Basic Trope: A character's ringtone is about something that embarrasses them or is inappropriate to the situation.
- Straight:
- Bob blushes and exits the room when his ringtone goes off in the middle of training, revealing that it's a disco song.
- Bob is at church when his phone starts blasting AC/DC's "Highway to Hell".
- Bob is trying his best to appear cultured. Then his ringtone goes off, and it's a crappy pop song about butts.
- Exaggerated:
- Bob and the rest of the True Companions all get embarrassed by their ringtones for various reasons.
- Bob is at a funeral when his phone starts blasting AC/DC's "Highway to Hell".
- Bob is attending a memorial for Emperor Evulz's victims when his ringtone goes off, revealing that it is Evulz's Villain Song.
- Bob (a successful businessman and humanitarian) is getting an award received through his anti-racism work, simulcasted on TV and Internet, when his cell phone goes off and it's an old hip-hop song with the singer yelling the N-word in a rapid-fire barrage that goes for way too long.
- Downplayed:
- Bob gets slightly red when his disco ringtone goes off.
- Bob is slightly embarrassed at the winding down ringtone reminding him that he forgot to charge the batteries. question
- Justified: Bob forgot to set his phone to silent. As for why his ringtone is disco/AC/DC? He just likes that kind of music.
- Inverted:
- Bob uses a badass song as his ringtone, so he just feels empowered when it goes off during training.
- Bob is a successful artist who uses his greatest hit as a ringtone, and smiles proudly whenever it goes off.
- Subverted: It turns out that Bob was embarrassed not by the ringtone, but by the fact that his phone went off at all — he was supposed to turn it off before the training started.
- Double Subverted:
- Doesn't stop the ringtone from being embarrassing on it's own.
- He will have plenty of reason to find it embarrassing after somebody who (for whatever reason) really hates that ringtone makes him spit all of his teeth.
- Zig-Zagged: Bob's disco ringtone makes him blush when it goes off during training; Alice grins proudly at the sound of her ringtone and Charlie's ringtone is too basic to affect anyone either way.
- Parodied: Bob's embarrassing ringtone goes off in a disco, and the DJ hears the tone and sees Bob's embarrassment. No sooner does he whip up a quick song using the ringtone, as it can be easily searched and downloaded.
- Averted:
- Nobody has cell phones.
- Everyone just uses a mundane default ringtone.
- Enforced: It's a (questionable) form of musical Product Placement.
- Lampshaded: "A disco song as a ringtone? Really?"
- Invoked: Alice steals Bob's phone and changes his ringtone to a crappy disco song to embarrass him.
- Exploited: ???
- Defied: Bob decides to use the default ringtone to avoid revealing that he's a Disco Dan.
- Discussed: "Let's call Bob in the middle of his training. If we're lucky, he has a stupid ringtone that'll make it pretty embarrassing."
- Conversed: ???
- Played For Laughs: Bob's ringtone goes off at church. It's an Intercourse with You song, and everyone but Bob knows that it's about sex.
- Played For Drama:
- The other characters bully Bob for having a disco ringtone.
- It's pretty probable that the widower who insists he is moving on from his wife's death is lying if he kept "our song" as a ringtone.
- Played for Horror:
- Bob was trying to hide from a monster. His cell phone goes off. The monster tears Bob apart with "Spanish Flea" (a.k.a. "The Dating Game"'s theme) as background music.
- Bob's embarrassing ringtone is an SS marching song. You can guess what he does to people who hear it.
- Hey, hey, hey, Troper!Uh...heh heh...
