Basic Trope: Someone pushes a cause they don't actually believe in as a cover to another end.
- Straight: Vera leads BABY (Because Animals are Better than You), an Animal Wrongs Group that rails against all use of animal products and animal testing. She does not care about the cause at all — she eats meat, owns plenty of leather goods and uses make-up that was tested on animals — she's only in it as a plan to get money
- Exaggerated:
- Vera actually loves to kill animals.
- Nobody in BABY actually believes the stuff they spout.
- Vera leads both BABY and an organization that advocates an all-meat diet. She doesn't believe in either cause.
- Vera is a power-hungry Corrupt Politician who doesn't even believe in one of her party's ideals.
- Downplayed: Vera only disagrees with a few of BABY's more extreme ideals.
- Justified:
- Vera is a slimeball who views the recent popularity of the animal rights movement as a chance to make money, and she hides her hypocrisy well enough to avoid getting caught.
- Vera is a low-ranking member who only joined BABY because her friends kept bugging her about it.
- Vera may be a Sleazy Politician who makes no attempt to follow her party's ideals in her personal life, but she was charismatic enough to win her party's primary election. The country's political system is very polarized and makes third parties unviable, so most of her party's supporters find themselves "forced" to vote for her because a hypocrite who will at least push their cause (or at the very least keep her opponent out of office) is better than someone who stands for everything they hate.
- Inverted: Vera genuinely believes in BABY's cause and holds herself to extremely high standards, but she's also very accepting of people who do use animal products — even if the reason for doing so is just "it looks nice" or "I like the taste".
- Subverted: A tabloid publishes 30 photos of Vera eating steak. It turns out that they were taken before Vera got into animal rights at all.
- Double Subverted: The present-day Vera still eats steak frequently.
- Parodied: Vera openly eats lots of hamburgers and always wears mink. Even though she makes absolutely no attempt to hide her hypocrisy, BABY members still believe that she cares deeply about the cause.
- Zig Zagged: Vera is occasionally caught using products that were tested on animals. When it happens, she always says she didn't know they were tested on animals and that she will stop using them. Some believe her. Others don't.
- Averted:
- Vera always lives up to the ideals of BABY.
- Vera is a regular Hypocrite who occasionally fails to live up to her publicly expressed and sincerely held moral standards due to ordinary human weakness.
- Enforced: A sleazy fur company pays the author to write in a Straw Character to discredit animal rights organizations.
- Lampshaded: "So BABY's rules were so extreme that not even their leader bothered to try to follow them? I can't say I'm surprised."
- Invoked: The sleazy Vera's equally sleazy friends encourage her to use the animal rights movement to make money.
- Exploited: Shawn finds out that Vera doesn't believe in the cause, and decides to blackmail her.
- Defied: The members of BABY force Vera to resign after they find out she doesn't actually care about the cause.
- Discussed: "$5 says Vera secretly loves meat."
- Conversed: "How come people on TV are always duped into joining organizations lead by someone who doesn't care about the cause and just wants to make a quick buck?"
- Implied: Vera's trash can is often full of hamburger wrappers.
- Deconstructed: Once a tabloid reveals Vera's hypocrisy, BABY is discredited, and the reputation of animal rights organizations in general takes a hit.
- Reconstructed: Vera admits that this was also her intention, making BABY represent her own criticisms about animal rights groups so she could convince them not to end up making the same mistakes themselves.
- Played For Laughs:
- Vera says "Remember, kids, eating the flesh of animals is bad!" and then takes a giant bite out of a hamburger.
- Vera rants about meat being "unhealthy" while smoking.
- Played For Drama: Vera founded BABY for the donation money in a desperate attempt to get out of crippling debt.
Back to Straw Hypocrite.
