Basic Trope: An incident of friendly fire resulting from someone taking a friend by surprise.
- Straight: Alice is sneaking around the house in the dark with a baseball bat, thinking there's a burglar in the house. It's really her boyfriend Bob, who walks up to her in silence and taps her on the shoulder. *THWACK*.
- Exaggerated: Alice whirls around and beats Bob to a pulp in blind terror before she realises who it is.
- Downplayed: She turns around, bat raised, but notices who's there and stops herself before angrily rebuking him for scaring her.
- Justified:
- There really is a killer in the house, and Alice is right to be jumpy... but Bob can't risk calling out to her in case he alerts the bad guy.
- Alice has PTSD, and was in the middle of a traumatic flashback.
- Inverted: Alice sees a shape facing away from her, and sneaks up behind it. She tells the intruder to turn around slowly, and jumps out of her skin when she recognizes Bob.
- Subverted: Alice just stops herself hitting Bob, and sighs in relief. Cue Bob's Psychotic Smirk as he sticks a knife in her chest.
- Double Subverted: Alice just stops herself hitting Bob, and sighs in relief. Then she beats the shit out of him for giving her such a fright.
- Parodied: Alice has been on guard all night, keeping herself awake with Klatchian Coffee. Every single stimulus makes her freak out and run screaming at it, baseball bat swinging.
- Zig Zagged: Alice goes on a prolonged hunt through the dark house. She gets a Cat Scare, starts walking backwards straight towards a shadow in the corner, the shadow reaches out, and *POW*, she knocks out... Bob! That fool, why didn't he say something!? Oh, he was trying to be quiet because the killer is in there too - we can see him sneaking up on Alice as she tends to an unconscious Bob...
- Averted: Bob sees Alice on the prowl and wisely decides to call out to her across the room.
- Enforced: The writers need a believable reason for Alice to kill Bob, her one true love who's never done anything to hurt her.
- Lampshaded: "Don't Sneak Up on Me Like That!"
- Invoked:
- Bob knows that once Alice's Unstoppable Rage is in progress, the only thing that will snap her out of it is if she harms a friend, so he resolves to take the hit.
- Alice is a secret agent undercover as a wimpy civilian. Bob wants to blow her cover.
- Exploited: ???
- Defied:
- "Oh god, Alice is in Berserker Mode again. I'll go give her a Cooldown Hug." "Are you crazy? You'll get yourself killed!"
- Alice's elite martial arts training actually teaches her to have better situational awareness than most people; even if someone were able to sneak up without her noticing, she'd be able to properly assess the threat before attacking
- Discussed: [Alice feels a hand on her shoulder] "PleasebeBob, pleasebeBob, pleasebeBob..."
- Conversed: "Oh, don't walk up behind her, you idiot!"
- Deconstructed: Alice's overly sensitive reflexes causes her to retaliate towards anyone who so much as breezes past her from any direction, even if they had absolutely no intentions of attacking her, and she either ends up in jail for unjustifiable self-defense or put into an institution to subjugate her reflexes and restrained with a straightjacket.
- Reconstructed: Hearing strange noises in the dead of the night means that Alice has a right to be on her guard. Once she sees Bob she is able to restrain herself even if she is angry at him for showing up without warning.
- Played For Laughs: Alice is playing Red Light Green Light. Despite knowing the rules perfectly well, her reflexes take over whenever anyone taps her on the shoulder, and before long no-one wants to sneak up on her.
- Played For Drama: Alice ends up dealing Bob a fatal blow when he surprises her, leading to a severe My God, What Have I Done? reaction that send her past the Despair Event Horizon.
AAAH! Oh, it's you! Don't Sneak Up on Me Like That!
