Basic Trope: A character is very bad at judging the character of others.
- Straight: Alice doesn't trust the heroic and clearly good Bob, but immediately trusts the Obviously Evil Lance.
- Exaggerated:
- Bob is an example of Incorruptible Pure Pureness, but Alice treats him like the bad guy, while she allows the over-the-top villainous Lance to hear her secrets.
- Gullible Lemmings
- Downplayed:
- Alice is suspicious of both Lance and Bob, but she 'gets over' it for Lance but not Bob.
- Alice trusts both Lance and Bob, but she trusts Lance more.
- Alice tries to see the good in everyone. She rightfully trusts Bob but also trusts Lance.
- Alice is suspicious of Lance, yet also extends said suspicion to Bob.
- Justified:
- Alice is simply The Ditz, so it makes sense she wouldn't be smart when it comes to judging people's characters.
- Alice is a child and easily swayed by whoever gets to her first — in this case, Lance.
- Lance is rich and uses his money to sway Alice's opinion in his own favor.
- Alice is too stubborn to admit mistakes, not wanting to recant her initial assessment of Lance when further evidence presents itself.
- Lance is that good at hiding his true nature in front of Alice, manipulates everything to make himself look good and to make Bob look bad.
- Alice has a crush on Lance and is blinded by her idealization of him.
- Alice is in a bad state of mind and immediately latches onto the first person who show her kindness. The person in question just happened to be the opportunistic Lance.
- Inverted: Alice is a freakishly good judge of character and in fact an expert at detecting lies — if you're in her presence for a matter of seconds, she can tell how trustworthy you are.
- Subverted:
- Alice seems to trust Lance more than Bob, but that turns out to be a ruse to get Lance to reveal his true nature — she knew all along that Bob was good.
- Alice was right. Lance has the Face of a Thug but turns out to be good, and Bob turns out to be a charismatic Manipulative Bastard.
- Double Subverted: But when Lance reveals his true nature, she seems shocked.
- Parodied: Bob has a Holy Halo and naturally attracts cute forest animals, while Lance literally has horns and the grass beneath him wilts as he walks on it. Naturally, Alice thinks Bob is horrible and Lance is true blue.
- Zig-Zagged: She distrusts the good Bob and the evil Lance, but when the even better David comes along, she assumes he's good.
- Averted: Alice is a solid judge of character.
- Enforced:
- The writers of the show want Alice to join the team, but they need to pad out the time between the gang meeting her and her formally joining.
- Alice was meant to be a decent but fallible judge of character, but Lance's actor ended up more Obviously Evil than intended.
- Lampshaded: "Alice, how can you trust the Obviously Evil Lance, but not the clearly pure, kind Bob?"
- Invoked: Lance plants false evidence and spreads stories around, presenting himself as someone to be trusted and Bob as someone to avoid.
- Defied: When Bob gets some time alone with Alice, he points out how obvious Lance's villainy is.
- Exploited: Lance tricks Alice into ruining Bob's reputation.
- Discussed: "That Alice, she thinks good people are bad and bad people are good."
- Conversed: "How long can they drag out Alice's misjudgment of character?"
- Played for Drama: Bob eventually wins Alice over and she joins him on his quest ... but he never entirely forgets the initial mistrust.
- Deconstructed:
- Because Alice is so bad at judging people, nobody trusts her with any sort of task where she'd have to do so.
- Alice's repeated failures at properly assessing who is good and and who is evil lead to her having massive trust and self-confidence issues.
- Alice's misplaced trust in Lance makes it easy for him to manipulate her.
- Implied: Alice talks about having trusted the wrong person once and regarding it ever since as her worst mistake.
C'mon, Ted Bundy, you seem all right, so let's go on back to Horrible Judge of Character. And don't think I'm not keeping my eye on you, Gandhi — I know you're up to no good.
