Tempting Fate/Playing With
Basic Trope: A character says or does something that suggests nothing bad will happen, thereby daring fate to make something bad happen, and then it happens.
- Straight: Alice says "How could this possibly get any worse?" and it starts raining.
- Exaggerated: Alice says "How could this possibly get any worse?" and she gets run over by a stampede.
- Justified:The universe has a cruel sense of Irony and Alice is its Butt Monkey.
- Alternatively, Alice had been placed under a curse by a witch doctor in which any time she utters the phrase "How could this possibly get any worse?", she is punished by the gods.
- Inverted: Alice says "How could this possibly get any worse?" and then finds money.
- Subverted: Alice says "How could this possibly get any worse?" and nothing happens.
- Double Subverted: And then she discovers she's glued to her chair.
- Parodied: Alice says "How could this possibly get any worse?" and is promptly stampeded by a pack of water buffalo, run over by an 18-wheeler, struck by lightning, set on fire, and then abducted by aliens.
- Deconstructed: Alice became incredibly pessimistic because terrible things keep happening to her every time she even so much as having a negative thought.
- Reconstructed: Alice's friend, Bob, who notices that Alice has been incredibly pessimistic, constructs a collar for her to help her become more positive. The collar shocks it's wearer whenever she says anything negative such as "How could this possibly get any worse?" It can't be removed until Alice learns to be more positive.
- Zig Zagged: Alice says "How could this possibly get any worse?" and Bob gets squashed by a stampede.
- Averted: Alice never says "How could this possibly get any worse?" or anything of the kind.
- Enforced: ???
- Lampshaded: Bob tells Alice to stop saying that phrase!
- Invoked: The God is fed up with we humans' stupidity, so he decides to punish anyone who regularly eats junk food and then says "how would I get diabetes?"
- Exploited: In order to defeat the villain, Alice tricks the villain into saying "How could this possibly get any worse?" The universe takes care of the rest.
- Alice tricks the villian into bragging nobody can stop me now.
- Defied: Alice begins to say "How could this--" but stops, remembering what's happened the past 500 times she's said it.
- Discussed: "Everytime you say that, it starts to rain or somebody gets run over by a stampede. Maybe you should stop."
- Conversed: "According to this show, simply saying a particular phrase will cause bad things to happen to you? That's ridiculous. That would never happen in the real world!"
- Cue the stampede.
Head on back to Tempting Fate. What could go wrong?