Invoked Trope

Jigsaw: Drop the gun, Mr. Luger!
Luger: I don't have one.
Jigsaw: You're not carrying a weapon?
Luger: I don't believe in them.
[Jigsaw kicks over a pistol]
Jigsaw: Pick up the gun.
[Luger picks up the gun]
Jigsaw: Drop the gun, Mr. Luger!

— Loaded Weapon 1

The writer brings a narrative trope into play by having a character consciously set it up.

Some methods:

• A Sitcom character tries to stage a Meet Cute between two characters.
• The Heart pulls a Wounded Gazelle Warcry in order to set off a hero's Unstoppable Rage.
• A princess gets herself kidnapped in the hope of a Rescue Romance.
• A villain relies on how heroes act for his Batman Gambit.

Genre Savvy and Wrong Genre Savvy characters may demonstrate their familiarity with narrative conventions by invoking a trope.

Compare Exploited Trope (not making the trope happen, just taking advantage of one happening), and compare/contrast Enforced Trope (the writers themselves shoehorn a trope into a story by necessity). Contrast Defied Trope, Discussed Trope.

This is not the same as an Intended Audience Reaction. Only a character can invoke a trope; an author per se cannot.

TECHNICAL NOTE: On the wiki, typing the word "invoked" anywhere within an example will disable the automatic YMMV, Trivia, or Flame Bait flagging (denoted by a petrol/gas pump, question mark, or flame respectively) for that example. However, this is not a feature but an artifact of hasty programming - In-Universe examples of YMMV are permitted on main work pages, but not Invoked YMMV.

---

Examples

Anime & Manga

• Kagura from Azumanga Daioh has Sakaki invoke her Running Gag of cats biting her in order to meet a wild mountain cat on a school trip. Partially subverted when the cat comes and doesn't bite her.
• In Cardcaptor Sakura, Tomoyo supplies Sakura with an Unlimited Wardrobe, with the reasoning that "when you are doing special things, you must wear special clothes!"
• Code Geass. It's simple enough. If you beg someone, anyone, to save your defenceless, Token Mini-Moe Empress, then there's a good chance that your Large Ham, sort-of-enemy will pull out a shiny new mecha and do so.
• In Dragon Ball Z, Gotenks attempts to invoke Heroic Second Wind by "letting" himself get beat so he can have a last-minute comeback and inevitable victory, with a... predicable result. In short, all his friends get killed one by one, and later the villain blows up the planet.
• Haruhi Suzumiya:
  • The Locked Room Mystery trope is invoked in the episode "Remote Island Syndrome" by Koizumi, who wanted to keep Haruhi occupied.
  • There are a couple of other examples, such as the intentional creation of an Absurdly Powerful Student Council to give Haruhi something of an enemy.
• Ayano's father tries to invoke Bodyguard Crush to pair her up with the immensely powerful Kazuma in Kaze no Stigma. Unfortunately for him and his wallet, Kazuma cheerfully milks him for all he's worth. Likely double subverted as it turns out he does care about her a great deal more than he usually lets on.
• In March Comes in Like a Lion, Nikaidou specifically asks Shimada to turn his shogi match against Rei into a Curb-Stomp Battle in an effort to have Rei develop as a player.
• Maria no Danzai: Maria deliberately invokes Cool Teacher and Friend to All Children so that no one will suspect her when she murders Okaya's gang. And it works: by the time she finally gets started, practically every student in the school adores her.
• Negima! Magister Negi Magi has Kotaro invoking Idiot Hero, claiming that Negi would be a better fighter if he acted more like an idiot. It actually makes some sense, as Negi's greatest weakness is that he tends to overthink everything.
• In Mobile Suit Gundam Seed Destiny, Meyrin Hawke helps Athrun escape from soldiers searching for him by invoking Distracted by the Sexy via Modesty Towel. Two invoked tropes for the price of one! Extra points: she wasn't actually naked underneath the towel, she just got her hair wet and then wrapped the towel around her clothes to make it look like she'd just gotten out of the shower.
• In Sailor Moon, Rei attempts a Crash-Into Hello in order to meet Mamoru. It doesn't go as planned but still works.
• Every few episodes of Sgt. Frog, Momoka will try to stage a Rescue Romance in order to get closer to Fuyuki. For one reason or another, it never seems to work. For the most part, this is because she's trying to be rescued by Fuyuki.
• In an episode of Tenchi Muyo!, Ryoko and Ayeka engineer Crash-Into Hello-type meetings in order to get closer to Tenchi... even though they've known him for months. Sasami showed them some shoujo manga and tricked them into thinking that this was a traditional part of Earth romances. Thus clarifying something very important. Sasami is an evil, evil woman.
• Kamina of Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann fame absolutely refused to combine mechas with Simon until he performed a Transformation Sequence with him, even while in the middle of combat.
• To Love Ru does this for harem comedy. Momo knows that the First Girl Wins and if Rito is forced to choose one girl out of his harem it probably isn't going to be her. Her solution, naturally, is to make sure Rito doesn't need to choose only one girl.
• Your Lie in April has Kaori invoking Manic Pixie Dream Girl to get Kousei out of his funk so he can play piano again since it was always her dream to play violin with Kousei accompanying her.
• In YuYu Hakusho's Dark Tournament arc, Kuwabara deliberately invokes Yusuke's Unstoppable Rage by allowing Toguro to kill him, or so he thinks — Toguro doesn't actually kill him, but letting Yusuke think he had has the same effect. Since Toguro wanted to fight Yusuke at max power, he probably counts as invoking it too.

Audio Plays

• The Big Finish Doctor Who audio drama The Doomwood Curse is based entirely around this: Some space nanites are making a fictional book true, and through careful manipulation of the tropes the Doctor is able to reverse the effect: The only way to get the solution to the carrier (a highwayman) in time is to make it a valuable item that "Must get there before sunrise!".

Comic Books

• In Dungeon Zenith, the keepers of the dungeon create a rumor about a kidnapped princess. But they unwillingly use the name of an existing princess. Then she walks to the dungeon with her secret lover, to make her father believe he saved her.
• Nick Fury invokes Jerk with a Heart of Jerk. He claimed this for himself in back in the '70s Captain America comic. After he'd spent a whole issue getting The Falcon pardoned for his criminal past, Cap remarked, "Fury, under that rough, unshaven exterior..." Fury interrupted, "There's an even rougher, unshaven interior!" Of course, in this case, it's very blustering; while later writers did make Fury genuinely amoral, around this time he was still a pretty straightforward bleeding-heart hero.

Comic Strips

• Cathy has tried, at least once, to invoke You Were Trying Too Hard, declaring that she was not looking for a boyfriend, and therefore a suitable one should pop up any minute now. It didn't work.

Fan Works

• All Assorted Animorphs AUs: Aftran invokes Voices Are Mental in "What if Tom was infested by a member of the Yeerk Peace Movement?"; she decides to speak in a higher-pitched voice than Tom when she takes control of his vocal chords.
• The Bank Called, Your Reality Check Bounced deliberately invokes as many tropes as possible as a Shout-Out to TV Tropes; some, like Corner of Woe and Portmanteau Couple Name, are even Name Dropped.
• In Children of the Atom, Narg tries to invoke character development by attempting diplomatic relations with some raiders, as opposed to just crushing them all. They continue to shoot at him through power armor, despite it doing nothing. He kills them all. It's hilarious.
• Courtney's Crusade for Redemption invoked Shown Their Work. Courtney, covering her knowledge of the season's events by telling everyone that she had seen and analyzed the reruns of past seasons, justifies her Genre Savvy moments.
• In Emotions Running High, when Draco regrets having told Harry he'd date him when pigs fly, he uses an obscure spell to invoke Cue the Flying Pigs and then remarks that it looks like he'll have to keep his word.
• In Tiberium Wars, Kane invokes Evil Is Not Well-Lit because watching his minions stumble around in the dark is funny.
• Wander over Foster's AU One-Shot (Wander over Yonder, Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends): Invoked Mysterious Past. At Foster's, imaginary friend's pasts aren't often dwelled on. It's considered rude to question someone on why they're at Foster's.

Films — Animation

• 101 Dalmatians: Pongo and Perdita catch each other's eyes before their human owners do, so they use Dog Walks You to arrange a Meet Cute.
• In Meet the Robinsons, Lewis, a former Doorstop Baby, wants to track down his birth mother by creating a machine that will invoke No Infantile Amnesia and allow him to remember her.
• Turning Red invokes Mondegreen Gag. The background music for one of the official trailers is *NSYNC's "It's Gonna Be Me", which is intended to be heard as "It's gonna be Mei" (i.e. the main character). This is especially true for the line edited from "You might been hurt, babe" to "You might been hurt, Mei".

Films — Live-Action

• Natasha Romanoff does this twice in The Avengers, setting herself up as a vulnerable girl in over her head so that people will spill intel that she needs. Both times it works.
• The Cabin in the Woods is basically Invoked Trope: The Movie. Practically every horror movie cliche, from Artifacts of Doom lying around where anyone can find them, to creepy old guys giving ominous warnings, to teenagers having sex in monster-infested woods, are all set up (at great effort and expense) by a massive conspiracy.
• In Greedy, Danny's act of Calling the Old Man Out turns out to be this: he hired an actor to play his father in order to have a staged argument in front of his rich uncle, who had been estranged from his brother, in order to win his uncle's favor.
• The Buddy Cop Show parody Loaded Weapon 1 has this a few times, as in the page quote.
• The Spaghetti Western Affectionate Parody My Name Is Nobody has the title character doing this endlessly, to set up another character as an old west hero.
• At the end of the indie movie Sex Ed, when fired sexual-education teacher Cole confronts the father of one of his students, a preacher that successfully lobbied for the school district to ban sex-ed, Cole invokes the fact that The Internet Is for Porn. Specifically, he mentions that if parents are too embarrassed to have The Talk with their kids, and if it's illegal to teach sex-ed in schools, then kids will go on the internet, where boys will learn that girls are meant to be used as sex objects, and girls will learn that it's okay to be treated like that. Cole's Rousing Speech works, since he is not only re-hired, but is used to train other sex-ed teachers. Obviously, the more heavily invoked trope is The Talk, since the main character, an unemployed high-school math teacher, took it upon himself to teach a course on sexual education in the middle school that hired him.

Literature

• The Cineverse trilogy by Craig Shaw Gardner is a giant exercise of invoking a trope, with lots of little lampshades hanging within it. The main characters (particularly the Guardian of the Multiverse and the Multiversal Conqueror) are Genre Savvy and therefore frequently talk about how best to exploit the current world's laws.
• The Theory of Narrative Causality is a measurable law on Discworld, so there are many invocations of tropes throughout, some more successful than others.
  • In Guards! Guards!!, the main characters invoke the Million to One Chance during a critical arrow shot - they deliberately make it harder to aim (using blindfolds and standing on one leg), in order to get the odds of a direct hit down to exactly a million to one. They don't succeed, mind, but when the dragon blows up the building they're standing on, the narration continues, "Fortunately, the odds of anyone surviving the ensuing explosion were exactly a million to one." A later discovery suggests that their chance of hitting the dragon's "voonerables" may have been 0% all along.
  • When the Big Bad (or The Dragon to a dragon, depending how you look at it) calls guards to arrest Captain Vimes, the guards are reluctant to try to arrest him as he is clearly unarmed and outnumbered.
  • The Silver Horde find themselves in a comparable predicament in The Last Hero, when they realize that Carrot's status as The Hero — a lone man standing against several, convinced he's saving the world — likely out-classes their own. And when they learn that Carrot doesn't even expect to receive any reward for doing so, but is merely fulfilling his duty, they know they don't stand a chance.
  • In Witches Abroad, Lady Lilith draws much of her power from fairy tales, to the point where the laws of Genua under the rule of her Puppet King the Duc demand that people conform to fairy tale stereotypes. Cooks should be fat and jolly, toymakers should whistle while they work, and so on. Anyone who can't or won't confirm to their role is punished severely.
  • In Men at Arms, Vetinari orders Vimes to hand in his badge, specifically to invoke Turn in Your Badge and the inevitable determined solving of the crime afterward. Subverted in that Vetinari realizes too late that he's triggered a Heroic BSoD in Vimes instead.
  • The Discworld Roleplaying Game actually has rules for this, including magic that lets you manipulate and even draw power from narrative tropes, as well as a caution that just because you set yourself up as the Hero Who Saves the Town From the Evil Troll doesn't mean you're not actually One of the Dozen Hapless Characters Who Get Killed by the Troll Before the Hero Shows Up or, if the story is being told from a troll perspective, The Human That Gets Smooshed by the Troll. (Troll fairy stories aren't very subtle.)
• Enchanted Forest Chronicles: In book 1 (Dealing With Dragons), it's mentioned that Princess Alianora's parents invited an evil fairy to her christening in hopes that she'd curse her, presumably with the intended result that she be rescued by a handsome prince. Instead the fairy, possibly thrilled by the novelty of being invited, had a wonderful time and went home without cursing anyone.
• Ghost Roads: In the second book, Rose is brought back to life through an Unwanted Revival, so she and her allies devise a plan to invoke and then subvert Rescued from the Underworld. Rose will descend to the Greek underworld with a companion, ask Persephone and Hades to let her leave, and then have her companion deliberately look back at the last moment, returning her to her ghostly existence.
• Attempted in Good Omens, where Anathema Device, after trying all other methods to find her book, dramatically pretends to give up, flop down, and let her gaze casually fall on a patch of dirt.
• Harry Potter: Lord Voldemort has a hang for knowing how to manipulate Harry.
  • In Order of the Phoenix, he learns to what extent he can share things with him and uses that knowledge to give Harry what appears to be a prophetic dream, showing Voldemort holding Sirius Black prisoner in the Department of Mystery. As he expected, Harry rushes to the Ministry immediately. And all so that Harry would finally pick up the Prophecy concerning the two of them, and Voldemort could learn its full contents.
  • Half-Blood Prince has Harry actually mention this as his reason for breaking up with Ginny. He mentions that Voldemort already took her as a hostage in the Chamber of Secrets to get Harry to save her, and that was back when she was simply his best friend's sister. He wants to keep her safe by cutting off a romantic bond that would make her a greater target than before.
  • Finally, ''Deathly Hallows'' has Lucius Malfoy ask Voldemort to call off the battle at Hogwarts. Voldemort denies it, knowing exactly how much it would torture Harry to know that people are dying because of him, and how he ''will'' [[HeroicSacrifice give himself up to Voldemort before the battle is over. And he's right, as Harry heads off to face Voldemort in the Forbidden Forest.
• The villain in The Jennifer Morgue by Charles Stross casts a reality-warping spell which forces his life into the structure of a James Bond movie, with him as the villain. He plans on stopping the spell after he captures the person playing the Bond role; that way, the pawn goes from being a super-suave man of action to a simple civil servant out of his depth, and it'll be too late for anyone else to step in. He thinks it's the hero; it turns out that the hero is actually the Bond girl, and his girlfriend is Bond.
• In John Dies at the End, John and Dave try to lure out a ghost by splitting up, with John taking a shower and Dave taking a nap, while loudly announcing their plan and their fervent hope that they will not be attacked by a ghost under these circumstances.
• The short story "The Cat From Hell", from the anthology Just After Sunset, has a cat kill a hitman by an Orifice Invasion. To make this possible, the cat claws at the hitman's groin, and the screams this causes means the hitman's mouth is wide open, and the cat leaps right into that mouth.
• Several characters in Mercedes Lackey's Tales of the Five Hundred Kingdoms series deliberately invoke tropes when it will help them or harm their enemies. They have force due to the presence of an ambient, powerful magic in the land called the Tradition, which causes events to follow the fairytale they most resemble.
• The Tenant of Wildfell Hall: When Gilbert Markham hears a rumor that Helen has been widowed and is getting remarried, he instantly packs up and leaves town, walking the final six miles when he can't find any transportation, intending to burst into the Church and interrupt the ceremony if he has to.
• Tom Sawyer runs his life this way. It helps that Mark Twain runs Tom Sawyer's life this way. (It helps that Samuel Clemens ran Mark Twain's life this way.) Of course, Tom probably knows that. On the other hand, when Huckleberry Finn attempts the same, it ends in disaster.

Live-Action TV

• The Jump Street Program on 21 Jump Street invokes Dawson Casting by training "youthful-looking" adult cops to go undercover as high school and college students.
• Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
  • In "Enemies", Faith uses These Hands Have Killed, Last-Second Chance and Cooldown Hug in an attempt to seduce Angel. In the Angel episode "Sanctuary" when Buffy finds her using these tropes for real, she naturally thinks Faith is playing Angel again.
  • On her 18th birthday, Buffy must undergo the Cruciamentum Test in which a Slayer's powers are secretly removed, and she's locked in a house with a vampire that she must defeat through her own cunning and determination. Basically Damsel in Distress + Alone with the Psycho = Final Girl.
• In Hornblower episode "The Examination for Lieutenant" (also known as "The Fire Ships"), Captain Pellew invokes Tactful Translation. Upon learning that the Spanish intend to break their alliance with the British, Pellew is too flustered to formulate a reply, and simply tells Hornblower (acting as a translator/interpretor, speaking French with the Spaniard) to tell the Spanish officer the sort of thing Pellew would say, leaving Hornblower to figure out an appropriate reply on the spot while Pellew grits his teeth. The Spanish guy ends up impressed, never realizing that Pellew was seething.

Tabletop Games

• Chronicles of Darkness:
  • Changeling: The Lost features the art of Talecrafting, wherein you can manipulate the nature of fate by noticing how the tropes of a story are going to play out (e.g., two attempts have failed, so you can invoke Third Time's The Charm). On the other hand, it comes with a story-appropriate penalty (such as All That Glitters) unless you do really well. Oh, and they link to this website in the book.
  • Demon: The Descent puts you in the position of one of the fallen engineers of the divine mechanism, meaning there are times when you can invoke common misunderstandings for power. For instance, the Combustion Embed exploits the fact that everyone knows a car will explode if you shoot it.
• d20 Modern sourcebook Cyberscape
  • You can get an implant called Organ Remapping. "Organ remapping is an extensive set of minor cybernetic devices that relocate a recipient's internal organs and add safety valves, cutoffs, back-ups, and alternatives to many of the more critical and fragile organic systems." So any character can invoke Organ Dodge.
  • Combat Clairvoyance. Psionic characters can use a power called Combat Clairvoyance, and any character in a campaign with Cyberscape can use Kata Calculators/Computers, which are chips implanted into the brain comparing the battle to millions of battle sequences stored, and calculating the most probable next move from the opponent, giving advance warning to the user.

Theme Parks

• Journey into Imagination: In the opening scene of the original version of the ride, Dreamfinder invokes Delightful Dragon by adding "a dash of childish delight" to finish creating Figment.

Video Games

• The Daycare Attendant from Five Nights at Freddy's: Security Breach invokes One-Time Dungeon by kicking Gregory out of Superstar Daycare, locking the door behind him, and blocking him from going back down the slide into the daycare's ball pit (seen here). This is in response to Gregory breaking the rules of the daycare by turning off the lights, thereby triggering the Attendant's Jekyll & Hyde Nighttime Transformation.
• Desann, Big Bad of Jedi Outcast, invokes Shooting Superman and then (this is the part he hasn't really thought through) It's Personal as part of a Batman Gambit to manipulate Kyle Katarn. Kyle has given up his Jedi abilities and connection to the Force deliberately, but Desann makes him really wish he had them by forcing him to fight him, a powerful Dark Jedi, with normal weapons — and inevitably lose, failing to save his girlfriend. This leads to Kyle returning to the Valley of the Jedi to reconnect with the Force for purposes of revenge, showing Desann the way there.
• In Knights of the Old Republic, it is ambiguous if Jolee Bindo is acting like a Grumpy Old Man because it is expected of someone his age and he finds humor in fulfilling the sterotype or if he actually is a Grumpy Old Man but Genre Savvy about it (or some of both). Check out his Wookieepedia quote pages and judge for yourself.
• The Pokémon move Grass Knot invokes Broken Heel. It uses grass to trip the opponent. The amount of damage depends on the opponent's weight.
• From Portal 2's co-op campaign:
  GLaDOS: This is the Computer Intelligence Training and Enrichment Center Human Test Subject Research Center, or CInTECH. But why don't we all just agree to call it the hub?
• The fighters of Ultima reject learning magic in order to focus exclusively on honing their physical abilities.

Web Animation

• Although DEATH BATTLE! usually at least tries to portray each episode's fight as being somewhat even, the episode "Deadpool VS The Mask" was intentionally chosen by Wiz and Boomstick to be the worst Curb-Stomp Battle the show had ever seen, all in an effort to get rid of Deadpool and his annoying fourth-wall-breaking antics. The Mask is a Physical God who dwarfs his opponent in literally every category, leaving Deadpool with absolutely no hope of possibly coming out on top. Wiz and Boomstick both even ended up ashamed of setting up such a stomp.

Web Comics

• In The Adventures of Dr. McNinja, Frans Rayner quite flagrantly invokes the Conservation of Ninjutsu trope to try to defeat the titular ninja. He prepares an army of clones made from the doctor, so they'll all attack him at once. The doctor responds by switching sides so he can invoke some other tropes to gain the upper hand. " Dammit, Frans. You don't have to be a lone wolf any more! That attitude will get you killed!"
• In Blip, when the subject of a nasty falling-out between K and Mary comes up, Liz announces that "It's intervention time! "Rashomon"-Style!" Hester recounts the tail end of the argument, as that was the only part she saw, then Liz gives a deliberately exaggerated version of what she saw, prompting Mary to set the record straight for both of them. Of course, forcing Mary to examine these memories in detail was Liz's goal in the first place.
• In Finder's Keepers (2008), Cailyn proposes Let's Split Up, Gang!. Cardinal points out that would be tempting fate. Cailyn replies that they're trying to find Fate.
• In Gunnerkrigg Court, Kat very loudly and deliberately tempts fate, aiming to get kidnapped as the first step in a Batman Gambit: "Oh boy! I sure hope nothing happens to me now that I'm here all alone!" It works, partly: She does get kidnapped, but not by the hunky Mr Eglamore like she was hoping.
• In A Loonatic's Tale, Jasper Zinc is a genius, there's no denying that. And he's fully aware that he's a genius. But he hasn't got a particularly high opinion of anyone else's intellect, so he deliberately avoids contractions and uses unnecessarily large words in order to make sure that the lowest common denominator is also aware that he's a genius.
• MSF High: Examples include Runners, girls who run through the school with eyes closed and bookbags unzipped, looking for a cute guy who they will crash into, and subsequently date. One of them would be this girl. She MAY have gone a little too fast...
• Elan in The Order of the Stick is fond of these, often pointing out that they're obligatory. All the characters are reasonably Genre (and Rule, for that matter) Savvy, but Elan's a bard and seems to feel that invoking tropes is part of his job.
  • For example, in On the Origin of PCs, when Roy is recruiting members for an adventuring party, Elan gets Roy to sit in a corner, looking mysterious, to invoke You All Meet in an Inn.
  • Elan is also not the brightest bulb in the chandelier, and will do things like insisting on waiting for the fireball to catch up — despite having reached the escape in plenty of time — so as to do an impressive jump to safety.
    Elan: Wow! Just like a Vin Diesel movie!
  • In "Nuthin' but Net", Elan insists that the party allow themselves to be captured because a net has fallen on them. When the other two party members simply lift up the net (it is made for catching game, not humanoids) and try to escape, they're beaten up by orcs and then captured anyway. Cue smug Bard, and audience realization that a man who actually does live in a world of narrative tropes probably has some method to his madness.
    Elan: Fight, fight, fight, fight the urge to say "I told you so!"
  • Subverted in a later comic, when Elan insists that another character's poor choice of words are inevitably going to lead to his immediate death. By this point, everyone around him is so used to successfully invoked tropes that they look around, waiting for a trope that never comes.
    O-Chul: I'll be honest. I did not actually expect to live through this.
    Elan: Don't say that! Whenever someone says that after surviving something dangerous, something totally random pops out and kills them!
    [all look around; nothing happens]
    Elan: Well, most of the time, at least. Just don't announce that you're going to retire tomorrow, OK?
  • Also, when Elan Took a Level in Badass, his teacher starts out by staging a Training Montage rather than actually training him.
  • Roy has actually taken advantage of this tendency of Elan's, as Haley points out:
    Haley: Elan, don't you see? Roy let you loose in the desert thinking that you would trip over the main plot!
    Elan: So?
    Haley: You DID!
• The Sluggy Freelance crew is fond of this. The most notable occasion is during the Bug Squisher Quest: when they find the book of Güd, Torg makes Zoë wait until he could exclaim that nothing could save them now, noting that saying that made sure that something would in fact save them. It doesn't work. However, when Torg explains what he was doing, Zoë responds "You mean like [when someone says] 'It can't get any worse?'" This time, it works.

Web Videos

• In The Angry Video Game Nerd "Porn Games" episode, the Nerd attempts to use his tendency to get ambushed by the characters he discusses in his game reviews to his advantage while reviewing the game Gigolo.
  Angry Video Game Nerd: You know, that's really weird. Could you imagine if you're just sittin' around, minding your own business, when all of a sudden, some naked chick breaks in and starts humpin' the crap outta you? [looks at door, excited... nothing happens, he shakes his head] You know, that's really not fair. I get Jason Voorhees and Freddy Krueger, and Spider-Man... Bugs Bunny... but no naked chick. [shakes his head] Fuck this shit.
• Bedtime Stories (YouTube Channel) invokes Alternate Character Interpretation. One of the most common recurring themes in this series is whether or not the various phenomena, incidents, or examples shown are supernatural or have a scientific/rational explanation. Among many examples listed here include:
  • Michael Taylor: A man genuinely falling to the corruption of some 40 demons or driven insane by joining a religious group purportedly known for using brainwashing techniques?
  • The SS Ourang Medan: Supernatural phenomenon responsible for the deaths of her crew and subsequent sinking, or the result of poor handling of Deadly Gas dating from World War II? Or completely made up, since no record of such a ship exists?
  • Elisa Lam: Was she killed by malevolent spirits residing in her hotel? Or was it a Serial Killer checked in there at the time of her disappearance? Or was it the result of her mental illness?
  • The Men in Black: Are they Government agents? Aliens? Some sort of Government Conspiracy involving both alien and human agents? Supernatural entities? Or just characters in very old scary stories?
  • The "Bones" on Mars: Are they actual evidence of alien life that possibly once existed on the Red Planet, Ancient Astronauts, or just the result of an optical illusion?
  • Flight 19: Pilot and navigation error or Alien Abduction? Unlike the previous cases, the creators themselves emphasize that the probability is more on the former.
  • The Lead Masks of Vintem Hill: Alien Abduction? Or the more rational explanation of being mugged and killed by a crime syndicate?
  • The Grinning Man: Humanoid Abomination? Humanoid Alien? Part of The Men in Black? Or some fabricated hoax?
  • Cindy James: Did she really have a stalker? Was she stalking herself, wittingly or otherwise? Or is the truth something else entirely?
  • The Manchester Pusher: Is a rash of drownings in Manchester the result of one or more people committing murder, or just a series of unconnected tragic accidents? Or is it a combination of the two?
  • Kenny Veach: Did he die on the way to the cave? Was he murdered for witnessing something he shouldn't have? Or did he deliberately find a spot where nobody can find him so he can end his own life? The narrators believe Kenny had killed himself due to evidence of him suffering from depression and planning his own suicide, Kenny's girlfriend also believes this to be true as well.
  • Christopher Case: Was his death a result of a curse? Or was his death a result of mental health issues and myocarditis due to his excessive use of suppliments.
• The TV Tropes webseries Echo Chamber is fond of invoking tropes.
  • In Episode 4, Tom tries to invoke Dumbass Has a Point on himself, claiming Dana is discounting his opinions without considering them. He then goes on to discount Zack's opinion without considering it. The episode does have a Dumbass with a Point, but it's not Tom. It's Zack.
  • In Episode 7, Tom invokes Walk and Talk, and Dana is displeased with his attempt at Enforced Method Acting.
• Kato in Gantz Abridged invokes the Rule of Cool in the final battle. And the final boss invokes the Heroic Sacrifice. Yes, it's a Shout-Out to TV Tropes.

Western Animation

• Archer has the title secret agent going off on a Roaring Rampage of Revenge when he finds out the chemo drugs he's supposed to be receiving are just Zima and sugar pills. As a pop culture-obsessed secret agent, however, he has his colleague film the whole thing and includes many, many references to things like Man on Fire and Magnum, P.I..
  Lana: Is that really necessary?
  Archer: Of course it is, Lana, it's a rampage!
• In the Batman: The Animated Series episode "The Clock King", the eponymous villain wants to get revenge on Mayor Hill for an Advice Backfire, so he wants to make Hill Gotham's Butt-Monkey. Clock King mess with downton Gotham's traffic lights precisely when Mayor Hill is on his way to his reelection fundraising. Later he produces Hill's Malevolent Mugshot with Mustache Vandalism and the legend "Time for a change". Everyone in the street laughs.
  Angry driver: There's the foul-up. Mayor Over-the-Hill. Nothing works right in this city no more.
• Justice League:
  • Vandal Savage invokes Godwin's Law of Time Travel by specifically sending data on superweapons (or modern technologies that would look like superweapons in context) and Allied tactics and strategy to his past self so that he could usurp the title of Fuhrer from Hitler and conquer the world using the Axis' military might. It is up to the Justice League to stop him.
  • In the same series, one episode starts with Superman at the mercy of Lex Luthor thanks to the latter using a good chunk of Kryptonite. Knowing about Lex's ego, Superman gets him to do some Evil Gloating at how perfect his plan was, who he bribed to get it to succeed... And then gets up and punches him, revealing he is actually the Martian Manhunter, a known Shapeshifter, and that the Justice League just pulled an epic-level sting operation, thereby also exploiting and deconstructing the Evil Gloating.
• In King of the Hill, the men in Lucky's family have a tradition of invoking their own Engagement Challenges in order to prove they're worthy of the women they love. Lucky fails, as has apparently every one of his relatives, and invokes the one loophole: a Shotgun Wedding. Luanne is already pregnant at this point, but Lucky insists that he can't propose unless an exasperated Hank points a rifle at him.
  Lucky: Is that gun cocked? It's gotta be cocked.
  Hank: I'm not gonna cock it...
  Lucky: Alright. I'm in no position to make demands.
• Miraculous Ladybug: Gabriel Agreste invokes Tantrum Throwing in "The Collector". He does trash his office, throwing down paintings and sculptures around, but if he is furious toward Adrien for stealing his spellbook, the real reason is to make it look more believable to Ladybug and Cat Noir that he was overrun by negative emotions and thus akumatized.
• My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic:
  • In "A Dog and Pony Show", Rarity invokes Pity the Kidnapper when she is captured by Diamond Dogs in order to make them willing to let her go. It ends up working so well, they let her leave with all the jewels they made her find.
  • Pinkie Pie invokes a Spit Take in "Magical Mystery Cure" after Princess Celestia reveals that Twilight is now an alicorn princess.
• The Simpsons:
  • In "Lemon of Troy", Bart assigns his friends the roles of a Five-Man Band while preparing to investigate Shelbyville.
    Bart: Okay, I'll be the leader, Milhouse is my sidekick, Nelson is the tough guy, Martin is the smart guy, and Todd, you're the quiet religious guy who ends up going crazy.
  • After Apu and Manjula have difficulty conceiving in "Eight Misbehavin'", Homer helps out by having them simulate a drunken teenage one-night-stand.
• South Park:
  • In "I'm A Little Bit Country", Cartman attempts to invoke a Flashback to colonial times so he doesn't have to learn about the Constitutional Convention by reading. This being South Park, after a couple of false starts it eventually works.
  • In "Put It Down", Craig takes advantage of the fact that Tweek's favourite ride is the Ferris wheel to try to invoke a Ferris Wheel Date Moment to distract Tweek from his worries about North Korea. Unfortunately, it doesn't work.
• In the Steven Universe episode "Onion Trade", a Matter Replicator is used to flood the entire town in cheap plastic toys. When they get it back, Garnet destroys it to invoke No Ontological Inertia.
  "I'm not cleaning up this mess."
• The Tick, due to his "Drama Power", will often let villains kick his butt, so that his heroic comeback will be more powerful.

---