Basic Trope: Someone is mistaken for dancing and becomes famous for it.
- Straight: Alice is doing a Potty Dance while music is playing and Bob sees her, thinks she is actually dancing, and starts a dance craze.
- Exaggerated:
- Alice is simply scratching her back in a way that doesn't look anything like dancing, and Bob still thinks it's a dance.
- Alice's dance craze is imitated by the entire world.
- While having a Potty Dance, Alice is hit by The Nudifier and transported onto a concert stage naked. She goes viral online and sparks a nudist dance craze.
- Downplayed:
- Alice is experiencing Squirrels in My Pants, and actually is dancing while it happens, but her most famous "move" is induced by the squirrels.
- Some people imitate Alice's "dancing", but only for a short period of time.
- Justified:
- Alice's potty dance is simply jumping from foot to foot, which is also a dance move.
- It's a very free-form dance scene, and her Potty Dance just happens to sync up with the music and its constituent 'dance steps' flow nicely into one another.
- Inverted: Alice is dancing, but is a bad dancer and Bob mistakes it for a potty dance.
- Subverted: She did need to go to the bathroom, but the dancing was an actual dance.
- Double Subverted: But she starts another dance craze due to shooing a fly in a dance-y sort of way.
- Parodied: Bob thinks Alice is dancing when she is just walking.
- Zig Zagged: Alice has a Potty Emergency and appears to do a Potty Dance; Bob starts a dance craze, but it turns out the dancing was unrelated to the potty emergency. She then shoos a fly in a dance-y way and Bob starts dancing in the same way, but that was a coincidence. However, a dance craze is started when Charlie scratches an itch in a dance-y way.
- Averted: Nobody mistakes a character's movements for dancing.
- Enforced: The writers want some humor, while trying to teach viewers how to dance.
- Lampshaded: "Does this really qualify as 'dancing'?"
- Invoked: Charlie blocks Alice's access to the bathrooms at a disco and invites Bob, who is The Ditz.
- Exploited: Alice is shooing the fly in a dance-y way, and everybody doing it makes the fly go away sooner.
- Defied: Alice never moves in an obscure way unless she is dancing.
- Discussed: "Remember when Alice was dancing like that 'cause she needed to go to the bathroom, but now it's an actual dance?"
- Conversed: "Don't those characters know what dancing is like?"
- Implied: Alice is seen potty dancing. The next day, people are dancing the same way as an actual dance.
- Deconstructed: Alice is embarrassed by being mistaken for dancing and this is keeping her from finding a bathroom, so she has a Potty Failure.
- Reconstructed: Alice doesn't really get embarrassed, and her dance is an efficient way of holding it in.
- Played for Laughs: Dances are named after actions like the Gotta Go Fandango, the Wah Shoo-Fly and the Itch Boogie.
- Played For Drama: Alice is suffering from a seizure attack and starts tumbling around the floor, but Bob thinks it's an exotic dancing style.
Mosey on back to Accidental Dance Craze. Oh, you were just swatting a fly?
