Basic Trope: Nobody wants to do the thing, but they all think everyone else does, and so they end up doing it anyway.
- Straight:
- Bob doesn't want to kill Charlie but he thinks that Alice and everyone else will hate him if he doesn't, so he commits to the idea. Alice, meanwhile, doesn't want to harm Charlie either, but seeing Bob appearing to be convinced that killing him is the only possible course of action, leads her to accepts the role of his accomplice in the crime.
- Nobody in the Troper family wanted to do a road trip to Abilene, but because none of them wanted to look like the bad apple by protesting, they all do anyway.
- Barely anyone in the country wants President Evil to become President, but they believe that he is so popular that he will win the election anyway. So they unanimously vote for him, believing that there is no other outcome possible.
- Exaggerated:
- Bob doesn't want to kill Charlie but peer pressure results in him deciding to blow up the planet Earth, killing everybody including himself.
- Nobody in the Troper family wanted to do a trip to Abilene all the way from Mars, especially because none of them could think of any damn good reason to do so, but none of them wanted to look bad by protesting, so they do. The trip docks them half a year's pay, Grandpa Bill dies en route, the rest of the family decides to never speak to each other again, and the trip turns out to be All for Nothing because they never figured out what to do when they made it to Abilene.
- President Evil isn't just voted into power over his own country because everyone thinks everyone else wanted him, he is also made the leader of the new One World Government by this reason.
- Logical Extreme: Bob's paranoia reaches absurd heights as he believes the entire world is clamoring for him to kill Charlie, leading to a spree of eliminating anyone named Charlie.
- Downplayed: Bob feels pressured to hurt Charlie instead of kill him.
- Justified:
- Bob believes that God is commanding him to kill Charlie and he feels the need to follow his religion.
- Bob believes he will be well paid even if it goes against his conscience.
- Many Troperians dislike President Evil, but don't dare to say so around his supporters, since many of his supporters are their friends and relatives. His real supporters, while in fact low in numbers, tend to be much more open about their beliefs.
- Inverted: Bob feels pressured "not to kill Charlie" and he decides to succumb to this pressure.
- Subverted:
- Bob doesn't want to kill Charlie but it turns out that everybody is ordering him to do it, resulting in him being forced to succumb to fear.
- Bob did want to kill Charlie much to everyone's horror and confusion.
- Double Subverted:
- When Bob goes through with killing Charlie, everybody is trying to deny that they had anything to do with it.
- Bob realized too late that he only wanted to hurt Charlie and that killing him wasn't what he wanted.
- Parodied: Bob is taken to trial and everyone keeps pointing fingers at each other until the judge gets flabbergasted when it turns out nobody wanted the murder to happen, so he arrests everybody involved for idiocy.
- Zig Zagged: Bob is conflicted as to whether he actually wanted to kill Charlie or not. Did he actually act on his unconscious desire to do it or did the pressure of his peers guide him to carry out the deed? Conversely, Alice and the others are wondering if any of them actually wanted this outcome to occur.
- Averted:
- Bob decides to speak up about it and the entire ordeal is averted.
- Everyone unanimously agrees to murder Charlie.
- Enforced:
- A writer points out that neither Bob, nor anyone, would have any reason to kill Charlie only to have these complaints overruled by the executives that want to create drama for drama's sake.
- Truth in Television; this is one of the ways propaganda can work.
- Lampshaded: "Wait, I didn't want to kill him, you didn't want to kill him, you didn't want to kill him...did ANYONE want to kill him?"
- Invoked:
- Evulz decides to screw with the telephone lines resulting in poor communication that results in Charlie getting killed.
- President Evil turns himself into a Villain with Good Publicity by effective propaganda. Since everyone has met quite a bunch of people who are enamored with Evil, they all vote for him, since they think he will win the election anyway and some votes against him will do nothing about that.
- Exploited: The Defense argues this point as grounds that because Bob has no motive, that he didn't actually kill Charlie and is innocent.
- Defied:
- "Listen, I'm not about to murder someone without being told to do it or not!"
- Bob stridently refuses to go with the flow if nothing else but so he can say he didn't.
- "I will still not vote for President Evil, even when everyone else does it! We live in a democracy!"
- Discussed: "All those idiots, and not one of them bothered to actually figure out if Charlie should die or not."
- Conversed: "Wait, you wanted him to die, right?" "What? No! Did you want him to die?" "Well, too late now."
- Implied: When the police officer asks who ordered Bob to kill Charlie, the spectators are all silent as they don't want to expose themselves as non-compliant.
- Played for Laughs: Bob's comical attempts to kill Charlie are repeatedly thwarted by hilarious mishaps, turning the murder plot into a slapstick comedy of errors.
- Played for Drama:
- The pressure for Bob to kill Charlie intensifies, resulting in a gripping exploration of morality and the consequences of societal expectations.
- President Evil uses the fact that everyone thinks most other citizens wanted him for President to destabilize the nation and turn it into his dictatorship.
- Played for Horror:
- Bob's internal struggle and the collective desire for violence create a chilling atmosphere of psychological horror.
- It's Charlie's bad luck that Bob happens to be not only be the dude who thinks everybody wanted Charlie dead, but also the one who thinks everybody wanted Charlie to die screaming.
- President Evil does what evil presidents always do and everybody who voted for him have only themselves to blame as they are dragged in front of the firing squad.
Back to Abilene Paradox, nobody wanted to come here anyway...most likely.
Here are the missing lines added to the previous list:
