Basic Trope: A member of the hero's team is a real liability to the heroes, usually needing to be rescued.
- Straight: Linda, the love interest of Harry, tags along on his quests to save the world, often getting herself into trouble he or another member of the team has to bail her out of.
- Exaggerated: Linda slows the team down every time she shows up.
- Downplayed: Although Linda needs to be saved occasionally, she can hold her own relatively well most of the time.
- Justified:
- Harry can handle himself, Linda really can't.
- Linda thinks she can handle it, but can't.
- Linda is broken over the course of the quest. By the end she can barely function, let alone fight.
- Linda may be a burden most of the time, but she has the most essential skill the team needs to save the world. So they tolerate her knowing this.
- Linda's not capable of handling herself because she's injured or disabled in some way.
- This is a survival story - Linda has a Twisted Ankle and it's not pretty.
- Inverted:
- Linda can handle all the baddies herself.
- Linda is the only capable fighter in a dysfunctional, failure-prone team.
- Subverted: Linda is caught, as part of a infiltration plan. It involves escaping on her own and kicking ass.
- Double Subverted: But she bungles that one too, making Harry's mission even harder.
- Parodied: Linda slows Harry down in a "World's Slowest Man" contest.
- Zig Zagged: Sometimes Linda slows the team down, sometimes she doesn't, sometimes she doesn't show up at all.
- Averted: Linda is actually quite competent.
- Enforced: The writers write Linda weak thinking it will humanize Harry.
- Lampshaded: "We have to go save Linda again?"
- Invoked: Linda is a spy and wants to leave with the intelligence without raising suspicion. She phones it in enough that they'll be glad when she leaves at the first safe place recognizing that she isn't making things better.
- Exploited: Linda is a part of the team against her will, and hopes that by acting useless, they will kick her out.
- Defied:
- Linda never goes into conflict with Harry, she knows it'll cause more problems. Or, in reverse, Harry refuses to let her come along because he knows she won't be able to handle it.
- Linda asks to be trained so she can be able to handle things on her own.
- Discussed: "Oh crap, Linda's here." "I know, how long before she breaks a heel and we have to carry her again?"
- Conversed: ???
- Implied: There are two versions of events. One has Hiro's forces rescue Linda and one where she is already dead. With her alive three of his squad die. With her dead no one dies. Hiro's anger could explain it as well though.
- Deconstructed:
- Linda's insistence on going into these dangerous circumstances are very telling about his relationship.
- Or about Linda herself.
- Harry gets fed up with Linda and abandons her, leading to her quick death.
- Reconstructed: Despite her constantly bringing the team down, Harry needs to have this happen to Linda, it's the only way he can succeed in the first place.
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