Basic Trope: A mundane substance is treated like an addictive drug.
- Straight: Bob gets high on sugar.
- Exaggerated: Bob snorts sugar like cocaine.
- Downplayed:
- Bob gets high on sugar, although it was implied that something stronger was mixed in.
- Sugar is shown being produced in discreet production facilities, shipped among innocuous objects, and sold by backstreet dealers like an illegal substance.
- Justified:
- Inverted: Alcohol sobers Bob up.
- Subverted:
- Bob is given sugar for this purpose but it doesn't work.
- The sugar turns out to have been laced with cocaine.
- Bob is an actor, his character is getting stoned because In-In-Universe it is heroin.
- Double Subverted:
- Because it isn't strong enough.
- The sugar without cocaine turns out to have more drug-like effects than the cocaine-laced sugar.
- Parodied: Sugar is banned causing The Mafia to smuggle cane sugar across the border.
- Zig Zagged: Sugar is sometimes depicted like an addictive drug. Sometimes it's just sugar.
- Averted: No one is shown getting high on something other than drugs.
- Enforced: Moral Guardians have insisted that no real drugs be used in a show aimed at small children, but the writers want to do a drug-themed episode. Sugar gets chosen.
- Lampshaded: "Getting high on sugar, seriously? Of all the things..."
- Invoked: The sugar companies design a new form of sugar that is psychoactive to increase sales.
- Exploited: Emperor Evulz ambushes Bob during his sugar entranced state.
- Defied: Alice takes steps to ensure Bob never eats sugar.
- Discussed: "No way I'm giving you sugar. Remember the last time I gave you sugar?"
- Conversed: "Woah...that can't be 'just sugar'..."
- Implied: Alice mentions that Bob has a serious sugar addiction.
- Deconstructed: Sugar is made illegal because of its extreme psychoactive effects.
- Reconstructed: Protesters get the ban repealed because sugar is too important to cuisine.
- Played For Laughs: Bob is arrested for driving while sugar-high, only to let him go when they find out he's just drunk
- Played For Drama: Bob dies of a sugar overdose.
Back to I Can't Believe It's Not Heroin!