Jerk Jock/Playing With

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


Basic Trope: A bullying high school / college age teenage boy, usually presented as a popular star athlete and foil to the heroes.

  • Straight: Bob is an arrogant, bullying star athlete who plays quarterback for the high school football team. He takes particular delight in bullying Andy and Colin, our heroes.
  • Exaggerated: Bob is a vicious, violent and brutal thug who rules the entire school with an iron fist of terror because of his bullying nature, allowing him to get drunk, torture and rape with near impunity.
  • Justified: Bob is the star athlete of the local sports team, which has given him a lot of local popularity. His athletic nature has resulted in a well-toned physique which attracts girls. His family is wealthy and influential, meaning teachers are reluctant to discipline him or give him bad grades because of this and his sporting prowess, which brings credit and funding to the school. He uses all of this to throw his weight around.
  • Inverted: Bob is friendly, charming and decent.
    • Insufferable Genius
    • Bob is an arrogant, bullying star...chess player for the school's nationally-ranked chess team.
    • Bob is an asshole, before joining the sports team. Now that he has a legitimate outlet for his aggression, he calms down.
  • Subverted: Because of his interest in sport and wealthy family, Andy and Colin assume Bob is a bully; he's actually quite a decent guy.
  • Doubly Subverted: The decency is just for show; Bob soon reveals his true colours.
  • Parodied: Bob is a completely wild gorilla. Literally.
  • Deconstructed: For all his apparent popularity and success, Bob is empty and miserable. He is being pressured into sporting success by his over-competitive family regardless of his true wishes. His lack of academic achievement and bullying nature mean he is unlikely to find success outside of high school. He channels his frustrations into bullying, and resents Andy and Colin for what he feels are their advantages over him.
    • Bob is an arrogant, bullying jerk who is competent on the sports field, but intensely disliked by the majority of his fellow students, and his bullying lands him in trouble with the teachers and/or the law.
    • Bob and his equally Jerkass teammates are so busy competing with each other for on-the-field glory and the resulting ego boosts that they barely function as a team. As a result, they have been on a long losing streak, and their classmates have little respect for them.
    • Bob can only push his idiotic bullying so far..... until he bullies what he shouldn't have bullied in the first place, showing his idiocy and seeing him lose popularity points.
  • Reconstructed: Bob's just an arrogant, bullying jerk.
  • Averted: Bob is skilled at sports, but he isn't a bully.
  • Enforced: "Wow, that quarterback who used to pick on me at school was a total jerk! I'm going to base a character on him -- that'll show him!"
  • Lampshaded: "Watch out for Bob -- total neanderthal, but he can throw a football so everyone lets him do whatever the hell he wants."
  • Invoked: Bob, a bully, joins the football team in the hope that his athletic prowess will cause people to overlook his flaws.
  • Defied: Bob works hard not to let his athletic prowess go to his head; he knows that in the long term friendship is more valuable than petty schoolyard power.
  • Discussed: "How come everyone likes Bob so much? He's such a jerk!"
  • Conversed: "Bob reminds me of the jerk who used to pick on me back in high school..."

Now get your ass Back to Jerk Jock before I beat you up, Dickhead!