When the
Scary Surprise Party turns
really scary.
In TV-Land, parties are an occasion for
teenagers to go wild and
Spin the Bottle, families to play
Parlor Games, and
psychotic hosts to massacre their guests. Then there is the Surprise Party; and 90% of the time, surprise parties in fiction
will end in disaster. This might vary from something as small as
someone getting humiliated or
showing up naked, to something as threatening as
your city getting invaded by a giant monster. Can be
Played for Laughs or for
Drama.
A rare but not unknown variation is where the character trying to organize the party runs into some heavily abnormal trouble. In these cases the party itself will take place at the end of the episode/movie/chapter, and will be uneventful.
Examples:
Comic Books
Film
- Get Shorty pushes this to the funniest extreme. The scene starts with a long sequence of Mafia Boss Momo wheezing his way up a long flight of steps, and from the way it's filmed, the lack of music, and the plot thus far, the audience is naturally expected that he's going to get assassinated any minute. He opens the door to his darkened apartment, and suddenly the lights go on, revealing a surprise birthday party in his living room. Momo dies of a heart attack from the surprise.
- District 9: Wikus gets home: "I need to get to the toilet, quickly! Baby, listen I might've crapped in my pants— " "SURPRISE!"
- Cloverfield: Rob, one of the protagonists, gets a nice little going-away surprise party - and New York is promptly attacked by a massive creature bigger than the statue of liberty.
- The Room. Johnny's fiancee decides to come out with her affair with his best friend during the surprise birthday party she's throwing for him.
Live-Action TV
Webcomics
- In Shadowgirls, the Alpha Bitch sets up Becca to get gang-raped at the party. And the Deep Ones starts killing people
- Zii from Ménage à 3 relates in flash-back how she once set up a "surpise 6-some" for Yuki. It did not turn out as expected, and Zii found out that Yuki's Berserk Button is male genitalia.
- In Kevin & Kell, a surprise birthday party is how the gang find out Bruno (a wolf who's had some surgical modifications) has become a herbivore. The arc starts here
.
Western Animation
- Bobs Birthday is an animated short centered entirely around this with Bob's wife Margaret trying to throw a surprise party for him. She keeps trying to steer Bob into the living room where all the guests are hiding, but Bob's so preoccupied with other things that Margaret never gets a chance. It won the Best Animated Short Academy Award in 1994.
- And was even made into a TV series, later.
- The Venture Brothers - the Monarch enters his cocoon lair, the lights go on and everyone yells "Surprise!!!" He cries out "Crap! An ambush!" and kills a minion with a poison dart missile before he realizes what's going on.
