This is a form of heartless
Practical Joke in which Alan thinks he has a date with Bonnie, but in reality it's a trick by Bonnie (or even Charlene) and the expected outcome is anything but a romantic interlude.
In the
Romantic Comedy genre, this will lead to Alan either temporarily breaking off with Bonnie (to make up later) or meeting Dorothy, who will be the actual romantic interest for the rest of the story.
In other comedies,
Hilarity Ensues. In the horror or mystery genres, this will often result in a
Deadly Prank, with the poor sap being set up either suffering an unexpectedly lethal fate, finding the prank less than amusing and coming back to take obsessive revenge, or both.
Common Types of the Prank Date:
1. Just not showing up, to see how long the poor sap will wait. Not the same thing as a
Doomed Appointment, where Bonnie did intend to show up, but died before making it. If Bonnie intended to show up and was otherwise late or unable, it's
Stood Up instead.
- In the Yu Yu Hakusho manga, Yusuke helps a girl who literally died waiting.
- The Simpsons: Bart does this to his teacher in one episode, as part of his impersonating a possible love interest.
- Happy Gilmore: Shooter getting Happy (the guy, not the emotion) out on "the ninth green at 9".
- Homestar Runner: In his blog, Strong Sad describes getting "joke invitations to online singles sites (which, of course, I don't discover are 'joke' invitations until after waiting around the proposed meeting location for 4-8 hours. but hey! you never know when one might turn out to be legit!)."
- In a series of Fox Trot comics, Paige receives letters from a "secret admirer". The letters are actually from her brother Peter, who leaves her out in the rain for hours while she waits for her nonexistent secret admirer to show up.
- The protagonists do this to Steve Buscemi's character in the film of Ghost World.
- The They Might Be Giants song "Four of Two" combines this with Rip Van Winkle.
- Happened to Arnold Rimmer in his backstory in one of the Red Dwarf novels.
2. It's a set-up for public humiliation.
- Carrie, or so she thought. (The date itself was benign, but the two antagonists made sure it went very wrong. So she responded.)
- The Toxic Avenger movie.
- Tyrion undergoes a particularly tragic version of this in A Song Of Ice And Fire.
- Josie's real high school prom in Never Been Kissed. The most popular boy in school asks her to prom - and throws eggs at her from the limo with his friends on the night.
- Backstory for the serial killer in National Lampoon's Class Reunion, an ex-Butt Monkey who'd been set up for a masked tryst by his high school class. With his twin sister.
- In one Batman comic, The Libby of Jonathan Crane's school once suckered him in to one of these so that her Jerk Jock boyfriend could ritually humiliate him. Of course, since Jonathan Crane later grew up to be the Scarecrow, this came back to bite them both on the ass very, very badly.
3. Like number 2 above, but for a group, the "dogfight," in which the objective is for each competitor to bring the least desirable date, so that the unlucky chosen can be humiliated both individually and en masse.
- Married With Children: Kelly Bundy undergoes this; the criterion is "unintelligent."
- The French movie Le Diner de Cons is centered on this, but without the "date" part.
- This was meant to be 3 and ended up a 2 in an Archie Comics bit in which Veronica went with a rich guy to his estate only to find out that she was the last item on the scavenger hunt list, the thing no one else had managed to get: a "townie." Archie and the gang got back at them for that one.
- Something like this happened in an episode of Cold Case in which several fat girls were brought to a house where they were made fun of by guys with pig masks. Can only vaguely recall, but there might have been a setup for a rape. This came to a very bad end when the girls set the house on fire and ran off, only one of them had gone back inside, ended up locked in a room, and died due to smoke inhalation while her best friend, the only boy at the party who hadn't wanted to see her humiliated, sat on the roof just outside the barred window, unable to help her but at least able to hear her last wishes.
- The movie Dogfight, in which Hollywood Homely Lily Taylor is the victim.
4. "Bait and Switch": The actual date is with someone else than Alan was led to believe, usually someone much less desirable. "Oh, you thought I was asking for me? No, I was asking for my cousin Melvoid."
- Used in the Scottish film Gregory's Girl, where Gregory asks out a girl he has been crushing on, only to find himself passed between three other girls instead. However, the last one actually loves him as well, so it all works out.
- May also be done for both datees, to push them toward each other. Someone did that to Jerry Steiner and Shelly in Parker Lewis Cant Lose.
- Happened to Moist in Dr. Horrible's Sing Along Blog. He and another character had a double date with Bait and Switch. Moist thought he was supposed to be paired up with Bait, but... yeah.
- Happened to Jacob in Genesis when he works 7 years to marry Rachel, and gets Leah instead, making this trope Older Than Feudalism.
5. The supposed date location is dangerous or embarrassing for Alice, because Bonnie wants to meet Alan in a
Gay Bar, Gay Bar, Gay Bar.
6. The "date" is actually a way of luring Alan to an isolated location for the purpose of robbery, murder, or rape (this last one is more likely to happen to Alanna than Alan).
- Corpse Bride was a victim of this.
- At least one of the Child ballads has this plot.
- In Hot Gimmick, Hatsumi is invited over to Azusa's apartment. Turns out he and his friends want to gang rape her. Luckily she's rescued.
- On Criminal Minds Garcia got the full romantic date treatment before her date brought her back home, almost kissed her, then turned to go... and turned back, said "I've been dreaming of this moment all night," and shot her.
- A CSI had a plot that involved luring a boy into a trap of all of the three examples (the bait lured him to a construction site with the prospect of having sex, then her friends proceeded to beat him to death with hammers before taking his wallet and split the money four ways.) The boy had originally been friends with the rest of the teenagers, who were all emo punks, but when he stoppped hanging out with them, got a job and starting doing better in school, the other teenagers were angry at his ditching them, figuring that he thought he was better than them.
- Well, if they were willing to kill and then rob him, he probably was better than them.
- Chloë attempts this with Ray in the movie In Bruges. Doesn't quite go according to plan.
- This happens to Montblanc from Final Fantasy Tactics Advance, who received a letter from Mogumi, a townsgirl. She asked him to go to Materiwood. As he gets there, it was actually Reaker, the leader of Clan Rose who are going to attack him.
