Basic Trope: An entertainer or other public figure can get away with pretty much anything.
- Straight: Bob, a heavy metal rock star, brings home a different "girlfriend" every night, smokes up to 50 cigars an hour, does all kinds of hardcore drugs, and drinks like a fish. Not only does this not hurt his public image, it actually enhances it.
- Exaggerated: Bob murders someone, and yet nobody bats an eye.
- Downplayed:
- Bob is an outspoken political conservative, but his liberal and socialist fans still like him because of his music (or some other combination thereof).
- Bob is a Jerk with a Heart of Gold, which gives him character dimensions that distinguish him from his straightforward Nice Guy and Jerkass peers and makes people want him to be around because he's a more relatable human than those other rockers are.
- Justified:
- Bob has a public persona (and maybe a real personality) as a bad boy. This makes him popular with women and with men who want to be like him.
- Bob is a foreigner or newly landed immigrant and his homeland has Blue-and-Orange Morality relative to his host country. He just doesn't know about the Values Dissonance associated with the things he's doing; he's also fortunate that people born there are tolerant.
- Inverted:
- Former Child Star Alice is now a Happily Married mother and is thirty years old. For the first time in her life, she shows her navel for a magazine. For this, she loses a lot of fans because she shattered their image of her as being pure and wholesome (the Fridge Logic that she must have had sex because she has a child occurs to fewer people than it should).
- Bob doesn't drink or do drugs (not even so much as coffee), and only has sex with his wife at home (or, alternatively, doesn't have sex at all). He's never posed nude for a magazine, doesn't go clubbing, and rarely goes to parties. (And when he does, they're the kind of parties that involve Pictionary or charades and a crudité platter, not Hookers and Blow.) Nor has he ever been involved in a violent altercation with anyone, or advocated violence. His squeaky-clean public image essentially makes him one of the most hated musicians in the industry.
- A horrible crime happens at one of Bob's concerts. He belongs to a disfavoured group, so he gets Convicted by Public Opinion thanks to a generous dose of Insane Troll Logic.
- Subverted:
- Because of some aspect of Bob's identity in which he is an historically oppressed minority (e.g., his skin color, sexual orientation, where he's from, his religion, etc.), he is scrutinized more, so people are quicker to decry him as morally bankrupt.
- Children and teens idolize Bob, so it matters how he behaves on and off stage.
- Bob is caught with drugs, gets arrested, and goes to rehab.
- Double Subverted:
- People within Bob's demographic, however, see him as a hero.
- He doesn't lose popularity because he did something scandalous.
- Most other people would have gone to prison, not rehab.
- Parodied: Bob says that his fans are uncultured pricks and he hates all of them. This improves his public image. His fans start idolizing him even more.
- Zig-Zagged:
- Some people from the group or groups that held back Bob's group, whatever it is, come to love Bob though he doesn't deserve it, while members of his group come to hate him even though he doesn't deserve that, either.
- Despite having so many young fans, Bob gets away with a surprising amount of public family-unfriendly behaviour for years until he commits a Felony Misdemeanor which costs him his audience. But then he regains his fans with an act of heroism.
- Bob knows that his celebrity status has conferred more chances and opportunities on him than most people get. So, he campaigns for drug policy reform to make it possible for less fortunate users to get the treatment they need.
- The public will tolerate more bad behaviour from Adam or Bob than they will from Alice or Beth.
- Averted:
- Bob doesn't do anything scandalous or controversial.
- Bob is not a public figure of any kind, and doesn't have much of a social media presence.
- Enforced: Bob is a No Celebrities Were Harmed version of some famous person who, in the opinion of the creator or producer, did bad things and then pulled a Karma Houdini.
- Lampshaded: In a concert, Bob thanks his fans for sticking by him even while he does bad things.
- Invoked: Bob, a rock star, is seen doing lines of coke off the nude body of Alice, a prostitute.
- Exploited:
- Bob uses his exploits to gain publicity.
- Alternatively, Bob doesn't do anything exciting in his day-to-day life, unless making pancakes for dinner and pizza for breakfast counts. (See "Untwisted.") He does this on purpose so the paparazzi will just get so bored, they'll give up on stalking him and trying to catch him doing something wrong, and go tail some train wreck of a Former Child Star instead.
- Defied:
- Bob says or does something absolutely unforgivable, with bonus points if he causes harm to one or more Unacceptable Targets in the process. He never gets another acting role (not even as an extra), publishes another book (not even a single short story or article), gets another photo or painting exhibited, nor releases another album (or even song, and no, neither does he get to contribute a guest performance to a song by somebody else). How utterly screwed is he? He can't even get a Fallen-on-Hard-Times Job!
- This isn't really the kind of image Bob wants to portray, or he's worried he'll get fired, so he doesn't do anything wild, even if he wants to do something wild.
- Discussed: "It's interesting that Bob can get away with so much that I can't. Does he really do enough good to cancel out that bad stuff?"
- Conversed: "I couldn't keep watching the show after all the musician characters leaned too far into the hedonism you get in show business."
- Deconstructed: While Bob faces inadequate or no consequences for his actions, they still have consequences in other people's lives, including injuries, illnesses, loss of money, taking affront, or even death. Eventually, the people who are paid to clean up his various messes get sick of him and quit en masse. That should signal to Bob at least that his Karma Houdini Warranty is about to run out, but he doesn't notice.
- Reconstructed: Bob finds new enablers to run interference for him before long.
- Played for Laughs: Bob gets away with causing Amusing Injuries to people.
- Played for Drama: Bob's lifestyle of Sex, Drugs, and Rock & Roll is killing him by degrees, but he doesn't notice until it is too late.
- Played for Horror: Bob gets away with summoning an Eldritch Abomination.
- Untwisted: Bob's image is controversy-proof because he does nothing overly exciting or scandalous in his day-to-day life. He says nothing controversial on social media (if he has much of a social media presence at all), wears nothing that could be considered cultural appropriation (or any other fashion "don't"), and doesn't even go clubbing. He doesn't date (either he is Happily Married or a Celibate Hero). His Music Videos consist of fractals and other patterns, and his lyrics are squeaky-clean or nonexistent. He rarely hosts or goes to parties, and when he does, they tend to be the kind that involve sitting around and talking, or playing charades or Pictionary, not the kind that involve drugs or turn into orgies. He never drinks more than one beer, or one glass of wine, if any alcohol. And the paparazzi got tired of watching him doing mundane, boring things like buying toilet paper, taking his dog Loki out to do his business (and always picking up after the dog), folding laundry, picking up dry-cleaning, going through the car wash, getting the same bagel and coffee at the same restaurant every day, taking out the garbage (containing nothing exciting, salacious, or scandalous — they looked), reheating leftovers, watering his plants, tidying his living room, cleaning his teeth, etc. They want to see him having one-night stands, cheating on his partner, doing lines of cocaine, Making Love in All the Wrong Places, having a messy breakup or divorce, getting arrested, developing a flat tire, buying drugs, saying the N-word, wearing an ugly shirt, or something else "out there", but he just isn't doing any of them.
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