Basic Trope: The work features multiple shades of conflict with different levels of morals.
- Straight: The main conflict of Tales of Troperia involves the fight of The Troper Federation against the Evulz Empire. While President Trooper (And by extent, the federation) might be a fairly good guy, he can also be very harsh when punishing evil and his subordinates include Knights in Shining Armor such as Field Marshal Bob, mercenaries who are only there for a pay, a bigoted allied dictatorship that is opposed to Evulz, and criminals who are fighting to earn their freedom. Emperor Evulz meanwhile (and by extent, his empire) is a very cruel and warmongering leader who nevertheless treats his subordinates pretty well and guarantees freedom of expression amongst the places he subjugates (out of Pragmatic Villainy so that he can achieve his goals without being distracted on the home front). The people working for him runs gamut from guards who only want to keep their family safe, genuine loyalists who believe in the Empire's goals, his honorable champion and personal muscle Clay, who comes from the barbarians who love to fight, a tribe who fight for him because the aforementioned bigoted dictatorship hates them while Evulz has no problem with their cultural autonomy and his second in command, Grand Marshal Draconis, who is hated by just about everyone in the setting for being repulsively evil.
- Exaggerated: There are more than 10 factions in the story, each one with their own agenda and members of varying levels of good and evil, where the protagonist cycles between each faction every episode, where again each protagonist has a different type of morals, going from Bob the Priest and the Purity Church to Alice the Broken Soldier and the Metal Legion to Jerry the Psycho and the Circle of Slaughter to even Tom the Destroyer and the Nothingness Cult.
- Downplayed:
- The two factions themselves are either purely good or purely evil, but their members can be more varied with some of the "evil" faction mooks being quite honorable when you get know them and some of the heroes from the "good" factions being rather pragmatic.
- There's at least one purely good and one purely evil faction each, but you also have a few others who are either morally gray, unpredictable, or just downright crazy.
- Justified:
- It's a fairly big conflict and both sides have been fighting for quite some time, so it's expected that many kinds of "heroes" would join the party.
- It's an Ultimate Showdown of Ultimate Destiny where everyone is invited.
- Inverted: No Antagonist (there might as well be No Protagonist as well).
- Subverted: Turns out that The Troper Federation was evil all along and that the Evulz Empire was good all along, inverting the usual sides in a conflict like this and turning the story into a black and white one.
- Double Subverted: Turns out that The Trooper Federation was a Well-Intentioned Extremist faction all along and there are internal reformists inside it trying to turn it more heroic and more villainous, while the Evulz Empire still contains some bad apples inside it even with a more heroic Evulz leading it. And Draconis is still an evil bastard.
- Parodied:
- The conflict is caused by the world being unable to decide what the best pizza topping is, with hundreds of factions being formed over this discussion, ranging from the heroic cheddar kingdoms to the anarchist sauce plains to the pineapple horde.
- A Talking Kitchen Sink shifts between multiple alignments every few hours. It's a literal morality kitchen sink.
- A typical good-versus-evil conflict is set up to happen, but moments the battle begins, an Author Avatar suddenly appears, says "The teams have been autobalanced," uses their Author Powers to randomly sort the teams regardless of moral alignment, and then vanishes.
- Zig Zagged: At first the conflict seems to involve many characters of different degrees of morality, but upon further inspection most of the factions and it's members can be classified as either evil or heroic. Them a new faction appears that is quite ambiguous when compared to the other ones, and THEM some of the faction leaders of the unambiguously evil and good factions are assassinated and swapped with leaders who go from genuinely heroic, if harsh to insane usurpers who only care about power. And then some of the characters from each faction perform Heel-Face Turns, Face-Heel Turns and Hazy Feel Turns...
- Averted:
- Each side is presented as either absolutely evil or absolutely good, or gray.
- There is no conflict in the story and it's mostly a slice of life where ideals and morals aren't really a point.
- Lampshaded:"You know, President Trooper might be a relatively good guy, but some of his employees are rather on the anti-heroic side, and others seem to be straight up Evulz enforcers!""Yeah, and when you think about it, Evulz isn't that bad of a guy, and some of his minions are not so different from us! Well, except Draconis, he is a bastard."
- Invoked: The work has a Monster of the Week format, and while we don't see Evulz's motivations (Or at all), the villains range from Tragic Monster, to Hero Antagonist and literally monstruous.
- Exploited: A Magnificent Bastard manipulates the factions around him, using both pragmatic and moral arguments to get them to fight each other so he can take over... and rule benevolently.
- Defied: Jake looks at a log detailing each faction and what their members motivations are:"So, they dare stand against us? Very well, that's the only thing I need to know to see that they are all pure and unrepentant evil!"
- Discussed: "Damn, everyone seems to have their own reasons to fight. It's gonna be difficult to know which side is gonna come up on top in the end!"
- Conversed:
- Alice: "This show is strange, sometimes The Federation has these heroes saving innocent kids, and sometimes we have these mercenary teams holding civilians hostages to force the Evulz Empire members to surrender, and that's without mentioning that knight who killed his own commander just to receive a promotion!"
- Bob: "Yeah, everyone there has different shades of morals, both good and bad in each side, anti-heroic and anti-villainous. Except Draconis, he's just a bastard."
Back to Morality Kitchen Sink.
