Basic Trope: Insulting an existing work by having a character who is dumb or otherwise unlikable be a fan of it.
- Straight: Trevor from the show Tropetacular! is an Insufferable Imbecile. Bob, the show's writer, decides to make it canon that Trevor is also a fan of Bob's least favorite band, The Clichés, as a Take That! to the band.
- Exaggerated:
- Bob makes all the unlikable characters enjoy his least favorite works and creators.
- Every time he appears, Trevor does nothing but praise The Clichés — not even bully people, though everybody insists he's a bully.
- Trevor isn't just unlikable, but a Politically Incorrect Villain and an outright Hate Sink.
- Downplayed:
- Trevor is a bit of a Kindhearted Simpleton and enjoys The Clichés. The show portrays him as being more misguided than anything.
- Trevor, a Jerk with a Heart of Gold, casually bobs his head to the beat of The Clichés.
- Bob disagrees with Trevor on politics, metaphysics, sports, food, what have you, and Trevor happens to like The Clichés.
- In the narrative, Trevor would be The Ace or The Hero, if only he didn't like The Clichés.
- Justified: Trevor is too unintelligent to realize that the band isn't good.
- Inverted:
- Bob likes the movie The Adventures of Hiro, so he makes Alice, the All-Loving Hero of Tropetacular!, a big fan of the movie to show his praise for the film.
- Bob makes Trevor a hater of a show he likes, the implication being only an imbecile would hate it.
- Bob makes Tami an Insufferable Genius and a fan of his favourite book as Self-Deprecation.
- Subverted:
- Bob makes Alice a fan of The Clichés as well as Trevor.
- Bob admits he likes The Clichés himself.
- Trevor was just an Insufferable Imbecile who liked The Clichés, but then he gets Character Development.
- Double Subverted: Then Alice or Bob moves out of their phase where they like The Clichés, or Trevor remembers why he liked them.
- Parodied:
- Trevor is a fan of the band The Clichés, despite the series taking place in the Stone Age!
- Trevor, who was originally a normal character, becomes a fan of The Clichés and immediately turns into an Insufferable Imbecile. Or, he was an Insufferable Imbecile who liked The Clichés, then decides he doesn't like them anymore and immediately becomes smarter and kinder.
- Alice gives a Long List of Trevor's flaws as a villain, and to the fact he is a fan of The Clichés she gives the Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking treatment.
- The Clichés are acclaimed and popular until Trevor makes public that he likes them, whereupon all their other fans reject them.
- Zig-Zagged:
- Alice or Trevor goes from loving The Clichés to hating them to not thinking much about them.
- The Clichés have fans and haters within the Tropetacular! cast on all points of the spectrum of desirability.
- Averted:
- Trevor doesn't particularly care for The Clichés.
- Bob doesn't even mention The Clichés in his scripts — he hates them so much he can't function when he thinks about that band.
- Enforced: Bob the writer wants to do a Take That! for a work he hates, but wants to make it creative.
- Lampshaded: "Who'd listen to The Clichés if they knew Trevor did?!"
- Invoked:
- Trevor's mooks, who are even stupider and meaner than he is, suggest that he listen to The Clichés.
- Trevor, who was not fond of his son John being a Loony Fan of The Clichés, began acting like he was an even more obsessed fan (whether or not the lie became truth depends) to make John disgusted and with that drop the fandom.
- Exploited: Everybody can tell where Trevor is because he always insists on playing music by The Clichés for everybody to hear — but they don't have to pay money to listen to it and decide for themselves that it's terrible.
- Defied:
- Trevor likes The Clichés at first, but he realizes they're terrible and goes to find better music.
- Trevor makes clear that he is an idiot, a jerk, possibly evil, and that he likes The Clichés, but he is not a representation of the average fan of the group.
- Trevor is about to put on The Clichés as he abuses Alice, but she lays a No-Holds-Barred Beatdown on him before he can.
- Discussed:Alice: I met that new guy, Trevor, yesterday.Adam: What's he like?Alice: He's a real Jerkass. He interrupted me three times in one minute, he said helping poor people was bad, and he told an off-colour joke. I'll bet you money he likes The Clichés, too.
- Conversed: "Considering they made the mean and stupid character a fan of that band, I think it's safe to say that the author doesn't care much for that band."
- Implied:
- Trevor is briefly shown to have a poster of The Clichés in his house.
- Trevor praises The Clichés, and after he gives a Death Glare, everyone around him nervously agrees.
- Played for Laughs:
- Trevor likes The Clichés, and when Alice challenges him on why he likes them, there's Cringe Comedy when he can't come up with a good reason.
- Everybody treats Trevor's fanaticism of The Clichés as a horrifying fact.Alice: He loves The Clichés!? I should have known he was a monster!
- After Trevor reveals he loves The Clichés, he immediately becomes a Loony Fan.
- Played for Drama:
- The "only idiots love The Clichés" meme is an insult created by Angela, the Alpha Bitch of the class, after seeing Trevor's fanaticism. While Trevor could not care less about one more insult flung at him, Timmy is ostracized and called stupid and evil just because he likes the band too, maybe even being forced to make his love of the band a Dark Secret (and like many other dark secrets, when it inevitably comes out he becomes a pariah).
- This kind of vox populi leads to The Clichés becoming box office poison through no fault of their own.
- Trevor feels offended and outraged by how there are assholes who specifically use his (and by implied extension other people's) love of The Clichés as insulting proof of his intellectual inferiority, even if he admits and accepts he is not smart otherwise, and just refuse to cut it out.
- Played for Horror:
- Trevor is a murderous Insufferable Imbecile and people making fun of his love of The Clichés is one of his many murder-worthy Berserk Buttons.
- Only poor fools love The Clichés because the band is structured (and maybe even enchanted) to enrapture all Lower-Class Louts as part of a plan to exterminate them.
- The villain of the story is a demented Jerkass who has taken this insult to the utmost, most disgusting, horrifyingly literal extreme and believes that Adam's love of The Clichés is perfect proof that Trevor (and the rest of the fanbase) is better off being removed from humanity's gene pool.
- Deconstructed:
- People seem to dislike Trevor only because he likes The Clichés. Adam, the Audience Surrogate and Only Sane Man, tries to point out that since that's not a thing Trevor has done or said to anybody, it doesn't harm anybody else, and he has no idea what The Clichés sound like anyway, this is not a sensible reason to hate him.
- Trevor is a fool and he likes The Clichés. These are inarguable facts. The problem becomes that everybody else brings their own bias to this argument and hates on Trevor over the second fact and thus literally for no good reason.
- Reconstructed: Almost as soon as Adam speaks, he sees Trevor stealing Sarah's lunch money and hears a few bars from The Clichés, which he finds to be a Brown Note. He realizes in a flash that everyone else dislikes Trevor and The Clichés for excellent reasons.
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