Basic Trope: A character who mainly exists to argue and point out flaws in ideas.
- Straight: Bob is a member of the Awesome Hero Team, but his role is mainly to argue with the hero, Jack, as well as to point out what he thinks are flaws in his logic.
- Exaggerated:
- Bob is pretty much incapable of agreeing with anyone. Not even to agree that they are not going to agree.
- Whenever Jack changes his opinion, Bob changes his to remain the opposite of Jack.
- Downplayed:
- Bob argues more often than not, but also agrees a fair amount of the time.
- Bob's arguments are more along the lines of Constructive Criticism. "Yeah, this might work, but it might be better if we do this instead..."
- Justified:
- Bob is playing Devil's Advocate—he doesn't disagree with the plan, he just wants to make sure Jack thinks everything through before he leads the team into danger.
- Bob knows something that Jack, as well as possibly the rest of the team, doesn't.
- Jack really is an idiot, and Bob knows it.
- Bob really, really wants some attention.
- Bob is The Rival to Jack (or has some other kind of enmity) and refuses to give the other guy any victory, even one as tiny as agreeing on ice cream flavors.
- Jack is a Control Freak. In his eyes, anything Bob says or does that is not following his commands promptly and exactly makes him an example of this trope.
- Inverted:
- Bob immediately and completely agrees with anything Jack suggests.
- Whenever Bob makes a suggestion, Jack pulls rank on him and bullies him into silence.
- Bob's ideas are always better than Jack's, but for some strange reason he can't seem to find inspiration unless it's in the middle of disagreeing with Jack.
- Subverted: Jack suggests a plan, and everyone looks at Bob. He says "Good plan."
- Double Subverted: "...if you were to do this and this, that is..."
- Parodied:
- Bob can't agree with anyone on anything, no matter the topic. If Jack wants to order pizza for dinner, Bob will suggest Chinese. If Jack suggests swimming for their recreational activity, Bob will suggest hiking, and so forth.
- Bob argues with commercials on TV.
- Zig Zagged: Jack proposes a plan that Bob objects to angrily. Only it was actually all a ruse to convince Alice, who was spying on them, that they can't get along. But privately, they still can’t agree on an actual plan.
- Averted: Bob only dissents when he has a personal reason to object to the plan, but no more than that.
- Enforced: Jack and Bob have to represent both defense and prosecution in a trial, Bob has to disagree with Jack or the Real Life attorneys will complain that it should've end up a mistrial.
- Lampshaded: "Anyone have any objections to the plan? Of course... what's the problem, Bob?"
- Invoked:
- Bob is hit with a curse that makes him disagreeable, so this is the end result.
- Bob is put on the team specifically because his opinions differ from Jack's, ensuring that Jack will always have another point of view to consider.
- Exploited:
- Emperor Evulz sees Bob and Jack arguing and tries to convert Jack ("...you can't even control your own team..."), Bob ("...he's not listening to you..."), or both.
- Bob was accepted onto the team solely for his ability to point out flaws others might not see.
- Defied: "Anyway, that's the plan. And I don't wanna hear anything to the contrary, Bob."
- Discussed: “Jack, it’s not that I disagree because I don’t like you. It’s because I think your plans are really, really dumb.”
- Conversed: “You know, with all their arguing, I’m starting to wonder if the shows writers want us to think Bob has a crush on Jack.”
- Implied:
- Jack comes up with a plan. It's not discussed on-screen, but he and Bob leave the meeting looking very annoyed with each other.
- "Bob AGREED to the plan?!" "F-f-from the g-g-get go." "Something is seriously wrong here." "Yeah…"
- Deconstructed:
- Bob argues with and criticizes Jack so much that team cohesion completely falls apart.
- Jack comes up with a plan, and Bob immediately starts arguing with him—except they're in an emergency and don't have time to argue. As a result, everything goes south because they argued instead of doing anything useful.
- Bob seemingly never agrees with Jack's ideas no matter how good they actually are and as a result loses all credibility with the team once they figure out he's just going to go against whatever Jack says.
- Reconstructed:
- It's a pain in the neck to deal with Bob, but he's a pretty driven Devil's Advocate and as a result any plans that don't need to be improvised within the next five seconds tend to become quite flawless.
- The team works things out with Bob who doesn't have to change his ways but instead becomes a decent sounding board for the quality of Jack's plans. If Bob's arguments become flimsy, they know they've struck gold.
- When Bob is right, he's right, and the universe seems to love making him right when he is arguing with Jack. As much as the rest of the team hates it, they just can't afford to ditch one of their more reliable sources of wisdom.
- Played For Laughs:
- While making pizza, Jack wants to put on extra pepperoni while Bob demands mushrooms instead. A Food Fight ensues.
- Jack's opinions are always well-informed and sensible. Bob's opinions are always driven by Insane Troll Logic.
- Jack is stuck in a "Groundhog Day" Loop which requires Bob cooperating with him (or, much worse yet, that Bob will agree with him on something) for it to be resolved. Bob never, ever does, no matter what Jack does to try to convince him. We get a very long Failure Montage that gets increasingly absurd as it goes on, including Jack and Bob yelling Duck Season, Rabbit Season, and Jack develops a nervous tick whenever he has to talk to Bob.
- Played For Drama:
- After listening to another one of Bob's criticisms, Jack yells at him to get lost—and he does. Then it turns out that Bob was right, leaving Jack guilt-ridden over driving away a valuable ally.
- Bob's refusal to cooperate with or even respect the opinions of anyone else makes any friendships he can make quickly take a nosedive.
- As things go From Bad to Worse and Jack refuses to agree with Bob in literally anything, the rest of the crew pulls the string and find out that Jack has Irrational Hatred for Bob. The question now is how long is it going to take for Jack to get them all (hopefully only nearly) killed for the sake of satisfying his hatred.
- Played For Horror: Jack is so driven to shut Bob up that murder attempts soon follow. People don't try to step up to offer ideas because they are really afraid of what Jack may try to do to them if he disagrees.
I'm not so sure you should go back to Commander Contrarian.
