Follow TV Tropes

Following

Playing With / Badass Preacher

Go To

Basic Trope: A religious leader is a badass.

  • Straight: Bob is a minister who hunts vampires, exorcises demons, and fights off any thugs who attack his church or parishioners.
  • Exaggerated:
    • Bob beats up vampires, demons, hitmen, and every other sort of bad guy in-between giving his sermons.
    • Instead of deer shooting, Bob goes on a harrowing of Hell every hunting season.
  • Downplayed:
    • Bob is a minister and former boxer who gets into the ring to spar when he has spare time.
    • Bob is a Badass Pacifist who will never get into a fight, but is bravely willing to put himself in danger for his beliefs.
  • Justified:
    • Bob believes God has sent him to fight evil.
    • Bob's faith is a great weapon in dealing with vampires and demons.
    • Bob is in a land that persecutes people of his faith, and must fight back.
    • Bob is a Church Militant or a Warrior Monk. He's part of an organization where every member is expected to be both a priest and a soldier, fighting wars for their religion.
    • Bob is a missionary in a war-torn country when an invading army comes through his region bent on Rape, Pillage, and Burn. In order to protect his congregants, he begins Training the Peaceful Villagers and leads them on raids against the invaders.
  • Inverted:
  • Subverted: Bob is The Atoner who was once a Badass Biker, but is now a peaceful man of the cloth who will not even fight back if punched by members of the local gang.
  • Double Subverted: Then they mess with his family and now... It's Personal.
  • Parodied:
  • Zig Zagged: As a minister, Bob tries not to engage in violence even though he is a former military man. When criminals try to take over his small town, he turns into a Technical Pacifist and hires men to fight them off while trying to get his people to safety. When those hired men are killed and he is all that's left, he picks up a gun and fights the gang.
  • Averted: Bob is just a normal preacher who does his job.
  • Enforced: The writers are religous or otherwise, want to play with the notion of religious faith in connection with badassery.
  • Lampshaded: "Don't let the Bible fool you. That man can kick your ass everyway until Sunday... Thankfully, he rests on Sundays."
  • Invoked: Bob lives in a Crapsack World and knows the people need two things: God and protection. He offers both.
  • Exploited:
    • The Big Bad, a demon, forces Bob into violent battles in order to draw people away from the church once they see a preacher kicking ass.
    • The Bishop hires people to force Bob into violent battles in order to draw people into church once they see a preacher kicking ass.
  • Defied: Even though Bob is aware of vampies and knows they are vulnerable to his faith, he does not hunt them.
  • Discussed: Members of Bob's church wonder if his violent nature is suitable for being a clergyman.
  • Conversed: Alice reads a comic featuring Bob, and talks with her friends to see if the writer was trying to mock religion, promote it, or was just trying to be funny.
  • Implied: "Pastor Bob is a peaceful man of God and everything but don't mess with his church members. Trust me."
  • Deconstructed: Bob hunts vampires and feels that his life of violence is not appropriate for a man of God and leaves the church.
  • Reconstructed: Bob hunts vampires and fears that his life of violence is not appropriate for a man of God. Therefore, he tries to invoke a Heel–Faith Turn in the vampires, and if necessary beat the evil out of them first.
  • Played For Laughs: Bob beats up members of the local gangs and demands that they go to church on Sunday.
  • Played For Drama: Bob struggles to make amends between his duties as a clergyman and his duties of being a vampire hunter.
  • Played For Horror: Bob is a former priest who has become a fundamentalist Knight Templar Serial Killer and has absolutely no problem hauling out a flamethrower and giving the hundred cops sent to arrest him a little taste of Hell on Earth.


Back to Badass Preacher

Top