WarJay77
Bonnie's Artistic Cousin
from The Void
(Troper Knight)
Relationship Status: Armed with the Power of Love
Bonnie's Artistic Cousin
#2: Jun 26th 2021 at 8:55:04 PM
You want Trope Launch Pad.
Current Project: Incorruptible Pure Pureness
Total posts: 2
Hi all! I was thinking of this as a possible new trope. It's a situation where crime has no consequences. I did a search to see if it already exists, and the closest thing I could find was the trope "There Are no Police," where the police don't exist in a story. But, I think my proposed trope describes the same story state but is slightly different from the police don't exist.
Or, maybe I could change “there are no police” to “Crime is a free action?” Either way, it's a pretty big change and I wanted to run it through the discussion boards first before doing it.
Trope Name: Crime is a free action.
Description: In real life, depending on who one is and where one lives, crimes create evidence trails and have consequences. Not here.
Did Bob just kill a dozen mooks in a shootout? Did Charlie just go through a high speed chase leaving a trail of property damage, injured individuals, and dead bodies that spans half the city? Did Alice break into an active crime scene and remove vital evidence? The consequences for these actions will be noticeably absent. No matter how many crimes have been comitted, no police investigations will happen. Covers will remain intact. The hero will remain a hero.
Sometimes this trope is justified. Maybe the story's world has a different view of crime than ours. Maybe the city is in chaos and order has broken down. Maybe the threat posed by the villains is so great that any help, no matter how illegal, is welcome. Maybe the police are on the side of the heroes and can spin a plausible cover for them. Or, maybe the police are useless and it's up to the hero to take matters into their own hands.
But, more often than not, this happens for story reasons. It would bog the story down if the writers had to worry about the legal consequences of the character's actions. It's also boring to have the police handle every problem by arresting the villains and putting them in jail. It's much more exciting when the heroes and villains battle it out in dramatic fashion.