Basic Trope: The heroes are unambiguously good, but the villains are morally ambiguous.
- Straight: The good guys who serve the greater good are in conflict with the bad guys who do not border to completely evil.
- Exaggerated:
- The good guys are the most purest and kindest characters who are willing to give anyone a second chance. The bad guys are Designated Villains who Pet the Dog on many occasions.
- Good Versus Good: Not only are both sides sympathetic; they're both unambiguously good.
- Downplayed:
- The good guys are fighting against the bad guys who may be evil, but are really nice guys once you get to know them.
- A Lighter Shade of Gray: While the villains are still sympathetic, the heroes themselves aren't squeaky clean, yet they still have a higher moral ground.
- The main antagonist of the story is morally grey, but another antagonistic force is evil through and through.
- Justified:
- The protagonists are All Loving Heroes/Heroines, and they hold this worldview as motivation to help those in need, and bring the best in any villain.
- The villains are just too misguided in their goals in making the world a better place to live.
- The antagonists are villainous due to unfortunate circumstances such as mistreatment from peers, Abusive Parents, lengthy isolation, and other mental or emotional problems.
- The villains either have no concept of morality or have a completely different moral code than the heroes.
- It's a Sugar Bowl.
- The villains aren't aware they're doing anything bad. When confronted, they are surprised by the fact that their actions caused harm to others, thinking their isolation would prevent that from happening.
- Rousseau Was Right
- Inverted:
- Black-and-Gray Morality.
- The heroes are morally ambiguous, but the villains are always unambiguously good guys.
- Subverted: The villain was just lying about wanting to make the world better, even if it was through immoral actions & really did it For the Evulz.
- Double Subverted: It turns out that although the villain was just doing it For the Evulz; there are certain lines (s)he won't cross because Even Evil Has Standards.
- Parodied:
- The conflict is said to cause philosophers headaches by the very nature of good and evil it's presenting, where as regions are divided on it and the conflict is causing them to split off into factions. The entire conflict is over one ice cream stand charging a little extra for sprinkles, just so with tax it would cost an even amount, while the other gives them for free with every cone.
- The heroes are so
good-hearted that it's jarring, while the villains are evil because people mistreat them for being freaky loners of society.
- Zig Zagged: The morality of the situation changes with every new revelation. The heroes always try to stay good, but it will be revealed their actions have caused harm, while those in the grey area never really change morality based on these facts.
- Averted:
- Black-and-White Morality.
- Grey-and-Gray Morality.
- There is no conflict to speak of.
- Enforced:
- The author wants to write a work to avoid completely evil villains so that the Moral Guardians won't complain.
- It's a kid's show.
- The writers want to do expies of popular Ideal Heroes & AntiVillains.
- The people behind the show want it to be Lighter and Softer.
- Since fiction nowadays is Gray-and-Grey Morality at best and Black-and-Grey Morality at worst, the author wants their story to stand out by portraying the heroes as unambiguously good and the villains as sympathetic and misguided.
- Or the author simply dislikes real villains and finds them flat and cartoonish, but still finds charm in heroes.
- Lampshaded: "The bad guys don't look like they're bad guys. Meanwhile, the good guys are, well, good guys."
- Invoked: The government decides to put a computer chip in everyone that makes it so that there's always some good left in their hearts, even when they turn evil.
- Exploited: A manipulator uses the ambiguity to get the heroes to do things for him, using their moral views to get them to do actions that are worse than either side intended.
- Defied:
- The heroes choose to only go after Generic Doomsday Villains, Omnicidal Maniacs, etc. even when AntiVillains pose a threat.
- The hero lost a close friend by not sacrificing his moral code in order to defeat the villain & vows never to make the same mistake again.
- A hero who is in favor of moral absolutism says makes this statement:"No matter how you look at it, evil is evil, and it must be punished immediately."
- While the heroes specialize in fighting destructive monsters with no concept of morality, they also have to deal with Always Chaotic Evil species at a daily basis.
- Discussed: "Aren't villains supposed to be nasty and vicious? Oh well, at least the heroes are still kind and selfless."
- Conversed:
- Alice: "Why does it seem that this show only has no purely evil villains, while still having clear-cut heroes?"
- Bob: "There are two kinds of people on this planet: people with good-hearts and aspirations with the knowledge to make their goals a reality, and people who are misguided, broken, confused, and in pain, but never truly evil."
- Deconstructed:
- The antagonists are totally sympathetic that the heroes don't seem to see any reason to punish them for their evil when it needs to be done. As a result, the villains defeat the heroes to make the world better in their own way.
- Just because the villains have sympathetic qualities doesn't mean they will never be willing to turn from their villainy. This causes the heroes (and the audience) to lose sympathy for them and thus, the heroes win.
- The Bad Guy Wins, where the moral dilemma causes the heroes to hesitate enough to let the villains win. They end up in power and Take Over the World, ans as a result run an autocratic, moderately oppressive, but otherwise pleasant government where everyone's needs are met, the average person doesn't notice much of a difference and for many, things improve. However, the villains learn the hard way that power concentrated in their hands alone makes them vulnerable, and so their utopia is in danger because the rare genuinely evil antagonist shows up and the villains are unable to stop it and soon the world becomes the very thing they were trying their best to prevent from happening.
- Reconstructed: After being morally pushed by the situation, the heroes realize that it doesn't matter if they are right, the way they go about it is still damaging to other people and it needs to be stopped before more people get hurt than helped.
- The original villains who had ruled the world team up with the heroes in an Enemy Mine situation, they realize that the heroes won't reinstall them back into power but they're okay with that because they care much more about the health and safety of the world they live in than their goals of world conquest.
Back to White-and-Grey Morality.
