Basic Trope: A tiny incident sets off a chain of events ending in catastrophe.
- Straight: Alice tells Bob a joke over the phone. Bob's laughter distracts Charles, who is working with an axe. Charles swings around and accidentally decapitates Bob.
- Exaggerated: Alice tells Bob a joke over the phone. Bob's laughter distracts Charles, who is working with an axe. Charles swings around and accidentally decapitates Bob. Bob's head rolls down to a lever, pushing it and activating a machine that drops an anvil. Diane happens to be walking under it, and she is crushed by the anvil. The anvil makes a really loud noise, causing Ellie to stumble and fall off a building. She lands on Frank, who was drinking water. Ellie's body crushes and kills Frank, causing him to drop his water bottle on some wires. Greg walks on them, and he is electrocuted. His body rolls to the road, where Hank is driving. He sees Greg's body and tries to pull over, but his car hits the body and sends it flying down the road into a Fruit Cart, where Ivan is selling fruit. Hank's car crashes into the fruit cart and crushes the fruit cart and Ivan. Hank gets out of his car and tries to call 911, but he trips and falls into the road. Before he can get up, Jacob runs him over unknowingly, causing him to lose control of his car and crash into a gas station, exploding it. The explosion causes Katy, who was jogging nearby to lose balance and fall into a pothole. She tries to climb up back to land, but she bumps into Larry, who was cutting an orange with a knife. He drops the knife and it lands on Katy's eye, killing her instantly. Larry is shocked and tries to run away, but he trips on a rock and lands on some water. He then tries to get up, but he is suddenly hit by a bus driven by Moe, which crashes through an office building, where he gets electrocuted inside by the wires. Noah, an office worker tries to call 911, but he drops his phone on his water bottle. He tries to get his phone back but is electrocuted, and he and his phone fall down on some wires. It starts a fire, making the whole office evacuate. Owen tries to get into his car, but he drives over some water and loses control due to water in his tires, and crashes into a slaughterhouse. Pete is shocked by this and stumbles and falls into a meat processor, so Quinn calls 911 on her phone. Robert and Susan, two police officers arrive and take the body to the hospital. On the way there, they see Terry crossing the road slowly, so they try to pull over. However, they were too slow to activate the brakes, and Terry was run over and killed. They try to call an ambulance and send her to the hospital, but Robert accidentally spilled his hot coffee while trying to get the phone. He screams in pain and loses control of the police car, and it crashes into some construction being worked on. Ulmer sees the car coming in his direction and tries to run away, but his arm gets in the way and is cut off. His arm rolls down to the road, and Velmer sees it but is too distracted by it and is crushed by falling construction material. His arm falls off, and Walter, Xavier, and Yakov, three construction workers accidentally step on it, causing blood to come out, They are disgusted by it they dropped a rock they were holding and it lands on Zack who was drilling the ground, crushing his skull and making him drill down too deep, drilling too close to the Earth's core, causing Earth to explode. This was all because Alice told Bob a funny joke.
- Downplayed: Alice tells Bob a joke. Bob calls Charles on his cell phone to share the joke. Charles talks while driving and crashes his car. While no one is hurt, the damage costs him thousands of dollars.
- Justified: People working with dangerous objects/materials must focus all their attention on the task at hand to avoid dire consequences.
- Inverted: Alice tells Bob a joke about gambling. Bob shares it with Charles, and Diane overhears it, prompting her to buy a lottery ticket. She wins the jackpot.
- Subverted
- Bob gets out of the way of the axe.
- Lifesaving Misfortune
- Double Subverted: ...then it swings around and decapitates Charles.
- Parodied:
- The events and their consequences don't fit with each other. For example, Alice tells Bob a chicken joke. This reminds Bob that he needs more pancake mix to feed to his robotic mouse, so he goes to the grocery store and meets Charles. Charles is carrying a jar of apricot jam, which Bob finds hilarious for some reason. Charles then decides that, because he made Bob laugh, he should knit a green sweater for a banana squash. The sight of a squash in a sweater leads Diane to become a terrorist.
- The events are extremely minor and the series is short. For example, Alice tells Bob a joke. It causes him to laugh a lot, causing him to stay up a bit late than usual. Everybody acts as if Bob had been killed.
- Zig-Zagged: Bob notices the axe and dodges it, but it decapitates Charles instead. The axe then rolls down to a lever that activates a machine that will drop an anvil, but he grabs the axe before it could push it. However, he trips on the lever, activating the machine and so on.
- Averted: There is no chain of events.
- Enforced:
- "We want a moment that is both comedic and dramatic. How about a hilarious chain of seemingly insignificant events that results in a death?"
- This is a safety PSA that's meant to show that the danger doesn't stop at the immediate consequences.
- Lampshaded: "It wasn't your fault, Bob. I told you the joke, and you liked it enough to share it."
- Invoked: Emperor Evulz is a manipulator of fate who drives Charles insane in an attempt to kill Bob, because Bob is the only obstacle to his conquest of the galaxy.
- Exploited: ???
- Defied: Charles tries his hardest not to get distracted by Bob's laughter.
- Discussed: ???
- Conversed: "Why does every chain of events in this show escalate to death or injury? It doesn't make sense!"
- Played for Laughs: Bloody Hilarious, Amusing Injuries.
Now you've done it! By going back to Disaster Dominoes, you've started a truly disastrous chain of events!
