Basic Trope: Male character grows a beard to signify he's depressed.
- Straight: Bob lost someone close to him, and his Perma-Stubble grows out fully.
- Exaggerated: After a particularly bad night, Bob has a beard the size of the rest of his face.
- Downplayed:
- Bob only goes from clean-shaven to having Perma-Stubble.
- Bob stops taking care of his beard, causing it to go from neatly cropped to shaggy.
- Bob is usually bald or has a crewcut, but lets his hair grow out while in mourning.
- Justified:
- "I'm just too depressed to shave in the morning. Are you happy?"
- The incident that made Bob depressed also caused him a severe injury that made him unable to shave his beard somehow. For instance, he had to have his arms amputated.
- Bob thinks the beard makes him look cooler and makes him feel slightly less awful.
- Inverted:
- Bob shaves off his beard to make a break with his past.
- Bob grows a beard to signify that Bob Took a Level in Cheerfulness.
- Gender Inverted:
- Alice, a woman that grows facial hair stops depilating it after she loses someone close to her.
- Alice, a tomboy who usually keeps her hair short, lets it grow to mid-length while grieving.
- Subverted: "I'm not depressed. I just realized that my scar would be less distracting if I grew a beard over it."
- Double Subverted: "I'm not depressed, I just thought I'd see what I look like with a beard." He's lying.
- Parodied:
- People in the series can tell any man's current emotional state just by examining the length of their beard.
- Alice feels depressed one day and puts on a fake beard to show it.
- A bushy beard suddenly grows on Bob whenever he feels slightly sad, let alone depressed.
- Zig Zagged: The character grows out a beard because his Half-Identical Psychic-Linked Twin lost her boyfriend.
- Averted: Bob continues shaving as normal after the trauma.
- Enforced: "The actor wanted to grow a beard and have more serious plotlines. We decided to mix the two."
- Lampshaded: "Depressed, huh?" "How could you tell?" "You haven't shaved."
- Invoked: Bob stopped shaving because his Girlfriend in Canada "dumped him," "leaving" him single.
- Exploited: Charlie opens a combination psychiatric counseling facility and barber shop.
- Defied: The character makes a conscious decision to keep up personal appearances despite his depression.
- Discussed: "What did you expect, to find me sprawled on the couch in despair, not having shaved or washed for weeks? We only went on two dates."
- Conversed: "Is this the episode where Bob starts growing the beard?" "Nope, that was the one where Bob lost his parents."
- Deconstructed: Growing a beard is part of the hero's collapse into outright catatonic stupor, leading to an extended narrative of the miserable life and eventual suicide of an undiagnosed sufferer of bipolar disorder.
- Reconstructed: Growing out a beard is a deliberate reaction, a change of appearance that the hero chooses to signify his new mental state. Bob plans to shave it off if he's ready to feel good again.
Grow a Beard of Sorrow.
