Caffeine Bullet Time/Playing With

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


Basic Trope: A character drinks a massive quantity of a caffeinated drink and moves with superhuman speed as a result.

  • Straight: Bob drinks several cups of coffee and can move insanely fast for a temporary period of time.
  • Exaggerated: Bob drinks 45 espressos. From his POV, Time Stands Still.
  • Up To Eleven: Bob drinks 300 cups of coffee in a row. As a result, time moves so slowly that to everyone else, he travels at the speed of sound.
  • Justified:
    • Bob unwittingly drinks some Klatchian Coffee.
    • Alternately: Bob was genetically engineered to have superhuman speed. Needing coffee to activate it is how the genetic engineers keep him under control.
  • Inverted:
    • Bob gains superspeed and finds that he can increase it by drinking coffee.
    • Alternately: Bob has superspeed and ADHD and can only slow down by drinking coffee (or taking Ritalin).
  • Subverted: Bob drinks several dozen cups of coffee and gains superspeed. Then it pans out and it turns out he's actually hallucinating because someone spiked the last cup.
  • Double Subverted: Turns out Fred spiked his cup because the last thing he wanted was Bob cognizant with caffeine super speed.
  • Parodied: The amount of caffeine Bob consumed allows him to accomplish things at an incredible rate. He does his taxes, repairs the roof, runs for mayor and invents a new kind of blender in under a couple of hours.
  • Deconstructed: The amount of caffeine Bob consumed causes him to suffer from caffeine overdose, possibly putting him in the hospital.
  • Reconstructed: However he still gets a great deal done before that.
  • Zig Zagged: Bob drinks 100 cups of coffee and gains superspeed. He immediately tries solving a number of problems but then discovers that he seriously has to use the bathroom after drinking so much. He spends what seems like hours searching for an available bathroom. After he finds one then he has just enough superspeed left to solve the original problem.
  • Averted: Drinking a lot of coffee does not give you superpowers, unless you count insomnia as one.
  • Enforced: "Wouldn't it be cool if this character got superspeed from coffee?"
  • Lampshaded: "How much coffee did you drink?!"
  • Invoked: Alice comes to Bob's house to find coffee cups littering the floor and that the door's been broken down from the inside.
  • Defied: Bob considers drinking lots of coffee to give him superpowers, only for Alice to remind him that it only works in cartoons.
  • Discussed: "How come that never happens when I drink coffee?"
  • Conversed: "What kind of blend do you think he drinks?"

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