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Basic Trope: A character has a generic, one-note personality.

  • Straight: Alice is an average teenage girl with a basic personality.
  • Exaggerated: Alice has only one personality trait.
  • Downplayed: Alice is a basic girl, but she has one or two other personality traits differing from her archetype.
  • Justified:
    • Alice is a one-shot character, so she doesn’t get fleshed out.
    • Alice is one of a group of twelve side characters in a film, and characterizing all of them would make the film far too long.
    • Alice has been locked away in a Gilded Cage her whole life and never interacted with anyone, never learning what it's like to be herself.
  • Subverted: Alice seems like a generic girl at first, but it turns out that there’s a lot more to her, such as unique hobbies or passions.
  • Double Subverted: But Alice, and the rest of the cast, forgets about it next episode and Alice returns to her one-dimensional self.
  • Inverted: Alice is the most complex, lore-relevant character in the series.
  • Parodied: Alice is flat like paper and has a flat personality.
  • Averted: Alice is a Rounded Character.
  • Defied: Alice (or her classmates) notices how basic she is and tries to has a stronger persona.
  • Zig-Zagged: Alice’s portrayal is Depending on the Writer. Sometimes her only personality traits consist of being generic, other times, there’s some depth put into her relationships.
  • Enforced:
    • “Y’know, we have a pretty complex cast. We should balance it out with just one basic character.”
    • “Let’s make our main character, Alice, generic in order to make her stand out from the cast.”
  • Lampshaded: “Y’know, Alice is pretty one-note. Is that normal?”
  • Discussed: “C’mon, there’s no way I’m that flat. Human beings are too complex for that.”
  • Conversed: “Ugh, I hate flat characters in books.”
  • Invoked: Alice acknowledges how basic she is and uses this to avoid getting into hijinks.
  • Exploited: Bob tries to go out with Alice because her simplicity will increase his chances of impressing her.
  • Played for Laughs: Alice is a basic girl always put into dangerous, crazy, or deep situations and has little to no complex feelings about it.
  • Played for Drama: Alice has a hard time making friends because of how boring she is.
  • Played for Horror: Alice’s basic personality and constant facial expression makes her off-putting.
  • Implied: Alice only has one line that makes her seem generic.
  • Deconstructed: No one really likes Alice because of how boring she is.
  • Reconstructed: No one really likes Alice because of how boring she is, but she’s fine with it.

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