Basic Trope: A character is revealed to be more rounded than they initially appear as the show goes on.
- Straight: At the start of the show, Alice is The Ditz. At the end of the show, she's turned out to be a Genius Ditz.
- Exaggerated: In the pilot and the second episode, Alice is a fanatic animal rights activist who doesn't seem to stop talking about it. At the end of Season 9 (the series finale), she's pretty much the Everygirl.
- Downplayed:
- Alice seems sort of flat and undefined, but every so often she shows a new facet, hinting at deeper depths.
- Alice is the cheerleader of the high school team, and it shows that she is very good at dancing breakdance.
- Justified: Alice prefers not to talk about herself, so her unusual nature is not evident.
- Inverted: Flanderization. Alice starts out deep and complex but ends as a one-note character.
- Subverted: Alice has many interests no one expects her to have, what with being The Ditz... but they're all superficial and flights of fancy which she quickly forgets.
- Double Subverted: ...and then it is revealed that she was only pretending to be bad at those things to avoid freaking people out.
- Parodied: Everyone is amused when Bob is revealed to have written a poetry book.
- Zig Zagged: Alice is your basic cheerleader. she is revealed to have wanted to join the theater club. It turns out that a boy she has a crush on is in it. she has a crush on him because they spontaneously managed to sing a duet from a play, starting at the first line of the piece.
- Averted: Alice really is just The Ditz, and not hiding any intelligent hobbies or interests.
- Enforced: "We need to keep viewers interested in our show... Let's show Alice getting some Character Development to keep it fresh."
- Lampshaded: "Who would have thought that Alice would turn out to be a Genius Ditz? I'd have never thought she could muster the focus to grow outside her niche."
- Invoked: Alice is depressed for being looked down on as the Ditz, so she puts her mind to it and gets a college degree.
- Exploited: Alice never actually got said college degree, since everyone expects the obviously ditzy girl to compensate for it somehow she's been coasting on a good con-act.
- Defied:
- Alice remains happily ditzy all through the show.
- Alice demonstrates her smarts and hobbies at the absolute earliest opportunity when meeting anyone, even having a routine where she does acrobatics while saying obscure science facts as a cheer that she unleashes as a "hello".
- Discussed: "Hey, have you ever wondered if Bob's actually into Shakespeare?"
- Conversed: "So Alice goes from not being able to walk and chew gum to Gadgeteer Genius? A little far-fetched, but so worth it to see when she drops a Freeze Ray!"
- Deconstructed: Alice, the head cheerleader of her high school, hides her love of puppetry and musical theater from her friends because she thinks that if they knew, they would look down on her for it. Despite her best efforts to hide her hobbies, her friends begin to look down on her as they find out more about her and eventually reject her entirely.
- A slight variation on the above: her friends don't reject her for her hobbies, but rather, because she hid them from them, and they took it as a sign that she really just didn't trust them, in spite of having an otherwise stable friendship.
- Reconstructed:
- ...But then the power of friendship sways their hearts and accept her for her oddities, going on to become stronger friends than before.
- Alternately, Alice finds better friends who won't reject her over such unconventional hobbies.
Back to Hidden Depths
