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The Take

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A combination of sight gags and reaction shots originally from silent film and vaudeville took to a predictably ridiculous extreme. Many overdramatic dating commotions involve these to show all the characters' reactions to the couple or the supposed-to-be couple.

    Sub-tropes 
  • Animal Reaction Shot: Even the dog reacts.
  • Aside Glance: Whatever happened is so outrageous, the character breaks the fourth wall to glance at the audience.
  • Delayed Reaction: A character takes their sweet time to realize what happened or its implications.
  • Double Take: The character ignores the event at first, only noticing it at second sight.
  • Eye Take: The take, but focusing on the character's eyes.
  • Face Fault: The event causes a character to faint in response.
  • Gasp!: The auditive equivalent of the take.
  • Glasses Pull: Putting on/pulling off glasses is the reaction to whatever just happened.
  • Love Can Make You Gonk: Seeing someone attractive deforms the character's face to Gonk levels.
  • People Fall Off Chairs: Whatever happened causes a sitting character to fail off their seat.
  • Reaction Shot: The action cuts away to show a character reacting to something, but there's no gag involved.
  • Shrug Take: The character merely shrugs off whatever they just witnessed.
  • Spit Take: The event makes a character violently spit out whatever they were drinking.
  • Wild Take: The cartoonish version of the take, when the character's anatomy is warped to reflect their reaction.

Takes often accompain either part of a One-Two Punchline. Compare and contrast with Distant Reaction Shot, when an event it's so massive it can be seen from space and far-away characters do a take after being impacted by its effects. See also Facepalm and Rimshot. Sudden changes to a Super-Deformed style might be used as takes of sorts.


Examples:

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    Anime & Manga 
  • Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba: Whenever the characters do comedic takes, their eyes shift from normal to Black Bead Eyes.
  • Higurashi: When They Cry: Just after everyone makes it safely through a particularly rough patch of the plot, one character is Tempting Fate by thinking just that. The Idiot Ball falls on her hands and she decides to become reckless and race on a hill with twisted roads, which make it difficult to notice pesky things such as incoming trucks. Someone else warns her but she dismisses them. When the truth quite literally hits her, there's a take showing the utter shock on her face. Poor gal.

    Comedy 

    Fan Works 
  • Truth and Consequences: One of Chat Noir's complaints about the newest recruit of Ladybug is said hero's utter lameness — being the type to write "Gorillaz fanfiction in his underwear". Chat Noir gets a "Who told you about that?!" for an answer, and both he and Ladybug stare bewildered at the new Peacock wielder. Joke and Receive, indeed.

    Films — Live-Action 
  • Ghostbusters: Afterlife: The first time Phoebe and Podcast test the franchise's iconic Proton Pack, the scene alternates between the proton ray obliterating the target (a handful of bottles on top of a discarded wheel tire) and the kids' awed faces. Phoebe also seems to have had a lot of fun firing the stuff.
  • The Master of Disguise: Fabbrizio Disguisey responds with a take after his son Pistachio's Verbal Tic makes him waxes the lyrics of a song. It's not his son's echolalia that surprises him but the fact Pistachio dares to choose a woman with a small butt despite his family's fetish.
  • Wild at Heart: When Sailor learns that Lula is pregnant with his child, his immediate reaction is to light up two cigarettes at once and then start to smoke them simultaneously. He then tries to play it cool and tells her in his most deadpan voice possible "It's okay by me, Peanut."

    Literature 
  • Worm: While trying to convince Parian to truly commit to the cause, Tattletale mentions engaging in intimate moments as part of said commitment. This prompts Parian to look at her as if she just grew a second head.
    Tattletale: Commitment on a mental level, P. That's more than just coming to meetings. You don't have to like us, but respect us, get to know us, trust us and maybe allow for the occasional intimate moment.
    [Parian's head snaps around to stare at Tattletale]

    Web Animation 
  • Mystery Skulls Animated: In "Freaking Out", the ghost has apparently been out of it for so long that he's forgotten a few of the basics of human life. While crossing the street, he actually stops and squints at something bright... namely, the oncoming headlights of an 18-wheeler. He promptly gets creamed by it once he realizes what's barreling down at him, complete with a classic Take reaction—it's one of the very few times in the series that the iconic head-bob actually stops cold.

    Web Videos 
  • Reaction videos, popular on Youtube, are essentially extended takes. Their format consists of one or more people watching some material (put in the B-Roll for the audience's benefit) and then pausing it when something stirs a strong emotion in them. This is followed by commenting on what they just saw/heard. On occasion, it's the opposite that prompts the pausing — something should have provoked a reaction but failed to do so. Reaction videos might include Reaction Shots but also any other of The Take's sub-tropes. On occasion, this type of video causes the reacted-at material to go viral (e.g., Jinjer).

    Western Animation 
  • Daria: Most of the time, the eponymous character defies this trope by rarely reacting to the other characters' antics. At most, she sports a subtle change of facial expression. The only time something is groundbreaking enough to prompt her to make a Double Take is in one episode of another cartoon. "Sporting Goods" from Beavis And Butthead, to be precise.
  • Garfield and Friends: In the episode "The Secrets Of The Animated Cartoon", Garfield mentions while speaking to the audience that he has a particular dislike of cartoon characters who overreact with Wild Takes (which, ironically, describes the hypochondriac Wade Duck on the same show pretty well). The Take itself is parodied — its ridiculously-Delayed Reaction variant, in particular. Book tells Bo that aliens disguised as bottles of dishwashing liquid are invading Earth. Months later, in the middle of winter, Bo's brain finally catches up and he flees in terror after screaming: "Dishwashing liquid?! Aw no, man!". Kind of an In-Universe, Played for Laughs version of Fridge Horror.
  • Tiny Toon Adventures: Invoked and parodied in the second segment of "Inside Plucky Duck", the tiny toons are receiving a lecture on Cartoon Wild Takes. Given that Bugs is teaching them the basic ones, Plucky Duck is unimpressed, so he attempts one of the complex techniques (taught by Daffy in an advanced class) as his grand finale for his pop quiz. The problem? Plucky gets stuck as a legged, giant eyeball after trying his hand at the Clampett Corneal Catastrophe.

    Meta 
  • A particular take is someone coming across something harmless that they find scary, like a rat or cockroach, and then screaming while grabbing at another person.


Alternative Title(s): Take

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