Basic Trope: Characters who are morally on the same side exist in the same universe, one is significantly more powerful than the other but stays out of the less powerful character's problems.
- Straight: The main character is Amazing Girl, real name Alice. A sort of wannabe-superhero, who is a competent heroine and quite athletic, being able to pull off some cool acrobatics and kick ass, but she doesn't have any powers or super-technology to speak of. In the same universe, Bob, A.K.A Superio exists, who has a few nifty gadgets, a handful of useful superpowers, and is also a hero, but Bob never helps Alice.
- Exaggerated:
- Bob is omnipotent, but Alice is clumsy and uneducated, yet Bob still has nothing to do with Alice.
- There's a whole group of heroes as powerful as Bob and neither of them help Alice.
- Downplayed:
- Bob has a few powers and/or crazy tools but is only slightly more powerful than Alice.
- Bob sometimes helps Alice, but not very often.
- Justified:
- Bob is too busy solving other problems to help Alice.
- Bob is confident in Alice's ability to fend for herself.
- Bob doesn't know that Alice or her foes exist.
- Bob lives far away from Alice, and couldn't easily make it to her area even with his superpowers.
- Bob is employed by the Mutant Draft Board and confined to its jurisdiction. Alice as a Badass Normal is exempt from this, and moreover operates as a vigilante which the authorities don't support.
- Bob is technically more powerful, but also has his own set of weaknesses or limitations that would render him even more vulnerable than Alice in her situation, thus he can only really stand by and let her handle things alone.
- The bad guys are actually hoping Bob arrives because they have a trap set for him. Alice deciding not to get him involved really screws up their plans, especially if the resources they put in place for the "destroy Superio" part greatly exceeds the ones for the "deal with the Muggles" part.
- The proper tool for the job. You don't send a Superman pastiche to deal with a malpractice lawsuit. Or being more specific, he would be good if the defendant had a billion guys with guns ready to strong-arm his way out of the lawsuit, but winning in the courtroom is a different thing.
- Inverted: Bob helps Alice with everything, even the things she's perfectly capable of handling on her own with minimal effort.
- Subverted: Eventually, Bob steps in to help Alice.
- Double Subverted:
- But only for once.
- That turns out not to be Bob, but an impostor.
- Bob finally steps in to help Alice... and proves to be completely out of his depth on her turf, despite his greater superpowers.
- Parodied: Bob is just too lazy to help Alice, even though he otherwise doesn't act lazy.
- Zigzagged:
- Sometimes Bob helps Alice, other times not.
- There are several characters more powerful than Alice. Some help, some don't.
- Alice will often be sent in first. Bob will step in later however (usually closer to the climax).
- Averted:
- Nobody is more powerful than Alice or less powerful than Bob.
- Bob does help Alice.
- Enforced:
- The writers decide that Bob would solve the problem too quickly if he helped Alice.
- The "Superior Superio" franchise exist separately from the "Alice, the Amazing Girl" franchise either for legal reasons or to let viewers enjoy each character as a hero of their own story.
- The "Superior Superio" franchise is a PG-rated tale of superhero derring-do. The "Alice" franchise is an R-rated vigilante war with the villains being hyper-violent, sex-crazed drug dealers that will only stop if you splatter their brains all over a wall. As cool as fanfiction writers think it would be, there is no way Superio would be allowed to appear in the "Alice" series without grossing out or even scaring away some of the audience by the sudden influx of violence and the inevitable argument of why Superio doesn't deals with this kind of crap more often.
- Lampshaded: "You know, Bob, I'd love it if you helped me out a bit more."
- Invoked:
- Bob decides not to help Alice.
- Bob's superior forbids him from helping Alice.
- Jester sabotaged the engines of a Metro-bound 747 to distract Bob with while he was doing his latest crime spree in Goddamn City.
- Alice says that she's got it under control (even if the villains there are tough), and says that Bob should be focusing elsewhere.
- Exploited:
- By not helping Alice, Bob solves another, more important problem.
- The villain bad-mouths Bob by pointing out that he never helps Alice.
- By not helping Alice, Bob inadvertently lets smaller time villains to see that Alice is a big target, take her out immediately, and grow stronger as a result.
- Defied:
- Bob decides to help Alice.
- Alice will make damned sure Bob will help her even if she literally has to drag him into her mess.
- Discussed: "If I became a superhero, would the more powerful ones help me or not?"
- Conversed: "How come we never see the way more powerful characters help out, even if they're on the same side?!"
- Implied: Alice's district has a far higher crime rate than the rest of the city, although it is never confirmed if Superio is trying there or not.
- Deconstructed:
- Bob gets a bad reputation for not helping Alice.
- By not helping Alice, villains with already high potential, such as Electro-Man, who's normally a threat to Tarantu-Dude, starts targeting her, and proceeds to absolutely bulldoze her out of the city. And with nobody left to protect that city, other villains see it as a perfect opportunity to take it over and get even stronger, which means by the time Bob decides to finally help Alice, he's too late, and now every villain (Yes, even Dark Friggin' Messiah) that would normally be on the wrong end of a Curbstomp Battle with him could easily turn the tables and put him in a Curbstomp Battle.
- Reconstructed: He has good reasons for not helping her, and people come to realize that.
- Played for Laughs:
- Things go From Bad to Worse and from worse to straight up brutal, Bob is literally right there and does not pay Alice any mind, and she shouts at him for being lazy.
- Bob is ideal for the job, but also completely Genre Blind and believes Alice will do better.
- The reason Bob never helps Alice (and other female supers in the setting) is revealed to be that Bob's Violently Protective Girlfriend Abby has the habit of screening Bob's requests for backup.
- Played for Drama:
- Alice resents Bob for not helping her.
- Alice constantly fights crime expecting Bob to come out of nowhere and help her. He doesn't so she tests fate until she angers numerous crazy powerful super villains and ends up with her own Rogues Gallery, who all want her dead. Now she must become stronger or die.
- Played For Horror:
- Alice completely snaps and unleashes all kinds of horrors on Bob in retaliation for his inability to help her.
- Alice is captured by her enemies and tortured, raped and/or killed in a situation that would have been prevented if Bob had been around.
- Alice doesn't calls on Bob because whenever he deals with her enemies, he seems to unleash his inner Plutonian.
Back to Superman Stays Out of Gotham. Why the hell aren't we getting any back up from Trope-tan!? We're clearly struggling here, y'know!
