Basic Trope: A killer falls in love with their target.
- Straight: Bob is ordered by the League of Killers to eliminate Alice. He befriends her to gather info in order to kill her efficiently, but he falls in love with her in the process and this complicates his mission.
- Exaggerated: Bob is ordered to kill Alice, but he falls madly in love with her upon seeing her in his scope.
- Downplayed:
- Bob is ordered to kill Alice, but he ends up bonding with her in the process of knowing her and this makes his mission difficult.
- Alternatively, Bob is ordered not to kill Alice, but to bring her to the League of Killers.
- Justified:
- Bob was trained as an assassin since his childhood and knows nothing aside of killing and violence. Alice is the first person who treats him kindly, and this makes him to fall in love with her.
- Bob falls in love with Alice because she reminds him of his lost love.
- Inverted:
- Alice finds out that Bob is there to kill her, but instead of being afraid, she somehow sees it as utterly romantic and falls in love with him.
- Bob was already in love with Alice before he was ordered to kill her.
- Subverted: Bob is ordered to kill Alice, but he falls in love with her and protects her from fellow hitmen. But at the end all is revealed to be a ruse and he kills her.
- Double Subverted: ...however, this is revealed to be a trick to fake Alice's death and make the League of Killers believe that she has been eliminated. Once they believe she's dead, they stop trying to kill her.
- Parodied:
- Elementary school boy Bob is entitled by his group of friends to steal class bookworm Alice's homework and maybe stick a gum into her hair, but in the process of getting near her, he falls into his first crush for her, so he betrays his friends.
- Hitmen fall in love with their targets so reliably that the local Assassin's Guild doubles as a matchmaking service.
- Zig-Zagged: Bob is sent to kill Alice, but her kindness make him fall in love with her and he turns on the League. However, she is revealed to be another mercenary ordered by the League to charm him off in order to get him killed. But turns out that Alice fell in love with him as well and she betrays the League helping Bob to escape. Later Bob interrogates the leader of the League and learns he was targeted because Bob's father was a former member of the League who turned on them for having fallen in love with a female target. However, Alice discovers it was actually a similar ruse to eliminate Bob's father due to money issues.
- Averted: Bob kills Alice and doesn't fall in love with her.
- Enforced: The story is a work about the miseries of being a mercenary.
- Lampshaded: "Damn, I didn't expect to fall in the League of Killers' old sin."
- Invoked: All is revealed to be a plan by the League of Killers to dispose of Bob, who was sent to eliminate Alice in the hopes he would fall in love with her and give them an excuse to kill him.
- Exploited:
- The leader of the League knows Bob's love for Alice, so he has planted a tracking device on him to get her.
- Alice uses Bob's feelings for her to get him to turn against the League, causing him to protect her out of love.
- Defied:
- Bob falls in love with Alice, and although it gives him much pain, he kills her anyway.
- The League of Killers has had so many troubles with this that they take care to assign only straight assassins to kill people of their own sex, gay assassins to kill the opposite sex, and refuse to hire bisexual assassins at all. Aromantic assassins are the best-paid in the whole trade.
- Discussed: "How can an assassin fall in love with his target? That's not logic. Maybe the humans are that fallible."
- Conversed: "Look at Bob. I bet ten bucks he will fall in love with Alice."
- Deconstructed: Bob falls in love with Alice, which stops him from fulfilling his mission. This destroys his career as a mercenary when the League of Killers finds about it, and naturally Alice rejects him at discovering he is an assassin out for her. Bob ends with nothing, and is left to face his former employers and endure the pains of a lost love.
- Reconstructed: ...however, Alice is still targeted by the League and Bob saves her from another Assassination Attempt, so she starts to warm up to him and eventually falls in love with Bob as well.
- Played for Laughs: Bob continuously falls in love with his female targets, with triggers multiple Face Palms at the League.
- Played for Drama: Bob falls in love with Alice and doesn't know how to handle it in relation with his work. His life starts to crumble under the weight of the disjunctive of either killing her and breaking his own heart or screwing the mission and protecting her.
- Implied: Bob was last seen going up to Alice with a box of chocolates and a card, rather than weapons or poison.
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