Basic Trope: Acts excessively macho and homophobic to conceal the fact that he's gay.
- Straight: Bob routinely goes on long diatribes about how he hates homosexuality. He turns out to be gay himself.
- Exaggerated: Bob is a Religious Stereotype preacher infamous for using The Bible as an excuse to bash gay people. It comes out that he has a history of paying for male escorts.
- Downplayed: Bob makes an offhanded comment about how he thinks homosexuality is morally wrong, and is actually bi-curious himself.
- Justified: Bob doesn't want anyone to know he's gay. So he acts as manly as he can or lets everyone know how manly he is and pretends he hates gays. After all, who would be prejudiced towards a group they're in, right?
- Inverted:
- Bob acts gay to conceal that he's homophobic.
- Bob acts like Het Is Ew in order to conceal the fact that he is heterosexual.
- Gender Inverted: Alice acts ridiculously feminine and constantly scoffs about lesbians while being secretly attracted to women herself.
- Subverted: Bob routinely goes on long diatribes about how he hates homosexuality. Other people suspect it may be due to his own hidden sexuality. It's not; he's straight.
- Double Subverted: ??
- Parodied:
- Bob spontaneously burst into an elaborate and flamboyant musical number to describe his hatred for gays. When an unsuspecting audience member lampshades All Gays Love Theater, Bob proceeds to bust his kneecaps, and then he goes back to his number.
- Alan and Bob are conservative politicians who regularly demonise homosexuality. They also live together, hold hands.
- Zig Zagged: ??
- Implied:
- Bob is a homophobe, but at one point he seems to check out a gay man in the midst of condemning him.
- Bob is a homophobe, but has an annoying habit of slapping the butts of his male friends, which he denies is gay.
- Averted: Bob is a completely heterosexual homophobe.
- Enforced: ??
- Lampshaded: "Seriously, Bob, for someone who hates gays so much you sure spend a lot of time touching them."
- Invoked: Bob's boss, who knows he's gay, shouts a homophobic slur at another man at the office to egg Bob into doing so as well.
- Exploited: Bob's coworker, who knows he's gay, provokes Bob into harassing a gay coworker so that Bob will be fired and he can take Bob's promotion.
- Defied: A trusted family friend of Bob's, knowing his behavior, comes out of the closet, forcing Bob to take steps towards coming out himself.
- Discussed: "How many after-school specials have you seen this in? There are two guys, a soft, sensitive one and one who beats the crap out of the other for being 'a fag.' Who's ALWAYS the gay one?"
- Conversed: "Wow, for someone who claims to hate gays as much as he does, Bob sure spends a lot of time ogling guys..."
- Deconstructed:
- Bob's shame over his orientation leads him to be Driven to Suicide because he can't reconcile his hatred of gays with the fact that he himself is gay.
- Bob has a group of friends who express similar beliefs to him, so when he finally comes out he has all homophobic friends. Other gay people who don't forgive him for how he acted before, despite now knowing it was an act. He's all alone with no one to turn to.
- Reconstructed:
- Bob is Manly Gay, but believes being openly flamboyant is disgusting. So as long as you act like a man and keep your homosexuality in private, he's fine with it.
- Played For Drama:
- Hating himself but eventually coming to terms with his sexuality is a large part of Bob's character arc.
- Bob gives a speech at a political convention condemning homosexuality. His boyfriend Alan, who was unaware of his political affiliation, is in the crowd and leaves heartbroken.
- Alan objects to Bob’s speech, reveals their relationship, begs Bob not to hate himself and pulls him into the Big Damn Kiss.
- Bob is living in an authoritarian regime where homosexuality is illegal, and has to pretend to be homophobic to avoid drawing any suspicion from the authorities.
- Played For Horror:
- Bob was initially making steps towards coming out of the closet and moving on from his internalized homophobia, but he still has many more personal flaws and past trauma baggage from his homophobic upbringing for himself and his Closet Key (and Living Emotional Crutch) Alan to deal with. Ultimately, Alan could not deal with Bob's abusive behavior anymore, and ends up breaking up with him and leaving him. Alan also warns other people about the sheer amount of domestic abuse that Bob put Alan through, and Bob ended up making himself too much of a pariah to ever find love with another man ever again. In the aftermath of breaking his own heart by mistreating the man he claimed to love, Bob welds himself back into the closet with bloody spikes and doubling down on his homophobic ways worse than ever before. With no options left for finding a new love interest, Bob turns himself into a horrifyingly ruthless and twistedly hypocritical Heteronormative Crusader; a Right-Wing Militia Fanatic in public, and a Depraved Homosexual with a bloodthirsty penchant for sexually assaulting other men - especially other gay men - in private.
Back to Armoured Closet Gay.
