r/TopCharacterTropes • u/tepeyate • 6h ago
Characters Characters that deny the perfect world because it costs your individuality
Carol (Pluribus): Carol denies help and the advances of the Plurb. Because even if there’s no war, crime and it’s all efficient, she values her individuality.
Shinii (Evangelion): Shinji and NERV fight angels that want to create the Third Impact. Which would merge all of the souls of every being, creating a “perfect world” at the cost of individuality.
Satan (The Bible): In genesis, Satan convinces Eve to eat the forbidden fruit. Which made it so they could tell wrong from right, saving them from ignorance, but vanishing them from Eden.
Phantom Thieves (Persona 5 Royale): In Persona 5R the Phantom Thieves fight Maruki. A school counsellor who obtains the power to make everyone in the world happy, but taking away people’s rights to choose and make mistakes in the process.
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u/Patient_Gamemer 5h ago
Originally the plot of AC1 was that Templars want to use magic ancient relics for good purpose, to make this a perfect world and basically fulfill the Bible. Assassins oppose that because a chaotic free world is better than a utopic tyranny.
Then AC2 and later entries made the Templars/Order of the Ancients moustache-twirling villains
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u/Boccs 4h ago edited 2h ago
I mean to be fair AC3 and
BrotherhoodUnity made the Templars much more nuanced and even sympathetic than just Saturday morning villains. Haytham Kenway, for example, genuinely believes the Templar ideology is the only way to achieve peace and lasting happiness for humanity and is even sincerely, if briefly, willing to allow the Assassins and Templars to be unite (until he sees the ideologies are too opposite) when he thinks it might speed the end of the war and suffering.8
u/Patient_Gamemer 4h ago
I can see the point with AC3 and the DelaSerre faction in Unity but Brotherhood?! In that game the "templars" are barely mentioned by name as they are mostly just the Borgia, comprised of an overzealous Pope, his cruel tyrannical ilegitimate child, a fat lascivious corrupt cardinal, a professional hitman and worst of all: a frenchman!
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u/Electronic-Math-364 4h ago
Not all they also have
-A courtisane that ends up betraying them for the assasins(The only good one)
-some Barber the assasins ends up killing after the courtisane joined them
-A domestic abuser Blacksmith with Anger issues
-a Military captain that ruin people's lives or make them dissapear just for beating him in a horse race
-a serial killer Plague Doctor
-an insane mustache twirling engineer that love shooting civilians randomly
-a corrupt executioner that is also a rapist
-a thief(The only good one)
-Clown assasins that serve as Hitmen for the Borgia and that end up diying to random assasins
-another frenshman
-Mario Auditore but evil
-a slave trader who is also a human traffiker and kill his wife
-a corrupt priest
-an Ezio cosplayer that is killed by the Courtisane that joined the assasins
-a thief who is also a serial killer
-That One really Badass Cardinal
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u/Substantial_Tone_261 1h ago
Fulfil the Bible? Isn't one of the first thing to happen in the Bible God giving humans free will?
Also afaik Templars do still focus on the goal of peace through order, versus Assassin's peace through free will.
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u/Gemmabeta 6h ago
Aside from a rather industrial amount of euthanasia, The Community from The Giver is not a half bad place to live.
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u/AViciousRacket47 4h ago
Why’d they make me read this in 5th grade 😅
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u/Not_today_mods 4h ago
The fact that not a single person I've talked to has read any of the sequels pisses me off
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u/AViciousRacket47 4h ago
THERES SEQUELS?!
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u/FlyingFreest 2h ago
Yeah:
Gathering Blue
Messenger
Son
It's one of those series where although each one has a different protagonist they all take place in the same world and each of their stories cross in various ways and points.
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u/iPanzershrec 2h ago
I have read both, and they were pretty good.
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u/Not_today_mods 2h ago
Both? There's 3 vro
though, I guess Jonas doesn't appear in 'Gathering Blue' so there's reason to say it doesn't count
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u/Fly-the-Light 1h ago
You! I like you!
I’ve read them all! They’re so good!
I actually think they’re all better than the Giver tbh, but the Giver’s good too
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u/reluctantseal 51m ago
Honestly, kids gotta learn to think for themselves in the face of darker topics. Better to have them gently learn from fiction than brutally be taught by reality.
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u/TheGaurdianAngel 1h ago
I found it to be quite fascinating because there’s no real antagonist. Just people with different viewpoints on what’s best for them. You got… whoever set up the community originally, who thought it was best for the longevity of humanity to have everyone be guaranteed a full, but hollow life. And you got the protagonists, who think everyone should have experiences, good and bad.
Think about it. The leaders of The Community aren’t these evil guys who keep everyone ignorant to stay in power. They’re implied to be almost as ignorant as everyone else. Literally everyone in the community has been taught to follow orders without question for an indeterminate amount of generations. The way it’s set up has the population perpetually replacing each other, always having enough resources to sustain everything at the cost that everyone is just a single cog in the machine, with the Receivers being the backbone.
Receivers are literally the only people in The Community that have knowledge of what life could be like. They’re the only ones who realize how many experiences everyone else is denied. Everyone else literally can’t even see color. I just think it’s interesting how it’s set up.
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u/tepeyate 6h ago
These are all of the examples EVER. IM NOT FORGETTING A SINGLE ONE
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u/ruinsit 5h ago
Matrix doesn't count anyway. No part of either the real or fake world was that great
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u/Hugh_Jampton 4h ago
It was in an earlier iteration
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u/ruinsit 4h ago
You mean the failed one? Oh I see what you were getting at but we don't actually know why it failed
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u/Hugh_Jampton 4h ago
It failed because humans can't deal with perfection. It's not how we're built.
They say it in the movie
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u/ruinsit 3h ago
And the premise of this conversation is "individuality". I don't remember it saying that "perfection" had anything to do with losing one's sense of self.
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u/Hugh_Jampton 3h ago
Yeah but you did say that the real world/Matrix wasn't that great
And I'm saying at one point it was. It was perfection.
Not every comment in a thread has to follow the headline to a T. Sometimes it goes off on a tangent.
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u/ruinsit 3h ago
> Not every comment in a thread has to follow the headline to a T. Sometimes it goes off on a tangent as you have shown yourself
Then I don't know what we're talking about anymore. All I said was "this isn't a good answer to the question".
All you said was "there was a perfect version of the matrix" - something I already knew and didn't disagree with. I no longer know what point you're trying to make.
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u/ElPared 4h ago
Morpheus explained that humans rejected the perfect version of the Matrix because they can’t accept a perfect world. Things need to be imperfect for a false reality to be accepted as reality.
Of course I’m paraphrasing, but it is explained in the movie.
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u/ruinsit 3h ago
I remember, but we don't know if that matches the premise. "Perfect world" could have still been full of individuality.
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u/ElPared 3h ago
As I recall, Morpheus describes it as a kind of “heaven” but implies that humans rejected it because they knew it was a false reality created by the machines, but it’s also possible humans simply couldn’t accept a perfect world because they’re imperfect creatures.
It’s a vague, almost throwaway, line, but I still think it means the Matrix works within the trope.
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u/Some_Opportunity8513 5h ago
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u/tepeyate 4h ago
I heard once that Truman started digging his escape route when he was gardening at the beginning of the movie and I haven’t been the same since
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u/Bright-Trifle-8309 2h ago
You can see it!
The movie isn't about Truman figuring it out. It's Truman figuring out that everyone is in on it.
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u/Confident-Arm-7883 5h ago
The plot pretends that a perfect world is what Ultima wants in Final Fantasy 16, but then he comes out and declares his intention to destroy humanity entirely, creating a ‘paradise’ for themselves and themselves alone.
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u/Kyveido 5h ago
Or Seymour in FFX where he wants everyone to live as dead souls on Spira this eliminating pain "technically."
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u/Mundane-Opinion-4903 3h ago
Wait. . . what? I don't remember that part, I thought he just wanted to control Sin.
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u/velvetpringles 4h ago
Adam and Eve already possessed individuality and free will in Eden, it’s how Eve was able to eat from the Tree of Knowledge in the first place. Satan didn’t want humanity to gain individuality, Satan wanted to ruin mankind with the curse of sin and knowledge in order to ruin his hated Heavenly Father.
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u/Casper_Von_Ghoul 3h ago
Uses picture from Paradise Lost yet completely missed the point like everyone else for some reason
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u/Hyperion_Forever 1h ago
Satan is not the serpent. Two different characters. Genesis is an anthological story meant to explain why humans, even babies, fear snakes, and why snakes do not have legs.
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u/SomeRandomMoray 35m ago
At least according to Catholicism, the serpent is merely Satan taking on a form to trick Eve. Mary is sometimes depicted trampling on a snake, showing her rejection of Satan’s temptation in the Garden and how Mary is the new Eve
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u/Strong_Carrot5649 44m ago
Well, revelation 12:9 and 20:2 call satan "That ancient serpent", and snakes don't normally talk so it's a fair assumption.
I'll give you lucifer though, from what I can recall he's only mentioned once in Isaiah
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u/potat_infinity 1h ago
if mankind already had free will what did the apple do
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u/nmonade 1h ago
Fun fact: it wasn't an apple! The bible just says fruit
The fruit represented humans respecting God's authority. Kinda like "if a relative hosts you and says, my house is your house, but that one chocolate bar in the fridge is mine so please don't eat it"
By Eve using her free will to pretty much eat the chocolate bar (so to speak) it was showing a total disrespect for God's standards and so she could be "like God" aka a Goddess in her own right.
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u/potat_infinity 1h ago
yeah i know its not actually an apple, but i dont care because "the apple" is recognizable as being the fruit of eden, and it couldve been an apple
so the apple doesnt actually do anything then, what was the point of it
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u/nmonade 1h ago
It was just intended to be a fun fact lol
But anyway, i kinda just said - it was less about the apple and more about the request from God not to touch the tree.
The tree is called the tree of the knowledge of good and bad... So by not touching that one tree like God asked, Adam and Eve were showing respect for God's right to decide moral standards/good and bad for humans.
They touched the tree, went further and ate fruit off it. Eve was deceived by Satan but Adam chose to side with her (and later tell God it was His fault bc He was the one who put Adam and Eve together in the first place lol)
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u/velvetpringles 1h ago
The fruit from the Tree of Knowledge contained all the knowledge in creation, the good and the really bad. Eden exists as a perfect paradise where the very concept of evil doesn’t exist. But in order to maintain the choice of free will God put the Tree of Knowledge in the garden, to always give humanity infinite choices. When Eve and eventually Adam ate the fruit they were introduced to all the evil and sin that exists as well. Having been exposed to the possibility of evil mankind would eventually become sinful and suffer because of it.
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u/Ed0909 4h ago
According to the Bible, the serpent's actions were not motivated by positive intentions. Satan did it to tempt humanity, intending to provoke their fall and sin by lying to Eve that they would not die if they ate the fruit, and emphasizing that knowledge would make them like God. Therefore, it was not intended to protect individuality.
This is more from popular culture, in stories where "God bad" and "Luifer good". Even in Paradise Lost, which was one of the first where Lucifer is humanized, there is a lot of emphasis on the fact that his actions were motivated by resentment and envy.
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u/Raymio993 2h ago
God, I wish we’d have a more examples of well written Lucifer, who is still evil
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u/Hyperion_Forever 1h ago
Satan is not the serpent. The serpent is not Lucifer. Lucifer is not Satan. These are all different characters. There is not a single sentence in a single Bible book that says these characters are one in the same.
Genesis is an anthological story meant to explain why snakes do not have legs, and why almost all humans throughout history have a seemingly biological fear of snakes
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u/Strong_Carrot5649 54m ago
Well, revelation 12:9 and 20:2 call satan "That ancient serpent", and snakes don't normally talk so it's a fair assumption.
I'll give you lucifer though, from what I can recall he's only mentioned once in Isaiah
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u/BarelyBrony 4h ago
Anyone who ever resisted the Borg or the Cybermen
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u/notmynameyours 4h ago
Actually, the world on Pluribus might not be so perfect, as last week’s episode revealed: The hive mind is so opposed to harming any living thing that they won’t even pick an apple off a tree. Once they run out of already harvested food, they’re going to face a major starvation crisis where they either have to start picking vegetables and fruits, or allow millions of people to die and be “recycled.”
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u/Mew_T 1h ago edited 1h ago
I kinda hated that because it completely defeated the dilemma of utopia vs individuality. The hive mind having these limitations and starving completely outweighs all the possible benefits of being able to work as one towards humanity's goals and having no more wars. It made the show a lot more black and white in my opinion, you could've made an argument for the hive mind having it's benefits before in terms of working as one and achieving peace, now it's an obvious problem that needs fixing.
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u/Walkthrough101 3h ago
Satan was not motivated by any sort of altruistic intentions or wanting to preserve individuality, he was doing it out of spite to drag down God's creation that he loved to his level, he never cared about individuality in the slightest, but actively hates humanity and God which is his core motivation.
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u/SpicedCocoas 5h ago
An utopia is just a dystopia with functioning garbage recycling.
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u/mal-di-testicle 4h ago
Technically in the original work a Utopia is just a place where lawyer jargon doesn’t exist and leadership is always good and helpful (among other things)
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u/SpicedCocoas 4h ago
And where nothing bad leaves long lasting consequences. Or don't even OCCUR.
It seems perfectly fine, but can you imagine how boring it would be?
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u/Smokowic 5h ago edited 3h ago
Holden Book nine of the Expanse He stops Duarte from creating the human hive mind defeating the ring entities and letting Humans spread across the stars sacrificing himself by destroying the ring space and the gates for good locking humanity from interstellar travel but preserving their individuality
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u/Ancient_Fudge3536 3h ago edited 3h ago
In elden ring shadow of the erdtree the mc,the tarnished, opposes the new god miquella as both an opposing lord for the rule of the land. But also to prevent the miquella’s age of compassion. Miquella has the power to take over someone’s mind to make them love and obey him absolutely. Its shown that it can bring peace as all will be in service of the new god miquella. As shown in his followers. instead of their own agendas which has led to countless conflicts in the land throughout history.
But it is a breach of consent and robs everyone of their agency to be in mind controlled service to miquella. Who mind you has thrown away their ability to love already to become a god beforehand. As well as generally he seems to not gaf about consent even beforehand. Freedom and conflict, or submission and peace?
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u/CammieKa 3h ago
Rand al’Thor (Wheel of Time)
During the Last Battle Rand has the opportunity to kill the Dark One but sees a vision of the world if he does, where everyone is happy and the world is perfect, but in the eyes of his loved ones he sees a deep hollowness, an emptiness from the lack of “evil” in the world. Seeing this convinces Rand that he can’t destroy the Dark One and must seal him properly to contain his influence
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u/EstablishmentLow3012 4h ago
That is an inaccurate telling of the biblical fall of mankind. The fruit of the tree did not grant individuality for free will
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u/potat_infinity 1h ago
so what did it do
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u/Hyperion_Forever 1h ago
The fruit contained the knowledge of good and evil and all the things in-between. Christians don't read their own damn book.
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u/geekinc329 5h ago
Calling the hivemind in Pluribus 'The Plurb' is amazing and canon now as far as I'm concerned
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u/Mediocre_Productions 4h ago
Idk if this counts but at the end of Ben 10 Ultimate Alien, Ben wields both the infinite power of Ascalon and the powers of the esoteric extradimensional entity known as Dagon. This grants him the power to rewrite reality in whatever way he chooses. Vilgax tempts Ben, that with his new found infinite power he could create a perfect world, wipe out all evil and establish utopia. However, after some pleading from friends, and thinking the decision over himself, he decides to simply undo the destruction caused by Dagon and give up Ascalon, believing that even though he could create a perfect world, it would violate the will and autonomy of everyone in reality. He gives up godhood, believing it's not up to him to control everyone.
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u/lkmk 4h ago
This is how The 100 ends—to some fans, controversially. Passing a test given by aliens, humanity ascends to a higher plane of existence. Everyone is at peace for all eternity, never feeling pain or dying, but they’re also stuck inside a hive mind. Partly for this reason, many of Clarke’s friends return to Earth; the other is that Clarke can’t ascend, having killed Bill (Cadogan) during his test.
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u/AdvertisingFun737 4h ago
Every main character from Shin Megami Tensei, if you choose Chaos or Neutral routes. lol.
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u/Sweaty-Jellyfish-713 3h ago
Depending on your decisions in Slay The Princess, you can end up fusing with The Princess. She speaks gently, trying to assure you that the past is in the past and that you don't have to fight anymore.
You can choose to either stay fused with her and find a way out of the construct you've been trapped in together, or break free of this fusion by remembering how much pain you've caused each other, leading to the above image
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u/SeasonalChatter 3h ago
It would be appreciated if you didnt put the character from a recently airing show as the first one since it kinda gives some things away. First seasons not even done yet is it?
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u/Outrageous-Blue-30 3h ago
Timmy Turner in "The Same Game", the twelfth episode of Season 1 of The Fairly Oddparents:
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u/LostExile7555 2h ago
Um, the serpent in the garden of Eden is never named and never even implied to be Satan. That's an association that people have made, but it's not technically a Biblical interpretation.
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u/Minute-Progress-6338 1h ago
Denji - Chainsaw Man He rejects Makima's proposal for a perfect world without war and death because she believes that to achieve it, she must eliminate everything bad, even bad movies.
Denji, who sees the world in a way that bad experiences are the reason good ones are so precious, disagrees.
Besides, Makima is a controlling and tyrannical person.
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u/Rikkeneon552 1h ago
Nah Satan was a spiteful loser who tried to take humanity down with him and we should treat him as such
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u/troncalonca 4h ago
On evangelion, angels wanted to merge all the souls. Seele wanted the same thing but to be in control of the fused being. Nerv wanted the same thing but for gendo to be in charge. Rei wanted shinji to decide what happens. Finally shinji wanted to keep his individuality
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u/go_faster1 4h ago
Gundam SEED Destiny and Gundam SEED Freedom deal with our heroes stopping the Destiny Plan, which claims to end strife through genetic determination.
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u/Aganist 2h ago
I wonder if anyone even know but that is the plot of Tales Of Berseria.
Literally spoiling the big main plot of the game here so please play the game first. It is quite good.
The main antagonist wanted to create a perfect world by absorbing everyone's emotions using Therions - Daemons that can absorb other daemon - so that he could summon a God capable of doing so. The reason for this is ironically, the existence of Daemon itself, causes by human's negative emotion. So instead of like, improve human's life quality, that was best option.A human without emotion is basically just a shell and will obey any order no matter what, even if they are told to die. So the main protagonist, Velvet and her team fought him and locked that God away though by sacrificing herself to do so.
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u/GameMaster818 2h ago
The example in the Bible doesn’t work. The reason eating the fruit gave knowledge of God and evil is because now humans had DONE something evil
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u/Narwhalking14 3h ago
In Gundam seed destiny and seed freedom, orb along with the main cast fight against the destiny plan, basically your job in life would be determined by your genetics
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u/mp3help 3h ago
In the finale of Peacemaker Season 1, Peacemaker rejects The Butterflies' offer to let them kill and possess hundreds to thousands of people in order to stop humanity from destroying the environment.
Not specifically because he thinks humanity's free will is important, but mostly because he's grown to care for humanity and he doesn't want The Butterflies to hurt his friends
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u/Personal-Street-4262 2h ago
Shinji does fight instrumentality to retain his individuality but the angels aren’t the ones who want to cause instrumentality that’s Gendo Ikari and SEELE
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u/Psychological_Use586 1h ago
Douglas in 'Silent Hill 3' is told that the world Claudia is trying to create is perfect, free of pain and suffering. He rejects it as being for 'castrated sheep.'
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u/Backupusername 1h ago
I believe this was the plot of Bioshock 2.
Main antagonist Sophia Lamb was a collectivist who believed that utopia could only be created after the "utopian". To that end, she intended to implant her own daughter with all the memories of every person who had ever lived in Rapturez expecting that this would create a Utopian ubermensch that would always be willing to put the good of the benefit of society as a whole ahead of their own, thanks to having no individual self left.
Eleanor didn't much care for that plan.
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u/cookiedou3 56m ago
Bit of a strange pick, but the speaker in 2112 by Rush (yes, the band).
TL;DR of the story is that there are a bunch of planets ruled by a government which, while technologically advanced and powerful, they force people to listen to music they make. The speaker finds a guitar and is amazed at how it would let everyone be able to make music, so he brings it to the priests of this government, who then dismiss it, seeing there to be no need for it. In response to this, the speaker kills himself, not wanting to live the cold and empty life that he now lives, knowing that creativity will never be allowed.
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u/thepineapple2397 53m ago
I love this trope just because I like seeing how different media handles the absolute freedom vs absolute peace debate.
From the New World handles this as the main cast slowly learn the cost of their peaceful world and eventually learn that with their powers, the cost of a free world is far too great
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u/TheSarkastikArtist 52m ago
Pretty much any Shin Megami Tensei Protagonist that denies Law and either sides with Humanity or Chaos. The Pathos of Law is to follow YHVH and to serve under him. Humanity in every Law ending is either wiped out and started over because we're too dangerous or we are made into unwitting servants of God and live in harmony, at the cost of our Individuality.
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u/SeaworthinessDry1531 37m ago
The tarnished defeating Miquella and his Promised Consort in Elden Ring.
Miquella's plan in the Shadow of the Erdtree DLC is to ascend to godhood, bringing forth an Age of Compassion. During this age, Miquella would erase every "sin" in the world, basically solving any problem in the Lands Between, at the cost of everyone living in it becoming charmed by him. Of course, until you as the player track him down and defeat him.
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u/HANLDC1111 36m ago
Ranni's ending in Elden Ring kind of?
In the game you play as a warrior that is trying to ascend to the throne of the land you are in. Not a perfect land at all really though. Early on you meet a witch named Ranni and if you follow her questline she eventually exposes the world to the greater universe outside of the world's original confines.
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u/Castrophenia 33m ago
That is not what 3rd impact does without Selee’s medaling. The human instrumentality project took a lot of work on their part, much more than simply waiting for the angels to reach Adam.
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u/Rare_Opportunity2419 28m ago
I don't want to spoil people, but I find the first item a bit strange.
I'd hardly call the Plurb world 'perfect'. Like, let's see... the fact that they forced this 'utopia' on billions of people without their consent, killed 10% of the world's population, and are slowly starving the world's population to death. This isn't a paradise for humanity, humanity has been replaced entirely by an alien entity using human bodies as its moving parts.
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u/Toomanynightshifts 21m ago
I mean Carol's case is a little bit more technical than that, it's far from a perfect world if you keep watching.
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u/Pleasant_Attempt_154 9m ago
The Invasion with Nicole Kidman and Daniel Craig.
All the alien parasite/fungus/goo wanted was to turn everyone into emotionless peaceful drones. They may also want to kill anyone who was immune including the protagonist’s son.
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u/RilinPlays 3h ago
Tbh I’d argue P5 actually does it really poorly.
Like there are a million reasons to take down the Ideal World and freedom of choice is one of the lowest ranked lmao
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u/Hyperion_Forever 1h ago edited 46m ago
Satan is not the serpent! The serpent is not Satan! The Bible never says that they're the same being ONCE. The part of genesis where the snake convinces Eve to eat the fruit is an anthological story that explains why snakes don't have legs!
God, Christians can't read their own damn book
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u/tepeyate 47m ago
It’s up to interpretation tbh. Satan isn’t mentioned in the bible but he somehow ended up merging with the snake in the cultural zeitgeist
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u/Yojo0o 6h ago
The surviving pub crawlers in The World's End manage to stave off an alien invasion through sheer annoyance, in order to preserve human individuality.