Basic Trope: A character wants to know something from another character, but the other character isn't having it.
- Straight: Alice wants to know what Charlie did to Bob. Charlie doesn't answer her, no matter what Alice does.
- Exaggerated: When Charlie does talk, his story changes every time.
- Downplayed: Charlie's recountings are vague and while providing valuable information.
- Charlie is paranoid that he would get railroaded and only agrees to testify if he is given ironclad immunity. After much delay going back and forth when his demands are met he proves pedantically honest. Alice berates him over the slowdown of the murder case. Charlie responds that is exactly why he didn't want to be used to provide a quick, easy, and wrong resolution as a scapegoat like a previous high profile case from the same department.
- Justified:
- The event in question happened more then twenty years ago, and Charlie has difficulty remembering.
- Alice has insulted Charlie in some way, and he is not ready to forgive her yet.
- It has been imposed upon Charlie by some outside force not to provide help to Alice. Reason can include Charlie having been ordered, bribed, intimated/blackmailed, or even brainwashed/mind-controlled into refusing to help her.
- At the time Alice is asking about, Charlie was having sex with David's wife Evelyn. For obvious reasons, he doesn't want to admit to this.
- Charlie has genuine reasons to believe that Alice is a Dirty Cop or is untrustworthy and likely to use his testimony to harm him or someone else. Therefore, he decides that remaining tight-lipped is the Lesser of Two Evils.
- Inverted:
- Alice is the one being unhelpful, with long pauses while she thinks of questions to ask Charlie, and is in general not very assertive. Charlie tries to keep her on track, because the sooner she does the sooner he can leave the cold, cramped interrogation room.
- Charlie is being "too helpful". After all, only a guilty person would expect to be suspected.
- Subverted: Alice would have been killed if she knew the truth, thus, by keeping mum, Charlie was helping Alice.
- Double Subverted: Then it turns out that that was just a lie he told Alice so that she'd leave him alone.
- Parodied: Alice wants to know what happened on last week's episode of Troper Tales...Charlie: You couldn't just look it on the internet and figure out for yourself?
Alice: Please, Charlie? Fictional lives are hanging in the balance!
Charlie: You're crazy. - Zig Zagged: Charlie switches between being helpful and unhelpful.
- Averted: Alice tells him flat out that if he tries to be difficult, it will be worse for him in the long run.
- Enforced: Charlie practices his responses for maximum frustration for Alice.
- Lampshaded: "I see what you're doing, Charlie. You're trying to make things difficult for me."
- Invoked: Alice is looking for a challenge, so she encourages Charlie to be unhelpful.
- Exploited: Alice pretends to think that Bob is guilty based on his unhelpfulness. Bob, eager to prove he's not, provides her with info.
- Defied: Alice intimidates Bob into telling her the truth.
- Discussed: "Wow, Charlie's really making things tough on Alice."
- Conversed: "You know a mystery's gonna screech to a halt when the perp makes things tough."
- Implied: Alice walks out of the interrogation room, looking completely frazzled, while Bob looks smug.
- Deconstructed: Alice doesn't trust Charlie to give her the information so she just starts to mind control him and force him to reveal his knowledge, removing his free will from the equation.
- Reconstructed: Bob starts giving Alice trouble for doing this clearly terrible action against Charlie and creates a new adversary for her to deal with when it comes to the questioning of information.
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