Basic Trope: The straight-A student gets a lower grade than expected.
- Straight: Alice is a straight-A student who gets a B in one subject. She panics and stresses about it for days.
- Exaggerated:
- Alice regularly aces all her tests. When she gets 49.5 out of 50 in one of them, she has a complete mental breakdown, goes insane, then attempts suicide.
- When she gets 50 out of 50, but finds out she got the extra credit question incorrect, she's still upset enough to tear the test in half.
- Downplayed:
- Alice gets a B. She is disappointed, but doesn't overreact.
- Alice is normally a straight-A student. She then gets straight Bs or even a C for one term and freaks out a bit but quickly calms herself down and promises to do better next time.
- Justified:
- Alice is Go-Getter Girl or a perfectionist who despises achieving less than perfect results.
- Alice is trying to get into a top, prestigious college, and anything lower than an A will lessen her chances of being accepted into this college.
- Alice's parents are very strict about what her grades are and anything lower than an A is grounds for punishment in their household.
- Alice is a medical student and a B is considered a poor or even a failing grade in her institution.
- Inverted:
- Alice is an underachiever and proud of it. When she manages to raise her straight-F average to a D-minus, she freaks out and worries about being branded a "nerd" by her Book Dumb pals.
- Alice is a stressed straight-A student and when she finally gets a B for a change, she celebrates it and is relieved that she broke her own repetitive cycle.
- Subverted:
- The "B" on Alice's report card was a misprint or computer error.
- Alice gets a B, and shrugs it off, much to the shock of everyone who expected her to get all torn up about it.
- Double Subverted:
- The "B" on Alice's report card was a misprint or computer error. Turns out she was supposed to get a C.
- Alice gets a B, and shrugs it off, to the shock of her classmates who expected a stronger reaction from such a brilliant student. When they all leave, however, she starts to weep.
- Parodied:
- Alice gets an A-plus, the highest grade possible, and complains that she didn't get an A-plus-plus.
- The death penalty applies for everything below A-minus.
- God Himself hates people who get B grades so much that they get an instant Bolt of Divine Retribution.
- Alice screams "Not the Bs!" like Nicolas Cage from The Wicker Man (2006)
- Zig Zagged: Alice gets a B on her report card, which was printed improperly; so she got a C instead. But all her classmates did so poorly that all of their grades are pitched upwards (or the class was graded on a curve), so she ends up getting an A anyway.
- Averted: Alice gets a B grade and takes it in stride.
- Enforced: The show "Diaries of a Brilliant Student" is trying to make the insanely talented Alice appear more human-like and realistic by making her get a B grade once in a while.
- Lampshaded: "Oh, no! It's report card day. Let's hope that Alice doesn't get anything lower than an A or we'll never hear the end of it."
- Invoked: Alice gets an A on a test, but Bob, a fellow student, switches the grade to a B, or changes her answers, knowing she will overreact, then asks Alice how she performed as the teacher passes the tests back to the students. This sends Alice into a blind rage, yelling at the teacher and everyone else. Then, later, she finds out that Bob tampered with her test.
- Exploited: Alice's Sadist Teacher knows how worked up and vulnerable she gets when she receives a lower grade than usual, so he uses this to his own advantage and gives her a C in his subject just to watch her break.
- Defied: "I got a B in Art? Well... I guess I'd better study harder next time."
- Discussed: Alice is bragging about her top scores. Her friends start to worry and talk to Alice about what she's going to do when, as is almost inevitable, she gets a B.
- Conversed:Laura: Oh, it's report card day. Do you think the writers are going to give Alice that tired old "I got a B! My parents are going to kill me!" plot?
Mike: Maybe it would be better than her usual smugness. - Deconstructed:
- Alice's extreme overreaction to a B grade reflects her low self-esteem and need for validation by others.
- Alice's parents are very strict about her grades, and they outright abuse her if she brings in anything less than an A- they beat her, scream at her, call her worthless, and send her to her room without food, while making her stay inside and study, forbidding her from seeing her friends, until she gets them another A on the next test.
- Reconstructed:
- Alice's friends knock some sense into her by noting that are people who are suffering from worse things than a mere B and call her out for being overdramatic.
- Alice is someone who beats themselves up over school grades in an obsessive way, so her peers teach her that while it's normal to be bummed up about poor grades, it's important to not let your academic performance define you or deeply affect your mental health.
- Alice's Cool Uncle, finds out about the abuse, reports her parents to CPS and gains custody of her.
- Played for Drama:
- Alice's parents berate and abuse her so severely over her B grade that she spirals into depression and is Driven to Suicide. Her parents then realize that the way they treated Alice contributed to her depression and eventual suicide.
- Building on the medical student justification, Alice is a medical student who got a B on a brain dissection, and now knows that she cannot fulfill her lifetime aspiration of becoming a brain surgeon.
- Fearing the disproportionate punishment that her parents will impose on her, Alice attempts to beg or threaten her teacher into giving her a passing grade. When that fails, she decides to murder her parents to prevent herself from being punished.
- Implied:
- After Alice receives her exam results, she quickly makes a call, "Yeah, so about those extra private lessons you mentioned, where do I sign up?"
- ...Or Alice immediately tears her report card apart in anger before anyone can see it, then walks away as if nothing happened.
- Played for Laughs: Alice does really weird... "things" every time she gets a lower grade than A to the point where the moment her friends see a B grade written on her report card, they all groan and ask, "What is she gonna do this time? Endlessly vomit rainbows?"
- Played for Horror: Because her teacher gave her a grade that is not an A, Alice decides to kill him on the spot to send a message to her friends that if they want to succeed, they MUST get all A's lest she kills them as well for their failures.
The link back to The B Grade was only slightly less than perfect? No dinner for a week!
