Baby Carriage/Playing With
Basic Trope: During a car chase scene, a baby carriage rolls into the path of the cars.
- Straight: While Alice is pursuing Bob, a carriage holding baby Carol rolls out into the street
- Exaggerated: Thousands of baby carriages roll out onto the streets, keeping both Alice and Bob from going anywhere.
- Justified: The mother was distracted by Alice and Bob's cars rapidly approaching, and stopped paying attention to her carriage, while it was on a slight slope.
- Inverted: A car gets in the way of a mother pushing a baby carriage.
- Subverted:
- We see a baby carriage begin to roll into the street, but the mother comes and takes it before it can get too far out.
- Alternately, the carriage contains anything other than a baby inside.
- Double Subverted: ... but then she pauses to catch her breath from the adrenaline spike on the other side of the road, where the baby carriage rolls back out into the street again.
- Parodied:
- Alice invests in an automated carriage with a robot baby designed to roll out onto the street on command to make Bob crash or slow down. It's later revealed that she has one on every street.
- Alternately, the baby carriage is armed... And so is the baby. And the mom. And they're both working for the bad guys.
- Deconstructed: Because of the incident, Carol's mother is charged with negligence and endangering the welfare of a child.
- Reconstructed: The charges are dropped due to the unsafe design of the carriage, and she invests in a baby carriage with design features that prevent it from rolling away when unattended to. She shows up in a later episode where her carriage starts to roll away but the safety features stop it before it goes far at all, as a Continuity Nod.
- Zig Zagged: There are multiple chase scenes. In the first, no carriages are involved. However, in the second, a carriage carrying twins rolls directly towards the car. In the third a mother loses control of her carriage, and Bob swerves automatically, but it ends up bumping a parked car and making the alarm go off.
- Averted:
- No baby carriages appear for the entire duration of the Chase Scene.
- Alternately, one appears in the background, but isn't involved.
- Enforced: "There aren't enough obstacles in your chase scene. Add something. Maybe a baby carriage, that's classic..."
- Lampshaded: "Why do I have the strange feeling that a carriage is going to show up?"
- Invoked: Someone rolls an empty baby carraige into traffic in order to provoke an emotional response from drivers or passersby.
- Defied: The baby carriage is ran over without a second thought.
- Discussed: "Don't argue with me: I've been in a lot of car chases in my day. There's always a baby carriage."
- Conversed: "How do people always manage to lose control of their carriages near speeding maniacs?"
- Played For Laughs: The baby in the carriage is playing chicken with the cars.
- Played For Drama: It is too late for Alice to avoid the baby carriage, driving over it and killing the baby inside which comes a major subplot of the work.
Look out! Don't drive into that Baby Carriage!