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{{trope}}
Alice sells Bob an insurance. Let's say, a life insurance. Looks pretty good; the rates are low, but the payout is high, maybe a million dollars. But when Bob later takes a closer look to the small print, he finds out that his people may only collect the money if he is killed by lightning. In the bathtub. On a Tuesday. [In Utah, on a mountain top, during a rainstorm, while holding a llama...]
That's this trope: An insurance with conditions attached making it almost impossible to collect the money. Bonus points if the impossible becomes possible.
{{examples}}▼
▲{{examples}}
== [[Advertising]] ==
* In one insurance commercial a tree falls on a couple's car and they nervously call their insurance company to make a claim. The operator tells them their low rate plan only covers damage from a [[wikipedia:Ficus|ficus]].
* In ''[[Judge Dredd]]'', pop sensation Pug Ugly is murdered on stage, and the perp is killed while resisting capture. It turns out the guy had taken out dozens of life insurances on himself, planning to get killed to make his mother rich. Unfortunately, Mega-City insurance companies always include the standard "claim void if killed by a Judge on duty".▼
* One Disney comic had Rockerduck (Scrooge's business rival) insure a box of cigars for a massive policy, with one of Scrooge's insurance agencies. (Scrooge is forced to accept it, though he objects loudly.) Rockerduck at first suggest smoking the cigars to cash in the policy, but fortunately Scrooge points out that intentional fires constitute grounds for fraud (or that intentionally lit fires aren't covered by the use of the word "fire" in the policy.) However, putting the box in a pine house in the middle of a pine forest during thunder season is perfectly legal.▼
** [[Fridge Brilliance|Scrooge's interpretation of the insurance policy is exactly how just about every policy involving "fire" is interpreted.]]▼
== [[Film]] ==
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* In one of the ''[[All Creatures Great and Small]]'' books, the narrator tells about some brothers and father who got slick talked into disability insurance. However, the joke was on the insurance company as they "managed" to somehow get injured repeatedly at an amazing rate as soon as the policy was issued. They remarked how it was strange how the company dropped them as soon as the policy term ran out but that they got another company, albeit at a higher premium, to insure them.
* [[Douglas Adams]] once suggested that insurance companies have [[Time Travel]], which is why whatever happens to you is mysteriously excluded from the policy ''and always was''.
* In ''[[
* An insurance company ''thought'' they were doing this, when they sold a policy to a young seaman in Tom Holt's ''Flying Dutch.'' But then he became the
== [[Live
* An episode of ''[[Dinosaurs]]'' had the Sinclair's house (and TV) struck by a falling meteor. Earl actually had bought meteor insurance but was denied coverage since he was only covered for meteors and once a meteor passes through the atmosphere it becomes a meteorite.
* In the [http://www.ibras.dk/montypython/episode17.htm#3 "Motor Insurance Sketch"] from ''[[Monty Python's Flying Circus]]'', a vicar had bought some insurance and has now come to collect on it.
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== [[Newspaper Comics]] ==
* In ''[[The Gambols]]'' Gaye takes out a travel insurance policy that she is told will pay out a million pounds if she hurts herself on the England-France ferry. Which technically it does, but only if the injury is ''"hit by a meteorite while lying on the sun-deck"''. Personal application only.
▲== [[Comics]] ==
▲* In ''[[Judge Dredd]]'', pop sensation Pug Ugly is murdered on stage, and the perp is killed while resisting capture. It turns out the guy had taken out dozens of life insurances on himself, planning to get killed to make his mother rich. Unfortunately, Mega-City insurance companies always include the standard "claim void if killed by a Judge on duty".
▲* One Disney comic had Rockerduck (Scrooge's business rival) insure a box of cigars for a massive policy, with one of Scrooge's insurance agencies. (Scrooge is forced to accept it, though he objects loudly.) Rockerduck at first suggest smoking the cigars to cash in the policy, but fortunately Scrooge points out that intentional fires constitute grounds for fraud (or that intentionally lit fires aren't covered by the use of the word "fire" in the policy.) However, putting the box in a pine house in the middle of a pine forest during thunder season is perfectly legal.
▲** [[Fridge Brilliance|Scrooge's interpretation of the insurance policy is exactly how just about every policy involving "fire" is interpreted.]]
== [[Radio]] ==
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[[Category:Comedy Tropes]]
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