Basic Trope: Intimidating someone with either a real weapon that you don't intend to use or with one that's totally useless (i.e. an unloaded or toy gun).
- Straight: Alice holds an unloaded pistol to Bob's head. Bob is successfully intimidated by the "gun" that Alice is pointing at him and is willing to do whatever he is told.
- Exaggerated: Alice successfully intimidates an entire gang of violent thugs armed with machine guns with a finger in a coat pocket that she pretends to be a gun.
- Downplayed: While Alice may not want to fire a real gun at Bob, she has no qualms with Pistol Whipping him and making repeated threats of plausible physical abuse.
- Justified: Alice would use a loaded gun if she had one, but she has to get by with an unloaded or fake gun due to outside circumstances.
- Inverted:
- Alice intimidates Bob with a real, loaded gun that she wouldn't mind using, and Bob isn't scared.
- Alice has an invisible gun that is very useful for assassinations, but useless for robberies and other crimes that require threatening.
- Subverted: Bob isn't intimidated by this and easily recognizes the gun as unusable.
- Doubly Subverted: Knowing something to be a fake or unusable prop scares Bob more than the real thing.
- Parodied: Bob is terrified at the sight of what is more than obviously a plastic water gun with which Alice threatens him.
- Zig Zagged: Alice pulls out a real gun which Bob thinks is a fake, and he counters by pulling out a fake gun of his own, which scares Alice.
- Averted: Alice's gun is fully loaded and operational, and she's perfectly willing to shoot.
- Enforced: It's a family movie and Alice threatening someone with a loaded gun seems way too harsh and in no way appropriate for something geared toward children.
- Lampshaded:Carl: Uh, Alice? That gun isn't even real!
Alice: Yeah, but Bob doesn't know that! - Invoked: Someone leaves an empty gun for Alice to use in her breakout of the Tropia Jail.
- Exploited: Alice surprises Bob in a dark alley where it's too dark and hard to make out exactly what Alice is holding.
- Defied: Alice is unaware that her gun is loaded while she is under the impression that it's a fake or empty.
- Discussed: "Knowing you, you'd probably try to hold them up with a pointed finger inside your coat."
- Conversed: "You know, in this kind of show the gun is always a fake."
- Deconstructed:
- Alice brandishes her "gun," believing it's enough to intimidate Bob and get the job done but finds herself completely unprepared for Bob whipping out a powerful machine gun and immediately firing.
- Alice successfully intimidated Bob, but reality sinks in later in the story when the police knocks on Alice's door...
- Reconstructed: After evading Bob's return fire and some stealthy maneuvering, Alice approaches from the rear and presses her "gun" to the back of Bob's head, instructing him to drop his weapon immediately or she fires.
- Played For Laughs: Alice is a Know-Nothing Know-It-All and Stupid Crook.
- Played For Drama: Alice is so down on her luck that she turns to crime to get by, but doesn't even have enough money to get a gun with all its components in tact, let alone bullets to fire it... But that doesn't stop her from trying to rob Bob.
- Played For Horror: Alice is Mugging the Monster with a a hunk of wood/cap gun/Finger Gun. "Too Dumb to Live" is not only enforced, very little remains of Alice afterwards to identify as human.
Maybe this gun is carved from a bar of soap and covered in shoe polish... but do you know that for sure? Why don't you just hold your hands above your head and follow me right this way and no one gets hurt...
