Basic Trope: A person who is friendly to everyone except one person, or a jerkass who is abrasive to everybody and acts even worse to a few people or an individual.
- Straight:
- Bob is cordial to everybody except for Josh.
- Bob is an asshole, but especially to Josh.
- Exaggerated:
- Bob gives presents and hugs and kisses to everyone every day, but when he and Josh are alone behind closed doors, he brutally tortures Josh.
- Even the Loving Hero Has Hated Ones: Bob is normally an All-Loving Hero even to his enemies, but when he and Josh are in the same vicinity with each other, he goes feral on the man.
- Bob Hates Everyone Equally... except for Josh, whom he treats like a sub-human.
- Downplayed:
- Bob is relatively pleasant towards everyone, but slightly snarky and/or impatient when he's around Josh.
- Bob is very much hateful towards everyone, but is slightly more cruel to Josh.
- Justified:
- Bob is jealous of Josh, so it makes sense that Bob would act differently towards him.
- Josh is Bob's Schoolyard Bully All Grown Up, and while Josh can't remember how badly he treated Bob back then (if he can remember Bob at all — in the worst case scenario, he eventually invokes "But for Me, It Was Tuesday" and says a decade should be enough time to let the water pass under the bridge), Bob was scarred deep enough that he has not (and maybe will ever) let it go and recognized Josh the moment he saw him.
- Josh slighted Bob once, probably without even knowing it. Bob has not forgiven him for that.
- Josh has the very bad luck of being part of a race (or class of people, such as hipsters) that Bob hates.
- Bob is an asshole, and Josh is an easy (or easier) target because he's an Extreme Doormat.
- Josh is the Butt-Monkey who's always mistreated by everybody. Even Bob, the nicest guy around, can't help but pick on him.
- One of Josh's most constant acts of habit is Bob's Berserk Button (for example: playing music loudly).
- Bob is a Loving Bully to him/her and acts like this to hide his crush.
- Bob is nicer to everyone else because all his negative emotions are concentrated on Josh.
- Bob is normally a genuinely Nice Guy, but because Josh is so thoroughly unlikeable, Bob feels the need to give Josh a bitter taste of his own medicine.
- Inverted: (Call the Inversion: "Nice Guy to One")
- Kind To One: Bob is mean to everyone, except Josh who is his Morality Pet.
- Kinder To One: Bob is nice to everyone, but treats Josh better than the rest.
- Parodied Inversion: Josh is the only man in the world that Bob treats with anything resembling respect, regardless of the occasional zing - which itself is deliberately less nasty than what he does to other people, to the point that said other people are utterly flabbergasted and puzzled about why this is happening, even assuming that the reason is sexual attraction.
- Subverted:
- Bob eventually becomes nicer to Josh.
- Bob reveals that he hates Tropers - a group that Josh is part of - Josh just happens to be the only member of this group Bob interacts with.
- Double Subverted:
- ...but Aesop Amnesia kicks in, and he's back abusing him.
- Bob runs into some other Tropers and he is nothing but nice to them.
- Parodied:
- Both sides are petty little bastards that Poke the Poodle and act like the other is the most vile monster in the world because of these (deliberate) minor inconveniences.
- Bob normally speaks in a high-pitched, cheerful voice but takes on a demonic-sounding low tone whenever talking to Josh or just saying his name.
- Zig Zagged: Bob is nice to 50% of people and mean to the other 50%.
- Averted: Bob is nice or mean to everyone equally.
- Enforced: "We need to create some unique dynamic between Bob and Josh, so let's make Bob an asshole exclusively to Josh."
- Lampshaded: "You seem to like everybody else, so why do you single out and pick on Josh so much?"
- Invoked: Josh is fed up of how annoyingly-nice Bob is and learns that Bob hates mohawks, which no one in the cast wears. Josh gets a mohawk just to piss Bob off, and it works.
- Exploited: No one else knows that the usually-nice Bob is a Jerkass to Josh, who decides to get revenge on him by showing up uninvited to his birthday party so Bob will get mad and expose himself to everyone else as a bully to Josh.
- Defied:
- Josh figures out exactly what he does differently to everyone else, and decides to act like them so Bob won't have any reason to treat him worse than them.
- Everybody else threatens Bob with extreme violence if he continues to be an asshole to John, and even more extreme violence if he decides to go for a Loophole Abuse and start to be an asshole to everybody in the world, including Josh.
- Discussed: "I'm sorry. Can anybody please tell me what bug bit Bob that he's got it against me, and against me alone?"
- Conversed: "In the last five minutes, Bob has insulted Josh nine times, but has treated Alice nicely even though she's been twice as annoying... what the hell?"
- Implied: Josh, Alice, and Charlie all enter Bob's house. After a timelapse, they all leave. Alice and Charlie seem fine, but Josh has a black eye.
- Deconstructed:
- Bob's constant mistreatment of Josh despite being nice to everyone else garners the attention of others who aren't pleased with this and they stop being friends with Bob and hang with Josh...
- Josh gets sick of Bob's meanness and leaves, or is just otherwise out of the picture. As a result Bob's Jerkass tendencies seep out towards other people due to losing a regular target to vent out his frustrations or uglier qualities against.
- Josh's pent-up resentment over being singled out for mistreatment by Bob finally causes him to lash out and beat the tar out of him.
- Reconstructed:
- ...and Bob responds by providing evidence that Josh bullied him all through high school. Everyone immediately concedes Bob's argument and from that point on they are all aware that Bob mistreats Josh exclusively and are okay with that.
- Josh lashing out at Bob results in others see him as an even bigger jerk than Bob. Bonus points if they were apathetic whenever Bob abuses him at every opportunity.
- Played For Laughs: Bob is nice to everyone except for Josh, in which he wears a t-shirt entitled "Anti-Josh" to express his dislike for him.
- Played For Drama:
- Josh is murdered and Bob is the immediate suspect, on account of how he always tormented Josh.
- Alternatively, it's Bob who was murdered and Josh who is the suspect, since it's reasonable to assume he finally snapped after ages of bullying.
- Played For Horror: Bob makes a point to stalk and terrorize Josh at every possible moment, savoring his time before the (incredibly bloody) kill, because his hatred of Josh is that excessive.
Back to Jerkass to One
