Basic Trope: A character whose main purpose is to be a love interest to another character (usually the main one).
- Straight: Bob is an underdeveloped character without many notable moments, but he has a crush on main character Charlie.
- Exaggerated: Bob's literally only trait is his love for Charlie.
- Downplayed: Bob is mostly around to provide a love interest for Charlie, but he's quite a memorable and colorful character otherwise.
- Justified:
- Bob's mind was manipulated to not express any feelings but love.
- Bob's a background character, so we don't really get to learn more about him other than his attraction to Charlie.
- In a book series with chapters that explore the point-of-view of multiple characters, we never get treated to Bob's own chapter, which would have shown more of his character beyond his being in love with Charlie.
- Inverted: Bob's main trait is absolutely despising Charlie and wanting him dead.
- Subverted:
- Despite some Ship Tease, Bob and Charlie ultimately don't end up together.
- Bob is revealed to have Hidden Depths which do not relate to Charlie at all.
- Double Subverted:
- They get paired up in the sequel.
- Bob's Hidden Depths are later used to further one of Charlie's plots and rarely come up afterwards.
- Parodied: When Charlie rejects Bob, Bob disappears from thin air and becomes Ret Goned due to his role becoming useless.
- Zig-Zagged: Bob occasionally shows some Hidden Depths for writers who like them.
- Averted:
- Bob does not crush on Charlie.
- Bob has a crush on Charlie, but that isn't brought up too often in comparison to his other traits.
- Enforced:
- "Romance always appeals to the Lowest Common Denominator! We need a character to crush on Charlie!"
- Charlie is a character in a video game and absolutely must have a Love Interest by a certain point. If he doesn't have one, Bob serves to fill the gap.
- Lampshaded: "Do you do anything but flirt with me all day?"
- Invoked:
- Bob was a robot created by Alice to win Charlie over.
- Bob dedicates his whole life to loving Charlie and caring for him.
- Exploited: Charlie abuses Bob, knowing he will never object to his behavior.
- Defied:
- No Hugging, No Kissing
- Every character is given Hidden Depths and are shown to be multi-faceted people, and that includes Bob.
- Discussed: ???
- Conversed: ???
- Deconstructed:
- Bob's crush on Charlie is based entirely on superficial reasons. When he works up the balls to ask him out, he finds that they have very different personalities and no romantic chemistry.
- Bob's sole personality trait being his crush on Charlie means he's a psychotic Stalker with a Crush.
- Being a side character, this treatment of Bob as "just" Charlie's admirer speaks to a greater problem—that nobody (least of all the narrative) actually cares about Bob outside of his love.
- Reconstructed: While a romance between Bob and Charlie doesn't work out, the two become casual friends afterwards.
- Played For Laughs: Charlie starts to show an interest in Bob and when asked just why, the only thing he can think of is "because he loves me." And then when he's asked if Bob has any other traits that Charlie finds attractive besides Bob's attraction to him, Charlie is left dumbfounded.
- Played For Drama: Bob's only notable trait being his love for Charlie is because Bob can never find himself being his own person.
Back to Satellite Love Interest, which itself only exists for the sake of the Official Couple trope.
