Basic Trope: The hero laments that the villain has (or had) the potential to be a good person.
- Straight: After defeating Dr. Imperius, Captain Resolute admonishes him for using his intellect for evil, saying he could've achieved far better in life than being a prisoner.
- Exaggerated: Every time he and Dr. Imperius meet, Resolute delivers a lecture on the superiority of good over evil.
- Downplayed: Resolute only gets on Imperius's case after he commits the most heinous offense possible.
- Justified:
- Imperius has invented several brilliant devices with near-universal applications that are only being used as weapons against heroes and the law.
- Resolute tries to see the good in everyone.
- Imperius used to be a law-abiding citizen.
- Imperius has powers that are actually applicable to day-to-day life or otherwise have obvious potential for good, yet he uses them for evil.
- A rogue super-scientist is dangerous to everyone—and the heroes' approval ratings. Imperius turning good would be a boon to the world, and the heroes' approval ratings.
- Inverted: Imperius praises Resolute for his drive, implacability and willingness to use pragmatic tactics when necessary, claiming that he could be a stellar villain if he would just apply himself.
- Subverted: Resolute has no hope that Imperius will ever turn over a new leaf, and deals with him accordingly.
- Parodied: Resolute records his various spiels for ease of recital.
- Zig Zagged: Imperius conducts most of his business in a sort of "grey area", sometimes helping the bad guys and sometimes hindering them. The real conflict is over which side he'll eventually stick with.
- Averted: Imperius grows tired of the hero/villain routine and becomes a legitimate scientist and businessman.
- Enforced: The writers want to create An Aesop about wasted potential and/or help establish Imperius’s determination towards villainy.
- Lampshaded: "If you dare say that cliched line, so help me I'm using this laser array to ignite an orphanage full of kittens!"
- Invoked: Resolute highlights the lowlights of the Compendium of Evil — a bevy of wasted talent, empty hedonism and moral depravity — to convince Resolute that villainy is not the way to go.
- Exploited: Several villains take advantage of Imperius's conflict to absorb his resources and territory.
- Defied: Imperius has always been, is, and will always be a villain, no matter what good he could accomplish with his time and energy.
- Discussed: Resolute and his coworkers attempt to come up with arguments to try and sway Imperius—"attempt" being the key word.
- Conversed: Alice and Bob wonder if that line should even be used anymore, considering that there are much more grey characters in fiction nowadays.
- Implied: Resolute doesn't enjoy fighting Imperius as much as he does Mr. Insufferable or Lunkhead.
- Deconstructed:
- Imperious responds to Resolute's speech by telling his own little story about a legitimate scientist who spent his early years working for the greater good, only for his efforts to go to waste because an ungrateful populace and crooked businessmen conspired to create a society too corrupt to bother improving, resulting in the man throwing off his self-enforced shackles and forged his own path as Dr. Imperius.
- Imperius then goes on to question why Resolute bothers fighting for things like truth and justice that can never possibly exist without being corrupted, and extends a counteroffer for the best thing he can hope for in a rotten world: being an enlightened despot ruling an empire of morons.
- Captain Resolute is a hero, yes, but he takes this attitude with everyone who doesn’t use their powers for “the greater good”; i.e. selfless heroism. Since Dr. Imperius markets his inventions like a normal person would instead of giving them away and/or using them to fight crime, Resolute looks down on him and lectures Imperius about his “selfishness”, and doesn’t take it well when Imperius treats him as a Holier Than Thou Jerkass.
- Imperious responds to Resolute's speech by telling his own little story about a legitimate scientist who spent his early years working for the greater good, only for his efforts to go to waste because an ungrateful populace and crooked businessmen conspired to create a society too corrupt to bother improving, resulting in the man throwing off his self-enforced shackles and forged his own path as Dr. Imperius.
- Reconstructed:
- Resolute resoundly rejects Imperius's offer, telling him that while he's not entirely wrong, wasting his life as a criminal because he was dealt a bum hand early on is neither intelligent nor rational, truth and justice are supposed to be ideals, not tools for men to beat each other over the head with, and that even if his crusade is pointless in the end he would conduct it anyway to avoid coming within spitting distance of Imperius's pathetic, self-defeating situation.
- He then tells Imperius where to find him if he's ready to change, before leaving with the doctor's latest doomsday weapon in tow.
- Ironically, Captain Resolute is told that he could've genuinely convinced others that they could've done something good, because as the enemies of Captain Resolute has squandered their talents of intelligence and what-have-you, Captain Resolute in turn squandered his own talents of diplomacy and public speaking.
- Resolute resoundly rejects Imperius's offer, telling him that while he's not entirely wrong, wasting his life as a criminal because he was dealt a bum hand early on is neither intelligent nor rational, truth and justice are supposed to be ideals, not tools for men to beat each other over the head with, and that even if his crusade is pointless in the end he would conduct it anyway to avoid coming within spitting distance of Imperius's pathetic, self-defeating situation.
"And to think, you could have used the header to go back to the main page."
