Basic Trope: Little people appear to indicate that a story is surreal.
- Straight: In a Disney Acid Sequence, dwarfs appear. They are not otherwise part of the story.
- Exaggerated: There are multiple dream sequences and every character is played by a midget look-alike, even the dreamer.
- Downplayed: The only dwarf characters that appear have very bizzare personalities, and the scenes they appear in are also pretty strange.
- Justified: A guy whose rival at work is a little person has a bad dream where aggressive little people attack him.
- Inverted:
- A dwarf is the Only Sane Man within a strange setting.
- A little person has a hallucinogenic fugue populated by surreal people of normal stature.
- Surreally tall people show up in a dream sequence.
- Subverted: It turns out they had a good reason to act that way.
- Double Subverted: ...but even after that reason has passed, they're still pretty strange.
- Parodied: The main character is having an otherwise normal day, but insists it was the weirdest day of his life just because he saw a little person.
- Zig Zagged: There's a surreal dwarf, but multiple characters are played as surreal for who they are.
- Averted:
- People with dwarfism appear in the story and their personalities and the situations they are in are not otherwise especially unusual.
- There are no dwarfs in the story.
- Enforced: We need to make this scene more surreal! Let's just randomly add dwarfs!
- Lampshaded: "Where did those little people come from? Why are they acting so strange?"
- Invoked: Someone realizes they're on a bad trip when they see a little person.
- Exploited:
- The protagonist is given fake drugs; his friends hire a dwarf to help set up what he thinks is a trip.
- A little person is hired as a humorous distraction.
- A casting director hires an actor with dwarfism for a Dream Sequence in a Show Within a Show.
- Defied: After numerous vivid dreams with no dwarf characters, the Only Sane Man is a little-person psychiatrist who interprets the protagonist's dreams.
- Discussed: "I see a dwarf. Things are gonna get weird, aren't they."
- Conversed: "I hate how dwarfs are never given realistic portrayals in movies, they shouldn't only get the weird roles."
- Implied: A character describes an offscreen Dream Sequence featuring a dwarf alongside various Noodle Implements.
- Deconstructed: A midget is just one of a number of unflattering stereotypes a dreamer encounters, each of whom lay plain the dreamer's secret prejudices.
- Reconstructed: A little person plays a role in an Expressionist horror film, but they're not surreal because of how small they are.
- Played For Laughs: In a direct parody of Twin Peaks, a reverse-speaking midget criticizes the director for going with this old saw.
- Played For Drama: The protagonist is taunted by terrifying dwarves that emphasize that he can't ever wake up.
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