Basic Trope: It looks and/or sounds cool, but the flashiness notably outstrips the usefulness.
- Straight: The Demonica is a gun that has an awesome texture and tons of areas it can shoot from, but it shoots every other decade and causes very little damage.
- Exaggerated: The Demonica is as big as the moon and has several areas where it can fire, has a badass texture, and is purple and red all over... and it does no damage. Heck, it doesn't even sell well.
- Downplayed: Awesome, but Impractical: The Demonica does shoot fast and has good damage, but the ammo is ungodly expensive.
- Justified:
- The wiring in the Demonica was eaten by Natterites, making it very ineffective.
- The Demonica is a prototype that didn't have all it's flaws worked out yet.
- It may be a long forgotten fact but the Demonica is a Starting Pistol
.note
- Inverted:
- Boring, but Practical: The Despit is small and a dull brown color, but the ammo is cheap and it has a good DPS, so it can be pretty effective.
- Simple, yet Awesome: The Despit is little more than a silver handgun, but it's so powerful that Bob doesn't care what it looks like.
- Subverted:
- The Demonica has a very bad DPS rate, but once you upgrade it, it starts to get better...
- The Demonica has a billion bad details but it can unleash a One-Hit Kill on any enemy.
- Double Subverted:
- ...for 2 hours. Then it reverts back to its crappy original form.
- Turns out that the Demonica only works that way if you have 100% Completion. By that time, it really doesn't matters what you use to kill enemies.
- Parodied: The Demonica looks like it was forged from hellstone and created by a Physical God Eldritch Abomination, and it is true... Except it does no damage. Heck, you do more damage to your enemies by throwing a peanut at them.
- Zig-Zagged: The Demonica is a bad weapon, but then you upgrade it, turning it into a crutch weapon, then you upgrade it again, turning it into a Game-Breaker.
- Averted:
- The Demonica is awesome looking, and has proportionate power.
- The Demonica looks like a bootlegged children's toy, and has proportionate power.
- Enforced:
- The game is based on the Demonica, and the moral of the game is to not judge a book by its cover.
- In a previous installment, the Demonica was an outright Game-Breaker. Some fans liked this, but some did not. To appease both camps, the Demonica was made into a cool weapon with serious weaknesses.
- Lampshaded: "But this weapon looks so cool! How is it so bad!?"
- Invoked: The Center for Really Awesome Pistols designs the Demonica to look good but perform badly, because "That'll mess with them."
- Exploited: Bob tries to use his newly-found Demonica on Emperor Evulz, and finds out that it's actually the worst weapon in his arsenal. Emperor Evulz takes him out while the hero was shocked by his terrible weapon.
- Defied: The Demonica is a weapon that always grows more and more powerful as time goes on, meaning it will never be useless.
- Discussed: ???
- Conversed: ???
- Implied: "Hey, what's that gun over there! It looks awesome!" "Hm? The Demonica? That's incredibly weak. You wouldn't want that."
Back to Cool, but Inefficient
