Basic Trope: What they call death/murder/execution by another name.
- Straight: The mob boss tells his minions to "take care" of Bob. They immediately set out to kill him.
- Exaggerated: No-one ever directly says they're going to kill anyone: they always use a new term such as "take out the trash" or "send you to bed."
- Downplayed: The euphemism is also fairly brutal, ex. "give him last rites" or "this is pest control."
- Justified: The mob boss wants Plausible Deniability if he's overheard or bugged.
- Inverted:
- Never Say "Die": instead of saying that her husband was killed, Alice says "Bob has... left the building."
- A murderous term used for something nice: ex. "killing his family" for taking Bob's kids to an amusement park.
- Subverted:
- The mob boss tells his minions to "take out the trash." Gilligan Cut to the minions...taking their rubbish out.
- The mob boss tells his minions that Bob is "taken care of". After the minions leave, Bob comes into view with a suitcase in his hand, the mob boss greets him, and sends him to his new house so that Bob can lay down low.
- Double Subverted:
- The Mob boss turns up on the scene, and yells at his minions for misinterpreting his instructions.
- It turns out they were waiting in position to ambush their target: the garbage truck driver.
- The minions' trash bags have their enemies' corpses inside.
- The trash bags have the living enemies inside, but they’re being sent to die in a trash compactor.
- Parodied:
- The mooks are too thick to get the mob bosses' euphemism, and he eventually has to explain it to them outright.
- Alice is a Psycho for Hire, and whenever the boss says something even slightly suspicious, he has to tell her not to start stabbing people.
- Zig Zagged:
- The mob boss has a...complex relationship with Bob, and the minions are not sure whether or not their boss actually wants Bob killed when he tells them to "take care of him."
- Averted:
- No euphemisms are used.
- "Take care of them" could mean anything from "keep him distracted", "buy him off", "threaten him into silence", or "kill him". The mob boss is flexible enough to allow his minions to use discretion - if anything, the less blood to shed and the fewer hoops to jump, the less unwanted attention they will attract, and the better for them.
- Enforced: "We can't say kill, this is a children's show! Showing organized crime is totally ok though."
- Lampshaded: "By 'take care of him,' you mean 'murder him,' right? I've made that mistake before."
- Invoked: The mob boss is asked by his minions to start using Euphemism specifically because it makes him more intimidating. He decides to humor them.
- Exploited: Alice is a Punch-Clock Villain and has a fond interest in Bob. When the mob boss tells her to "take Bob out", she reinterprets this as taking him out to dinner and plays dumb when the mob boss gets angry about her refusal.
- Defied:Mob Boss:
- "If I wanted you to kill him, I wouldn't tell you to 'take out the trash,' I'd tell you to fucking kill him! Now get cleaning already!"
- If you "take care" of him in that way, it will be you who will be "taken care" of.
- Discussed: "This is where you say "clean up the mess" and I shoot him the head and make' a mess, right?"
- Conversed: "On one hand, the Mob boss is not fooling anyone with that sentance, on the other hand, that's not something you want someone to be mistaken about.”
- Implied: We never hear exactly what the mob boss says, but we do hear Alice's response.Alice: His wording was vague, but my orders were clear.
- Played for Laughs: The mob boss says “Fly the alarm clock over the headphones with Bob and land him on Jupiter.” The minions respond “Okay, boss!” and kill Bob.
- Played For Drama: The story establishes early on that the mob boss utilizes "meet Mr. Mayhem" as a code word for "send Miller, my Psycho for Hire, to silence someone". So after Alice screws the pooch on a mission and we cut to the mob boss' office and he says to his secretary that Alice better "meet Mr. Mayhem by the end of the day"…
- Deconstructed: The mob boss tells two of his minions to "take care" of their accountant, Bob. The two promptly kill him and dispose of the body. However, the mob boss really did mean for them to take care of Bob, in the sense of keeping an eye on him; they're now down an accountant due to an easily-prevented misinterpretation, and the minions' continued prospects with the mob become pretty bleak when the boss finds out.
- Reconstructed: On the other hand, the police is never able to pin the murder on the mob boss. The most relentless Knight Templar of prosecutors tries, sure, but the boss' Amoral Attorney is able to convince all of the other cogs in the law enforcement machine that the Stupid Crooks who watch too many mob films are the ones to blame, so the boss walks. The boss then establishes with his remaining goons which allegedly harmless terms are the actual kill orders and which are not.
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