Basic Trope: A crappy horse.
- Straight: Holly's horse Tanglefoot is sickly and frail.
- Exaggerated: Tanglefoot can't move more than a couple of feet without collapsing.
- Downplayed: Tanglefoot is a bit slower than the horses owned by Holly's friends.
- Justified:
- Holly has had an emotional attachment to Tanglefoot for a long time, so she doesn't want to get rid of him.
- Holly runs an Equine Retirement Home.
- An Honest John's Dealership duped Holly into buying a crappy horse.
- Tanglefoot has a permanent injury or chronic illness. Holly keeps him around because she thinks it'd be heartless to have him killed.
- Inverted:
- Subverted: Tanglefoot looks old and frail, but when Took a Level in Badass throughout training, he runs like hell.
- Double Subverted: However, Tanglefoot is Incompletely Trained and trips a lot.
- Parodied: Tanglefoot looks like a lemon.
- Zig Zagged:
- Averted: Tanglefoot is a good horse.
- Enforced: It's a video game in which horses are an acquirable item that enables fast travel. Tanglefoot is the first "model" that becomes available at early levels, encouraging the player to trade up when they make more money. Keeping him for the whole game is considered a Self-Imposed Challenge.
- Lampshaded: "If Holly weren't a Friend to All Living Things, I guarantee Tanglefoot would've been shipped off to the glue factory ages ago."
- Invoked: The Big Bad deliberately cripples Tanglefoot.
- Exploited: A Snake Oil Salesman tries to sell Holly "remedies" that supposedly strengthen Tanglefoot.
- Defied: Holly sells Tanglefoot to the glue factory and gets herself a Cool Horse instead.
- Discussed: "Is this horse a good one? He looks a bit frail to me..."
- Conversed: "That game would be so much easier of Holly just got herself a horse that doesn't suck at running."
- Implied: Tanglefoot frequently loses races by a lot. Sometimes he doesn't even manage to finish them.
- Deconstructed: Holly has to buy a new horse to make up for Tanglefoot's shortcomings, and can no longer afford to keep Tanglefoot.
- Played For Drama: Tanglefoot is so frail because Holly frequently neglects to feed him.
Back to The Alleged Steed.
