"I ain't no foreigner... ain't nothing yeller 'bout me, but there is one color about me. It's a little red... that's right, I'm a redneck."
Much like the very tropes described on this site, Ethnic and National Stereotypes are things that an audience reasonably expects (for reasons good and... not so good) when confronted by an individual of a given background.
Some writers know this, and just like the tropes associated with fiction, they decide to turn it on its head.
A Stereotype Flip occurs when an individual does something that runs in direct contradiction to some established stereotype based on that character's gender, race, religious belief, nationality, or country (or planet) of origin.
This is often Truth in Television, as none ever fit all the given stereotypes associated with their background. If enough individuals do a Stereotype Flip, the stereotype in question may become a Discredited Trope.
A Stereotype Flip is not always a good move, however; it can sprout Unfortunate Implications of its own. Inverting a negative stereotype can lead to Flawless Token, and inverting a "model minority" stereotype is risky because portraying a minority as dumb, cowardly, and/or evil taps into much more basic forms of xenophobia than portraying them as being smart but nerdy. Finally, even if both those pitfalls are avoided, it still must be remembered that flipping a stereotype isn't the same as avoiding it; flipped stereotypes are no substitute for actual well-rounded characters.
Applies to fictional backgrounds as well. If the character is deliberately defying the "nature" of his people, it overlaps with My Species Doth Protest Too Much. If they choose a culturally disfavored role knowingly, then Klingon Scientists Get No Respect. Related to Square Race, Round Class and Token Heroic Orc. Cultural Rebel is generally the product of a character given the Stereotype Flip treatment. Masculine Girl, Feminine Boy and Asian Airhead are subtropes of this. See also Power Stereotype Flip, for when their personality contrasts with their powers, or Species Subversives for when an animal or non-human character acts the opposite of what you would expect for their species. May be a result of Stop Being Stereotypical.
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Examples:
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Anime & 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 original print 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; most other translations go for a Houston accent, which instead breaks the "loudmouthed redneck" stereotype.
- And then there's Sakaki, the tall, athletic raven-haired girl with an intimidating appearance who fits none of the associated tropes, and is just naturally shy and quiet, and has a (sadly mostly unrequited) love of cats.
- In the manga Cyborg 009, the character of 008, the only character on the team from Africa, is drawn in an incredibly unfortunate art style that is more than a little similar to blackface. This is at odds with his actual personality, which is an intelligent and stoic man who is passionate about preserving his culture and protecting his land and people from harm. In the stories that take place in Africa, the people are drawn in the same stereotypical way, but the reader is told that they're a people with a rich culture that ought to be preserved instead of converted or stamped out. Inversely, the non-African imperialists and poachers are shown as greedy and uncaring about anyone they hurt in the process of getting what they want.
- In what might be an accidental example of this and more of a case of As Long as It Sounds Foreign, Darker than Black had a minor character of an Israeli Occidental Otaku, who did not only not conform to the stereotype of being loud, rude, and aggressive, but he was very white and blond, which is quite a rarity among Israelis (although if he was wealthy enough to become an otaku and go study in Japan, he was probably a well-to-do Ashkenazi, which is not that unlikely), and spoke with an accent that sounded nothing like an Israeli accent.
- Gabriel DropOut runs on the angels and demons having their stereotypes flipped. Gabriel became a lazy, snarky shut-in, while Raphael takes pleasure in picking on the oblivious Satanichia. Tsukinose is probably one of the friendliest, kindest characters in the entire series. The only character who fits her stereotype is Satanichia, but her acts of villainy are too laughably ineffective to actually cause suffering.
- Monthly Girls' Nozaki-kun has the main cast go against what is often expected of their character roles in romantic shoujo series. It helps that all of them save Chiyo and Nozaki have traits taken from stock characters of the opposite sex.
- The titular Nozaki is a very tall, muscular Hunk who used to be captain of the junior high basketball team. He's also The Stoic and approaches his problems head-on. That said, he's also an award-winning shoujo mangaka and is utterly obsessed with writing good quality romance stories.
- Even Chiyo, to a degree. Yes, she's very much like a typical shoujo heroine: girly, cutesy, determined, and obsessed with her crush. But she's also a bit of a Deadpan Snarker and is a Stalker with a Crush towards Nozaki.
- Mikoshiba has the appearance and attitude of a playboy towards his classmates, but outside of school, he's a socially awkward Otaku who plays dating sims in order talk to girls more easily, even though said dating sims depict almost or entirely unrealistic conversations one would have with girls. His subtle Tsundere tendencies and fragile heart underneath his cool persona make him the basis of Let's Fall in Love's heroine, who is as stereotypical a Stock Shoujo Heroine as it gets.
- Kashima is the charming and androgynous-looking female "prince" of the school who loves flirting with other girls. She would be right at home in a One-Gender School Shoujo manga, but if she were a guy, she would fit the textbook shoujo "School Prince" easily. She also flips a common tomboy stereotype in shonen romance; rather than being insecure about her masculine qualities due to not being "girly" enough, she revels in them.
- Hori is Kashima's senpai who frequently beats her up for skipping Drama Club and excessively flirting. Not only is this an inversion of the typical "girl comically beats up guy for being a pervert/idiot", but if Hori were a girl, he would probably be the "Prince's beleaguered friend" in a shoujo romance who is always trying to make sure the Prince actually does more than be a playboy.
- Seo is loud, abrasive, blunt, and rude. Case in point, Nozaki used her characteristics to create a male character who has her personality, which is not uncommon in shoujo manga.
- Wakamatsu is a tall, muscular athlete, but is an innocent, friendly Nice Guy. He's also a bit of a Tsundere towards Seo. Nozaki modeled a female character after him who plays a love interest for Seo's character in Let's Fall in Love, who of course is an ordinary girl repelled by his antics but charmed by the abrasive boy's rare acts of kindness. He's also a male example of the Thinks Like a Romance Novel trope, which is a trait usually given to girls in both shonen and shoujo.
- Monster (2004): Runge's painstaking research of Tenma's past results in little more than him ascertaining that the latter is not "stereotypically" Japanese.
- The crux of the manga Please Tell Me! Galko-chan is that every character who appears doesn't play every single idea about the stereotype they embody straight.
- Galko, a Gyaru Girl, is actually a Nice Girl who will jump at the chance to help someone who needs it, she narrates stories with entertaining amounts of Large Ham, and she dreams of becoming a mother someday. The reason she dresses as a gyaru is to emulate her older sister.
- Otako may be an Otaku, but she's actually more of a Bookworm, a habit she got from reading anything in her house out of boredom.
- Ojou is certainly The Ojou, one who excels in her studies, but she's also naïve when it comes to what everyone else her age does.
- Iincho is the Student Council President, but in her first bit of attention in the manga, she realizes that she's never given "creating a world without war" essays a thought until she saw Galko—who she assumed didn't care—take it seriously.
- A hikikomori is stereotypically a creepy, misanthropic guy, and Sayonara, Zetsubou-Sensei instead has Kiri Komori, who is female and friendly and a hikikomori.
- She's My Knight is similar to Monthly Girls' Nozaki-kun in having a tomboy Prince and a male Tsundere, and some fans have even called them expies of Kashima and Mikoshiba.
- SPY×FAMILY really likes to flip gendered stereotypes:
- The romance angle between Anya and Damien is the typical "Class Princess falls in love with the bad boy from the wrong side tracks" plot. Except, the genders are reversed.
- The relationship and backgrounds of Loid and Yor are also an inversion of the typical stereotypes of their professions and roles in the family:
- Twilight is initially presented as the classic Tuxedo and Martini suave super-spy, but his actual role in his organization often involved being the Honey Trap for women connected to important figures. Thus a rare male example of a Femme Fatale, using his body, sex appeal, and masculine wiles for the mission. As Loid Forger, he mainly plays the Team Dad with Yor providing the most emotional support and insight, but he's the family cook and does much of the housework, stereotypically feminine chores.
- Yor Briar has the appearance of the classic sexy female assassin, but her looks always take a backseat to her utterly inhuman strength and killer instinct. Making the primary useful to her organization as an unquestioning bringer of death, a very masculine stereotype. She also subverts the Women Are Wiser trope, with Yor being something of a Cloud Cuckoo Lander and a Lethal Chef. Though being such a womanchild she can emotionally connect with Anya more easily than her goal-oriented husband, which still allows her to be the Team Mom.
Comedy
- Korean-American Henry Cho was born and raised in Tennessee, and much of his humor is quite blue-collar in contrast to the stereotypically elitist affectations of Korean-Americans. Henry's even acknowledged the inherent humor of an Asian person with a southern drawl.
- Canadian comedian Shaun Majumder, who is half Indian, has a stand-up bit about appearing as a minor terrorist villain on 24. He talks at length about how offensively stereotyped his character was while describing a chase scene with Jack Bauer, but the punch line is that instead of being a stereotypical brown terrorist, he's actually an over-the-top Newfoundlander.
- Serdar Somuncu, a German of Turkish descent born in Istanbul, deliberately invoked this trope after his acting career ended with him being a Classically Trained Extra who would play stereotypic "immigrant" characters with a fake accent that wasn't his, despite being well versed in Goethe, Schiller and all the rest. So he decided to do something GERMAN for his standup program. What, you ask? Oh, only reading Adolf Hitler's Mein Kampf (in a way that makes people laugh, which he admits was the point). He later reflected on that and the resulting identity crisis in a program aptly titled "Hitler Kebap".
Comic Books
- A fairly common variation in comics is to introduce a member of the fictional species and then the civilization.
- Thus, Mon-El (Superman) and Sodam Yat (Green Lantern) are friendly explorers from a racist and xenophobic species. They are seen as Category Traitors to their own people.
- Blackfire (Teen Titans) is a cruel and malicious monster from a passionate and warm species.
- Captain Marvel is a good-hearted protector from a race of conquerors.
- Katar Hol (Hawkman) is a good cop from an expansionist empire policed by Corrupt Cops. His wife Shayera is often torn between her love for her husband and her duty to her people. And the conservative Katar often gets into arguments with the liberal Green Arrow.
- X-Men:
- Wolverine famously defies stereotypes of Canadians being unrealistically polite by being abrasive, crude, quick-tempered, and prone to violent outbursts.
- Despite debuting during a very intense period between the Western and Eastern Blocs, Colossus was unique among Soviet Union characters at the time by being a kind, trustworthy hero. Even to this day, it's hard to come up with comic book characters of Eastern European origin who are heroes, let alone ones as heroic as Colossus.
- Generation X was this trope plus Five-Token Band: the girl from Kentucky was the smart one, the guy from Los Angeles was the nice one, and so on.
- Forge is a Zig Zagging example. While most Native American superheroes tend to have super strength, super senses or magic-based abilities, Forge's mutant power gives him an intuitive talent for developing machines. However, Forge also has magical knowledge that he rarely uses.
- Runaways with both superhero and teen drama cliches. Japanese Goth girl is actually both rather happy and a Catholic, Valley Girl slowly realizes she is gay, Jerk Jock is hiding his smarts due to hatred for his physically abusive scientist father, Tagalong Kid is also both strongest member of the team and much smarter than she looks and so on.
- Nightwing: Bridget Clancy, the superintendent of Dick Grayson's apartment building, is a stereotypical blue-collar Irish lass, complete with comically broad Funetik Aksent. The only difference is that she's ethnically Asian, and was adopted by an Irish family as a baby. Lampshaded when Dick is first introduced to her and assumes "Bridget" is the white redheaded woman she's standing next to.
- During Marvel's time as Timely Comics, it became famous for monster comics. When they came back as Marvel, they created The Incredible Hulk which flips the monster comic stereotypes upside down. The monster is the hero while the US army which usually kills the monster are portrayed as well-meaning but violent obstacles.
- In The Ultimates (2024), Earth-6160's Hawkeye is a Native American teenager who acts as a sidekick to Captain America, describing himself as The Savage Indian to Cap's "cowboy". However, when the two fight Quicksilver & Scarlet Witch in issue #14, after the latter disables his gear he reveals to Cap that being Indian didn't automatically make him a great archer and the targeting system Tony put in his suit had been doing most of the heavy lifting until then.
Comic Strips
- In one Bloom County, Opus is sitting at a bar when a redneck-looking guy opens a conversation with the standard "you know what's wrong with this country?" bit. The redneck then expresses surprisingly pacifist and environmentalist sentiments. Opus turns to the beatnik on his other side to say something about how appearances can be deceiving, and the beatnik shouts "America, love it or leave it you pinko punk!"
Fan Works
- Christian Weston Chandler in Survivor: Kujira-Jima has a mild-mannered white-collar Caucasian who talks in corporate buzzwords, an African-American former gangster... and Ken Faraday-Connors, a (usually) reserved and well-spoken black IT guy who bears more similarity to the former than the latter.
- Pretty Cure Perfume Preppy: Ashley McFly/Leather Ashes pretends to be from the USA and is a flat-chested brunette, a 360 flip on the Phenotype Stereotype Japanese have of all American women being blonde buxom beauties.
Films — Animation
- Pocahontas is The Chief's Daughter and an Indian Maiden in a story about white colonialists in America...except that she is the main character, tells John Smith that the way the Powhatans do things is just fine when he insists they'll improve the land, and gets an entire song ("Colours of the Wind") that's really an extended "The Reason You Suck" Speech about how her culture is just as valid as his. And in the end, it's her who saves him, later choosing to stay in Virginia because her people need her more rather than going back to England with him.
- Zootopia: Nangi, a yoga instructor at the Mystic Springs Oasis. Despite being an elephant and Yax insisting that her memory is excellent, she is remarkably forgetful and proves to be of no real help to Judy and Nick on their search for Emmitt Otterton. Yax, on the other hand, gives them exactly the information they need, and credits Nangi for it.
Films — Live-Action
- 8 Mile documents the lifestyle of an American socioeconomic group that, like Native Americans, has not been commonly seen in the popular media for decades: poor, urban whites (who are living in Detroit, the stereotypically blackest city in America, no less!). Many stories take it for granted that characters like Jimmy "Rabbit", Stephanie, and Lily haven't existed since the 1940s — and even when they do, they tend to assume that those people are "white ethnics", instead of the British-descended Protestants the Smith family clearly are.
- In 42, there's a scene where Jackie Robinson and his wife are approached by a scowling and rough-looking white man on the street, in the midst of an awful lot of racist persecution against them. The man proceeds to tell Jackie how upset he is at the way the Robinsons have been treated and to express his hope that Jackie will get the chance to prove his worth on the baseball field.
- One hilarious scene in Airplane! shows June Cleaver acting as an interpreter for two young black men who speak only Jive. She, of course, despite being a little old white lady is fluent in the language.
- Big Daddy (1999) inverts the typical Irishman and a Jew dynamic: the main character, Sonny Koufax, is a rambunctious but sentimental Jewish guy, whose foil is Kevin Gerrity, a straitlaced Irish-American corporate lawyer.
- Bone Tomahawk: Unlike your typical western, the most prominent Native American character is a well-educated man who speaks English very fluently and is respected by the mostly white community he lives in. He's known simply as "the Professor", and he may actually be one.
- In Clockstoppers, Zak's Token Black Friend Meeker is a much worse DJ than his white rival.
- The Dark Knight — Massive, terrifying, black convict (with a facial tattoo!) taking the detonator that would (allegedly) blow up the other boat to save theirs. "Give it to me, and I'll do what you shoulda did ten minutes ago." Which is throwing it out the window.
- A few other convicts seem to support his decision.
- Dragonheart turns the knight vs. dragon relationship on its head by making Bowen and Draco become friends. Their inevitable showdown becomes tragic as a result.
- The Edge of Seventeen has Mr. Bruner who is neither overly involved in his students lives nor is an overbearing authority figure. He just wants to stay out of all the teen drama BS.
- In Eraser, there's an exchange between a mobster and his supposedly dumb as bricks muscle:
Tony Two Toes: There they are. Commie bastards!
Mikey: They're not communists anymore, Tony. They're a federation of independent liberated states.
Tony Two Toes: Don't make me hurt you, Mikey. - The Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle movies are built on this trope:
- Kumar inverts the stereotype of South Asians being hardworking and studious, as he is an unemployed, irresponsible, Brilliant, but Lazy slacker stoner with terrible personal hygiene. However, the sequel shows that he actually was a high achieving math nerd in college until he was introduced to pot by a white girl.
- Harold does tick a lot of the stereotype boxes for an Asian-American. He's intelligent, fastidious, high-strung and works in finance. However, he is also a recreational pot user like Kumar, although he strictly only does it outside of work. A flashback to his college days also shows that he used to be an emo kid.
- Played with in a sequence where Harold and Kumar are in the Deep South, and meet a stereotypical redneck farmer... who turns out to be rich and sophisticated and lives in a very nice home with all modern conveniences and designer clothes... however, it's then revealed that he and his wife are brother and sister, and they keep their deformed, inbred son chained up in the basement.
- In another scene, they break down in Compton and see a group of Scary Black Men advance on them, with the biggest and scariest carrying a tire iron. They flee, only for a guy to roll in a spare tire from offscreen and the group to wonder why they ran away rather than accept their help in repairing the car. The leader, who turns out to be an orthodontist, then says they need to call the police to report the suspicious incident.
- In the Heat of the Night: The black guy in town, played by Sidney Poitier, is not just a suspicious black man passing through town on the night of a murder; he's also a respected detective from Philadelphia. And in case you're wondering, they call him "Mr. Tibbs"!, not "boy".
- In the The Karate Kid (2010) reboot, Andre is on his way to China, and on the flight sees a Chinese guy. Naturally, he takes the opportunity to practice speaking Chinese, only for the guy to say, "Dude. I'm from Detroit."
- The Last Dragon runs on this by design. All the African-Americans are interested in martial arts and spirituality while the Asian-Americans are very gangster.
- In The Luck of the Irish, Kyle's Token Black Friend is terrible at basketball, with every white guy on the team being much better than him, to the point where his father threatens to disown him. Subverted in the end when it turns out he simply lacks confidence in his skills, just like Kyle, who is used to relying on his Leprechaun family luck.
- In the Naked Gun 33⅓: The Final Insult, the protagonist Frank goes down a line of cabs trying to find someone who can relay an urgent message to Police Squad. The first two drivers do not speak English and do not understand what is being asked of them. When Frank looks into the third cab he sees a black guy dressed in traditional African clothes. Frank instantly dismisses him and abandons his attempts to radio for backup, leaving the driver to muse to himself "I wonder what the devil he wanted" in a British accent.
- Power Rangers (2017):
- Zack is Asian-American, and subverts the 'model minority' stereotype by being poor and living in a trailer park, where he's taking care of his ill mother. And rather than being smart or knowing martial arts, he regularly skips school and is a reckless daredevil.
- Trini subverts the Spicy Latina stereotype by being more aloof and a Sugar-and-Ice Personality, shown to have a neurotic and overbearing mother who makes her take a drug test after a Sarcastic Confession. She's also revealed to be deeply lonely as a result of possibly being gay or bisexual.
- Billy is the uncool Black friend to a popular white jock in Jason, also being on the autism spectrum, and the most enthusiastic about being a superhero. He's also portrayed as The Heart of the team.
- In one of the most memorable scenes in Remember the Titans one of the black football players is visiting his teammate who lives in a white neighborhood. A police car pulls up and an officer eyes the youth. You think it's going to be a classic Rodney King-esque scene (it takes place in 1960s Virginia). But... the officer simply congratulates the youth on a well-played game and wishes him good luck for an upcoming game. The black player, and presumably the audience, are pleasantly surprised.
- 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 (they were trained by brothers, who live in Hong Kong and Crenshaw, respectively).
- Shanghai Express flips the Asian Hooker Stereotype on its head. Hui Fei is a prostitute, but she's also a High-Class Call Girl who's highly intelligent and bilingual, as opposed to Asian Speakee Engrish, even acting as a translator for the ignorant American passengers. She's also travelling with a white prostitute, and the movie's moral is that prostitutes can be good people as well, since she saves the day by killing the villain as revenge for his implied rape of her.
- Star Wars: In-Universe example. Darth Sidious/Emperor Sheev Palpatine, a genocidal tyrant and one of the evilest people in the history of the galaxy, is a native of the peace-loving planet Naboo. The majority of its people are none too pleased about this.
Literature
- In the 1632 series, the Germans are the free-wheeling individualists, and the Americans are the stuffy, bureaucratic rule-lovers, much to the surprise of the respective opposing parties. Played with further in that any German that is a stuffy, bureaucratic rule-lover also fits this trope: the 'downtimer' stereotype of Germans is free-wheeling individualists.
- A Brother's Price is a kind of romance novel set in a world where women rule and men are so rare they must be secluded and protected. As such it flips a lot of romance novel gender roles on their heads and invents some entirely new ones.
- The science-fiction novel Buddy Holly is Alive and Well on Ganymede has three.
- The protagonist himself, who looks almost exactly like Buddy Holly (which becomes highly pertinent to the plot). He's an atheist, but not a bitter or sarcastic one, and by the end of the novel he has come to believe in a Higher Power after all.
- The protagonist's mother was a teenager who came of age in The '50s, but still had her son out of wedlock and made no apologies for doing so. It was she who encouraged her son to embrace atheism, owing to her hatred of the people at her son's religious school who thought rock and roll was evil.
- In the course of the novel, the protagonist befriends a right-wing biker who's bullying, crude, and a fan of Heavy Metal music — and is also a young woman with feminist leanings. We get the sense that she might have joined the political left if not for her obnoxious Hippie Parents.
- 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, Collins carefully cast the fat man as the main villain of the piece, an evil Italian gangster. He is still pretty jolly, though.
- The 16th book in the Diary of a Wimpy Kid series introduces a South Asian character named Preet Patel. Preet is characterized as a star basketball player as opposed to the stereotypical Bollywood Nerd.
- Discworld establishes its stereotypes purely to flip them, such as Casanunda, a great lover from a culture that generally doesn't acknowledge the existence of two genders, or the reveal that the Big Dumb Troll stereotype is purely a side-effect of the weather. In Unseen Academicals, Mr. Nutt, a character who talks like a philosophy professor and avoids conflict whenever possible is revealed near the end to be an orc.
- Lucy is a beautiful but frail girl loved by all. She is then fed on by Dracula. Her body sickens and dies but she is resurrected as a vampire. A sensuous predator who feeds on children. This was a shock to 19th century readers who were used to the saintly dying girl archetype.
- In Dragon Bones, Ward uses the fact that people tend to assume big guys are just dumb muscle to his advantage by Obfuscating Stupidity. He's actually very intelligent and concluded from his father's behaviour that he would have to pretend to have brain damage to be left alone, as his father saw him as a threat.
- Dream Park: Alphonse Nakagawa, from The California Voodoo Game, is the grandson of a Japanese fisherman who emigrated to Galveston to take up shrimping in the Gulf. Al himself plays up a "dumb Texas shitkicker" routine to make other Loremasters underestimate him, and even when he's not exaggerating his Southern culture, he'll use very un-Asian phrases like "that dog won't hunt" in his internal monologue.
- The Dresden Files:
- Karrin Murphy is a pretty, five-foot-nothing blonde 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. Averted in the TV series, where Murphy is Hispanic and looks like she means business. Still pretty, though.
- The local werewolf pack are all Dungeons & Dragons-playing geeks.
- Sanya is a rather tall and imposing black man... who's from Russia and sounds like it. He's also basically one of God's chosen paladins... but he's not remotely Knight Templar or even religious (he's an atheist who rather stubbornly refuses to buy any signs of God's existence). Also, Harry uses his accent and rhetoric to conclude that he's a communist, but he scoffs at the idea.
- In the historical novel Give Me Back My Legions! (set in 7-9 AD Roman Empire) by Harry Turtledove, the Romans are stoic, logical, and disciplined, not given to emotional outbursts, while the Germanic tribesmen that they are trying to conquer are excitable and prone to emotional outbursts, as likely to pull a knife as look at you and undisciplined in battle. In other words, modern-day Italian and German stereotypes are reversed.
- In The Green Mile, the Huge Muscular Black Man who supposedly raped two young girls and killed them with his BARE hands actually has a heart of gold (and is innocent).
- Harry Potter: The title character looks like a Stereotypical Nerd, being short, lean and bespectacled. But he's actually more like a jock in terms of personality and skillset, and is even one of the star Quidditch players on the Gryffindor team.
- How Much for Just the Planet?: The science officer of the Smith is T'Vau, a Vulcan. Unlike just about every other Vulcan in the Star Trek franchise, she's clumsy, absent-minded, and a bit of a slob.
- 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 character into a Fountain of Expies and the race into an Ensemble Dark Horse for D&D players.
- You'd generally expect a ginormous black guy to be a Scary Black Man who talks like someone from the 'hood. Hamish Lunley from The Mako Saga is a Gentle Giant, and very very Scottish. (He was adopted from a Chicago orphanage by a Scottish couple.)
- Les Misérables: Inspector Javert is implied to be of at least partial Romani descent. If he is, being a determined, self-righteous officer of the law is certainly a major departure from the Roguish Romani stereotype.
- In Lisa Yee's Stanford Wong Flunks Big-Time, the titular Stanford Wong is an Asian who's a basketball jock so hopeless at academics that he flunks English class and needs to be tutored by Millicent Min, who does fit the Asian and Nerdy stereotype but acts dumber than she is to be accepted by her friends.
- Star Wars Legends:
- 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, his brain was enhanced in various procedures.)
- All prior Nelvaanians who appear prior to Maul: Lockdown are honorable beings who use the same level of technology as real-world Native Americans. Izhsmash is a computer hacker and member of an unsavory prison gang.
- Blotus, a Hutt, served as Supreme Chancellor of the Republic for 275 years in its early days. Contrary to what you might think, he was beloved and almost universally considered one of the best chancellors the Republic ever had.
- In the Troubleshooters series, one of the terrorists is a white, blond/blue-eyed guy from the Midwest, who relies on racial stereotyping to get away with murder, not to mention pin his latest crimes on the nice Middle Eastern gardener in the neighborhood.
- Sandy Mitchell seems to take some glee in using the Ciaphas Cain novels to turn Warhammer 40,000 stereotypes on their heads. For starters, the title character is the exact opposite of the stereotypical Imperial commissar, a cowardly, self-hating man with an inflated reputation (or so he says), frequently described by fans like the type of guy commissars are supposed to shoot. Valhallan troops have a reputation for Zerg Rush tactics, but the 597th is a Badass Army of mechanized infantry that is just as happy to let the enemy come to them if the situation calls for it. In Cain's Last Stand we meet Sister Julien, a senior Sister of Battle who drinks, gambles, and is romantically involved with the schola progenium's bursar.
- In I Am Charlotte Simmons, Charlotte looks like a dumb blonde cheerleader, and when she gets into college, most people assume that's what she is, even though she's highly intelligent and ambitious. Unfortunately for her, the way people perceive her does affect her success.
- Noli Me Tangere was considered blasphemous for having its villains be Franciscan monks since Franciscans are the most touchy-feely of all the monkish orders.
- Reign of the Seven Spellblades: In Japanese fiction set in schools, aristocratic blonde girls with corkscrew pigtails or "drill-tails" are routinely written as Alpha Bitches to be overcome by lower-status female protagonists. Michela McFarlane is more of a wise Team Mom figure who's well aware of her privilege and is generally very diplomatic in dealing with other students.
- In the Wings of Fire series, book 15 introduces Axolotl, a non-binary Token Human as an inversion of the Non-Human Non-Binary stereotype.
Music
- "Truck Drivin' Song" by "Weird Al" Yankovic is sung by a manly-sounding truck driver at the wheel of his Big Badass Rig. By the end of the first verse, it is clear that he is also a crossdresser.
Rollin' down the highway until the break of dawn
Drivin' a truck with my high heels on - Terri Clark's "Girls Lie, Too," a subversion of the Females Are More Innocent trope.
Girls lie too,
We don't care how much money you make,
Or what you drive or what you weigh,
Size don't matter anyway.
Girls lie too
Pro Wrestling
- WWE wrestler Jimmy Wang Yang's entire 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.
- 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, 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 hero.
- Mexican-born Alberto Del Rio defies the usual stereotypes of Mexicans being poor, ignorant, and ill-mannered with his character of "The Mexican Aristocrat", who (at least when he is a heel) is quite Wicked Cultured. He also speaks with an upper-class colonial accent more reminiscent of Spain than of Mexico, rather than the more stereotypical mestizo accent associated with Eddie Guerrero and other Latino wrestlers.
- Chavo Guerrero Jr. got so fed up with being attacked by The Mexicools in 2005, that he turned his back on his Latino heritage, dyed his hair blonde and re-emerged as "Kerwin White", a golf-playing WASP who looked down on minorities and said bordeline racist stuff on television to draw heat from the crowd. In fact, he had even pitched an idea backstage to Vince McMahon about Kerwin joining the Klan!
- El Generico was a Canadian luchador on the indies notable for having very pale skin and red hair. Sami Zayn, the wrestler who portrayed him, is this in real life as, despite being very white-presenting he is of Syrian heritage.
- 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 Communist to an 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 from time to time, but he's still undeniably an "Asshole."
Theatre
- Flower Drum Song actually broke stereotype with Linda Low's character at the time, since as an Americanized Girl Girl living in Chinatown, she was neither a 'lotus blossom' nor a Dragon Lady. While she does lie to Ta and indulge in a bit of gold digging, she's a Good Bad Girl at worst, and gets her happy ending with Sammy.
- The Zeroth Law of Trope Examples strikes again. In Othello, William Shakespeare flips not one, but three Dead Horse Tropes: the brutal, lascivious, and treacherous Moor; the promiscuous, cunning, venal Venetian lady, and the honest soldier. Othello is honorable, cool-headed (mostly), and chaste, Desdemona is almost a Purity Sue in her simplicity, while Iago is a Manipulative Bastard and the villain of the story...
- In Electra, Chrysothemis is very clear on the point that Electra is not behaving like a woman should at all (i.e. She refuses to defer to others and accept her weakness and limits as a woman, 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 deconstruction of the "demure and submissive Asian woman who lives only for her Mighty Whitey man" stereotype codified by Madame Butterfly when it's revealed that 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 cross-dressing as a Japanese woman and committing suicide in the same manner Butterfly did.
- A Very Potter Musical casts a white girl with an exaggerated Southern drawl as the canonically Chinese-British Cho Chang. She occasionally drops some Gratuitous Chinese (and Japanese), implying that her name isn't as non-indicative as it seems.
Video Games
- Baldur's Gate: gave us Montaron, a Halfling thief. So far, the stereotype is pretty accurate, but where the average halfling is a Good-aligned, jolly, chubby sling-user, Montaron is a Neutral Evil (and a member of the Zhentarim, an evil-aligned organization) grumpy, vaguely psychotic, bloodthirsty scar-covered backstabber.
- Catacomb Kids: You'd expect your typical Blob Monster to be slow, lumbering, and either bouncing at you as an oversized water droplet or sticking to you like a living tar field, and generally being the wimpiest enemy in the game, right? Well, the Ogo is definitely neither, as a fast, dangerous and armed Badass Normal lump of suprisingly explosive blue mucus, unlike the previous two slimes fitting exactly the former description.
- Dragon Age: Origins has an example of this in one of the romance subplots related to Morrigan and Leliana. Morrigan is the 'atheist' member of the player's party who tends to hate religion whereas Leliana is the church-attending saint of the group. In a flip of a real-life expectation, it's Leliana, the religious party member, who is open to both a heterosexual and homosexual relationship. Morrigan, the atheist party member, is strictly heterosexual and will only entertain a romantic relationship with a male player character. It somewhat helps, however, that there is no stigma against homosexuality in Thedas, at least not from a religious point of view; the one case in the series of a truly homophobic character is a father who was trying, rather badly, to preserve his bloodline since his son marrying another man would mean no children for him, and his actions are not shed in a positive light at all.
- Dustborn:
- Mike, a rural white man, is initially driven to paranoid madness by an Echo, but if the party manages to disarm him and remove the Echo without knocking him out, Mike turns out to be a Nice Guy who is accepting of Anomals, who are usually treated with Fantastic Racism. Notably, he calls them Anomals from the start instead of Divergents, showing that he respects the Anomals' preferred terminology. He also reveals that he hates guns and that he only pointed his laser gun at the party as a bluff, though it helps that he's unable to get past the gun's fingerprint lock in the first place.
- The Puritans are described as technocrats representing "big tech," but while big tech is traditionally characterized as embracing new technologies for better or worse, the Puritans fear Protolanguage more than any other faction. They research Protolanguage not to spread its use, but to limit its use because they fear it will lead to the corruption of society and truth itself.
- Lottie is a Mormon, but falls into neither the Clean-Cut Naïve Mormon or the Malevolent Mormon tropes. She's a member of the Weave resistance organization, disagrees with the idea of Mormon hegemony, and enjoys spicy drama shows from Pacifica.
- In Final Fantasy VII, Tifa Lockhart and Aerith Gainsborough are meant to form a Tomboy and Girly Girl routine: the former is a bartender in revealing clothes who fights with her bare hands, while the latter sells flowers, wears a pink dress, and is the party's healer. Thing is, their expected personalities are swapped: Tifa is shy and motherly, while Aerith is flirty and adventurous. That being said it's a little subtle, causing some fans and Square Enix themselves to miss this and switch them right around again.
- Most Fire Emblem games feature a Cleric who is quiet, shy and reserved and a Tsundere Troubadour. In Fire Emblem: The Blazing Blade this is flipped: Serra the Cleric is the Tsundere Well, Excuse Me, Princess! while Priscilla the Troubadour is a modest Proper Lady. It also flips the traditional Ogma and Navarre archetypes by having Guy the Myrmidon be an all-round Nice Guy and Raven the Mercenary be an edgelord with a Hidden Heart of Gold.
- The Forever Winter: Generally speaking, fiction that features Western powers fighting Eastern ones has the former being on the cutting edge while the latter often relies on We Have Reserves. Here, however, Europa is the one on the backfoot technologically and dependent on conscripts to fill out its ranks, while Euruska and Eurasia are the ones with the cutting-edge weapons.
- Freaky Flyers: In a cast absolutely brimming with stereotypes, the Swiss Professor Gutentäag is far from neutral considering he's actively sabotaging the tournament with the help of Pilot X.
- Trevor Philips from Grand Theft Auto V was specifically written as the type of unstable psychopath who'd go on shooting sprees for the fun of it to satirize a certain type of GTA player. He's also Canadian, and God help you if you do anything that might remind him of this. Seriously, this guy makes Wolverine look the picture of mental stability.
- KanColle: Amusingly, while Gambier Bay certainly fits the physical stereotype of an American woman in Japan, she is actually rather timid and tends to stutter, and she panics whenever she is pressed into battle.
- The Legacy of Kain games have been flipping dark fantasy stereotypes since day one. The stalwart vampire slaying knights and the wizards maintaining the order of the world are just pawns of a greater evil. The god they worship is an Eldritch Abomination who cares nothing about its followers. The undead vampires are the remnants of a once noble race of Precursors while the Villain Protagonist gains redemption on his own terms instead of turning to the side of good. Even the Reaver, the Obviously Evil Artifact of Doom, becomes redeemed in the end. Cleansing Kain of the corruption which doomed him and set him once again on the path of righteousness.
- Estelle of The Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky seems to be deliberately designed to flip around one of the most classic RPG character concepts: she's a girl with a staff who also happens to be as far from the White Magician Girl as humanly possible, being both the main character and a hot-blooded Stock Shōnen Hero whose staff is not a Magic Staff but a good old hit-people-with-stick staff. Conversely, her love interest Joshua hits more personality traits of the archetype despite physically being a sword-wielding hero you'd expect to see in the protagonist's seat.
- Mass Effect takes pride in introducing a hat for a species to wear and then instantly having them take it off.
- Liara is a shy bookworm from a planet of sociable diplomats, Garrus is a loose cannon from a species of obedient soldiers (who lampshades it by saying that he's "not a very good turian") and Wrex is a philosophical and noble leader from a species of Blood Knights.
- The second game introduces two asari who are so far outside the stereotype most of their own people tend not to mention them; a krogan warlord obsessed with producing a single perfect krogan rather than returning to the old ways; and a geth who reveals the hat placed on his race in the original game applied to only a small rebel faction.
- The extremely civil and eloquent krogan businessman you can meet on Illium. Another one, Charr, doesn't seem to have an ounce of aggression in his body and is seen wooing an asari with poetry.
- Mordin, for the most part, represents the two typical things salarians are known for: science and espionage. Then he reveals that he is also a pretty good singer, having done the salarian adaptations of Gilbert and Sullivan.
- Even the fourth game has characters who defy the stereotypes of their race. Drack is an ancient krogan who actually has some pretty progressive views on how his species should survive Andromeda, Vetra is an amoral yet good-hearted turian smuggler who never went to boot camp, Peebee is a hyperactive asari who would rather live by the now and is perhaps the biggest critic of asari culture, Kallo, your pilot, is a salarian who actually doesn't like pushing already state of the art tech to its limits and uses his perfect memory to remember the good times of friends rather than knowledge. Even the human party members, Liam and Cora, can defy stereotypes from the view of the other races (being open about respecting and working with other species and completely adopting another race's culture respectively).
- Khalisah al-Jilani (an Arab woman) is a ditzy, vapid tabloid reporter. She's not exactly a sympathetic character (the player has the option to punch her in the face every time they meet), but she's such a far cry from typical Arab stereotypes that it almost comes off as Flawless Token.
- The expansions to 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 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 hams it up rather than whinging about the balance of life.
- Belueth the Calm, a Neutral Evil aasimar rogue. Aasimar are normally good (favored class Paladin) due to their celestial heritage.
- Grykk Bannersworn, a half-orc paladin. Not much else needs to be said.
- Ribsmasher, the batshit insane monk. You ain't getting any inner peace out of this guy.
- Fiction has stereotyped computer AI as efficient and logical beings who will eventually rebel against its human creators so its quite hilarious that Dr. Carroll from Perfect Dark is instead a loyal AI who turns whistleblower against the MegaCorp that wants to use it for evil.
- In fighting videogames, Italians are mostly depicted as sexy and suave, with examples including Robert Garcia from Art of Fighting, Rose from Street Fighter, Claudio Serafino from Tekken, and Brad Burns from Virtua Fighter. Soul Calibur's resident Italian, Voldo (a native of Palermo), is a brilliantly freaky, hideous looking bondage-fiend and provides a rather excellent exception to the rule.
- Many Pokémon are animals that flip the general Animal Stereotype that the animal they are based on may have. Such as Hippopotas (a hippopotamus) and Sandile (a crocodile) lines being Ground-types that hate getting wet despite being animals that are generally aquatic.
- Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous
- Aasimar tend towards good alignments due to being influenced by the upper planes. Daeran Arendae is a Neutral Evil aasimar with a Lack of Empathy who is quite happy to let others die or suffer for his own amusement. It's mostly an act, though. Daeran is certainly hedonistic and self-centered, but he's a far better person than he thinks.
- Gnomes are stereotyped as whimsical Cloudcuckoolanders, with the Golarion setting justifying it with the fact that seeking out new experiences staves off the Bleaching. Regill Derenge, a Lawful Evil hellknight, is anything but whimsical, being a hard-nosed and pragmatic killer. Notably this is killing him, as he's Bleaching to death but refuses to do anything stereotypically gnomish to delay the priocess.
- Half-orcs are often perceived as brutes and tend towards chaotic alignments. Irabeth Tirabade is not only Lawful Good but a paladin.
- Arueshalae is a succubus trying to redeem herself, and beyond not being evil is completely covered up and chaste, partially because she associates sexual acts with the terrible things she once did (and because her kiss still kills people).
- Halflings are generally Good-aligned, carefree hedonists who love food, drink and music. Nurah is instead a Chaotic Evil, deeply traumatized former slave who hates the hypocrisy of the "good" creatures and gods who perpetuate slavery through their inaction even more than she hates slavers, and more than willing to see the world plunge into literall hell to get revenge.
- Planescape: Torment has Fall-from-Grace, a chaste Lawful Neutral succubus.
- Punch-Out!!: The glass-jawed French boxer, Glass Joe, is decidedly not one to surrender before the bitter end. Despite being easily knocked down and at the bottom of the WBVA rankings, he refuses to retire and keeps getting back in the ring. The Wii game's Title Defense mode even lets him become a real challenge.
- The Sniper of Team Fortress 2 is an interesting one. His initial personality (an outback big-game hunter who favors large knives) is pretty well within real-world Awesome Aussie stereotypes... but in the setting of the game, Australians are Hot-Blooded Genius Boisterous Bruiser types, who are incredibly muscular, have thick mustaches and chest hair and enjoy wrestling and boxing. The Sniper, on the other hand, is clean-shaven bar mild Perma-Stubble, Lean and Mean, and a Long-Range Fighter and Combat Pragmatist with an overall detached and down-to-earth personality, making him basically the opposite of the stereotypical Aussie. Eventually, it's revealed that he's actually a New Zealander raised by Australians.
Visual Novels
- None of the Katawa Shoujo characters entirely fulfill 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.
- One of the reasons Emi gives for why she gets up early every morning to go running is because her doctors said that she would have to relearn how to walk after losing her legs. Due to sheer determination, she gets through physical therapy much faster than expected and continues to run "simply because she can". Also, rather hilariously, despite being the youngest-looking of the main characters, (seriously, she looks like she's 13; she's actually 19.) she's also the one who swears the most.
- Scarlet Hollow takes place in a small Dying Town in the American South, but is noticeably secular, and all of the game's love interests are openly queer with nobody raising any amount of fuss over it. This irreligiosity is explained in-universe by the town only having one pastor, who gives everyone in town a really weird vibe.
Web Animation
- Journey to the Quest:
- Pepper is basically the exact opposite of a Horny Bard, throwing up when trying to seduce a minotaur and getting grossed out by Rayne and Mara kissing.
- Mara is an orc barbarian, which would normally mean that she'd be a dumb, raging, brute. Instead, she's well-read (even serving as the party's bookkeeper), calm, and enjoys cute things like dresses.
- Despite being a ranger, Rayne seems to dislike being out in nature as she complains about having to go multiple days without washing her hair and hates the rain.
- Jackson is a rogue, but he's the most law-abiding member of the party and tries to prevent everyone from needlessly committing crimes.
Webcomics
- El Goonish Shive: Tiffany Pompoms is a blonde rich girl in high school. She's also a smart, nerdy, introverted Deadpan Snarker who goes by her middle name Susan and dyes her hair dark blue. Justified, since she tries hard to avoid Dumb Blonde stereotypes due to a traumatic event in her childhood. She's actually horrified to find out
she has an Identical Stranger who fits a lot of the stereotypes she hates.
- The Order of the Stick often does this with various professional/race stereotypes of Dungeons & Dragons and the like.
- Roy is a fighter, a class usually associated with Dumb Muscle, but he's a Genius Bruiser.
- Belkar is a halfling, a race generally known for being carefree and jolly, but he's Chaotic Evil and generally ill-tempered when not hurting people or caring for his pet cat.
- Crystal is a pretty young assassin who works for a half-Orc — but she's the Dumb Muscle and he's a pleasant Don type.
- The swashbuckling hero Elan becomes a Distressed Dude by the hands of Kubota's lackeys.
- Therkla the half-orc is the result of a loving relationship between her parents (her father was a human, and the mother was an orc). Half-orcs in Dungeons & Dragons are usually the result of the opposite.
- Sunny the beholder is a cheerful Nice Guy, whereas beholders are normally hateful, Always Chaotic Evil Absolute Xenophobes.
- Nick Nelson from Heartstopper is a total sweetheart as opposed to the archetypical Depraved Bisexual, and his romantic endeavors are pretty wholesome compared to more sexualized bi characters. He's also a conventionally masculine athlete, and his boyfriend's mom thinks it's odd that such a masculine guy is interested in men.
- Gator Days is a webcomic about Funny Animals. One minor character, Ember, is a preschool-aged capybara who is loud, bratty and forceful; the exact opposite of the popular image of capybaras as chill and laid back.
- The main characters Gustopher and Augustus also could be considered this. They are alligators; but are friendly, overweight, gamer geeks rather than predatory bad guys.
Web Original
- Epic Rap Battles of History: The penultimate episode of season 5 was a classic Slobs vs. Snobs battle between Theodore Roosevelt and Winston Churchill... but not the way one might assume. Since the Quintessential British Gentleman Churchill openly admits to being a chain-smoker and apparently came to the battle drunk, he ends up looking like more of a Slob than the American cowpoke Roosevelt, whose boasts about his physical fitness and military experience mark him as the Snob.
- The Hard Times: Male-Fronted Hardcore Band Proves That Guys Can Rock Too. While the stereotype is that most people in Hardcore Punk bands and scenes are male, the article presumes the opposite and uses the same tropes typically applied to women in the scene on men. The article and the people interviewed in it focus excessively on the men's appearance and speculate that they only got their position due to dating or sleeping with important people.
- Looming Gaia: Dr. Che is an asexual satyr, and is often assumed by strangers to be just as sex-crazed as satyrs are sterotyped to be in-universe.
- The Once and Future Nerd has a teenage elf with an American southern accent.
- Takotsubo's protagonist Cord Cai is a Deconstruction of the "Asian-American gangster" stereotype: A beaten-down, traumatized young man who hates being a stereotype, but thinks it's the only thing he's good for. According to the author, the story will go even farther than flipping the stereotype: Cord is a superhero who thinks he's a villain.
- In the stories that Matthew Villani (Altoona Your Piano) writes for his instrumental music, many of the characters are this such as the conservative banker Charlie who happens to be African-American and the liberal (at least economically) white farmer Terry, but the biggest stereotype flip has to be Mary, the red-haired Love Interest for his Interactive Narrator character who averts the Fiery Redhead stereotype hard. Instead, Mary is a Perpetual Smiler who is extremely friendly, a bit of a silly mildly Genki Girl with a love for french fries, and never loses her temper. During the rare moments when she's annoyed about something she keeps silent about it and vents to him later, all while never losing her smile. He later finds out from talking to people she went to school with that she was perceived as "the weird kid" and may have been a victim of bullying.
- In fact, the creator himself is a Stereotype flip, a big burly guy with a beard who has a history of strongman and martial arts training and a love of dangerous science experiments you'd expect to create heavy metal or country music but instead it's a type of beautiful seasonally-themed ambient music that he calls "experimental classical" that's pure Sweet Dreams Fuel. That is, except for his Halloween stuff, some of which is literal Nightmare Fuel above and beyond the regular horror associated with the holiday.
- The Great Nerf War: Despite being German, Baineswolf is not at all percise or punctual, instead he "prefers to be fashionably late"
- Jubilee Media produce a series of debate videos whereby one person representing one side of an issue debates twenty people representing the other side. One of these debates, billed as "MAGA versus Progressive" featured an older white man debating a racially diverse mix of young people from Los Angeles, many of whom were LGBTQ+. Of course the old white guy was noted left-wing commentator Sam Seder and the diverse young people were all conservative influencers. This actually resulted in many online right-wingers, who didn't know who the participants were, assuming that Seder was a lone common-sense conservative taking on a bunch of crazy woke kids based purely on appearance; and embarrassed themselves by praising his performance and even making multiple conservative memes based on him, having clearly not bothered to actually watch the video.
- Tales from the Stinky Dragon: Chip Haney, one of the player characters of the Grotethe campaign, is a tiefling Rogue Assassin, but was deliberately created to subvert the immediate stereotypical image that conjures. Rather than being a edgy, morally dark hellspawn, Chip is a polite, if bumbling house husband with a Minnesotan accent who previously worked for an assassin's guild before settling down in a suburb with his loving wife.
Western Animation
- Francine from American Dad! was angry at her adoptive Chinese parents for leaving all they had to their unseen birth daughter, Gwen. It turns out that they actually have more respect for Francine, and that Gwen is an Asian Airhead who isn't even good at math. Stan and Francine's father both agree it's terrible for children to disrespect their parents' stereotypes. Used in-universe in one story when Francine and Hiko Yoshido go into an all-out war over the spelling bee Steve and Akiko are competing in. Despite not speaking a word of Japanese, Hiko demonstrates she is nonetheless a Ninja, and confronts Francine in a fight to the death, smugly assuming that a blonde American woman will be easy prey. And then she finds out Francine's adoptive parents are Chinese. Cue Francine picking up a sword and a Wire Fu battle erupting.
- Angry Little Asian Girl and its subsequent webcomic Angry Little Girls, starring the short-tempered Korean-American schoolgirl Kim Lee, negate the stereotype of women ––especially the stereotype of Asian women–– as being inherently meek and docile.
- There's a scene in Babar the Elephant Comes to America where Babar tries to address a Native American chief with some hilariously broken-sounding English. The chief responds with fluent English, complete with an upper-class British accent.
- BoJack Horseman: Diane Nguyen, as her last name suggests, comes from a Vietnamese-Americannote family, with her parents having immigrated from there. Her relatives are very unlike stereotypical Asian-Americans, however, being crude, loutish Southies.
- In Futurama, Planet Express' accountant Hermes Conrad, a Jamaican man, is the exact opposite of a stereotypical Jamaican, being an uptight, neurotic workaholic rather than a mellow and relaxed Nice Guy. Though he does enjoy Reggae, he's a limbo champion, and he's implied to be a practicing Rastafarian in at least one episode. Not to mention his... other interests.
- Subverted by Mr and Mrs Wong. They are ranchers on Mars, which is Futurama's New Old West, and dress in stereotypical "Western" genre clothing; but otherwise are stereotypical Asian parents.
- Gravity Falls: Sheriff Blubs and Deputy Durland flip the stereotype associated with the Old Cop, Young Cop dynamic: Instead of the seasoned cop busting the inexperienced rookie's chops, Blubs always responds affectionately when Durland makes a mistake or does something stupid.
- On Hero Elementary, Sara Snap is the smallest of the 4 main kids, but she's also tough and one of her superpowers is Super-Strength. Benny, who's the biggest of the four kids, is very gentle, loves animals, and has bubble powers. They're also genuinely nice people, unlike other heroes with these strengths who are a bit jerkish yet well-meaning. Sara is Asian and Benny is white, so they also invert the stereotypical Mighty Whitey and Mellow Yellow dynamic.
- I Am Weasel: The titular character is a noble and intelligent weasel who deliberately averts the Wicked Weasel stereotype.
- King of the Hill:
- Hank Hill:
- Hank's devotion to propane grilling. Most grilling enthusiasts praise charcoal and have nothing but contempt for gas grills. Hank is the complete opposite.
- In a meta sense, he's a flip of the stereotypical sitcom dad. He's reserved and introverted, loves his dead-end job, of which he is of a fairly high-ranking position and has received many rewards in said industry, is usually the smartest and most mature person in the room and seldom gets angry unless provoked.
- Dale Gribble is a Right-Wing Militia Fanatic and general Conspiracy Theorist, but against the stereotype, isn't racist/prejudiced in the slightest and is actually a pretty nice guy once you get to know him.
- The Souphanousinphones:
- Most Asian characters in American media are either Chinese or Japanese, and even ones from Southeast Asia tend to be Vietnamese. Kahn and his family are Laotian (a group still underrepresented in media today). This is even lampshaded in their debut episode, with Hank and his neighbors continuously ask if Kahn is Chinese or Japanese, unable to comprehend that he's Laotian even upon being told.
- There was also an episode where Kahn, in grief over failing to get 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. Ironically, this actually ended up helping Connie get into a good school, since the only reason she kept getting rejected in the first place was due to affirmative action — every good school in the country was chock full of stereotypical Asian workaholics already, but Asian rednecks? That makes her an underrepresented minority, and the very next school she applied to accepted her instantly.
- Hank Hill:
- In The Magic School Bus, the blonde Dorothy Ann is the resident Smart Girl in Mrs. Frizzle's class, and apparently reads constantly when she's not on field trips. Hell, her catchphrase was "According to my research..."
- Minoriteam has the title characters as ethnic superheroes who fulfill their respective stereotypes to a T. In their civilian identities, however, they're all flipped: The Mexican gardener is a wealthy CEO, the misogynistic black man is a Women's Studies professor, the Jewish accountant is obsessed with black culture, and the Indian shopkeeper is a skateboarder.
- Hooty from The Owl House, despite being an owl (and the titular house), is easily the dimmest of the main cast. This is actually realistic, since most owls are actually on the low end of bird intelligence.
- Ren and Stimpy are flips of Animal Stereotypes. Ren is a mean dog, Stimpy is a Dumb Is Good cat. Though they do fit the stereotypes of Chihuahuas being aggressive and red cats being friendly.
- The titular characters on The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy flip the Dumb Blonde and Fiery Redhead stereotype, with Billy being the dumb redhead and Mandy being the fiery blonde (although Billy does have his moments of fits of rage).
- Sherlock Yack:
- In contrast with the Smelly Skunk of fiction, Skunk in this show is a stickler for cleanliness and likes to plant flowers.
- Lion has a tendency to agree with whatever statement that was recently uttered, rarely forming an opinion of his own and, to top it all off, his large mane is just a wig. King of Beasts he ain't.
- South Park:
- Tolkien Black (previously called Token) 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. Tolkien does actually fulfill some pretty funny stereotypes himself though: He has an astounding soul voice (then-Mrs. Garrison claimed that it got her wet), and this little gem...
Cartman: Alright, Token, give me a smooth bass line.
Token: I don't know how to play bass.
Cartman: Token, how many times we have to go through this? You are black, you can play bass.
Token: I'm getting sick of your stereotypes.
Cartman: Be as sick as you want, just give me a goddamn bass line!
[Token plays a perfect funky line with slap]
Token: ...Goddamnit. - PC Principal amounts to a walking jab at political correctness. However, he and his friends are depicted as athletic, hard-drinking party dudes rather than Granola Girls.
- From the episode "The Poor Kid", there's Mr and Ms. Wheatherhead who are Abusive Parents who foster children only to force their belief on the kids and torture them if they don't comply...the belief in question isn't religion or tradition but....agnosticism.
- Tolkien Black (previously called Token) 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. Tolkien does actually fulfill some pretty funny stereotypes himself though: He has an astounding soul voice (then-Mrs. Garrison claimed that it got her wet), and this little gem...
- This is the basic concept behind Speedy Gonzales (which is part of the reason Mexicans love him). He inverts the Lazy Mexican stereotype by being hard-working and energetic even before taking his Super-Speed into account.
- Scooby-Doo is the deliberate antithesis of the ideal Great Dane, a dog breed normally known for its elegance, bravery, strength, and high status, normally serving as a hunting dog or guard dog. He's certainly friendly and affectionate, but is also klutzy, cowardly, awkward, and seen as a mutt, with his usual role being to run away from the monster. His character designer reportedly asked a Great Dane breeder what the "ideal" traits of a Great Dane were, and went in the opposite direction for all of them: the traits given included straight legs, a straight back, a small chin, and small feet, while Scooby has bowed legs, a hump back, a big chin, and big feet.
Real Life
- Dallas has a reputation for this trope among other Texans. The general attitude in the state (especially Fort Worth and Houston) is that Dallas culture tries a little too hard to avert the stereotype that all Texans are redneck cowboys, making the city and its residents come off as pretentious and bougie instead.
- After the bombing of Pearl Harbor in 1941 stoked American racial fears of the Japanese, Asian residents and citizens were forcibly removed from their homes in the West Coast because military leaders and public opinion combined to fan unproven fears of sabotage. As the war progressed, many of the young Nisei, Japanese immigrants' children who were born with American citizenship, volunteered or were drafted to serve in the United States military. One of those units, the 442nd Infantry Regiment, became the most decorated unit in U.S. military history.
- More broadly, the history of Asian Americans can be seen as an example of this trope in action. The "model minority" stereotype only emerged after World War II; before then, they were seen as just another horde of dirty, job-stealing, non-English-speaking, white-woman-raping immigrants gathered in the big cities on the West Coast just like the "white ethnic" immigrants and black people in the East, and often subjected to similar racism and xenophobia. The rise of the Asian model minority stereotype in the mid-20th century has a number of complex causes behind it, including the desire of Asian immigrants to seek out The American Dream, a sharp focus on education in Asian communities, a tight-knit culture that allowed them to support each other, their small numbers meaning that they weren't seen as a demographic threat, and efforts by some white conservatives to hold their success up as a response to African-American activists arguing that racism was keeping them back.
