Basic Trope: A character tries to insult another character, but the second one is flattered.
- Straight: Alice calls Bob a weirdo, but Bob says, unironically, "Thank you!"
- Exaggerated:
- Alice gives Bob a whole speech on how he's no good but he thinks it's high praise.
- To Bob, Bad Is Good and Good Is Bad.
- Bob is a Card-Carrying Villain.
- Downplayed:
- On being called a weirdo, Bob says, "Um, thanks, I guess."
- On being called a weirdo, Bob simply shrugs and says, "Yeah, whatever." He's not flattered, but he's not offended either.
- Justified:
- Bob is proud of his eccentricities.
- Bob considers Alice to be boring and stuck up. Being weird by her standards is normal by his.
- Alice has Blue-and-Orange Morality for the setting and she insulted Bob for something most people consider good.
- The insult was a word Bob doesn't understand—he just assumes it was a compliment.
- Bob was insulted via Sarcasm Mode, but is Sarcasm-Blind.
- This is an alternate universe in which being weird is an actual medical condition. There are many slurs for being weird, but "weirdo" is not even close to being the strongest and Bob is more upset about Alice appropriating it.
- It wasn't much of an insult to begin with.
- Inverted:
- Subverted:
- Alice calls Bob a weirdo and Bob says, "Thanks ... for nothing."
- Bob seems to be unoffended by Alice's comment, but gets angry when she is out of earshot.
- Double Subverted: Bob's "thanks for nothing" comment was because he was still mad at Alice for something she did earlier. He actually liked being called a weirdo.
- Parodied: Alice, being from the Fiction 500, has a whole entourage of people trying to get into her good graces by insulting her. It sometimes works.
- Zig-Zagged:
- Alice calls a group of people weirdos. Some are flattered, some are neutral, and some take offense.
- Bob keeps changing his mind.Alice: You're a weirdo!Bob: Thanks ... for nothing ... but, seriously, I like being a weirdo ... but you shouldn't call me that. No, actually I don't mind...
- Alice calls Bob cold-blooded. He laughs, thinking she is commenting on the temperature of his blood. Then he finds out what she really meant, and is still not offended, but pretends to be so for the sake of publicity.
- Averted:
- Bob takes offense at Alice's insult.
- Alice does not insult Bob.
- Alice gives Bob a whole speech on how he's no good, and he suffers from a Villainous Breakdown.
- Enforced: "We need to make sure Bob is seen as different. Let's have him thank Alice for insulting him!"
- Lampshaded: "He's such a weirdo I can't even insult him!"
- Invoked: Bob trains himself to see a positive side to all insults.
- Exploited:
- Carol tells Alice to insult Bob, knowing he'll take it as a compliment.
- Alice makes an Engineered Public Confession out of Bob's response to her accusations.
- Defied:
- Alice looks for something Bob actually dislikes to insult him with.
- "Do not give me that 'thank you' bullshit, you son of a bitch! I'm calling you the most cold-blooded man I've ever seen because you are currently acting like a fucking sociopath, not because you literally have cold blood! Or maybe you are too stupid to figure out the context, too? You are so stupid you actually need me to tell it to you, aren't you, you cold-blooded bastard!?"
- Discussed: "You could call me a weirdo and I'd be like, 'Thank you' because that's how weird I am."
- Conversed: "That character never takes offense, he does the opposite!"
- Implied: Bob smiles when Alice calls him a weirdo.
- Deconstructed: Bob sees any insult thrown at him as just another way to get his name out. Fine if it's something silly like "weirdo" or if Bob was a Card-Carrying Villain, not so much when they outright count on Bob not caring to just say whatever they want about him.
- Reconstructed: Of course, when even that backfires, the insulters are too worn out from his non-reactions to care.
- Played for Laughs: Alice is always insulting Bob, which he mistakes as her flirting with him.
- Played for Drama:
- Bob is The Sociopath and takes glee in Alice calling him the vilest human being she had ever met, which was his goal all along.
- After Alice suffers a great injustice at the hands of Bob, she tries to get a victory, no matter how pitiful, by insulting Bob. Bob is thankful for Alice's insults instead, seeing them as a symbol of his atrocity. This is what makes Alice finally snap and pummel him into a coma.
- Played for Horror:
- After murdering all of her family and is getting ready to kill her, Alice tries to get some victory, no matter how pitiful, from insulting Bob. Bob, with a huge smile on his face, points out the futility of calling a Serial Killer a "weirdo" and kills Alice.
- Played for Horror defiance: Bob's Cruel and Unusual Death is Alice's insult to him; as she explains later, had she done anything less bombastic, Bob and his friends and family would have found a way to turn it around to their benefit.
Back to Insult Backfire.
