Basic Trope: A character's mentor/role model doesn't live up to what the protégé placed upon them.
- Straight:
- Bob once taught Chris noble martial arts, and Chris uses his ninja powers to catch Bob committing crimes.
- Alice meets her favorite actor, Benny and becomes disillusioned after discovering he's a huge Jerkass.
- Exaggerated: Bob, once a pacifist and a lover of kittens, has crossed the Moral Event Horizon to become a Complete Monster, and is barely recognized as Chris' original mentor, such is the atrocity of his crimes.
- Downplayed:
- Chris discovers that his mentor, Bob, has sold out and started churning out useless self-help guides for a quick buck, causing Chris to feel somewhat contemptuous.
- As Chris grows under Bob's tutelage, he loses his starry-eyed admiration and comes to recognize that Bob isn’t an Ideal Hero. While Chris is naturally disappointed by this, Bob’s flaws aren’t very severe, and Chris recognizes that his mentor is still a good man, just imperfect.
- While Chris didn't like his Sink or Swim Mentor Bob, he begrudgingly respected him for being a powerful and charitable hero. And then Chris finds out that his mentor is a Serial Killer Beneath Notice and all that respect (it's begrudging, but still respect) gets thrown out of the window.
- Justified:
- Bob is just as flawed as anyone else.
- Bob was forced into a life of crime due to living in a Crapsack World.
- Bob's kindly caring mentor persona was simply an act.
- Alice had created an image of Benny based on what's known about him publicly, and had ended up Loving a Shadow rather than Benny's actual character.
- Inverted:
- Bob used to train villains to commit crimes, and now does good acts instead.
- Chris is the one who starts committing crimes using the training he got from Bob, to Bob's deep disgust when he finds out.
- Subverted:
- Chris has misinterpreted Bob's actions; he is in fact a good person.
- Chris turns out to be a bad person himself, and is pleased to find out who Bob really is.
- Chris knew Bob was a terrible person, he valued his lessons but not his character.
- Bob wasn't doing those things willingly. Alice has Bob under her command, under duress, and Chris knows it. He's going to save the anger for the ones who did this to Bob.
- Alice finally meets famous actor Benny, and later furiously talks about how much of a jerk he was. It turns out Benny only treated Alice this way because Chris was relentlessly hounding him until he got fed up.
- Bob didn’t do anything particularly bad, Chris just held him to very high standards. Once Chris understands this, he realizes expecting Bob to meet those standards was very unfair of him.
- Rebuilt Pedestal
- Double Subverted:
- Then Chris learns about all the downright nasty crimes Bob has committed.
- That is until Bob fails to live up the Villainous Virtues Chris expected him to have.
- Chris confronts Alice, whom he blames for Bob's Face–Heel Turn, but it turns out Alice had nothing to do with it. Bob had willingly joined forces with her, then tries to shift all the blame on her to avoid taking responsibility of her actions because he's such a Dirty Coward.
- The reason Benny was so angry Alice was hounding him was because Alice was close to accidentally stumbling upon Bob's crimes, and Benny believed Alice put on an "adoring fangirl" disguise to investigate him.
- Parodied: Chris becomes disillusioned with Bob for horrendous crimes against fashion.
- Zig Zagged:
- Bob appears to be committing crimes, but then it turns out he has good intentions behind them, according with his original teachings. Then Chris learns this is just a cover-up to commit horrendous acts — it then transpires someone told him this, and it is a blatant lie.
- Chris catches Bob in a Face–Heel Revolving Door.
- Averted:
- Bob has always been the same noble teacher.
- Bob's always been an asshole, especially to Chris and definitely during the time he trained him. Even as Bob seeks to stop him, every time he remembers him Bob chooses to do so Warts and All.
- Enforced:
- The writers decide Bob needs some Character Development.
- The writers believe that Humans Are Flawed and finds Bob to be too unrealistically good, so they make him a secretly villainous character who is just pretending to be virtuous.
- Lampshaded: "You were once the noblest man on Earth, Bob. Now, I can't hold you in the same light I used to. Look at what you've done!"
- Invoked:
- Bob is a Good Is Not Nice Sink or Swim Mentor who needs Chris to fight his own battles and no longer rely on him.
- Bob does not like Hero Worship, so he does his best to ensure Chris won’t develop unrealistic views of his mentor, along with breaking down any that already exist. This results in Chris seeing Bob as a good person who still has flaws instead of an Ideal Hero, and Bob wouldn't have it any other way.
- Bob's enemies have caught up to him and he needs Chris to be far away when they inevitably kill him. So he does something to destroy Chris' trust in him so that his apprentice will be safe.
- Exploited: Bob decides to go under an alias and commit crimes in another city. The city where Chris is now policing.
- Defied:
- Bob is highly disillusioned by the Crapsack World, but decides keeping his principles is more important, especially with all the people he influenced over his life looking up to him.
- Alice decides to never meet her hero Benny, so she won't be disappointed if he turns out to be a jerkass.
- Alice never had Bob on a pedestal to begin with, so he never disillusions her.
- There is literally nothing Bob can do or that other people will point out to Chris, no matter how awful or even horrifying, that will destroy the pedestal Chris has built.
- Implied: Chris is glad to welcome Bob into his hometown one day. A few days later, however, Bob has been banned from Chris' hometown.
- Discussed: "That Bob has started beating up pensioners, raping kittens, and littering — how long before Chris finds him, and loses all faith in him?"
- Conversed: "Chris is going to be so pissed when he finds Bob doing all this stuff."
- Deconstructed:
- Chris finally realizes that Bob was always a simple asshole instead of the Knight in Sour Armor he always thought he was; it's just that he (and Bob) have never let himself admit it.
- Bob is a fundamentally decent person who also has flaws and vices just like everyone else, but Chris sees him as The Paragon, holding Bob to an unrealistic standard of behavior which he’s never pretended to meet. When these illusions are finally shattered and Chris tells Bob how disappointed he is, Bob calls Chris out not just for holding such delusional standards in the first place, but also for arrogantly thinking he has the right to demand Bob meet them. Rather than plucking at the audience’s heartstrings, the scene reveals Chris’ behavior for the petulance that it is.
- Reconstructed:
- Chris takes strength from his original teachings, and they allow him to call out his ex-mentor for his descent into villainy.
- Chris realizes that what Bob does doesn't really matter as long as Chris is still a good person.
- Played For Laughs: Chris becomes disillusioned after finding out that his instructor, Bob, who used to be admired for his martial arts skills, is now a nobody working in a low income job.
- Played For Drama:
- Chris faces off against Bob in a climactic battle using everything he learned from him in order to win, causing a defeated Bob to regret how teaching Chris led to his own downfall. It seems the student really has Surpassed the Teacher.
- Chris goes through some serious denial of Bob's vileness and it doesn't looks like it will end well long before it actually does.
- Played For Horror:
- Chris discovers Bob is a cannibalistic Serial Killer and many of the odd things that happened during Chris' training were caused by Bob's spree, not to mention that there were many times Bob felt the desire to turn Chris into one of his victims.
- Chris is so determined to keep Bob on that pedestal that he kills all that try to destroy it, even Bob himself.
- Plotted A Good Waste: When Chris encounters Bob after twenty years and there seems to be something weird going on that Bob is directly involved in, everybody else in the cast expects the "mentor gone evil" revelation to occur. Turns out the odd things Bob has done since he appeared are the result of harmless vices and the "Bob is a hitman for The Cartel" part of the revelation turns out to be a huge misunderstanding.
A true Troper would use the link back to Broken Pedestal. You taught me that. So... why? Why did you go back through the top?
