Basic Trope: Someone whose personality and motivations all revolve around another character.
- Straight: Alice is Bob's friend... and that's about all the audience really knows about her.
- Exaggerated: Alice is Bob's friend... and that's it. She exists merely to hang out with Bob and act as a sounding board.
- Downplayed: Alice is Bob's friend... and that's the only explanation for her motivations.
- Justified:
- Alice is a Robot Girl created by Bob's genius inventor parents to serve as his best friend and bodyguard. As such, her programs all focus on keeping Bob as the center of her world.
- Alice is a Shrinking Violet who relies on Bob to do all the talking and get all the attention. When she's without Bob, she immediately leaves out of fear of having to talk to people.
- Alice is Bob's Imaginary Friend, and thus, only exists in Bob's head.
- Inverted: Alice can perceive and interact with the entire world... Except Bob.
- Subverted:
- Alice appears to have no personality beyond her interaction with Bob, but it turns out that she has Hidden Depths that most people miss.
- She tells Bob everything about her.
- Double Subverted:
- Which all relate to Bob.
- But the audience hears nothing of it.
- Parodied:
- Alice literally revolves around Bob.
- Alice is asked what she does without Bob, and immediately has an existential crisis on the spot.
- Zoe tries following Alice around to figure out what she does when she’s not around Bob. Turns out, after he leaves the room, she literally does nothing. She doesn’t move, talk, or even blink. She just waits for him to come back.
- Zig Zagged: Alice appears to have no personality beyond her interactions with Bob, but then it is revealed that she has Hidden Depths, then it turns out these Hidden Depths were only brought about by Bob, but Alice finally tells Bob that she's tired of living in her shadow and starts having her own life.
- Averted: Alice is a well-rounded—if minor—character.
- Enforced: Bob is the franchise lead, and the writers don't want a secondary character eclipsing him in popularity, so Alice is reduced to near-accessory status.
- Lampshaded: One of Bob's other friends notes she doesn't know anything about Alice other than her being Bob's friend.
- Invoked:
- Alice is a secret agent, and it helps her masquerade if she appears to have no identity other than as Bob's friend.
- Alternatively: Bob is very popular, and Alice wants to be popular as well, but lacks self-esteem, and believes that if the popular crowd knew her personally, they wouldn't like her; so, she only ever defines herself by her friendship with Bob.
- Exploited: Alice's seemingly forgettable nature makes her an excellent spy.
- Defied: Alice considers letting her friendship with Bob be her sole identifying characteristic but then rejects this in favor of having a life of her own.
- Discussed: "Alice, what do you do when you're not with Bob?" "I don't understand the question."
- Conversed: "Hey, it's Bob. And... um.. that girl who's always with Bob."
- Deconstructed:
- Alice has no friends besides Bob, and thus allows her entire life to revolve around him.
- Alice is extremely dependent on Bob, whether she knows this or not. Either Bob moves, or dies, or just goes on to make more friends, and Alice suffers an identity crisis as she realizes she doesn't have much of a personality besides being Bob's friend.
- Bob is grooming Alice into his own personal servant.
- Reconstructed:
- Alice's steadfast loyalty to Bob becomes her defining virtue and is admired by the other characters for it.
- Alice finds a new friend to be extremely dependent on.
- Then Alice and Bob slowly grow infatuated with one another; Bob decides to just marry Alice instead.
- Plotted A Good Waste: Alice turns out to be a spy from a rival company, sent to earn Bob's trust and integrate herself into his life so she could steal intelligence from his family's corporation. She was portrayed as a Satellite Character so that the audience would be aware she existed, yet dismiss her as unimportant before The Reveal.
- Played For Laughs:
- Bob's friend doesn't even have a name. Everyone calls her "Bob's friend," including her mother.
- Alternatively: Alice is clearly very infatuated with Bob, and seems to have no other thought than agreeing with her beloved.
- Played For Drama:
- Alice is co-dependent and trying to lose her identity in Bob. When Bob insists she become her own person, Alice is hurt and offended and decides to kill Bob and take her place.
- Alice's personality and motivations all revolve around Bob... Specifically, her obsessive hatred of Bob.
- A villain murders Alice in order to hurt Bob. Bob is horrified that despite all of Alice's independent dreams and ambitions (or perhaps even lack of them), she was ultimately reduced to nothing but collateral damage in Bob's story.
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