Beard of Evil/Playing With

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Basic Trope: An evil character has a beard, usually a goatee.

  • Straight: The villain has a goatee.
  • Exaggerated: Every villain we run into has a beard of some sort, and none of the heroes do.
  • Justified:
  • Inverted: The only character with a beard is the hero.
  • Subverted: We catch a glimpse of a menacing looking bearded character, but he turns out to be on the good guy's side.
  • Double Subverted: ...Until we find out he was The Mole all along.
  • Parodied:
    • The villain laments his inability to grow an effective evil beard, and eventually goes for an obviously fake one.
    • Alternately, every villain we run into has a beard of some sort, including the female ones.
    • Alternately, the beard is the villain ...And it may have a beard of it's own
    • Alternately, the evilness of a villain is determined entirely by the size of their beard.
    • Alternatively, The hero imagines a goatee on their evil counterpart
  • Deconstructed: People with beards are discriminated against in society, who believes they are all evil. It is thus considered terrible for men not to shave regularly.
  • Reconstructed: Which eventually gives rise to a group of a Well Intentioned Extremists who start committing crimes after being discriminated against for having beards.
  • Zig Zagged: The suspicious looking character with a beard is actually on the good side, but he turns out to be The Mole. However, as soon as he reveals this, he shaves the beard off. After which he goes back to the side of good because the beard contained a tiny mind-control device implanted there by the Big Bad, and it's gone now.
  • Averted: Who has a beard and who doesn't has nothing to do with whether they're good or bad.
  • Enforced: We need a way for audiences to tell apart the Evil Twin from his heroic counterpart- let's give him facial hair so they can notice right away.
  • Lampshaded: "Fear me and my beard of doom!"
  • Invoked: A villain grows a beard for the sole purpose of making himself look more evil.
  • Defied: After making his Face Heel Turn, a character makes sure to keep up on shaving, as he doesn't like the idea of how he'd look with an evil goatee.
  • Discussed: "Psst. Maybe we should stay away from that guy. Look at the beard! It just screams of evil!"
  • Conversed:

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