Basic Trope: Characters who are quite similar in personality, and this causes them to have a strained relationship.
- Straight: Alice and Bob are both stubborn, competitive, and prideful. They don't get along because of this.
- Exaggerated: Alice and Bob are enemies trying to kill each other, and they are like in all but one key way.
- Downplayed:
- Alice and Bob are Vitriolic Best Buds, and really do care for each other, but they still frequently get into fights and butt heads.
- Alice and Bob are kind loving people, who don't actually get along very well due to both of them wanting to be the caretaker of the relationship.
- Justified:
- You Are What You Hate
- Like Father, Like Son. Bob sees a lot of himself in his son, Charles, and fears that Charles is going to make the same mistakes as he did. Bob might be right about this, but he struggles with being emotionally open with other people, and so does Charles, preventing them both from being able to discuss this.
- Evil Counterpart
- A key part of healthy relationships is talking out conflicts and compromising, but since Alice and Bob are both so stubborn, they just keep running into arguments.
- Inverted:
- Birds of a Feather: Alice and Bob are similar, and like each other for it.
- Opposites Attract: Alice and Bob are dissimilar, and like each other for it.
- Alice and Bob are dissimilar and hate each other for it.
- Subverted: Alice and Bob dislike each other upon first meeting, but eventually realize their similarities give them a great capacity to understand each other, and become quite close.
- Double Subverted: Alice and Bob get married, but the friction caused by them being too similar never truly goes away. After the honeymoon phase wears off, they're left with a Destructive Romance.
- Parodied: Alice and Bob are both very warm, friendly people, who like just about everyone. They inexplicably detest each other.
- Zig Zagged: Do Alice and Bob like each other? They have moments of Aw, Look! They Really Do Love Each Other, but it Depending on the Writer.
- Averted: Alice and Bob are not alike.
- Enforced: The writers didn't plan for Alice and Bob to be alike, but the actors bring something of themselves to the way they play the characters. Once the likeness is there, the writers want to address it somehow.
- Lampshaded:Charlie: You two are so similar! Why do you hate each other?
- Invoked: ???
- Exploited: ???
- Defied: Alice and Bob have an argument-preventing strategy in which they remind themselves of how much they like having a partner who understands them.
- Discussed: ???
- Conversed: ???
- Implied: Whenever Alice and Bob encounter each other, they look at each other with disgust.
Back to Too Much Alike.
