Basic Trope: Combining Samurai and Ninja features.
- Straight: Hanzo is a skilled Japanese warrior trained in ninjitsu who also observes bushido. He knows how to use the stealthy techniques, tactics, and armaments of the ninja while preserving the wisdom and restraint of the samurai class. He is skilled at both stealth and open-fighting.
- Justified:
- Hanzo was a samurai who was forced to adopt certain ninja techniques, weapons and tactics out of desperation.
- Hanzo was a ninja who frequently disguises himself as a Rōnin and thus adopted their style, habits and techniques.
- Hanzo's father is a samurai and his mother a kunoichi, both of them teaching him their ways.
- Inverted: Hanzo was once a warrior that blurred the line between a shinobi and a samurai, until he chose to devote himself to one or the other.
- Subverted:
- Hanzo's Samurai clan suspects Hanzo to be a ninja since he is willing to take less honorable methods...but he rejects this accusation and states he knows where to draw the line.
- A wealthy lord offers Hanzo the chance to become his retainer and take up an official post as a samurai, and he accepts — but it was all a ruse to assassinate said lord.
- Double Subverted:
- Despite his assurances earlier, Hanzo eventually does cross the line and commit an act so underhanded that he is no longer considered a samurai.
- Hanzo is a traitor to his ninja clan, selling his clan out to the Shogun in exchange for the title of samurai.
- Parodied: Hanzo is the token-foreigner of a Super Team named the Samurai Shinobi; Hanzo's outfit is literally split down the middle, the left-half a full-body black outfit with a utility belt of shuriken and smoke bombs, the other half that of full-body samurai armor with a sword and tanto. He will constantly say one thing and then contradict himself the next, flip-flopping between the ninja way and the samurai way at the drop of a hat, and he will often speak faux-wise sayings that actually mean diddly-shit.
- Deconstructed:
- Hanzo's use of ninja methods is seen as dishonorable to his samurai clan, who themselves adhere to their code so hard that it delves into Honor Before Reason.
- Hanzo betrays his ninja clan to become a samurai because he wants a better station in life, his clan always on the move and resorting to thievery to survive.
- Reconstructed:
- While Hanzo is branded as a criminal by his samurai clan at first, they deem him a hero and beg him to teach them his unorthodox ways, turning his clan into a clan of samurai-ninja.
- Hanzo comes to regret betraying his ninja clan and makes up for it by teaching peasants both the way of the ninja and the samurai to peasants, creating a new hybrid type of warrior in the process.
- Zig Zagged: Hanzo was a peasant who learned his own independent method of fighting by watching the various samurai and ninja that pass through his village on a constant basis. While he does not follow a clan or a specific code, he knows how to fight like both ninja and samurai. He doesn't call himself a ninja or a samurai, but whenever he meets either, they assume he is the other.
- Averted: Hanzo is just a law-abiding peasant with no fighting skills.
- Enforced: The writer only has a vague idea of what either ninja or samurai are and mixed various tropes and characteristics together because they thought it would make them cooler.
- Implied:
- Hanzo is a random soldier in an army of samurai seen wielding Stock Ninja Weaponry.
- Hanzo is a member of the Jiraya Clan, a clan of samurai who's colors are dark blue and their family sigil is a frog.
- Logical Extreme: While samurai and ninja were separate things in Feudal Japan, the constant swapping of initiates between them for one with another along with a host of other factors have led to both warrior-types to out-breed into extinction, everyone in Japanese a practitioner of the resulting hybrid way of life.
- Played for Laughs: Being a samurai, Hanzo comes across as a complete idiot when his ninjitsu teacher tries teaching him basic lessons in the art. For example, he tries teaching Hanzo how to be inconspicuous, only for Hanzo to walk around in full samurai armor shouting "I am just a filthy peasant just like you! Not a samurai trying to learn the ways of backstabbing ninjas!"
- Played for Drama: Hanzo's samurai-father discovers that his son has taken on the ways of the ninja out of desperation to save his home from invaders. He disowns him, brands him a criminal and is forced to hunt him down.
- Played for Horror: Hanzo's father wakes up to find his throat slit, Hanzo sent to kill his entire family as part of an initiation for his new ninja clan, his teacher having manipulated him his entire life into it.
- Exaggerated: Hanzo and his father all visit a fellow samurai clan's estate to discuss fishing out a criminal ninja clan harassing their territory, only to discover when it is too late that the neighboring samurai clan was the ninja clan, having long-since infiltrated and replace the clan from within over the course of decades. Hanzo barely escapes, but is too afraid to reach to his toher allies on the off-chance that the same happened to them.
- Downplayed:
- Hanzo is a samurai who's armor set is black or dark-blue.
- Hanzo is a ninja who's preferred mode of dress is a kimono with a katana and tanto strapped to his side.
- Lampshaded:
- "Ever notice that the more underhanded examples of samurai act more like ninja?"
- "Umm, last I checked, ninjas weren't the chivalrous type who would kill themselves at the first of failure. That was more of a samurai thing."
- Invoked: The Black Frog Clan is a ninja clan known for taking in former samurai or ronin that were banished, dishonored, disowned or just desperate. Their kindness endears them to their code's virtues, giving them more soldiers to fight for them and gives them a new set of skills and lessons to learn from them.
- Defied: "We must purge all shinobi teachings! We musn't allow their dishonorable ways to tarnish our family's legacy!"
- Exploited: The Shogun had Hanzo trained in the ways of the ninja to act as his own personal spy and assassin, acting as a quick and decisive killer when loud armies of samurai. Since samurai did not use such tactics, any chance of Hanzo failing and getting killed will not reflect back on the Shogun.
- Discussed: "This Is Reality! No one can expect all samurai to adhere their code without some lapses in judgement. Not all of them put Honor Before Reason, so it stood to reason that some of them would employ ninja-like tactics if they thought it was necessary."
- Conversed: "Unlike what a lot of movies and video games tell you, ninjas and samurai were not enemies. Samurai were rich nobles and would sometimes hire ninja to do assassinations for them. Sometimes they would even learn from one another in ways that blurred the line. Just ask Hattori Hanzō."
- Untwisted: Hanzo knows how to use shuriken and kunai effectively, but he only ever uses it if his proper samurai weapons are disarmed, so expecting him to also be a ninja would be a stretch. Except he is allied with the Black Frog ninja clan and learned a few things in the process.
- Unparodied: Hanzo is the supercriminal Samurai Shinobi; a ninja and a samurai from Feudal Japan who, while in the middle of a battle, were fused into one person by a curse from Shuten-dōji. Like Jekyll & Hyde, Hanzo switches between his ninja-half and samurai-half, swapping personalities, fighting styles and even clothes at the drop of a hat when the situation requires it.
- Gender Inverted: Hanzo is the wife of a samurai and thus was trained in the ways of bushido to defend the homestead. However, she was raised as a kunoichi before then and thus has all of their tactics and training too.
