Basic Trope: Someone scolded not for maliciousness but for incompetence.
- Straight: Bob tries to rob an old lady. Alice reprimands him for not wearing a mask.
- Exaggerated: Bob tries to destroy the entire world, by deceiving various global superpowers into declaring war via False Flag Operations. Alice gives him a "The Reason You Suck" Speech about how many ways the attacks can be traced back to him.
- Downplayed:
- Bob tries to steal a cookie from the jar, and Alice tells him to use a different stepladder.
- Bob insults Charlie by calling him the homophobic f-word. Alice scolds Bob for calling Charlie a slur, not because she's disgusted at Bob for being homophobic, but because she wants Bob to be cleverer with his insults.
- Justified:
- Alice is Bob's (eeeeevil) mentor.
- Alice has to put up with stupid criminals all the time.
- The way Bob is doing his misdeed is so unworkably stupid that Alice feels she needs to prevent an Accidental Suicide (or murder, or both) over whatever the heck Bob is doing.
- Alice is secretly a hero who needs Bob to do his misdeeds in a certain way to fulfil her heroic plan.
- Inverted:
- Bob tries to help an old lady cross the street, and Alice demonstrates a better way for support hold on her.
- Bob tries to help an old lady cross the street, and Alice congratulates him not because it's a nice thing to do, but because he picked great walking boots for the job.
- Bob tries to rob an old lady, and Alice arrests him for it, but Bob reprimands Alice for not wearing a mask, since other criminals she may have previously caught could break loose, recognize her face, and pursue revenge. Not that he would do that, but it is something pretty common for criminals to do.
- Subverted: Alice then arrests Bob.
- Double Subverted: But then she takes him to her house for training.
- Parodied: Alice takes Bob to a school for Card-Carrying Villains and gives him a series of lectures on how to Do Wrong, Right.
- Zig-Zagged: Alice reprimands Bob not just for wearing a mask, but also for being horrible, but also other flaws in the plan, which don't matter anyway because it's a horrible thing to do. Though doing it wrong just adds insult to injury.
- Averted: Alice arrests Bob for the actual crime.
- Enforced:
- "It's an old joke, but it's still funny, so we put it in."
- "How do we show that Alice is a pragmatic villain?" "How about she scolds someone for doing something bad, but then tells them how to do it right instead?"
- Lampshaded: "You know, I feel there's a more pressing thing wrong here, but I can't put my finger on it."
- Invoked: Alice makes her mind up to teach Bob evil.
- Exploited: Claire uses this an excuse to arrest Alice, for the joke.
- Defied: The police handbook prohibits Alice from making this joke lest she be fired for unprofessionalism.
- Discussed: "Other cops, they might make jokes, say if you do wrong, you do it right. Not me."
- Conversed: "If you do wrong, do it right. Ugh, what a clichéd joke."
- Deconstructed: As soon as Bob is out of jail, he returns to crime, only this time, he does it correctly, resulting in deaths and property damage. On television, he thanks Alice for her suggestion to commit crime more competently, prompting the police to strip Alice of her duties for endorsing crime.
- Reconstructed: Alice tracks down Bob, and understands that what he said on television was to discredit her, but it would have been better if he had killed her soon after instead of giving her the opportunity to go after him. Bob agrees that he could have, but he decided to play fair in order to get a real challenge out of her.
- Played for Laughs:
- Bob gets arrested for the actual crime, and for not doing it correctly.
- Bob actually feels the need to lampshade this out of his outrageous and Skewed Priorities: "Really? You're forcing me to risk getting lung cancer and you're going to lecture me about how the (whatever insult is funnier) I am holding my cigarette? Are you actually listening to what you're saying?"
- Played for Drama: Bob is a serial killer who Alice tracks down, leading to a climatic encounter where Bob almost kills her in pitch darkness, only for her to shoot him dead when he makes a sound. Alice then says that Bob should've been quieter.
- Played for Horror: Bob gets more than a little upset for the alleged pity Alice showed him, so he kills her for it alongside redoing his initial crime either "the wrong way" or "the right way" Alice showed him, whichever way he feels is more insulting to the poor victim.
- Implied: Bob robs a bank without a mask and only just gets away. A few months later, he wears a mask, then robs another bank with much less fuss and a bigger haul. When his mentee asks him what changed, he says, "I got some pointers from unexpected places."
Back to Do Wrong, Right. No, not like that! If you're going to ruin your life, at least do it right!
