Bros Before Hoes

""Bros before hoes. I cannot stress this enough. Always remember, girlfriends come and go, but your boys are always there. Breaking this rule is to commit the cardinal sin against Team Testosterone.""

- Barney Stinson, How I Met Your Mother

Your friend's pissed, lost and scared and just asked you for a lift but your girlfriend's telling you to blow him off. What do you do? Ditch the bitch of course.

This trope refers to the concept of putting friends before a romantic interest, with the idea that one is more enduring than the other.

A sub-trope of The Bro Code.

"Chicks before dicks" is picking up steam as the feminine version. "Sisters before misters" works too. "Pal before gals" is the G rated version.

Compare with True Companions

Anime & Manga

 * Berserk: Casca played the bro when she initially chose Griffith over Guts after saving him from torture. It didn't end well.
 * Ouran High School Host Club: Quite literally when Kaoru gives up on his romantic feelings for Haruhi so that his brother, Hikaru, can realise his feelings for her so that he might learn to grow to be a little more independent.
 * Soul Eater: Soul and Black Star. Though not just hoes; anything really.
 * Wolfs Rain: Bros before total and utter betrayal.

Fan Fiction

 * The Mass Effect Kink Meme gives us this. To say more would be to spoil it.
 * Homestuck fanworks have given us the phrase "rails before pails".
 * Simon repeats this phrase over and over to himself after he sees Kamina kissing Yoko in the satire of Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann.

Film
"Antoinette Lilly: Have you ever been married?
 * A Boy and His Dog: When Blood is dying from thirst and starvation, Quilla tries to convince Vic to abandon him.  it doesn't get any more bros before hoes than that.
 * Transformers: Sam's friend reminds' him of the sacred edict; "bros before hoes!". But to no avail as he is ejected out of the car for Mikeala Banes. A common case of Hoes before bros.
 * In Open Season it is phrased as the PG-friendly "bros before does."
 * Con Air: While Cyrus's gang refuel the plane, one of them is sent to hide the transponder on another plane. In the hangar he meets a female mechanic and is so busy talking to her that he misses the take and is shot while trying to catch up, explicitly dying because he chose to stay with the woman instead of returning to the bros.
 * Saw 3D has two men in a trap with a woman who's been bedding them both and having them steal to get her what she wanted. One of the three will be killed by the trap, while the other two will survive. The woman ends up being the unfortunate one. Bros Before Hoes, graphically portrayed.
 * A rather extreme version from Clint Eastwood's Bronco Billy:

Bronco Billy: Sure. A long time ago.

Antoinette Lilly: Did you love her?

Bronco Billy: With all my heart. Sometimes that just isn't enough.

Antoinette Lilly: What happened?

Bronco Billy: I caught her in bed with my best friend.

Antoinette Lilly: What did you do to him?

Bronco Billy: I shot her.

Antoinette Lilly: What! What about him?

Bronco Billy: He was my best friend."


 * Duncan and Charlie do all but cite this in Mystery Team.

Literature

 * Jeremy references this trope by name in Duumvirate when realizing his servant is far more valuable to him than his girlfriend.
 * Invoked/referenced in Romance of the Three Kingdoms where Liu Bei stops Zhang Fei from committing suicide over a failure with "[b]rothers are as hands and feet; wives and children are as clothing. You may mend your torn dress, but who can reattach a lost limb?". Though this could also be credited with how he 'justified' tossing the rescued Liu Shan to the ground just because it endangers Zhao Yun...

Live Action Television
"Leslie: Oh Ann, I am so fine. As long as you and me are cool. You know my code. Hos before bros. Uteruses before duderuses.
 * House: "There is a code; bros before hoes man"
 * On Parks and Recreation, Leslie invents some feminine versions when Ann asks her if she can go out with Leslie's crush Mark:

Ann: Got it.

Leslie. Ovaries before brovaries."

"Sheldon: Howard has informed me that my allegiance be to male comrades before women who sell their bodies for money.
 * On The Office... just watch it.
 * The Big Bang Theory: Sheldon, of course, gives us the Expospeak version.

Leonard: Are you sure he didn't say 'bros before hos'?

Sheldon: Well, I changed the phrasing so as not to offend the hos."


 * In another instance Sheldon's World of Warcraft account was hacked and they managed to trace the perpetrator. At the time Leonard was dating Raj's sister, Priya, and while everyone was set to track down their foe, Leonard was hesitant about stiffing Priya two nights in a row over this thing. This leads to Raj saying "Come on, Bros before ... my sister!"
 * On Thirty Rock when Jack wants to put his girlfriend's needs ahead of company's he mentions he can't because the company has a strict "B's before H's" code.
 * Ted pulls a non-gendered version in How I Met Your Mother, dumping his girlfriend Karen after she told him he couldn't be friends with Lily anymore -- this is even after he got into a huge fight with Lily because she tried to underhandedly break him and Karen up.

Western Animation

 * The kid-friendly "pals before gals" is used on The Amazing World of Gumball.
 * Stan Smith gives this bit of knowledge to son Steve on American Dad
 * There's a song by fictional rapper Gangstalicious on The Boondocks called "Homies Ova Hoes", which details this trope with homoerotic subtext abound in the music video. The look on Huey's face says it all.