Basic Trope: A jerk character seems like he may have a nice side, but turns out is just a bigger jerk.
- Straight: Bob, the Jerkass, helps Alice win a ton of money, but it turns out he just did it to scam her out of it.
- Exaggerated:
- Bait the Dog
- Bob throws a huge party at Alice's house. When she comes back she is shocked, because he and his revelers trashed and looted her house, and left her with the mess.
- Bob seems to have turned soft and helped Alice achieve her wildest dreams, but it turns out he just did it because he knew it would cut her life short.
- Bob tries to help Alice obtain her dreams, while telling her unrealistic they are. He then watches her Heroic BSoD when her dreams get shattered, and mocking tells her that he "warned her".
- Alice thinks that Bob is a jerk because he was isolated by society, and decides to give him a chance. She later finds out that many people tried to do the same for him, and he would turn on them no matter what they did for him.
- Bob, the Jerkass, saves a person he doesn't know from being brutally murdered... but only so he can enslave him.
- Bob is a Complete Monster at worst who is appropriately Hated by All, and apparently makes a Heel–Face Turn and starts performing random acts of kindness to anyone he meets, but only does so to gain a Villain with Good Publicity status so he can get away with his cruelty better.
- Downplayed:
- Bob almost does something nice, but it was a practical joke.
- Bob does something nice, but it's only because it benefits his selfish desires.
- All of Bob's friends help out Alice in her time of need, and Bob does to, but he does so grudgingly and drags his feet when no one is looking.
- No matter how much of a jerk Bob may seem he is always willing to help people out, because people are boring to him when they are not dependent on him.
- Justified:
- Bob is not a good enough actor to play nice full time, an occasional "nugget of fools gold" is the best he can do.
- Bob is well aware of Alice's savior complex. He acts like a jerk knowing that she will try to help him, and then feigns a few nice moments that Alice will see as progress.
- Inverted: Bob, a Nice Guy, seems to be a Bitch in Sheep's Clothing, only to turn out to be really as nice as he seems.
- Subverted: Turns out Bob's secretly using Alice's money to provide for his ill, elderly mother.
- Double Subverted: His mother's already rich and is in on the scam as well.
- Parodied: Bob's obviously a jerk, who's daily activities includes bullying people smaller and weaker than himself and scamming old ladies out of their money, but people repeatedly tell his victims they shouldn't judge him too hard and insist that he's a good man deep down.
- Zig Zagged:
- Bob is usually a douchebag, but he saves Alice from a rampaging tiger. He tells her he only did it to get laid that night. When she turns him down, he decides to buy her a new TV, no strings attached, to make up for his behavior. Then he tells her he doesn't actually care about what Alice thinks about him, and the real reason he bought the TV was ...nothing, he just felt like doing it.
- Jerk with a Heart of Jerk with a Hidden Heart of Gold which hides a Soul of Jerk but then he becomes the mask - twice over, so Bob is now a regular Jerk with a Heart of Jerk - but is he...? As it turns out, yep. Wait, maybe not! Nah, he's a jerk. Or is he? Then the world explodes.
- Averted:
- Enforced: The author starts Bob's Character Development by showing his nicer side, but Executives insist on sticking to the status quo.
- Lampshaded:
- "Trust me, what you see of Bob is pretty much what you get. In fact, he's even worse than you'd think..."
- "You think I use meanness as some defense strategy, or that it's some type of cry for help? No, I'm a jerk through in and through out! The only gold my heart's made out of is fool's gold, maybe!"
- Invoked: Bob was told to trust no one except him self when he was young.
- Exploited: Bob wants nothing more than to be left alone, so he acts like a dick to drive everyone off.
- Defied: Bob decides to drop the jerkass act entirely. Emphasis here: act. Whether he becomes a Nice Guy or a grade-A asshole is up in the air.
- Discussed:
- "I should have known rudeness was your only defining trait."
- "It was clever of you not to trust someone who seemed to nice. What you didn't think however, was that if someone seemed mean, they might really be that mean if not worse.
- Conversed: "Here's his moment to reveal his heart of gold, and, it's gone..."
- Deconstructed: Thanks to Bob's asshole attitude, everyone avoids him like a plague lest they get tricked by him. And because of this, no one is there to save him when Bob gets into trouble, leaving him to die alone.
- Reconstructed: Even when he's going to die, Bob regrets nothing, and even said that it was Worth It.
- Played For Laughs: Bob tries to prove to everyone that he really does have a heart after all by doing even more acts of jerkassery like if he was from a Bizarro Universe where his douchebag activities make him a Nice Guy over there.
- Played For Drama: Alice believes that maybe Bob could have been a nicer person if things in life turned out differently for him. She learns more about his past... but finds that he always was a douchebag, regardless of whatever he may or may not have experienced in life. Upon learning this, Alice decides to give up on Bob since he mostly likely hasn’t changed and never will.
- Played For Horror: Bob is Faux Affably Evil and makes clear, as he sets up the devices to give Alice a Cold-Blooded Torture, that every single apparent moment of friendship he did for her was a perfectly calculated move to draw her into this room.
Back to Jerk with a Heart of Jerk, dumbass. Aw, well, maybe that wasn't nice. I'll just call you a dimwit, okay?
