Basic Trope: If a rule is mentioned, a character will inevitably break it.
- Straight: Alice tells her six-year-old son Bob never to cross the road on his own. However, she then gets kidnapped and Bob must cross the road on his own in order to save her.
- Exaggerated:
- Bob makes a solemn promise not to cross the road on his own, but due to circumstances, he keeps needing to again and again.
- Alice tells Bob a Long List of house rules, and to save the day, Bob must break every single one of them.
- Downplayed: Alice tells Bob not to "put one shoe in Charles's house". When Bob enlists Charles to help him save the kidnapped Alice, Bob takes off his shoes before entering the house.
- Justified: When the stakes are high, sometimes you need to break minor rules.
- Inverted: Alice initially tells Bob that he is allowed to cross the road on his own, and he does so repeatedly. Later on, Alice decides to forbid Bob from crossing the road, and he obeys.
- Subverted: Alice tells Bob to not cross the road on his own. Alice gets kidnapped, and it seems like Bob will have to break the rule, but then Charles appears in the nick of time and is able to take him across the road.
- Double Subverted:
- Parodied: Bob has to play with his food in order to save the day.
- Zigzagged: Some rules get broken and some don't.
- Averted: Alice tells Bob not to cross the road by himself, and he never does.
- Enforced: "We need to make the scene where little Bob crosses the road to save his mom all the more heroic-seeming. How about we establish beforehand that he's not allowed to?"
- Lampshaded: "I know I said not to, but do it now!"
- Invoked: Reverse Psychology.
- Exploited:
- Defied: Bob refuses to cross the road until someone else shows up, even though Alice has been kidnapped.
- Discussed: "But what if I need to cross the road on my own to save you?!"
- Conversed: "He's totally gonna do it later in the film."
- Implied: We never see how Bob saved Alice, but there were several roads between him and her, so he likely crossed at least some of them by himself.
- Deconstructed:
- Reconstructed:
- Played for Laughs: Alice herself tells Bob to cross the road to save her.Alice: "This is awkward."
- Played for Drama:
- Played for Horror:
Back to Inevitably Broken Rule.
