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Basic Trope: Gorillas and other large apes are portrayed as vicious and dangerous.

  • Straight: Gonzo the Gorilla is a dangerous and ruthless beast.
  • Exaggerated: Gonzo is a Complete Monster.
  • Downplayed: Gonzo is a tragic Anti-Villain who is often brutal but has moral standards.
  • Justified:
    • Apes are incredibly strong and powerful, and while most of them (with the exception of Chimpanzees) will be fairly gentle if left alone, they could easily murder a person if they wanted to.
    • Gonzo just escaped from the lab that abused him and his only other contact with humans was with the poachers that sold him to said lab, we just have the dubious honor of being what he understandably thinks of as a threat.
    • Gonzo Was Once a Man, using his new body to inflict harm on others.
  • Inverted: Gentle Gorilla.
  • Subverted: Gonzo turns out to be a Jerk with a Heart of Gold.
  • Double Subverted:
  • Parodied: Gonzo destroys the entire nation of Albania with his bare hands in his first appearance.
  • Zig-Zagged:
    • Gonzo is introduced chomping off a person's head, but it's revealed that that person was actually a Complete Monster, and he saves the lives of the protagonists multiple times only for it to be revealed he was working for the villain the whole time, but then it turns out that he was actually being forced to and was trying to undermine the villains.
    • Gonzo randomly alternates between extreme kindness and empathy and extreme cruelty and brutality in a fashion more similar to a Chimpanzee.
  • Averted: There are no gorillas or other apes.
  • Enforced:
    • Gorillas used to be seen as incredibly violent and murderous, and authors wrote what they knew at the time.
    • The author dislikes Great Apes and writes them as villainous due to this.
  • Lampshaded: ???
  • Invoked: ???
  • Exploited: ???
  • Defied: Gonzo decides My Species Doth Protest Too Much and decides to be a friendly, pacifistic individual despite what others might assume about him.
  • Discussed: ???
  • Conversed: ???
  • Deconstructed: Gonzo's violent behavior is not a result of nature, but intense abuse from humans that resulted in him becoming aggressive and violent as a coping mechanism.

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