Basic Trope: A gay male who is best friends with the protagonist, who is usually a straight female. His love life is not as important as the protagonist's.
- Straight: Bob is Alice's closest friend, and interested in men only. While Alice goes through many fleshed-out romances of her own, we never see Bob's social life except when he texts Alice about last night's fling.
- Exaggerated: Bob is Alice's only friend, and every other conversation with is either about cute boys, fashion, musical theater and/or littered with sexual innuendos.
- Downplayed:
- Bob is close to Alice, but they both have other friends, both gay, straight, and in-between, and he doesn't fall squarely into the Camp Gay or Straight Gay category.
- Bob is Straight Gay, while Alice is a Girly Girl with a Tomboy Streak.
- Bob's love life is shown, but isn't that frequent/passionate/important when compared to how Alice does with her Love Interest.
- Justified: Bob and Alice have known each other since before Bob knew he was gay, but Bob is in the closet, so he doesn't want to make his homosexuality obvious.
- Inverted:
- Alice is a lesbian and Bob is her straight best friend.
- Bob is Straight Gay, while Alice is Camp Straight.
- Bob is a gay protagonist, and Alice is his Fag Hag best friend.
- Subverted: Bob is actually straight but told Alice he was gay for his own reasons.
- Double Subverted: Bob realizes he is actually gay while pretending to be gay.
- Parodied: Bob is literally treated like a pet or accessory. Alice gives him cutesy pet names, feeds him treats and scolds him whenever he does something she doesn't like.
- Zig Zagged: Bob and Alice are the closest of friends! Except they really hate each other. Until they find out more about each other and slowly become friends! Until Alice finds out Bob was lying about being gay. Only it turns out he really is gay! No, wait, he's actually just bisexual.
- Averted:
- Bob isn't gay.
- Bob is gay, but not Alice's friend.
- Enforced: "There's a suspicious lack of diversity in the cast... Let's add a gay best friend character to seem progressive and gain support."
- Lampshaded: "I swear, it's like it's required for each person in this school to have at least one gay friend."
- Invoked: Bob comes out as gay in the hopes that people will want to be his friend, and deliberately seeks out people who want a gay friend.
- Exploited: Charlie tries to get Alice to set him up with Bob.
- Defied:
- "Look, I get that you think you are trying to be nice, but I know why you're really trying to be my friend. I'm not some puppet in designer jeans with a limp wrist who reacts to everything you say with 'Oh snap, girlfriend!'"
- "It's not like that, okay? Bob is gay, he's my best friend, but he is not my 'Gay Best Friend'. He's a human being!"
- Discussed:Alice: "So, last night I was talking to my friend Bob about Alan's jealousy...."
Beatrice: Alan doesn't mind you talking with a guy named Bob?
Alice: Oh, Bob's gay. - Conversed: ???
- Deconstructed: Bob feels he has to play up the aspects of the Gay Best Friend trope that people expect so that people will like him, but underneath it, he is exhausted, bitter, and resentful of Alice and others who he feels are using him. Eventually he calls everyone out on this with a "Did You Think I Can't Feel?" moment and is made an outcast.
- Reconstructed: But Alice really does care for him, and Bob agrees to give her a second chance. The next time they hang out, Alice finds that she likes the real Bob better than the two-dimensional gay-best-friend persona Bob was projecting before. They become better friends than ever.
- Implied: Bob is effeminate and shows no romantic interest in Alice, but his sexuality is never confirmed.
Back to Gay Best Friend.
