Basic Trope: A friend who influences one or more characters but in a toxic, ill-intentioned or not-so-friendly way.
- Straight: Bob is a kid who goes to a summer camp where he meets another kid named Jack and the two quickly form a Cool Kid-and-Loser Friendship. Until Jack starts making Bob do things like sneak out after lights out, spray paint graffiti on the cabin outer walls and join him on reckless activities/pranks on other campers, causing Bob to change for the worse and act like another version of him.
- Exaggerated: Once Jack and Bob become friends, the former proves himself to be an All Take and No Give kind of guy who also encourages the latter to pick fights with other kids/teens, act as The Bully to the weaker campers, use alcohol and drugs, sexually harass the female campers, start food fights in the cafeteria, and talk back to the counselors.
- Downplayed: Jack encourages Bob to do things like sneak junk food out of the mess hall kitchen or peek in the girls’ cabin, but nothing too serious.
- Inverted: Positive Friend Influence.
- Subverted: Jack wants Bob to help him T.P. the entire campgrounds. Or that’s what Bob assumed as they were actually hanging up streamers for a party.
- Double Subverted: ???
- Parodied: Jack wants Bob to help him with a prank that involves literal toxic waste.
- Zig-Zagged: Jack is super mischievous and always makes Bob join in on his antics, but most of the time he is a laid-back Jerk with a Heart of Gold that occasionally makes some surprisingly valid points and good decisions.
- Averted: Bob never makes any bad friends the whole time he is at camp.
- Lampshaded: "Ever since Bob became friends with Jack, the poor guy has been going down a serious dark path."
- Invoked: ???
- Exploited: ???
- Defied:
- The second Bob finds out the crazy (and borderline illegal stuff) Jack wants him to do, he ends their friendship immediately and walks away.
- Whenever Jack makes a decision, he has to stop and think for a minute to see if it will make him come off as a toxic friend and if it does, he quickly changes his mind.
- Discussed: After hearing of other kids falling in with the wrong crowd at innocuous outings, Bob's mother worries that Bob might do the same.
- Conversed: ???
- Deconstructed: Jack and Bob are eventually sent to jail for everything they’ve done which finally makes Bob have a Heel Realization and find out what kind of friend Jack is.
Back to Toxic Friend Influence.