Basic Trope: A suspiciously Too Good to Be True character really is every bit as good as they seem.
- Straight: Alice is unfailingly kind to everyone, never has a cross word, and never drops the smile. Bob suspects that something's off but nope: she's every inch the Nice Girl.
- Exaggerated: Alice sings Disney songs as she carries an overly large cleaver everywhere, dresses like an Evil Overlord whenever she goes out volunteering at the soup kitchen, and has been spotted picking a basket of flowers near the sites of several murders. Everyone who says they love her has an oddly-blank stare and her neighbor swears they heard her listening to Death Metal once. A thorough investigation reveals that Alice just likes Disney, the cleaver is dull as a bread knife and was a memento to her dead younger sister, she just likes wearing extreme outfits, distributes painkillers as part of her day-job and only likes Death Metal ironically.
- Downplayed:
- Alice seems like a nice person, and is one of the suspects in a murder investigation. She's not guilty and all charges against her get dropped.
- Alice is clearly hiding something and has gone to truly ridiculous lengths to keep it hidden. Turns out she's trying to keep Bob's birthday gift a secret.
- Alice does start to act defensive, but with everyone suspecting her seemingly out of nowhere, she has reason to. Just because she's kind doesn't mean she can't read the room.
- Justified: Alice is a sweet Cloud Cuckoolander and her incongruous behavior merely seems to hint at a hidden dark side.
- Inverted: Alice is a Jerk with a Heart of Jerk.
- Subverted:
- Alice is a Bitch in Sheep's Clothing after all...
- Alice is indeed evil, but she is an Affably Evil Noble Demon, and she does love Bob.
- Double Subverted:
- ...but only because you caught her on a very bad day. What, like you've never snapped at someone when you were upset?
- Parodied:
- Alice constantly flashes Psycho Smirks, Death Glares and her every movement comes with a Scare Chord. She's also sickeningly nice to everyone she meets, even though half the time they run away screaming.
- Alice is a literal sheep that dresses as a sheep
- Zig Zagged:
- New pieces of evidence keep appearing, each implicating Alice in something bad right before Alice gives a sound (if far-fetched) explanation for each.
- Alice is Obliviously Evil, actually trying her best to be kind and good, but totally missing the mark.
- Averted: Neither the reader nor the characters are ever led to consider that Alice is a worse person than she seems.
- Enforced: It's a Murder Mystery story, and the writers want to keep the audience guessing.
- Lampshaded: "You'd think a girl as nice as Alice is hiding something, but you'd be wrong."
- Invoked: Alice makes herself into a Red Herring as a Heroic Sacrifice. Since she can't bring herself to do something truly wrong or mean, she instead draws suspicion onto herself with aggressive niceness.
- Exploited: Cathy knows what people think of Alice, and often uses her as a smokescreen for her own schemes.
- Defied: Alice makes sure she has a solid alibi for any given point in time because she's Genre Savvy enough to know she'll be a suspect.
- Discussed: "Now that we know Alice is innocent, I feel like kind of a jerk for suspecting her."
- Conversed: "I love this kind of twist, it subverts expectations and it gives a nice bit of idealism to balance out the tension."
- Implied: Alice isn't a big enough character to merit her own sub-plot, but several characters talk shit about her that is proven untrue in the few scenes she appears.
- Deconstructed: Alice starts off as the only decent, well-adjusted person in a Dysfunction Junction. Everyone but her has something to hide, so they all naturally suspect that she has her own secrets that she's just hiding better. Fear and suspicion evolve into outright persecution, and Alice finds herself bullied or shunned for reasons she cannot fathom. The group's collective venom results in her either breaking or snapping.
- Reconstructed: Of course, if she did snap, she'd be no better than her tormentors, and seeing how they clearly have their own problems, Alice feels that she's the only person around who can help them.
- Played For Laughs: Alice is completely oblivious to everyone's suspicions and continues to be unfailingly nice as everyone else gets increasingly frustrated trying to find her non-existent dark secret.
- Played For Drama: Being constantly under suspicion of wrongdoing despite having not done anything takes a serious toll on Alice's mental health. Even after being cleared of suspicion, she's seriously distraught and uncertain about herself, because she can't figure out why everyone was so suspicious in the first place.
Back to Sheep in Sheep's Clothing.
