Basic Trope: An assassin who kills because they enjoy it. The money is secondary.
- Straight:
- Bob loves killing people, and becomes a hitman to make money off it.
- Alternatively, Bob is a Consummate Professional. Whatever the contract he will take his time to plan the most efficient way to do so. He still loves killing people though, money be damned.
- Exaggerated: Bob works for free as long as he's allowed to kill people however he wants and whenever he wants. In fact he's willing to pay you for just for the opportunity!
- Downplayed: Bob does enjoy killing for fun, but money is still an important factor.
- Justified:
- The order that Bob trained with programmed all of its students into becoming psychopathically sadistic, possibly using a little help from some Psycho Serum for good measure.
- It's important to have a job you really like.
- Inverted:
- Bob is a surprisingly stable individual who sees killing as a business transaction and a necessary evil.
- Bob is a reluctant assassin that likes to avoid getting his hands dirty as much as possible, but it's willing to do almost anything for a hefty sum of money.
- Bob is an extremely happy individual that likes doing random acts on kindness for other people, not for a material reward nor the recognition, but to make world a better place.
- Buzz is an extremely precise Consummate Professional that avoids collateral damage at any cost and prides himself to have only killed the people he was hired to kill and nobody else throughout his career. The kind of skills that he had to develop to be so precise don't translate to an easy life outside of being an assassin, though, and he's okay with it.
- Implied: Every character talks about Bob as if he was some kind of rabid dog before he even appears on screen.
- Subverted:
- Double Subverted:
- Parodied: Bob puts an ad in the paper reading "Murderous Lunatic Will Throw Chainsaws At Whoever You Want For Only $79.99 Each. 50% Off If You Let Him Skin Them Alive."
- Zig Zagged:
- Bob likes both the money and the violence equally. Hence, he may accept the job for any of both depending on the situation.
- Altenatively, for exaggerated version : He'd work for free if he gets to kill lots of people, but needs to take payed jobs from time to time because he has expenses like everyone else.
- Bob accepts money up front for hits, but currently hasn't killed anyone in a good month, so the current one is on the house. He still requires coverage for bullets and other expenses though. On an impulse he shoots his potential client dead though, then takes all his money.
- Averted:
- Bob does not enjoy violence, so he never hurts anyone.
- Alternatively: Bob finds his job as a killer unspeakably dull, and only keeps at it because the money's good (or, stranger still, because it's the only thing he's really good at).
- Bob is still crazy, but he's not violent, just plain regular (so to say) Cloudcuckoolander.
- Enforced: This story is about a shadowy organization often has to use violent convicts. As expected, this trope tends to come up.
- Lampshaded: "Where'd you find this new guy? Serial Killers R Us?"
- Invoked: Carl wants an assassin who isn't just in it for the money, and who was crazy enough that any testimony he gave about who hired him wouldn't hold up in court.
- Exploited:
- Carl is facing some budget cuts, so he stops paying Bob first, since Bob will just keep working for the hell of it.
- When Carl is screening his minions in search for The Mole amongst them, he immediately removes Bob from the list of suspects. Undercover cops don't pretend to be murderous madmen, and Bob assumes (hopefully) that the most Rabid Cop on the planet would not be so low as to kill hundreds of innocents to maintain his cover.
- Defied:
- Bob's violent tendencies are noticed early and treated.
- Carl avoids hiring any assassin who doesn't regard it as "just business."
- Carl shoots Bob in front of all the other mooks and makes it clear that this is what will happen if he catches wind of any of them starting to show bloodlust—he does not pay them to Rape, Pillage, and Burn.
- Discussed: "Perhaps we can buy Bob off when he comes after us?" "Not likely; he's in it because he likes it, and he hates missing out on his fun."
- Conversed: "You'd think that character would be too dangerous to be worth it."
- Deconstructed:
- Bob owed more money to the mob than he could possibly pay back. Because of his formidable appearance, they put him to work collecting money for them. Over time, it was clear that he had a reluctant talent for hurting people. Eventually, he becomes a full-time assassin, but he can't live with himself after seeing what he has become. Eventually, Bob begins losing his mind, and accepting his role as a killer with manic glee. This addiction to violence prompts him to take on freelance jobs long after his debt to the mob has been repaid, and he can only vaguely remember the compassionate man he once was.
- Alternatively: Bob's over-enthusiastic sadism and bloodlust mean that he gets himself and his employers killed or captured when a saner enforcer would have succeeded.
- Reconstructed: Bob is completely nuts and needlessly sadistic, but he's also competent, and has his niche. For simply killing someone, other agents are used, but Bob is the go-to guy when you want to Make an Example of Them.
- Bob is just way too powerful to be kept in check. In fact, Carl never even officially hired him: Bob 'hired' himself and effortlessly slaughtered anyone Carl asked to get rid of him. Nowadays Carl tries to make the most of it: giving Bob the most dangerous missions he can, praying that Bob ends up getting killed on one of them and that Bob doesn't decide to turn on him before that happens because there will be nothing he could do to stop him.
- Bob keeps his urges in check and is a Consummate Professional he plans the most efficient way to kill people without over enthusiastic sadism
- Played For Laughs: "Machete Bob" is hired. Carl's instructions are "I need you to kill...", before he can finish, Bob yells "Okay!" and decapitates everyone in the room. Then congratulates himself on a job well done, and asks the Carl's headless body for his fee.
- Played For Drama:
- Bob slowly comes to realize that channeling his homicidal impulses towards specific, often deserving targets might be the only way to keep from killing everyone in sight. But it's not easy.
- Carl starts seeing a lot of drawbacks from having Bob around—Mook Depletion (because Bob keeps killing them), the heroes declaring The Gloves Are Off, etc. The worst part is that he has no clue if Bob will turn on him sooner or later and kill him For the Evulz. And this all adds up to his inevitable Villainous Breakdown.
- Played For Horror: Bob is essentially a slasher film villain killing for money (and even then he's okay with doing stuff for free if he's bored), with all of the messy mass murder that this creates.
- Plotted A Good Waste: Bob is showcased as the muscle of the evil organisation early on. His Blood Knight tendencies hints that the rest will struggle to keep him in line. Then, he dies first, probably executed when he outlives his usefulness, to show that the evil organisation is more professional than one would think.
Back to Psycho for Hire
