Playing With / Bad Liar

• Basic Trope: A character who is absolutely terrible at lying, typically in a humorous degree.
• Straight:
  • Laura catches her coworker Ethan eating her lunch. He tries to claim that Andy did it, despite the fact that Andy isn't even in the room.
  • Suspiciously Specific Denial
• Exaggerated:
  • Ethan is also holding the half-eaten sandwich in his hands, his face is incredibly messy, and Andy was fired last week. He still tries to deny it, and is very stubborn about it.
  • Ethan stutters nervously trying to come up with a lie, as if it wasn't obvious enough.
• Downplayed: Laura catches her coworker Ethan eating her lunch. He tells a half-convincing lie, and it takes Laura a few seconds to realize he's lying.
• Justified:
  • Ethan didn't think he was going to get caught, and so he forgot to prepare a lie.
  • Andy told Ethan to steal Laura's lunch For the Evulz.
• Inverted:
  • Ethan has a My God, What Have I Done? moment when Laura catches him eating her lunch, and grovels at her feet for forgiveness.
  • Ethan gets caught, but makes up an extremely convincing story that makes everyone believe Andy did it; it's never discovered that Ethan was the real lunch thief.
  • Cassandra Truth aka Bad Truth-Teller.
• Subverted:
  • Turns out that it's Not What It Looks Like, and Ethan really is innocent.
  • Ethan was making the truth sound as outlandish as possible.
• Double Subverted: That was another bad lie on his part.
• Parodied:
  • Ethan tries to claim that his cat ate Laura's lunch...and his cat magically appears and starts giving him a Death Glare.
  • Not only is Andy in the same room as Ethan, his hands are also filled with mayonnaise and repeatedly says he didn't do it even when nobody accused him of anything yet. Despite this, Ethan still manages to blow his cover.
• Zig-Zagged: Sometimes Ethan can lie very convincingly, other times he cannot; it depends on whether or not he was prepared.
• Averted: Ethan convinces Laura that he never stole her lunch.
• Enforced: Rule of Funny
• Lampshaded: "I-It was Andy!... Wait... Yeah, I did it." "You are a really bad liar, you know that?"
• Invoked: Ethan tries to make his lie sound as stupid as possible, knowing he has no way to explain himself.
• Exploited: Laura knew that Ethan is bad at lying, and that he'd never be able to resist eating what she brought for her lunch. She wants him to eat it, so she can force him to take her out to lunch, because he's attractive and she wants a lunch date with him.
  • Ethan pretends to be bad at lying because he has some kind of secret, and when asked about it, everyone believes whatever he says because he doesn't sound like his usual Bad Liar self.
• Defied: Ethan confesses to eating Laura's lunch.
• Discussed: Laura talks with other people in the office about how obvious it was that Ethan was lying about eating her lunch.
• Conversed: Two of Laura and Ethan's coworkers, who don't know about Laura's lunch, are chatting about how bad at lying Ethan is.
• Deconstructed:
  • Ethan becomes distrusted by his peers, who believe him to be a compulsive liar.
  • Laura rats Ethan out for stealing her lunch, and he gets fired.
• Reconstructed: Ethan learns how to lie more convincingly, as well as when he shouldn't even bother trying to lie his way out of things.
• Played For Laughs: Ethan's horrible lying skills become an inside joke among his coworkers.
• Played For Drama: Ethan gets fired... And nobody wants to hire him because of his compulsive lying. He ends up in poverty, and dies poor and alone.

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