Basic Trope: A previously comical moment is retconned as having been very serious.
- Straight: Bob trips up on a banana, not even necessarily a Banana Peel, for a gag. Later, it's revealed to have caused brain damage that made him comatose.
- Exaggerated: Bob trips up on a banana and falls onto a spiked ball nearby, causing him to jump up and hit his head on the fan. At first it's just a gag, but later it's revealed Bob died from it, and was a zombie this whole time, living in constant pain from the wounds he received but unable to say anything about it because he was under magic control.
- Downplayed:
- Bob slips on a banana for a gag. Later, Alice chews out Mike for not having disposed of it properly.
- Bob trips on a banana for a gag. Later, it's revealed that he still has a scar from that incident but it's not serious.
- Justified: Some supposedly wacky stunts really are dangerous.
- Inverted: Bob finds out he has cancer. At first, it's played completely seriously, but then they start playing it for Black Comedy and he recovers.
- Subverted: It appears as though Bob was put in a coma from tripping on the banana, but then it turns out he's just faking.
- Double Subverted: Then he trips on another banana. It's meant to be a joke, but the next episode reveals it put him in a coma for real this time.
- Parodied: Bob trips on a banana, which is played as a gag. However, it's later revealed that it gave him... a skinned knee. Bob cries and whines about how "everybody thought it was funny but I actually sustained an injury" but no one notices, so he gives up.
- Zig Zagged: The consequences of Bob's having tripped on a banana are depicted as funny or heartbreaking Depending on the Writer or the situation.
- Averted:
- There are no jokes.
- The jokes don't turn serious.
- Enforced: "All right, gang, we need to make this show more serious. What gags have we done that are actually quite deadly?"
- Lampshaded: "Who'd have thought bananas would be so dangerous?"
- Invoked: The Evil Overlord deliberately plants bananas all over the floor to make everyone think he's harmless before realizing that tripping over a banana is exceptionally deadly.
- Exploited: The villian knows that you can be horribly injured by slipping on a banana peel, but that because it's a well known cartoon trope, no one takes the possibility seriously. He thus takes steps to put banana peels unexpectedly in Bob's path and it pays off.
- Defied: "If I slip on that banana, I'll get badly hurt! I'll just step over it then."
- Discussed: "I don't care what Cerebus would do. Me slipping on a banana is not deadly."
- Conversed: "In shows where everything starts getting serious, nothing's allowed to be a joke anymore."
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