Basic Trope: Characters acting as contrarians for the sake of conflict, even though it doesn't makes much sense otherwise.
- Straight: Bob is normally a reasonable guy, but to tell An Aesop about teamwork, he suddenly argues with Alice and leaves.
- Exaggerated: Bob is normally a huge sycophant and spineless Yes-Man to Alice, but he suddenly vehemently disagrees with her over the most minor thing possible.
- Downplayed: Bob can get a bit antsy but acts more disagreeable than usual for the sake of the plot.
- Justified: Bob hadn't been getting much sleep, and Charlie, The Mole, has been feeding him lies about Alice.
- Inverted: Despite having a Hair-Trigger Temper and a fierce moral code, Bob goes along with Alice's decision to commit genocide.
- Subverted:
- Bob realized he's being unreasonable and decides to just go along with it.
- Bob and Alice only pretended to argue, to teach Jim and Rachel a lesson. note
- Double Subverted: ...until he finds ANOTHER ridiculous thing to argue about.
- Parodied: Bob throws a fit, breaks half of the Justice Team's base, and dramatically vows revenge on Alice for claiming Froot Circles are better than Choco Poofs, even though it had previously been repeatedly established that he hates chocolate and loves Froot Circles.
- Zig-Zagged: Bob starts getting angry about Alice having a party on a weekday, despite being seen at a party held on Tuesday ... until he learns it's a Friday, and he's okay with it ... until he's told there's alcohol at the party, despite passing out drunk two episodes ago ... then he learns there will be no minors there ... then he gets angry about marijuana being there, despite being seen smoking it two episodes ago ... then ...
- Averted: Conflict is caused by in-character disagreement or not caused by disagreements at all.
- Enforced: The Execs need some in-group conflict but everyone in the Justice Team gets along fine.
- Lampshaded: "So it's Bob's turn to be arbitrarily unreasonable today."
- Invoked:
- Bob wants to show the team what happens when they split up, so he pretends to get angry and leaves the team with Charlie for a day.
- Bob and Alice are laying the groundwork for Bob to infiltrate Team Evulz.
- Emperor Evulz sneaks in a conflict-causing Artifact of Doom.
- Exploited: Destructo is counting on the members of Justice Team to have some argument and break up for his plan to succeed.
- Defied: "Bob, you're being really unreasonable today. Let's just talk it out."
- Discussed: "Are we gonna do the thing where Bob gets angry for no reason, starting a chain of events that culminate with us learning a valuable lesson? Because that's what it looks like."
- Conversed: "Isn't it weird how the main character of this show sometimes gets all argumentative for no good reason?"
- Deconstructed: The Justice Team's tendency to randomly find issue with things they were fine with before gets them all diagnosed with bipolar disorder and eventually put out of superheroics by Dr. Hero.
- Reconstructed: But it turns out Dr. Hero was holding the Conflict Ball, their arguments were what made them a good team, and it was all just An Aesop about how some amount of conflict is inevitable in relationships.
- Implied: The argument happens during a Jump Cut, and we see Carol, Charlie, and Alice wonder why Bob was like that.
- Played for Laughs: Bob's squabbles with Alice are of the "Cavemen vs. Astronauts" Debate type.
No! Get your own Conflict Ball!
