Basic Trope: Two (or more) characters are friends but you wouldn't think that by the way they treat each other.
- Straight: Alice and Bob are supposedly best friends, but they constantly get on each other’s nerves.
- Exaggerated:
- Alice and Bob are supposed to be Platonic Life-Partners, yet all they talk about is how much they loathe and despise each other.
- Every last one of the show's conflicts are a result of Good Versus Good (or Evil Versus Evil) because of how vitriolic a small group of friends are to each other.
- Alice and Bob are High-School Sweethearts, not lovers, but pretty damn close. Their entire time on-screen is filled with their constant attempts to kill each other, punctuated with killing anybody who tries to kill one of the pair for other plot-related reasons while yelling "he's my friend!"
- The friendship is an Informed Attribute.
- Downplayed:
- Alice and Bob sometimes argue.
- Vitriolic Best Buds
- Justified:
- Alice and Bob have difficulty expressing affection.
- Alice and Bob are pretty much forced to be rivals because of competitive ideals, such as different sports teams or some clan or guild that are constantly non-violent rivals, that they hold, but they both know each other to be good people.
- Conversely to the above, Alice and Bob are pretty much forced to be working together because of a common goal they’re both trying to accomplish, but the fact that they’re mortal enemies with each other, makes it basically impossible for them to stop fighting with each other.
- Inverted: Alice and Bob are mortal enemies, but they act friendly towards each other.
- Subverted: It turns out that they were acting.
- Double Subverted: They really have duels to the death.
- Parodied:
- Everyone talks about what a great friendship Alice and Bob have while they attack each other in the street.
- Alice and Bob routinely set up death traps for each other, and sometimes gets the other seriously injured, but the two are Like Brother and Sister, Heterosexual Life-Partners, and every weekend work on a charity they both started.
- When asked the definition of the word "friend", Bob defines it as "person you share a mutual hatred with".
- Zig Zagged: Alice and Bob are friends but rather belligerent to each other. It was all an act. Except they put on the act because otherwise they would be serious about it.
- Averted: Alice and Bob are competitive, but they make sure to ever let it get any worse than that.
- Enforced:
- The producers fear Alice and Bob being seen as love interests, so they make them violent to each other to avoid that.
- The writer wants to prove in a cynical setting that friendships aren't friendly as one would expect.
- Lampshaded: "Are you two fighting again? I don't get why everybody calls you friends if you're always at each others necks."
- Invoked:
- Charlie feels Alice and Bob might get rusty in battle, so he arranges things so that they would have a reason to fight between themselves to keep their skills sharp.
- Alternatively: The Big Bad plans on making clones of Alice and Bob because he wants to break them up, so Charlie manipulates them so they would have no problems beating the other one up and think nothing of it.
- Exploited: The Big Bad uses this to push them into more violent rages, breaking their friendships.
- Defied:
- "You know, if we keep acting like this, we're going to be serious threats to each other. Let's tone down the hostility."
- "You will start treating each other like true friends from now on and forevermore or I fucking swear I will rip the both of you to fucking pieces!"
- "I've seen how you treat the people you like, even your own damn family. Why should I be friends with you, knowing you'll be a bitch to me anyway?"
- "If we're gonna be friends, we are going to be friends. I just can't.... I just 'won't... accept being treated like crap, in any way, shape, form or intensity, I don't care how much it's supposed to be a joke."
- Discussed: (As a response to Defied) "Well, to be fair, they say that you should keep your friends close, and your enemies closer. I guess that technically makes you my closest friend anyway, whether I like it or not."
- Conversed: "Should those two stop hating each other by now and act like true friends right now? It's been like what? 5 seasons?"
- Deconstructed:
- All of the arguments and problems that cause to each other end up culminating into Alice and Bob becoming actual enemies.
- Alice and Bob have a very twisted relationship. Despite being bitter and outright hateful towards each other, they are also so co-dependent that they have no idea how to survive without the other. They go through multiple therapists because they are always told that they would be better off not being friends.
- Alice and Bob become extremely hateful towards one another and actually start fighting. It ends when one gives a No-Holds-Barred Beatdown to the other.
- Reconstructed: The two remember all the good times they had and end up forgiving each other.
- Intended Audience Reaction / Plot Foundation: It's almost impossible to tell which one of them the audience is supposed to side with when they fight... Which is, naturally, the whole point: The author wants to address the possibility (and frequency) of Good Versus Good. Cue the Aesop about tolerance.
- Played For Laughs: The central Running Gag of Alice and Bob is their everlasting Escalating War.
- Played For Drama:
- Alice doesn't knows how good she has it to have Bob as a friend until the day he almost goes (because he nearly leaves, because he declares he's utterly fed up, or because he almost dies).
- Something extremely bad happens to Bob and Alice automatically becomes a prime suspect by law enforcement because nobody has proof or is able to believe that they were ever friends with that attitude of theirs. Alice, on her end, is horrified by how her (and Bob's) bad attitude is fuel to this Miscarriage of Justice.
- One day, the "vitriol" part supersedes the "friendship" part, either irreparably or very nearly so.
- Played For Horror: Alice and Bob's vitriol has gone so far as attempted murder with their fellow friends caught in the middle, and no matter which side they choose (even calling themselves neutral and running like hell) they just made a mortal enemy.
Back to With Friends Like These...
