Basic Trope: The Hero goes too far; team leaves in disgust. Results vary.
- Straight: Dirk refuses to rescue annoying Princess Wendy after she's kidnapped by Emperor Evulz; his friends get mad and head off to save her themselves.
- Exaggerated: Dirk refuses to help Princess Wendy tie her shoes; the team shake their collective heads in disgust and they start shooting at him.
- Downplayed: The team splits, but long-distance texting and calls are still open.
- Justified: Dirk is being amazingly selfish and needs a wake-up call.
- Inverted:
- Dirk the Magnetic Hero draws allies to his side through his heroic deeds.
- Dirk the Token Good Teammate refuses to abandon Princess Wendy after she's kidnapped by Emperor Evulz; his Anti-Hero Team decides they're better off without him.
- Subverted:
- At first his allies plan to save Wendy, but Dirk makes a persuasive argument as to why his allies shouldn't.
- Dirk's allies are very upset about his choice to leave the princess, but decide against splitting the group up.
- After a change of heart, Dirk decides he wants to save Wendy after all, and the team goes back to him
- Double Subverted:
- Dirk isn't as persuasive as he thinks.
- Until they learn that Dirk abandoned the princess because she dumped him, and abandon him in disgust.
- Only for him to back out of the rescue and for his team to abandon him all over again.
- Parodied: The team revolts frequently, for many frivolous reasons.
- Zig Zagged:
- Averted: Dirk's allies agree with Dirk's decision.
- Enforced: "We're looking for an aesop on friendship, and Character Development for Dirk... why not have the team get so pissed off with Dirk that they leave and he has to win them back?"
- Lampshaded: "Hey! Where are you going?! You're really going to leave me just because I'm refusing to save that royal pain?!"
- Invoked: Emperor Evulz sets up a situation where Dirk will have to abandon someone because he knows how fragile the team's cooperation is, and is counting on such a of crisis to break them up permanently.
- Exploited: Emperor Evulz, on learning that the heroic team has split apart, hunts them down individually and kills them.
- Defied:
- The others don't agree with Dirk's decision, but stay by his side anyway in hopes of changing his mind that way.
- Brik stays by Dirk's side until the very end; He tries to convince others to stay, and even if that fails, he'd still be with Dirk.
- Discussed: Everyone has a long conversation about why Dirk's refusal to help Wendy is wrong, and why his team is leaving him.
- Conversed: ???
- Deconstructed: The party was only held together by very breakable threads in the first place. Dirk is kind of a jerk. Dirk decides he doesn't need them, and strikes out on his own. Without the support of the rest of his party, he gets his ass kicked, but survives, and tries to seek out his old party mates. Unfortunately, Brik and Vespa are dead, Tec no longer cares, Xid is working for Evulz, and Lotan never forgave him for the decision that broke the the party and tries to kill him.
- Reconstructed: Lotan and Vespa wait until the rest of the party's asleep, then go and find Dirk and tell him in no uncertain terms that without him, they will lose the coming battle, but the way he's acting, he can't keep being leader. He agrees to try to do better.
- Played For Laughs: Everyone leaves over a laughably minor matter; i.e. he accidentally underpaid the innkeeper by one coin. While the problem is easily and immediately corrected, Dirk still has to bend over backwards to get the team back together before they can move on.
- Played For Drama: The heroes split up at the worst possible time, as Emperor Evulz cranks his campaign to conquer the world into high gear. Dirk not only has to earn back his friends' regard, but rush to do so before the scattered team is completely wiped out.
Back to Heroic Team Revolt.
