Basic Trope: A character that not only doesn't contribute anything useful to the team, but is also an active liability.
- Straight: Alice is ostensibly part of the Five-Man Band, but always ends up getting the main characters in trouble by bungling things with the Monster of the Week or Big Bad.
- Exaggerated:
- Alice always ends up unwittingly leading the team into direct conflict with the villain(s).
- Alice's extreme incompetence does more damage than the actual villains.
- Downplayed:
- Alice is a Damsel Errant or Manic Pixie Dream Girl
- Alice doesn't actively screw up her teammates' plans, but since she's too weak to defend herself against most enemies, she's been kidnapped a few times. Although she makes some useful contributions, it's never anything that couldn't have been done better by someone else.
- Justified:
- Alice is only there because she is Bob's little sister, or girlfriend, or some such that he wanted to take with him.
- Alice is only with the rest of the team because circumstances force her to stay with the team for good, to Alice's dismay. Alice is not truly interested in helping them and doesn't care if she causes problems for the others.
- Alice just hasn't had A Day in the Limelight or a chance to shine yet.
- Alice is trying to help, but doesn't have the talents nor training to do what she does.
- Alice is some sort of Living Macguffin; she might not have much practical use herself but for some reason she is necessary for the party.
- Alice is not only the least powerful major character, but also a borderline average human.
- Alice is actually The Mole and her screw-ups are deliberate hindrances to the team she's in.
- Inverted: Alice is the smartest and strongest character on the team, and always ends up taking care of and rescuing all the others.
- Subverted:
- Alice seems to get the characters in trouble, but it actually ends up getting them away from a trap.
- Alice acts like she's a load of trouble because it's a ploy.
- Double Subverted:
- But then, she brings the enemies to the team anyway.
- Except she doesn't have the talent to escape, can't resist the torture, and sells the team out.
- Parodied: Alice wears a sign that says "DESIGNATED FAILURE" on it.
- Zig Zagged: Sometimes Alice hinders the team, sometimes she helps, sometimes she doesn't do anything.
- Averted:
- Alice is not part of the team.
- Alice never needs rescuing. Should she ever get captured by the enemy, you may be sure that she'll make her escape by the time Big Damn Heroes come to retrieve her.
- Alice is a supporting member of the team, helping with things — usually in the background — that don't cause problems.
- Enforced:
- Failure Is the Only Option, usually in combination with one particular character getting the Idiot Ball or the Distress Ball all the time.
- Chickification or Ukefication, either in a Fan Fiction, or a change in adaptation, or an attempt to appeal to some Periphery Demographic.
- Alice is a Parody Sue.
- Lampshaded: "The mission isn't just hard because we have Alice to worry about, everything Alice does seems to make things worse."
- Implied: After returning from a mission, Bob is seen chewing out Alice for turning a quick and smooth operation into an utter mess, Claire mentions a couple of previous instances of a task going horribly wrong thanks to her, while Daniel wonders aloud why they still haven't dismissed someone as obstructive as Alice.
- Invoked:
- Alice lets her Naïve Everygirl tendencies or some other weakness get the better of her.
- Da Chief assigns Alice to The Squad, knowing that she'll screw things up... which is exactly what he wants.
- Exploited:
- The Big Bad uses Alice's weakness against her.
- Emperor Evulz gets the chance to kill Alice every week. He always refuses, because she hurts the heroes far more than he ever does.
- Defied:
- Alice goes through Training from Hell, or at least Took a Level in Badass, and takes cues from the other characters (verbal and nonverbal) instead of just Leeroy Jenkinsing.
- Alice realizes she's detrimental to the Five-Man Band, and leaves of her own accord.
- Alice is killed off pretty soon in the plot, before she can either be a hindrance or it can be seen if she would be a hindrance.
- After the first time Alice screws up, the other members of the Five-Man Band promptly give her the boot, maybe even literally.
- Discussed: ???
- Conversed: A frustrated viewer asks why they still bring Alice along when all she ever does is making things worse.
- Implied: The rest of the team is very visibly frustrated when they rescue Alice.
- Deconstructed:
- Obviously, teamwork breaks down if the Five-Man Band (or the Elite Four, for that matter) always has to pull one of its members out of the mess they've just swan-dived headfirst into.
- Alice expresses acute awareness of her letting down the team, which doesn't help her self-esteem or functionality in the least.
- Reconstructed:
- The Five-Man Band hones their skills and their patience through continually rescuing Alice, rather like how carrying around a millstone would cause someone to become stronger. They decide to keep her around for this reason.
- Alice actually does have something useful to contribute when the opportunity presents itself.
- With time passing and therapy provided, Alice rediscovers her abilities in non-combat areas and accepts a support role, such as team healer, team cook, or Mission Control.
- Played For Laughs: In the series' Clip Show, after a montage of Epic Fail moments triggered by Alice's incompetence, the other members of the team ask Da Chief "mind explaining to us again why we have her around, anyway?"
- Played For Drama: The mission goes pear-shaped and everybody in the team is nearly killed because Alice is worthless as a member. In the aftermath we get a good view of how much they are fed up when the team spends a hefty amount of time debating whether or not to kill Alice as punishment for her uselessness, without a single iota of sarcasm.
- Played For Horror: Alice's uselessness leads to many members of the team to die horrible, preventable deaths, and the survivors to express the hatred this has created by lynching her.
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