Such a Phony

Alice is talking about Bob, who will be entering the room shortly. Bob is generally a "nice" character. Alice does not like Bob, and says Bob is "such a phony", but as soon as Bob enters, Alice pretends to be nice to Bob, thus being as big a phony as she claimed Bob was.

For example:

Alice: Here comes Bob. I hate him. He thinks he's so perfect. He's such a phony.
[Bob enters]
Alice: [sweetly] Hi, Bob! Great to see you!

A staple of sitcoms from the eighties to the nineties, but constant reuse has robbed the joke of its sting. You can still see it on contemporary shows, but the better written ones try to avoid it.

Sub-trope of Hypocritical Humor. See also I Resemble That Remark.

Examples of Such a Phony include:

Film

• Scary Movie

Brenda (about Buffy): Girl is as fake as press-on nails.
Buffy approaches Brenda and Cindy.
Brenda: Hey, baby girl!

• Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides:

Captain Jack Sparrow (about Blackbeard's daughter Angelica): Sir, the woman is a liar, deceitful, worse than a wild beast, with gnashing teeth and-
Angelica enters.
Captain Jack Sparrow: Sweetness!

Literature

• The Catcher in The Rye is practically built around a non-comedic example. One of the most prominent aspects of Holden's character is that he refers to everybody else as a "phony". Another of the most prominent aspects of Holden's character is that he lies to just about everyone and is proud of his lying skill.
  • And also his ability to have every other word be a swear word. This Troper's Lit teacher says that there are more references to the word "Goddam" then there are pages in the book.
    • This troper kept a tally while reading it for school. There's an estimated 228 "goddam"s in the book (a few may have been missed accidentally)
• Célimène does this in Molière's The Misanthrope.

Live-Action TV

• Seinfeld: The Parking Space "That Michael Jordan is so...phony" is the knee-jerk answer, attempt at saving face, and failed example, by Mike (Kramer's Friend) to convince Jerry that he meant calling him a phony behind his back was said in a positive light, as in using a reverse nickname (bad means good, hot means cool, and to shake your booty means to wiggle one's butt.)

• Used a couple of times in Frasier, once by Frasier and once by Roz. Also once by Martin, who was bitching to Frasier about how much he hated Niles' new girlfriend Mel.
• Becker, with Reggie.
• On Friends, Joey sees a job at Chandler's office as a chance to play a new character, a processor named Joseph with a wife and three kids. After making plans with a co-worker to get their families together, the co-worker leaves and Joey exclaims, "What a phony!"
• Majors Burns and Houlihan to Col. Blake's "friend" Nancy in the M*A*S*H episode, "Henry in Love".
• A variation is used in Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Xander complains about how much he hates Angel, and when the latter enters, he calmly adds "Oh, hey, Angel" without bothering to revise his statement.
• In Cheers, whenever Henri enters some of the barflies start talking about how much they don't like him, then when he say's hi, they say hi back nicely

Newspaper Comics

• Something similar can be found in the very first Peanuts strip: "Good ol' Charlie Brown... How I hate him!"

Web Original

• Overheard documents a number of real-life examples, this being one.

Web Comics

• This bizarrely anachronistic Chainsawsuit.

Western Animation

• Taken to a humorous extreme in Family Guy where Peter is shown playing on an electronic piano and witnessed by a stock character, only for said man to discover that the tune is played automatically which results in him continuously calling Peter out for his supposed fraud occasionally throughout the episode. He appears once more to take his anger out on Neil Goldman after discovering his suicide attempt was a bluff.
  • They actually named the character Holden Caulfield.