Scary Black Man/Playing With

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


  • Basic Trope: A tall, usually heavy-set or very muscular dark-skinned male character is perceived as particularly threatening or Badass.
  • Played Straight: Tyson is a unusually tall, quiet black guy with a forbidding attitude who scares anyone who doesn't know him.
  • Exaggerated: Whenever Tyson shows up, everyone screams and yells in utter terror and dive for cover.
  • Inverted: Tyson is Black and Nerdy and rather scrawny in build.
    • Jeremy is a tall, menacing and uncommunicative blond pale-skinned guy.
  • Justified: Tyson is a bodyguard. His job requires him to behave in a dissuasive manner.
  • Subverted: Tyson looks scary, but this impression goes away when he smiles.
    • Alternately, Tyson is a bullying Miles Gloriosus who takes advantage of this trope to push people around. When Tyson pushes the skinny white nerd Melvin too far, Melvin fights back and Tyson proves to be a Dirty Coward against anyone who actually stands up to him.
  • Double Subverted: ...but it's only Technically a Smile because whenever Tyson appears joyful and happy, bad things happen.
  • Deconstructed: Tyson relies so much on his appearance to get what he wants that he actually becomes a selfish jerk, ending up lonely and embittered as a result.
    • Tyson knows what people think of him due to his appearance and becomes so annoyed by it that he goes off the deep end whenever someone makes a remark about his appearance.
  • Reconstructed: Tyson eventually realizes that acting like a brute when you already look like one isn't exactly the best course of action to get people to respect you. He then resorts to developing a more reasonable side.
  • Parodied:
  • Lampshaded: "Tyson, don't look at me like that, you're freaking me out!"
  • Averted: Black men in the show may appear imposing, but nobody notices or cares.
  • Enforced: "We need a character that screams Badass just by his appearance. No one does the trick better than a tall, muscular black guy."
  • Invoked:
  • Defied:

Tyson:"Stop looking at me as if I were about to kill someone! I'm just here to buy some snacks, okay?"

  • Discussed:
  • Conversed:
  • Played For Laughs:
  • Played For Drama: Everyone shuns Tyson just because he looks threatening.

Sucka, you can either go to the Main Page or stay here and face me. Your choice?

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