Basic Trope: Someone acts intimidating, but is actually very weak.
- Straight: Archer acts very tough, but is a very bad fighter.
- Exaggerated: Archer believes he's the best fighter in the world, but he can be taken down just by being lightly poked.
- Downplayed: Archer is a good fighter, but he tends to exaggerate his potential.
- Justified:
- Archer is a small child or acts like one.
- Archer was good at fighting once, but has become very rusty due to lack of practice.
- Archer has never been in an actual fight before, and just thinks he's good at it due to his upbringing or something similar.
- Archer has a debilitating medical condition that impairs his ability to fight, but he still talks tough.
- Inverted: Killer Rabbit
- Subverted: Archer turns out not to be a good fighter, until the next time he fights.
- Double Subverted: ...Where he's even worse.
- Parodied: Archer is literally an origami tiger.
- Zig-Zagged: Sometimes Archer is as good as he claims to be, sometimes he's even better, and other times he's far worse.
- Averted: Archer never claims that he's any more powerful than he is.
- Enforced: Can be Rule of Funny.
- Lampshaded: "Seems you're really not as tough as you say."
- Invoked: Archer, in spite of knowing that anyone who could easily wipe the floor with him, doesn't want his friends to get hurt, and so is usually the first one to challenge any threat to him or his teammates; Sometimes, he can even make a Badass Boast so convincing that his enemy gives up and doesn't want a piece of him.
- Exploited: ???
- Defied:
- Bob calls Archer's bluff and challenges him to a duel. He gets licked and admits he was lying.
- Bob shuts Archer up before he can proclaim his lacking combat skills.
- Discussed: "Archer, sometime you have to accept that you're really not all that strong of a fighter."
- Conversed: "I wonder why some characters really like to exaggerate their strength."
- Implied: After he boasts about his martial prowess, Archer has a fight offscreen, and he comes back from it barely clinging to life where the other character comes back with barely a scratch on his number.
- Deconstructed: Archer thinks he can defeat the Big Bad all by himself until they actually fight each other, whereupon he discovers, much to his chagrin, that he can't.
- Reconstructed: His teammates pull off a Big Damn Heroes moment and save him, giving him the opportunity to become the badass he aspires to be.
Back to Paper Tiger
