Basic Trope: Person A makes a conclusion. Person B is astounded by their powers of deduction—but it was just Person A noticing the obvious.
- Straight: "This document was written in 1996, most likely by an American woman." "Goodness, you managed not only to deduce the age of the paper, but identify the writer by their handwriting style?" "It's signed and dated."
- Exaggerated: "This book here is a book." "No! How did you figure that out?"
- Downplayed: Watson tells Sherlock how amazed he is he managed to deduce what he did with so little information, but realizes the obvious clue mid-sentence.
- Justified:
- Watson is an Easily Impressed person.
- Watson is a child and children find anything cool and amazing.
- Or Watson could reach this conclusion himself but since he is a bit slow the other characters reach it faster than him, therefore, impressing him.
- Inverted:
- Watson finds Sherlock's deduction skills weird even if he was just pointing out the obvious.
- Watson is disappointed in or disgusted with Sherlock for reaching such a conclusion in no time.
- Subverted: Watson looks at the paper and discovers there's no date there.
- Double Subverted: Then Sherlock turns the paper over.
- Parodied:
- "Here's some notes on the case so far, by me." "Good god, how'd you deduce that?! It's not signed or anything!" "...I remember writing it."
- Sherlock announces a realization. Watson, in amazement, praises him on how clever he is for the extremely complicated yet sound logic he used to come to that conclusion, which he promptly goes into an explanation about... and Sherlock reveals he just pointed out the obvious. Awkwardness ensues.
- Zig-Zagged: ???
- Averted: Watson is not one bit impressed by Sherlock's deduction and tells him "even I can tell".
- Enforced: The audience has began to find the Sherlock Scan to be annoying and overused, so the writers decide to mix it up a bit.
- Lampshaded: ???
- Invoked: ???
- Exploited: ???
- Defied: Watson looks for obvious clues before Sherlock to avoid this kind of embarrassment.
- Discussed: ???
- Conversed: ???
- Implied: When Watson asks Sherlock how he knows, Sherlock delivers an Expospeak Gag that apparently boils down to "reading."
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