The Ace/Playing With

Basic Trope: A ludicrously over-the-top perfect, heroic, overacting, manly Played for Laughs supporting character, better than the protagonists at everything.

• Straight: Adam McAwesome is physically perfect, has a Leitmotif that sounds like a national anthem on steroids and a perfectly glinting set of teeth. He enters the scene to save the main characters from the Big Bad's Death Trap and absconds with The Baroness (who has instantly fallen for him) after suplexing the villain's entire supply of Elite Mook bodyguards all at once so they explode. As Adam rides off into the sunset he delivers a final and epic Kirk Summation that leaves everyone present swooning after him.
• Exaggerated: ...Including the villain.
• Justified: The Rule of Cool and Rule of Funny are actual rules of physics in the show, and Adam is Genre Savvy enough to know how to exploit it.
• Inverted: The Sociopathic Hero. Adam still 'wins' constantly, but it's through being a bigger evil Jerkass than everyone else than being more heroic.
• Subverted: Adam is shown to have some telling character flaws that gives him areas where he is inferior to the protagonists.
• Double Subverted: But these flaws are comedic and non-serious and have no impact on his ability to save the day.
• Parodied: This trope is, by definition, a parody of the Marty Stu.
• Deconstructed: Adam turns out to be a Broken Ace: The perfection is only a facade used to compensate for and hide the emptiness and crippling mental issues inside.
  • Adam is a Telepathic Master of Illusion who uses his powers to create a "perfect" image of himself in order to hide the fact that he's an incredibly ugly loser with huge self-esteem issues.
  • ... Or the Big Bad, using his incredible power to win the trust of the land and conquer the world without being Obviously Evil about it.
• Reconstructed: After getting therapy that cures the mental issues, Adam is back at work saving the day with his mind cleared of pesky distractions.
  • Adam decides to do away with the illusions, puts himself through Training from Hell, gets a makeover and starts living up to his idealised self-image.
  • Adam ends up Becoming the Mask and pulls a Heel Face Turn, becoming The Good King.
• Zig Zagged: Adam shows up and heroically rescues the cast in a dramatic over-the-top fashion, only to reveal after the fact that he was really scared crapless of the whole ordeal and only acted that way to one-up the villain. He then leaves the rest of the cast to their ordeals, stating that his heart won't take much more... Then, the moment the heroes are out of sight, Adam immediately leaps off to save someone else in a similar fashion. He only acts weak and insecure after the fact because he doesn't want the rest of the cast to feel inferior and unneccessary.
• Averted: There's no Ace in the cast. The heroes are the most heroic people around.
• Enforced: The writers respond to accusations by their audience that their characters 'aren't heroic enough' by adding a character who overcompensates and then some.
• Lampshaded: "What a guy!" *Swoon*
  • "Who does that guy think he is anyway? He's too damn perfect, and the fans are giving him more attention!"
• Invoked: One of the heroes attempts to act like The Ace when rescuing someone else, in order to look cool.
• Defied: The heroes chase off The Ace before he starts making them look bad (i.e. immediately after showing up).
• Discussed: "Is this guy for *real*?" "You tell me; I'd hate to think of what we're in for if he turns out to be a deranged hallucination."
• Conversed: "This show can't expect me to take someone that perfect seriously."
• Played For Laughs: The default state of the trope.
• Played For Drama: Broken Ace again.

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Return to The Ace here. Adam could of course burst in there heroically and do it for you, but is that really worth the risk that he'll end up accidentally seducing your girlfriend/boyfriend/you in the process?