Playing With / Terrorists Without a Cause

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Basic Trope: Terrorists who put a little too much emphasis on 'terror', at the expense of their ideology.

• Straight: The Peoples' Freedom League is a formally designated terrorist organization, identified by the Ministry of Surveillance, whose tactics include setting up car ignition mechanisms with bombs, assassinating political figures, and blowing up dozens of people for the purpose of eroding public trust in the Empire of Evilus and securing the peoples' rights- well, except for Annihilus, that is, who is an Obviously Evil Bomb Throwing Anarchist that tortures, kills, maims, and terrorizes people and destroys their property for no identifiable reason.
• Exaggerated:
  • Annihilus comes out of nowhere and slaughters millions of people, vaporizes hundreds of towns, and kicks thousands of dogs for Personal Amusement.
  • The entire League is like this.
• Downplayed: Annihilus usually takes great care in ensuring that the League's ideology succeeds, but he's a bit off his rocker and devises intricate schemes to maximize blatantly unnecessary violence in the process.
• Justified:
  • Annihilus is a person who built his entire world around the idea of rebelling against the status quo, to the point where he forgot why he was rebelling, and what he was rebelling against, eventually rebelling for rebellion's sake.
  • Or, it was rather the League that lost it's way, and he was just going along with the flow.
  • Annihilus is a Psycho for Hire who joined the League, not because he gave a damn about their ethics or goals, but because they were an armed group that operated outside the constraints of the law. To him, it was all an opportunity to watch the world burn.
  • Annihilus is a Misanthrope Supreme who believes that killing humanity is a cause as good as anything else.
  • Annihilus was given an Irrevocable Order to sow as much chaos as possible, even after his original goals had already been achieved.
  • The League actively worship a God of Evil and/or chaos, and are causing more chaos because it thrives in such an environment.
• Inverted: Annihilus is a Principles Zealot who wouldn't dare to kill civilians if it breached his long code of ethics to the point where it's questionable if he is actually a villain at all.
• Subverted: It seems at first that Annihilus does what he does for no reason whatsoever, but upon closer inspection it seems that that orphanage he bombed contained only one child: The Antichrist. Every single cat in that kitty cat adoption center he destroyed was a Beast of the Apocalypse, and that pipeline he sabotaged supplying Tropestan with water was infected with Super Bubonic Ebola Pox.
• Double Subverted: Annihilus turns out to be unaware of those facts, and is in fact dismayed that his actions actually helped save people.
• Parodied: Annihilus is a Dastardly Whiplash who trafficks in Cartoon Bombs and builds skyscrapers for the sole purpose of destroying them spectacularly, and that's about it.
• Zig-Zagged: ???
• Averted:
  • Annihilus has a clear-cut reason for commiting acts of terror.
  • Annihilus is not a terrorist.
• Lampshaded: "This Annihilus guy sure likes annihilating stuff, that's for sure."
• Invoked: Annihilus is a Chaotic Evil double agent with state-backing, dispatched to give the League a bad name.
• Exploited: Word of Annihilus' existence is quickly spread by the Ministry of Truth as a sort of "proof" that Hobbes Was Right and that mankind cannot live in peace without the goading of an iron fist, and that the Peoples' Freedom League are as monstrous as they claim.
• Defied: The Peoples' Freedom League quickly apprehends Annihilus to prevent further casualties.
• Discussed:
  • This discussion:
  Felicia: "Oh God, would that bastard just stay still and listen for five minutes!"
  Zach: "Perhaps we host a birthday party for him and invite all the officials of Evilus to join us, and he'll stop blowing them up?"
  • This other discussion: "Heyo buddy! I left you a gift of C4 in your car, your bedroom, and your brain" "Annihilus, we're friends."
• Conversed: "I literally don't get why they keep Annihilus around when clearly he's only in it to cause mayhem and chaos?" "He's probably good for doing it, but the rest of the team has to restrain him before he does too much damage."
• Deconstructed: Annihilus' Stupid Evil tendencies only ends up obstructing the path to success of the League, either resulting in the organization collapsing due to internal conflict, with people defending the man due to his effectiveness as a planner and combat unit, and others haranguing about him being an abomination and complete, self-destructive moron- and with no-one strong enough left to resist The Empire internally, it survives to oppress for centuries onward.
• Reconstructed: Annihilus serves as a cautionary tale for the entire League, with the leaders of the organization affirming that they shall never stoop to his methods, no matter what.
• Played for Laughs: Annihilus engages in Poke the Poodle shenanigans for no discernible reason other than vague platitudes towards the League, leaving everyone confused as what he is actually trying to achieve.
• Played for Drama: Alice is a Wide-Eyed Idealist drawn to the People's Freedom League by Annihilus' reputation and believes he is a Well-Intentioned Extremist, but when she discovers that Annihilus has no principles other than mass murder and the League is powerless to restrain him, her loyalties are now all in doubt.
• Played for Horror: The Evilus Ministry of Security takes down the People's Freedom League's more principled leaders. The disillusioned remnant and radicalized new recruits adopt Annihilus' nihilistic philosophy and become just as monstrous as the Evilus propaganda claims them to be.