Basic Trope: A character, usually a villain, loses his complex motive in favor of a simpler one.
- Straight: Green Fist, a well-meaning eco-terrorist in Season 1, starts doing crime more for fun than for his stated motives in Season 5.
- Exaggerated:
- Green Fist starts off as a nice guy, donating to green charities, promoting environmentalist movements, etc. He becomes a terrible villain committing heinous crimes purely For the Evulz in his second appearance.
- Green Fist's new motive is the polar opposite of his original motive - he goes from trying to protect the environment to trying to destroy the planet.
- Downplayed: Green Fist, a well-meaning eco-terrorist in Season 1, starts doing things more for the sake of his ego in Season 5, although they are still environment-related.
- Justified:
- The Dark Side Will Make You Forget
- Green Fist died, but Came Back Wrong.
- Green Fist has gotten so used to losing that he's stopped planning for what he'd do if he won.
- Green Fist eventually realizes his original goal was more trouble than it was worth, and thus opts for an easier or more practical one.
- Green Fist started out well-meaning, but a few Humiliation Congas later, he gets more vicious because he wants to prove himself again and get revenge on his tormentors.
- Green Fist made a deal with the demon Zluve in order to get his powers. He intends to use them for good or at least well-intentioned extremism, but Zluve, being a demon, wants Green Fist to be as evil and cause as much misery as possible. So Zluve acts as The Corrupter, pushing Green Fist to focus more on avenging his defeats and doing things for the hell of it than his original noble goals.
- Green Fist became an eco-terrorist because he thought it was his duty to the environment, but later found crime to be more fun. He therefore incorporates more crime into his plans and starts focusing on it more.
- Green Fist died trying to fulfill his original goals, and when he returns as a spirit, he no longer has any ability to do so. As a result, he sets his sights to any areas he can still influence, even if it's not much.
- Inverted: Black Blight starts off wanting to kill all plant life for kicks, but later gains a more complex reason.
- Subverted:
- Environmentalism was never Green Fist's goal to start with, and the mask has started slipping.
- Green Fist remembers his reason in Season 6.
- Double Subverted: Only to forget in Season 7.
- Parodied:
- Green Fist starts off as a humanitarian (and no, not that kind of humanitarian), then quickly becomes a mustache-twirling Card-Carrying Villain.
- Green Fist cannot for the life of him remember his motive. Every episode he gives a Motive Rant with a separate and often contradictory motive each time. When he gets called out on it, he brushes it aside. Eventually, when pressured, he reveals that real reason he's still a villain is because he forgot why he was doing it a long time ago and was too embarrassed about it to just give up villainy, so he just pretended he still remembered the original reason.
- Zig-Zagged: And because of a war between the writers, alternates every new season depending on who's writing him.
- Averted:
- Green Fist is still as complex as ever even as the show enters Season 21.
- Green Fist wants to kill Bob because he ran over his dog's tail three years before the story starts. He constantly reminds it to Bob every chance he gets, even during their Final Battle that takes place three hundred and fifty In-Universe years after Bob made his slight.
- Enforced:
- Green Fist started out as a complex character with a noble motivation. Then, the executives pressured the writers to remove the complexity that has made the character popular in order to achieve three objectives: to make the character simpler to write, to give an excuse to kill him off, and to end the show quickly.
- The executives demanded to add An Aesop about obsession, and uses Green Fist as an example — the more he focuses on beating those meddling kids, the more his actions actually hurt the environment, and the less he cares.
- Lampshaded: "Something tells me this isn't about the environment any more..."
- Invoked: Someone is manipulating Green Fist to move away from his original goal.
- Exploited: Bob breaks Green Fist by talking by forcing him to acknowledge that he's become a monster instead of a protector.
- Defied: Green Fist resolves to remember what the mission is about.
- Discussed: "So...why did you even start all this?" "I...I don't even know anymore."
- Conversed: "Yep, Green Fist has totally lost it. This show has totally jumped."
- Implied: Green Fist gets an invitation for Fanatics Anonymous from Wile E. Coyote
- Deconstructed:
- No one in Green Fist's army respects him anymore, as they feel he has lost sight of his goals. They thus plan to overthrow him.
- Green Fist has lost so many times to the heroes, he has developed a vendetta against them. What started as a simple mission to save the environment has degenerated into a pursuit for revenge.
- As soon as Green Fist has his Motive Decay pointed out to him via "The Reason You Suck" Speech, he collapses into a Villainous BSoD, suddenly realising how many lives he's wasted in pursuit of something that wasn't even his goal.
- Reconstructed:
- The above, but instead of overthrowing him, they intend to remind him of his goal. He may or may not remember.
- He still has a valid argument or two for wanting revenge: As long as the heroes keep standing in his way, he'll never be able to achieve what he wanted in the first place. It's probably better if he starts out small before progressing to his bigger plans.
- The Breaking Speech gives Green Fist an epiphany: He never truly cared about the environment, only having an excuse to get revenge on anyone who ever mocked him for real or imagined slights. He returns to super villainy with a renewed sense of purpose.
- Plotted a Perfectly Good Waste: Green Fist's decay from well-intentioned villain to psychopathic brute is intentional, foreshadowed, and entirely deliberate. He serves as a dark mirror to the hero's Character Development, and represents a darker path the hero could have easily gone on.
What was I going to go back to Motive Decay for? Eh, who cares? Muhahahaha!
