Thank Your Prey/Playing With

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


Basic Trope: A character thanks or apologizes to the animal they eat.

  • Straight: A native hunter kills an antelope for food, then says a short thanks to the antelope for providing him with nutrition.
  • Exaggerated: The hunter erects a statue in the antelope's honor.
  • Justified: That's the way of the hunter's tribe, who revere nature and the cycle of life.
  • Inverted: The ghost of the antelope appears and thanks the hunter for ending its tiring life.
    • The hunter insults the antelope's lifeless corpse.
  • Subverted: The hunter seemingly begins to thank the antelope, but then just laughs and insults the antelope for its stupidity.
  • Double Subverted: Then the hunter's companion chastises him for his rudeness and insists he apologize and thank the antelope. He does.
  • Parodied: Before eating, the hunter thanks the antelope so long that its meat rots or gets snatched by something else in the meantime.
    • Or the antelope briefly rise, says "You're welcome", and then dies again.
  • Deconstructed: The hunter is insane.
  • Reconstructed: Despite him being insane, that's the way every hunter from his tribe treats the prey.
  • Zig Zagged: The hunter thanks the antelope, and then laughs rudely at the antelope's stupidity. Then the other hunter appears and chastises him, and our hunter sincerely apologizes to the antelope. And then, a passing fellow tribesman who just happens to be graduated from Harvard criticizes his tribe's irrationality, and he is then criticized by the Chief for abandoning the reverence of nature, instead favoring the destructive way of the townspeople... etc.
  • Averted: The hunter doesn't say anything.
  • Enforced: "Let's show the audience that primitive tribes are really good-hearted!"
  • Lampshaded: "Are you seriously gonna waste your time on talking to a dead animal? Let's get to eating!"
  • Invoked: "I think I should say something here..."
  • Defied: "...nah."
  • Discussed:"The local tribe has a custom where they always treat the animals they eat with reverence."
  • Conversed: "Man, it annoys me when these hunters on TV say all these sappy thanks."

Be sure to tip your waiter and Thank Your Prey.

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