A form of Bait-and-Switch where a scene appears to be a homage to a scene from another work, or even a work of the same series, only to completely subvert itself for shock or humor. By its nature, it can also double as either a Call-Back or Shout-Out.
This is often employed in parodies and abridged works, making fun of scenes from the original work. It can remove all seriousness from the referenced scene, or add seriousness if you're going for a more dramatic effect.
For this trope to work, at least to the best results, the leading up to the bait and switch should stay seemingly faithful to how the original scene plays out, with the switch being the payoff for following along. This often results in Mood Whiplash.
Often overlaps with Deconstructive Parody due to often breaking down the tropes at play in the scene for laughs.
Compare Not His Sled, when it's an adaptation that does this rather than another work making a Shout-Out.
Contrast with Whole-Plot Reference which copies another story's plot beat by beat.
Examples:
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Anime & Manga
- In Tamagotchi! Yume Kira Dream episode 9, Himespetchi imagines herself on a large boat with Mametchi, copying the "I'm flying" scene from Titanic (1997). Unlike the actual Titanic events, however, Mametchi is able to steer the ship away from the iceberg before it can hit it.
Films — Animation
- A series of trailers for Lilo & Stitch featured famous Disney moments (the dance in Beauty and the Beast, Simba's presentation in The Lion King (1994), and "A Whole New World" in Aladdin) that played out as normal until Stitch shows up and sent them off the rails.
Films — Live-Action
- Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom has a Call-Back (technically a Call-Forward, since this movie takes place before Raiders) to one of the first movie's scenes, where Indy is confronted by a swordsman and he just shoots him dead. This time, he's faced with two swordsmen. Indy smirks and reaches for his gun... and realizes he doesn't have one anymore because Willie lost it back in Shanghai.
- Marvel Cinematic Universe: In Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Cap finds out that S.H.I.E.L.D. has been infiltrated by Hydra and, in one iconic scene, finds himself in an elevator full of Hydra agents. Of course this ends in a badass fight scene where Cap beats up everyone in the elevator and escapes. In Avengers: Endgame, Cap goes back in time to before Winter Soldier on a mission to retrieve Loki's Scepter. He tracks it down to an elevator, where it's in possession of the same Hydra agents from before. At first it seems like the fight will play out like before until Cap confidently declares "Hail HYDRA" and takes the scepter away without incident.
- Nope: After chimpanzee Gordy attacks and mauls the other members of the cast of Gordy's Home, he spots child actor Jupe hiding behind a table, looking at him through a tablecloth. Perhaps because Jupe is not looking Gordy directly in the eyes, the chimp doesn't attack him but extends a fist at him through the cloth to offer him a fist bump, which was an in-universe Signature Scene. It's also a Call-Back to an iconic image from E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial where Elliot and E.T. touch fingers. However, when Jupe and Gordy's fist touch, the chimp is shot dead.
- Seed of Chucky: In the climax of the film, Chucky goes after Glen, Tiffany, and Jennifer Tilly in the hospital. He slashes a hole in the wall with an axe, puts his face in it, and is about to say "Here's Johnny" from The Shining. All he said was "I can't think of a thing to say. Fuck it!"
- Star Wars: The Last Jedi manages a double whammy. Kylo Ren brings Rey before Supreme Leader Snoke, paralleling Return of the Jedi's confrontation between Darth Vader, Luke Skywalker, and Emperor Palpatine. Just like Darth Vader before him, Kylo Ren saves the young Jedi (Rey) by turning against his master (Snoke) at the last second. But while Vader made a genuine Heel–Face Turn and died of his injuries shortly after, Kylo is uninjured and rejects Rey's offer to return to the Light Side. Instead, Kylo tries to tempt Rey into joining the Dark Side and ruling at his side, which turns into a parallel of Vader and Luke's clash (and the reveal of Luke's true parentage) from The Empire Strikes Back. But while Vader demoralized Luke by revealing that he was Luke's father, Kylo demoralizes Rey by revealing that her parents were absolutely nobody important. Spoilers for Star Wars Episode IX
Live-Action TV
- Saturday Night Live:
- The "Farewell Mr. Bunting
" sketch parodies the heartwarming ending of Dead Poets Society, where the students stand up on their desks one by one in support of their recently fired teacher. Things take a turn for the morbid when one student stands too close to the ceiling fan, rendering the scene Bloody Hilarious.
- Similarly, another sketch subverts the ending of A Christmas Carol with Scrooge (Martin Short) asking a young boy to buy a goose for the Cratchit family, but accidentally tossing the coins into their eyes, shocking the Ghost of Christmas Present (Steve Martin) when he shows up to see how he's doing.
- The "Farewell Mr. Bunting
Music Videos
- "Manijak" by the Serbian music group "Moda Band" is a deliberate homage and Whole-Plot Reference to Miserable by Lit with the band singing for a Giant Woman while she lets them explore her body. Towards the end of the video, the woman picks up one of the guys, who reacts with shock. It seems like they are about to re-enact Miserable's infamous ending, but instead she just puts him and his bandmates one by one into a little heart-shaped box and closes the lid, clearly wanting to keep them as her little musicians forever instead of devouring them. Making this a rare homage derailment with a happier alternate ending than the original (at least for those on the band's side).
- Related to the "Manijak" example, the video it was homaging was in itself a homage. Miserable was inspired as a homage to Attack of the 50 Foot Woman. However that movie didn't end with Nancy eating a bunch of people.
Radio
- "The Game", a sketch on Saturday Night Fry, presents itself as a Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy homage, with the retired spy protagonist being called back to duty to save a troubled secret service. The punchline is that the organisation the characters actually work for is the BBC.
Theatre
- A Very Potter Musical:
- Inverted in the dragon selection scene — when the tournament champions have to choose the dragons they will be facing, every other contestant gets a harmless cartoon dragon, like The Reluctant Dragon or Figment the Imaginary Dragon, but Harry still manages to get the terrifying Hungarian Horntail.
- When Harry has to face the Hungarian Horntail, he stands in the middle of the field, raises his wand, and uses the Accio spell, just as the original Harry did in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire... but instead of his broomstick, he summoned a guitar to serenade the dragon into submission.
Video Games
- In The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind's Bloodmoon expansion, the Bjorn ice cave has a skeleton stuck hanging upside down from the ceiling with a sword out of reach below. Unlike Luke in The Empire Strikes Back, who used the force to retrieve his lightsaber and escape, this unlucky adventurer could not.
- Killer Instinct has Eyedol's own ending, which homages Blanka's ending in Street Fighter II. In said ending, Blanka's mother recognizes him and they reunite, the reunion itself being a heartwarming moment that also reveals Blanka's history origins. By contrast, Eyedol meets a human who claims to be his mother and everything lines up to be a homage... until Eyedol kills her.
- Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots: Snake and Liquid Ocelot recreate Liquid's iconic death scene from the first MGS, only for Liquid to reveal it's all just a big fake-out.
Liquid: FOX!....
Snake: —DIE....
[beat]
Liquid: Just kidding! - Touhou Koumakyou ~ the Embodiment of Scarlet Devil: During her path, Marisa asks Remilia how many humans she's sucked blood from, only for Remilia to respond by asking how many slices of bread Marisa's eaten in her life, mimicking a similar exchange between William Zeppeli and Dio Brando in JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Phantom Blood. This quickly gets turned on its head when Marisa responds, "Thirteen. I prefer Japanese food."
Web Animation
- How It Should Have Ended: The very nature of the series, making fun of and parodying movie endings, lends very well to this form of subversion.
- The Wizard of Oz: The Wicked Witch is suddenly and unceremoniously killed almost right at the start of the film during her famous line delivery to Dorothy.
Witch: I'll get you, my pretty, and your little dog t—!
[gets shot in the head]
Town Soldier: Woah, you just killed her! How is it so?! - Indiana Jones: Kingdom of the Crystal Skull: One of the first action sequences from the film, where Indy survives a nuclear test launch by hiding in a fridge, gets completely subverted when he comes out of the fridge burnt and horrifically mangled. Black Comedy at its finest.
Indy: I think I broke every bone in my BODY!!!
- The Wizard of Oz: The Wicked Witch is suddenly and unceremoniously killed almost right at the start of the film during her famous line delivery to Dorothy.
- In season fifteen of Red vs. Blue, after reporter Dylan Andrews finally tracks down the planet the Red and Blues have been hiding on, there is an encounter between her and Caboose that homages the ending of The Force Awakens that abruptly ends when Caboose freaks out at her appearance and falls off the cliff.
- Team Service Announcement: "Pocket Medic" plays out at first like a loose homage to "Meet the Medic"note , including having all the same classes present as the original. Except this time, the Medic completely ignores all his injured teammates and instead rushes into battle with a Heavy, only for both to get blown up in seconds. The point illustrated is that Medics need to be there to help everyone, not focus on a single teammate the whole game.
Webcomics
- In cool and new web comic, Dadd causes the ectobiology that creates the player characters in place of John in the uncorrupted timeline. o, the narrator, expects him to reenact [S] John: Reunite with your loving wife and daughter. (itself a parody of the end of Con Air) with the babies, but Dadd's unresponsiveness and lack of knowledge of Con Air frustrates o instead.
- Housepets!: The early arc Thematic Arc of Questionable Quality featured a trilogy of homages to Calvin and Hobbes, most of which ran smoothly. The exception is 'Philosophical Quandries Must Wait', which prevented the classic 'riding a wagon down a hill' gag by reason of Babylon Gardens not having any hills steep enough to ride down.
- Megan Kearney's Beauty and the Beast: There is a scene where Beast and Beauty are both dressed up and he takes her to a huge ballroom. One would expect that they would replay the famous Dance of Romance of the Disney film and Beauty even lampshades that, but Beast deconstructs it all in a humorous tone.
Beauty: Are you taking me to dance, Milord?
Beast: Ha! Would that I could! Walking upright is enough of a challenge for me, thank you.
Web Videos
- Dragon Ball Z Abridged: The series milks a lot of humor out of subverting classic moments from Dragon Ball Z.
- Vegeta's famous scouter scenenote plays straight up until he drops the line about Goku's power level, mistaking Goku as a much weaker opponent, which makes the whole moment an anticlimax to the original. Nappa then hilariously gets his ass handed to him rushing Goku, only for Vegeta to realize the reading on his scouter was wrong.
Vegeta: Wait a minute! Nappa!!
Nappa: [beaten] WHAT?!!...
Vegeta: My scouter was upside down; it's over nine thousand! [crushes scouter nonchalantly] Rah... - The series makes a Running Gag out of shutting down filler arcs before they can happen, often by killing the characters involved. For example: Garlic Jr. shows up briefly to signify the beginning of his arc, only for him and his goons to be horrifically consumed by Mr. Popo, thus letting the showrunners skip the arc entirely.
- Vegeta's famous scouter scenenote plays straight up until he drops the line about Goku's power level, mistaking Goku as a much weaker opponent, which makes the whole moment an anticlimax to the original. Nappa then hilariously gets his ass handed to him rushing Goku, only for Vegeta to realize the reading on his scouter was wrong.
- Party Crashers: During a round of Animation in their second Gartic Phone video, Sophist decides to recreate a moment from their first collaboration with Magic the Noah, where he casts Thunder Spell on a little girl, with Nick continuing it in his drawing. Brent on the the other hand decides to derail it by having the little girl deflect the attack with a shield, with Vernias then finishing it off with the reflected spell killing Sophist instead.
- Sword Art Online Abridged: The scene of Kayaba revealing how he no longer remembers his motive from the original is at first played straight... until Kirito points out how stupid it actually is, to which Kayaba reveals he's just playing with him.
Kayaba: You know, it's funny... I don't even remember anymore...
Kirito: Are you FUCKING SERIOUS?!
Kayaba: Haha! Oh my god, no! Could you imagine? Two years and that's what I give you?! MAN, that'd be unsatisfying! - X in X Minutes:
- Phantom Blood in 5½ Minutes: The memetic "How Many Breads" scene from at the original is made fun of, being framed as Dio flubbing his lines in the script.
Jonathan: Dio! How many souls have you consumed!!?
Dio: How many breads have you eaten in your life?
Jonathan: I— Hold on, What?...
Dio: Oh god — oh, how embarrassing — you know, I was gonna say "how much bread". But then I thought "how many slices" of bread, then just "how many breads". Heh, kinda funny, right?
Jonathan: Oh yeah! No, don't worry about it; I do it all the time. - My Hero Academia in 5 Minutes: The iconic moment of Midoriya asking for All Might's opinion on the former becoming a hero is subverted.note
Midoriya: All-Might, is there any way I could be a superhero? Even though I don't have quirk?!note
All Might: Yes.
Midoriya: Wait, really? - Stardust Crusaders [Part 2] In 9 Minutes:
- DIO and Jotaro play out the moment from the original where they slowly approach each other to do battle, only this time DIO cuts off Jotaro before he finishes his line.
DIO: Oh? You're approaching me? Instead of running away, you're coming right to me!
Jotaro: I have to move closer if I'm gonna kick your—
[DIO tosses a bunch of knives into Jotaro]
Jotaro: — ass... [collapses] - Like the original final battle, DIO closes in on Jotaro to finish him off, which is supposed to be followed up by their final clash and DIO's death. Before any of that can happen, Iggy jumps out of nowhere onto DIO's face and farts on him. A few seconds later, DIO's head explodes.
- DIO and Jotaro play out the moment from the original where they slowly approach each other to do battle, only this time DIO cuts off Jotaro before he finishes his line.
- Phantom Blood in 5½ Minutes: The memetic "How Many Breads" scene from at the original is made fun of, being framed as Dio flubbing his lines in the script.
Western Animation
- American Dad!: Stan recreates the famous gun barrel shot standard to Bond films and then gets shot for real, expressing shock that it was a gun, as he always thought it was an eyeball.
- Family Guy:
- There is an infamous scene where Peter dives into a "sea" of golden coins like Scrooge McDuck. Instead of swimming, he crashes on the metal, getting all injured and with an exposed fracture in his leg.
Peter: AAAAAAH! It's not a liquid! It's a great many pieces of solid matter that form a solid floor-like surface! Aaaaaah!
- One gag presents a typical Looney Tunes cartoon of Elmer hunting Bugs. After the duo deliver their respective catchphrases, Elmer successfully shoots Bugs in the stomach, causing him to gasp in shock and pain until Elmer breaks his neck.
- There is an infamous scene where Peter dives into a "sea" of golden coins like Scrooge McDuck. Instead of swimming, he crashes on the metal, getting all injured and with an exposed fracture in his leg.
- Futurama: The third and final segment of "Anthology of Interest II" is a Whole-Plot Reference to The Wizard of Oz, with Leela and the Planet Express crew as stand-ins for Dorothy and the film cast. At the very end though, where Leela's supposed to wish to go home, she instead wishes to become the new Wicked Witch and turns the rest of the cast into toads (until Zoidberg splashes her with overflown toilet water and she melts).
- The Simpsons:
- Treehouse of Horror:
- The "Treehouse of Horror III" segment "King Homer", a parody of King Kong, re-creates the scene of the ape (this time played by Homer) climbing the Empire State Building with Marge in hand... And then he gives up a couple of stories up after getting too winded. Marge points out he should eat more vegetables and fewer people.
- In the "Treehouse of Horror V" segment "The Shinning", a parody of The Shining, Marge sees Homer has written something on a typewriter. Though instead of "All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy" like Jack Torrance wrote, it simply says "Feelin' fine", which allays Marge's fears. That is, till the lightning flashes, revealing Homer had written "No TV and no beer make Homer go crazy" all over the walls.
- In the "Treehouse of Horror XII" segment "Night of the Dolphin", Lisa frees a dolphin from a Sea World knock-off, in the process, recreating the moment from Free Willy of the whale leaping over the boy. Only in this one, Lisa's face gets smacked by the tail.
- "When You Dish Upon a Star" opens with a Yogi Bear parody, with Homer and Bart as Yogi and Boo Boo, respectively, in the act of picnic basket theft. When confronted by Ned Flanders as Ranger Smith, Homer straight-up mauls him like a real bear would.
- The Free Willy leap is also parodied on "The Boy Who Knew Too Much". Homer is watching the director's cut on HBO, where Willy falls on top of the kid and crushes him.
- In "The Frying Game", Homer is getting sentenced to death, and as he's being taken to the electric chair, he passes by a prisoner that resembles John Coffey from The Green Mile, who says "Give me your hands, boss...". Homer obliges, but instead of healing him, Coffey starts strangling him, yelling "I'll kill you! I killed them other people! I'm gonna kill you, too!". After the guards break up the encounter, Coffey looks at his pet mouse, asking "You want some cornbread, Mr. Jingles? Well, you can forget it, because I'm gonna kill you, too!".
- Treehouse of Horror:
- In The Venture Brothers episode Pinstripes and Poltergeists, Henchman 21, still a pop-culture nerd despite his taking a level in badass, dresses in a Jedi robe to confront episode villain Monstroso who attempted to double cross 21's boss, the Monarch. The exchange goes down almost exactly like Luke confronting Jabba in Return of the Jedi, complete with 21 attempting a Jedi Mind Trick. It fails, just like in the movie, however, just as Monstroso tries to summon his henchmen and attack 21, new ally Brock Samson enters the room. The fight happens offscreen during the credits, but considering that Brock is shown splatted with blood eating breakfast the next morning, the pair soundly defeated Monstroso, unlike the movie.
