Basic Trope: A character decides to ensure that they will never again suffer from something that happened to them before.
- Straight: Bob had a harsh upbringing because his family couldn't afford better. He resolves to become rich so that he will be safe.
- Exaggerated:
- Bob was brutally harmed and tortured by his community, and justice was never achieved because said community was supported by an equally monstrous and hateful society who ensured said community would never see proper consequences. He decides to become someone far more powerful and dangerous to not only take his revenge on that community for their heinous crimes, but also to ensure that he could never suffer the way he did ever again.
- Bob decides to take control of the entire economy so that he will never be even slightly inconvenienced by lack of wealth.
- Downplayed: Bob burned his hand on a hot stove once, so now he always makes sure to wear oven mitts when operating one, even when it's turned off.
- Justified: Bob was forced to constantly think about money and view lack of it as the cause of all his pain, and the attitude never left him.
- Inverted: Bob learns how to be happy without money, seeing materialism as the reason he was unhappy with his childhood.
- Subverted: Bob is a Self-Made Man who rose from poverty, but his motivation for becoming rich wasn't to escape from his old life.
- Double Subverted: ...at least not entirely. He still doesn't want to have to suffer for lack of money ever again.
- Parodied: Bob had to listen to a lot of music he didn't like as a child. He spends his adult life using his money in an effort to dismantle certain parts of the music industry.
- Zig Zagged: ???
- Averted: Bob doesn't want more money than he needs, despite a childhood of money issues.
- Enforced: ???
- Lampshaded: ???
- Invoked: Alice deliberately sabotaged Bob's family financially, while at the same time teaching him the morals that would guide him to use his money for the good of others.
- Exploited: Alice cons Bob out of what little money he has because he is too obsessed to see her deception.
- Defied: Bob refuses to let his life be defined by the worst parts of his childhood.
- Discussed: "The hell's the matter with you, Bob? You think you're the only one whose ever faced any personal hardship?"
- Conversed: ???
- Deconstructed:
- Bob is far too focused on money to ever be happy. Everything about his lavish lifestyle reminds him of his unhappy childhood and leads him to depression.
- Bob doesn't care who he hurts in his endeavors to avoid the pain he felt in the past.
- Bob's hurtful endeavors lead to him getting sued by his victims, and his entire fortune dwindles away, leaving him just as poor as he never wanted to be.
- Bob's crusade initially yields good results, but his relentless fear of ever being harmed again and hatred of society and those who harmed him cause him to start inflicting immense brutality on any action he sees as enabling the things that hurt him, regardless how tenuous and completely disregarding those who have come to realize that they were monstrous and genuinely want to make amends. Bob's worldview, as no one is able to stop him and because he is so gripped in his rage and fear of being hurt, only becomes increasingly vicious and starkly black and white, increasing his brutality and body count until he has completely subjugated everyone who even remotely does anything he perceives as evil. Everyone is now deeply afraid of him harming them far more than the old society did.
- Bob's crusade to prevent himself from ever being hurt again is doomed to fail, because people will hurt others even when they don't mean to, or will do it when they absolutely believe they have the right to. As such, trying to stop himself from being harmed only takes a massive toll on his mental state, to the point that he start leaning dangerously close to more destructive beliefs and ideals, just out of sheer desperation to end the pain.
- Reconstructed: Bob is reminded that We All Die Someday and he can't take his wealth with him when he dies. He also doesn't forget about how hard it was for him to grow up poor. Taken together, he uses his new wealth and status to try to combat poverty in his society, especially for children.
Back to Never Be Hurt Again
