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Narrative
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alt title(s): Subverted; Subversion In other words, the story does not trick the player, it is the player that tricks himself.
Tropes live in the minds of the audience. When a screenwriter successfully builds an expectation that a trope is coming, then wrests the situation into a very new shape, invalidating the expectation and surprising the viewer, you have a Subverted Trope.
This is one method of leveraging a trope to give a story texture. It certainly isn't the only way.
A subversion has two mandatory segments. First, the expectation is set up that something we have seen plenty of times before is coming, then that set-up is paid off with something else. The set-up is a trope. The "something else" is the subversion. It is a deliberate act on the part of the characters, as though they are expecting the trope.
To put this another way, a trope of the form "X are often Y" is not subverted by every X you can think of that isn't Y. If someone is murdered and there's a butler around, but he didn't do it, that's not automatically a subversion of The Butler Did It. But if the writer makes it look like a typical example of The Butler Did It, then reveals he didn't, that's a subversion.
Conclusion: when posting examples, remember that just not doing a trope isn't the same thing as subverting it.
Bear in mind that, just as Tropes Are Not Bad, subversions are not automatically good, or witty, or clever, or original; conversely, don't hesitate to add a subversion (that's actually there) just because you think the work is inane and stupid.
Meta Trope Intro compares this with many other ways that a trope can be used.
See also Discredited Trope, Dead Horse Trope, Double Subversion.
ExamplesWestern Animation
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