Basic Trope: Characters who act dramatically a lot of the time, or at least when they have little reason to.
- Straight: Bob bursts into tears, screams hysterically, and faints upon seeing a small dent on his car bumper.
- Exaggerated:
- Bob bursts into tears and hysterical sobbing, then flies into a rage equivalent to the Postal Dude over the wrong type of coffee in the office coffeemaker.
- Hysterical Woman
- Downplayed: Bob quietly complains to himself about everything and spreads rumors about people he doesn't like.
- Justified:
- Bob's car was a Lamborghini that he bought with a $350,000 lottery windfall. That bumper will be $5000, which he now doesn't have to fix it because he spent all the money on the car.
- Someone put "biker coffee" in the coffeemaker - on the day of the office drug test.
- Bob has a personality disorder and has difficulty reacting in an appropriate manner.
- Inverted:
- Alice is The Stoic, walking out of the ashes of her family home in the Doomed Hometown without even a whimper.
- Bob has a mental illness but one with flat/blunted affect, so he responds to the news that he is about to be arrested for a heinous crime with "Yeah" and a Thousand-Yard Stare.
- Bob is the only character that who reacts proportionately to situations.
- Subverted: Bob's car is The Alleged Car, and he practically is overwhelmed with happiness when he sees it smashed to pieces when a big rig tried to park - so much he throws his arms around the trucker and dances with him before effusively thanking him - finally, he's rid of his dad's Yugo! Finally!
- Double Subverted: But when Bob's dad finds out and yells at him for it, he starts to throw a hissy fit.
- Parodied:
- Bob's Comical Overreacting and crying is so long, he's obligated to take a deep breath during it before continuing.
- Bob stares blankly for ten seconds before suddenly Comical Overreacting and crying.
- Bob is prompted to go into Comical Overreacting and crying by the most minor and trivial of problems.
- Bob starts to go into Comical Overreacting and crying to the sky. A few seconds after he starts, a choir shows up out of nowhere and joins him.
- Bob's Comical Overreacting is used as an Overly Long Gag.
- Zig Zagged: See Played Straight, Subverted, and Double Subverted. Bob looks like he's going to throw a hissy fit. However he manages to calm himself down.
- Averted: Bob rarely ever overreacts.
- Enforced: ???
- Lampshaded: "Take it easy Bob, it's just a dent!"
- Invoked: ???
- Exploited: ???
- Defied: Bob keeps his temper in check, not wanting others to view him in a bad light because he openly made a fuss over a trivial mishap.
- Discussed: "There goes Bob making another ambiguously threatening vaguebook post about someone he doesn't like."
- Conversed: "I swear to god that if my brother drags me into another one of his self-made problems, I will kill him." "What the hell did he do this time?" "Cheated on his girlfriend, got dumped, threatened to kill himself, and got his bluff called when she called the cops. Now he won't shut up about how he works so hard and nothing ever works out right." "They'd probably work out fine if he wasn't a shitty dude and a dramatic baby."
- Played For Laughs: Bob's high-strung, dramatic nature causes him to be widely disliked by other people, but he is such a wellspring of schadenfreude that people can't help but laugh when he flips out or has something blow up in his face.
- Played For Drama: Bob is an unstable, out-of-control toxic garbage fire of a human being who steadily burns through the people in his life and constantly plays the victim and complains about how terrible people are and how awful the world is because he is incapable of seeing his role in all of his many problems.
You simply must go back to Drama Queen!
