Divided We Fall/Playing With

Basic Trope: The good guys are hampered by infighting.

• Straight: The Rival refuses to support The Hero's plan against the Dark Lord.
• Exaggerated: The Rival throws a fit over The Hero being given the only weapon that can be used against the Dark Lord when he's coming into the castle.
• Justified:
  • The Hero has not thought through his plan; The Rival sees legitimate flaws.
  • The good guys don't have goals that precisely line up - certain details of the plan would further The Hero's goals but hinder The Rival's.
  • The Rival is a jerk.
• Inverted: Enemy Civil War
• Subverted: The Rival is really The Mole and intentionally sabotaging it.
• Double Subverted: Except that The Mole framed him for it.
• Parodied: The good guys are hampered by infighting over the most petty things. Meanwhile the villains are hampered just as badly by far more serious concerns.
• Deconstructed:
  • The heroes spend more time fighting each other than the villains, and cause more destruction in the process.
  • The Dark Lord is a Dangerously Genre Savvy strategist who is aware of the heroes' infighting and decides to take advatage of it by either let them finish each other off before he makes his moves, or manipulate the weaker faction of the heroes into his bidding. In the end, The Dark Lord wins the war.
• Reconstructed:
  • They realize what they are doing and learn to work together.
  • Or The Hero uses it to filter out those whose Pride will keep them from being good team players. It results in a Ragtag Bunch of Misfits.
• Zig Zagged: The Hero never knows which allies will support him and which will sulk over his plan on any given day.
• Averted: The heroes all work together.
• Enforced: "The Hero's plan will work in five minutes -- we need to drag this out for the rest of the episode -- let's make his allies argue with him!"
• Lampshaded: ???
• Invoked: ???
• Defied: For the purpose of defeating the Evil Overlord, The Hero and The Rival set aside their differences and work together as a single united team.
• Discussed: ???
• Conversed: ???

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