This is discussion archived from a time before the current discussion method was installed.
Ununnilium: First of all, this seems like two and possibly three different tropes — the comedic version definitely, the other dramatic version maybe. Second, the examples really need to be more specific. "This troper once saw something where this happened!" is utterly useless.
- I second the motion to create a second trope off of this one (if it hasn't been done already): The stock phrase "don't answer that" is almost more commonly used as a comedic follow up to a rhetorical question that the asking character doesn't want the answer to. (i.e. "How stupid do you think I am?...Don't answer that.")
- Also, more on topic of the trope as it stands: My Criminal Procedure professor advised all of us budding criminal attorneys to keep a pair of clean sweat socks in our desk drawer. Why? Because if you get called to the station house to represent a client, the first thing you do when you walk in is ask your client to open wide, and then you cram the socks as far in as they well go.
Johnny E; We already have Rhetorical Question Blunder, which would be the perfect home for the comic version if it weren't a Wiki Trope with no examples. Technically it covers "asking a rhetorical question only for someone to answer it", but adding the variation of people preempting that with the phrase "Don't Answer That!" shouldn't be a problem.
Willbyr: Moving these entries here until they can get a proper media.
- This editor has seen at least one example where the FBI agent responded to the lawyer's interruption by starting to list the crimes they could have the lawyer arrested for.
- This editor fondly remembers an instance in which the lawyer held her hand over the client's mouth to keep him from Answering That.
