Tyrant Takes the Helm/Playing With

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Basic Trope: The replacement for an authority figure makes horrible changes.

  • Straight: A substitute teacher is incredibly strict.
  • Exaggerated: the substitute teacher is actually a notorious serial killer.
  • Justified: Vetinari Job Security: The authority figure is the only one who can handle the situation.
  • Inverted: The replacement for a boat's captain handles the ship a lot better than normal.
  • Subverted: A substitute teacher seems creepy, but he's just a Trickster Mentor and a pretty cool guy.
    • Alternately, it is ultimately revealed that many of the changes the tyrant introduced were good ideas, and despite his unpopularity, he's proven to be an effective leader when the chips are down.
    • A extremely imposing and scary guy appears in the front of the students, saying that "things are going to be very, very different from this point on!"... And then he introduces the real substitute teacher, which looks like a pretty normal guy.
  • Double Subverted: That was temporary and he becomes uptight again.
  • Parodied: The substitute teachers' union's gate reads "ABANDON HOPE ALL YE WHO ENTER HERE".
  • Deconstructed: The sailors of a boat hold their old captain to an impossible standard and view all changes as the work of a tyrant.
    • Or they organize a mutiny to overthrow their new captain and choose someone else from the crew as their new leader. It turns out that neither of them know how to lead the ship and eventually fall into chaos.
  • Reconstructed: The Captain, great guy that he might have been, didn't push his crew hard enough, and someone ended up paying the price. So when a Tyrant Takes the Helm, they may not like her much but things get done and lives are saved.
  • Zig Zagged: Is the new teacher nice or just useless? It gets harder to tell every day...
  • Averted: Nobody really complains about the replacement.
  • Enforced: Executives liked the original authority figure and convince the writer to start shilling the Creator's Pet through clever use of this trope.
  • Lampshaded: "We have a substitute teacher." "I'll get the holy water."
  • Invoked: The original authority figure hires a terrible replacement to convince his subordinates that he's amazing.
  • Defied: A substitute teacher acts cool and nice to make sure that the students like him.
  • Discussed: "Mr. Replacement keeps talking about how 'things are going to be different around here'. I have a bad feeling about this..."
  • Conversed: "How come replacement authority figures are always such dicks? Do we really need to be reminded how wonderful The Captain was?"

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