Follow TV Tropes

Following

Playing With / Good Powers, Bad People

Go To

Basic Trope: An evil character with good powers.

  • Straight: Gabrielle is a heartless sociopath who uses her healing powers on her partners in crime.
  • Exaggerated:
  • Downplayed:
    • Gabrielle uses her healing powers for evil, but she's also a Noble Demon with certain moral boundaries she'll never cross and can be convinced to help others for nothing on a good day.
    • REALLY downplayed: Gabrielle is a Good Is Not Nice Jerkass, while not evil, she charges ridiculous prices for her healing services and is known for being rude to people seeking her services because she has a monopoly on healing abilities and she knows it.
  • Justified:
    • Gabrielle was taken advantage of too many times in the past, which led to her being fed up with doing good for people who might not even appreciate her.
    • Those with good powers sometimes grow into being Tautological Templars who believe everything they do is good. With that sort of a moral compass evil soon follows.
    • The Superpower Lottery is morally-blind.
  • Inverted: Bad Powers, Good People
  • Subverted: Gabrielle's conscience eventually gets the best of her and she becomes The Atoner, healing people who were damaged by her misdeeds.
  • Double Subverted: Gabrielle's conscience eventually gets the best of her, but it isn't long until she decides to press on and continue being evil anyway.
  • Parodied:
  • Zig Zagged:
    • Gabrielle is a bad person who uses her powers for bad things, but it turns out she's actually The Mole helping the heroes out. However, it turns out she's been embezzling the resources given to her for her own purposes, but those purposes turn out to be charitable goals that fit the heroes' mission statement anyway.
    • Gabrielle has multiple powers: some of these powers are good, and some of them are bad.
  • Averted: Gabrielle is good, with good powers to match.
  • Enforced: The editors thought the whole thing was turning out a bit too formulaic, so they pushed for the creation of an evil character with good powers to spice things up.
  • Lampshaded: "You have to be a real rotten person if you insist on being evil while having powers like those."
  • Invoked: The bad guys frame Gabrielle for a crime, knowing that this trope will be called into question.
  • Exploited: The heroes are well aware of Gabrielle's selfishness, using her character flaws and beneficial powers against her and her allies in a Batman Gambit.
  • Defied: Gabrielle is one of the kindest people in the series, and balks at the notion that she'd use her good powers for wicked purposes.
  • Discussed: "We might have to keep a closer eye on Gabrielle. Comic books have taught me that people with kindly powers can have really nasty dark sides."
  • Conversed: "My favorite villain from that show is Gabrielle. Who knew you could cause so much trouble for the good guys while having healing as your superpower?"
  • Deconstructed: Gabrielle is a sitting duck after all her fellow villains have been restrained in places she can't reach. While being arrested, she is subject to a "The Reason You Suck" Speech about the easy life she could have lived, making a killing off of the beneficial effects of her powers and being one of the most beloved people in the public.
  • Reconstructed: Gabrielle's threat doesn't end with her powers. She's also an expert Chessmaster and comes a hair's breadth away from taking out the heroes through her abilities and strategic planning. She also retorts to the speech by pointing out that, not having much in the way of offensive capabilities, she probably would have ended up helping the villains anyway by being forced into their operations. At least she was free to use her skills on her own terms as a villain.
  • Implied: Several people are found murdered with mysterious tumors. The hero never figures it out, but the tumors look remarkably like the work of Gabrielle's healing powers.
  • Played For Laughs: Gabrielle tries to be a Card-Carrying Villain but her powers keep on making things better no matter how she tries to abuse them and make her an involuntary Villain with Good Publicity. Her attempts at healing Axe-Crazy murders cause them to atone, her price gouging gets her some money but the expense causes them to realize the sheer value of preventative medicine.

Back to Good Powers, Bad People

Top