Basic Trope: A woman of high social and/or economic status with a superiority complex and demanding attitude.
- Straight: Karen is a middle-aged, upper-middle-class white woman who always fights with the teenage cashiers if they don't get her order just right. She flaunts her credentials as president of the homeowner's association and the PTA, insisting that she speak to their superiors because she knows she's right.
- Exaggerated:
- Karen calls the police on the cashier because her coffee had a little too much sugar in it.
- Karen straight up threatens to murder the cashier for "talking back" to her.
- Karen is in her 60s at the youngest, and pretty much says "Screw Politeness, I'm a Senior!"
- Downplayed:
- Karen gets frustrated with people all the time, but usually doesn't pursue the issue.
- Karen isn't actively vindictive, just Innocently Insensitive.
- Justified:
- Karen's mother was just as entitled as she was, and taught her this was the way to get what she wanted.
- Karen was an Alpha Bitch in her youth and her attitude hasn't changed since.
- Following off both above examples, Karen has Doting Parents who allowed her entitled attitude to run undisciplined and unchecked when they raised her.
- Inverted: Karen is at the bottom of the neighborhood food chain. Everybody, including retail workers, belittles her and picks petty fights with her.
- Gender-Inverted:
- Darren is a Camp Straight stuck-up husband and president of the PTA who throws tantrums whenever he doesn't get his way.
- Darren is a conservative House Husband who, feeling emasculated in his marriage for not being the homemaker, tries to assert his alpha-male dominance onto his neighbors and strangers he converses with on a daily basis.
- Subverted: It looks like Karen is just acting obnoxious, but it turns out the retail worker really did get her order wrong.
- Double Subverted: ...But then Karen realizes she could have gotten a better deal with the incorrect order, and claims the cashier is trying to screw her over by fixing it.
- Parodied: Karen encounters Becky, a similar obnoxious housewife who's the president of the homeowner's association and the PTA in a different county. They meet in a parking lot and they get into a fight, invoking their credentials, threatening to have each other arrested and posting each other's pictures on Facebook in a cycle of abuse that devolves into a for-loop. That is until a random bystander looks at them funny (for good reason) and they both start bullying that one person at the same time.
- Zig-Zagged: Karen picks petty fights with some people, but other times she decides that her cause isn't worth throwing a fit.
- Averted: Even when inconvenienced, Karen doesn't start petty fights.
- Enforced: The author wanted to draw attention to how annoying these behaviors are to dissuade privileged women from abusing their status.
- Lampshaded: The retail worker laments how they always have to deal with obnoxious middle-aged women like Karen.
- Invoked: Rachel starts a PTA at the elementary school so she can single out the most entitled moms in the school, who are bound to bring in their complaints.
- Exploited: Terri the cashier sees Karen in line for checkout and takes her break immediately, so Barry, her coworker and Sitcom Arch-Nemesis, has to pick up her shift and deal with Karen instead.
- Defied: Even though Karen has high social and economic status, she avoids picking fights so she doesn't get a bad reputation among her friends.
- Discussed: "When I get older, I hope I don't turn into one of those annoying soccer moms who throw fits in grocery stores over expired coupons."
- Conversed: "Karen's the most annoying character on Hapless Housewives. All she does is yell at people for stupid shit!"
- Deconstructed:
- Karen tries to take control over everybody around her because she's stuck in a Dysfunctional Family and feels like she has no power over her life.
- Karen gets arrested for harassment and/or disorderly conduct.
- Karen eventually picks a fight with Cool Old Guy Flash Young, who may be a Reformed Bully, but he's definitely not going to hesitate to revert back to his old bullying tactics against other assholes. Cue Karen eating the most satisfying, cathartic left cross anyone's ever seen.
- Reconstructed:
- As Karen's attempts to control everyone around her escalates as that control starts to slip, it becomes too much and she has an emotional breakdown in-front of everyone she has harassed. The crowd are there for her when she needs them and she has a Heel Realization and decides to be better. While she can still be an Alpha Bitch, she has learned to harness it into a zeal for good, using it to stand up for her friends when they are the ones being harassed or manipulated.
- Karen owns this town. She can just pay them off and become more obnoxious.
- Flash committed assault, so after his arrest, Karen immediately jumps on the opportunity to bully him and make his life a living hell.
- Played For Laughs:
- Karen calls the police during an argument, leading to the police to come and beat her up because the cops are idiots who thinks that's what she wanted.
- All the cops at the station know who Karen is because she calls every day, each for continuously ridiculous and arbitrary reasons that they don't take seriously. Place your bets on the cops not coming when she really needs them as karma.
- Played For Drama: Karen calls the police during an argument, leading to a Police Brutality scene.
- Played For Horror:
- Karen is revealed to be The Sociopath Knight Templar who has dirt on the police chief, thus she turns her community into a Police State that totally isn't run like the Third Reich where the people are forced to follow her arbitrary white, middle-class conservative values or else they and their families are terrorized by the police. God help you if you just moved in, not knowing what you have gotten yourself into.
- Karen gets into actual trouble by pissing off an actual dangerous criminal who "ain't going back to jail", and nobody's too interested in finding out Who Murdered the Asshole after... what's left turns up.
Get back to Obnoxious Entitled Housewife, or I'll be speaking with the manager!
