Basic Trope: A character "volunteers" for something against his or her will.
- Straight: Alice and Bob are "volunteered" for a dangerous or humiliating job by their boss Charlie.
- Exaggerated: Alice and Bob get volunteered for something that is patently illegal, suicidal, or just plain nuts.
- Downplayed: When Charlie asks for three volunteers, no one raises their hands, so he assigns Alice, Bob, and David to the task.
- Justified:
- No one is willing to do the job Charlie has asked them to do (mainly because it is dangerous), but somebody has to do it.
- Due to a technicality, Charlie can't legally order his subordinates to do the job, but it needs to get done, so Charlie has them "volunteer" for it.
- Inverted: Alice and Bob volunteer Charlie to do the job.
- Subverted:
- Charlie the boss needs to assign a difficult job to his team and he thinks nobody will be too keen on it. However, when he brings it up, Alice and Bob see it as a challenge and enthusiastically want to do the job.
- Alice and Bob are not volunteered. Instead, Charlie charges Dorothy with the task of doing the job.
- Double Subverted: ...However, Dorothy needs assistants to actually do the job, so Alice and Bob are dragged along with her.
- Parodied: Bob does everything he can to avoid being volunteered for the job or activity. He gets slipped up and is volunteered any ways.
- Zig Zagged: ???
- Averted: Alice and Bob volunteer for the job out of their own free will.
- Enforced: ???
- Lampshaded: "Just once, I'd like to 'volunteer' for something and have it actually be voluntary."
- Invoked: ???
- Exploited: ???
- Defied: Alice and Bob sense that their boss Charlie wants to assign them on an unpleasant job. They promptly find a different thing to do, supervised by Charlie's superior. Charlie then tells his team that he needs volunteers, anyone but Alice and Bob who are already busy. Poor Dorothy is charged.
- Discussed: "No one's willing to do the job. I bet Charlie's going to 'volunteer' one of us to do it."
- Conversed: "Don't you just love it how [a boss character] from this comic strip always volunteers his team to do the most tedious jobs? And he always takes the credit for their work. What a guy!"
