Basic Trope: A character makes something dangerous and/or illegal, but the method involved is obscured or deliberately inaccurate so that viewers can't replicate it.
- Straight:
- Bob makes a bomb, but the materials he's using are obscured through camera angles and careful editing.
- Bob makes a bomb out of common household materials, but none of them would result in a real explosive device.
- Bob refers only to the high level elemental composition, energy levels, and detonation triggers of the bomb. All accurate but ignoring the how of the process entirely.
- Exaggerated:
- Bob is covered by a giant censor blur while he makes his bomb, and every time he talks about what he's doing, his dialogue is bleeped.
- Bob makes a bomb out of bottled water, string, and the sound of moonlight.
- Downplayed:
- Bob uses (mostly) accurate components but leaves out a few crucial steps.
- Bob's bomb might actually work in real life but it would not be nearly as destructive as it's depicted onscreen.
- The components are accurate but are either already in their dangerous and hard to acquire form or completely harmless. Nitroglycerin mixed with diatomaceous earth for instance.
- Justified:
- Bob is intentionally building a fake bomb that won't work.
- Bob is a Reality Warper or lives in a universe powered by Clap Your Hands If You Believe, so the bomb will work as long as he thinks it will.
- The laws of physics are different in this universe.
- Bob is aware of the Fourth Wall and does not want to disclose what he actually used to make a bomb for the audience.
- Inverted:
- Bob bakes a completely normal and harmless cake, and it's all shown in excruciating detail.
- Bob makes something completely normal and harmless, but the recipe he is shown using would make a bomb if it was followed in real life.
- Bob makes a safe atomic power core out of two tons of uranium pushed together by explosives. To be fair it was written before the critical mass was even calculated.
- Subverted: Bob sets out a bunch of unlabeled chemicals, then openly names them and explains what they're used for.
- Double Subverted: Then the camera abruptly cuts away before he starts to work.
- Parodied: Bob writes the word "BOMB" on an empty cardboard box, and it explodes just like the real thing.
- Zig Zagged: Bob is shown making a bomb with a real life recipe with explicit detail. However it later explodes with greater force than it would have actually done. It is revealed that the reason he made the bomb was part of a gambit to expose a weapons smuggler. If it was harmless clay then it would have just made a loud noise and a dent in it. Since it was C4 it detonated. The danger is also averted since the effect occurs only if one has military grade explosives in the first place. If one has C4 then there is little need to fool around with improvised explosives in the first place.
- Averted:
- Bob's bomb-making technique is completely accurate and shown in explicit detail.
- No one in the work makes any bombs, or drugs, or improvised chemical weapons, or anything else that might be dangerous.
- Enforced:
- The creators want to entertain their audience, not teach them how to blow themselves up.
- The network executives and their lawyers insist that the show not teach the audience how to blow themselves up.
- Lampshaded: "I'm pretty sure that's not how you make a bomb." "Shh! We don't want kids trying this at home!"
- Invoked: The instructions are part of a sting operation to prove intent in bomb making while not actually being dangerous.
- Exploited: ???
- Defied:
- Alice hides all the common, harmless household materials because she suspects Bob is trying to make a bomb with them.
- Alice monitors Bob's actions at all times so he can't just build a bomb offscreen.
- The In-Universe writers of Bob decide to add all necessary data to manufacture the device the plot needs right there on the screen, only adding a Do Not Try This at Home disclaimer in the end credits. If that leads to a barrage of world-wide accidental explosions and deliberate crimes, that's not their problem.
- Discussed: "If this were a TV show you could just make plastic explosives out of orange juice and styrofoam."
- Conversed: "Why do people on television always make their bombs out of stuff that won't explode?"
- Played For Laughs: The missing ingredients are presented as Nothing Is Funnier (or basically reverse Noodle Implements).
"I'll just need aluminum powder, ammonium nitrate, And Some Other Stuff..."
