Bros Before Hoes

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"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

Examples of Bros Before Hoes include:


Anime & Manga


Fan Fiction


Film

  • A Boy and His Dog: When Blood is dying from thirst and starvation, Quilla tries to convince Vic to abandon him. Instead Vic kills and cooks Quilla for Blood's lunch; 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:

Antoinette Lilly: Have you ever been married?
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.

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.
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.
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