Basic Trope: A character has an extremely unusual fear that's Played for Laughs.
- Straight: John is afraid of sandwiches, tricycles, teddy bears, ducks, and microwave ovens.
- Exaggerated:
- John is afraid of pink tablecloths with white polka dots, bacon-wrapped eggs, and books with an even number of pages.
- John has pantophobia, a literal fear of everything... as well as phobophobia, fear of phobias.
- Downplayed:
- John is afraid of being near balloons, but only because he's startled by their noises when they pop.
- John's phobia is not that strange, but his reaction to the thing that scares him is absurd.
- Justified:
- John has had traumatic experiences with all of these things. Or John has PTSD, which often causes a fear of things that are incidental to the trauma.
- John is a very young child with not much life experience, which is why he's so afraid of things most adults would dismiss as mundane objects.
- Inverted:
- Subverted: John claims to have all these fears, but it's revealed he lied in order to get out of performing some task.
- As the series goes on, it turns out he actually has a very good reason to have those fears.
- Double Subverted: ...but then he actually does gain those fears after some traumatic experience.
- ...or alternatively, the reasons for those fears turn out to be absurd in themselves.
- Parodied:
- John is afraid of tricycle-riding ducks wearing teddy bear masks who eat sandwiches cooked on microwave ovens. John's therapist comments that this particular phobia is relatively common.
- John is afraid of the word "Sandwich" being pronounced "Sammich".
- John has phobophobophobophobia the fear of the fear of the fear of phobias and phobiaphobia, meaning that, he is scared of the word phobia.
- John has braveophobia meaning he is scared of not being scared and constantly flip-flops between being calm and terrified as a result.
- Zig Zagged: John is shown to be deadly afraid of sandwiches... even though a previous scene showed him having no issues eating a sandwich (and then he is shown eating a sandwich again at the end of episode, as if his phobia never existed). John is a very complicated fellow.
- Averted:
- John is afraid of spiders and heights.
- John isn't afraid of anything.
- Enforced: It's an episode that's about the main cast facing their worst fears, so it's only natural for one of them to have a weird fear to confront thanks to Rule of Funny.
- Lampshaded: "John, you're the only person I know who's actually afraid of that stuff."
- Diane makes sandwiches.
Diane: Alright, everyone, I made some sandwiches for e-*John screams and runs through the door, leaving an Impact Silhouette*Diane: Oh, right. (Yelling) Sorry, John! - Invoked: John's neighbor Diane traumatizes John daily with harmless stuff like sandwiches as part of an experiment to see if people can indeed develop unusual phobias through enough mental trauma.
- Exploited: John's neighbor Diane keeps him out of her house by placing them all around her lawn.
- Defied:
- John receives some therapy to help him conquer these fears.
- John receives said therapy to prevent said fears in the first place.
- John's fears are pointedly not treated as "funny" by the rest of the cast.
- Implied: John is shown visibly nervous when near sandwiches, but it's never stated why.
- Discussed: "It's a slapstick comedy and John is a straight-up Space Marine. Obviously they needed to make sure he's Not So Above It All."
- Conversed: "Have you noticed how these kinds of characters always have those weird fears? I mean, who actually has them?!"
- Deconstructed: John has all these fears...that are given a Cerebus Retcon as he had a traumatic childhood that caused said phobias.
- Reconstructed: His friends still laugh at them though as a source of Black Comedy.
- Played For Laughs:
- This trope usually is applied for this reason, especially the exaggerated version.
- John goes through a particularly absurd experience (such as taking care of Alice's never-do-well younger brother) and spends the rest of the series deathly afraid of doing it again.
- Played For Drama:
- John's fears make him much less functional as a human being, especially if he's afraid of things that are too common.
- It's all fun and games until Diane discovers that John was molested as a child and his molester felt it was funny to perform bizarre things with sandwiches, like forcing John to eat sandwiches full of scatological results or being "force-fed" sandwiches through... yeah...
- The phobia is absurd. What John does to try to get away from it is not.
- Why Did It Have to Be Snakes?
- Played For Horror:
- John is Properly Paranoid due to an encounter he had with an Eldritch Abomination that can disguise itself as a sandwich.
- Diane keeps pranking John with sandwiches because of how absurd it is. And then John ends up suffering a heart attack.
- John becomes an Omnicidal Maniac to try to get rid of whatever makes him afraid forever.
- John's fear of rabbits looks ridiculous, until the team encounters the being that caused John's trauma: The Killer Rabbit of Caernabbog. And there is no running away from it. And there is no hiding from it. And there is no calling for help. And they tossed away the blessed hand grenade John always carried just in case. And nothing else can hurt it. If they survive — and it's a very big "if" — they are going to develop the same phobia.
Back to... AAAGH! A trope! Don't let it eat me!
