Basic Trope: Cafeteria food is depicted as awful.
- Straight: The food in Tropeville High School's cafeteria is a Mess on a Plate which doesn't look appealing at all.
- Exaggerated: The food contains all sorts of disgusting ingredients such as human remains, body fluids, garbage, poison, and broccoli.
- Downplayed: The food is a little bland, but not horrible overall.
- Justified:
- The cafeteria workers are inexperienced.
- The cafeteria workers are serving bad food to the students (whether it's all of them or just a few of them) due to having a specific grudge against them.
- To keep the cost of the food down, substandard ingredients are used. It's noticable.
- Inverted: The food in the cafeteria is wonderful, and even restaurant quality.
- Subverted:
- Alice is disgusted by the way the food looks, but it actually tastes pretty good.
- While it looks and tastes disgusting, it's made in accordance with the Cafeteria Heatlh and Hygiene Law(s) and is very nutritious.
- Double Subverted:
- And then the next day, the cafeteria serves something even worse.
- Tropeville High isn't known for following any Hygiene Laws… why would the cafeteria be any different?
- Parodied: Alice insists that the food at Tropeville High School is nasty because it's just slightly bland.
- Zig-Zagged: The cafeteria serves a lot of food every day; some of the different foods are good, and some of them are bad.
- Averted:
- Cafeteria food isn't mentioned.
- The cafeteria food is relatively fine.
- Enforced: The creators of the work want to call attention to issues such as school lunches not having enough nutrition for students.
- Lampshaded: "Why does cafeteria food always taste awful?"
- Invoked: ???
- Exploited: The students make the cooks eat their own food so they realize the food they put out is awful.
- Defied:
- The staff at Tropeville High School hires better cooks.
- The board of education has very severe standards about the quality of the food offered to students (whether or not the students like it regardless, that's another problem).
- Discussed: "I heard that Tropeville High School has awful food."
- Conversed: "Ya know, I wonder why it's impossible for school chefs to make decent meals every once in a while."
- Implied:
- Alice doesn't even eat from the cafeteria when she's forgotten her lunch at home.
- The trash can is full of uneaten meals.
- Everyone is shown bringing their own lunch.
- Played for Laughs: The situation is played as Faux Horrific because of the frequent Stock "Yuck!" ingredients of the food.
- Played for Drama: Someone gets a serious disease from eating the cafeteria food.
- Played for Horror:
- One of the cafeteria workers is a Serial Killer who puts the bodies of their victims in the food, similar to Sweeney Todd.
- Someone dies from having an adverse reaction to the elements in the crappy cafeteria food.
Back to Foul Cafeteria Food
