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Basic Trope: A person argues they aren't a bigot because they have friends who belong to the group they scorn.

  • Straight: Alice makes an offensive joke about tropers. When Bob calls her out on it, she retorts that some of her best friends are tropers.
  • Exaggerated: Alice demands tropers be rounded up and killed, and uses the example of a troper with whom she had a pleasant four-minute conversation in a bar last week to deflect criticism.
  • Downplayed:
    • Alice, generally a Perpetual Frowner, always glowers a bit more strongly whenever a troper comes into the room, and replies to criticism by noting that most of her friends are tropers.
    • Alice calls for "special scrutiny" of tropers as a threat to national security, though she makes an exception for her partner who's a troper.
  • Justified:
    • Alice has had a hard time with tropers for most of her life, giving her ingrained prejudices towards them, but she has a few troper friends who don't reflect these prejudices.
    • Alice's troper friend often tells troper in-jokes, without mentioning the N-Word Privileges nature of such jokes.
    • Simply having troper friends has caused Alice to receive the same mockery that they receive. Alice feels that she has earned herself N-Word Privileges.
  • Inverted:
    • Alice mentions the few troper friends she has and Bob calls her out for mentioning them. Then Alice makes an offensive joke about them as a retort.
    • Alice glorifies tropers. When Bob questions it, she retorts that some of her worst enemies are tropers.
    • Alice openly admits to her prejudices, yet still manages to retain genuine friendships with tropers.
    • Alice, a troper, makes an offensive remark about her own people. But since she has no friends who are tropers, she is treated with the same scorn as an outsider.
  • Subverted:
    • It turns out that Alice really is a troper herself.
    • Alice isn't really anti-troper, just bad at jokes.
    • "Hey, some of my friends are ... You know what, never mind. It doesn't matter because I'm not prejudiced."
  • Double Subverted: The next time Alice gets really angry, it's at Alexandra, a troper, whom Alice has always really hated.
  • Parodied:
    • Letter "A" makes an offensive joke about the letter "X". When "B" calls it out on it, it retorts that some of its best friends are "X"s.
    • The moment Alice finishes telling the offensive joke about tropers, all her troper friends appear out of thin air telling her that they are not only not friends anymore, but her joke is now the world's unfunniest joke before disappearing.
    • Alice makes an offensive joke about black people and then comments about how she can't be racist because her best friend is Winnie the Pooh.
    • Alice says this, unaware that she's a part of said group.
    • Alice says she can't be racist because her best friend, Carol, is black and she wouldn't like her if she was racist. It turns out that Carol is a Boomerang Bigot herself.
    • Alice mentions having a troper friend and is accused of using the "friend defence" even though she never said anything offensive in the first place.
  • Zig-Zagged: Sometimes Alice makes negative comments about tropers that use their identity as part of troper culture as the punchline; other times she doesn't mention that they're tropers at all.
  • Averted:
    • No one clarifies or apologizes for their offensive jokes, instead going all the Refuge in Audacity way.
    • No one makes any offensive jokes.
    • Alice only says some of her best friends are tropers because Bob said he doesn't know any tropers, so Alice wanted to say she does know some.
    • Alice doesn't say whether she knows any tropers.
    • There are no tropers, nor any other minority group that faces adverse discrimination for any reason.
  • Enforced: "We need a quick and easy way to portray the anti-troper as a hypocrite."
  • Lampshaded: "I've heard so many closet anti-tropers use that line."
  • Invoked: Alice makes friends with tropers to make use of that excuse.
  • Exploited: Alice makes sure to know exactly how many troper friends she has to defend herself if she says something untoward.
  • Defied:
    • Alice makes no attempt to defend herself from scorn, as everyone in the room knows that none of her friends is a troper.
    • Alice doesn't say what she thinks about tropers out loud.
    • Alice is about to use this Stock Phrase, but decides that it would be too clichéd and uses something else to her defense instead.
  • Discussed: ???
  • Conversed: "Is Alice's head all right?"
  • Deconstructed: Alice's troper friends stop being her friends when they hear about the offensive joke Alice made.
  • Reconstructed: Alice's friends know that she was just joking.
  • Played for Drama: Alice's troper friend Ben is prejudiced against his fellow tropers. Since he is the only one she knows, she repeats the things he says without realizing their offensive nature.
  • Played for Laughs:
  • Implied: Alice says, "You know about my friends," but Bob doesn't let her finish.

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