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Stereotype Flip (view source)

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== Anime & Manga ==
* In ''[[Azumanga Daioh (Manga)|Azumanga Daioh]]'', Osaka breaks Tomo's expectations that the new Osakan student is going to be a loudmouth who's always trying to sell stuff. This is emphasized in the English manga, where Osaka's speech is translated with a New York City accent, which has a similar "loud and pushy" stereotype associated with it.
* In ''[[Monster (Animemanga)|Monster]]'', Runge's painstaking research of Tenma's past results in little more than him ascertaining that the latter is not "stereotypically" Japanese.
* A [[Hikikomori]] is stereotypically a creepy, misanthropic guy, and ''[[Sayonara, Zetsubou Sensei-sensei]]'' instead has [[Punny Name|Kiri Komori]], who is female and really friendly and something of a [[Yamato Nadeshiko]] and a hikikomori.
 
 
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* The ''[[Rush Hour]]'' movies milk this trope for all it's worth. Consider the scenes where Carter reveals he actually knows Chinese and Lee reveals that he actually speaks flawless English.
** In ''Rush Hour 2'', Carter makes fun of a black man who has immersed himself in Chinese culture and knows the same type of kung-fu as Lee.
* ''[[In the Heat of Thethe Night]]'': The black guy in town, played by Sidney Poitier, is not just a [[Scary Black Man]]; he's also a respected detective from Philadelphia. And in case you're wondering, '''[[Memetic Mutation|They call him 'Mr. Tibbs'!]]''' Not a big deal in 2009, but a huge deal in 1967.
** Actually the bigger deal was Sheriff Gillespie. A white small-town, southern sheriff who was clearly bigoted, who actually managed to swallow his prejudices and help the black detective solve the crime. Mega-huge deal in 1967. And a well-deserved Oscar for Rod Steiger's performance.
* One hilarious scene in ''[[Airplane!]]!'' shows [[Leave It to Beaver|June Cleaver]] acting as an interpreter for two black youths who speak only Jive. She, of course, despite being a little old lady is fluent in [[Jive Turkey|the language]].
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* ''[[The Dresden Files]]'' has Karrin Murphy: a pretty, five-foot-nothing blond with a cute button nose who Harry has described as looking like a cheerleader or someone's favorite aunt. And she's a [[Badass]] cop with a black belt in aikido who's stood up to everything from a [[Nigh Invulnerable]] hell-werewolf to the king of all incubi and once attacked a 15-foot-tall ogre with a chainsaw. Also, the local werewolf pack are all [[Dungeons and Dragons]]-playing geeks.
** Averted in the TV series, where Murphy is Hispanic and looks like she means business. Still pretty, though.
* Victorian author [[Wilkie Collins]] liked to do this to stereotypes of his day. For example, in stage melodramas, the villain was always portrayed as being incredibly thin while fat men tended to be jolly comic relief style characters. So, in ''[[The Woman in White (Literature)|The Woman in White]]'', Collins carefully cast the fat man as the main villain of the piece, an evil Italian gangster.
** [[Affably Evil|He is still pretty jolly, though.]]
* [[The Legend of Drizzt|Drizzt Do'Urden]] is well known for being pretty much everything a Drow isn't. He's a [[Nice Guy]] and Drow...are not very nice. At all.
** It should be noted that Drizzt's popularity has induced a slew of stereotype-flipped drow characters, turning the race into an [[Ensemble Darkhorse]] for [[Dungeons and Dragons (Tabletop Game)|D&D]] players.
* In the ''[[1632]]''-series, the Germans are the free-wheeling individualists, and the Americans are the stuffy, bureaucratic rule-lovers.
* Piggy, the Gamorrean pilot from the [[X Wing Series]], is the only member of his species with the intellectual capacity to pilot a starfighter. (Of course, he's had his brain genetically enhanced.)
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== Live Action TV ==
* In an episode of The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, During a talent competition between USC and University of Michigan football players called "All American Idol", a white guy faces up against a black guy in a rap battle and utterly schools him.
* In an episode of ''[[Star Trek: Enterprise]]'', a Vulcan greets Captain Archer....with a warm and hearty handshake, something the Vulcans... don't do. She also asks Archer about her quarters; T'Pol assumes she's displeased with the smell as Vulcans have a more heightened sense of smell than humans. Rather, she wants Archer to thank the crewman who loaned it to her.
** Nog of ''[[Star Trek: Deep Space Nine]]'' not only proves that he's more than a money-grubbing Ferengi, he also becomes a Lieutenant in Starfleet.
** Worf's lover K'ehleyr, a fellow Klingon (though half-human), actually cracks jokes, smiles, and seems to actually have other interests other than finding excuses to 'fight in glorious battle.'
*** She's also an example of [[My Species Doth Protest Too Much]], though in [[Star Trek]] this tends to be a standard-issue trait of alien hybrids.
** The mere fact of the [[Star Trek: theThe Original Series|original Enterprise]]'s crew was a historic stereotype flip. A black woman who was actually not a servant. A very scrutable Asian. A Russian treated sympathetically ''at the height of the Cold War''. One of Trek's great accomplishments was all the stereotypes it flipped.
* ''[[Hannah Montana]]'''s [[Alpha Bitch|Alpha Bitches]] Amber and Ashley are played by a black girl and an Asian girl. Amber is the hottest girl in school and a [[Rich Bitch]], a role usually restricted to [[Blondes Are Evil|blondes]], and Ashley is a bitchy [[Asian Airhead]] as opposed to "model minority" [[Asian and Nerdy]]. So, less of an [[Unfortunate Implication]] as much as a case of not restricting the ethnic kids to [[Black Best Friend]] and [[Token Minority]].
* Mohinder Suresh on ''[[Heroes (TV series)|Heroes]]''.
** On the same show, DL Hawkins was initially described as the classic [[Scary Black Man]]. When he actually showed up, he turned out to be one of the nicest and most sane guys on the show, completely dedicated to his wife and son.
* [[Twenty Four24|President David Palmer]] is all over this trope.
** As is President Allison Taylor.
*** These are all limp examples. The biggest Flip occurred in Season 2. The question of just who was helping the terrorists nuke LA boiled down to either the Middle-Eastern boy educated in London, or his WASP father-in-law to be. And then.....we learn the REAL identity of the terrorist. Before the show starting [[Ass Pull|pulling asses]]; this was one of the greatest twists and a true Stereotype Freakin' Flip.
*** ''[[Twenty Four|24]]'' has been flipping stereotypes since its pilot episode.
* Senor Chang on ''[[Community]]''. One episode showed he has a Jewish brother, Rabbi Chang, opening the possibility that Senor is Jewish as well.
* [[Stargate SG -1|Colonel Samantha Carter]]. Gorgeous, sexy, hot blonde. Who also possesses an IQ approaching Stephen Hawking's and has kicked several planets-full of asses in ''two'' galaxies. And killed the gods of ''a third''.
** Jack O'Neill also breaks several stereotypes, being the Kirk and not into science most of the time he'll occasionally recognize stuff first...
** Daniel Jackson fits the bill as well. He is undoubtedly an academic and a nerd, who in the course of the show, has kicked his fair share of ass, and is far too good-looking to be a standard nerd.
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**** You shouldn't go around saying things like that. You may be hunted down by a group of Canadians to receive one hell of a stern apology for the misunderstanding.
* [[The Suite Life of Zack and Cody|London Tipton]], an [[Asian Airhead]], yes, but usually the spoiled socialites are blonder.
* Much like [[Stargate SG -1|Col. Carter]], Agent Sarah Walker from ''[[Chuck]]'' is blonde, sweet, sexy. And an ass-kicking is never far behind whenever she's on the screen.
** Devon "Captain Awesome!" Woodcomb combs like a typical "frat boy." And while he has that silly catchphrase, played football, and loves to say "bro" and "dude"; he is also an accomplished doctor, and a genuinely caring husband and friend.
** Total slacker Morgan is usually the one who comes up the biggest when the situation gets dire.
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** The Master, the Doctor's [[Evil Counterpart]], also defies the Time Lord stereotype. Especially in his latest incarnation, when his insanity is mixed with him getting a sense of humor.
* ''[[The Jeffersons]]'', although they sometimes fall straight into other stereotypes.
* ''[[The Fresh Prince of Bel -Air]]'' derived much humor from the [[Fish Out of Water]] nature of a stereotypical Black teen clashing with his flipped relatives in Bel Air.
* ''[[The A-Team (TV)|The A-Team]]'' 's Mr. T. fool! [[Scary Black Man]] with a Mohawk and a chest full of chains. You wouldn't think it, but he was actually the one the kids loved, both in the show's universe and in [[Real Life]].
** Mr. T. actually performed as [[Santa Claus]] at the White House for Nancy Reagan in 1983. Yep.
* ''[[Leverage]]'' made [[The Smart Guy]] [[Black and Nerdy|black]] and [[The Big Guy]] white.
** In the episode where they meet another team, their "big guy" is an attractive Jewish woman.
* Lisa Turtle from ''[[Saved Byby the Bell]]'' was written as a stereotypical "Jewish Princess" and cast as Black (gentile?) before the show went on the air. She was still materialistic and high maintenance, but managed to avoid many of the [[Unfortunate Implications]] of the [[Sassy Black Woman]] because of her class (somewhere between [[Rich Bitch]] and [[Spoiled Sweet]]) and [[Cloudcuckoolander]] tendencies. Her character was the only female lead to survive the [[Retool]].
* Whitley Gilbert, the [[Alpha Bitch]] on ''[[A Different World]]'' was a brash, [[Closer to Earth|far-from-earth]] [[Southern Belle]] at a (functionally) all-black college. She was played by a trained dancer and stage actress Jasmine Guy, who's acerbic characterization and well-paced slapstick soon made Whitley the [[Breakout Character]]. [[Harsher in Hindsight]] / [[Hilarious in Hindsight]] [[Fair for Its Day]], because during [[The Eighties]], it was ''seen as a step forward for a Black Woman to play a [[Comedic Sociopath]] convincingly.''
* Phil Harding, regular on UK archaeology show ''Time Team'', looks and talks like a stereotypical West Country poacher. He's also an expert in pottery and flint-knapping and can speak eruditely and at great length about them, "ooh-arr" accent and all.
* ''[[Firefly]]'' had Zoe, an ass-kicking [[Action Girl]], who was happily married to Wash, who was very much a [[Non-Action Guy]]. It seems that not [[All Amazons Want Hercules]].
* Danny John Jules always enjoyed playing the Cat's nerdy alter-ego 'Dwayne Dibbley on [[Red Dwarf (TV)|Red Dwarf]] because it flipped the stereotype of black people as cool jive talking characters.
* ''[[Mad TV]]'': The "Average Asian" sketches are about an Asian guy who is expected to have stereotypical Asian abilities (knows karate, origami, good at math, plays a musical instrument, etc) by people around him but doesn't (except for ping pong, summoning ninjas, and laundry).
* In an episode of ''[[Designing Women]],'' Julia and Suzanne are visiting their mother in Japan. While on the plane, they're sitting beside an Asian man who is sitting on Suzanne's purse. Suzanne yells at him in her typically offensive way; Julia then attempts to speak to him in Japanese. At this point he reveals that he knew he was sitting on her purse, and mentions that not only does he speak fluent English, he's actually from Georgia, and mentions that if they want to continue screaming at him, please do it in English, because he might look Asian, but in reality, "He's a Bubba." (As a bonus, he was played by [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MeKFNisCatA Henry Cho,] who's mentioned below.)
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* WWE wrestler Jimmy Wang Yang's entire current gimmick is based around this. His character (a down-home cowboy who also happens to be Korean) has him deliberately defying Asian stereotypes by being proud of his Southern heritage, and wishing to be identified by his self-admitted love of being a redneck, rather than being judged by his race.
** A similar example occurred in the ''[[Pushing Daisies]]'' episode "The Fun in Funeral," where the culprit turns out to be an Asian-American good ol' boy who killed the victim to get back Civil War memorabilia belonging to his great-grandfather (a [[Chinese Laborer]] who wandered off from the railroad and ended up joining the Confederacy).
* [[John Cena]] is an even better example, both in [[Kayfabe]] and in [[Real Life]]. Born to relative privilege in a practically all-white Boston suburb, [[Pretty Fly for Aa White Guy|he embraced rap music at a young age and in time became a modestly successful rapper himself]]. And then, once he got to WWE, he flipped the stereotype right back by having his "wigger" character "join the military" (actually, he was just training for his starring role in ''The Marine'') and transform seemingly overnight from a rude and crude ghetto thug to an [[All-American Face|all-American hero]].
* It was once extremely common for a wrestler performing a [[Heel Face Turn]] or a [[Face Heel Turn]] to completely invert their stereotypical qualities to make the transition more dramatic. An example of the latter would be Nikolai Volkoff's turnaround from being a [[Dirty Commie]] to an [[All-American Face|apple-pie American patriot]], while the former is exemplified in Rick Martel's switch from soft-spoken nice guy to the arrogant [[Jerkass]] known as "The Model." Now that [[Black and Gray Morality]] is much more common in sports-entertainment, it's customary for wrestlers to simply retain (as much as possible) their old qualities when they turn: TNA's "Mr. Anderson" may be a crowd favorite now, but he's still undeniably an "Asshole."
 
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== Theater ==
* [[The Zeroth Law of Trope Examples]] strikes again. In ''[[Othello]]'', Shakespeare flips not one, but ''three'' [[Dead Horse Trope]]s: the brutal, lascivious, and treacherous Moor; the promiscuous, cunning, venal Venetian lady, and the honest soldier. Othello is honorable, cool-headed, and chaste; Desdemona is almost a [[Purity Sue]] in her simplicity; and [[Manipulative Bastard|Iago]]...
* In ''[[Electra (Theatre)|Electra]]'', Chrysothemis is very clear on the point that Electra is not behaving like a woman should at all (ie. She refuses to defer to others and accept her weakness and limits as a women, is certain to remain unmarried and neglected because of her behaviour, is stubborn and excessive in mourning her father, and is conspiring to murder her mother and step-father). Electra is a [[Tragic Hero]], after all.
* ''[[M. Butterfly]]'' has its title and plot clearly based on ''[[Madame Butterfly]]'''s, but turns out to be a brutal [[Deconstruction]] of the "[[Me Love You Long Time|demure and submissive Asian woman]] [[Driven to Suicide|who lives only for her]] [[Mighty Whitey]] man" stereotype [[Trope Codifier|codified]] by ''Madame Butterfly'' when it's revealed that {{spoiler|the seemingly demure and submissive Song is actually a male spy who manipulated the white diplomat Gallimard as ruthlessly as Pinkerton did with Butterfly in ''Madame Butterfly'', and it's ''Gallimard'' who kills himself in the end out of love for a man, even crossdressing as a Japanese woman and committing suicide in the same manner Butterfly did}}.
 
 
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*** Not to mention the ''extremely'' civil and eloquent Krogan you can meet on Illium.
* None of the ''[[Katawa Shoujo]]'' characters entirely fulfil the cliche of their disability (Hanako probably comes the closest, but she is still much deeper than you'd expect), but Shizune really blows her own out of the water. She's deaf-mute, but instead of being shy and passive she's an outgoing, competitive, ruthless taskmaster who is a totally devoted [[Student Council President]].
* The [[Expansion Pack|expansions]] to ''[[Neverwinter Nights 2 (Video Game)|Neverwinter Nights 2]]'' flip stereotypes with several characters. ''Mask of the Betrayer'' has Gann, a hagspawn spirit shaman who is the resident [[Mr. Fanservice]]. Hagspawn are normally ugly brutes (-2 Charisma, favored class Barbarian). Gann isn't because {{spoiler|his parents actually loved each other}}.
** Safiya is everything the vast majority of Red Wizards are not, more interested in learning and teaching than accruing personal power.
** ''Storm of Zehir'' has Umoja, a druid who [[Large Ham|hams it up]] rather than whinging about the balance of life.
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== Western Animation ==
* Dale Gribble of ''[[King of the Hill]]'' is a [[Right-Wing Militia Fanatic]] and general [[Conspiracy Theorist]], but against stereotype isn't racist/prejudiced in the slightest and is actually a [[Jerk Withwith a Heart of Gold|pretty nice guy]].
** There was also an episode where Khan, in grief over failing to Connie into a prep school, decided to embrace his "american" side and completely abandon his laotian heritage and behaviors, becoming an unbearably stereotypical redneck instead of his normal stereotypical "asian workaholic" behavior.
* On ''[[South Park]],'' [[Meaningful Name|Token Black]] (yes, that's his name) is the richest kid in town, and his parents seem to be more educated than just about anybody else. The entire episode "Here Comes the Neighborhood" plays on this idea: as more rich and successful black people move to town, the poor white characters begin to get angry, but over class rather than race -- until the very end, where Mr. Garrison basically outs himself as a racist.
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* In ''[[Futurama]]'', Hermes Conrad is, in many ways, exact opposite of a stereotypical Jamaican - while they're normally portrayed as being maxed and relaxed, he's an uptight, neurotic workaholic. Though he does have the limbo and reggae skills.
** And...[[Erudite Stoner|other interests]].
* Francine from ''[[American Dad (Animation)|American Dad]]'' was angry at her adoptive Asian parents for leaving all they had to their [[The Ghost|unseen]] birth daughter, Gwen. It turns out that they actually have more respect for Francine, and that Gwen is an [[Asian Airhead]] who [[Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking|isn't even good at math]]. Stan and Francine's father both agree it's [[Crosses the Line Twice|terrible for children to disrespect their parents' stereotypes]].
* [[The Ren and Stimpy Show|Ren and Stimpy]] are flips of [[Animal Stereotypes]]. Ren is a [[Cats Are Mean|mean]] dog, Stimpy is a [[Dumb Is Good]] cat.
 
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