Playing With / Apple of Discord

Basic Trope: Someone uses something, an object or an event, to break up some friends.

• Straight: Alice, Bob, Charlie, and Denise are best friends. In order to make them stop liking each other, Ellie gives them an apple and says it's for whoever is the brainiest.
• Exaggerated: Alice, Bob, Charlie, and Denise usually are very good at making compromises, but Ellie is able to turn them into mortal enemies by making them confused as to what to have for their pizza's topping.
• Downplayed:
  • Ellie uses the apple to make them argue but not necessarily stop being friends.
  • Alice, Bob, Charlie, and Denise were reluctant allies at best, and only needed a few gentle nudges to turn on another.
• Justified: They're barely held together as is and their egos don't allow them to concede superiority to others.
• Inverted: Someone uses something mundane to turn enemies into friends.
• Subverted: Ellie states that breaking them up was not her real intention.
• Double Subverted: She lied.
• Parodied: Ellie makes them argue over who gets the last piece of cake.
• Averted: Nobody tries to break a group of friends up.
• Zigzagged: Alice, Bob, Charlie, and Denise sometimes are not friends because of the apple and sometimes they are.
• Enforced: The author wants to show how a simple object can cause havoc in friendships.
• Lampshaded: "Maybe this will stop them being friends!"
• Invoked: Fred tells Ellie "Maybe they'll stop being friends if you do this!"
• Exploited: Ellie is a Big Bad and Alice, Bob, Charlie, and Denise always defeat her by working together. She decides if they stop being friends, then they wouldn't work together as efficiently, leaving her free to Take Over the World.
• Defied:
  • "We're friends no matter what!" says Alice.
  • The group looks at the apple in sheer awe and wonder, before roaring with laughter at such Refuge in Audacity at Ellie's thought that an apple of all things can split them apart.
• Discussed: Denise, the Lovable Coward of the group, says "What if we stop being friends because of something little?"
• Conversed: "How come TV characters can stop being friends over something so minor?"
• Implied: After being given the apple, Alice, Bob, Charlie, and Denise are seen looking mad at each other.

• Played for Laughs: Silly Reason for War.
• Played for Drama:
  • It leads to someone taking over the world.
  • Alice, Bob, Charlie and Denise break off their friendship for being so uncompromising with their opinions.
• Deconstructed:
  • A confused Alice asks Ellie why the group would fight over something as trivial as an apple.
    • The defiance of this trope can also count as a standalone deconstruction or even a lampshaded justification for the above.

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Back to Apple of Discord, if you think you're the Tropeiest of them all.

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