History Recap / CommunityS3E05HorrorFictionInSevenSpookySteps

* ShipTease: Britta/Jeff in Britta's story, Abed/Britta and Abed's story, Annie/Jeff in Annie's story.

* While Abed called Britta out for the lack of realism and logic in her story, Abed's ended up being even worse in that regard.

* BodyHorror: In Troy's dream, he and Abed got sewn together by Pierce. In retaliation, Troy and Abed mutilated Pierce and sewn him back in the wrong placements.

* MurderIsTheBestSolution: Subtly done in the final confrontation, when everyone is paranoid that everyone else could be a serial killing sociopath and arms themselves. It also subverts WomenAreWiser; the boys chose weapons which are clearly either just the first things at hand, defensive in nature (a chair for Abed) or less-than-lethal (a fire-extinguisher for Pierce and a bunch of sharp pencils held like Wolverine's adamantium claws for Troy) suggesting that they're not aiming to kill, while Jeff himself doesn't go for a weapon and tries to talk the situation down. The ''girls'', however, appear to have either brought with them and look frighteningly adept at using a variety of lethally-sharp stabbing implements; Shirley smashes a bottle, Annie threateningly brandishes a pair of sharp-looking scissors, while Britta is armed with what appears to be a ''Bowie knife'', implying that they're ready to go straight to lethal force if necessary.

* NightmareFetishist. Annie is ''quite'' happy in describing her gory ending, to the entire group's shock.

* HollywoodPsych: While sociopathy is certainly not a condition to take lightly, it doesn't automatically mean that one is predisposed to homicidal behavior, as there are multiple factors that affect one's propensity for violence. Then again, it ''is'' [[KnowNothingKnowItAll Britta]] interpreting the results, which, as it turns, ahe didn't process correctly in the first place.

* WomanInWhite: Annie and Britta in the former's story; Shirley in hers.

** Pierce is not-so-subtly lashing out at Troy and Abed over the previous story, complete with 70s style [[JiveTurkey racial stereotypes.]] This is coupled with his [[DirtyOldMan leching over the female members of the group]].

** Pierce is not-so-subtly lashing out at Troy and Abed over the previous story, coupled with his [[DirtyOldMan leching over the female members of the group]].

* EarWorm: (InUniverse)[[invoked]] "Daybreak" by Michael Haggins, the song from Abed's story. It has received numerous [[CallBack call backs]] being hummed or vocalized by [[Recap/CommunityS3E09FoosballAndNocturnalVigilantism Troy]], [[Recap/CommunityS3E11UrbanMatrimonyAndTheSandwichArts Annie]], and [[Recap/CommunityS3E13DigitalExplorationOfInteriorDesign Abed]]. It was finally referred to by name and played in "[[Recap/CommunityS3E14PillowsAndBlankets Pillows And Blankets]]".

* TropesAreTools: Abed's story demonstrates this; he's so fixated on avoiding plotholes and (what he thinks are) bad tropes that he doesn't take into account that some of these are actually needed for the story to work, meaning that his story doesn't go anywhere and he just bores his audience.

* WomenAreWiser: Parodied; in her story, Britta's AuthorAvatar feels the need to point out that she was right about the situation to Jeff while he's ''being stabbed to death by a psycho with a hook for a hand.''

* KarkovaMan: Pierce hooks up with all three female leads in his story.

* LingerieScene: The female characters in [[DirtyOldMan Pierce]]'s story.

* MsFanservice: The female characters all provided {{Fanservice}} this episode. In Pierce's story they're all in a LingerieScene, while in Annie's own story both she and Britta are wearing [[OfCorsetsSexy corsets]].

* WomanInWhite: Annie in her story; Shirley in hers.

* OfCorsetsSexy: Annie in her story.

** Averted in Abed's story. He explains that it's no longer the '50s, so it makes sense to rent a cabin rather than park at a make-out point.

** Britta misunderstands the meaning of "britta-ing" (it's something along the lines of 'fucking up') as "making a tiny and ''understandable'' mistake."

** Britta misunderstands the meaning of "britta-ing" (it's something along the lines of 'fucking up') as "making a small and ''understandable'' mistake."

* HeartwarmingMoments: {{Invoked}}, parodied and subverted: Jeff is clearly trying to invoke one of these through his story in his usual style, and clearly expects everyone to react as if it was one, but they instead consider it, in the words of Pierce, "[[TastesLikeDiabetes the gayest crap I've ever heard in my life.]]"

[[quoteright:350:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/horror_fiction_in_seven_spooky_steps.jpg]]

* GenreBlindness / GenreSavvy: Parodied and deconstructed; Abed objects to the GenreBlindness displayed by the characters in Britta's story, explaining that character's making decisions the audience never would makes us lose sympathy for them. His innate Genre Savviness leads him to construct a perfectly logical horror story where the protagonists [[AvertedTrope avoid every single cliche, mistake and convention]] present in the genre... even the [[NecessaryWeasel ones necessary for telling a story]] (ok, sure, the ''victims'' do smart decisions, but does the ''slasher''? Abed finishes off the tale with the couple not encountering the killer anyway, so he doesn't seems to think showing any kind of consequences to the couples' decisions, even a potential CurbStompBattle with them as the winners, is worth continuing). This almost completely robs his story of suspense, tension and horror, and just serves to bore and irritate his audience.

** Abed's story is overly logical and lacks emotional resonance, more concerned with filling plot-holes and avoiding cliches, unrealistic actions, GenreBlindness and {{Contrived Coincidence}}s than actually telling the story;

* GenreBlindness / GenreSavvy: Parodied and deconstructed; Abed objects to the GenreBlindness displayed by the characters in Britta's story, explaining that character's making decisions the audience never would makes us lose sympathy for them. His innate Genre Savviness leads him to construct a perfectly logical horror story where the protagonists [[AvertedTrope avoid every single cliche, mistake and convention]] present in the genre... even the [[NecessaryWeasel ones necessary for telling a story]] (ok, sure, the ''victims'' do smart decisions, but does the ''slasher''? Abed finishes off the tale with the couple not encountering the killer anyway, so he doesn't seems to think showing any kind of consequences to the couples' decisions, even a potential CurbStompBattle, is worth continuing). This almost completely robs his story of suspense, tension and horror, and just serves to bore and irritate his audience.

* HalloweenEpisode

** Pierce doesn't even try to make his story scary and instead uses it to [[HerCodenameWasMarySue glorify himself]] and lash out at Troy and Abed over his treatment in Troy's story. He also assumes the cool hedonist leader in Shirley's story (a stand-in for Jeff) to be his own stand-in character, and wonders why Jeff wasn't in the story.

%%* PsychicPowers: See subtrope MindOverMatter

* CellPhonesAreUseless: {{Defied|Trope}} in Abed's story. He made sure his cell phone was fully charged before heading up to the mountain cabin.

* BackToBackBadasses: Britta and Abed in Abed's story.

* GenreBlindness / GenreSavvy: Parodied and deconstructed; Abed objects to the GenreBlindness displayed by the characters in Britta's story, explaining that character's making decisions the audience never would makes us lose sympathy for them. His innate Genre Savviness leads him to construct a perfectly logical horror story where the protagonists [[AvertedTrope avoid every single cliche, mistake and convention]] present in the genre... even the [[NecessaryWeasel ones necessary for telling a story.]] This almost completely robs his story of suspense, tension and horror, and just serves to bore and irritate his audience.

* EvenBetterSequel: In-universe. Troy expresses this opinion for ''SuperMonkeyBall 2'' right before being attacked in Britta's story.