Basic Trope: (Usually) insincere affectionate nicknaming from an enemy.
- Straight: Emperor Evulz calls Alice "My dear."
- Exaggerated: Emperor Evulz calls Alice "My dear, darling Alice, light of my life, queen of my heart, most beautiful woman in the world."
- Downplayed: Emperor Evulz occasionally calls heroes "My dear."
- Justified:
- Emperor Evulz does this as an intimidation tactic.
- Emperor Evulz does this to make Alice angry so she is more erratic and easier to defeat.
- Emperor Evulz is Alice's father and uses terms of endearment with his family.
- Emperor Evulz has a Villainous Crush on Alice.
- Emperor Evulz just finds the dissonance funny.
- Inverted:
- Alice calls Emperor Evulz "My dear."
- Alice refers to her best friend Becky as "That bitch!". (See Vitriolic Best Buds)
- Subverted:
- Evulz creepily calls Alice "My dear", but it turns out he was Good All Along.
- But then Evulz suddenly stops being nice and calls Alice "My dear little... BASTARD!!"
- Double Subverted:
- And he then has a Face–Heel Turn.
- And then he goes back to call Alice "My dear loveable little bastard and darling".
- Parodied: Emperor Evulz spends hours deciding whether to call Alice "My dear" or "darling"
- Zig Zagged: ??
- Averted:
- No one calls anyone else "My dear."
- The only people who use affectionate nicknames are the heroes.
- Enforced: "We need to make Emperor Evulz seem extra creepy... let's have him call Alice 'My dear'"
- Lampshaded: "Why does every villain call me 'My dear?'"
- Invoked: ??
- Exploited: Evulz somehow gets off for most of his crimes. However, a recording of Evulz calling Alice "my dear" is enough to get him arrested for sexual harassment.
- Defied: "Why would I call you 'My dear?' We're enemies."
- Discussed: ???
- Conversed: ???
- Deconstructed: Alice has a long period of time where the only people who call her "my dear" are her enemies. It gives her a Trauma Button reaction to the words and makes it more difficult for her to have romances.
- Reconstructed: When she finally snaps and decides Bob and all of his associates need to die screaming for what they did to her she makes a very big point of calling him all "my dear" at every chance she gets, which quickly makes it their Trauma Button as well, and it feels so sweet...
- Implied: Bob calls Alice "my dear" and gets chewed out. When he asks whether anyone else has ever called her that, she fingers a scar and says, "No one I ever liked."
- Played For Laughs: Emperor calls Alice a number of increasingly odd names such as "My snufflebutter"
- Played For Drama: Emperor Evulz only calls his enemies "My dear" before he kills them. The first time he meets Alice he calls her "My dear."
- Played For Horror: Emperor Evulz treats the people he tortures to death with his bare hands in such friendly terms as calling them "my dear".
Back to Terms of Endangerment, dear.
