenge the epilogue shows his new credentials as The Dreaded by scaring off T-Rexes with a Death Glare.
- The thing that horrifies the monsters are humans… and they are a collection of beings so vile that the monsters from beyond time and space that feed on souls look more humane in comparison.
- Played For Horror:
- The first monster was already bad enough. How bad could the second one be?
- The fact T-Rexes run away from Bob whining like scared puppies is a big clue that there is something very wrong with Bob and that "something very wrong" is probably going to kill the rest of the cast very soon.
- If you think an Eldritch Abomination with full use of its mental faculties was already dangerous enough, guess what happens when it goes into a Freak Out? Great job, Bob, that was a great job!
- The thing that scares the monsters is that Humans Are the Real Monsters, represented in terrorists, Ed Gein-style serial killers, and other maniacs who answer to the question of "those are immortal beings from time and space, how are these guys supposed to be more scary?" with "they can kill the monsters, and it's going to be pure Cannibal Holocaust-flavored."
- Bob is murdered, and quite violently at that, by the slasher he just scared the everliving crap out of because they were scared out of their wits and had access to a weapon — just like Alice five scenes earlier when she shot Jimmy nine times in an unthinking panic when he scared her with that prank in which he dressed like the slasher. Alice even points out the irony of the slasher acting just like she did, which leads to the rest of the cast fearing that she is a potential second slasher.
- Bob has made it his life's mission to eradicate a specific race of monsters after the death of his child. Despite most of them having had nothing to do with what happened to Bob, they are forced to run in terror as Bob kills their children, tortures and kills their loved ones, and burns their cities to the ground. Long after Bob successfully managed to torture and kill the monsters responsible; he is still committing genocide to the monster species as they run in terror and desperately try to hide from the human that is their bogeyman. Bonus points if the narrative changes perspectives from Bob to the monsters as they run from him in a desperate bid to save themselves and their loved ones, showing that, to them, Bob is as terrifying as any monster was to humans.
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