Basic Trope: A mentor who uses trickery and subversion to teach their students.
- Straight: Men-Tor guides the Five-Man Band, though instead of actively helping, he prefers to disseminate information through riddles.
- Exaggerated: Literally everything Men-Tor says is some sort of riddle.
- Justified: He's there to train their minds as much as their bodies.
- Mentor is so good that his knowledge and mastery turned him insane.
- Inverted: Men-Tor is as literal as possible, directly spelling out what the Five-Man Band needs to do.
- Subverted: The group comes up to Men-Tor, expecting him to throw out a cryptic riddle for them to solve. Instead, he just tells them what they need to do, no questions asked.
- Double Subverted: That in and of itself was a riddle - a Secret Test of Character of sorts to get them to question everything.
- Parodied: Men-Tor doesn't actually know what he's talking about - he later admits that he makes up silly riddles to sound wiser than he really is.
- Deconstructed: Men-Tor's reliance on riddles drives away his students, as they dislike having to decode everything he's telling them.
- Reconstructed: The Five-Man Band calls him on it - and it's revealed that not only did they have to solve the riddle, but they needed to have the appropriate reaction to be his students.
- Zig Zagged: Some of the stuff he says is a riddle, other stuff isn't. He figures that's the best way to keep them on their toes.
- Averted: He's direct.
- Enforced: "We've got to pad this story arc out to the number of episodes we want...so how about we make it to where they have to spend a few episodes decoding their mentor's instructions?"
- Lampshaded: "Why can't you just tell us what we need to do?"
- Invoked:*Men-tor decides to start speaking in riddles, as he believes only those who are tolerant enough to withstand his riddles are worthy of his knowledge.
- Defied: The Hero of the Five-Man Band tells Men-Tor that no riddles will be tolerated.
- Discussed: "I like Sen-Sei's teaching. He's not like my old teacher Men-Tor who spoke in riddles all the time."
- Conversed: "You ever notice how mentor figures in the movies can never give a straight answer to anything?"
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Trickster Mentor.
