What Do You Mean It's Not Heinous?: Difference between revisions
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{{trope}}
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{{quote|'''Manager:''' I want to apologize, humbly, deeply, and sincerely about the fork.
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This trope comes in 4 varieties:
# '''Writers believe this is as wrong as they are showing it.''' In this case, the "What do you mean," part is from the writer, so this overlaps with [[Values Dissonance]]. [[Strawman Political
# '''Writers think this isn't that bad, but exaggerate for effect.''' So this isn't moral dissonance, it's just [[Anvilicious]]. Even if the thing is wrong, presenting it as something magnitudes worse usually makes it a [[Clueless Aesop]]. [[Can't Get Away with Nuthin']] uses this a lot.
# '''Writers use [[Values Dissonance]] for [[Played for Drama|dramatic effect]].''' This is common in [[Dystopia
# '''Writers invoke [[Values Dissonance]] for [[Rule of Funny|Comedic]] [[Played for Laughs|Effect]].''' A lot of the well-written animated shows, even dating back decades, would do this. And [[Sitcom|Sit Coms]] will do this as well. [[Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking]] or [[Selective Enforcement]] is often invoked here.
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* Gamefly commercials. Various gamers having [[Freak-Out|epic-level temper tantrums]] over a bad game they purchased, complete with screaming, destruction of personal property, and even chucking televisions off their roofs.
* Subway has a line of commercials best paraphrased as "Fast food will ruin your life." Someone ordering a fairly normal fast food meal is told things like they'll instantly get fat, be abandoned by their significant other, and need therapy.
* A carpet cleaning service, Stanley Steemer, has a commercial where two of their employees see a rolled-up carpet set up for trash collection. Both react as if it were a corpse, complete with one racing out to its side, cradling it tenderly, [[Schindlers Listsobbing|"I could have saved this one!",]] and ending with a [[Skyward Scream
* A commercial for the sweetener Truvia shows a woman committing a particular act. After she completes this act, the shame and self-loathing on her face is glaring. Her SO walks up and looks down at her with a look of absolute disgust. The heinous act this woman committed? Eating a tiny piece of cheesecake, which could have led to her getting fat.
** Yay eating disorders!
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* ''[[Ranma ½]]'': [[Embarrassing First Name|Pantyhose Taro's]] grudge with Happosai. His legitimate (potential) [[One-Winged Angel|grudge (his curse)]] is a [[Red Herring]] to this.
== [[Comic Books]] ==
* Guess what hyper-fundamentalist comic company fits the first kind. If you said [[Chick Tract
** It's even inverted many times in the tracts themselves: When normal people convert to Christianity they are disowned by their families, fired from their jobs and abandoned by their spouses and friends, for no other reason than embracing the Christian faith. Although,granted,this can be reality in some parts of the world.
*** To be fair, that is a logical reaction to someone who subscribes to Chick's version of it, as they'll just insult you and scream for your death.
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* In ''[[Scott Pilgrim Versus the World]]'', the "Vegan Police" treat vegans who don't adhere to a vegan diet as criminals. Of course, since veganism gives you superpowers, it seems reasonable to take it seriously.
* ''[[Max Und Moritz]]'' by [[Wilhelm Busch]]: Killing her chickens ''was'' mean, but the widow reacts in a way you could think they had killed her children.
* A type 4 example appears in ''[[The Flash]]'', in a flashback to the exploits of 1930s [[Knight Templar]] the Clipper. At one point he rescues a family from a burglar and then starts handing out punishments for their "crimes"
{{quote|'''Boy''': Even Pooky?
'''The Clipper''': Of course Pooky! Pooky is the stigmata of your evil! }}
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** It was supposed to be a "anything can be bad if taken to extremes" moral, but it fell on its face pretty badly.
*** it falls even flatter once you consider that Monica has a caffeine addiction.
* Played for laughs in ''[[Castle]]'': when Demming, Beckett's new love interest, is suspected by the others of being a dirty cop planted into their recent investigation to sabotage it from within, they voice their suspicions of him from a distance. However, whereas the cops comment on things such as his suspicious reasons for requesting to be part of the case and his too-good-to-be-true dedication to the case, Castle's reasons for suspecting
** There's also the episode "Hedgefund Homeboys" where Castle tells his daughter Alexis to tell him if she's ever in trouble or does anything wrong after he works on a case involving a bunch of teenagers and a shooting. She later comes to him in tears and reveals that she once jumped a turn stile at the train station late one night, inciting this trope with complete honesty. Castle responds with relief and amusement but Alexis grounds herself for her heinous actions.
*** Alternately, Alexis is [[Genre Savvy]] and is only ''pretending'' to play this straight in order to assure Castle that, although no one's perfect, she's not getting into any serious trouble and he can stop worrying.
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** Sue seems to think ''everything'' the Glee Club does is heinous. When they performed "Push It" at the school assembly (admittedly, with school-inappropriate choreography), Sue's "first reaction was that all the children [[Disproportionate Retribution|should be put into foster care]]."
** Jesse's reaction to Rachel's {{spoiler|triplecasting him}} in "Bad Reputation."
*** "Bad Reputation" also brings us Kurt's master plan to become [[Badass]]
* Parodied in an episode of [[The IT Crowd]] with an anti-piracy PSA which compared pirating films to stealing a handbag, stealing a baby, and shooting a policeman, stealing his helmet, pooping in it, sending it to his grieving wife, and stealing it again.
* Abed's methods of teaching the study group to respect and fear him in ''[[Community]]'' episode [[Community/Recap/S1/E21 Contemporary American Poultry|Contemporary American Poultry]]. This involves cutting up a backpack, releasing a monkey from a cage, putting gum in hair, unplugging a TV, and feeding chicken fingers to a guy.
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* In [[GoldenEye: Rogue Agent]] you can get unlocks by earning "rogue bonuses" which are awarded for particularly "evil" actions. Said actions are things like headshots, taking human shields, shooting [[Exploding Barrels]], hacking enemy turrets, etc... all things that are present in many other FPS and which an experienced player will already be doing by this point. Apparently we were evil all this time, who knew?
** [[Accidental Aesop|Unintentional]] [[Deconstruction|deconstruction?]]
* The dwarven justice system in ''[[Dwarf Fortress]]'' has values skewed along this trope's lines. Heinous crimes such as smashing nearly-valueless furniture or failing to manufacture the specific pointless trinket demanded by one of the fort's nobles can net a dwarf a month in prison (which is often a death sentence due to the fact that feeding prisoners is a low-priority task<ref>
* A lot of the "incidents" behind the [[Excuse Plot
** Interestingly, a number of "incidents" could be considered in the same category - "meteorological" - and could have also demonstrated either a failure of the Great Border or an ecological threat, both of which are terribly serious issues for a [[Pocket Dimension]] with a [[Weirdness Censor|undefined degree of filtration]] from the Outside World. The red mist, delayed Spring, an incorrect gibbous moon, a delayed Autumn, earthquakes, geysers, more red mist.
** Additionally, being ''youkai'' ''is'' a crime.
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* ''[[The Adventures of Dr. McNinja]]'': ''[http://drmcninja.com/page.php?pageNum=7&issue=15 King Radical is subverting our country's rich history for his own devious purposes!]''
* Type 4 from ''[[Skin Horse]]'': Sweetheart's idea of a "rampage" is [[Poke the Poodle|spilling coffee next to a "no littering" sign]]. The Chimeric Anti-Defamation League hears about it and tries to revoke her membership. You know things are bad when ''Unity'' is the voice of sanity - her reaction is, "Who called you, and how could they tell it was a rampage?"
* In a ''[[User Friendly]]'' arc, Erwin the computer dreams of being [[Mercy Kill
* In the [[Ciem Webcomic Series]], Candi's worst crime in the eyes of her enemies is ''being born a Flippo'', which she had no control over. The ''universe'', however, punishes her for ''[[Sex Is Evil|having sex with Denny]]''. Even though they were ''married'' at the time! It's because she was ''supposed to'' marry Donte, but was originally deceived into thinking Donte was dead. Under the circumstances, hardly a soul in [[Real Life]] would blame her for moving on. But even her godfather treats this as her having [[Kick the Dog|burned down a village]] as opposed to something closer to what the offense [[Poke the Poodle|was really like]].
** Which gets [[Moral Dissonance|downright weird]] when she later goes through two years of constant ([[Lime|mostly implied]]) on-and-off sex with Donte before they get married, with hardly any ill side effects.
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* Fish slapping, from the ''[[Veggie Tales]]'' film Jonah. Justified in that it's all a story being told by the modern day Pirates, and saying what the ''real'' Assyrians did would be inappropriate for their young audience.
* ''[[Fillmore]]'', a police-procedural-type show set in a school, is the undisputed master of this, both for the title character and the show in general. Fillmore himself is treated, by many people in the show, like an unstable/possibly violent ex-convict for his past crimes. What are those crimes, you ask? Directly ripped from the opening sequence: Chalk boosting, locker rigging, a comic book poker ring, cutting class, milk counterfeiting (non dairy creamer), and backtalkery. For this sordid past he has many [[The Atoner]] moments. This is before, of course, we even get into the scooter jacking ring, tartar sauce smuggling, and the time Fillmore's pet was almost killed by a boy in return for the answer sheet to a particularly hard test. Another episode features a psychotic, monotone, genius IQ boy who had to locked up in total isolation because the spray paint tagging he was doing all over the school were so traumatizing they could make people physically ill.
* In ''[[Adventure Time]]'', the earl of Lemongrab has some... er, interesting concepts when it comes to punishing those who do wrong. Making a mess? Thirty days in the dungeon. Asking questions? Thirty-TWO days in the dungeon. Refusing to clean up mess, or asking who exactly Lemongrab is talking to? Three hours dungeon. Harmless prank? Seven years dungeon, no trials. Assuring Lemongrab that the prank was harmless? Twelve years dungeon. Elaborate, painful prank involving spicy food? ONE MILLION YEARS DUNGEON!!! (Of course, Lemongrab isn't
** Princess Bubblegum and Finn decide to play a harmless prank on the earl of
** [[Our Vampires Are Different|Marceline]] writes a heart-breaking, soul-crushing, tear-jerking ballad which questions if her dad even loves her because.... he ate her fries.
*** [[It Makes Sense in Context]]. [[Tear Jerker|Oh, does it make sense in context...]]
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[[Category:Rule of Drama]]
[[Category:Character Flaw Index]]
[[Category:
[[Category:What Do You Mean It's Not an Index?]]
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