Basic Trope: A guard animal isn't very good at its job, usually due to being too friendly to intruders.
- Straight:
- Bob gets a Dobermann to guard his house, hoping it'll be an Angry Guard Dog. The Dobermann ends up being a Big Friendly Dog who does nothing when intruders show up at Bob's house.
- Bob tries to get a guinea pig to guard his house.
- Exaggerated:
- Bob gets a Siberian tiger as a guard animal, but the tiger acts as friendly as a domestic animal to anyone who tries to break in.
- Bob tries to get a pet rock to guard his house.
- Downplayed: The Dobermann is a pretty efficient guard dog for the most part, but can still be distracted if an object is thrown.
- Justified:
- Bob hasn't trained the animal to be able to guard his house.
- Bob is The Ditz, and doesn't realize that guinea pigs and pet rocks don't make suitable guard animals.
- Inverted:
- The guard animal is a Super-Persistent Predator who is completely focused on getting the intruder off the premises, no matter what it takes.
- The guard animal is too aggressive, to the point where it attacks Bob when he tries to enter his house.
- Subverted:
- The Dobermann is initially friendly to the intruder — that is, until it realizes that the person is an intruder in the first place.
- Bob gets a guinea pig as a guard animal... but it turns out it's a Killer Rabbit, and is much more dangerous than it appears.
- When Bob claimed he was getting a guinea pig as his guard animal, he was only kidding.
- Double Subverted:
- Then the Dobermann gets even friendlier.
- An intruder who is able to easily overpower the guinea pig breaks into Bob's house.
- It turns out that Bob's actually planning on getting a chihuahua as a guard animal.
- Parodied: Bob tries to get a series of increasingly ridiculous choices of guard animals — a dragon, a werewolf, a Hellhound, and even an Eldritch Abomination — but all of them are nothing but friendly to anyone that tries to break in.
- Zig-Zagged: ???
- Averted:
- Bob doesn't get a guard animal.
- The guard animal can do its job properly.
- Enforced: ???
- Lampshaded: ???
- Invoked: ???
- Exploited: ???
- Defied: Bob makes sure that he's getting a reliable guard animal before he chooses one.
- Discussed: ???
- Conversed: ???
Back to Incompetent Guard Animal
