Everything's Better with Bob/Playing With

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


Basic Trope: Everything's Better With Bob. Bob is an inherently funny name, and therefore is used a lot in comedy, mostly for throwaway gags. And in Playing With pages. So... DOUBLE META, ALL THE WAY!]

  • Straight: Protag's brother is named Bob; he is used as comic relief.
  • Justified: Characters' names are assigned based on job; all jesters are named Bob
  • Inverted: Bob is the Badass of the story.
  • Subverted: There is a character named bob who is boring or the protagonist or the antagonist or really anything but comic relief or a one-gag character.
  • Double Subverted: The protagonist's name is Bob, but he is both funny and falls victim to Chuck Cunningham Syndrome after a very short time.
  • Untwisted: There is a heroic jester who's name is Bob, but he ends up being a major character who rarely wisecracks.
  • Parodied: Whenever a character named Bob is mentioned, someone shouts OH GOD NO A ONE-JOKE CHARACTER
  • Deconstructed: Bob kills off other people, assumes their personalities, makes skin-suits out of them, appears for one unit-of-entertainment (i.e. movie, episode, strip), then repeats the process.
  • Reconstructed: Bob has multiple-personality disorder and all the personalities vanish as soon as they appear. Also he has a plastic-surgery obsession.
  • Zig Zagged: Bob works for the company that decides what your name will be and is extremely vain, therefore he names all the people he gets assigned Bob, after himself. But then Bob goes crazy and kills off everyone named Bob after their first appearance. He then collects all the Bobs and makes them into zombies (that look just like humans thanks to the skin suits the evil Bob had already made to disguise himself as others, thereby infiltrating his name further into the world, and which he made the zombies wear) and unleashes the zombies on the world. Unfortunately, the zombies are not very powerful (instead they have a penchant for humor), and die off as soon as they move off screen.
  • Averted: There is no character named Bob, perhaps he is named Fred, or perhaps there is no minor one-joke character.
  • Enforced: The [form of media]'s director's son is named Bob, so the director names all the one-joke characters Bob after his son.
  • Necessary Weasel: ???
  • Played for Laughs: Larry greets a random stranger walking down the sidewalk: "Hi, Bob!" "But my name is Richa-" "SHUT UP. YOUR NAME IS BOB AND YOU WILL LIKE THAT NAME."
  • Played for Drama: Bob has had a traumatic childhood because people made fun of his name.
  • Exaggerated: Every character is named Bob; whenever one character says another's name, they all burst out laughing.
  • Downplayed: While Bob is funny, he's overshadowed by the Ensemble Darkhorse.
  • Lampshaded: "Hmm, there's no currently ongoing plot, and the last couple strips have been throwaway jokes. Oh, hi Bob!"
  • Invoked: A character needs a break from the current storyline, so she finds a guy named Bob to appear in the next strip, hoping his appearance will cause the next strip to be a throwaway joke.
  • Defied: "Okay, Bob, I've traveled to the future and put you in tomorrow's [unit of entertainment] so you won't be a one-gag character!"
  • Discussed: "No, you can't be a comedian here just because your name is Bob"
  • Conversed: "See that guy? Bob? I bet he'll be gone next scene!"
  • Exploited: A king hires everyone named Bob to be his jesters, knowing that people named Bob are inherently funny.

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