Line #82 Series/WhatWouldYouDo


1	[[quoteright:322:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/wwyd_3782.PNG]]
2	[[caption-width-right:322:John Quiñones would like to know.]]
3	''What Would You Do?'' (also known as ''Primetime: What Would You Do?'') is a hidden camera show that airs on Creator/{{ABC}} in the United States. The premise is, [[RippedFromTheHeadlines take a current hot-button issue]], have actors play it out in public, and see if anyone steps in to help.
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5	Unlike most other hidden camera shows, this one is produced by ABC's news division, and is hosted by journalist John Quiñones. Comedy is NOT the name of the game here, and the show is instead more of a sociological experiment.
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7	Gained a spinoff in August 2013 known as ''Would You Fall For That?'', which is essentially a LighterAndSofter version that doesn't focus on "serious" issues.
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9	Not to be confused with the early-90s {{Creator/Nickelodeon}} game show ''[[Series/WhatWouldYouDoNickelodeon What Would You Do?]]'', although oddly, both series feature hidden cameras as an element.
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11	----
12	!!This show provides examples of:
13	* FourOneNineScam: The focus of one scenario, except tweaked a bit so that it played out via a ''very'' public Skype conversation in a New Jersey coffeehouse.
14	* AbusiveParents: Many scenarios involve parents mistreating their kids, and at different age groups at that.
15	* AgeLift: At times the show will replay similar scenarios but change the actors' ages.
16	* AlbinosAreFreaks: Mentioned by Quiñones in the introduction to a segment dealing with two guys bullying an albino man. Albinos in ''Film/TheDaVinciCode'' and ''Film/TheMatrixReloaded'' were cited as examples.
17	* AloofDarkHairedGirl: Traci and Diana are the ones who usually play this character type. Traci in particular commonly plays a {{Jerkass}} snob. And when she plays heroic characters, they tend to be withdrawn.
18	* ApatheticCitizens: While the show still respects people's reasons for not getting involved in the invoked scenario, it still heavily discourages people to ignore problems taking place in front of them.
19	* ArmouredClosetGay: A variation was done combined with infidelity. The segment in question had an actor and actress, portraying a husband and his pregnant wife, going into a crowded restaurant when the wife excuses herself to go to the restroom. Soon, a third actor, portraying the husband's lover comes in and convinces him to tell his wife that he's "going back to the office," when she comes out of the bathroom.
20	* BadassBystander: Some marks go out of their way to directly confront the actors playing the antagonist.
21	* BadBoss:
22	** One segment took a page out of ''Literature/TheDevilWearsPrada'' and featured a fashionista berating her poor assistant at a New York bistro. The fashionista got called out quite a bit for her bad behavior.
23	** Another segment had a mother berating a nanny in public.
24	*** Soon after, they had the [[SpoiledBrat "daughter"]] berating and threatening the nanny with getting fired.
25	* BerserkButton:
26	** The marks tend to really hate seeing service workers getting mistreated by the actors.
27	** Men also react strongly to women being abused/mistreated.
28	** Older women have a tendency to want to protect younger girls.
29	** Child abuse seems to be a BerserkButton for many bystanders.
30	* BothSidesHaveAPoint: It's very unusual for this show, as most scenarios are set up with a clearly defined morality problem, but sometimes the show will not take a side.
31	** One scenario focused on a [[TeenPregnancy pregnant teenager's]] decision to keep her child, and the adoptive parents-to-be who became distraught over the girl's decision. WWYD didn't explicitly side with either party.
32	** In the scenario dealing with an extreme couponer in a supermarket who ends up holding up the line for over 20 minutes (including leaving the line and coming back with more items that she has coupons for), the show concedes that while it is perfectly okay to use all the coupons you want, it is not okay to piss people off by holding up the line.
33	** In the scenario dealing with parental use of public shaming to discipline their children, where an actress playing an African-American mother made a boy actor playing her son wear a sandwich board in downtown South Orange, NJ, saying "suspended because I lied and stole", a white woman told her it was disgraceful and humiliating, but then a black woman expressed approval, pointing to the much higher rate of incarceration among young black men (which the show emphasized with a graphic) and said she didn't blame black parents for trying anything they could to make their kids behave.
34	* BrattyHalfPint:
35	** The focus of one scenario. The producers set up shop in a diner, gave the child actors Nerf guns (among other things), and told the kids to go nuts.
36	** Another scenario involves bratty children verbally abusing their parents at a shoe store. A later episode would have a similar setup, with a young "social media star" acting the same way towards a store employee.
37	* BreakingTheFourthWall: The intro scenes for every scenario typically end on a freeze frame as John Quiñones steps in to explain the setup. For the “wannabe influencer” scenario, the teen diva character suddenly unfreezes and tells John to get out of her shot.
38	* BystanderSyndrome: The show's entire premise is to take a current hot-button issue, have actors play it out in public, and see if anyone steps in to help. Some topics covered in the show for example include racial or religious discrimination and seeing whether or not any bystanders step in and help speak out against such injustice. A few bystanders play this trope straight, others outright defy it.
39	* {{Catchphrase}}:
40	** "Why--" (or "Why not") "--get involved?"
41	** "Nothing prepared us for the man/woman we're about to meet."
42	* ChristmasEpisode: Scenarios in the last episode before the holiday in 2013 were all built around the holiday: a family that couldn't afford the tree it wanted, Santa at a bar getting drunk before starting his shift etc.
43	* ComingOutStory: This is a scenario that WWYD explores quite often, since it's a hot-button issue in the USA, and WWYD typically uses it whenever they visit other cities. They also mix it up a bit: usually they play it with a child coming out to a parent, but they've also done it with a parent coming out to a child, a wife/fiancée/girlfriend coming out to her husband/fiancé/boyfriend, or vice versa. Usually it's played with the recipient of the WordOfGay freaking out, in order to elicit reactions from people.
44	* ConspicuouslyLightPatch: A variation. Most of the time in crowd shots, people whose faces are not obscured are usually people who will be interviewed about their action (or lack thereof).
45	* CoolOldLady: Oh, so many of them, and in all kinds of situations. [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4YmaHSxxAY4 One example:]] "Why don't you just shove the stuff up your [[SoundEffectBleep bleep]] and get out?!"
46	* TheCon: Most often, the "mark" is just some random passersby rather than anyone specific. Although on some occasions they center a scenario on one specific person or group.
47	* CrazyPrepared: Justified. Whenever WWYD stages a scenario, they keep a security guy nearby to keep the actors safe, and they inform emergency services ahead of time just in case someone calls 911 (which people have).
48	* CreatorCameo: A variation. John Quiñones has stated numerous times that his parents were illegal immigrants, and he helped them work in the fields picking food, so in the segment where a (real life) day laborer was denied service at a restaurant by a racist cashier (an actor), he joined in to catch people's reactions.
49	* CrossDresser: A [[HalloweenEpisode Halloween]] scenario had a "mother" in a Staten Island costume store upset that her son wanted to be a Disney princess, or that her daughter wanted to be Spider-Man.
50	* CureYourGays: A few of the scenarios does this, such as the "Praying the Gay Away" one.
51	* DateRapeAverted:
52	** Very often, people don't let the drugged/drunk/intoxicated girl walk away with the obviously less-than-unsavory fellow who has made it apparent that he's got one thing on his mind.
53	** Somewhat averted in one scenario, in which a man spikes his date's drink in a crowded bar. Many people saw it, but only two confronted the guy straight up, while others only spoke up after the woman started to complain either of sudden illness or the drink's taste. Those people took action by telling her ''not'' to drink from her glass, buying her another drink, and/or giving advice not to drink something left unattended, but never saying that he spiked it.
54	** Fully averted in one scenario where someone witnessed the spiking but said nothing. When the actress started to feign feeling ill, and the actor playing the guy wanted to take her to his home, [[TheCon the mark]] got up and left (only telling another patron the guy was "cheating" before leaving). When the camera crew caught up to the mark, he refused to speak to them.
55	** The gender flipped version is shown as well. Men were quite reluctant to inform a man if a woman put something in his drink.
56	** One episode featured a teenage boy borrowing a roofie from a friend in order to use it on a girl. There were several interventions, and in one instance, a nearby off-duty police officer flashed his badge and gave the lad a stern warning.
57	* DeconstructedTrope: Sometimes WWYD will cite a popular movie or TV show's use of a certain situation, then will go on to show how said situation would be in the real world.
58	* DeliberatelyCuteChild: Two segments had a young boy and girl sell hideously overpriced lemonade (in New Jersey) and sweet tea (in Texas). A large cup with a straw, napkin, and umbrella was ''30 dollars''. Thankfully even ChildrenAreInnocent was averted, with most of the marks calling the kids out on how unfair the pricing was and when the girl actor tried to use a "times are tough" excuse the mark called her out. The pair made 59 dollars (It was all given back). She even made twenty due to how sweet she was being.
59	* DistractedByTheSexy:
60	** One episode dealt with bike thefts. A Caucasian male in his twenties was stopped. An African-American male in his twenties was stopped. A buxom blonde in her twenties ''got [[IHaveBoobsYouMustObey guys to help her]]''.
61	** A businessman left his car, which contained an estimated $10,000 worth of goods, unlocked and unattended. A young Caucasian male got stopped a lot of the time, a young African-American male got stopped ''all'' of the time, but a pretty blonde was even able to call over guys to help her carry the expensive stuff out of the car.
62	* DomesticAbuse: Showing the different kinds of domestic violence is the show's most used scenario.
63	* DoubleStandardAbuseFemaleOnMale: [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LlFAd4YdQks A scary straight version happens]]. When the man was abusing the woman, people were quick to step in and stop him. When the woman abused the man, it took hours of filming and over 150 people passed by (''including a police officer'') before someone stepped in and called the cops. Several people, when asked why they failed to intervene, said they assumed that the man must have done something to deserve it, and freely admitted that had the positions been reversed, they would have intervened. One woman was actually cheering on the abuser and saw her as a "role model."
64	* DoubleStandardRapeFemaleOnFemale: In one episode, bystanders react much less strongly to women putting other women through a sexually humiliating hazing ritual than to men putting other men through a sexually humiliating hazing ritual.
65	* {{Eagleland}}: For one scenario, they placed a Type 2 couple in France to test the [[FrenchJerk snooty French stereotype]]. Aside from some eyerolls and ugly American comments, no French people spoke up--instead, it was [[StopBeingStereotypical another American tourist that called them out]]. Some of the French people even found them funny instead of obnoxious.
66	* EarlyInstallmentWeirdness: Back when the show was a recurring ''Primetime'' special, a few WWYD scenarios seemed a ''lot'' more like straight-up {{Candid Camera Prank}}s. Take, for instance, the [[http://abcnews.go.com/WhatWouldYouDo/story?id=6629295&page=1 Five Millionth Customer]] scenario, or the [[http://abcnews.go.com/WhatWouldYouDo/story?id=6556024&page=1 Rude American Tourists]] scenario.
67	* EducationMama: One scenario was focused around a mother publicly berating her child for getting an A minus in a diner. The other patrons around them were put off by this. The only person to come to the defense of the mother was an older Asian man who advised the other patrons to stay out of it since they didn't know the circumstances that led to the mother's actions.
68	* {{Ephebophile}}: Some of the scenarios involve an adult preying on teenagers.
69	* EventTitle: The title refers to the different scenarios the show invokes.
70	* EverythingIsBigInTexas:
71	** The show had one episode in which they took a bunch of previous scenarios and watched how they played out in the [[UsefulNotes/DFWMetroplex Dallas area]] to see if they would turn out differently from in the North. Yes, a few [[TheCon mark]] reactions had conservative and faith-based bents, and nearly all reactions followed the "be good to others" {{Aesop}} that WWYD enjoys showcasing. The show noted that more Texans spoke out against the waitress berating gay parents than people did in the North. One guy even invoked and paraphrased Jesus to the waitress, telling her, "Don't judge."
72	** The episode's IdiosyncraticWipes fully invoked Texas stereotypes, including cattle brands, star-shaped tin sheriff badges, cowboy boots, and Western-style fonts.
73	* FakePregnancy: Examined the implications of this trope in one episode. Onlookers watch as a young woman buys a positive pregnancy test from a pregnant woman, and then uses it to pressure her boyfriend into marriage, saying how excited she is to start a family with him.
74	* FourthWallMailSlot: The WWYD crew did a special that was based on viewer submissions, entitled ''How Would You Do It?''.
75	* FromTheMouthsOfBabes: One scenario involves the young actors saying [[ClusterFBomb the F word]] and FlippingTheBird.
76	* GenderFlip: Often the show will replay similar scenarios but change the genders of the actors.
77	* GenreSavvy: Some marks have seen the show and ponder on the possibility that the scenario they're seeing are indeed staged.
78	* GirlOnGirlIsHot: Played with during one scenario featuring gay couples kissing in public. When two guys made out, there were abundant protests, including a 911 call and police response (the officer did not know the show had been cleared and got the informing call just as he approached the pair). When it was a female couple, however, there were some protests, but ''much'' less than with the guys, and a LOT more male staring. When a group of businessmen were questioned afterwards, they admitted that this trope came into play.
79	* GoldDigger:
80	** One episode had a twentysomething blonde girl canoodling with an elderly man in a bar. It was made quite obvious to the bar patrons that the girl was only in it for the money, and aside from a few odd stares, very few people spoke up.
81	** They repeated the scenario with a GenderFlip: young guy, old lady. Again, it got a few stares, but not really any straightforward intervening.
82	* GoodGirlsAvoidAbortion:
83	** One scenario has a family discussing this at a restaurant.
84	** In another, a teenage girl approaches patrons at a drugstore to ask if they'll buy her some Plan B, because she's too shy and/or embarrassed to do it herself.
85	** Another episode in Texas had a pregnant teenaged girl publicly mull over whether to get an abortion. All of the people who spoke up suggested she keep the baby.
86	* GuestStarPartyMember: Some episodes have celebrities joining John Quiñones in hosting duties. At times they even participate in the scenarios (usually the last one).
87	* HandsOffParenting: Some scenarios involve parents being lax or/and downright indifferent to their children.
88	* HeroicBystander: The show's raison d'être is to find these kind of people by staging conflicts near crowds and waiting for someone to step up.
89	* HollywoodAtheist: One controversial scenario involved one yelling at a family for praying in a public restaurant. Most of the marks in the scenario proceeded to point out that while they were entitled to their beliefs, so was the family in the restaurant and their attempts to berate them for disrupting their meal was far more disruptive than the family praying.
90	* HomelessHero: On [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WnOt1ZSp_tw a video]] showing if people will help those who collapsed on the street, the last woman who did so was mentioned as "sometimes homeless".
91	* HonorRelatedAbuse: One segment had a Muslim "family" go to a restaurant, with the father, mother, and one of the teenaged daughters dressed in traditional attire. The other "daughter" was berated by her "father" for wearing a denim mini skirt and a tank top, and he even said she was "dressed like a whore."
92	* HypocriticalHumor: The show's most popular segment (based on a viewer poll and ensuing special) had [[GirlPosse a group of girls]] bullying another one in a park near a busy walkway. Almost every woman who passed by chose to intervene and often made disparaging remarks about the girls doing the bullying that were as bad or worse than the girls had, sometimes using profanity (which the producers had told the actresses not to do so as not to allow that as an excuse for intervening).
93	* TheIllegal: In One segment, Quiñones brought in a number of Latino actors and actresses, portraying illegal day laborers that were berated and denied service because of their backgrounds. A number of people stood up for them, and since the cashier would not serve the laborers, [[LoopholeAbuse they bought an item for themselves, and gave it to them.]] A number of people agreed with the "cashier" that not only should he not serve them, but that the workers should go back to where they came from, including an African American man who stated that things were bad enough for the African-American community without having to compete for jobs against an ethnic group that was willing to work for lower wages. The latter changed his mind when he saw how badly the laborers were treated, and how some people failed to sympathize with people who were discriminated against simply because of their background.
94	* {{Improv}}: Aside from some background information and some general guidelines on how to act, the actors do the scenarios completely in improv.
95	%%* IncrediblyLamePun:
96	* InspirationallyDisadvantaged: Subverted (and then some) by a scenario on [[FourthWallMailSlot the episode based on viewer ideas]]. A wheelchair-bound woman, who sent the idea in, played herself in a Nyack, NY, supermarket. An actress approached her and gushingly lampshaded the trope, then went on to patronizingly do things for her that she was clearly capable of doing for herself, even wheeling her around at one point. All were things the woman said had happened to her. Most of the passersby reacted by telling the actress to calm down and back off.
97	* InsultComic: One scenario had a actual comic make repeated jokes at the expense of a man with a younger Asian wife (both WWYD actors) in a Manhattan comedy club in front of an audience mostly composed of tourists to see whether anyone would react. Some did, mostly in disgust; however one young group, mostly black or Hispanic, found it hysterically funny and were unapologetic about it, beyond not giving their names and letting the show blur their faces.
98	* IronicName: During the [[YouAreFat fat shaming episode]] in the Havana Club, one of the marks pretends to know the actress playing the victim, whose name is Santressia, so the actor playing antagonistic doorman would let her in. The doorman then makes sure if they really know each other and asks the bystander for the victim's name, and the bystander says "Lakisha". In Filipino, "Lakisha" is phonetic to "Laki siya", which means that/this person is big.
99	* {{Jerkass}}:
100	** For some scenarios, the actors have to play them to provoke reactions.
101	** For some scenarios, it's the marks who have the rude/offensive actions.
102	* {{Joisey}}: Many of the scenarios are shot in suburban New Jersey.
103	* KidsAreCruel: A few of the scenarios involve {{Jerkass}} children doing extreme KickTheDog moments (e.g bullying their nanny, parents, other children, extremely {{Spoiled Brat}}s, etc.)
104	* LampshadeHanging: Hilariously, more and more marks mention that the scenarios feel like that TV show called ''What Would You Do?''
105	* MalignedMixedMarriage: Some scenarios involve actors playing an interracial couple getting harassed by other actors.
106	* MamaBear: If the set-up involves a child in danger or distress, ''many'' female bystanders display a fierce maternal instinct. A great example is Renee Wood, one of the women in the [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hUrVfiYFwdk polygamist child bride scenario]], who swats the other actors aside and pulls the crying "victim" to safety.
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108	* MeanCharacterNiceActor: During TheReveal, it's not uncommon to see the mark be a little unnerved while shaking hands with the friendly actor who was a complete {{Jerkass}} just minutes ago.
109	* MetaCasting: The show often uses ActorSharedBackground to give RealitySubtext in their scenarios.
110	* MsFanservice: Invoked on several occasions in order to determine people's reactions.
111	** One segment involves how people would respond to someone stealing a bike that was chained to a stop sign. A white guy is given several nonchalant demands to stop. An actor portraying a black guy dressed in baggy clothes is loudly told to stop. When a hot girl tries to saw the chain off, several guys ''help her''.
112	* NiceToTheWaiter: The actors being mean to waiters, nannies, or supermarket checkout clerks with Down Syndrome tends to be a major BerserkButton for the marks.
113	* NobleDemon: The guy who was willing to join in some young people's harassment of a homeless man, but insisted they had to give him a dollar afterwards.
114	* OffTheWagon: Largely defied in a scenario where an actor went to a busy bar on Long Island, claiming to be celebrating his first year of sobriety and wanting to have just one drink. Almost everybody there pointedly refused to buy him one.
115	* OldFriendNewGender: Used in at least two episodes, featuring the bullying of a [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GI9b9d3txe8 transgender woman]] and a [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2RHvCdb9Wa8 transgender man]] by former acquaintances or classmates to see who will step in.
116	* OnceAnEpisode: In nearly every episode, there's always at least one person who ends up unintentionally [[LampshadeHanging lampshading]] a scenario by saying something along the lines of, "I feel like I'm on that show ''What Would You Do?'' right now!"
117	* PacManFever: They once tried to tackle the topic of 'girl gamers' in the gaming community. [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K1BldQmiV0M It's as cringe-y as anyone who is remotely knowledgeable on modern gaming would expect]]. Not only do the actors look like they walked straight out of TheEighties, some of the 'slang' internet insults they use were dated even in the [[TurnOfTheMillennium mid-2000s]].
118	* PaedoHunt: Some of the scenarios involve an adult male preying on a little girl.
119	* PantyThief: They set this one up in a laundromat, and had a male actor take panties from a WWYD actress' dryer -- and it ''seriously pissed off'' several laundromat patrons.
120	* PapaWolf: Men are just as likely to jump in and help girls in trouble as women are. In one scenario, a group of guys cornered and rushed an actor that they thought was kidnapping a girl.
121	* ParentalAbandonment: Many scenarios involve this. It goes from something like leaving children on a certain place for hours, or parents downright [[ScrewThisImOuttaHere giving up on their children on the spot]].
122	* ParentalFavoritism: This was done at a clothing store in Merrick, New York. It got quite a few emotional reactions from passersby, including an impassioned TheReasonYouSuckSpeech to the favoritist mother from a teacher moved to tears.
123	* ParentalMarriageVeto: Usually overlaps with the MalignedMixedMarriage scenarios above, but it varies from time to time. In one time it deals with different social status, [[UptownGirl specifically the man being of "lower class" (e.g a gas attendant)]]. Another has the parents not wanting their son to be with a plus-sized woman.
124	* PlayingDrunk: The actors do this with scenarios that deal with public drunkenness, and they do it ''very'' well.
125	* PrecisionFStrike: More often than not, people will drop F bombs while interceding in a tense situation.
126	** One scenario, inspired by the third-season ''Series/ModernFamily'' episode "Little Bo Bleep" ([[ProductPlacement which just coincidentally also runs on ABC]]) had a preschool-age girl very much like Lilly in the show (down to being the obviously-adopted Asian daughter of a white mother) innocently tell a stranger the new word (or, in some variations, gesture) she just learned from Mommy (who had just stepped away for a moment).
127	* {{Profiling}}: Has been done in numerous segments.
128	** Two memorable example include a saleswoman in a high-end store, played by a white actress, loudly and clearly telling a potential costumer, played by an African-American actress, to go away because she (the costumer) was planning to steal the merchandise. Another showed a number of people calling the police because a group of (African-American) young men were acting suspiciously. What were they doing that was so suspicious? Napping inside a car.
129	* RaceLift: ZigZagged:
130	** They'll run a scenario with a person/group of one race, then they'll run it again with a person/group of another, in order to see if reactions differ.
131	** Another variant is to make the person/group look poorer or richer than they had in a previous runthrough. It sometimes makes a difference -- passersby on a street in affluent Westchester County, NY, were critical and unforgiving of a woman who threw her squabbling children out of the car and left them behind when she smoked, wore drab, older clothes and drove a slightly beat up car; but when she and the kids were dressed stylishly and she drove a pricey SUV, no one seemed to care. On the other hand, people were more critical of someone who took money from a homeless person's plate to pay for a cup of coffee when they were dressed in nice suits and got out of a limo.
132	* RacistGrandma: In one scenario, a white man rejects his daughter's black boyfriend. An elderly woman speaks out in his favor. She even uses the term "colored” and ''refers to him as a "thing"''.
133	* RealityIsUnrealistic: As noted at DeconstructedTrope, above, many scenarios are taken from popular movies or TV shows, including some common tropes to show how they would play out in real life.
134	** This was lampshaded in one of the tensest segments on the show. The show traveled to South Padre Island, Texas, for Spring Break, had two of their younger actresses [[PlayingDrunk get fake-drunk]], and then gave the marks a chance to [[DateRapeAverted avert a potential date rape]]. In one instance, after they'd made the girls appear a little skankier, some guy sidled right up next to them at the bar and began trying to pick them up -- ''before'' the actor who was supposed to do that could start doing it. They told the actresses to just play it the way they were supposed to, then quickly shifted and told the actor to become the guy looking out for the girls, i.e. what the marks usually do.
135	** As the show went on, some marks have become GenreSavvy enough to ponder on the possibility that the scenarios they're seeing are staged. The show's constant use of Traci in particular backfired in one episode when a fan of the show recognized her.
136	* TheReasonYouSuckSpeech: The marks who ''do'' get involved often deliver scorching verbal beatdowns.
137	* RecognitionFailure: At times celebrity guests use disguise when participating in scenarios, but those who do not are still not recognized.
138	* RefugeInAudacity: At one point during the BrattyHalfPint scenario listed above, they had the actress playing their mother get up and leave the kids to take a phone call. One of the marks later {{lampshade}}d it, saying it was ''too'' ridiculous to believe.
139	* TheReveal: "Hi, I'm John Quiñones, and this has all been a part of a TV show called ''What Would You Do?''..."
140	* RippedFromTheHeadlines: Many scenarios have this. It was notable in an episode that had actors playing a polygamous family similar to those from the real life FLDS controversy in Texas.
141	* RousseauWasRight: The show likes to showcase when this trope is played straight, and people stick up for random strangers or perform acts of kindness for them, but it doesn't always happen. On at least one occasion, [[InvertedTrope an actor had to shift from aggressor to protector because a random person took the role before he could]].
142	* SecretTestOfCharacter: The show performs wide-scale versions of these in public places. The name itself points to this trope: "in this situation, ''what would you do''?"
143	* SlutShaming: In the episode where a teenage girl attempts to fill a birth control prescription. Everybody (including the actress playing the girl) agrees that she should just wait to have sex. The problem with this is that this sort of medication is prescribed for many things including bad cramps, PCOS, endometriosis, and ''acne''.
144	* SpecialGuest:
145	** Dr. Mehmet Oz appeared in one episode.
146	** Barbara Corcoran has appeared as herself, and a scenario in which the actors play prospective ''Series/WhoWantsToBeAMillionaire'' contestants who openly attempt to cheat on the entrance exam, host Meredith Vieira appeared as herself.
147	** Ashley Graham in the WeightWoe episode at the restaurant.
148	* SpinOff: ''[[http://www.mediabistro.com/tvnewser/abc-news-slates-new-primetime-hidden-camera-show-would-you-fall-for-that_b189166 Would You Fall For That?]]'', which is essentially the lighter, less serious version.
149	* TakeThatCritics: Quiñones started an episode by playing an angry voicemail from a female viewer in Arizona[[note]]regarding a previous segment that featured racial profiling against Latinos[[/note]], which told the reporter to "go back to Mexico." Quiñones, who is a ''seventh generation American citizen'', took the crew to a restaurant on the Arizona/Mexico border and recorded people coming to the defense of undercover actors (and an undercover Quiñones himself) being racially profiled by a Caucasian actor. At the end of the segment, they played back the voicemail and contrasted it with the footage of the Arizonan Good Samaritans, and the rhetoric seemed to convey a huge "screw you" to the naysayer.
150	* TeacherStudentRomance: Some of the scenarios have a teacher preying on a teenage student. Interestingly enough, the {{Sexy Mentor}}s are AlwaysFemale.
151	* TeensAreMonsters: WWYD has had quite a few scenarios revolving around [[KidsAreCruel kids]] and teens behaving in a horrible manner.
152	* TeenPregnancy: A recurring backdrop for scenarios such as a discussion about whether or abort and another with potential adopters.
153	* TitleDrop: Typically, Quiñones asks the question before introducing a segment, but it also happened in the middle of the aforementioned FourOneNineScam scenario:
154	-->'''[[TheCon The Mark]]:''' I can't tell you what to do, but I wouldn't do it...
155	-->'''Actress:''' What would you do?
156	* ToxicFriendInfluence: Some scenarios involve an individual being peer pressured into doing something very risky or outright bad.
157	* TheUnfairSex: This trope is made clear when WWYD {{Gender Flip}}s a scenario. For example, the show once staged a domestic spat in a park. When the man was the aggressor, several people called the police. The man just had to yell at the woman to elicit response. This very example is used to prop up a deconstruction of DoubleStandardAbuseFemaleOnMale; after the GenderFlip, most passersby chuckled and assumed he had it coming. The woman ended up ''beating the man over the head with a newspaper'', and even ''then'', the only people who did anything were a group of female joggers, who gave the woman a warning and secretly hung back to see if she followed. When she started hitting him again, they called the cops. Disturbingly, another woman called the abusive actress a [[DoubleStandard "role model" for women.]] And one of the men who ignored it was an off-duty cop.
158	* TroublingUnchildlikeBehavior: PlayedForLaughs in one scenario, which had a little girl swearing and FlippingTheBird, without knowing what they really mean.
159	* WeightWoe: Many episodes and scenarios deal with [[YouAreFat bullying the obese]].
160	* WhatYouAreInTheDark: The show will often interview various people off the street on what they would do in a certain situation, then contrast it to with what other people ''actually'' do when witnessing the situation on hidden camera.
161

Context Series / WhatWouldYouDo