Follow TV Tropes

Following

Playing With / I Broke a Nail

Go To

Basic Trope: A character (almost Always Female) breaks a nail and gets really upset about it.

  • Straight: Alice breaks her nail and starts crying.
  • Exaggerated: Alice calls herself an ambulance despite the "break" being more of a "chip" or a "crack."
  • Downplayed: Alice says, "Ow!"
  • Justified:
    • Breaking a nail, while not a serious injury, really does hurt.
    • The breaking ruptured her nailbed, which tends to be a more serious condition than just breaking a nail.
    • Alice peeled her nail off down to the quick.
    • Alice just spent a lot of money on a manicure, which is now ruined.
    • Alice was going for the "World's Longest Fingernails" record, and breaking a nail sets her back.
  • Inverted: Alice suffers nail-related fingore but simply brushes it off, if she even notices it in the first place.
  • Gender Inverted: Bob breaks his nail and sheds a few Manly Tears... Or throws a fit of Inelegant Blubbering, depending on the case.
  • Subverted: Alice hurts her finger. She's upset because it's bleeding.
  • Double Subverted: She's also upset about her nail breaking, but not as much.
  • Parodied: Alice receives a considerable amount of Amusing Injuries in a short time period, yet she doesn't seem to mind them...until she slightly chips one of her fingernails. Then she starts screaming and crying out in agony as if she were being mauled by a pack of velociraptors.
  • Zig Zagged: Some girls get upset about broken nails, others don't.
  • Averted:
    • Alice doesn't make a big fuss about her fingernails. Indeed, they may be short and grubby, and not manicured at all.
    • Alice doesn't break her nail in-story.
  • Enforced: Women Are Delicate
  • Lampshaded: "Why does this always happen after I just had a manicure?" // "Ow! This is a lot worse than it is on TV!"
  • Invoked: Alice's nails are kind of long, and she's doing some kind of manual labor.
  • Exploited: Women in Alice's culture deliberately grow their nails long, so they won't have to do any work. Long fingernails are a sign of beauty and social class. They may also, because of their length making certain...activities difficult, be tied to ideas about sexual purity; perhaps unmarried women use them to show that they are virgins, and married women trim their nails to make marital relations easier...or use long nails to showcase their chastity and fidelity to their husbands. (The longer they are, the more "pure" they're perceived to be.)
  • Defied: Alice keeps her nails well-trimmed. In fact, she may not care how they look at all.
  • Discussed: "Did Alice just go to the hospital for a chipped fingernail?"
  • Conversed: "Breaking a nail sucks, but it's not that serious!"
  • Deconstructed: Alice gets a painful infection.
  • Implied: Alice does something, pulls back her finger and reacts, but doesn't say she actually broke a nail.
  • Played For Horror: Alice's nail breaks very badly or comes right off, causing her profuse bleeding and horrendous pain.

Back to I Broke a Nail

Top