Basic Trope: A paper-pushing character is revealed to be surprisingly badass - either through "normal" things like surprising fighting skills and awesome stunts, or through impressive uses of bureaucracy.
- Straight:
- Fred is a Ridiculously Average Guy working a normal job in a Vast Bureaucracy... but when someone comes to him with a grievous injustice heaped upon them, or a Matter of Life and Death that must be resolved here and now, he will cut through any amount of red tape to set things right.
- Fred is seemingly an average guy working a normal job in a Vast Bureaucracy... but he is also a Stealth Expert and master gunfighter living a life Beneath Notice, who is sometimes called upon by the civil service to fight the criminal underworld, corrupt officials, or Nebulous Evil Organizations.
- Exaggerated:
- Fred is a One-Man Army and World's Best Warrior who has repeatedly saved the entire planet, yet he still sticks to his ordinary bureaucratic job whenever his fighting skills are not needed.
- The Vast Bureaucracy actually has an entire department of The Chosen Many, whose job is to safeguard the world from various evils and who fight with weapons made from or disguised as normal office tools and accessories.
- Downplayed:
- Fred is a Retired Badass in an ordinary bureaucratic job, and doesn't really do anything cool anymore - but can always be relied on to dispense sage advice.
- Fred is an Obstructive Bureaucrat who happens to know right from wrong, and while frustrating to deal with, he occasionally does some real good by obstructing and rooting out bureaucratic and political corruption whenever he comes across something fishy.
- Justified:
- Fred is a Paperworkaholic of a highest degree, and also a textbook Nice Guy - so when someone comes to him with a serious issue, it's a matter of priciple for him to help.
- Fred has not always been a bureaucrat - he used to be a field agent for his country's intelligence service, with all the training and expertise that implies, but he was eventually promoted to a Desk Jockey status, and now is only occasionally called upon to solve problems with hands-on fighting.
- Fred knows the policies of the Vast Bureaucracy inside and out. He's simply using malicious compliance to get away with representing his clients more than his Pointy-Haired Boss.
- Inverted:
- Fred is a Beleaguered Bureaucrat who can't even handle his normal duties, much less go above and beyond them.
- Fred is a badass Action Hero who has gotten good with filling out all the Hero Insurance paperwork he regularly incurs.
- Subverted:
- A group of people come to Fred with their paperwork, having heard of his reputation as a badass who can make the bureaucracy sing and dance for him... but he turns out to be an Obstructive Bureaucrat, with banal motivations and a pedestrian outlook on life, and the group quickly leaves when they see his reputation is unwarranted.
- The viewers see a sequence of Fred using guns and gadgets to infiltrate a highly-guarded location - but then it turns out he was just daydreaming.
- Double Subverted:
- The Obstructive Bureaucrat persona was just an act; Fred, being privy to how people and the system work, only brings out his true skills when he knows there really is something at stake.
- Fred was daydreaming of what he could legitimately be doing right now, instead of a particularly difficult and irritating stretch of paperwork.
- Parodied: Fred is a bureaucracy-themed superhero who has literally Minored in Ass-Kicking when getting his degrees in Accounting and Project Management, always comes to work with a Utility Belt of superhero gadgets that his co-workers pay no mind to, and uses a Briefcase Blaster as a weapon - when he's not burying his enemies in paperwork, figuratively or literally.
- Zig Zagged: Fred is an overworked, bureaucracy-mired Pen-Pushing President... of a massive government or paramilitary organization where intrigue and subterfuge is the order of the day, every day, staying near the top of the hierarchy is in itself a remarkable achievement that sometimes involves punching out your opponents, and the person at the helm, though limited in agency, wields immense power by simply being the face of a powerful and notorious power on the world stage.
- Averted: Fred is a perfectly ordinary bureaucrat, and when push comes to shove, he defers to people who are more badass than him to solve the problems, rather than run into the line of fire himself.
- Enforced: The head writer thinks that bureaucrats get a bad rap, and decides to create a character for his new hero team who'd be the antithesis of inefficiency and indifference that people expect from the civil service.
- Lampshaded: "Hey, did you hear that yesterday people saw Fred leaping from car to car out on the highway? I'm jealous of whoever had that in a betting pool!"
- Invoked:
- Fred was always a Badass Bookworm Guile Hero, and after landing a job in the bureaucracy, he quickly got a hobby of studying its policies inside and out - so that he can do his job easily and help people as much as he can via knowledge of all the procedures and all the useful loopholes therein.
- The Vast Bureaucracy holds training seminars and qualification improvement courses to teach its bureaucrats martial arts, parkour, and marksmanship; the reasons why that is considered necessary are either Classified Information or lost to obscurity.
- Exploited:
- Fred is a hero endowed with Paper Master powers - and this means that him being a desk worker in a sprawling bureaucratic office is like being barricaded in an impregnable fortress every work day from nine to five.
- Fred uses the stereotyped image of "petty, none-too-bright paper-pusher" to hide in plain sight - after all, no-one is going to figure that an average bureaucratic worker like him is capable of singlehandedly moving the gears of the system with his expertise.
- Defied:
- Fred is trying to stay Beneath Notice for whatever reason, and becoming a notoriously badass bureaucrat would compromise that goal - so he either avoids becoming too good, or keeps his real skill in reserve as a last-ditch option.
- Fred is a rather competent bureaucrat, but he only does as much as the job and his clients require of him, so that he can enjoy all the extra time off and a good work-life balance.
- Discussed: "Hey, you're the new guy in the office, right?" "Yeah. What's up?" "Oh, I just want to warn you - don't mess with Fred. If you do, you'll end up either buried in red tape, or with him giving you a boot up your ass." "Really?" "Yes, really! He's a nice guy, though, so you can just ask him if you don't believe me."
- Conversed:Alice: "Did you see that episode of 'Bureaucracy Busters' last night?"Bob: "Yeah, it was hilarious how they had the meek office clerk turn out to be a secret agent. Talk about playing with tropes!"
- Implied:
- Fred walks into work a little scruffy and beaten-up, and when his colleague asks him if he got into a fight recently, he replies with "Yeah, but they've got to try harder than that to stop me from coming here at 9AM sharp!"
- Some character passes Fred's desk as it's literally buried in paperwork; in ten minutes, they pass it again and there isn't a single piece of paper left in the inbox.
- The background signs in office scenes show directions for getting to, among other things, a gym, a dojo, and an armory; no-one, not even the visitors, pay them any mind.
- Played For Laughs:
- Fred is a bit-part Recurring Extra, unassuming at first glance but possessing bureaucratic know-how so profound and dangerous that it tips over straight into Enlightenment Superpowers, and his direction by superiors follows the rule of "One Riot, One Ranger".
- Fred is a Hypercompetent Sidekick who constantly has to counterbalance and obstruct his department's Pointy-Haired Boss and solve problems that feel like they'd take an impossible amount of stupidity to create, but he manages to take all of that in stride.
- Played For Drama:
- Fred is using his courage and bureaucratic know-how to wage a one-man internal war against a tyrannical regime where it's illegal to help people, disregarding the great personal risk to save others with his expert rules-lawyering.
- Fred is a high-profile government investigator whose work can be risky as-is - but the story kicks off when he discovers a gigantic embezzlement scheme that siphoned off billions in tax money to who-knows-where, and from that moment, his efforts to get proof and protect himself from retaliation rest entirely on his rule-fu being stronger than that of his enemies.
- Played For Horror:
- "Fred" is the most badass bureaucrat there ever was... because they are a Slender Man-like being arisen from the abstract concept of bureaucracy itself, and will descend upon anyone who dares to contravene any of the myriad rules and regulations they watch over; getting on their bad side, whatever your reasons, is not a good idea.
- Fred is a bureaucrat working for an Artifact Collection Agency and/or The Men in Black, and has to be pretty damn badass just to survive working with some of the stuff that his agency routinely contains or thwarts.
- Deconstructed: The impracticality of relying on a paper-pushing character to be a badass is highlighted as Fred's actions often create unintended consequences and chaos within the system, emphasizing the importance of following established processes.
- Reconstructed: Fred learns from his actions and becomes an advocate for reforming the bureaucracy, effectively combining his bureaucratic knowledge with his badass abilities to achieve positive change and solve problems.
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