Basic Trope: Ice cream truck being used for villainous purposes.
- Straight: Harvey, a Psycho for Hire and long-time Professional Killer, drives an ice cream truck when going after his targets.
- Exaggerated:
- The local ice cream truck is driven by a murderous, cannibalistic clone of Hitler. Who dresses like a birthday clown.
- The city's ice cream company is a front for Scary Dogmatic Aliens, or something even worse.
- The truck is a Weaponized Car that could take on a battalion of tanks single-handedly and win. Its driver is no less dangerous... or insane.
- Downplayed: The ice cream man is a Jerkass who enjoys bullying and swindling the kids who buy ice cream from him.
- Justified:
- Harvey is driving the ice cream truck to appear inconspicuous.
- Harvey's preferred method of assassination, when he feels he can get away with it, is selling poisoned ice cream to his target.
- Inverted:
- Normally, Harvey is just an ordinary ice cream truck driver. But when duty calls, he dons his costume and becomes... The Frozen Avenger!
- Harvey and other operatives for The Mafia start noticing ice cream trucks in places they go to, but think It's Probably Nothing; unbeknownst to them, these trucks are packed with monitoring equipment and FBI Agents.
- Subverted: Some local kids tip the police off to a local ice cream man they saw acting suspicious, and think that he's a murderer. However, when he is investigated by the police, he is found innocent.
- Double Subverted: ...But only because they got the wrong ice cream man.
- Parodied:
- Harvey's ice cream truck has a jingle heavily reminiscent of "Psycho" Strings.
- Harvey drives a mafia themed ice cream truck, with his crime family's name on the side and weapons in clear view of the public.
- Zig Zagged: The story concerns a big city police department unraveling a conspiracy that has two sides—both of questionable morality—posing as ice cream men.
- Averted: No villain in the story uses ice cream truck as a cover.
- Enforced: The writer wanted to make the work more unsettling, so he made the ice cream man a villain.
- Lampshaded: "Here comes the ice cream man... go to Defcon 1, now!"
- Invoked: Harvey uses an ice cream truck as a cover because he wanted to be an ice cream man when he was a kid, but his mafia enforcer father put the kibosh on that.
- Exploited: Detective Elliot knows that Harvey's victims are found remarkably well preserved, so he focuses on anything with a fridge unit when he seeks Harvey's headquarters. Ice cream trucks are at the top of that list.
- Defied: The Don scoffs at Harvey's idea of using an ice cream truck to appear inconspicuous, and tells him that it'll make him even more conspicuous, if anything.
- Discussed: "I think I hear an ice cream truck, wanna go get some?" "No way, man. Those ice cream men are always drug dealers, mafia hitmen, or drug-dealing mafia hitmen."
- Conversed: "Why does the ice cream man always turn out to be a bad guy?" "Because that's unsettling and paranoia-inducing, if you have to ask me."
- Implied: A murder spree crime scene is shown with an eerie jingle playing in the background. At first, it looks like Soundtrack Dissonance... up until we hear the jingle coming from the ice cream truck.
- Deconstructed: Harvey is found and caught by the police when several witnesses point to an ice cream truck leaving the scene of a crime.
- Reconstructed: The city where Harvey lives and operates is known as "the ice cream truck capital of the world". He drives an ice cream truck to become a Needle in a Stack of Needles, and to create a fearsome legend: that he could be anyone among the city's ice cream men...
- Played For Laughs:
- Harvey takes his cover as an ice cream man so seriously he constantly tries to sell ice cream to his fellow mafia goons.
- The police start investigating ice cream men when they find a victim who died from having a giant popsicle jammed down his throat.
- Harvey is trying to carry out his dark purposes in time, but he does have to keep his cover and actually sell ice cream to kids who want it. And it's a very hot summer day today...
- Played For Drama:
- When Harvey sees the policemen coming after him, he takes several children who were buying ice cream from him hostage to ensure his escape.
- Harvey is a Hitman with a Heart torn between the loyalty to his employers and the fact he actually likes his job selling ice cream to kids.
- Played For Horror: Harvey is a serial killer who lures his victims into the back of his ice cream truck and hides their bodies in the freezer.
Back to Bad Humor Truck
