Basic Trope: A villain realizes that they are the bad guy.
- Straight:
- Emperor Evulz is an Evil Overlord who realizes that in the process of taking over the world, he's brought death and suffering to millions of people.
- Evulz, after throwing his falsely accused brother in prison to appease the majority, realizes he handled it in a not completely admirable manner.
- Exaggerated:
- Evulz is a God of Evil in a Luxury Prison Suite who realizes that in the process of causing The End of the World as We Know It, it's brought death and suffering to trillions of sentient organisms.
- Millions of Emperor Evulz's Faceless Goons undergo a spontaneous mass revelation in which they realize that the ideology they serve has wrought incalculable pain and anguish to tens of millions of innocent victims and demolished countless cultures, histories and civilizations across the earth, and the empire they proudly fight to defend and bring to glory is fundamentally twisted and irredeemable.
- Evulz accidentally steps on a housefly, and experiences an emotional breakdown as he "realizes" that he was a Complete Monster, before dropping to his knees and praying to God for forgiveness.
- Downplayed:
- Evulz is The Bully who realizes that his bullying was hurting people.
- Evulz decides he no longer belongs in the utopia he is trying to create, but still plans to take extreme measures to create it.
- Justified:
- Evulz started as a Well-Intentioned Extremist who believed that Utopia Justifies the Means, but over the course of his conquest he resorted to measures of ever-increasing intensity and cruelty, which slowly eroded at his sense of justice and sanity, ultimately culminating in his blossoming as a fully-fledged mass murderer and villain as everyone not aligned with him, even innocents, began to resemble the monsters he once fought. However, deep down he clung onto his vision of a better future for the world, and honestly believed until now that he was doing the right thing. Eventually, the dissonance between these two clashing worlds — one where he was good and the other in which he was bad — reached a crescendo, and all that remained was reality.
- Evulz had a very convincing Opinion-Changing Dream that made him reassess his brother.
- La Résistance successfully ran a very convincing Tokyo Rose campaign of demoralization, one that forced Evulz's soldiers to finally confront the error of their ways and the philosophy that guides them.
- Inverted:
- Evulz, an Anti-Hero, realizes that he's a bad guy.
- Face Realization.
- He Who Fights Monsters.
- Subverted:
- Evulz sees all the pain he's caused, but it only makes him surer that it's all for the greater good.
- Evulz briefly realises that he was wrong... and then goes right back to doing what he's been doing, proving that he has learned nothing.
- Double Subverted: Evulz realizes that his original goals were evil, but his essentially unpleasant nature means that his activities in the service of "good" are just as vicious.
- Parodied: Evulz accidentally forgets to feed his pet cat, Muffins. He has a nervous breakdown as a result.
- Zig Zagged: Evulz sees the pain he's caused and finally realizes he's evil. He decides he doesn't care, and stays evil for a while. But then he goes too far and realizes he's even more evil than he thought he was and decides to change.
- Averted:
- Evulz does not realize he's the bad guy.
- Evulz knows he is a bad guy and revels in that fact.
- Alternatively, Evulz knows he's a bad guy and he hates it.
- Lampshaded: "Your undead armies have swept across the land killing everyone in their path! Of course you're the villain!"
- Invoked: Casey gives Evulz a well placed Kirk Summation in order to make him see the error of his ways.
- Exploited: Alice gives Evulz a "Break Them by Talking" lecture that opens his eyes, and uses the moment of distraction to kill him for his crimes.
- Defied:
- Evulz is a Knight Templar who will never see himself in the wrong no matter how much damage he causes.
- Evulz taught his soldiers that, while genocide and massacre is wrong, what they do is justified as a Lesser of Two Evils solution because their enemies are just that cruel and subhuman, thus ensuring that, even if they begin to question his motives, they'll have plenty of rationalizations at the ready to combat such epiphanies.
- Discussed: ???
- Conversed: ???
- Deconstructed: Evulz's realization of being in the wrong didn't give him the opportunity to make things right. Instead, it puts him in a Luxury Prison Suite where he pathetically dwells in sorrow and despair by remembering his deeds. It also doesn't help that anyone isn't willing to let go of their hostility and bitterness towards Evulz .
- Reconstructed: Evulz's such a sorry wreck that a few people, including Charlie, take pity on him and let him take the first major steps toward being reformed, after leaving his Luxury Prison Suite. Evulz spends some time as The Atoner, and is finally forgiven eventually.
- Played For Drama:
- Evulz realizes that he's the villain... and likes it. Now that he's completely unhindered he will make the heroes suffer even more.
- Evulz has a Heel Realization and decides he doesn't want to be the Big Bad any more. His second-in-command happily takes his position, putting his old boss to death to keep him from being a liability and to show just how much less scrupulous he is than Bob.
- Even if Evulz did realize the fact what he's been doing is wrong, many others outright refuse to forgive him.
Thanks to both of the deconstructions, the people who refused to forgive Evulz soon end up slowly mutating into literal aspects of Evulz that they loathe, realizing their own errors far too late to even repent. All that was thanks to a curse cast upon the land by a demented warlock under the employ of the God of Hatred, Odio.
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