Basic Trope: A team kicks out one member due to finding them useless or annoying, but later finds out they need them.
- Straight: Alice, Bob, Clara, and Darren are the main characters, but Alice, being the smartest one, is always calling out the others on their foolish ideas. Bob, Clara, and Darren are fed up with this and see Alice as a bossy wet blanket, so they disband her. However, when monsters start attacking, they realise they need Alice to figure out a plan on how to defeat the monsters.
- Exaggerated: Bob decides that Alice is too bossy, Clara is too silly, and Darren is too much of a Dumb Muscle, so he decides to work alone. However, he then faces monsters that require Alice to make a plan, Darren to wrangle them into a fenced-off area, and finally Clara to kill them since humour is their Weaksauce Weakness.
- Downplayed: Bob, Clara, and Darren do manage to defeat the monsters without Alice, but they realize that it would've been a lot easier with her around, so they decide to bring her back anyway.
- Justified: Despite Alice's bossy nature, Bob, Clara, and Darren still care about her and realize either that Alice is missing out on lot of better opportunities simply because she has to babysit the three of them all the time or that relying on her as a Crutch Character is hindering their own growth. As such, they decide act like Alice is useless in order to convince her to branch out and try to find ways to get stronger without her.
- Inverted: Bob, Clara, and Darren gain an extra member, Alice, thinking that they need her. However, when the monsters attack, she turns out to be nothing but dead weight, so they get rid of her.
- Subverted: Bob, Clara, and Darren have trouble fighting the monsters and consider getting Alice back... but then Darren makes up a plan to defeat them without Alice.
- Double Subverted: The plan fails, so they must get Alice back anyway.
- Parodied:
- Zigzagged: The group disbands Alice due to finding her too bossy, but then the monsters arrive. They consider getting Alice back, but then Darren comes up with a plan to fight the monsters off without Alice... but it doesn't work, so they try to get her back anyway... but they can't find her, so Clara tries thinking of a plan... but that doesn't work...
- Averted:
- Alice stays with the team.
- The team does fine with Alice gone.
- Enforced: "Viewers are calling Alice useless. Let's make an episode where she proves her worth."
- Lampshaded: "I knew you couldn't last a day without me!"
- Invoked:
- Alice deliberately acts bossier than usual in hopes that they'd kick her out and learn her value.
- Ethan, hoping that Bob, Clara, and Darren would realise how important Alice is, encourages them to kick her out.
- Exploited:
- Defied:
- Alice just explains what would happen to Bob, Clara, and Darren if they kicked her out, preventing them from doing so.
- Darren manipulates things so Alice either does not has that much power or so the whole crew will suffer a barrage of horrifying fates worse than death equally if they separate (with whoever is to blame for the separation having it just a little bit worse than everybody) and then makes sure he cannot just cancel this, forcing them to stick together literally no matter what.
- Discussed: "Let's just get rid of Alice!" "No, what if we need her smarts to get out of a bad situation?"
- Conversed: "I've seen this plot a million times — they're gonna regret kicking that character out!"
- Implied:
- Deconstructed:
- Reconstructed:
- Played for Laughs: Alice comments that she would say, "I told you so", but a monster attack is not the time for it.
- Played for Drama:
- Played for Horror: Trying to fight the monsters without Alice gets Bob, Clara, and Darren killed.
Back to Removing the Crucial Teammate.
