Basic Trope: A character apologizes often, even when it really isn't called for.
- Straight: Polly Puregood often issues unnecessary apologies.
- Exaggerated:
- Every or nearly every sentence out of Polly's mouth is an apology, even when it's totally apropos of nothing.
- Polly apologizes for apologizing.
- Downplayed: If Polly does something wrong, she usually apologizes regardless of whether it's a big deal or not.
- Justified:
- Polly is The Jinx, so it's only natural that she apologizes for the trouble she causes others.
- Polly has self-esteem issues.
- Polly was taught as a child that it is polite to apologize, even when it isn't her fault. Polly is just exhibiting good manners.
- Polly has Push Over Parents whom she got this trait from.
- Polly has Abusive Parents, or an abusive partner, and the abuser has broken her down to the point that she reflexively apologises for even the smallest things.
- Inverted:
- Pansy Purebad is a Jerkass who rarely if ever apologizes for anything she does wrong.
- Lynne Dignant constantly demands apologies from others.
- Subverted: Polly would apologize if she could, but every time she tries, she gets silenced or distracted.
- Double Subverted: Eventually this gets to a point where she yells over everything in order to apologize… and in the stunned silence, apologizes for yelling.
- Parodied:
- Polly is a pull-string puppet whose phrases include "I'm sorry," "I'm so sorry," "Please forgive me," and "My apologies for that."
- Polly apologizes for apologizing about his apology, itself an apology to another few apologies.
- Zig Zagged:
- Polly constantly apologizes to those who she considers her friends, but never apologizes to her enemies.
- Polly apologizes constantly for small, miniscule "mistakes", like accidentally bumping into people, but she refuses to own up to more serious screwups, like the argument she had with her (former) best friend.
- Averted: Polly only apologizes when it's appropriate to do so.
- Enforced:
- The writers wanted a character who apologizes a lot to contrast the other characters' lack of manners.
- The writers wanted to highlight Polly's Incorruptible Pure Pureness and does this by making her extremely polite.
- Lampshaded:Bob: Polly, would you quit apologizing for everything?Polly: I'm so-...I mean, uh, my bad. Wait, that's not... I'll try. No problem.
- Invoked:
- Polly knows that her constant apologizing habit annoys people, so she does it just to get on their nerves.
- Polly is a Faux Affably Evil character who uses her extremely polite demeanor as a cover-up for her heinous personality.
- Exploited: Bob subtly pushes Alice in Polly's way so that he can escape unnoticed behind the noise of Polly's excessive apologies to Alice.
- Defied: Polly tapes her mouth shut so that she doesn't annoy people with her constant apologies.
- Discussed: "Polly, please stop. We get it, you're sorry."
- Conversed: "Say, you ever notice how ever other sentence out of the mouth of the girl on that show seems to be an apology of some sort?"
- Deconstructed: Polly gets on everyone's nerves and drives them away with her constant apologies, which aggravates the self deprecation issues that drove her to apologize a lot in the first place.
- Reconstructed: Polly partially recovers from her disorder (whether through force or through enlightenment ) and manages to tone down her apologies… but not before apologizing for being obnoxious.
- Played For Laughs: A maudlin soundtrack plays every time Polly issues another of her apologies.
- Played For Drama: Polly's constant apologies cause people to tune her out, leading to a life-threatening situation when no one hears her urgent cries for help.
I'm sorry, you probably just want to go back to Apologizes a Lot. A thousand apologies for wasting your time with this.
