Bitch Alert

Sometimes writers love to tease us a little with who's nice and who's not so nice in the story. Not this time, though.

The character enters the scene and she's clearly trouble. Tall, slender, regal bearing, pretentious walk, looking down on every one, long nails and pulls an icy, cutting sarcasm the minute she opens her mouth... That's right, we have a Bitch Alert and it's so blatant you could actually have this caption blinking on the screen/panel as soon as she appears.

Usually applies to the Alpha Bitch, Rich Bitch, Femme Fatale and many other types of villainesses.

This is a very obvious type of Establishing Character Moment.

Never applies to the Bitch in Sheep's Clothing, since this one isn't hiding her bitchiness behind a sweet, welcoming face. Au contraire, she is rather pretty upfront and direct about it.

Compare Make Way for the Princess, for the typical High School variation.

Examples of Bitch Alert include:

Film

• The Trope Namer is Heartbreakers when Max as "Olga" meets Tensy's housekeeper and says the line. The housekeeper does indeed become quite the problem for the women and they have to plant Tensy's jewels and cigarettes on her to get her fired.
• Legally Blonde gives us three with Professor Stromwell, Vivien Kensington and Enid Wexlin. The first two turn out to be not so bad while the third at least gets put in her place.
• Taken has the ex-wife example with Lenore. She turns out to be a nice enough lady as well though.
• 17 Again has Naomi, Scarlett's best friend. Stays quite nasty.
• The trio of Heather, Bridget and Kelly in The Final. They're established as very nasty from their first dialogue not even interacting with anyone. Then they act mean towards Emily. However it gets turned on its head when Emily becomes the real villain and Bridget turns out to be not so bad.
• Brian's scumbag mother from The Breakfast Club has only two lines and establishes herself as this so it comes as no surprise when we find out later on how bad his home life is.
• Lindsey from The Abyss complete with an announcement on how she is "the supreme bitch queen of the universe". This being a James Cameron film she turns out to be not so bad.
• Holy hell, Dizzy from Starship Troopers. It's not until halfway through the film that she actually does something un-bitchy.

Literature

• Harry Potter's first impression of Professor McGonagall is this, but he couldn't be more wrong. Both Pansy Parkinson and Marietta Edgecombe get full straight examples, though.
• Lavinia from A Little Princess.
• Arguably all the girls in Carrie White's class since our first impression of them is throwing tampons at Carrie in the school showers. Only Chris Hargensen is actually nasty though.
• Sandpaw's first appearance in the Warrior Cats series. She snarls that Firepaw smells revolting, and then makes a comment about how he's a kittypet.
• Elizabeth Elliot is a completely rude, pushy bitch who treats Jack Ryan with total hostility in her first appearance in the Tom Clancy book Clear and Present Danger. In fact, in the followup book (for those who didn't see her the first time) she gets a similar moment.

Live-Action TV

• Libby in Sabrina the Teenage Witch.
• Cordelia Chase with her "softer side of Sears" comment in the Buffy the Vampire Slayer pilot.
  • A Subversion as her very first scene is to helpfully share a text-book with Buffy, befriend her in the hall, and then make the bitchy comment to Willow as Buffy's smile fades.
  • This trope also applies to Buffy's psychology professor, who introduces herself as "the evil bitch-monster of death."
• Quite a few characters on Scrubs, notably Dr Miller. Special mention, though, has to go to Nina the Malpractice Attorney whose first scene involves hospital-wide panic at the mere thought of her arrival. Not long afterwards, she's given a musical number where she dances down the hallway of the hospital literally and viciously busting the balls of every male unlucky enough to be in her eyeline. She does so while smiling. Semi-subverted when she actually becomes one of the main characters' girlfriend, but remains a massive bitch throughout the (short) relationship.
• Happens a lot on Reality TV. For example, Ivy Higa, on eighth season of Project Runway, declared froom the get-go that the show should be called "Project Ivy". The editors clearly signaled this as a Bitch Alert. She proceeded to act as in a particularly bitchy fashion, even by the show's standards. She also never won a challenge.
• C.C. Babcock from The Nanny.
• Every time Morgana entered a room in series three of Merlin you could almost hear the alarm bells go off. Ironic in a way, considering her role was also an inversion of Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: despite the evil smirk, no one ever noticed that she was plotting their deaths right under their noses.

Video Games

• Nina Williams from the Tekken series. Her ending (when we first get a sense of her character) has her stealing one of her sister's shoes and slapping her in the face when the sister gets upset about it. Wow.

Web Comics

• Miko Miyazaki in The Order of the Stick, although her establishing moment was attacking the Order from nowhere on the basis that Roy registered as "evil" (actually picking up on a trophy he took from Xykon).

""By the Twelve Gods and in the name of Lord Shojo, I demand to know: Who removed the tag from this mattress?!?".

Web Original

• Mai Valentine's first conversation with Yugi in Yu-Gi-Oh!: The Abridged Series prompts Tea to appear behind him and proclaim "Back off, bitch, he's mine!" with a Voice of the Legion.