Basic Trope: A hero turns down a reward offered for a good deed.
- Straight: Max turns down money offered for helping his neighbor.
- Exaggerated: Max turns down a badge of a high-ranking position and, with it, recognition.
- Downplayed:
- Max turns down money offered by his mother for doing a household chore.
- Max talks down the offered reward to something insignificant, as he knows that the one offering him the reward is honor-bound to reward him in some way, so he cashes it in via a trivial favor.
- Max only takes as much money as is needed to cover expenses and lets his neighbor keep the rest.
- Justified:
- The reward doesn't help Max advance his goals or help him on his quest.
- Max remembers his friend Bob, whose ego swelled out of his hands after accepting all the rewards given to him. To Max, who doesn't want to become like Bob, it makes sense to refuse this reward generously.
- Max has everything he needs and thinks it would be unreasonable to take from someone who would do more with it anyway.
- Max believes he will get a better reputation if he also projects the virtue of generosity.
- Max has never cared about money/whatever else is offered to him and simply is the kind of person who enjoys doing good deeds.
- Max is part of a group whose rules forbid him from accepting the reward.
- Max's neighbor is poor and can't afford to pay him, so he chooses not to charge for his services.
- Inverted:
- Max pretends to do a heroic deed, then comes back and demands a reward he hasn't even earned.
- Max does a heroic deed, but is utterly dismayed when he doesn't get his rightful, promised reward. He then goes on a Roaring Rampage of Revenge.
- Alternatively, Max simply hangs around and pesters/coerces/blackmails/guilt-trips/influences/persuades the promiser to give the reward.
- Sam fulfills an assassination request for an Evil Overlord, but turns down the reward because he just enjoyed the killing.
- Subverted: Max accepts the reward happily.
- Double Subverted:
- However, he only takes as much money as he needs to pay his rent/buy the thing he always wanted/etc. He lets the giver keep the rest.
- He accepts the full reward and secretly returns the portion he didn't need.
- Max accepts the reward ... and promptly gives it to charity.
- Parodied: Max, searching for a needed MacGuffin, takes a break and helps Alice do something else. It turns out that Alice has the MacGuffin and she offers it to him as a reward, but he declines it.
- Zig-Zagged:
- Max is conflicted over whether he should accept the reward or not, seeing benefits and costs to both.
- Max accepts some rewards and declines others.
- Averted: No mention of a possible reward comes up and no one pretends otherwise, being motivated by other things.
- Enforced: ???
- Lampshaded: "I'm astonished he seems so content without a reward."
- Invoked: A greedy, selfish Punch-Clock Hero decides he's gotten enough of what he wants and thinks he can, for once or from that point on, turn down a reward.
- Exploited: A poor family offers Max a reward to be polite, even though they can't afford it, because they know he'll turn it down.
- Defied:
- "Are you really going to be such a complete ingrate that you actively turn rewards down? You're no better than the outlaws you hunt!"
- Max accepts the reward because he doesn't want to seem ungrateful.
- Discussed: "You know, Max, we might be able to keep our gear in good shape if you wouldn't reject every reward we're offered."
- Conversed: ???
- Implied: Max finishes work for Bob, who offers him money. Later, Max says he never had the money Bob offered him.
Back to Keep the Reward, although the mere trip there is reward enough.
