Disposable Fiancé

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Homer: This movie is tired and predictable! You KNOW she's going to wind up marrying Richard Gere!
[audience gasps in shock]
Dr. Hibbert: I thought she was going to wind up with that rich snob!

— The Simpsons, "HOMR"

A Sub-Trope of the Romantic False Lead that is extremely popular in romantic comedy films. In order to make a Boy Meets Girl plot last two hours, there needs to be some kind of obstacle in the way of True Love. At the same time, that obstacle shouldn't be something that will continue to be a problem after Happily Ever After, i.e. no significant character flaw, traumatic association, or impossible relative.

Enter this guy. Mr. Not-Quite-Right. He might have been there from the beginning or he might be the result of a rapid Relationship Upgrade, but the writers don't really care about how he came into the bride's life; their job is to get him out of it. Their biggest concern is how to keep him unsympathetic, so that even if the heroine dumps him right at the altar, the audience won't shed a tear. Here are some common tactics:

• Bland Perfection: He's a real-life Prince Charming: handsome, thoughtful, romantic, usually rich... but there are just No Sparks. He will get nary a shred of Character Development, but he's still basically the ideal man, and the audience knows he'll have no trouble finding someone else. He tends to pull an I Want My Beloved to Be Happy at the end.
• Minor Flaws: He's not terrible, but he has this one annoying thing about him. Maybe he chews loudly. He has obnoxious friends. He's socially clueless or a total mama's boy. Whatever his flaw is, the fact that the heroine tolerates it clearly means that she's given up on her romantic ideals and decided to settle. This guy doesn't usually kick up a fuss at the break-up, although he can't carry it off with the dignity of Bland Perfection.
  • Latent Jealousy: The more extreme version of the above. Starts out sensible and modest, but turns wildly jealous at the first sign of a Love Triangle, to the point where this overrides his nice qualities and makes his Minor Flaws stand out more. He'll be a sore loser about the heroine rejecting him, but if it looks like he might turn dangerous or violent, he'll kick off before the end of the film in a Self-Disposing Villain sort of way.
• Evil All Along: This guy's such a sleazebag, you can't see why anyone would marry him. He disrespects the bride, slanders her behind her back (and sometimes even to her face), and is cheating on her with at least half of the wedding party. Sometimes we see that he puts up a front of Bland Perfection but promptly shows his real face the minute her back is turned. This creep deserves to get dumped. Whilst a Disposable Fiancé of this type is the most straightforward in terms of getting the audience to root for the romantic lead, it raises the most questions about why the bride accepted his proposal in the first place.
• Let's Call the Whole Thing Off: Sometimes while the leads have been agonizing over their feelings, the fiancé has been doing some thinking of his own. Maybe he decided that he and the bride are Better as Friends, or he remembered the promise he made to his dying mother, or he noticed that his intended is spending all her time with another guy. Maybe that one shy bridesmaid finally dared to make her move. Heck, maybe women just aren't for him. Whatever the reason, he doesn't want this marriage either.

Assuming the fiancé isn't just a plot device, they can provide a lesson about how rushing into things is bad, getting married for the sake of being married isn't a good idea, and/or that you should really know someone before you make a lifelong commitment to them.

While this trope is not Always Male, it's uncommon to see a woman in this role.

Sometimes both leads will have a disposable intended, and in rare cases we end up with a Pair the Spares solution. Compare Disposable Love Interest, contrast Disposable Woman. See also Asshole Victim, which similarly diverts audience sympathy for someone who gets hurt.

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Examples:

Anime & Manga

• In the anime of Princess Lover!, Charlotte's fiancé is tossed in at the halfway point of the story, and then rather promptly shot in the back (making him a literal Disposable Fiancé). Turns out it wasn't a killing shot, and he escapes to become the Derailing Love Interest.
• Kanae from Revolutionary Girl Utena. Either a bizarre deconstruction of the trope or a hilarious parody, depending on how you watch the show. She ends up reduced to a completely vegetative state by Akio, serving only to keep him officially in power in her father's academy. And it's very debatable whether Akio even needs her for that, making his actions seem creepy at best and inhumanly cruel at worst.
• Rupa in the 5th Urusei Yatsura movie, once Lum finally gives Ataru the ultimatum to say he loves her or she's staying on the World of Darkness. In a subversion, she obviously doesn't like him as anything more than a casual friend, and that's after he stops trying to force her into marriage. In a twist, Lum is actually his Disposable Fiance as well.

Comic Strips

• For Better or for Worse:
  • Therese as Anthony's Disposable Wife. She was meant to come off as Evil All Along due to her refusal to Stay in the Kitchen. In practice, she came across to most of the Hatedom as insanely sympathetic...with ANTHONY as being Bland Perfection!
  • Played straight with Deanna’s unseen first fiancé Perry as Bland Perfection. She’s engaged to him when she and Michael reunite after her accident, but she falls for Michael and later has an Offscreen Breakup with Perry. According to her monthly letters, Perry was wealthy and her mother Mira all but arranged for them to marry, denying that she ever loved him.

Fairy Tales

• In Catherine and Her Fate, when the king hears Catherine's story, he decides to marry her instead of the princess who was coming. To be sure, he had just given Catherine all the gold in his treasury.
• In The Twelve Huntsmen, the prince feels obliged to follow his father's Last Request and marry a different lady than the one he loves. At the end of the story, he basically decides "screw that" and sends the father's candidate home.

Films — Animation

• Pocahontas: Pocahontas' fiancee is Kocoum, who qaulifies as both Bland Perfection (the best warrior in the tribe) and Minor Flaws ("He's so...serious."). Justified because Pocahontas had no interest in him to begin with; the marriage was arranged by her father.
• In Monsters vs. Aliens, Susan's fiance Derek turns out to be, in her words, a selfish egotistical jerk. His wedding day attempt to convince her that his job interview in Fresno is an acceptable substitute (rather than an unfortunate delay) for the planned Parisian honeymoon pushes him into the Evil All Along category.
• In Frozen, Anna gets engaged to Hans immediately, but then we see her relationship with Kristoff develop more fully, indicating he would be the real love interest. But that's okay because Hans is just Bland Perfection or so it seems, but he is actually Evil All Along. This even gets lampshaded by one of the trolls, who refers to the engagement as a "flex arrangement."
• Proteus from Sinbad: Legend of the Seven Seas gets the Bland Perfection treatment.
• In Encanto, Isabela is presumed to be engaged to Mariano, who seems like Bland Perfection. She lets him down gently since she never had feelings for him and only went along with it to make her family happy. He then implies he was eager to get married because he's just ready to find true love and settle down, not because he loved her specifically. Luckily for him, she then introduces him to her cousin Dolores, who has had a crush on him for ages and actually knows him, unlike Isabela. Mariano is surprised but delighted, and proposes marriage on the spot. She chuckles and says, "Slow down!" and they walk off hand-in-hand. Overall, he gets a pretty good deal for this archetype.

Films — Live-Action

• Ralph Bellamy practically made a career of playing the "bland nice guy" version, three examples being his turns in His Girl Friday, The Awful Truth, and Hands Across the Table. He's a slightly more sinister version of the trope in Carefree, where he's perfectly willing to marry Amanda (Ginger Rogers) when she's been hypnotized into loving him, but still played with a light touch.
• 3 Idiots: Subhas, Pia's fiancé, and absolute materialistic jerkass, willing to raise hell just because someone spilled sauce on his very expensive shoes. Hilariously, he got dumped twice, first during her college years, and then years later she leaves him at the altar, after being proven that despite his claims otherwise, he hadn't ditched that aspect of his personality.
• Addicted to Love: Subverted in that the fiancée has already left Sam, he just won't give her up.
• The Baxter is a Deconstruction told from the perspective of a Disposable Fiancée or the titular "Baxter" who's had countless women dump him for either people they've just met or childhood friends. Consequently, he's extremely hesitant with his latest marriage as the bride's high school boyfriend shows up to win her back, while he meets a temp worker. This is later Reconstructed when the groom is dumped again, but ends up with the temp worker just as the temp worker's ex-boyfriend tries to win her back, revealing HIMSELF to be a Baxter.
• Bell, Book and Candle: Merle for Shep. Her past as a snobbish college bully makes her less sympathetic.
• The Black Swan (1942) has Roger Ingram, the Stuffy Brit fiancé of Margaret Denby. An example of Evil All Along, and at the end he is (presumably) brought to justice for his crimes.
• David's fiancée in Bringing Up Baby is briefly introduced in the beginning and only serves as a harsh contrast against the Manic Pixie Dream Girl Susan whom he then encounters.
• Bubble Boy: Mark is Chloe's high school sweetheart and it's his upcoming wedding to her at Niagara Falls that kicks off the plot. He hasn't moved on from high school; he's immature, crass and obnoxious. At the end when Jimmy barges into the wedding Mark wonders aloud why he's the only one who takes exception to Jimmy interrupting the ceremony and running off with the woman he was seconds away from marrying.
• Cast Away is a rare aversion; many test audience members who were so used to this trope reacted negatively to the ending because it doesn't follow this pattern.
• Chalet Girl John breaks off his engagement with Chloe to be with Kim at their engagement party. She gives him a Groin Attack as payback.
• The Nicholas Sparks movie The Choice has this in the fiancé of Gabby the heroine, who doesn't fall into any of the above-mentioned categories (possibly Bland Perfection, as he's a terrific guy, but there's no indication that she's dissatisfied with the relationship in any way.
• Choose Love: Paul is the steady, compatible boyfriend Cami is dating at the beginning of the film. He is a nice guy but pointedly not as exciting of a choice as Cami's new love interests Rex or Jack, and depending on the viewer's choices, he can be dumped in favor of them.
• Coming to America: The prince had a fiancée back home, but he came to America specifically to find a replacement for her. You have to feel sorry for the girl. Her bland perfection stemmed from the fact that from the day she was born, she was raised to be his wife and do everything he said. She had no opinions or likes of her own, simply stating "whatever you prefer" when he asked her. However, she does wind up with the prince's best friend at the end of the movie, and he thought she was perfect.
• Enchanted does this both ways, always sympathetically. In the real world, Nancy gets a proper characterization, and the Minor Flaw is more on the side of the lead - Robert's eternal cold feet cause her a certain amount of stress to begin with, and a Not What It Looks Like situation understandably angers her - and it's Giselle who suggests the way to make her feel better. Later, when they realize that they're just incompatible with their partners, Giselle forsakes her own (adorably ditzy) Disposable Fiancé, Prince Edward, and he and Nancy hop into the sunset — er, manhole — together.
• Ever After: Let's Call The Whole Thing Off; Turns out Prince Henry's fiancée had a Love Interest of her own that her parents didn't approve of and was fighting for their happily ever after as well.
  Spanish Princess: (Sobs and blubbers in Spanish as she points toward a man in the audience who is also weeping)
  Henry:(laughing) My lady, I completely understand.
• Falling for Christmas: Sierra's fiance Tad. After they're separated and she falls into the care of the male lead Jake, Tad is en route to dumpville.
• Fingernails: Ryan is set up as this from the jump — he's the guy Anna is dating at the beginning, and they're supposed to be each other's One True Love as they've already passed the test measuring this. However, the complacency he displays in their relationship as a result makes her unsatisfied, especially after she develops a romantic connection with her coworker Amir. Anna and Ryan retake the test and pass — and she's so upset by this that she stays the night at Amir's and rips out her fingernails, implying that she will reject the test results to be with Amir.
• The Graduate: Probably Bland Perfection, to the extent that the audience even gets to know him in the few minutes of screen time he has. Outside pressure was also most likely a factor in Elaine's swift engagement and marriage. Of course, in that movie, she'd already married the guy by the time she ran out in the wedding dress.
• The low-budget indie, "Have You Met My Son?" has the protagonist's closeted gay son unintentionally invoke this when he becomes engaged to a Dumb Blonde Christian conservative woman. Even though he finds out his mother knew all along of his homosexuality, he's still set on marrying her (it's implied he felt disillusioned and depressed after a breakup). By the end, he re-accept his homosexuality and breaks off his engagement. Though it turns out his fiance (who was a repressed lesbian), is more than happy to settle for a platonic friendship.
• L'arnacoeur, aka Heartbreaker: Jonathan is definitely Blandly Perfect.
• Hope Floats torpedoes this trope right off the bat by having the would-be disposable fiancé (well, husband); dump her on live television. He's Evil All Along, Two-Timing with the Bestie, and abandons his daughter as well as his wife so he and his new flame can have alone time.
• Subverted in I Know Where I'm Going!. Avowed Gold Digger Joan Webster is en route to her wedding to millionaire Robert Bellinger when she is trapped by a storm and meets sailor Torquil MacNeil. Despite her best efforts to the contrary she falls in love with and eventually marries Torquil, but the film makes clear that Joan is the one primarily responsible for the failed engagement. We never even see Robert and Joan is irrationally fixated on the idea of having a rich husband long past the point it should be apparent that she loves someone else.
• Averted in Imagine Me & You. The fiancé (actually, husband) is a genuinely good guy and in love with the heroine. When she falls for the (female) florist who arranged their bridal bouquets, he is genuinely heartbroken with no emotional band-aid or Replacement Goldfish. It's the most convincing scene in the movie.
• In Incest! The Musical this is played in a pretty reasonable way. The female lead, Katie, has a boyfriend, Mark. He's nice, but they're poorly matched. She's smarter than he is, and they have largely different interests. A whole song is dedicated to Katie realizing that if she and Mark were still together in 10 years, it would be a mess. (In a 23-minute movie with only 4 songs, this is a lot of time to spend on establishing this.) This all happens before she has her Love Epiphany for her real love interest, and so it seems pretty likely that Katie and Mark would've broken up pretty soon anyways, even without said love interest (who, admittedly, speeds things along). Justified Trope, because Mark isn't her fiancé or anything close: He's just her high-school boyfriend, and it's really no surprise that he's not the right guy for her. At the very end, Mark tries to invoke Pair the Spares, but the other spare rejects him.
• It Happened One Night: The fiancé is actually the reason the leads meet as Peter the reporter, hoping to get a good story, follows heiress Ellie along on her trip to meet the guy her father is trying to get her away from. Of course, Ellie never really knew her original fiancé. He was simply the first man she ever got alone with and married him to stick it to her overprotective father. Once she spends her time with Peter and finds out what falling in love is actually like, she realizes there's no way she ever loved the first guy.
• In Lajja, Maithili is about to marry her college sweetheart, who comes from a wealthy family. Maithili, meanwhile, comes from an upper-middle-class family. Her fiance's parents have set an extremely large dowry price, which they will not budge on, and which her father is struggling to scrape together. He's a few thousand rupees short, and if he can't get the money together, the wedding will be called off, and his daughter will be publicly humiliated. When Maithili finds out, she tells her fiance, but he's afraid to stand up to his parents. At the actual wedding ceremony, Maithili calls her would-be in-laws out for their greed, and her fiance for his cowardice. She ends up breaking off the engagement at the cost of Family Honor, which would normally mean that no one would want to marry her (and that she'd be pressured to commit suicide in order to save her family's honor), but Raju steps in and marries her offscreen.
• In Last Vegas, Lisa barely shows up in the film, and is summarily dumped upon arrival due to Billy realizing that he's not in love with her, but with Diana.
• Leap Year has a combination of Bland Perfection and Minor Flaws (though said flaw is hardly trivial).
• Letters to Juliet: While it appears that Sophie's fiancée is neglecting her, a more honest description of their situation is that both sides do not see the presence of the other person as a necessity, which leads to their inevitable break-up.
• Jerry in Liar Liar. Bland (proving Cary Elwes can play anything), and pulls an I Want My Beloved to Be Happy at the end, when he realizes the relationship isn't just about him and the girl anymore. Unlike the typical example, the relationship isn't ending because Audrey is getting back together with Fletcher; that part doesn't come until Max's birthday a year later. Rather, Audrey decides not to take Max away from his dad, and Jerry has a job waiting for him across the country.
• Love in the Villa: Julie's longterm boyfriend Brandon appears in the beginning to dump her, allowing her to develop feelings for the main love interest Charlie on the vacation she was supposed to take with Brandon. He shows up near the end and proposes, but she has decided they are not compatible.
• Made Of Honor: Bland Perfection. While he takes the loss of his fiancee well enough, he at least still decks the main character for humiliating his family, who cheers him on.
• Meg Ryan:
  • IQ: Catherine Boyd is engaged to James Moreland. He's a pompous bore who, as part of his academic research, conducts unsettling experiments on human and animal test subjects. Her reason for marrying him is because she's only interested in men who have a scholarly background, and for whatever James lacks in charm and affability, he is a renowned psychology professor. Things start to change when she meets Ed Walters, an uneducated but amiable auto-mechanic. Once Catherine learns her lesson she unceremoniously dumps James and hooks up with Ed.
  • Sleepless in Seattle: Bland Perfection and Let's Call The Whole Thing Off, but he does his I Want My Beloved to Be Happy moment so well that you hold out hope he'll find a new love soon. What really stings is that she hasn't even met the guy she's dumping him for.
  • You've Got Mail, although in that movie they were merely Disposable Roommates Who Are In Long Term Relationships With The Leads. But that doesn't roll off the tongue nearly as easily, does it?
    • They also filled the roles of being perfectly compatible with the two mains as they perceived themselves and were perceived at the beginning of the film, as they both start to grow and are shaped by the events of the film, they realize they are only compatible with their starting partner on superficial levels but are perfect for each other on deeper levels (even if they are superficially disagreeable with each other). All in all, done better here than most other times, since the audience is perfectly aware that the disposable female is a horrible person and the disposable male leaves amicably as they both realize they aren't really in love with each other at about the same time.
  • And again in The Deal where she's been with Glenn (Bland Perfection) for over seven years, but quickly throws him away for an affair with Charlie, although she plans on returning to Glenn once the filming is over, at least until Charlie convinces her they make a good team. Unlike most examples, it's suggested partway through the movie that she's been grooming Glenn entirely as a meal ticket.
• The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society: Mark is Bland Perfection; he's a wealthy military man who dotes on Juliet (and isn't quite as shady as his novel counterpart), but she feels stifled by him and London high society.
• In Midnight in Paris, Gil's fiancée Inez prefers to hang out with her friends rather than Gil. She doesn't think that Gil's dreams are worth exploring, and believes that he should remain a hacky but successful scriptwriter rather than try writing a novel. Whenever Gil has an argument with her (male) friend, she always takes the side of the friend, even though her friend is clearly full of it. Near the end, Gil finally figures out that Inez slept with her friend (meaning she not only betrayed Gil but also her friend's wife with whom she hangs out). When Gil confronts Inez, she treats it as no big deal and fully expects Gil to still be on for marriage. Inez and her parents are outraged when Gil simply calls the whole thing off and leaves. Definitely an Evil All Along example.
• The More the Merrier: Good ol' blandy, Mr. Pendergast. Poor guy, doesn't even notice his fiancée is falling in love with someone else.
• Mr and Mrs Smith, Jeff Custer is so very bland.
• Mrs. Doubtfire:
  • Subverted in Mrs. Doubtfire which seems to feature a Bland Perfection type, but he gets to stay with the woman in the end. Instead, he just vanishes from the movie after Daniel's ruse is exposed.
  • Almost played straight in that the original ending had Danny and Miranda get back together, which was opposed by Chris Columbus, Robin Williams, and Sally Field (all divorcees).
• Subverted in My Best Friend's Wedding where Julianne is convinced that Michael's fiancée is one of this type and does all in her power to break them up but in the end decides he belongs with the other girl after all.
• Old School: Evil All Along, and the type where he hides it from the love interest. It's employed to juxtapose how the lead is perceived as too immature and chauvinist to get the girl, but her fiancé is actually way worse.
• Only You: The main character's fiancé is a jerk who doesn't really know her, much less love her, and she's settled for him instead of waiting and following her romantic dreams.
• Paperback Hero: Ruby's partner Hamish shows a bit of Latent Jealousy when he finds out that her book was actually written by Jack, but he ultimately breaks up with her amicably.
• The Parent Trap (1961) and The Parent Trap (1998): Evil All Along, as well as a rare female example.
• Discussed in Past Lives. After his wife Nora reconnects with Hae Sung, her husband Arthur muses that in a different story, he'd be the evil American husband who would be dumped in favor of the childhood sweetheart.
• The Philadelphia Story and its remake High Society. Bland Perfection turns into latent jealousy.
• The Princess Bride: Not only is Prince Humperdink is Evil All Along, he's the Big Bad.
• The Princess Diaries 2: Royal Engagement: Andrew, Mia's chosen husband, is the Bland Perfection type: a handsome, well-educated, and genteel duke who would make a perfect husband if only Mia were attracted to him. At the end, the two of them Call The Whole Thing Off. Mia cancels the wedding at the last minute, Andrew is perfectly understanding about it, and he's only worried about what his mother's going to think. Mia ends the film with Nicholas.
• In R.O.T.O.R., Sonya's fiance is given one scene to establish that he's a dickhead, then he's shot dead by the killer robot.
• Runaway Bride: The protagonist realises her fiancé isn't the one for her and she's forcing herself to get married simply to break her pattern of leaving guys at the altar.
• Set up but ultimately averted in the original Sabrina (1954) and the 1995 remake — David Larrabee wants to end his planned marriage to Elizabeth Tyson and hook up with Sabrina, the chauffer's daughter, despite the financial fallout that will result. His brother Linus makes him see sense — and he, incidentally, has fallen hard for Sabrina himself.
• In Secretary, the fiancé's flaw goes beyond boring - he seems to genuinely just want to get married and start a family, and doesn't much seem to care with whom. Maggie is swept along due to an inability to say "no", plus the mixed messages she's receiving from her actual love interest. It's only when trying on the wedding dress that she realizes that she can never be satisfied with him. Her dumping of him is still quite the surprise for the oblivious guy, but at least she didn't wait until the altar.
• Set It Up: Suze is of the Bland Perfection type. She's a fairly successful model, but she and Charlie don't have any meaningful emotional connection, and Charlie doesn't seem torn up about dumping her.
• In Serendipity, Jonathan and Sara meet each other only briefly before they're separated for six years and become engaged to other people. Despite all this, they clearly keep holding out hope of finding each other again and ultimately break up with their spouses-to-be. For someone they had about fifteen minutes of interaction with many years ago.
• In Something Borrowed, Rachel snatches her friend's groom-to-be. Not much reasoning is given as to why the fiancée needs to be disposed of.
• Baroness Schraeder in The Sound of Music is a combination of Minor Flaws and Let's Call The Whole Thing Off.
• Spaceballs: As the name would suggest, Prince Valium is a case of Minor Flaws (so boring he puts himself to sleep). Plus it's an arranged marriage she was being forced into, so she doesn't come off as particularly cruel when she ditches him, especially since he doesn't seem to mind (or even notice).
• Spider-Man 2: Mary Jane is in love with Peter but dates and almost marries John Jameson, who is Bland Perfection and barely has any personality at all. At the end she leaves John at the altar with nothing but a note and runs to Peter in her wedding dress, after learning why he won't date her.
• The Sure Thing: Two completely different forms of Bland Perfection. Allison's boyfriend Jason treats their relationship like a potential corporate merger (to be fair, so does she before her Character Development). And Gib thinks of "The Sure Thing" as just a beautiful girl he is guaranteed to have sex with until he meets her and realizes she has a much more boring personality than Allison.
• Sweet Home Alabama of the Bland Perfection type. He's the most eligible bachelor in New York, he donates money to charity, he's hoping to become President of the United States someday, he sends his girlfriend roses for no reason...and when he gets dumped at the altar he takes it in stride and just wanders off. Given the numerous flaws her true love interest displays, it's easy to question her choice.
• Sylvie's Love: Variant on Let's Call the Whole Thing Off as Lacy makes it further than "fiance", but when he realizes at the end of the second act that he and Sylvie are incompatible and she only has eyes for Robert, he gracefully exits the story after five years of marriage.
• Twister has a rare female example in Melissa. Tends towards Minor Flaws, in that she is somewhat boring and holds back the lead character from doing what he loves. However, it's also mixed with Let's Call The Whole Thing Off as she realizes that he still has lingering feelings for the woman he hadn't even legally divorced yet.
• Wedding Crashers: Evil All Along (curiously, the main character manages to win back the heroine without even revealing the fiancé's sleaziness). A notable example of the Evil All Along type, as while Sack Lodge is a Jerkass he is also charismatic and charming enough that Claire doesn't look like a complete moron for dating him in the first place. This is the hurdle that many romantic comedies using the Evil All Along Disposable Fiancé stumble over.
• The Wedding Planner, of the "let's call the whole thing off" variety. Worked horribly, as the only person you feel sorry for is the fiancée. The man gets romantically involved with another woman (who turns out to be the wedding planner his fiancée has hired) and then berates her for "misinterpreting" his philandering. He then ignores the whole thing and lets his fiancée plan their wedding blissfully unaware that he's falling in love with the planner (who only superficially thinks of ending the whole thing and never lets her client in on what her fiancé is really doing). Meanwhile, the planner is constantly leading on a childhood friend who is desperately in love with her to either serve to make the male lead jealous, or to boost herself up emotionally as she pines for the leading man. At the last second, the fiancée decides she doesn't want to get married, giving him the opportunity to run after the female lead. With his behavior, it's kind of hard to imagine how either woman wants him in the first place. And the planner is even less sympathetic because it's revealed she's been the victim of this before when her fiancé got back with his high school girlfriend on the night of their rehearsal dinner.
• The movie The Wedding Ringer has an interesting take on this trope. The premise is the male lead is going to get married in two weeks to a beautiful woman, but he has no best man or groomsmen, so he hires someone who specializes in pretending to be someone's long-time best friend to hire men to act as groomsmen. So, what's the twist? Well, BOTH the male and female leads were settling — she was never in love with him (she just wanted a good guy who was financially stable), and he didn't love or even like her (he never thought he COULD be with such an attractive woman). So, in a way they BOTH fit this trope with each other.
• The Wedding Singer has two: Robbie's fiance, Linda, who just leaves him at the altar at the beginning of the film, and Julia's fiancee, Glenn, a grade-A sleazeball who cheats on Julia and makes it clear he will continue to do so after they get married.
• What's Up, Doc?: Madeline Kahn and here her character Eunice Burns is really the innocent victim of the devious schemes of Barbra Streisand's character. At least Eunice seems to be happier with the millionaire she ends up with!
• Who's That Girl: Louden's fiancee is vain, self-absorbed and shallow, not to mention absurdly promiscuous and just not as interesting to be with as Nikki.
• Wicker Park starts with the male lead buying a ring to propose to his Blandly Perfect girlfriend. He then thinks he might be able to find the girl he dated before her and spends the rest of the movie completely ignoring the woman he was apparently intending to marry, as well as sleeping with someone else. While she has no character, the way he immediately abandons their relationship without even bothering to inform her makes him come off as a Jerkass.
• Young Adult: Main character Mavis, the immature Young Adult book author, wishes her "rival" Beth is this. Averted in that Beth is a perfectly nice woman, and Buddy (Mavis' ex that she's trying to get back together with) has absolutely no intention of leaving Beth or the baby he just had with her.
• Young Frankenstein: Madeline Kahn has Minor Flaws. She ends up marrying the Monster and seems very happy with him because...well.

Literature

• In Edgar Rice Burroughs's Thuvia, Maid of Mars, Thuvia has accepted an offer at the opening, though he doesn't actually appear. Then she's abducted, Carthoris chases after her, and the fiancé only reappears at the end — where Carthoris heroically saves his life and intends to leave Thuvia with him. Thuvia begs him to stay, though she admits it's dishonorable on her part, and her fiancé frees her.
• In the Tarzan series, also by Edgar Rice Burroughs, we have Jane's fiance, William Cecil Clayton. Will Clayton is mostly a "Minor Flaws" as he has a good heart, but is a buffoonish coward in contrast to the wild Tarzan. William dips a bit into "Latent Jealously" type as he figures out Tarzan is his missing cousin, John Clayton, and the real heir to the Clayton estate, but keeps the secret from everyone. William is mortally wounded by the novel's real villain, but redeems himself by telling Jane the truth, releasing her from the engagement and giving Tarzan his blessing.
• An early example in the Sherlock Holmes story The Adventure of the Noble Batchelor, Holmes' client Lord St. Simon end up as this. Turns out his missing fiance had run off with her husband she previously thought dead. It somewhat justifies the Sore Loser part of this trope.

"But with no very good result," I remarked. "His conduct was certainly not very gracious."

"Ah, Watson," said Holmes, smiling, "perhaps you would not be very gracious either, if, after all the trouble of wooing and wedding, you found yourself deprived in an instant of wife and of fortune. I think that we may judge Lord St. Simon very mercifully and thank our stars that we are never likely to find ourselves in the same position.

• In the Trylle Trilogy by Amanda Hocking, Wendy's husband Tove is gay. Wendy is in love with Loki, a prince of the rival group of trolls. He gets the marriage annulled in the final book of the trilogy.
• Shan Elariel in Mistborn: The Original Trilogy. She was engaged to Elend before Vin (who would later marry Elend) killed her. Considering that Shan was trying to kill Elend at the time, this is probably acceptable.
  • Subverted in the sequel series Wax and Wayne. Wax spends almost all of The Alloy of Law trying to rescue his almost-fiancée Steris^note  they're all but engaged because of an arranged marriage, but hadn't announced it due to scandal with the help of Steris's cousin/bastard half-sister Marasi. Steris appears to be a humorless Grande Dame only marrying him to save their houses, and Marasi is an eager Spirited Young Lady with a keen interest in his exploits, which seems to set up Wax falling for Marasi. Upon rescuing Steris, Wax realizes that while Marasi is a good friend, he doesn't love her, and goes ahead with his engagement to Steris. Wax and Steris eventually fall in love and get married.
• Subverted again in The Stormlight Archive, by the same author. Noblewoman Shallan is engaged to Prince Adolin to secure her house's future. Adolin is handsome and sweet, and appears to be sheer Bland Perfection, especially since Shallan keeps running into the brooding commoner Captain Kaladin. All signs point to Shallan breaking off her engagement to be with Kaladin: they keep getting into fights, they save each others lives, and Shallan admits that she has fun teasing him. Ultimately, while Kaladin is a good friend, Shallan goes ahead and marries Adolin because of his kindness, and because sees the real her behind her multiple personalities.
• P. G. Wodehouse made frequent use of the Let's Call The Whole Thing Off category, often combining it with Pair the Spares.
• A justified Evil All Along example in the Tairen Soul series, as the heroine didn't choose her fiancé. Den sexually assaults Ellysetta to force her to marry him, and breaking the engagement would cost money her family doesn't have. Once Ellysetta finds a way out of the situation (namely, getting married to the Sorcerer King Rain) she jumps on it. The fact that she's been fantasizing about Rain her entire life and has a particularly intense Single-Target Sexuality for him is a nice bonus.
• At the beginning of the Enchanted Forest Chronicles, Princess Cimorene gets engaged to Bland Perfection Prince Therandil. It's a political match, and she tries to dispose of her fiance the moment she learns that she's getting engaged because she can't stand how bland he is, and ultimately ends up moving in with a dragon to escape the marriage. It takes her half the book to get rid of him (by invoking Pair the Spares by inspiring him to seek a Rescue Romance with a different, and equally shallow, princess held captive by a different dragon), after which he only gets mentioned when she discusses how she got him to leave. She doesn't even meet the Replacement Goldfish until the next book.
• Twofold in Maia Chance's whodunit Beauty, Beast and Belladonna: After accepting Comte de Griffe's proposal in the previous book to spite her love interest Professor Penrose, Ophelia tries to weasel out of the engagement as painlessly as possible because she wants to live independently and she finds the Comte boorish. Then who should show up but the Professor with his new fiancée Miss Banks. Comte de Griffe releases Ophelia amicably when he admits he was in love with his idea of her, and Ophelia nudges him toward a maid who is in love with him. Miss Banks, on the other hand, falls to her death shortly after revealing herself an accomplice to the murderer, and an elitist shrew besides.
• Weaveworld has a low-key "let's call the whole thing off" example: at the beginning of the story, Cal is drifting toward marriage to his girlfriend Geraldine. Geraldine is a thoroughly good woman who keeps supointing Cal even as he withdraws from mundane life, including her. All the interactions between the pair are described from Cal's perspective, but it is clear that after all her effort Geraldine deserves better - and though she does give him an ultimatum the book does not reveal if she gets it. Weaveworld is not a story about people like her.
• Deconstructed Trope that's Played for Drama in Trapped in a Dating Sim: The World of Otome Games is Tough for Mobs. In the original Romance Game that became Leon's new reality, noblewomen Angelica and Clarice were this. Leon points out, how they are Designated Villain and how the game had Protagonist-Centered Morality that gave them the short end of the stick despite not truly being bad people:
  • Angelica is incorrectly blamed as having ordered other students to bully Marie, and is trying to keep the heir of the Kingdom Julius, from tarnishing his reputation, and encouraging him to make as many friends and allies as possible to ease his future rule. As well, Marie is intentionally stoking her jealousy, holding the hands of men other than Julius in front of her, to trigger her Hair-Trigger Temper and cause her undoing.
  • Clarice had her reputation tarnished and became victim of gossip, due to Jilk's behavior around Marie. And then Jilk broke off his engagement via "Dear John" Letter, and ignored her completely, driving her into a mental breakdown and to lash out in revenge.
• Of Fire and Stars: Thandililom, Dennaleia's fiancé, is nice enough but also unappealing to her. It soon becomes clear this is because she's a lesbian, falling instead for his sister. She leaves him and runs away with Mare after their relationship is discovered.

Live-Action TV

• The Office (UK): Lee play this to Dawn. Mostly of the "minor flaws" variation, but with hints of Latent Jealousy.
• The Office (US):
  • Roy falls directly into Latent Jealousy when he and Pam consider getting back together and Pam tells him she kissed Jim. The next day he goes to the office and almost assaults Jim.
  • In the final season of the US version, the characters attend Roy's wedding to a woman we've never seen before. He seems to have changed into a boring nice guy, but a bit of the Evil All Along variant surfaces when he hints to Jim that he dodged a bullet by not marrying Pam.
• How I Met Your Mother:
  • Deconstructed with a Perspective Flip. Ted—the main character—ends up as a Disposable Fiancé to Stella. She left Ted at the altar in favor of Tony, her ex and her daughter's father. This is framed as a deeply selfish, cruel way to treat Ted—but Stella and Tony's relationship is also framed as true and important. From Stella's point of view, Ted probably fell into the "Bland Perfection" category, as in Robin's words, he was "disappearing into someone else's life". Stella later apologizes for her actions, telling him she was always in love with Tony, but she loved and cared for Ted because he made her believe in romance again (ironically priming her to be swept off her feet by Tony when he realizes he's about to lose her forever to Ted). This whole scenario becomes an Exaggerated Trope when Tony writes a hit romantic comedy movie about the whole thing, with himself as an OP self-insert and Ted as pathetic, evil, goofy, jealous monster (to the point where the fact that Stella would even date him is described as the movie's only flaw). The Ted-expy even drops his Paper-Thin Disguise altered name ("Jed Mosley") and shouts "I'm TED MOSBY!" at one point during the movie.
  • Happens once again, with Victoria, Klaus, and Ted. She is convinced to write a note to her fiancé, but when Ted goes to drop it off he bumps into said fiancé... who was also running away from the marriage. Turns out that he realised that she is almost what he wants, but not quite. As both partners were simultaneously treating each other as Disposable Fiancés, this is an Exaggerated Trope.
• Glee: With Will/Emma being the primary romance between the show's adults, that pairing alone has a few of these. Ken Tanaka, Emma's fiance at the beginning of the show, is this trope played entirely straight (complete with the "slipping away at the end" business). Terri is Will's disposable wife. In Season 2, when it seems like Will and Emma can finally get together, along comes her sexy new dentist boyfriend Carl Howell, who later seems set up to be a disposable husband.
• Downton Abbey:
  • Lavinia Swire may as well have had this written on her forehead from her first appearance. She dies during the influenza epidemic, but not before seeing her fiancé kissing another woman and insisting that she wants him to be happy anyway. There's a brief acknowledgment of Let's Call the Whole Thing Off when she tells Matthew that she doesn't want to deal with being the Countess of Grantham, even if she loves him.
  • There was an even more blatant example with Richard Carlisle, Mary's Disposable Fiancé. Unlike the sweet and selfless Lavinia, Carlisle was a jerk whom Mary only considered marrying to keep the Pamuk scandal out of the press. Once Lord Grantham made it clear that she wouldn't have to worry about that, she dumped his sorry ass.
  • In series four, Mary's suitor Lord Gillingham happens to be inconveniently engaged to someone else; but ultimately decides to break off the engagement (risking a potential scandal as well as the displeasure of the woman's family and all their circle) in order to pursue Mary.
• In A Different World, Whitley becomes engaged to the handsome senator Byron Douglas III. He's pretty perfect (quite the political crusader) but not bland. Whitley leaves him at the altar and marries Dwayne. Since Whitley and Dwayne tend to be the One True Pairing, fans didn't think about Byron too much.
• Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon has this with Hina Kusaka, Mamoru's Unlucky Childhood Friend. Most fans had seen the original anime, so they knew there was no way that Mamoru and Usagi were not going to end up together.
• In Once Upon a Time, Abigail/Kathryn to James/David, both in fairy tale land and in Storybrooke, of the Let's Call The Whole Thing Off variety in both:
  • In fairy tale land, it's an arranged marriage. As it turns out, she's no happier with the arrangement than he is, being in love with one of her father's knights.
  • In Storybrooke, the curse has placed them in a loveless marriage and actively prevents them from being with their beloveds (with a little help from Regina), even when Kathryn realizes David loves Mary Margaret (Snow White) more than her and tries to gracefully remove herself from the picture.
• Merlin (2008)
  • Princess Mithian, who Arthur becomes engaged to after Guinevere is Mistaken for Cheating. Yet somehow Mithian averts every single one of the types common to this trope, coming across as an interesting, charming, kind-hearted woman who genuinely falls for Arthur over the course of the episode. The only type she could arguably fit into is Minor Flaw (with her flaw being that she's simply not the woman he's in love with), as were it not for Arthur's latent feelings for Guinevere, she would have been the perfect match for him. She even takes her rejection amazingly well, and on returning in the next season, has no hard feelings toward the Happily Married pair.
  • Also Princess Elena of the series before, who falls into the Let's Call The Whole Thing Off category after she and Arthur agree that their Arranged Marriage isn't to their liking (Arthur because he loves Gwen; Elena because she doesn't really know Arthur).
• Combining Bland Perfection and Let's Call the Whole Thing Off is Dr. John Taglieri, from the first season of ER. He's Carol Hathaway's rebound guy after her breakup with Doug Ross and subsequent suicide attempt. They're quickly engaged, but he leaves her at the altar at the end of the season because he knows she'll never be as thrilled to be with him as he is with her.
• A flashback in Agent Carter revealed that Peggy had been engaged to a British Army officer named Fred Wells back in 1940 (a good three years before she met Steve Rogers). Her brother disapproved of the match, claiming that she would never live the life of adventure she wanted with her fiancé. After her brother is killed in action, Peggy realizes that he was right, invokes Let's Call The Whole Thing Off, and accepts a transfer into the SOE, starting her life as a secret agent. Apart from the episode where said flashbacks occurred, her fiancé never appears or even gets mentioned.
• Frasier Crane on Cheers was introduced as Diane's disposable fiancé; Word of God is that he was directly inspired by the characters Ralph Bellamy played in old Hollywood movies. He became popular enough that after Diane inevitably left him at the altar the writers kept him around and gave him some Character Development. There was even an episode on the sequel show, Frasier, where it's revealed that Frasier still has emotional trauma over how Diane treated him, even after several years have passed, and he gets the chance to call her out on her behaviour after seeing how she's skewed their relationship in a play that she's written.
• On Lovesick, Evie's fiancé Mal falls into Bland Perfection.
• I Dream of Jeannie: Major Nelson is engaged to Melissa Stone, the daughter of General Stone, for the first half of the first season. The writers quickly realised they had no idea what to do with her beyond using her as an excuse to keep Major Nelson and Jeannie from getting together. Melissa is eventually Put on a Bus by having her get back with an ex-boyfriend, which technically made Major Nelson the "disposable" one in their relationship.

Music

• Dierks Bentley's Drunk on a Plane: We get to hear from the dumped guy "I feel like a plastic groom alone there on the top of the cake" Actually a very upbeat sounding song and in the music video he meets a lovely woman on the flight as well as getting "a little Mile-High flight attention" from the sexy Stewardess

Myths & Religion

• In the Circassian tale about the abduction of Psatina, the latter is abducted at her wedding feast... yet there is no further mention of the groom after the fact, and she is freely able to marry the hero Warzameg after he rescues her.
• In Classical Mythology, Perseus agress to save Andromeda from the sea monster if he can marry her. At the wedding feast, Andromeda's former betrothed (and uncle) Phineus attacks him. Andromeda's dad sides with Perseus on the grounds that hey, Phineus didn't try to save Andromeda. Phineus and his allies won't relent, and Perseus uses Medusa's head on them in the ensuing battle.

Tabletop Games

• Hilarious subversion in a Dungeons & Dragons Adventure, from Free Adventure day. A Lawful Good type is forced into an Arranged Marriage with a succubus, due to a treaty with the local Lawful Evil nation. However, the probable plot is subverted. The marriage is too important to break up. Instead, the goal is to get him a ring that protects against life drain! Furthermore, she is not portrayed as Evil All Along and can be genuinely... well, if not GOOD, at least you can see it won't lead to slaying.

Theatre

• Gloria Kramer in the musical One Touch of Venus exemplifies Latent Jealousy.
• Tiffany in Mary Mary, though not a Rich Bitch, is just too wealthy for Bob to keep, and she makes this one of several reasons to call off their engagement. As she leaves, she notes that he was never strongly attracted to her in the first place.
• Jane in Brigadoon is far too bland to compete with Tommy's memories of Scotland.
• In the 1993 musical of Tommy, the boyfriend talks about getting married to Tommy's mother. However, when her husband comes back home from the war, the mother feels surprised and relieved that he's alive after all, and the boyfriend soon becomes a jerkass by acting hostile toward Tommy's parents and attempting to kill the father. Fortunately, the father disposes of him by shooting him dead in the struggle.
• Pretty well averted in Romeo and Juliet. By all appearances, Paris is a genuinely decent, honorable guy, and in his dying moments, asks to be buried alongside the supposedly dead Juliet.
• In The Desert Song, Margot is still about to marry Captain Paul Fontaine as the first act finale begins.
• In Kinky Boots, Charlie and Nicola break up partway through the second act, leaving him free to ask out Lauren in the finale.
• In Leading Ladies, Meg breaks her engagement to Duncan very suddenly in the final scene. It's a combination of her realizing she can marry for love instead of convenience, and that Duncan is a rather dull personality.

Video Games

• Persona 3: In Mitsuru's social link storyline after inheriting ownership of the Kirijo Group due to her father's death she is thrown into an arranged marriage with an Evil All Along type, whom she immediately dumps after he insults the main character.
• Haru in Persona 5 goes through something similar, although this one goes much further with the Evil All Along type. While Mitsuru's fiance was just a snobbish jerk, Haru's is violently abusive and possibly a rapist, and a boss fight against the Cognitive version of him in the Metaverse is what awakens Haru's Persona in the first place.
• A justified Evil All Along example from Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn; Astrid was supposed to marry Lekain, but it wasn't by any choice of hers in the first place. Instead, she ends up marrying Makalov which is... well, it's better, at least.
• In Tsukihime, Akiha had previously been engaged to Fat Bastard Tonami Kugamine, presumably at the behest of her father, but as soon as he dies Akiha takes over the family, breaks off the engagement and throws Kugamine out of the house. In this case, he's significantly older than her, perverted, and Akiha is actually in love with her brother Shiki.
• A subplot in Always Sometimes Monsters revolves around the protagonist trying to win back the "love of their life", who is marrying someone else. Conveniently, this person turns out to be a lying scumbag who never really loved her at all, so the protagonist doesn't have to feel guilty about hijacking his wedding. (The Love Interest's right to make their own romantic choices is rarely touched upon.)
• Deconstructed in Nancy Drew: The Haunting of Castle Malloy. Kit believes that Matt disappeared because he doesn't want to commit to Kyler, and constantly pushes this idea at both Kyler and the player. Kyler — outraged that Kit is trying to manipulate her love life — makes it clear that she is not interested in him. In the end, Matt is saved from his kidnapper and marries Kyler as planned, Kit admitting that he may have let jealousy colour his interpretation of events.
• A rare female example is Penelope in Sly Cooper: Thieves in Time, who is both of the Latent Jealousy and Evil All Along categories. She betrays Bentley for the sake of greed and believes his True Companions to being holding back his full potential.
• Alex Valse of the Rance series fits this to a T. He's a handsome, talented and morally-upright prodigy with a bright future who is dating the princess of his country, putting him in line to be the next king. Unfortunately, he is also rather bland and passive, which causes him to eventually lose his girlfriend (and his chances of becoming king) after Rance outshines him by being more proactive and effective during a crisis. Rather surprisingly for an example of this trope, however, Alex actually takes his loss to heart and, instead of dropping out of the story, devotes himself to developing a stronger inner resolve. By his later appearances in the series, he is happily engaged, much less indecisive, and able to fully bury the hatchet with his ex.
• Demonheart: Mark is the main character's fiancé who quickly becomes unlikable due to being a dirty coward. He gets replaced by two bad boy love interests. The player can even choose to murder him.
• Jayden in Grand Theft Auto V was the fiance of Franklin's Love Interest Tanisha who's shown to be a Type C. He's a rich doctor who's mentioned by Lamar to run a charity for sick kids, but Tanisha's social media indicates that he's condescending and borderline emotionally abusive towards her. The two eventually marry, but by the time of Online it's shown that Franklin left crime behind and became a successful businessman, and Tanisha went back to him with the two starting a family together.
• Xenoblade Chronicles 1 has a rather tragic variant of this trope. Sharla had a fiancé named Gadolt. Unlike most examples here, Gadolt wasn't a bad person. However, he was captured by mechon during the attack on Colony 6 and was assumed dead. He wasn't killed, but he was placed in a Faced Mechon to control, and unfortunately for him, Mumkhar's actions made it to where he and other faced mechon got their memories wiped. His memory came back just long enough to save the party, but he didn't live long enough afterwards.
• Miitopia: The princess is being forced to marry a prince of the Evil All Along type — he's arrogant, useless in a fight, and puts down pretty much everyone he meets except for her (including her childhood friend, who she's actually in love with). The king finally agrees to call off the engagement after her face is stolen by the Dark Lord and he sees the two men's true personalities through how they react to it (the prince runs and cries for his mother; the friend, while being utterly useless, at least tries to save her).
• Love of Magic: In backstory; Emily's first fiancé got himself killed by being found in bed with a Council Battlemage's wife.
  Emily: And the head of the Army, Lord Morris, resigned in disgrace after scattering my late and unmourned ex-fiancé across the duelling grounds.

Web Comics

• Erstwhile, which adapts lesser-known fairy tales by The Brothers Grimm, has a few examples where the fiancée's only flaw is "Arranged Marriage when the male lead is already in love with somebody else." The creators at least try to treat them sympathetically — the girl from "The Twelve Huntsman" is strongly implied to not want to marry Prince Aster anyway, while the one from "Sweetheart Roland" gets a Maybe Ever After with the shepherd at the main couple's wedding.
• In this parody of the rom-coms that tend to pop up around the holidays, protagonist Carol's business-minded boyfriend Burt (a parody of the Evil All Along type) ends up being forgotten by her the moment she meets the handsome, rural Jerk with a Heart of Gold Nick. When Burt shows up to pick her up later, he's incensed to discover her affair, at which point Carol affirms her love for Nick and dumps him. Both Burt and Nick agree that this doesn't really absolve the whole cheating thing, but she claims it doesn't count because "it's Christmas magic".

Web Original

• A short story floating around Tumblr revolves around a pair of Hallmark Disposable Boyfriends who meet, bitter and miserable, on the plane back from "Tinyville, Bumfuck Middle-Of-Nowhere, Utah", and hit it off surprisingly well.

Web Videos

• When The Nostalgia Chick did Meg Ryan Chick-Flick Month she points out how weird some of the Minor Flaws examples can be, like a man who sneezes too much and a girl who asks for Tic-Tacs during a stressful situation. The "Let's Call the Whole Thing Off" scenes also baffle her in how completely painless they seem to be for everyone involved; Sleepless in Seattle's actually sends Todd in the Shadows into a rage.

Western Animation

• Hro Talek, Hawkgirl's long-lost fiance in Justice League. Initially presented as Bland Perfection, he winds up as Evil All Along. Interestingly, Hawkgirl had been in a relationship with the Green Lantern before we even hear about Hro.
• Lady Jasmine in The Smurfs (1981) episode "The Prince And The Hopper", whom Prince Theodore believes is his true love that he's going to marry, who turns out to be a Gold Digger who's only marrying him for his wealth. The wedding eventually gets called off when, at the ceremony, she ends up kissing a frog who's been turned into a copy of the prince who gets turned back into a frog when Smurfette kisses the real prince who was turned into a frog and turns him back into a prince.
• In Avatar: The Last Airbender, Princess Yue is about to enter an Arranged Marriage with the arrogant Hahn, much to Sokka's annoyance. However Hahn drowns shortly after his introduction when he attempts to kill Admiral Zhao and is promptly thrown overboard.
• Eric in Kim Possible Movie: So the Drama is presented as a Bland Perfection Flavor of the Week boyfriend, even getting along with Ron, but is really of the Evil All Along category. He's actually a synthodrone created by Drakken to distract Kim while he unleashes his Diablo toy scheme to terrorize the planet and take over what's left of civilization.

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