Selective Enforcement/Playing With

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Basic Trope: One character does something without being punished; another imitates them and immediately gets into trouble.

  • Straight: Lucy likes to play pranks and tease others; Alice tries pulling a prank herself and is caught and punished.
  • Exaggerated: Lucy is a Karma Houdini who does horrible things; Alice accidentally misses the trash can while throwing a wrapper away and is busted for littering.
  • Justified: Lucy's parents are powerful, so nobody wants to upset them; Alice has no such advantage and thusly is fair game.
  • Inverted: Sweet Alice can do no wrong while nasty little Lucy Can't Get Away with Nuthin'.
  • Subverted: After seeing Lucy pull a prank, Alice copies her and gets away with it.
  • Double Subverted: ...But then tries it again and gets caught, and blamed for everything Lucy did to boot.
  • Parodied: Lucy kills a dog and gets away with it. Alice tickles a dog and gets chased by an angry mob.
  • Deconstructed: After getting punished one too many times while Lucy gets away scot free, Alice finally snaps and takes matters into her own hands, beating the ever-loving crap out of Lucy -- if she's going to get into trouble anyway, why not go all the way?
  • Reconstructed: Lucy counters the attack and ends up beating the ever-loving crap out of Alice, Alice then gets in trouble for starting a fight with Lucy on top of everything else.
  • Zig Zagged: Alice gets punished for some pranks, sometimes she doesn't
  • Averted: Everyone, even Lucy, gets in trouble for their crimes.
  • Enforced: It's a kid's show, and while the writers can sometimes get away with showing "bad" people doing bad things, the protagonists must be punished or else Moral Guardians will complain. In a sense, this applies the trope to the writers.
  • Lampshaded: "Oh, come on! There is no justice in the world."
  • Invoked: Alice is caught, then asks Lucy while she's still doing it because she could get caught too. Lucy dismisses this because she knows she's just too lucky to go to jail.
  • Defied: Alice says that Lucy did it first and the police arrest both.
  • Discussed: "I don't care if you've never been caught, it's bound to happen eventually!"
  • Conversed: "The characters never both get in trouble. One has to be a karma Houdini to make the other seem more like a Butt Monkey."
  • Exploited: Turns out Lucy was actually an Anti-Hero.
  • Played For Laughs: See Parodied.
  • Played For Drama: Lucy the Big Bad kills Alice and gets away with it. When Bob tries to avenge her death, he gets arrested.

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