Basic Trope: Each member of the Five-Man Band has a different ethnicity.
- Straight: In the Five-Man Band, Bob is white, Tony is latino, Velma uses a wheelchair and is Native American, Jack is black, and Alice is Asian.
- Exaggerated:
- Bob is a Token Human, Jack is a Noble Wolf, Velma is a chicken, Tony is a Cool Horse, and Alice is a Catgirl.
- The series has a large cast and every one of them is some kind of minority.
- No two characters (including minor characters and villains) are of the same race or species.
- Each character is Twofer Token Minority: Bob is white and gay, Jack is black and blind, Velma is Jewish and in a wheelchair, Tony is Native American and bisexual, and Alice is Asian and transgender.
- Alternatively, Bob is a 1/2 Irish 1/4 Swedish 1/4 Hungarian gay vampire viking, Jack is an Afro-Caribbean blind autistic ninja werewolf who also has vitiligo, Velma is a Half-Polish Half-Ethiopian Jewish elf cyborg with robotic artificial limbs and rainbow eyes, Tony is a Muslim bisexual Mayincatec-descents mestizo cowboy centaur, and Alice is a Half-Korean Half-Thai ADHD transgender mermaid catgirl.
- Downplayed:
- Everyone is of different nationalities, but Bob and Alice are white, Jack and Velma are black, and Tony is Hispanic.
- Bob is White Anglo-Saxon Protestant, Jack is half-black, Velma is Polish-American, Tony is white Hispanic, and Alice is French-American.
- Justified:
- The Five-Man Band is some sort of coalition for diversity.
- All live in a diverse city.
- Inverted: Everyone in the group is one race. Everyone else is thoroughly diverse, ethnically, socioeconomically, spiritually, grammatically...
- Subverted:
- Everyone in the group looks to be different races, but are all one race.
- A group of diverse individuals are seen together, but are actually strangers.
- Double Subverted:
- But each have friends that are ethnically diverse.
- But it revealed later that they're diverse more than just different races: Bob is bisexual, Jack is autistic, Velma is Jewish, Tony is gay, and Alice is transgender.
- But then they decide to become friends.
- Parodied:
- There is a scene where the characters specifically pick out diverse friends so they can teach kids about diversity, but they actually are racists.
- Each of the members have superpowers or combat styles based on their stereotypes: Bob is a natural leader and The Cape, Tony is very good with guns and prefers Guns Akimbo, Velma engages in Hollywood Hacking and can break into any system, Jack is a Scary Black Man with Super-Strength,, and Alice is Awesomeness by Analysis, a living calculator who can provide data with Ludicrous Precision. Jack speaks in poorly-written Ebonics, Tony talks like Speedy Gonzalez, and Alice is heavily-accented and speaks unusually bubbly regardless of her mood.
- There's a band of Psycho Rangers that are equally as diverse in their negative traits: the team consists of a racist, a sexist, a nationalist, a radical fundamentalist (or smug athiest), and a nondescript misanthrope.
- It's All-Stereotype Cast and the story is Equal-Opportunity Offender: Bob is a Comedic Sociopath Angry White Man who speaks in flawlessly Deep South accent, DeJack is The Ditz Uncle Tomfoolery who comically acts like gangsta rapper, Velma is an Insufferable Genius Cripple who uses an inspirational status to makes her look nice, Tony is a Casanova Wannabe brown slob Latin Lover, and Alice is a Brainless Beauty Asian Airhead who hooks up with several men for money.
- Zig-Zagged: Their different skin tones seem to be a different race, but then they are revealed to be wearing makeup and dyeing hair to look different, but then they find out that they are actually different races and sexual orientations, but then they discover that just Fake Mixed Race and Pragmatic Pansexuality...
- Averted:
- Only one or two minorities are represented in the group.
- Or the entire cast consists of only one kind of minority group (e.g. Cast Full of Gay.)
- The medium is non-visual (like a radio play or literature) and no clues as to ethnicity are ever given.
- Or, if it's a visual media, all the members of the group always wear all-encasing suits with gloves, helmets and masks so that their appearance description barely goes further than height and build, and their speech is as close to RP as it gets, nearly completely stripped of any and all accents or slang.
- No minorities are featured at all.
- Only one or two minorities are represented in the group.
- Enforced: The producers want to appeal to a wide and diverse audience.
- Lampshaded: "Statistically, all five of us should be white, since we're from northern Minnesota." "Wait, but I'm Irish, you're Norwegian and she's Italian..."
- Invoked: Characters intentionally seek out ethnically diverse friends, hoping to be seen as open-minded and tolerant.
- Exploited:
- A Politically Incorrect Villain forces the group together through manipulation in hopes that they will start fighting each other over racial/cultural/religious tension.
- The villain uses the infighting of the team in order to convince the populace that the represented groups shouldn't work together, and are much better left to stay in their lanes and mistrust each other.
- Defied: Characters refuse to be friends with anybody not of their own race.
- Discussed: "We all come from different backgrounds, but that's no reason for us not to work together."
- Conversed: "I understand that the writers want to be diverse, but none of the heroes has any characteristics beyond their ethnicity."
- Implied:
- Their different skin tones are clearly visible, but this is never mentioned.
- Bob lists his close friends: Jack Jefferson, Alice Yang, Tony Perez, Velma Kowalski.
- Deconstructed: The group is so focused on diversity that they accept members with no real qualifications other than being diverse. This harms their performance.
- Reconstructed: The characters' diversity creates different skills in them too, and those skills each help the group in their own way.
- Played for Laughs: Many background characters are noticeably racist (particularly toward the Five-Token Band), but no one is offended.
- Played for Drama: The group has to put up with racial and religious tensions (e.g. Israelis and Palestinians).
Back to Five-Token Band.
