Basic Trope: A character gets rejected in a cruel way.
- Straight: Alice asks Bob to go on a date to her. In response, Bob mockingly laughs at her and tells her to go bother someone else.
- Exaggerated: Bob rejects Alice by insulting her, tells her that she should kill herself her and gives her a "The Reason You Suck" Speech on why he would never go on a date with her.
- Downplayed: Bob only answers with a Blunt "No".
- Justified:
- Bob is a Sadist, a Jerkass or has a Lack of Empathy.
- Bob can't stand Alice.
- Alice is a horrible person that no sane person would want to go out with.
- Inverted:
- Bob agrees on going on a date with Alice by saying something romantic.
- Bob rejects Alice in a kind way.
- Subverted: After "rejecting" her Bob tells Alice he was joking and agrees on going on a date with her...
- Double Subverted: ...but then starts to laugh at her again because that obviously was a lie.
- Parodied: Bob rejects Alice and insults her with a childish insult. Which Alice actually likes because Bob behaves like a "bad boy" and she happens to like bad boys.
- Zig-zagged: Bob can't make up his mind and constantly switches from insulting Alice to wanting to go on a date, too.
- Averted: Alice doesn't get rejected in a cruel way.
- Enforced: "Alright, we need some drama between Alice and Bob. Let's make him Kick the Dog by hurting Alice's romantic feelings for him.
- Lampshaded: "Bob, that was downright cruel..."
- Invoked:
- Bob wants to make sure that Alice will definetly leave him alone. So by behaving extremely cruel he makes himself look like a Jerkass that Alice wouldn't even want to date anymore.
- Bob wants to impress his nearby friends who did something similiar.
- Implied: Alice tells her friends that she wants to ask Bob out. In her next scene she tells her friends that she's not interested in Bob anymore - not after what he said when she asked him out.
- Exploited: Charlie witnesses the scene and comforts Alice so that she can go on a date with him instead.
- Defied: "I could be cruel to you now, but that would't be very appropiate for someone like me."
- Discussed: "Did you really have to be so mean to her, Bob?" "I am a mean person, Charlie. Besides, I want to make sure she understands the message."
- Conversed: "I wonder if anyone in Real Life could be so cruel..."
- Deconstructed: Because Alice was madly in love with Bob she ends her life...
- Reconstructed: ...but seconds before she is about to jump from a building she has the realization that maybe Bob wasn't so desirable as a person and that she actually dodged a bullet there. She doesn't kill herself in the end.
- Played for Laughs: Alice is an Alpha Bitch and a Drama Queen who gets rejected by the unpopular Bob. Alice is Not Good with Rejection and angrily screams at him that he should feel honored that someone like her noticed someone like him which everyone around them hears.
- Played for Drama: While Alice is completely heartbroken from Bob's cruel rejection he himself has a Heel Realization soon fafter and develops some form of self-hatred due to his cruelty.
- Played for Horror :
- Bob's Unnecessarily Cruel Rejection is a major red flag for Alice that something is clearly wrong with him. After some time, she discovers that Bob is a downright evil Sociopath and that his rejection was actually one of the less cruel things he did.
- Alice kills herself and either her vengeful ghost or her revenge-seeking brother get back at Bob. As usual of these types of stories, if they only took out Bob (and even then some may feel ill about how he went out) nobody would care. It's the twenty other people that are collateral damage that show the true levels of how unhinged they have become.
Oh my, you really want me to give you an Unnecessarily Cruel Rejection, do you? Remove yourself from my sight at once and don't bother asking ever again.
