Basic Trope: The protagonist has friends at the start of the story that are never seen/mentioned again or treated as their friends as the story continues.
- Straight: Bob has been friends with Charlie and Denise since they were children. He meets Alice and joins her in adventure. When Alice and Bob need to call on the help of all of their friends and allies, suddenly the narrative pretends Charlie and Denise don't exist.
- Exaggerated: Charlie and Denise are gone the very scene Alice shows up. Nobody mentions them ever again.
- Downplayed: Instead of not showing up at all, they turn into Those Two Guys.
- Justified:
- Charlie and Denise weren't there for Bob's major character growth, so compared to his newer friends and True Companions they don't carry the same emotional weight when they show up.
- The friendship wasn't all that close anyway. The three of them met by chance and hung with each other out of habit, but once they stop hanging out it's not that big of a deal.
- Or the friendship, while originally close, was already drifting apart.
- Bob's adventures involve the supernatural, and Invisible to Normals is in effect, so Charlie and Denise can't help him.
- Inverted: Bob was established to be alone as a kid, but he later mentions his old friends Charlie and Denise when he reminisces. When Alice asks why she's never heard of them from Bob before when he talked about his lonely past, Bob doesn't know what she's talking about.
- Subverted:
- Bob still values Charlie and Denise as companions and tries to make time for them as well as his new comrades.
- You see Charlie and Denise in Bob's ally montage. They take up a little more time than everyone else.
- Double Subverted: It was lip service. Bob treats Charlie and Denise no different than when he stopped hanging out with them.
- Parodied: Either Bob's an asshole, or Charlie and Denise are. As soon as the plot kicks in and Alice asks Bob if he's okay with throwing away his mundane life and friends, he practically leaps to her side.
- Zig Zagged: ???
- Averted: Bob is still friends with Charlie and Denise. That part of his life never gets thrown aside, whether he decides it or they keep pushing themselves back into his life.
- Enforced: "Well, we don't want Bob to look like a friendless loser with no social skills, so let's give him someone to talk to before Alice shows up."
- Lampshaded: While hanging out with Charlie and Denise, Bob feels like he might forget about them if he doesn't stay around long enough.
- Invoked: Bob is a natural introvert, so he makes friends with Charlie and Denise to keep up appearances despite not having a connection with them.
- Exploited: Charlie and Denise know Bob doesn't care about what kind of friends he makes, so they use his attitude to get in with him, hoping if they're lucky, Bob might just become friends with them for real.
- Defied: Every time Alice and Bob come back to his hometown, the first thing he does is visit his friends without fail and spend time with them. And when he has free time, he contacts them if he can. He feels that he shouldn't forget where he came from or ignore his friends just because they're not around him 24/7 anymore.
- Conversed: "Didn't Bob have friends before?" "Yeah, but they're like those episode 1 friends. They don't actually matter."
- Discussed:Alice So were you really alone that whole time? Didn't you have your two friends to go to?
Bob: Not really... There wasn't anybody at home I could really be myself around, I wouldn't call them friends.
Charlie and Denise: (out of nowhere, comedically and angrily) You wouldn't WHAT?! - Deconstructed: The friendship ends up as it did because they just... sort of drift apart. Of course they never hang anymore; life gets in Bob's way now, and since he's never in the neighborhood for long anymore there's no reason for him to pretend he cares about them just as much as his new crew.
- Charlie and Denise are incredibly upset with Bob for not remembering they exist, to the point of up and leaving him when he needs them the most. Faye chews him out for letting his desire to be with the "bigger people" affect his relationships with his former friends.
- Reconstructed:
- Bob takes Faye's chewing out to heart, and does his best to try and make it up to Charlie and Denise, who become unofficial Sixth Rangers/Those Two Guys to the group.
- Plotted a Good Waste:
- When the narrative sees the friendship from Charlie and Denise's perspective instead of Bob's, we see that they feel used as friends and even a little resentful, seeing that their friend Bob stopped hanging with them and joined with bigger and better people without so much as a goodbye.
- The narrative itself points out that Bob can't even remember the names of his hometown friends or the people he befriended on his journey. His callous treatment of them isn't glossed over; rather, it's now a testament to how little Bob thinks of people outside his social circle, and his companions take notice. If he can't even bring himself to care about the minor folk after getting away from them, how much will he care about his new so-called companions once their adventure is over?
- Played For Laughs:
- At Bob's homecoming, all of his hometown acquaintances are there, including an excited Charlie and Denise. After greeting everyone else, he greets them as if he's never seen them before. Charlie, Denise, and Bob's mother chastise him for forgetting his longtime friends.
- Frank, Alice and Bob's nemesis, decides to take a few of the people Bob cares about in an effort to break his resolve. He chooses two completely different people to stand in for Charlie and Denise since he figures that Bob (and the viewers) wouldn't really notice if they weren't there. He's right.
- Played For Drama: When Plot-Mandated Friendship Failure happens and Alice leaves Bob, he tries to go to Charlie and Denise for either help or company. They call him out for abandoning them for someone else and expecting them to welcome him back after so long. Now Bob has to try to make it up to Alice and the both of them while dealing with whatever world-ending event is going on.
Go back to Social Circle Filler
