Shaped Like What It Sells/Playing With

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


Basic Trope: The easiest way to know what a store sells is by looking at the appearance of it.

  • Straight: A pizza restaurant has a billboard shaped like a giant pizza.
  • Exaggerated: A convenience store has pictures of everything they sell painted on the walls and sculpted on the billboard. They even have statues of groceries.
  • Downplayed: A bakery has a small board with the picture of a loaf of bread on it.
  • Justified: The owners wanted to attract the customers.
    • The clientele is mostly illiterate.
  • Inverted: A fast food restaurant has the interior and exterior decoration that made it seemed like it was a cafe.
  • Subverted: The owners planned to make a billboard of what they sell, but they decided it would cost too much money, and it would be cheaper to send brochures.
    • The building resembles a product that isn't offered there.
  • Double Subverted: Then again, they did have more than enough money to send brochures and make a billboard.
    • But later, they start selling the item the building resembles due to popular demand.
  • Parodied: This Billboard Needs Some Salt
  • Zig Zagged: ???
  • Averted: The store isn't shaped like what it sells at all, just a regular building.
  • Enforced: Viewers are Morons. People Sit on Chairs. Captain Obvious.
  • Lampshaded: "Why don't we go to Pizza Shack?" "The place with a giant pizza on top of it?" "Yes, that's it."
  • Invoked: See "Justified".
  • Exploited: Because of the billboard, the owners had more income from the incoming costumers.
  • Defied: The owners refused to renovate their building.
  • Discussed: "Why do we always seem to find a place, any place shaped like anything they sell every five kilometers?"
  • Conversed: "That restaurant Alice is going to sure looks like a pizza. It must be a pizza restaurant!"
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