Basic Trope: Someone who enjoys fighting.
- Straight: Bob loves a good fight and picks a profession that allows him to seek out worthy opponents and enjoys proving his skills against them in battle.
- Exaggerated:
- A hyper-violent Glory Hound
- Sadist
- Put the "Laughter" in "Slaughter"
- Bob cannot go a week without getting into some kind of fight just to alleviate boredom if nothing else.
- Bob is literally in love with fighting.
- Bob starts a religion where brutally murdering your enemy is the best way for his salvation. And for the salvation of his enemies. Or Bob uses elements of "sacred sexuality" like in Tantrism, but replaces everything sexual with the joy of killing his enemies.
- Bob is a philosopher, he just replaces "I think, therefore I am" with "I fight, therefore I am".
- Bob frequently declares wars against other states just so he can have a chance to fight.
- Downplayed:
- Bob enjoys fighting against skilled opponents, but doesn't go out of his way to seek them out.
- Bob enjoys fighting, but he dislikes fighting against the weak and defenseless, and he will always hold back against an opponent who isn't as skilled as he is in order to make the fight more fair for said opponent.
- Bob enjoys combat sports such as mixed martial arts. Live combat to the death? Not so much.
- Justified:
- As a member of a militaristic culture that glorified warfare and prowess of the battlefield, Bob is merely acting according to his culture's expectations of a good warrior.
- Bob is a Professional Wrestler and he enjoys the fights.
- Killing is his career.
- He started out his rampage as a revenge, but in the end, he ended up obsessed with fighting.
- He spills the others' blood to ease his thirst. And since nutrition is a pleasure on itself...
- Bob is a bit Ax-Crazy, and he uses violence as a way to utilize his homicidal tendencies.
- Combat provides a massive adrenaline rush. Bob fights to get the ultimate high.
- Bob doesn't enjoy combat for its own sake. Rather, his opponents are dangerous criminals and he finds joy in the knowledge that when he's done with them, they won't be hurting any more people.
- For Bob, combat is a way to take out his frustrations.
- Bob is a sadist.
- Inverted:
- Bob hates fighting and avoids getting into any sort of conflict to the point of being an Actual Pacifist.
- Bob’s profession is a soldier at the military defending the city, and hates working there because “it’s tiring.”
- Bob enjoys fighting the weak and defenseless opponents and avoids strong opponents.
- Bob is a Reluctant Warrior.
- Bob is a Consummate Professional and every kill he performs is a calculated step towards a specific goal, without nonsense things such as passion or prejudice behind it. The few times he is "passionate" about his kills is not because he seeks the thrill of combat - it's because he wants someone very, very dead.
- Subverted:
- Bob enjoys proving his skill on the battlefield until he meets an opponent that grossly outclasses him in terms of skill. He then finds that fighting is less fun when you're getting your ass kicked.
- Bob enjoys winning, and he's a good fighter, but the joy of fighting is not in his mind.
- Bob does like fighting and killing... specifically against innocent civilians and people who can't fight back. When someone actually challenges him, he tries to escape.
- Double Subverted:
- Bob's beatdown motivates him to train harder so he can defeat his opponent.
- But when it comes to his Arch-Enemy, Bob is definitely going to love spending thirty minutes ripping him to pieces on a tournament.
- Even if the smug and the cowardice never truly leave him, Bob comes to enjoy the idea of pitting his escape plans against increasingly dangerous enemies (citing Harry Houdini as an inspiration).
- Parodied: Every time Bob hears about a fight, he immediately goes berserk and runs at the place to start yelling "FOR BLOOD!!!" and swinging the first heavy object he found and picked up left and right.
- Zig Zagged: Whether or not Bob is enjoying a fight depends on a variety of factors, sometimes he's having the time of his life, other times he's just as stressed as everyone else.
- Averted: Bob may be a warrior, but he doesn't enjoy fighting in the slightest.
- Enforced:
- The writer wants to portray the negative aspects of being obsessed with violence.
- The writer finds "he goes looking for fights" more realistic as a plot device than "all the fights come to him".
- Implied: Whenever Bob is in open combat, he seems much more relaxed than in everyday situations.
- Lampshaded:
- "It's been like four days since anybody needed me to punch them. I. Am. So. BORED."
- "Doesn't he have another fun in his life?"
- Invoked: Bob was raised from birth to love fighting and violence so that he could serve as The Heavy for the local Big Bad.
- Exploited: Bob is easy to manipulate, because his love of fighting gets in the way of his critical thinking when it comes to things like "Should I be fighting this guy in the first place?"
- Defied:
- Bob isn't hesitant about fighting when it's necessary, but refuses to let it become something he enjoys for its own sake.
- Big Bad Evulz makes a point of summarily executing any (and that is any) member of his army that is turned on by violence, and that is if they make it pass his rigorous hiring interview. He's already got too much shit to deal in his campaign of conquest without having to include assholes willing to do anything, no matter how gross, imbecilic or treasonous, to slake their bloodlust.
- Annihilus, the Greater-Scope Villain, makes a point of installing a Restraining Bolt on all of his minions that destroy their capacity to become excited (at all, but especially in combat) and destroys them literally if they somehow bypass it and/or become excited still. He's also been thinking about switching his army to an all-drone swarm.
- Discussed: "If there's anything I've learned, Enyo, it's that if you show yourself to be strong, you'll have people lining up to fight. Thus, I want everyone to know how strong you are, so I can find a few combat-addicts to help further defend my plans."
- Conversed: "People who like fighting are always written as battle-lusty maniacs — as in, literally, they all but cum in battle, and in an X-rated show they go that far, too. It's always like that. You'd think writers would give them a bit more nuance nowadays."
- Deconstructed:
- Bob's tendencies to seek out worthy opponents leads to him getting killed, or getting injured to the point he can't fight anymore.
- Bob's love of battle leads him to escalate a situation that could have easily been defused peacefully. He is abandoned by his comrades after the destruction his actions indirectly caused.
- The person he fights for publically begs him to stop fighting.
- Reconstructed:
- It only makes Bob even more stronger shortly after he's Back from the Dead.
- Bob knows his aggressive tendencies put him at risk of doing something stupid, so he emphasizes self-control and learns to enjoy his moments of delayed gratification.
- Bob is a Martial Pacifist who deeply enjoys fighting, but also knows that there is a time and place for it. He sometimes worries that he'd be no good to anyone — and worse, would be terminally bored — in the kind of peaceful future he's fighting for.
- In the end, Bob loses everything, he gets ostracised by everyone he wanted to defend, gets betrayed and outright killed. Hundred years later, even his enemies consider him a hero because he fought for what he believed, no matter the cost, and risked everything for his values.
- Played For Laughs: Bob treats fighting like any other form of entertainment. When everyone goes to the cinema, he goes to the boxing club, and going to war is his idea of a perfect vacation.
- Played For Drama:
- Bob can seldom find any enjoyment in anything other than combat. Despite having been injured multiple times and being ridden by guilt over the times he had to kill someone, he continues to do the only thing that, in his opinion, makes his life worth living.
- Bob is a Death Seeker who can't commit suicide because it would be dishonorable. Therefore he tries to find someone who can kill him in a fight.
- Bob is deeply unhappy and/or traumatised and the only time he feels like he's truly alive is when he's in combat.
- Played For Horror:
- Bob is shown laughing with joy, while his fallen enemies scream in pain at his feet.
- Bob makes a big speech about how he just has to see what is happening on that massacre just next door.
- Bob's stupid battle lust is directly responsible for the hell the world has become (he refused to kill a demon unless it was in proper battle with the demon at full strength. The demon needs to kill people to become stronger. The people who sent Bob predicted that the demon would need the blood of 50 or 60 million people to obtain his full strength. Do the math.)
- Bob kills the Messianic Archetype who would have saved the world because he really loves living on the Hell the Earth has become, every single blood-soaked, slaughter-ensuing second of it.
Back to Blood Knight
