Playing With / The Grinch

Basic Trope: Character who hates Christmas and tries to ruin it for everyone.

• Straight: Bob hates Christmas and tries to ruin the neighbor's Christmas.
• Exaggerated:
  • Bob pulls out a gun and goes on a killing spree because somebody said "Merry Christmas" to him.
  • Bob goes back in time to kill Jesus, hoping that it erases Christmas from history. Or, lacking the capacity for time travel, he marches straight to the North Pole and assassinates (or kidnaps) Santa Claus.
  • Bob steals all of the holiday presents and related items in town, even the ones from the holidays he doesn't personally celebrates (like Kwanzaa and Chinese New Year), in order to make everybody in town miserable.
• Downplayed:
  • Bob does not hate Christmas… but he doesn't love it either.
  • Bob hates Christmas and makes no secret of it, but he doesn't try to ruin it for anyone else so long as they leave him out of it.
• Justified:
  • Bob grew up in a dysfunctional household where Christmas was always a chore to celebrate.
  • Alice died/broke up with Bob on Christmas.
  • Everyone around Bob shoves Christmas, and all of their traditions and cheer, down Bob's throat (in some cases rather literally), and Bob eventually loses all tolerance at the sight of it.
• Inverted:
  • The Anti-Grinch
  • Bob is obsessed with Christmas to the point where it becomes annoying and possibly even a little creepy.
• Subverted: It's not that Bob hates Christmas. It's just that every Christmas, he has too much to do and some of his family members are very obnoxious.
• Double Subverted: Turns out the family members aren't actually that obnoxious, he is the one who is a killjoy.
• Parodied:
  • Having a Grinch trying to ruin everybody's Christmas is just another Christmas tradition in our small town.
  • Bob actively tries to ruin every holiday, not just Christmas. The Long List of his atrocities^note Every Halloween, he turns the sprinklers on trick-or-treaters. Every Easter, he destroys all the eggs in the town's Easter egg hunt. Every Thanksgiving, he gives his guests food poisoning. This past Valentine's Day, he set it up so Alice would think he was going to propose to her on national television, only to dump her on TV instead. Every St. Patrick's Day, he serves non-alcoholic beer and wears red. Every Fourth of July, he rents a firefighting helicopter and flies over town looking for fireworks to douse (and he's made so much noise with fireworks every New Year's that he is single-handedly responsible for the Governor trying to impose a ban). Every Black History Month, he spreads information on notorious scumbags like Idi Amin and O.J. Simpson. He turned the cemeteries into Death Courses on Dia de los Muertos. Every Black Friday, he tries to damage the town's Internet service. On Groundhog's Day three years ago, he tried to kidnap Punxsutawney Phil. On Veteran's Day four years ago, he threatened to dump Agent Orange. He set on fire the homes of every atheist in town on the birthday of Richard Dawkins six years ago. He has a history of "accidentally" stampeding through the town's parades with his eighteen-wheeler. On March Madness, he sabotages the local teams. On National Hugging Day, he gropes people. And you don't want to know what he does on Arbor Day. leaves the guy trying to teach him the True Meaning of Christmas with an odd look on his face as he figures out how long the odds truly are.
  • Bob actually a perfectly kind and cheerful Pollyanna all most of the year, but as soon as the Christmas lights go up, his frown turns upside down and his mood sours.
• Zig Zagged: Bob tried to ruin Christmas, but he does not actually hate Christmas and he only did it because he hates consumerism. He hates consumerism because he always went off to buy expensive Christmas gifts for people but they do not put in that extra mile for him, and they only ever get him crap gifts because he told them that he did not like Christmas very much.
• Averted:
  • Bob loves Christmas and did not try to ruin anything.
  • Bob celebrates Hanukkah instead and has a great time.
  • Bob doesn't like Christmas, but he's got no intention of taking it out on anyone else as long as they accept that he isn't joining in.
  • There are no depictions of Christmas (or even other Real Life holidays) in the work at all.
• Enforced:
  • The director is Jewish and was forced by the studio to make a Christmas special. Best make a mess of it!
  • "We need a villain for the Christmas Episode, and a curmudgeon who despises the holiday to the point of wanting to get rid of it and not caring a damn about how this will affect other people would be the perfect choice."
• Lampshaded: "Remind me why we invited Scrooge McHatesxmas again?"
• Invoked: Bob is put on a "special" list by the justice department for his loathing of Christmas, said list used to narrow down suspects for crimes that happen around Christmas.
• Exploited: Something goes wrong at your Christmas party? Blame it on Bob, because he hates Christmas. Let everyone think he’s just paranoid when really Bob did make that thing go wrong.
• Defied:
  • "I don't allow people with green skin dressed like Santa to come to my Christmas party. It isn’t a race thing, I'm just making sure."
  • "Just because I don't care for Christmas doesn't mean I have to ruin it for the people who don't share my viewpoint. I'd rather live and let live."
  • "Bob, I'm not going to force you to love this season, because there's things even I find annoying about it, but so help me I'm going to do you a lot of hurt if you try to ruin it for me!"
  • Bob learns to delegate some of the Christmas preparation, so it's less burden and stress on him.
  • Even though Bob does not celebrate Christmas, he still wishes people well...and doesn't turn the sprinklers on the Christmas Carolers.
  • Instead of getting up on his soapbox about why he thinks Christmas sucks, Bob just ladles himself another glass of eggnog and does his best to have a good time.
  • Bob gets an invitation to a Christmas party from his neighbor Alice. He respectfully declines the invitation, without so much as a "Bah, humbug!"
• Discussed: "Just because I don't like Christmas, does not mean I want to destroy it! Stop acting like I'm going to steal your shit!"
• Conversed: "Oh gee, a reclusive man that gives blackened stares to anyone that wishes him a merry Christmas and has been reading Breaking and Entering for Dummies seems so pleasant. Lets hope nothing goes wrong at the holiday block party. Say, is that a shiny new assault rifle he's trying to hide in his coat?"
• Deconstructed: Bob immediately gets arresting for breaking and entering with the intent of theft all because he doesn't like Christmas.
• Reconstructed: Bob broke in and tried stealing his neighbor's Christmas presents and ornaments because his neighbor stole all of them from him only a few nights ago.
• Played For Laughs: Bob is an Ineffectual Sympathetic Villain who tries to be left alone for the holidays (and fails epically). He tries to be threatening and rude, but quite honestly, the heroes are a whole lot more intimidating than he will ever be.
• Played For Drama: Bob steals all Christmas-related items in his city block and makes the day a shit-fest for everybody else.
• Played For Horror: The Day of Bob is the tale of how Bob became so fed up with Christmas that he went on a killing spree.