Big Red Button/Playing With

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


Basic Trope: The big red button should NOT BE PRESSED.

  • Played straight: When pressed, the button blows up the complex.
  • Exaggerated: When presses, the button blows up the complex, the state the complex is in, and takes out half the planet.
  • Justified: The button is bright red specifically to draw attention and serves an emergency-only purpose, a la emergency plant shutdown buttons found in most factories.
  • Inverted:
    • The button is supposed to be pressed, and is used quite frequently.
    • The button you're not supposed to press requires a paperclip to press.
  • Subverted:
  • Double Subverted:
    • At least, it appears to do nothing, but really its consequences are highly destructive.
    • Then it blows up a bomb attached to the villain.
  • Parodied: The button is of a comically large size, with multiple signs around it telling not to press.
  • Deconstructed: Characters discuss whether having a single, shiny red button do something so important is really so good of an idea.
  • Reconstructed: Several safety precautions are set in place so pressing the button when it isn't supposed to be pressed does absolutely nothing.
  • Zig Zagged: Initially, the button appears to do nothing. However, it actually causes a great deal of damage...except it doesn't and it only appeared to cause the damage.
  • Averted:
    • Red is just another color of button. There's no reason why it should be shorthand for something extremely destructive.
    • There are no doomsday functions to activate.
  • Enforced: It's convenient shorthand for something you don't want to touch.
  • Lampshaded:
    • "Don't press that button! It's red!"
    • "Why do they even have that button?"
  • Invoked: "If that button is red, maybe people will know to keep away from it."
  • Defied:
    • The only buttons present are small, unobtrusive, and have protective shrouds to prevent accidental pressing.
    • The destructive function is activated by entering a complex password into a computer, or some similarly foolproof method.
  • Discussed: "So, which one of these colors shouldn't I press?" "Take a guess."
  • Conversed: "Why can't there just be a big... red... button or something? That would make this a whole lot easier..."
  • Plotted A Good Waste: The button is placed by the facility's designer as a Schmuck Bait.

You really should go back to the main article. That button's red, you know...

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