Basic Trope: The plot goes out of its way to convince the audience how awesome a character is.
- Straight: Alice mentions to Charlie how much she admires Bob's intelligence, but Bob's intelligence is an Informed Attribute thus far.
- Exaggerated:
- Alice exclaims that Bob is a genius, but every action he's taken has been rash, if not dangerously stupid.
- Alice begins her lengthy speech about how clever Bob is, right before Bob suddenly gets killed by slipping on a Banana Peel.
- Downplayed:
- Alice tells Charlie that Bob has been brought onto the team for his brilliant strategic mind. This is Bob's first episode, and this is the first we've seen or heard of him.
- Alice praises Bob's skills. In some episodes he makes good calls, but in others he screws up.
- Alice praises Bob's strategic mind. Bob's strategies are pretty good, but it's really because he knows his opponent whereas Alice does not. If she did, she could probably come up with a good strategy too.
- Justified:
- Bob is Colonel Edward's son. The heroes are in a position to treat Bob as a bigger deal than he really is.
- Bob is talked up about all the time because the characters constantly You Are Better Than You Think You Are speeches, because Bob's self-esteem is nonexistent.
- Bob saved Alice's life once in a rare moment of cleverness, so of course she's going to gush about him and see him as more intelligent than he really is.
- Alex and Bob are in a post apocalyptic setting, and Alex doesn't have the skills or the knowledge to stay alive for long without Bob. To increase his chances, Alex butters up Bob at every opportunity. Bob enjoys having his ego stroked too much to really notice...or care.
- Bob is everything that Alice says he is.
- Alice is hired by Bob as a shill.
- Bob is a dictator and he built a Cult of Personality around himself.
- Inverted: Alice tells Bob that Charlie is Dumb Muscle. In practice, he's shown to be remarkably inventive and clever in a pinch.
- Subverted:
- Alice turns out to be an Unreliable Narrator and Bob is everything but intelligent.
- Alice's heaping of unwarranted praise upon Bob is used to characterize her as a butt-kisser.
- Alice says she doesn't want to make any grand assumptions about Bob's intelligence...
- Turns out Alice's praise of Bob wasn't exaggerated.
- Double Subverted: ...But Colonel Edwards told her that Bob could very well be the greatest military genius of their lifetimes.
- Parodied: Bob is a giant chicken. Our heroes ask him for advice, he clucks, and everyone praises him for being a genius.
- Zig Zagged: Everyone lauds Bob as a brilliant strategist, but in his first battle, his plans fall apart and The Cavalry is routed and loses a significant strategic point. However, this is later revealed to be Bob's plan all along so their allies could capture two, even more significant points.
- Averted: No character is played up to be significantly better than their actions prove them to be.
- Enforced:
- The actor playing Dan left the show so Bob has very big shoes to fill and the writers want to insert him into the Dan roles of already-written episodes as soon as possible.
- It's the set-up for a Gossip Evolution Aesop.
- Lampshaded: "You're referring to the same brilliant mind that lost his spear and accidentally set his tent on fire not once but twice now, right?"
- Invoked: Emperor Evulz has his minions spread good rumors about Bob. He figures the commoners will believe anyone whose enemies speak well of him must be really good, set their expectations too high, and then be disheartened when he fails to live up to them.
- Exploited: Figuring that Bob can't live up to his reputation, Emperor Evulz deliberately sets up a trap to make Bob look foolish and crush his enemies' spirits.
- Defied: Bob refused to be a laughing stock, applies himself harder, and aspires to live up to his reptuation.
- Discussed: "You're just saying all this about Bob to get me to like him, aren't you?"
- Conversed: "Ever notice how sometimes when the audience isn't taking to a character the writers like, the writers then have the popular characters deliberately play up the person?"
- Played For Drama:
- Bob himself doesn't buy any of the shilling, feeling like he doesn't deserve it and that the others are overestimating his abilities. He starts underperforming on purpose to avoid the attention.
- After everyone makes Bob seem like an invincible badass, he loses quite quickly against the first person to challenge him. His reputation is forever lost.
Let's go back to Character Shilling because it's just the greatest!
