Basic Trope: An exemplification of the worst stereotypes of politics.
- Straight: Polly Ishan lies a lot, gives and takes bribes, is a total Hypocrite, is frequently involved in scandals, and generally acts like a Jerkass.
- Exaggerated: Polly Ishan is highly corrupt, a traitor to her country, focuses most of her campaigns on smearing her political opponents, is guilty of everything she falsely accuses her opponents of (including several felonies and sexual crimes up to and including rape), backstabs anyone who tries to work with her, and never even makes a token attempt to tell the truth or keep her promises.
- Downplayed: Polly Ishan breaks many of her election promises and has been involved in a few sex scandals, but isn't too bad otherwise.
- Justified: Polly Ishan may be a sleazy person, but she has a solid voter base consisting of those falling for her charisma, and those who only vote for her because they hate the politics of her more respectable rival.
- Inverted: Polly Ishan is committed to always keeping her promises, respectful towards political opponents, willing to go the extra mile to ensure that her constituents are satisfied, and too honourable to touch a bribe or otherwise violate her advertised principles.
- Subverted: Nate the narrator introduces Polly Ishan as corrupt hypocrite, but he turns out to be a fanatical supporter of Polly Ishan's main rival.
- Double Subverted: Nate's description was exaggerated, but not entirely false - there are plenty of proven instances of Polly engaging in corruption and hypocrisy.
- Parodied: Polly Ishan opens all her campaign speeches with a deadpan "Here are the obligatory empty promises we're all painfully aware I won't even try to keep".
- Zig Zagged: Many characters complain about Ishan's corruption, and some complaints are true, but others are false, and still others are justifiable.
- Averted: Polly Ishan is a flawed individual, but generally tries to act respectably.
- Enforced:
- Audrey the author slaps a Sleazy Politician into her work because she thinks politician bashing sells.
- The work is a Propaganda Piece that needs a Strawman Political against whatever it wants to vilify.
- A dictator who wants to push an anti-democracy message forces the author to add a scene showing that if you give the people the power to choose their leaders, they'll pick sleazebags.
- Audrey the author is not fond at all of Polly Tick and so creates Polly Ishan, who has the flaws Audrey believes Tick has and turns them up to eleven, as a Take That!.
- Lampshaded: "I'm sitting out this election. Neither the lying Jerkass nor the corrupt skirt chaser deserves my vote."
- Invoked: Polly Ishan, believing there's No Such Thing as Bad Publicity, deliberately starts acting sleazy to draw attention to herself.
- Exploited: Polly Ishan's main rival uses her sleazy behaviour against her in attack ads.
- Defied: In the upcoming election, Polly Ishan's constituents make it absolutely clear that they won't put up with sleazebags like her by voting against her in droves.
- Discussed: "Who I'm voting for in the upcoming election? I don't know. Hopefully someone who isn't a total sleazebag."
- Conversed: While watching Politicians of Tropetown, John laughs at Polly Ishan's behaviour, asks "how the heck did someone like that get elected anyway?" before comparing her to his most hated politician and saying "well, if he got elected, Ishan can too".
- Implied: Some characters are seen complaining about Polly Ishan's behaviour, but it's never shown.
- Deconstructed: As every politician seems to be sleazy, the people of Tropetown get political Too Bleak, Stopped Caring. By the time someone truly bad appears, few people even notice the threat, and most of those who do are too desensitized to care. This eventually causes a young firebrand to rise up against the evils, and whip everyone back into shape; He's so damn tired of the constant corruption that he's going to get it by tooth and nail, come hell or high water, consequences be damned.
- Reconstructed: And of course, due to trying to fight back against corruption, the young firebrand is promptly branded a pariah and sent to rot away in prison forever. He'd be lucky if he actually dies of natural causes.
- Played For Laughs:
- Polly Ishan tries to lie and bribe her way into office. Too bad she's a Bad Liar and only offers Comically Small Bribes.
- Polly Ishan is a Self-Proclaimed Liar, and is seen smoking a joint while giving a Drugs Are Bad speech.
- Polly Ishan lies so much that she needs a notebook to keep her story straight. Then she loses her notebook...
- Polly Ishan and her equally sleazy rival Cory Uption run for office. Poppy Stardom, an in-universe celebrity, joins the race as a PR stunt. Polly and Cory are so hated that Poppy wins, and now has to deal with the issues that come with an unwanted position of power.
- Played For Drama: The heroes expect Polly to help them stop the mob, but she was in their pocket the whole time, and allows the mob to kill them.
- Played For Horror: Polly's corruption and incompetence is Grey's Law incarnate - it does not matters if it's born out of more human fallibilities such as greed and laziness or less human like believing in unspeakable evil for evil's sake, at some point her contribution to creating the horrors that have decimated the population and allowing them to continue existing is so great that there is no real difference, and as a matter of fact revealing that she is just some idiot has greater chances of causing people to snap than not.
Back to Sleazy Politician. This political ad was paid for by The Committee to Elect Sleazy Politician, and was in no way funded with bribe money.
