Basic Trope: A character orders the mass murder or imprisonment of people out of fear they may rebel or dissent.
- Played Straight:
- After seizing power over Troperia, Prime Minister Evulz orders General Drake to execute the former Prime Minister and their cabinet, then imprison any officials who he suspects of plotting against them.
- Prime Minister Evulz has any members of the military they consider traitors, disloyal, or a threat to their power imprisoned, given show trials, and either executed or exiled.
- Exaggerated: Crushing the Populace, when applied to an established (rather than newly conquered) nation.
- Downplayed: A dozen people are murdered or imprisoned on Evulz's order.
- Justified:
- The former regime of Troperia was even worse than Evulz, and the purge's targets were mostly or entirely officials responsible for the worst of its crimes.
- The Purge is part of a Zero-Approval Gambit on Evulz's part.
- Inverted: PM Evulz welcomes victims of a purge into Troperia.
- Subverted: PM Evulz makes ominous remarks about "clearances" and "removals" while looking over a map of Troperia; it's promptly revealed that they're talking about removing forests to allow the building of new towns.
- Double Subverted: PM Evulz's remarks are all euphemisms used to keep up appearances; once alone with their inner circle, Evulz immediately begins laying out plans for a proper purge.
- Parodied: The purge is aimed toward something completely inane, such as destroying all raisin-flavoured cookies in Troperia after Evulz bit into one thinking it was chocolate.
- Zig-Zagged: ???
- Averted: PM Evulz does not purge the old regime's members when taking over.
- Enforced: The purge was intentionally written as Evulz's Moral Event Horizon.
- Lampshaded: ???
- Invoked: Chancellor Malvoisin manipulates Evulz into launching a purge as part of a Uriah Gambit; he plans to let Evulz's purges cripple the opposition and turn the populace against the PM, then turn on Evulz and seize power himself under the guise of "saving" Troperia from their current insane leader.
- Exploited: ???
- Defied: PM Evulz refuses to launch The Purge, feeling it will only give New Troperia's enemies ammunition against them and hurt their regime.
- Discussed: ???
- Conversed: ???
- Implied:
- An official who survived a recent purge receives a list of names and orders to "send these down to the countryside" to be "retrained"; he is visibly unnerved by this, and comments that "it's happening again."
- A character finds two photographs of several officials walking besides a canal, taken at different times. One of the officials is absent in the later photograph, though the conditions are otherwise the same.
- Deconstructed:
- Evulz's frequent purges of multiple branches of government ends up causing massive Brain Drain as experienced officials die or are forced into exile. This harms The Empire in the long run – their military's new officers lack any proper combat experience, making them much easier for the heroes to defeat; the new bureaucrats are various stripes of incompetent Yes Men with no idea how to run a country efficiently; and the few remaining experienced officials are keeping their heads down to avoid being purged for "treasonous" behaviours like suggesting that the new fanatics need training rather than faith.
- The purges cause Evulz's own side to rebel against them, either out of moral concerns or the fear that they'll be the next ones against the wall when Evulz decides to launch another purge of the ranks.
- Reconstructed: The purges remove the corrupt officials from the old regime and drive out the corrupt members of the new, preventing the mistakes of the old from occurring.
