Basic Trope: A character must choose between doing what is honorable and what is compassionate/good/just.
- Straight: The
Lawful Good Paladin Alice must choose between following her code and completely destroying a town which is the base of an Ambiguously Evil organization, along with its good people, or going against her laws and sparing the innocent lives. - Exaggerated: Alice must choose whether or not to annihilate an entire race because they've all committed at least one petty sin.
- Downplayed: Alice must decide whether or not to capture the Chaotic Good Lovable Rogue Bob, as he did commit some crimes worthy of imprisonment.
- Justified:
- The lawmakers did not have a perfect sense of morals, and thus created a flawed law.
- The laws really are right, but Alice is a Wide-Eyed Idealist who doesn't understand why they are correct.
- Alice grew up believing that following the law was always the right thing to do, even if it sounds asinine on paper. It's when she's an adult and seeing firsthand how harmful these laws are that she begins to question the worth in following them when they're clearly harming people.
- Inverted: (To Be Lawful or Evil) Lawful Evil Ecila, an Evil Overlord Blood Knight, must choose between killing the people in a town or sparing them for the benefit of her rule.
- Subverted: It seems as if Alice is disobeying the law for a good reason, but it turns out that she was being bribed into sparing the town by its leader Alex.
- Double Subverted: Alex was really trying to do good, and had to debate whether to break the law in order to spare his town.
- Parodied: Alice, a Paladin under Lawful Stupid leaders, must constantly go against them due to the insanity of their laws.
- Zig Zagged: Alice seems to be trying to help the town, but it turns out that she was being manipulated. The manipulators then turn out to be Ambiguously Evil, but Alice still complies. Meanwhile, Alice's leaders turn out to be trying to destroy the town for purposes of enforcing their rule, and not out of justice. Then Lovable Rogue Bob comes in and seems to prove Alice's 'manipulators' to be good people...
- Averted:
- Alice doesn't care about the law at all.
- Alice's good actions never come into conflict with her law.
- The laws have enough leeway for Alice to employ legal fiction
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- Enforced: "This Lawful Good hero hasn't had a moral dilemma in a while. Let's put him against the cops!"
- Lampshaded:
- "The laws aren't matching up with your morals, are they, Alice?"
- "You know, the laws aren't perfect. I'm not going to let them override my reasoning."
- Invoked: Alice is looking for some way to discredit the law. She then sees the town as an opportunity to expose its cruelty.
- Exploited: Louis Cypher uses this dilemma to make Alice disown her law and consider his own as righteous.
- Defied:
- "There will be no debate. I'm doing what the law says, no matter what."
- Screw the Rules, I'm Doing What's Right!
- Discussed: "Maybe I should be putting the laws of the land to question..."
- Conversed: "Okay, so they made the law have a mistake in it so the conflict won't be resolved for twenty more seasons. How original!"
- Deconstructed:
- Alice ends up in prison because she didn't follow the law, allowing Emperor Evulz to take over the world unhindered.
- Alice chose to follow the law instead of following her conscience, and as a result, Emperor Evulz managed to take over the world; Alice now seen as a pawn and is treated like the enemy for her actions.
- Reconstructed: Alice breaks the law in order to do good, but notified her occasional ally, Chaotic Good Bob, of her unlawful action that could put her in jail. He then breaks Alice out of prison and allows her to join his Ragtag Bunch of Misfits. Then, he assassinates all of the people who aided in capturing Alice, because they turned out to be working with the Emperor Evulz to set up the dilemma.
The laws of Troperia say that I can't give you a link to the main page. I'm still going to, though, because it's the right thing to do.
