Take a Third Option/Playing With

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


Basic Trope: Offered only two options, a character chooses a third of his own devising.

  • Straight: The villain holds two cities up with his army and the hero can only go to one in time to save it. Rather than struggle on deciding which one, the hero summons the goddess and she gets some of her personal army to aid one city while the heroes liberate the other.
  • Exaggerated: The villain gives the hero two options which will probably both have horrid results. The hero breaks all rules of logic, out of nowhere, and manages to succeed with it and make everything go perfectly in the plot because of it.
  • Justified: The two options were given as a Secret Test of Character to get the Hero to use his imagination in finding a way out.
    • The villain was trying to force the hero into making a hasty gut decision so he wouldn't have time to find an alternative.
  • Inverted: The heroes cover both the villain's escape routes, forcing the villain to improvise in order to get away.
  • Subverted: The Hero's attempted third option was planned for, and prevented, by the villain.
    • At the last moment the hero suddenly realises that the correct choice was the second one all along.
  • Double Subverted: The Hero's attempted third option was planned for, and prevented, by the villain... but the hero makes it work anyway.
  • Parodied: The hero is presented with two options...and begins perusing his list of options 3, 4, 5, 6, 7....
  • Deconstructed: The Hero's attempted third option comes at a bigger cost than choosing one of the other two would have been. Because of the unintended cost the hero starts to doubt his abilities and it slowly throws him into a Heroic BSOD
  • Reconstructed: After a talk from his friends, the hero finds out that, despite the tragic cost,it was actually better than what the other choices were by far, giving the hero resolve to keep going and giving him new insight into the way the villain plans.
  • Zig Zagged: In attempting to find a third option, he finds 56 more...none as appealing as the first two.
  • Averted: The Hero chooses one of the options provided, never considering the possibility of a third option.
  • Enforced: Choosing either of the two options given would involve killing off one of the fans' favorite characters.
  • Lampshaded: "He'll find a way to save us both. That's what he does."
  • Invoked: The villain intentionally omits an obvious third option so as to fool the hero into a trap.
  • Defied: The hero tries to take a third option, and is put down with extreme prejudice by the villain, who taunts him by saying, "Like I said, there is no third option."
    • Alternatively, there really isn't a third option at all.
  • Discussed: "Is this one of those situations where I have to think outside the box to figure this out? I hate those."
  • Conversed: "Oh, it's that episode of Batman where he has to make a Sadistic Choice. You know he's gonna get around it though, because he's the goddamn Batman."

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