Noodle Implements/Playing With

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


Basic Trope: Weird objects are used for an undescribed incident in an unknown way.

  • Straight: "He escaped using only a blimp, thirty Asians, and a pound of hot cocoa powder."
  • Exaggerated: "You remember what happened with the 500 armed guards, 32 blind finches, 18 wooden staves, a bear hide, 3 criminals that had just broken out, a bullwhip, the golden model ship, a white scarf, and some chewing gum?"
  • Justified: We see lots of Zany Schemes in the present that suggest the sort of process the character employs without spoiling the original use of the implements.
    • MacGyver is involved.
    • there were reasons those specific items were involved whatever happened, rather then just being on hand.
  • Inverted: We're told that he needed something airborne, something for cover, and something for writing a message, but we never find out exactly what was used.
    • Oh he used a very normal object such as a knife to do all the improbable acts, but we never find out how.
  • Subverted: We eventually see the plan in question, and find out what each of the Noodle Implements was for.
  • Double Subverted: We eventually see the plan in question, and find out what each of the Noodle Implements was for... except for one, the pound of hot cocoa powder, which the character, when asked about it, states "The pound of cocoa powder was in case I got stopped by crosswinds."
  • Parodied: A character arms himself with a bizarre variety of Noodle Implements, which turn out to be used for something perfectly mundane.
  • Deconstructed: The weirdness of the implements indicates a more generally bizarre and random properties such things once had in what turns out to be a lost age of magic.
  • Reconstructed: And as it turns out, even in that lost age of magic, very few people would use these things together. Especially the holy water and the lightning-enhanced rapier.
  • Zig Zagged: ???
  • Averted: Nobody ever uses weird things without a Flash Back or Imagine Spot demonstrating what they intend to do with them.
  • Enforced: "We can't directly state what he does in his sex life, so let's make a joke of it by throwing in a bunch of random objects as being part of it to make a joke out of it!"
  • Lampshaded: "We're never going to find out what he planned to use this stuff for, are we?"
  • Invoked: A character asks for a variety of random objects to throw people off and keep them wondering while the real plan requires something much simpler.
  • Defied: The mystery items turn out to be totally useless in the plan.
  • Discussed: "Why do people always ask for such random stuff for their plans and then never bother to tell us how they're used? Are they trying to be funny?"
  • Conversed: "Now you see, this is why our lives aren't a comedy series. If it was, then he'd be using something irrational, like a fleet of bobsledders wearing afros, rather than tanks. Case closed."

We're down to one wallaby and four ounces of red pepper jelly, you say? Time to get some more Noodle Implements.