Basic Trope: There is a law that tells Super-Heroes that they have to register with the government (including their own identities) and will be punished if they don't.
- Straight: The Congress passes a law forbidding people with Superpowers from fighting crime without a specialized license.
- Exaggerated:
- You want to help an old lady cross the street? You have to get a license first.
- The "registration act" is a full-blown fascist Mutant Draft Board with some vaguely-worded paragraphs to give it a sense of being (allegedly) optional.
- Downplayed:
- The registering is optional, but highly encouraged.
- Registration is only needed if one wants to actively seek out and fight crime, and it comes with free Hero Insurance as a benefit. Defending yourself from anyone who tries to attack you or defending others while you are nearby is allowed without registration as self-defense. However seeking out registration is required to, say, storm a criminal's secret lair.
- Justified: Those who enforce the law HAVE to be held to some form of accountability. This registration act prevents the local Anti-Hero from using telekinetic abilities to, say, kill shoplifters.
- Inverted: Super-beings are not allowed to register as anything, not even a social security number.
- Subverted: ???
- Double Subverted: ???
- Parodied: Registration of special abilities is taken to the illogical extreme of including any special ability over others. Not only the ability to perform calculus but also being one standard deviation more flexible than average.
- Zig Zagged: ???
- Averted: Superheroes do not have to register themselves before fighting crime.
- Enforced: The writers wish to write a story in which they decry any stupid hot-button law passed by the government that allegedly brings the Day of the Jackboot one inch closer to reality.
- Lampshaded: "Why would they possibly think this is a good idea?"
- Invoked: ???
- Exploited: Following the announcement, crime rates erupt as criminals capitalize on the superheroes' inability to act due to the pending government decision, assuming that the superheroes won't want to risk government displeasure.
- Defied: Mastermind explicitly blackmails congress against passing such a law by threatening to reveal government conspiracies that would not only mean the end of their careers but lead to a civil war. They back down.
- Discussed: "Those idiotic bureaucrats in the government are making us register before we can fight crime!"
- Conversed: ???
- Deconstructed: The law is passed and the registration comes with logical downsides that make the whole system fall apart eventually. If it is less oppressive they find less superheroes due to them not wanting to risk them to their families. In more oppressive ones the supers end up fleeing to greener pastures where they are better treated or outright form an insurrection. It turns out that angering people who can crush tanks barehanded is a bad move.
- Reconstructed: Care is taken to make sure the super registration act is good for everyone involved and civil rights are respected. Supers and their families receive sufficient protection so they don't have to worry. Their hazardous job and rare abilities are appropriately compensated. The only ones dissatisfied with the new system are the extremists: Knight Templar vigilantes who don't respect due process, Not-So-Well-Intentioned Extremist sadists, mundanes who want to put the freaks in their place and resent their plush position and supers who believe they should be above. The similarity between the latter two is noted.
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