Even Evil Has Loved Ones: Villains care about people in their own families and would never dream of hurting them.Even the Dog Is Ashamed: An action so bad, it even warrants the disapproval of the Non-Human Sidekick.Even Beggars Won't Choose It: The poor may be needy, but they're not desperate enough to accept that handout.Even Bad Men Love Their Mamas: Villains care about their mothers especially.Ethical Slut: Has a very active sex life, but goes about it in a moral and responsible way.
Dude, Not Funny!: Even in works of Black Comedy, jokes about some subjects are considered to be in bad taste, or at least the more distasteful the more demanding the standards of quality and wit to distinguish from mere shock and vulgarity.Con Men Hate Guns: They make their living scamming and cheating people, but they refuse to resort to violence.The Commandments: The standards take the form of a short simple list of rules.
Everyone has a story to tell lyrics code#
Code of Honour: The standard is formally codified and agreed to, often with a Heroic Vow.Churchgoing Villain: A villain may be vile to the core, but still believes that Real Men Love Jesus.Choosy Beggar: Just because they're needy doesn't mean they don't have good taste.Chivalrous Pervert: An individual who has some filthy desires but holds themselves to a standard when going about them.Caper Rationalization: A group of criminals comes up with a reason this particular crime is justifiable.Blue-and-Orange Morality: A strict ethical framework, but one that happens to be based on strange or alien moral principles.Black-and-White Insanity: The above, taken to a completely irrational extreme.Black-and-White Morality: Sees the world in clear and unambiguous shades of pure good vs."Blackmail" Is Such an Ugly Word: A villain is perfectly willing to do evil, but takes offense to someone calling it evil.Arbitrary Skepticism: In a world with lots of weird stuff, this is so remarkable that one can't help pointing it out.Ape Shall Never Kill Ape: A violent group sees it as immoral to be violent toward one of their own.
See also Shades of Conflict for the many variations that may occur when people with different levels of standards collide. Conversely, someone's standards may be consistent but at odds with genuine morality, leading to Curious Qualms of Conscience. If this hypocrisy is never called out in the work itself, it's Moral Dissonance. If someone's standards are applied inconsistently, it's a Double Standard. If someone judges other people's actions but assumes their own must be good by definition, they have Moral Myopia. See What the Hell, Hero? when someone calls out a person's actions for violating their own standards. Even people you wouldn't think of as having standards still tend to believe in something.Ĭompare Conscience Makes You Go Back, Sudden Principled Stand. The point of this trope is that no matter how high or low anyone thinks the line is, they all believe that there is a line, and that those who cross it are in the wrong.
The standard is often moral or ethical, but could also be regarding culture, or True Art, or good taste, or good manners, or what constitutes a good meal, or even the boundaries around a fandom basically, anything that a person or group is willing to treat as Serious Business.