Basic Trope: Being cruel to someone to ultimately help them in the long term.
- Straight: Bob insults sensitive people so they'll learn to ignore insults.
- Exaggerated: Bob straight up ruins Charlie's life so he'll stop using emotions to judge his actions.
- Downplayed: Bob refuses to help someone with something minor, instead letting them figure it out.
- Justified: If everyone was actively helpful then no one could function alone.
- Inverted:
- Bob is incredibly helpful, doing so the people he aids become helpless without him.
- Cruel Mercy.
- Subverted:
- Bob appears to be cruel to be kind, but he's really just a jerk who doesn’t care about other people.
- Bob forces Charlie to undergo treatments and surgeries that seem painful but necessary, but actually makes Charlie's condition worse.
- Double Subverted: ...Which is what he wants people believing, so they understand there are truly horrible people in this world.
- Parodied: Bob is Charlie's childhood bully and never misses a day in bullying him. When high school comes around and Bob brings some other (genuine) bullies to torment him, Charlie has finally had enough, telling Bob off then and there and fighting his way to the school entrance— and Bob immediately stops and congratulates him for standing up to his tormentors. Charlie responds by punching him.
- Zig Zagged: Bob appears cruel to be kind, but is really a jerk. Except he actually just wants people to believe that so they know unforgivable people exist. However, he's excessively cruel in doing so...
- Averted: People either don't know how to be cruel or they don't care about helping.
- Enforced: "We need the kiddies to know there are bad people in this world. How about we have Bob be cruel in his attempts to help?"
- Lampshaded: "Yep, because people love being insulted, they'll totally forgive you upon realizing how helpful it was."
- Invoked: Bob, deciding being straight up nice isn't working, starts being cruel to people.
- Exploited: Bob's rival tricks Bob's patients to focus more on his cruelty than his helpfulness.
- Defied:
- "If I'm going to be kind, then I'll actually be kind about it."
- "I do not care how "kind" you think it will be for me in the long run, if you ever treat me like that, I'll pay you back with greater "kindness", by which I mean I will make sure you spend a huge chunk of your life in ICU! Do you understand me?"
- Discussed: "Bob is such a jerk, always insulting people." "You didn't notice? The people he insults grow used to it so they aren't bothered by anyone's insults."
- Conversed: "I don't get it, why would anyone think being cruel to be kind works?" "Well, if you're just clearly helpful then people will expect you to do their work for them."
- Implied: Bob tends to act ruder when Alice is around, though not enough that people are surprised.
- Deconstructed:
- Bob, known for being cruel, is ultimately avoided regardless of how helpful he is because he's still cruel in doing so.
- The people Bob 'helped' become angry and vengeful toward him and retaliate by making his life just as miserable as he made them while telling him to thank them for returning his so-called 'kindness'.
- Bob's "kindness" is nothing of the sort, only him using the pretense of being "cruel to be kind" as an excuse to tear people down and satiating his sadistic desires. When people figure this out, they start to avoid him because it's clear that he's a selfish arrogant tool twisting the truth to justify his actions.
- Bob’s attempts to impart a valuable lesson to Alice through an apparent act of cruelty, but it doesn’t work because the cruelty is all Alice noticed. Bob’s actions ended up shooting the message.
- Alice may eventually notice the lesson Bob was trying to convey, but chooses to ignore the lesson because Bob was such an asshole about it.
- Reconstructed: Though known for being cruel in his attempts to be helpful, the fact he's actually successful gets people to seek him out.
- Played For Laughs: Bob acts under the idea of highly unlikely situations, such as volcanic eruptions and robotic uprisings, in his attempts to be cruelly kind.
- Played For Drama: Bob's attempts to be cruel to be kind work, except he's now clearly hated by the person he helped.
- Played For Horror:
- Bob borrowed his book on how to be cruel to be kind from John "Jigsaw" Kramer.
- Played for drama, but the victim is the one who's going to pull all the Kramer style traps on Bob.
Back to Cruel to Be Kind.
