Duct Tape for Everything/Playing With

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


Basic Trope: Objects are conspicuously held together with duct tape.

  • Played Straight: Bob seals a leak around a pipe with duct tape.
  • Exaggerated:
    • Most of the items in Bob's house are held together with duct tape.
    • Bob's SPACESHIP is held together with duct tape. And it works.
  • Downplayed: Bob seals a cardboard box with duct tape.
  • Inverted: Bob patches a strip of duct tape with a pipe.
  • Justified: Bob is lazy.
    • Bob doesn't have much handyman's skill and the only tool he really has is duct tape.
    • The situation needs a temporary quick-fix, as there's no time to do an actual repair--or else, the materials for a more permanent fix aren't readily available.
    • Duct tape is very useful, and if it isn't involved with water then duct tape can be a VERY good fix for cracks or broken parts. It may just be better to work over the item with duct tape than to try something else.
  • Subverted:
    • Bob notices the leaky pipe and considers using duct tape... but then sets out to fix it properly.
    • Bob considers using duct tape... but ends up calling the plumber, who comes over right away.
    • Bob tries to use duct tape, but it doesn't hold together.
  • Double Subverted: Tomorrow. Today, he's much too busy, so he takes 5 seconds and wraps a length of duct tape over it.
    • And then uses duct tape to fix the pipe and charges Bob an arm and a leg.
  • Deconstructed: Duct tape is meant to be a temporary solution.
  • Reconstructed: But somehow, it holds together for hours, days, weeks, months, years, and Bob has more time to do things he wants to do.
  • Parodied:
    • The house, Bob's clothes, in fact pretty much everything in town is held together with (or outright made of) duct tape.
    • Duct tape is actually Bob's superpower!
  • Lampshaded: "If it ain't broke, don't fix it. If it is broke, just put some duct tape on it!"
  • Averted: Bob calls the plumber, or fixes the leak using something other than duct tape.
  • Enforced: Rule of Funny
  • Invoked: Alice asks Bob to fix the leaky pipe, but Bob just wants to watch the game on TV. So he wraps tape around the pipe and calls it good.
  • Defied: Bob feels that this job is a little too big of a fix for duct tape and either does actual repairs or calls the plumber.
  • Discussed: "Duct tape fixes everything!"
  • Conversed: "The duct tape gag? Writers must like that one."
  • Played For Laughs:
    • It's part of a Doom It Yourself project of some sort.
    • Bob calls the plumber, who fixes the leak with duct tape and charges Bob an arm and a leg for the "repair."

"Three hundred dollars?! For a tape job?! I coulda done that myself practically for free!"

  • Played For Drama: A hostage is duct taped to a chair.

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