History Main / TricksterMentor

-->'''Bastard''': "No. Not You. Granted, you tumble and complain halfway to the abyss, but eventually you do spread your wings and soar."

* Subverted in ''WerewolfTheApocalypse'' with the Nuwisha werecoyotes. The Nuwisha see themselves as trickster mentors to the Garou and other Fera, but judging from the other tribebooks, their "lessons" produce confusion, embarassment, or anger more often than enlightenment.

* Dron the Dragon from ''AMagicalRoommate'', though not always in a good way- he tries to shake his students out of the 'learn what they tell you and don't think for yourself' mentality by forcing them to question everything and everyone, but fails to see that students need something reliable to trust, or they can't do anything.

* Vriska in ''HomeStuck'' subverts this. She believes herself to be a Trickster Mentor to [[TheWoobie Tavros]] by constantly heckling him and [[spoiler: forcing him into an unwinnable situation that lead to him being paralyzed]] because she thought it would make him a stronger person. She later admits that she was really just being a [[JerkAss bitch]] because she despised his doormat personality.

* In many ways, the SilverAge {{Superman}} was one of these, particularly to his pal Jimmy Olsen and his girlfriend, Lois Lane (as well as his various other girlfriends). There are countless stories where Superman puts his loved ones through various sorts of Hell in order to teach them lame moral lessons. For Jimmy, the lessons often boiled down to "don't drink things you're not supposed to;" for Lois, they usually were "stop trying to find out my secret identity/trick me into marrying you." For the readers, the lesson was "[[SuperDickery Superman is a dick]]."
** The Super-Teacher From Krypton was a robot built by Jor-El to teach his son. Of course, then the planet blew up... but by a fluke, the robot survived (a ''lot'' of Kryptonian stuff survived in the SilverAge) and eventually found Kal-El as a [[{{Superboy}} teenager]] on Earth. The robot took it upon itself to guide him in the wise use of his powers. The robot appeared twice, once in the SilverAge and then once in the BronzeAge. In both cases, it acted like an incredibly high-handed and manipulative JerkAss, and while Clark had to admit he had learned valuable lessons from it, he was ''very'' glad when the wretched thing took off back into outer space. [[FridgeBrilliance So maybe this is where Supes picked up these same qualities when "mentoring" people as an adult.]]

* Willy Wonka in ''WillyWonkaAndTheChocolateFactory'' and ''CharlieAndTheChocolateFactory'' is a variation. Gene Wilder, who played him in 1971, beautifully summarizes this trope with the story of agreeing to do the film on one condition: he wanted to make his entrance with a cane, limping, then suddenly somersaulting, "Because from that point on, no one will know if I'm telling the truth or lying." The director agreed to it, and the rest is history.

* King Bumi for the duration of "The King of Omashu" on ''WesternAnimation/AvatarTheLastAirbender''.

** He tries to teach Sam that he can't save Dean from dying and going to hell because of his deal by sticking Sam in a GroundhogLoop where Dean ends up dying in increasingly ridiculous ways every repetition and Sam can't stop it from happening. Arguably, this just ends up making Sam ''more'' desperate.
** In a later episode, he sticks the boys in TVLand and makes them play out the "roles" they are cast in in each show to try to get them to "play their roles" in the coming apocalypse. He ends up having a much more selfish motive in this one: [[spoiler: because he's Gabriel, who ran away from heaven because his brothers were fighting each other, and he want Michael and Lucifer to have their showdown because "I just want it to be over!".]]

* The Trickster from ''Series/{{Supernatural}}''. Half the time he's teaching a lesson, and the other half he's just killing for fun. Oh, and [[spoiler: [[LightIsNotGood he's an]] [[OurAngelsAreDifferent archangel]].]] Arguably, he is always teaching someone a lesson, these just usually [[AesopAmnesia go over the recipient's head]]. Often because said head is rolling away.

* John Constantine the ''{{Hellblazer}}'' is a mentor to Timothy Hunter in ''{{Books of Magic}}''. Because of John's profession as con man, he sometime pranks Tim, sometimes to the point of endangering the kid's life.

* In ''Webcomic/TheDragonDoctors'', when [[http://www.drunkduck.com/The_Dragon_Doctors/5089994/ Kili summons the Capricious Spirit of Love in Chapter 2]], the spirit acts as one for her.

* Mr. Miyagi from ''TheKarateKid'', as a particularly iconic example.

* In ''TheGrifters'', Roy Dillon (John Cusack) finds a ConMan and asks to be taught how to be a grifter. The man agrees and gives him some advice. At the end of their conversation the man asks Dillon for $10. After Dillon gives it to him, the man says "Come around tomorrow, I'll take you again."
* "The Old Man", of ''TheGoldenChild'', played by none other than Victor Wong, who would later go on to play Egg Chen in ''BigTroubleInLittleChina''. His first appearance to Eddie Murphy's Chandler Jarrell has him pretending to be a Tibetan street vendor selling junk jewelry, and scamming Jarrell out of money as a SecretTestOfCharacter.
* PlayedForLaughs in ''{{Dodgeball}}'', where the team's mentor, Patches O'Houlihan, [[TrainingFromHell goes so far as to throw wrenches at the players]], declaring that "if you can dodge a wrench, you can dodge a ball".

* Buddy in ''AngerManagement''.
* Lionel Logue in ''TheKingsSpeech''.

** There was also a story arc in Season 4 where Kutner uses House's name for an online-diagnosis site without House's knowledge or consent. When House finds out, he submits a fake medical problem to the site, pretending to be a woman with faulty breast implants. When Kutner continues to try to treat the "patient" on his own, House hires a prostitute to come in posing as the patient from the website.

* This is George Bluth's parenting style on ''Series/ArrestedDevelopment''. Whenever his kids misbehaved when they were young, George would hire a man who had lost an arm working for the Bluth company to help stage an accident, making the kids think that a random stranger had lost an arm because they were ignoring their father's advice.

* The entire [[IncrediblyLamePun Allalie]] family qualifies, especially Henry/Verey and Callan. Henry attempts to change his mother by showing her illusions and always asks the question, [[ArcWords "What did you learn?"]] Callan attempts to do this for Jake but fails- Jake just becomes angry and confused. The family also tricks [[TheAlcoholic: an alcoholic journalist]] into giving up drinking.

* The entire [[IncrediblyLamePun Allalie]] family qualifies, especially Henry/Verey and Callan. Henry attempts to change his mother by showing her illusions and always asks the question, [[ArcWords "What did you learn?"]] Callan attempts to do this for Jake but fails- Jake just becomes angry and confused. The family also tricks [[The Alcoholic: an alcoholic journalist]] into giving up drinking.

* Willy Wonka in ''CharlieAndTheChocolateFactory'' is a variation. Gene Wilder, who played him in 1971, beautifully summarizes this trope with the story of agreeing to do the film on one condition: he wanted to make his entrance with a cane, limping, then suddenly somersaulting, "Because from that point on, no one will know if I'm telling the truth or lying." The director agreed to it, and the rest is history.

* ''Manga/{{InuYasha}}''. Toutousai has played this role for both Inuyasha and Sesshoumaru, with much reluctance and by unpredictably combining this trope with ObfuscatingInsanity, LetsGetDangerous and OlderAndWiser. It's the only way he can get the two HairTriggerTemper sons of his late master to achieve the CharacterDevelopment their father desperately wanted them to undergo. The anime once toyed with this in a filler episode that was PlayedForLaughs, by having Inuyasha think Toutousai was giving him WaxOnWaxOff style training when really Toutousai just wanted someone to do all the heavy lifting to make him a hot outdoor bath.

* Sometimes, the blacksmith Totosai towards ''InuYasha''. Though other times Inuyasha just misunderstands what the blacksmith asks of him as training.