Basic Trope: An extremist villain/or a very unscrupulous hero that earnestly believes they're doing good for the world.
- Straight: Bob seeks to maintain order in society... by installing a totalitarian dictatorship in which he is the sole ruler.
- Exaggerated:
- Bob seeks to find the meaning of Life, The Universe, and Everything by mass murder, torture and genocide.
- Bob seeks to eliminate human suffering and bring the humanity a paradise... by turning all living beings into orange juice and forcefully merging their souls.
- Bob, a seemly generic Slasher Film Serial Killer, who frequently abducts and murders people in his mansion, turn out to be holding back a race of Eldritch Abominations from destroying the world by offering them a Human Sacrifice.
- Downplayed: Bob uses blackmail and vote fraud to become Student Council President, because he wants to improve student-faculty relations, organize a mentoring program, stop bullying and throw everyone a big pizza party.
- Justified:
- Bob is deluded.
- He actually has a point after all.
- Bob's ruthless tactics actually end up bringing a utopian state of peace and stability.
- Something really horrible happened to him in the past.
- Inverted:
- Not in This for Your Revolution
- Right for the Wrong Reasons
- Bob has a villainous motivation for the good deeds he does.
- Bob is a Nominal Hero.
- Subverted:
- Bob lied about his intentions.
- Bob is revealed to be not that extreme.
- Bob wants an orderly society, but only so he can feel safe, to hell with everyone else.
- Bob's extreme acts only began when he was brainwashed by Emperor Evulz. Once it wears off, he's well-intentioned with none of the extremism.
- Double Subverted:
- Bob claims to have lied about his intentions, because the greater good involves him seeming like "the bad guy".
- That was a lie.
- Bob was lying about his intentions, but winds up Becoming the Mask.
- Parodied: Bob wishes to save the world... by ripping the tags off of every mattress in the world.
- Zig Zagged: Depending on the Writer, Bob's motive for his tyranny ranges from simple lust for power to desire to create an orderly society.
- Averted:
- Bob is a Card-Carrying Villain.
- Bob is a Knight Templar who only thinks that his goal is good.
- Alternatively: Bob does not resort to the extreme for the greater good.
- Enforced: "If we want our show to have more depth, we should give our 'villains' an understandable motivation and at least partially sympathetic goals."
- Lampshaded: "I killed millions... to save billions!"
- Invoked: Shoot the Dog
- Exploited: Turns out, Alice is using Bob's Well-Intentioned Extremist tendencies and (Anti-) Heroic Zeal to make it easier for her to commit genocide.
- Defied: "There are instances in which the means are too rotten to be justified by any ends."
- Discussed: I Did What I Had to Do
- Conversed: "Isn't Bob going a little too far to reach his goal?"
- Deconstructed:
- Despite his good intentions, many people turn on Bob for his actions.
- In the end, Bob goes down in history as an evil ruler.
- After being defeated by Alice, Bob realizes all the sacrifices he made were for nothing because his plan failed, and has a Villainous BSoD as he reflects on what he's done.
- Bob's extremism ends up causing the exact thing he wished to avoid.
- "No Bob, the world you envision will be a better place... But only for you!"
- Bob's "good intentions" come from such a bizarre case of Blue-and-Orange Morality that his aims, and the world he seeks to create, are both seen as bad by everyone else, and they may have a point.
- Bob seeks to create a utopia from his actions, but he's so driven by his madness that the prospect of a more peaceful, bloodless method genuinely doesn't occur to him.
- Reconstructed:
- Bob is OK with the world hating him, so long as the world he creates is a better one in the end.
- Bob is initially viewed as dangerous and evil, but as time goes on people come to appreciate the results of his actions- even if the actions themselves were distasteful.
Should you not go back to Well-Intentioned Extremist, the world will no doubt suffer for it... and I shall see to it that you will not live to see such a tragedy take place.
