Basic Trope: A supervillain has a fixation on a certain thing.
- Straight: Supervillain Piranha has a piranha-like Buzzsaw Jaw, keeps a tank of piranha for disposing of loose ends, and likes to steal exotic fish.
- Exaggerated: Piranha makes himself into a human piranha (as much as possible), keeps a tank of piranha to dispatch people, uses piranha jaws as weapons, steals exotic fish, and plans to turn everyone into piranha under his control.
- Downplayed: Piranha has a piranha-like Buzzsaw Jaw and steals exotic fish more frequently than anyone else.
- Justified: Piranha trained at a supervillain academy that is quite traditionalist. A gimmick, be it clever or preposterous, is mandatory before graduating. Piranha chose what he knew, that is, a specific species of fish about which he was quite knowledgeable because he was, well, a bit of a nerd. After years of being "Piranha" first as an alumni, then as a professional, it would be much bother to separate himself from his well-known equipment and refined routines, and re-learn everything from scratch.
- Inverted: The city has a supervillain it doesn't even know about because his crimes are so eclectic.
- Subverted:
- Captain Hero hears about a supervillain called Piranha and expects him to have a theme around piranha, but it's just a nickname because of his large teeth.
- The city seems to have a myriad of supervillains, each with a gimmick...but it turns out that really, the city has a few supervillains with multiple costumed identities and separate themes.
- Double Subverted: However, a supervillainess called Frost has ice powers, uses cold-themed puns, and likes to steal things that come from cold places.
- Parodied: Everyone has a gimmick, and is known first and foremost through that ; to the point that heroes and villains don't anymore do research on their ennemies themselves, but on the gimmick they use, to find weak points. It turns out Piranha has trouble being operational in saltwater, Chiropterawoman overheats in daylight and fears cats, and Lightning Storm is quite easy to dispatch with a lightning rod.
- Averted: The story deconstructs the Superhero genre and plays it as realistically as possible. Meta-humans and criminals don't use gimmicks at all, because they are a waste of time, inefficient, and tend to leave leads and hints to investigate. The closest they have to idiosyncracies are favoured techniques, which they simply know better and are thus more reliable.
- Enforced: The author knows this is expected and so comes up with a fixation for each new supervillain.
- Lampshaded:Captain Hero: First Piranha releases a bunch of piranha into the bay, then Frost steals a polar bear, and now Heatwave is threatening to fry the city. What is it with supervillains and gimmicks?
- Invoked: Piranha is patterning himself off other gimmicky supervillains.
- Exploited: Captain Hero sets an ambush at the aquarium's piranha exhibit, suspecting Piranha will come there.
- Deconstructed: When extraordinary beings started to emerge, the superhero genre had predated it and gimmicks were the new black because they just seemed so appropriate. Then so many secret identities were revealed simply by, say, investigating possible hideouts just because they fitted someone's theme, or checking weird item deliveries because the person who orders defunct vinyl records every month is probably Needle Scratch, that they were eventually dropped.
- Defied: An aspiring supervillain decided against having a theme.
- Discussed: ???
- Conversed: ???
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