Basic Trope: Friends who are as close as family, and just as protective.
- Straight: The heroes Alice, Bob, Charles, Diane, and Erika are five friends who fight Emperor Evulz together, know that they can always count on each other, and are as close as siblings. They see their elderly mentor, Frank, as a father figure.
- Exaggerated: There are loads of characters who all see each other as a "family of friends", and countless temporary team members. For all intents and purposes other than DNA, they might as well all be Massive Numbered Siblings.
- Downplayed:
- Alice and Bob are the best of friends and are Like Brother and Sister.
- Adam and Bob or Alice and Bella are the best of friends.
- Alice, Bob, Charles, Diane, and Erika are closer than ordinary friends, but do not see each other as family.
- Justified:
- The heroes are Childhood Friends who have always cared very much about each other.
- None of the heroes have any other friends.
- The heroes became friends after they were forced to cooperate under unsavory circumstances.
- Inverted:
- The heroes are a Ragtag Bunch of Misfits who just don't get along.
- The heroes thoroughly hate each other, and fight each other more than the villains.
- The main group of villains are True Companions (Villainous Friendship).
- Subverted:
- The heroes look like a "family of friends" at first, but are revealed to have only normal friendship bonds...
- The heroes look like a family of friends...but then Erika reveals she was working for the villains all along.
- Double Subverted:
- ...until they perform a great act of teamwork to escape a dangerous situation, at which point their bonds strengthen considerably.
- Erika was actually a Double Agent and just pretended to be working for the villains.
- Parodied: Alice and/or Bob are effectively parents, while Charles, Diane, and Erika are effectively their "children".
- Zig Zagged: Vitriolic Best Buds
- Averted:
- The heroes are nothing more than friends.
- The heroes are False Friends.
- Enforced: ???
- Lampshaded: "These are my teammates. We didn't like each other much at first, but we gradually warmed up to each other, and now we're like a family."
- Invoked: The heroes were already friends, and decide to become closer friends once The Team is established.
- Exploited: ???
- Defied:
- The heroes believe that it's wrong to treat friends as family.
- The heroes avoid becoming friends at all.
- Discussed: "No, I don't see my friends as a second family! My friends are my friends, and my family is my family, even if we don't get along."
- Conversed: "This is a great show! I love how those heroes treat each other like family."
- Deconstructed: Seeing how loyal the heroes are to each other, Emperor Evulz makes a plan to test the true devotion the heroes have to each other, exposing major flaws with each other in hopes of eventually causing the heroes' team to collapse in on itself as the heroes become more untrusting with each other.
- Reconstructed: Despite the flaws that each of the heroes have, Evulz's plan to break them up collapses in on itself as the heroes decide not to break up and actually trust each other even more due to having sympathy for each other's backstories.
- Implied: The heroes do everything together, and are all closer to one another than to their own relatives.
- Played For Laughs: Bob says, "We'd better save Alice because she's our sister ... I mean, friend."
Come back to True Companions, buddy.
