Basic Trope: A compassionate/polite sidekick is a foil to the less well-adjusted hero.
- Straight: Bob the Great is a jerk; his partner Charlie is a Nice Guy.
- Exaggerated: Bob the Great is a Sociopathic Hero; Charlie is an All-Loving Hero.
- Downplayed: Bob the Great is a Jerk with a Heart of Gold; Charlie is a Knight in Sour Armor.
- Justified:
- Charlie's kind nature is what tames Bob's negative qualities.
- Bob the Great, at age 79, believes he has earned the right, a luxury his grandson Charlie has to wait a long time for (and he knows it).
- Inverted: Bob the Great is the Nice Guy who has to restrain the less well-adjusted Charlie.
- Subverted:
- However, then it turns out Bob has been Brainwashed by the villains to act mean.
- However, then Charlie begins acting more jerk-like. Bob's been rubbing off on him.
- Double Subverted:
- Oh, never mind, it turns out Bob's just as mean without the brainwashing.
- ...But then Bob learns that Charlie has been kidnapped and replaced with a Mole.
- Parodied:
- Bob and Charlie are angels — only the former is abrasive and uses profanity while the latter is polite.
- Of the heroic category: Bob the Great is a sophisticated, resourceful, and very intelligent meanie. Meanwhile, Charlie is a well-mannered, compassionate, loyal, and good-hearted numskull in a strong but Odd Friendship.
- Bob wears a greaser jacket and a pair of sunglasses and bullies his nerdy sidekick Charlie.
- Zig-Zagged: Charlie and Bob go from being kind to antisocial depending on circumstances and their own self-control, sometimes with Bob being the kind one and Charlie the antisocial one, sometimes vice versa, and sometimes they're both mean or both nice.
- Averted: Bob and Charlie are equally nice/mean.
- Enforced: The executives want a Darker and Edgier hero to appeal to the crowd, but they hedge their bets by giving him a nicer sidekick for viewers who don't like dark and edgy.
- Lampshaded: "How do Bob and Charlie work together? One is so friendly and the other is so ... not."
- Invoked: Bob knows he's not the nicest person to be around, so he selects a partner who can balance him out and keep him from going overboard.
- Exploited: Bob, realizing the dynamic he and Charlie have, works it into a Good Cop/Bad Cop interrogation tactic.
- Defied: Charlie declares that he'll never work with someone so unfriendly as Bob.
- Discussed: "Bob the Great is such a dick. Why does Charlie put up with him anyways?"
- Conversed: "It's such a trend in fiction to have a hero who is a jerk while his sidekick is a nice guy."
- Deconstructed:
- Charlie has to put up with Bob's continual nastiness to him day in and day out, and he's somewhat isolated from others who might help him thanks to Bob's attitude. Every day he gets more tired and discouraged. One day, Bob does something that is just too much, and Charlie chews him out and stomps away.
- Because Bob always mistreats and abuses him, Charlie turns against him and sides with Emperor Evulz. This shocks Bob.
- Reconstructed: After a while, Bob realizes that while Charlie's niceness sometimes got on his nerves, he appreciated the support and loyalty he gave him — after all, no one else would stick with him so long. Meanwhile, Charlie has been running into people who are jerks like Bob, but without the underlying heart of gold, and has been realizing that Bob may be a jerk, but he's still heroic. The two get back together and their differing personalities balance each other, making them more helpful as heroes than before.
- Played for Laughs: Bob and Charlie are heroes and a comedic duo.
Hero: The main page is over here, you idiot! Honestly, don't you tropers know anything?
Sidekick: I'm sorry. He's just like this, sometimes. The main page is here.
