Basic Trope: A character knowingly does a bad thing, and feels bad about it.
- Straight: Dan steals a loaf bread while homeless, and afterward feels pangs of guilt instead of pangs of hunger.
- Exaggerated: Dan can't even think about stealing without experiencing shortness of breath, muscle spasms and nausea.
- Downplayed: Dan feels bad at first, but the feeling wears off after he eats.
- Justified: Knowing he needs food doesn't mean Dan likes stealing to get it.
- Inverted: Dan steals as a matter of course and doesn't bat an eye. Street life is tough, and you need to be tougher.
- Subverted: Dan steals bread and doesn't feel bad at all. He learns to live with thieving on occasion.
- Parodied: Dan is conflicted about taking a piece of free bread without leaving a tip.
- Zig Zagged: While working up the nerve to steal Dan feels terrible, but it subsides once the exhilaration of getting away with it kicks in, until the guilt returns when he fails to finish all of the bread, eventually crystalizing into remorse when he throws it away.
- Averted: Dan doesn't steal and doesn't feel anything but the growling from his empty stomach.
- Enforced: The Aesop is that the fact that it's necessary doesn't stop an evil act from being evil.
- Lampshaded: Dan wonders why his moral code is strong enough to cause him to feel guilt but not strong enough to stop him from doing bad things.
- Dan turns into a kiddie Raskolnikov trying to justify his theft.
- Invoked: After participating in a gang hit, Dan steals bread to make sure he still feels bad when he does something wrong.
- Exploited: In spending most of his life on his own, Dan has developed a calculus for criminal acts. Petty theft doesn't faze him much anymore, given that its a victimless crime, but he still feels a tiny twinge of guilt that reminds him not to go too far.
- Defied: Dan doesn't feel any remorse over stealing. Or anything else.
- Discussed: After being picked up for stealing, Dan spills his guts to the cops about why he had to steal to eat, ending by breaking down in tears.
- Conversed: Dan's parole officer gently suggests that Dan's guilt would be alleviated if he went to a soup kitchen instead of stealing from a grocery store.
- Implied: Dan makes sure to never go back to the store he stole from again.
- Deconstructed: The guilt Dan feels over stealing bread outweighs any good it might have done him. He would have been better off not taking it.
- The shopkeeper immediately pins Dan as a potential thief because he looks guilty and tells him to beat it before he calls the cops.
- Dan's guilt gets the better of him and he confesses to the police. He gets arrested and sent to juvie.
- Reconstructed: Dan's guilt galvanizes him against further wrongdoing. He walks the straight and narrow till his situation improves and never forgets how hard street life can be afterward, leading him to become a valuable friend as an adult to the homeless.
- Dan isn't too good at being good, so feeling bad for doing something wrong is actually a step in the right direction for him.
"I know using this link to go back to the main page is wrong, but what else can I do?"
