Basic Trope: A girlfriend goes psycho after her boyfriend dumps her.
- Straight: Bob ditches Alice, and she snaps and becomes a villain.
- Exaggerated:
- Bob ditches Alice, and she decides to destroy the universe as a result.
- Every girlfriend Bob has goes insane at the prospect of his leaving her.
- Alice tries to ruin Bob's life, because he ignored her when she tried to flirt.
- Alice literally repressed the memories when Bob dumped her, and has no idea they are apart.
- Alice was the one who broke up the relationship, but lost her mind when Bob agrees that they should be apart.
- Alice is this way to all of the men she was in relationships with.
- Downplayed: Alice remains bitter toward Bob after he breaks up with her, but it never amounts to anything beyond a few nasty words and maybe laughing at him when he's down on his luck.
- Justified:
- Bob was Alice's Only Friend, and she couldn't tolerate losing him.
- Bob seriously mistreated Alice before she dumped him, and she's angry and worried about him doing the same to Carol.
- Bob publicly humiliated Alice when he dumped her, so of course she's pissed.
- Or Alice was always crazy. She was just really good at hiding it.
- Alice was never exactly stable, and losing Bob as her Living Emotional Crutch sent her off the deep end.
- Bob was abusive, and now tries to pass off Alice's attempts to hold him accountable as Alice being a crazy ex.
- Inverted:
- Bob becomes Alice's boyfriend and she snaps from it.
- The breakup makes Alice reconsider the aspects of her and Bob's personalities that caused it, and she becomes a much better person (while Bob remains much the same).
- Alice goes batshit after she dumps Bob. The thing causing her to go psycho is her continued hatred of her ex.
- Subverted:
- Bob thinks Alice is psycho, but it turns out that he is simply taking her innocent behavior out of context.
- Carol thinks Alice's psycho behavior started with the breakup, but Bob ends up making it clear that Alice had problems before then.
- Alice only called Bob once after the breakup, to ask for her stuff back. Bob went around telling everyone that she "won't stop calling."
- Alice and Bob were never dating to begin with, Alice just assumed they were based off casual interactions.
- Bob tells Carol that Alice is his ex, but Alice reveals that they are still dating and she is mad that he is cheating on her.
- Bob keeps bringing up how Alice must be upset that they broke up and angry that he found a new partner, as a form of Psychological Projection as he is the one who hasn't gotten over the breakup.
- Bob was the psycho, not Alice, and he smeared her as the crazy one after the breakup to dodge responsibility.
- Double Subverted:
- Alice's actions seem to have simply been misunderstood. And then it is revealed that she is psycho after all.
- Alice won't stop bugging Bob about her stuff, even after he returns it. Months later, she still constantly claims he has something of hers.
- Bob tried to break up with Alice but she would always steer the conversation away from it, meaning he had to instead leave her with no warning.
- It turns out that while Bob may have been crazy, Alice was as well, and he just opened his mouth to smear her first.
- Parodied:
- Bob breaks up with Alice and assumes she is going to become this and becomes paranoid as a result. However Alice is in fact treating their break-up in a healthy well adjusted manner, but Bob continues to believe she is psycho.
- Bob treats Alice as a psycho as soon as their relationship shows signs of coming to an end. After all, nobody in their right mind would want to break up with the one and only Bob!
- Zig Zagged: Alice only freaks when she sees certain girls around Bob, but otherwise doesn't act aggressive towards him.
- Averted: Alice doesn't snap when Bob ditches her.
- Enforced: Alice was originally going to take the break up well, but the creators needed a new villain, and thus they made Alice the psycho she is today.
- Lampshaded: "Oh, Crap!, it's my ex-girlfriend, Alice! She didn't take the breakup very well!"
- Invoked:
- Bob wants Alice to snap so he could have her target his enemies in return for being his girlfriend again.
- Alice initially takes the breakup well enough, until her friends or family convince her that Bob was a abusive boyfriend and that she deserves revenge, or that she should intercede to "protect" his new girlfriend who obviously doesn't know what she's getting into.
- Exploited: Alice realizes Bob's going to dump her sooner or later because he prefers Jane . She seeks counseling or institutionalizes herself before it even happens. Or starts stockpiling weapons and planting tracking devices in Bob's clothes.
- Defied:
- Bob never leaves Alice because he knows she will snap upon him ditching her.
- Alice sees Bob's scared expression the first time they bump into each other after the breakup, and she's offended. "You think that just because I wanted us to be together, I'm going to have a mental breakdown when you leave? Get over yourself!"
- Bob doesn't get together with Alice at all because he knows what she did to her last ex-boyfriend.
- Discussed: "Alice, if I were to leave you, what would your reaction be?" "Well, I will first find you and then I will kill you, just so you can never leave me again. Why do you ask?" "No reason..."
- Conversed: "Oh God damn it! Another crazed ex-girlfriend? Can't I just play one Visual Novel without encountering one of these kinds of characters?"
- Implied: Every time Alice's name is mentioned, the normally-unflappable Bob jumps out of his skin looking terrified, set to a score of "Psycho" Strings. No explanation is ever given for this.
- Deconstructed: Bob gets the courts to pass a restraining order on Alice upon finding out about this.
- Reconstructed: This doesn't stop Alice from changing her identity and pursuing him.
- Plotted A Good Waste: Alice is played as a run-of-the-mill Psycho Ex Girlfriend for most of the plot, and feminists everywhere grind their teeth. But hints begin to come to light that Bob was more than a abusive boyfriend; he systematically psychologically abused her into being utterly dependent on him, and destroyed her relationships with everyone else she loved. Then when he got tired of her "clinginess", he cast her aside and made her think it was her own fault. She's now convinced that the only way she can be happy is to convince him to take her back.
- Played For Laughs: Alice is harmless, but frequently shows up as a Diabolus ex Machina just to foil Bob's attempts at forming new relationships.
- Played For Drama: Alice is a seriously unhinged Stalker with a Crush, and Bob's life is ruined by anxiety about what she'll do next.
- Untwisted: Alice's attends Bob's wedding with Claire, and she seems happy at first. Then when she starts crying, everyone ignores it, since many other guests are crying as well. Eventually Alice's crying breaks down into screams of rage, and she is escorted away from the wedding before disaster strikes.
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