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Motive Decay
- 235 statements
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A character with an initially complex and even reasonable motive for his actions is Flanderized into a Flat Character who simply does what is expected, regardless of their original motivation. This is often someone who starts out with a specific goal, as a Well-Intentioned Extremist or someone out for revenge against the perpetrators of a particular wrong (real or imagined), or someone who is driven to actions by unfortunate circumstances. This can make a very deep and often tragic character, but it's hard for the writers to keep it up, especially in a long-running franchise. Perhaps the author simply has trouble following through on their original idea, other parts of the story got more important, or the creator was making it up as they went along. Perhaps later writers who come on in the middle of a work's run just don't "get" it. Sometimes the writer is trying to give some kind of Aesop that because their original motive was grey, this leads to monochrome quickly. Too quickly. On the other hand, it sometimes is intentional. The character may very well have lost track of what they were fighting for and kept going on in spite of this because they have nothing else left. This often happens when a story has several antagonists, one of whom is only needed for conflict. Expect the character to become a cartoonishly evil megalomaniac. If this happens to a side character, it is often followed by Flanderization. Perhaps even more strangely, the other characters won't notice such decay and will, at the least, be unsurprised that this character is now a walking cliche. If this happens to a series protagonist, expect an Audience-Alienating Era, gnashing of teeth and shrieks of Ruined FOREVER! This is, if anything, even more common in stories told out of order, as a writer wishing to give a two-dimensional character more depth will go back and write a backstory exploring the reasons behind his good or bad actions, especially as the character tends to be the protagonist of the backstory. Comics do this a to a certain degree, as various writers are more or less interested in character depth than another writer. This is common in serial works in general for another reason — usually, a villain becomes popular for what they do as a villain and not for the reason they do it, so when they want to keep using a character, writers have an incentive to discard motivations that might get in the way and put them through Flanderization down to their most essential parts. A particularly common form of this for B-list villains is for them to have a clear and understandable motive the first few times they appear, which eventually decays into "get revenge on the hero for the last time they defeated me" ad infinitum. As villain motivation isn't always seen as integral to the plot, expect villain examples. Compare The Dark Side Will Make You Forget, where the changing of motives is a form of Character Development. Similarly, It Gets Easier, and He Who Fights Monsters are in-story development of motives. Likewise, this may be purposely invoked in order to create a Self-Disposing Villain. Compare with: Villain Decay, Plot Tumor, and Flanderization (which is a derailing of how the character acts, not his reasons). Not to be confused with: Out-of-Character Moment, Unbuilt Trope and Character Development |
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Abraxas (Hrodvitnon): In this Godzilla MonsterVerse fanfiction, Ghidorah's backstory and further elaboration by Word of God reveal that Ghidorah is originally an In-Universe case of this trope. When it first committed planetary genocide, Ghidorah was only trying to make the excruciating Terrible Ticking, which constantly told Ghidorah to "Kill Them All", stop screaming in its heads. As Ghidorah committed planetary destruction again and again to no effect, its minds grew desensitized to the violence, then they grew to enjoy it, until they became the sadistic, omnicidal bastard we know the three-headed dragon as. | |
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In the Heralds of Valdemar series, this explicitly happens to Big Bad Ma'ar, alongside and combined with his Villain Decay. In the Mage Wars he was a Well-Intentioned Extremist who united the barbarian tribes and sought to impose a Utopia Justifies the Means. Through successive reincarnations and overuse of Blood Magic, he eventually devolves into a twisted, megalomaniacal schemer whose grandiose plans to Take Over the World end up thwarted by generation after generation of heroes. This all turns out to have been a scheme of the gods, who needed his knowledge to avert the return of the magical Cataclysm that started with his original death. | |
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In The Sneetches and Other Stories, the Star-bellied Sneetches initially use their stars to flaunt their superiority over the plain bellied ones. When the latter actually obtain stars, however, the original star-bellies protest, believing they are still the better Sneetches regardless, and remove their stars and consider plain bellies to now be the top option. The process repeats until none of the Sneetches on either side can even remember what clique they were in originally. | |
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Speaking of Immortal. Jeff Jarrett's motivation for joining was to gain control of his company back from Dixie Carter. However, there was no resolution to this as he would soon go on and feud with Kurt Angle. | |
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RWBY: There are two in-universe examples in the show: After the gods curse Salem with Complete Immortality, Salem repeatedly tries to kill herself in an attempt to reunite with her beloved. Over time, this devolves into fruitless attempts at suicide to spite the gods until an epiphany results in her changing direction in pursuit of a new goal. Blake's initial descriptions of Adam depict a Faunus rights activist whose dedication takes him too far into terrorism, with many White Fang members, including his mentor High Leader Sienna Khan, being fooled. An abusive, manipulative Control Freak who gaslit everyone for years, his true self only becomes clear to Blake in Volume 3, and the rest of the White Fang in Volume 5. He never believed in equality, he wants humanity enslaved; his increasing obsession with Blake destroys the White Fang, leaving him with nothing but the need to destroy Blake for ruining his life. |
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Dad Villain AU: Gabriel justified all of the crimes he committed as Hawkmoth by claiming it was all necessary in order to save his beloved wife Emelie from her "mysterious illness"... which was the result of her using the broken Peacock Pin. When he finally got to make his Wish, however, he prioritized punishing Ladybug for daring to oppose him, rewriting reality so that the magical backlash from using the Peacock hits Ladybug and her loved ones instead. Even after Viceroy figures out how to ensure Emelie suffers the consequences instead, Gabriel is more concerned about continuing to punish the former heroine than protecting his wife — something Duusu mockingly notes: | |
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The Adventures of Dr. McNinja: For most of the story, the Big Bad, King Radical, has the main goal of saving his world and people by sacrificing the Doctor's world. However, when the Doctor ruins his plans beyond repair, the only motive King Radical has left is to make the Doctor suffer as much as possible. | |
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Bullet Club was originally an alliance of gaijin (non-Japanese) wrestlers who banded together to get ahead in New Japan Pro-Wrestling's Japanese-dominated competitive scene by using brute force and underhanded tactics. Their firearm visual motif, and their general image as uncouth thugs, originally underlined this motive: it emphasized their lack of respect for Japanese traditions and culture, and leaned heavily into negative stereotypes about Westerners. But as they've become more popular and well-established, this motive has gradually been downplayed, and they've notably welcomed several Japanese wrestlers into their ranks (most notably Kenta, Taiji Ishimori, EVIL, and Sho). Not that their fans are complaining. | |
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Homestuck: At first, Jack's motives revolve around a desire to rule. Once he becomes the new ruler of Derse, wanton destruction becomes his sole motivation and he simply starts slaughtering everything he finds for the sake of doing so. Eridan is originally driven to turn against the other trolls because he believes that submission to Jack is their only chance of survival, and is especially motivated by his desire to save himself and Feferi. However, his confrontations with the others quickly turn more and more violent and bloody, and his original motivations fall by the wayside after he kills Feferi. |
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Intentionally explored in The Machineries of Empire with Nirai Kujen. He started out as a Well-Intentioned Extremist who genuinely wanted to create a society of peace and prosperity even if it was a totalitarian state with no free will and perpetual war with all its neighbours, but when he found himself tormented by conscience he intentionally turned himself into a sociopath via brain surgery and psychological conditioning. Unfortunately, he didn't realise that he would completely lose his ideals and end up being indirectly or directly responsible for centuries of torture, repression, imperialism and genocide, solely so that he could live forever in luxury. | |
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Middle-Earth: Related to the Satan example is Sauron in Tolkien's legendarium — he starts out as a clever, Manipulative Bastard in The Silmarillion, who works with Morgoth only as part of his agenda to bring order to the world, then gradually degrades to the genocidal type seen in The Lord of the Rings. This was a deliberate piece of decay on Tolkien's part, due to his belief that evil usually starts out with some kind of high-minded ideal but its methods (and Sauron's multiple deaths) eventually ruin its practitioners, leaving them arrogant, hate-filled, mindless destroyers. Even more pronounced is what happened to Sauron's former boss, Morgoth (who is intended to be Satan). He started out wanting to create and be the God of his own universe. But as he realized that nobody but God could actually be omnipotent, he gradually descended into a pure Omnicidal Maniac, with a corresponding loss of his power as the mightiest angel. At least Sauron kept the same basic goal (wanting to rule the world) in mind the whole time, even if the reason shifted from "I'm the only one who can run things right," to "POWEEEER! UNLIMITED POWEEEER!". |
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The Adventures of Wiglaf and Mordred: An example in this comic, except the evil one is the one who was attacked, not the attacker. Gawain, the attacker, genuinely forgot why he was attacking Arthur in the first place because he is a zombie with a Healing Factor, and while shooting him in the head won't kill him, he loses and regains random pieces of memory every time. Even though he couldn't remember his original reason, he figured that revenge for being shot in the head so many times was still a decent reason. | |
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Reversed in the Vorkosigan Saga, where the Cetagandans were introduced as pretty generic bad guys, defined by militarism and expansionism, but were soon developed as a society with hints of a history, changing goals, and internal disagreements. | |
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xkcd strip #1736 "Manhattan Project": The second Manhattan Project starts out as an attempt to cure cancer, but ends up replicating the original Manhattan Project exactly. | |
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The Lost Fleet: Senator Costa starts out wanting to military strengthen the Alliance's military and weaken their bitter and longtime enemies to end a Forever War. Then she becomes a major force behind a dangerous and ill-advised A.I. Is a Crapshoot project that nearly destroys the Alliance from within due to her paranoia about not being able to trust the military to do what she wants anymore, even though the original war is over. As of Boundless, Costa seems primarily focused on trying to avoid punishment for her role in the fiasco. | |
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CinemaSins: Jeremy in later videos frequently forces in his trademark catchphrases and Running Gags even when the original reason for doing so doesn't actually apply. For instance, in his early videos, he would sin uses of the phrase "DC Comics" due to the fact that the "C" in "DC" already stands for "Comics", making the "Comics" part redundant. However, in later videos, Jeremy started saying "DC Comics" and adding a sin any time something DC-related was mentioned in a movie, regardless of whether or not the phrase "DC Comics" was ever used in the movie. | |
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The Swan Princess: The villainous Rothbart's initial goal is to take over King William's kingdom. He kills William, then kidnaps his daughter Odette, turns her into a swan, and will only set her free if she agrees to marry him, making him legally the next king. So far so good. But when he learns that her true love Prince Derek (the only one besides himself who can break the spell, with a vow of everlasting love) has found her, he resolves to kill them both. It never seems to cross his mind that killing Odette will ruin his plan to legally claim her father's throne. | |
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The Victors Project: Luster begins training for the Games to bring glory and status to his family and district (according to his own journal, anyway). However, from the moment he becomes a victor, his family is never mentioned again and he delights in oppressing the district as an absolute dictator and Card-Carrying Villain. | |
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We see this happen to Ysanne Isard, head of Imperial Intelligence, over the course of the X-Wing Series. In the first book, Rogue Squadron is just another enemy asset to be destroyed, while Isard's attention is still on her wider Xanatos Gambit to destroy the New Republic. By book four the Rogues have thrown a wrench in her plan, one of them "defiled" her secret prison by escaping it, and the squadron has gone on to wage a guerrilla war against Isard's power base - so she lets it get personal and starts prioritizing hurting them even when it goes against the rest of her interests. Even Isard recognizes her Villainous Breakdown, but by that point she's too far gone to change tactics, while her subordinates begin to call her out and desert her. | |
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In Nobody's Hero, Ai reveals he wanted to do a Suicide by Cop because there is a self-preservation protocol built in him, necessitating for him to escalate things until he's killed. But two years of grief blinded him and he forgot his original intention, rather, his desire warped into terminating humanity. | |
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Delta Green: What leads to Majestic-12's demise. The group originnaly made a pact with The Greys to have their technology in exchange for allowing the greys to experiment on humans, as the MJ-12s Steering Committee saw as the only way humanity could actually compete and fight with the other more powerful aliens. Some elements inside it started to see that MJ-12 degenerated into almost woshipped Grey technology for its own sake like a Cargo Cult instead of protecting the United States and Humanity as it was their original mission. Eventually those who thought like that work to take down Majestic from the inside with the help of Delta Green and turn into "The Program". | |
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Heroes in Beast: The Primordial originated as a sort of balancing tool for the Primordial Dream: their job was to keep Beasts in check. Modern ones have largely, although not universally, degenerated into callous narcissists interested solely in killing Beasts for glory. | |
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Frozen Turtles: The Shredder starts off wanting to kill the Turtles and Elsa and their friends to eliminate a threat to his criminal empire and his own personal power. But by the climax of Into the Unknown, all he wants is to kill them and everyone else in both worlds because he can. Even his minions are disturbed by the change in attitude. | |
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In the epilogue of the Princess of the Blacks series, the Longbottom family and half the Granger family a part of a feud with the Black family nearly a century and a half long, but only Jen Black is old enough to remember why and she's mere minutes from dying of old age. | |
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Never Be Silent: Discussed between Oliver and John. Oliver points out that John is the one who told him that he needed to help the people of the city in a more direct way, and somewhere along the way they've lost sight of that because of all the constant attacks from various supervillains. As a result, despite those words, the city hasn't changed as much as they'd like, something that Oliver wants to correct. | |
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Muh Phoenix: The comic doesn't miss the opportunity to point out that, after getting the power of the phoenix, Cyclops never tried to restore mutantkind (he decided to form a rap band with the other Phoenix hosts). | |
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8-Bit Theater: Thief stole only to pay for his father's medicine. After that issue is resolved, he keeps being as greedy as ever. When pressed by Black Mage, he was asked "So shouldn't you, y'know, stop stealing?", to which the answer was a simple "No." Every single Elf is a total bastard. It's even part of their (stolen) national anthem. | |
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Kariya Matou's motivation for entering the Holy Grail War in Fate/Zero is that by winning, he'll be able to save his adoptive niece Sakura from the abuse of the Matou family patriarch Zouken and return her to her mother, a woman he loves. However, the strain of maintaining a Servant like Berserker and the Matou crest worms eating away at him causes his mind to deteriorate and he becomes obsessed with killing Tokiomi Tohsaka (Sakura's father, the man who unthinkingly gave Sakura to the Matous). | |
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Emperor Jagang in the Sword of Truth books starts out as a man who believes in human superiority and unlimited potential, and believes that magic prevents the men from creating a technological society. Later, he is a religious fanatic/Omnicidal Maniac who believes that all men are evil and unworthy of life, and it's his defeat which causes a sudden technological development. At the point of his change, the books take a strong right turn into Objectivist didacticism, which suggests a different trope altogether is in play. | |
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Yet Another Fantasy Gamer Comic: In-Universe example, Lewie the Lich King's original goal was to get sweet, sweet revenge on the barbarian pirates who sacked his kingdom, but The Fog of Ages and his manipulative goddess convinced him he wanted to rule the world. Once he succeeds in the latter, his oldest living rival asks him if he finally got what he wanted, giving him enough clarity to realize he'd been duped into becoming a Puppet King and pull a Heel–Face Turn. | |
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At the end of The Incredibles, the Underminer bombastically rants about declaring "war on peace and happiness" so that "all will tremble before me". In Incredibles 2, it turns out all he actually wanted to do was to rob a bank. | |
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Warhammer 40,000's Chaos Gods, like the Dark Side, are quite fond of corrupting the motives of the fools who sign up with them willingly. The Horus Heresy novels show how this happened to most of the traitor Primarchs: Horus' descent into evil is initially triggered by the Emperor's near suicidal mysteriousness about what his intentions are once the Galaxy is united under his rule. Horus, not knowing what the Emperor plans to do and aware of how the Space Marines are being increasingly sidelined, rejects this and accepts the idea that as superior beings, the Space Marines have a right to rule. When the Chaos Gods show him a vision of a grim, dark future in which the Emperor is worshiped as a god and Horus and his brothers have been obliterated from history, Horus decides to overthrow his father for the good of mankind. But by the Siege of Terra, hundreds of billions of deaths later, Horus seems to have accepted the Chaos Gods and is mostly in it for horrendously evil gits and shiggles. In short, he went from "I will save the Galaxy" to "I will rule the Galaxy" to "I will destroy the Galaxy". Konrad Curze, the Night Haunter, started off as a Well-Intentioned Extremist who believed in maintaining order through fear, tenets he passed on to his Legion. Curze went mad after the Heresy and let himself be assassinated to prove that the Imperium was no different from him. In the years since, his Legion has mostly forgotten his ideals and spreads terror For the Evulz. Magnus the Red was devoted to advancing humanity through the acquisition of knowledge, but had an unfortunate taste for forbidden knowledge. Magnus was forced to join with Horus to survive the Emperor's wrath, and since then he's been obsessed with getting revenge on the Space Wolves for burning his planet. Fulgrim started off pursuing perfection, but even before the Heresy he'd become an arrogant Jerkass who believed he represented perfection. Chaos played on his arrogance and twisted him into a hedonist. He's only gotten worse since then. Angron simply wanted Revenge on the Emperor for allowing his original army to be slaughtered rather than saving them, but he also made several very good points about his father's tyranny and hypocrisy, and under better circumstances could've been seen as a heroic rebel. Unfortunately, a combination of the Butcher's Nails driving him to madness and the influence of Khorne turned him into little more than a mindless, raging berserker that killed anything that crossed his path. Alpharius and Omegon, as revealed in the book Legion, sided with Horus to ensure that Chaos ultimately lost the war. There are several problems, however: first is that the Alpha Legion is notoriously decentralized and secretive, second is that Alpharius was reportedly killed during the Heresy, and third is that Omegon at some point began plotting behind his twin's back. The net result is that we can't be sure who the modern Alpha Legion is following or what their ultimate goals are, assuming it even has a unified agenda anymore. A lot of Chaos cults start out as organizations for actual reform (removing corrupt leaders, purging mutants, killing criminals...). Unfortunately, while a lot of what the Imperium does is stupid and wasteful, a lot of what it does is also Necessarily Evil, and Chaos is all too happy to exploit this. |
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El Goonish Shive: In the Legend of Diane storyline, we see the eponymous girl reflecting on how her serial dating got started, and how she gradually went from "maybe this one will be the one" to "we're all just kids hanging out and having fun" to "boys are for buying me things". Ironically, this reflection actually highlights her Character Development since her first appearance and the storyline serves as her Start of Darkness. | |
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The Circle Opens: Lampshaded in Magic Steps, when Alzena's internal monologue notes that she used to love Nurhar and care for the Dihanurs, before the unmagic started eating away at her. Unfortunately, by the time she notices this she's way beyond saving. | |
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The Legend of Spyro: Zonoya's Revenge: In the games, Malefor wanted to destroy the world because he believed it was the fate of the purple dragon to do so. Here, he decides to conquer it instead. | |
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Marik from Yu-Gi-Oh! The Abridged Series initially wanted to kill Yugi in order to take his screen time. Nowadays, Marik gets tons of screen time, even more than Yugi and his friends, yet he still tries to murder Yugi. Justified both in-universe and out. Marik has never been quite sure of exactly what he wants to do to Yugi, and the show ultimately has to follow the basics of the original plot, albeit barely. |
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Dorkly Originals: In "Robotnik Finally Wins", Robotnik robotizes Sonic and Tails, followed by all the animals of the world. He then spends the whole video lampshading this trope trying to remember why he was spending decades even trying to do that in the first place. Turns out, he was trying to make members for a bagpipe band. | |
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In 2013 The Decade started out attacking Eddie Edwards, who was leaving Ring of Honor for TNA, saying they were tired of seeing people celebrating when wrestlers leave for larger companies. Then they switched gears to attacking wrestlers returning from larger companies like The Addiction. Then they started attacking wrestlers who worked for ROH part time while contracted by larger companies(reigning IWGP Champion AJ Styles). Then they started attacking new wrestlers they suspected of trying to use ROH to get noticed by larger companies. Their focus had shifted a great deal, but at least there was a consistent theme. But in 2015 BJ Whitmer tried to turn Decade into his personal army against Steve Corino, which ended up destroying the group. | |
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Murtagh from Inheritance Cycle was derailed from a sympathetic villain who works for the Big Bad in order to make the world a better place to a one-dimensional snickering cliche that rivals Snidely Whiplash. This could be considered a Take That! to how he was becoming something of a Draco in Leather Pants to certain sections of the Hatedom. It doesn't help that Galbatorix made it impossible for Murtagh to convert to Eragon's side. Really, someone who physically can't choose for himself which side he fights for is going to be miles more sympathetic than someone who can choose and mindlessly calls a person evil when that person, again, has no choice in the matter. |
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Nicholas from The Care Bears Movie just wanted to cast a spell over the two remaining people in the world to get them to feel hatred. In the Dwedit Jamez Bond flash movie, he now wants to take over the world. | |
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When Ric Flair betrayed his stable Fortune to side Hulk Hogan and Eric Bischoff's Immortal alliance in 2011, it pretty much did away with all his sense of direction in TNA, both in- and out-of-universe. In-universe he betrayed his own plans to both finally defeat Hogan once and for all and to remake The Four Horsemen with TNA homegrown talent and proved it was all about the power for him. Out-of-universe he seemed to float around with no purpose, as there wasn't exactly much potential to elevate amongst the Immortal ranks, what with the one young rising star in Gunner being lost in the shuffle at the time. He was such an ineffectual member with Immortal that people were speculating he was being The Mole to help either Fortune or Sting with taking out Hogan, but this never materialized. | |
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Played straight as an arrow in the Star Wars Legends Legacy of the Force book series. In the first book of the series, Jacen Solo has visions of galaxy-wide destruction, including his dueling and killing Luke, that can only be prevented by accepting the teachings of the Sith. Lumiya, a former Vader apprentice, softens the blow by teaching Jacen that through careful discipline and sacrifice, he can avoid falling into darkness like Vader and the Emperor. However, with each successive book, his altruistic motives are shown less and less, slowly replaced by ever-increasing anger, distrust, intolerance, and desire for power. All of the culminates when he kills Mara Jade, who had caught onto his downfall, for a reason (or at least a rationalization) that makes almost zero sense and is later completely abandoned by the series. In a later book, he Force-chokes a young lieutenant to death for a perceived error, despite the fact she followed all standard procedures and was commended earlier in the book for her attention to detail. At this point, almost all trace of his benevolent motives are gone and all that remains is the Dark Side. | |
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The godmodder in Destroy the Godmodder suffered from motive decay extremely quickly. The godmodder wishes for everyone to rage quit for eternity, but that very quickly got/gets lost sight of in the seas of massive explosions and energy blasts. | |
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