Basic Trope: Lies and rumours spread to discredit someone.
- Straight: Carol tells Bob that Alice is cheating on him.
- Exaggerated: Carol prints leaflets that claim that Alice starts fires, devours small children and never washes her hands after using the loo.
- Downplayed: Carol halfheartedly claims that Alice is a Jerkass.
- Justified: Carol is a good liar and is jealous of Alice's relationship with Bob.
- Inverted: Carol tries to exaggerate rumours of Alice's great deeds in order to improve her reputation.
- Subverted: Carol's lies are far too outlandish to be believed. Bob traces them back and confronts her.
- Double Subverted: Carol uses the transparency of the lies to convince Bob that Alice set her up.
- Parodied: Carol leaves a badly done crayon drawing of Alice cheating on Bob to be found. It becomes accepted as fact in minutes.
- Zig Zagged: Some rumors are revealed to actually be true, some were lies, some were half truths and some were designed to be identified as false rumors to cover up the fact that they were true.
- Averted: Nobody starts any rumors.
- Enforced: The Hero needs to have a bad reputation, but he can't have done anything wrong. False rumors are the obvious solution to the writers' problem.
- Lampshaded: "You guys really do believe everything you read in the papers, don't you?"
- Invoked: Carol realizes that she can get rumors about Alice to snowball if she plays her cards right.
- Exploited: Alice wants a fearsome reputation and allows Carol to spread rumours of her dastardly deeds for this reason.
- Defied: Alice goes out of her way to make sure she can prove what she was doing at any given moment and makes sure at least one of her friends is a respected journalist who can clear her name.
- Discussed: "Don't believe everything you hear about Alice, I hear that that gossip Carol's got it in for her."
- Conversed: "So is the Alpha Bitch going to spread rumors about her to split them up?"
- Deconstructed: In the end no one believes any rumors they hear because almost everyone's been slandered at some point.
- Reconstructed: Carol and other rumormongers get creative and frame people for starting rumors.
- Played For Laughs: Carol's lie is highly unbelievable - that Alice is two children in a long coat posing as an adult - but everyone believes it.
- Played For Drama:
- Carol tells Bob that Alice is cheating on him, when Alice is doing no such thing. Bob divorces Alice, leaving and taking their children with him. Since Alice's job depends on a good public image, she is fired when news of this reaches her boss. Her community shuns her as well. Alice life falls apart, and she is Driven to Suicide by the despair. Bob, meanwhile, learns that Carol lied to him and Alice was innocent and is wracked with guilt — even moreso now that Alice is dead and he can't apologize to her. The children then estrange themselves from him, further worsening his misery.
- Carol tells Bob that Alice is cheating on him, when Alice is doing no such thing. Bob divorces Alice and trashes her on social media, destroying her reputation. Alice responds by exacting violent (and fatal) retribution on Bob, Carol, and everyone else who spread the false rumor.
I heard that the writer of this Playing With Wiki isn't any good. Just go back to Malicious Slander.
