Bunny Ears Lawyer/Playing With

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


Basic Trope: A character with a very definite and noticable quirk, but who is so incredibly competent in an area of expertise that no one seems to notice it (at least not after first meeting).

  • Straight: Bob wears a pair of bunny ears on his head, but he's an expert lawyer.
  • Exaggerated: Bob wears a bunny costume all the freaking time, and insists on being called "Fluffy McMuffins" (possibly to the point of getting his name legally changed), and yet, he has a 100% success rate in the courtroom.
  • Downplayed: Bob absolutely loves carrots, and revels in the inevitable nickname "Bugs". Everyone thinks he's a bit eccentric, but he's good at his job.
  • Justified:
    • Bob has a state-dependent memory, and cannot remember his law school education without wearing bunny ears.
    • Bob is of the opinion that his uniquely gifted lateral thinking and problem-solving skills are somehow related to the unusual way his mind works, but he hasn't found a therapist who's sufficiently outwardly-bizarre-but-expert-in-his-field for him to trust their opinion.
    • The court house Bob works at has cases that deals with a lot of children. By wearing bunny-ears, Bob is easing the tensions for any child who's forced into court for some reason.
  • Inverted: Bob is terrible at his job, but he's so entertainingly quirky that they keep him around anyway.
  • Subverted: Bob's client Alice believes that he's a competent lawyer...right up until he calls the March Hare as his first witness.
  • Double Subverted: ...but it turns out there really is a person named March Hare who is a material witness in the case. Looks like Bob did his homework after all.
  • Parodied: In this universe, lawyers are not taken seriously unless they wear bunny ears.
  • Deconstructed:
    • Bob really is an expert lawyer, but nobody will hire him by virtue of his cosplay habits. He begins to wonder if law was the right field for him after all.
    • Alternately, you can have him get the job, but the ethical application for it is highly suspect, i.e. Bob is the greatest post-mortem forensic investigator in the biz, and also a necrophile.
  • Reconstructed: Just when Bob is about to quit his law firm, he gets one final potentially career-making case. He wins, with his bunny ears standing proud.
  • Zig Zagged: Bob wins the big case, only for his client to reveal he never expected Bob to win, and only hired him in the hopes that the bunny ears would ensure he'd win an ineffective counsel appeal after a guilty verdict.
  • Averted: Bob is a competent lawyer, and does not wear any sort of costume or have any abnormal quirks.
  • Enforced: "We need our lawyer character to be competent, but entertaining. Let's give him an odd quirk that nobody could take seriously. It could also teach a lesson about not judging a book by its cover."
  • Lampshaded: "The prosecutor is wearing bunny ears. We're screwed."
  • Invoked:
    • "Here, put these bunny ears on. Then it will look like you know what you're doing."
    • Bob was a perfectly good lawyer, but it's a competitive field trying to get clients, so he took a cue from TV and assumed an eye-catching personality quirk that would make people think 'that guy must be really good to get away with behaving like that...'
  • Defied: "If I want people to take me seriously, I'm going to have to leave my bunny ears behind."
  • Discussed: Said by an employer of Mad Scientists: "Our firm tolerates a certain level of... quirkiness, so long as it does not interfere with performance. We have found that the kinds of people who are willing to defy the laws of physics are normally also the kinds of people who are willing to defy social norms as well."
  • Conversed: "Why is it that the lawyer with the bunny ears always wins? It makes no sense."

Back to Bunny Ears Lawyer

Retrieved from "https://allthetropes.org/wiki/Bunny_Ears_Lawyer/Playing_With?oldid=1678519"