Perp Sweating: Difference between revisions

* [[Twerp Sweating]] (not actually a subtrope, but related)

* [[We Have Ways of Making You Talk]]

 

Two characters '''Perp Sweating''' almost never works on include [[The Sociopath]] and people with [[Aspergers Syndrome]], totally different types of person, both on a different level of communication to you. [[The Sociopath]] will be two steps ahead of you and retaliate with a [[Hannibal Lecture]]. A person with Aspergers will be seven or eight steps behind, and get confused by subtle questions, annoyed by a [[Good Cop, Bad Cop]] routine, and clam up if you start lying to them. The savvy ones will [[Be as Unhelpful as Possible]] to get back at you. Either way you're going to have to rethink your techniques with them.

 

{{examples}}

== [[Advertising]] ==

* Parodied in the popular "Got Milk?" commercials. In one commercial, a cop interrogates a suspect while placing a package of snack cakes on the table. When the suspect notices the snack cakes, the cop says, "Go ahead, have 'em." The suspect wolfs down the cakes while the cop pours a glass of milk. "Now then," he says as he places the glass in front of the suspect, "We can do this the easy way, or we can do this..." He suddenly slides the glass out of the suspect's reach. "The hard way." The suspect, not having any milk to wash down the snack cakes, gulps loudly.

* ''[[Cast a Deadly Spell]]''. When Lovecraft refuses to cooperate with the police, his friend Lieutenant Bradbury turns a bright light in his face and starts questioning him.

* Harvey Dent does this to the man who {{spoiler|apparently killed Jim Gordon}} in ''[[The Dark Knight]]''. Harvey abducts him from the ambulance, ties him up in a chair, and threatens to shoot him if a coin flip turns up 'tails' unless he talks. The coin is a two-headed one, so Harvey never really intended to shoot the man. Batman puts a stop to this because a) the perp is a mental patient and thus isn't truly culpable for his deeds and b) Gotham's "White Knight" shouldn't be resorting to such unethical tactics.

 

== [[Literature]] ==

** And then there was the incident with sending the family car into a ditch ...

* Also used in a couple of story arcs in [[FoxTrot]]. After punching another kid in the face at school ([[Berserk Button|he was making fun of Peter's girlfriend]]), Peter comes home expecting his parents to have been contacted and to be chewed out for it. When his mother mentions that the school called her, he bursts into an annoyed monologue about how he screwed up and he knows it, thank you very much... only to have her reveal that they simply called to say someone found his wallet and immediately jump on him for whatever the "fight" was that he mentioned. In a similar instance, Peter's mother comes into his room and asks him to "guess what he found under his mattress." He flips out and quickly insists that [[Suspiciously Specific Denial|he only reads those magazines for the articles]]. Cue her explaining that she found his baseball mitt and demanding to know what magazines while Peter [[Perp Sweat|begins sweating profusely]].

 

== [[Western Animation]] ==