Inconvenient Summons/Playing With

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


Basic Trope: A character is teleported somewhere against their will while in the middle of some activity.

  • Straight: Bob summons a demon to do his bidding, but the demon in question was in the middle of brushing his teeth.
  • Exaggerated: Bob summons a demon to do his bidding, but the demon was just about to get laid.
  • Justified: Demons dislike being summoned and have ways of preventing it, so they must be summoned while their attention is elsewhere.
  • Inverted: Bob is brushing his teeth, while a demon comes up behind him and banishes him to Hell.
  • Subverted: We see the demon brushing his teeth in the Otherworld, notices he's about to be summoned and quickly puts his toothbrush back on the sink.
    • The time when Bob summons the demon and when the demon is whisked off from the Otherworld are different thanks to complex Time Travel magic made to avoid such inconveniences.
    • The demon doesn't see why being summoned while brushing his teeth would be any more inconvenient than anything else.
  • Double Subverted: The demon had forgotten that he had just come out of the shower, so as he's summoned, he only has a bath towel wrapped around him.
  • Parodied: A montage shows that the demon only ever gets summoned while in the middle of another activity and avoids doing anything but sitting around as a result.
  • Deconstructed: The demon is angry that he got summoned during the middle of brushing his teeth and kills Bob.
    • The demon can hardly go a night without being summoned, and is perpetually sleep-deprived as a result.
  • Reconstructed: As the demon's being summoned, Bob notices the toothbrush in the demon's mouth and remembers that demons don't like being summoned during their morning routine, so sets it up so it looks like Alice, the show's Butt Monkey summoned him.
  • Zig Zagged: Bob summons a demon while he was brushing his teeth, however the demon is always brushing his teeth (twenty mouths have a lot of upkeep), but the demon is still annoyed because he was in the middle of a hot date.
  • Averted: The demon is summoned and is perfectly ready to serve Bob.
  • Enforced: Demons may only be summoned when they are "off duty" because The Devil wants his plans not to be interrupted, so they'll always be doing something personal.
  • Lampshaded: Every time I brush my teeth, there's a sacrifice at the Circle...
  • Invoked: Bob intentionally summons the demon when he knows that the demon is busy. Because Bob is just a jerk.
  • Defied: Bob makes an arrangement with the demon about the time when it's appropriate to summon him without extra disturbing.
  • Discussed: "It must suck to be a Demon, you're always getting bossed around by mortals and never get to keep your dignity when summoned."
  • Conversed: "I know it's funny, but I have a hard time believing demons in this setting do mundane and personal things and have no control over how or when they're summoned."
  • Played For Laughs: Part of the curse of demon hood includes being summoned doing something embarrassing.
  • Played For Drama: Unbeknownst to the heroes, Alice was trying to stop the Big Bad from stealing an important Plot Coupon. When they transported her to their present location, they prevented Alice from stopping him, and the Big Bad manages to take the Plot Coupon, gaining a huge advantage over the heroes.

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