He Who Fights Monsters/Playing With

Basic Trope: A character who is initially heroic, but is slowly becoming as evil as the things he fights.

• Straight: Norbert is a Serial Killer Killer who becomes a pitiless Knight Templar.
• Exaggerated: Norbert ices one bad guy and instantly becomes a Complete Monster.
• Justified: Norbert is catching The Virus from his kills.
  • He's heard too many Hannibal Lectures, and they're starting to stick.
  • He is starting to doubt the existence of morality due to the monsters he fought against, while pure desire takes over.
  • Black and White Morality slowly shifts to Gray and Gray Morality during the battles, turning Norbert mad from doubt about what he is doing.
• Inverted: Heel Realization.
• Subverted: Norbert learns valuable lessons from his battles with evil.
  • Norbert doesn't become evil. He was always evil. He's just gotten worse at controlling his impulses and/or justifying his actions, so it's only now that the mask is starting to slip.
• Double Subverted: ...but becomes evil anyway.
• Parodied: He actually starts to look and speak like his enemies.
  • Norbert writes a note to a bad guy telling him to stop being evil, Norbert then immediately turns into a Complete Monster who kills random people for no reason
• Deconstructed: Every day, his foes show him new depths of horror, keeping him on the straight and narrow.
  • Norbert's goals are sympathetic enough that the heroes show reluctance in interfering with them; by doing so, they fear that they're actually helping the Complete Monster he's after get a Karma Houdini, as the justice system won't give him the proper retribution.
• Reconstructed: The depression caused by what he sees causes him to despair and give in to evil.
  • However, the heroes also recognize that Norbert is reckless in his pursuit, and is more of a threat to the public at large than the individual he's after. No matter what context Norbert is fighting in, the heroes realize that the masses are what's ultimately at stake, and must stop him before he himself crosses the Moral Event Horizon.
• Zigzagged: Norbert's morality seems to jump between good and evil whenever he kills a monster.
• Averted: Norbert is unchanged by his work.
  • Norbert was always evil, and only targets people worse than he is as a way of trying to keep the heat off himself.
• Enforced: "We can't have one of the good guys killing people. Let's make him one of the bad guys instead!"
  • The author is writing a Tragedy.
• Lampshaded: "You are Not So Different!"
• Invoked: Serial Killer Alice knows that, eventually, she's going to be caught by Norbert. She kills his little sister in order to make Norbert more like herself as revenge.
  • Norbert is killing the monsters for the sake of becoming one, either physically or mentally.
• Defied: Norbert vows to never become like his enemies, even if it means subjecting himself to a Fate Worse Than Death.
• Exploited: A Manipulative Bastard uses the fact that Norbert is turning into a villain to create discord within the Five-Man Band which Norbert is part of.
• Dicussed: "Well, what did you expect? Norbert was always the best at his job."
• Conversed: "If you are planning revenge, don't. You'll become exactly like your enemies, like what happened in this show."

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