Basic Trope: A mean, cruel, arrogant, or plain unsympathetic character is broken by circumstance.
- Straight: Bob is an incredibly arrogant CEO. After a few years of arrogance, his company has a misfortune that causes him to lose millions — and subsequently lose his company.
- Exaggerated: Bob's an arrogant CEO who loses his company, his wife, his children, his bathtub, and gets treated with Tar and Feathers for everyone to see.
- Downplayed:
- One of the company's projects doesn't do well, but Bob keeps his position and becomes more humble, learning from his mistakes.
- Humble Pie.
- Justified: Because Bob was so arrogant, he failed to see that a competitor was working hard on a product that would make his signature product obsolete.
- Inverted:
- Bob's an incredibly humble office worker who, after years of hard work, is finally rewarded.
- Bob acts increasingly more arrogant as a way to mask how much he's being broken inside.
- Subverted:
- It seems like Bob is due for a big fall, but he gets out of it at the last minute.
- Bob seems to be humbled, but has just traded open arrogance for sneering, two-faced cunning.
- Double Subverted: Only to be broken by something else unrelated.
- Parodied: It's clear that Bob's failure is attributable to outside influences (e.g. market conditions), but everyone still insists that Bob was crushed by his own hubris.
- Zig Zagged: It seems like Bob's due for a big fall, but he gets out of it... but something else comes along to bite him in the ass...but it seems like he'll be OK.
- Averted: Bob's arrogance is never called into question.
- Enforced: "If there's one thing I know about writing TV, it's that the arrogant guy always gets his in the end!"
- Lampshaded: "I was crushed by my own hubris!"
- Invoked: Bob is reading a newspaper which highlights the inventions of his opponent, but he decides to ignore it because he thinks he's too skilled.
- Exploited: ???
- Defied:
- Bob realizes how arrogant he is pre-breaking, and decides to start becoming a better person.
- Alternately, Bob is able to see the various ways his arrogance might hurt his company and counters them, without actually being any less arrogant.
- Bob is utterly delusional, and his ego is completely unassailable. The 'breaking' is summarily ignored and/or justified, or even twisted into evidence of his greatness, and Bob walks away from the debacle more arrogant than ever. He blames everyone else for his fall from grace, since he's firmly trapped in a "Never My Fault" mentality.
- Discussed: ???
- Conversed: "I was so pleased to see Bob broken, humiliated and reduced to smithereens! He was so asking for it!"
- Implied: The arrogant Bob is Put on a Bus, and when he returns, he is not only much less arrogant, but shows signs of trauma.
- Deconstructed:
- A surprisingly optimistic deconstruction; Bob, after experiencing this trope one too many times, becomes more humble or at least reins in his own ego for once. He's now willing to share the spotlight with, if not step out of it for, other successful people who earned the spotlight.
- The breaking done to Bob ends up being far too excessive because the breakers are filled with contempt, rage and anger at Bob, and want his pain to be so thorough that he'll never forget it. And it ends up working too well. Bob is reduced to such a broken, miserable shell of a man that he basically gives up on life completely, too frightened and scared for his life to even begin to change...or do anything at all.
- Reconstructed: And an equally pessimistic reconstruction; Even for all his humility, if Bob ever gets even the slightest bit of pride within him, some godly force rains awfulness down upon him to retract the little pride that was in him.
- Played For Laughs: Bob's company just happens to be one currently reviled by the viewing public. (Enron, BP, Halliburton, etc.)
- Played For Drama: Bob is his family's sole source of income; his arrogance not only puts his job at risk, but their financial stability. His attitude also has impacted his children, turning one into a spoiled diva angling for her own breaking and the other into a nervous wreck longing for the day he can finally call the old man out.
Back to Break the Haughty.
