Basic Trope: Good guys are portrayed as boring and uninteresting.
- Straight: Bob is portrayed as a generic Ideal Hero in contrast to the more exciting Emperor Evulz.
- Exaggerated: Bob is so pure and righteous that the characters (and the audience) would rather go to sleep than to listen to his lectures about morality. Emperor Evulz is so stylish despite being sadistic and ruthless that the characters would rather join him.
- Downplayed: Bob is so much of a Nice Guy that this bores Alice who would rather go out with Brad.
- Justified:Alice: Emperor Evulz has cool weapons, cool venues, and he's even kind of cool himself! Why aren't you more like that?
- Bob decides that it's better to be "boring" and be morally upstanding than to be "interesting" and distract himself from the task at hand.
- Inverted:
- Bob's interesting, relatable development sets himself apart from Emperor Evulz's Generic Doomsday Villainy.
- In a sea of emotionally compromised Anti Heroes, Bob's surprising moral purity makes him interesting to look at.
- Too Bleak, Stopped Caring - Where the villain becomes so bleak and morally void that the audience starts losing interest.
- The good guys are fun and quirky, while the bad guys are banal, pompous jerks with petty motives.
- The status quo has flipped: What was once considered 'cool' and 'evil' has become so commonplace that it bores the audience. Meanwhile, the once 'boring' moral values has become so uncommon that it's treated like a breath of fresh air.
- Subverted: Bob's motivations are just as interesting as Emperor Evulz's...
- Double Subverted: Unfortunately, Bob's development treads the same notes as other heroes who try to "break the mold", effectively looking generic by comparison.
- Parodied: Bob's mere presence puts the enemy to sleep. His teammates use his moral nature as a natural remedy for insomnia.
- Zig Zagged: ???
- Averted:
- Coolness is not a main focus in hero vs villain stories.
- Due to the series running on Rule of Cool, both the good guys and the bad guys have at least one cool thing they did, even the local Butt-Monkey and Ineffectual Sympathetic Villain.
- Enforced:
- The writer believes that Evil Is Cool and wants to reflect on that by intending his heroes to be boring.
- Villain Protagonist Chancellor Wantstorule's doomed-to-fail-by-his-own-actions attempts to take over are the focus of the stories, characterizing King Bob beyond being the king of the land could easily take away what makes the stories so comedic.
- Lampshaded: "Oh great. Here comes Mr. Goody-Lamey-Two-Shoes."
- Invoked:
- Emperor Evulz uses a strawman to convince the public that he is worth noticing.
- The Powers That Be decide that the safest bet to pick as The Chosen One is the most moral, unwavering, and uninteresting person around. It just happens that Bob fit the description.
- Exploited:
- Bob gets Emperor Evulz to keep the heroes alive by pointing out without "boring" heroism, the concept of villainy being "interesting" loses its meaning.
- Emperor Evulz gains followers by upholding this trope and Evil Is Cool.
- Defied:
- Bob decides that there's no point toppling the tyrannical regime of evil if the forces of good are just going to be rigid and stuffy and oppress people the same amount from a different angle. So he goes a different route.
- Steve shows that not only does Good Feels Good, he shows that Evil isn't so cool as it looks by showing that the villains may have the flash but they lack the substance, kindness, and other positive qualities that heroes possess. He not only shows the horrific nature of evil itself, but how evil can be banal. Besides, even if the villains look cool, it doesn't excuse their atrocities and rotten character.
- Alternatively, a Knight in Sour Armor calls out the villains for upholding both this trope and Evil Is Cool by verbally ripping their cynical beliefs apart.
- The Author creates charming and fleshed-out heroes to counter this trope and prove that villains aren't the only characters that can be interesting.
- Discussed: "Why is it that good guys always manage to make people go to sleep?"
- Conversed: "Bob is on television again. Yawn."
- Deconstructed:
- Bob's upstanding purity causes his teammates to defect to Emperor Evulz, believing there will be more interesting events occurring. They are initially right: A couple of days under Evulz's leadership seems better than what they're used to. However, the longer they stay, the more used to all the hedonism and violence they become, and they end up just as bored as they used to be when they were with Bob. In the end, they learn their problem wasn't with Good and Evil, but with stagnation and variation.
- Because people find good boring and evil interesting, the townspeople don't show gratitude for the heroes' good deeds and the heroes gradually lose support from the people while the villains gain more power. Not only does this betrayal anger the heroes to the point of calling out the townspeople, it makes the heroes struggle even more in their battle against the villains.
- Reconstructed:
- Good is stable, not boring. If Bob wants to take a day out on the lake, he can, completely guilt-free, and with that comes a certain amount of peace of mind, the kind Evulz just doesn't have, whether he's bat-shit insane, desperate for a purpose in life, or just can't understand good.
- Not all of the townspeople abandoned the heroes. They don't care about "coolness" or "boringness"; they care about what's right, and the loyal townspeople do whatever they can to support the heroes as possible.
- Played For Drama:
- Bob points out that it says a lot about his teammates when their concept of "entertainment" is making their own lives interesting at the expense of everyone else.
- Emperor Evulz wins over the populace by citing this trope, but as they soon find out, "interesting" doesn't necessarily mean "fun".
Here's a link to the morally righteous yet tedious main article.
