Basic Trope: Someone fakes surrender to catch their enemies off guard.
- Straight: Emperor Evulz surrenders, allowing Alice and Bob to put their weapons down. When they do, Evulz reveals he was faking the surrender and shoots them.
- Exaggerated: Emperor Evulz' fake surrender allows him to press the button and destroy the entire universe.
- Downplayed: Emperor Evulz' fake surrender allows him to simply run away before the heroes can catch him.
- Justified:
- Evulz acted convincingly enough that it looked like he really was going to surrender, and Alice and Bob were inexperienced enough to fall for it.
- Evulz has surrendered in good faith in the past, so Alice and Bob don't expect this kind of behavior from him.
- Alice and Bob know what Evulz is doing, but both of them are too committed to their code of honor, and consider refusing an enemy's surrender to be dishonorable.
- Evulz has fifty bullets in him, lost both arms, one leg, a chunk of his brain, and was stripped naked from all the gunfire that also knocked him into some of his Kryptonite Factor and a dead spot where he cannot communicate and request a teleportation escape. Alice and Bob seriously did not expected him to have one last attack up his sleeve.
- Inverted:
- Evulz fakes his death to catch Alice and Bob off guard.
- Despite his surrender, Alice and Bob shoot Evulz on the spot.
- Subverted:
- Evulz is about to shoot them, but realizes that it'd be too low, even for him to cheat like that. He puts his gun away and decides to surrender for real.
- While Evulz is surrendering, General Drake tries to attack the heroes from behind. However, Evulz tells Drake to stop because he is acting out of order.
- Double Subverted:
- He puts down his rifle, then draws his sidearm.
- Evulz did order Drake to sneak up on the heroes. He actually told him to stop because he realized it wouldn't work.
- Parodied: Evulz approaches Bob while waving a white flag, then uses the flag to beat the crap out of Bob.
- Zig-Zagged:
- Sometimes Evulz surrenders to Alice and Bob, no strings attached, while other times he decides to fake a surrender.
- Evulz' surrender request is genuine, but he also has a trap in place for the heroes... which is only set to go off if his surrender request is refused, so the heroes really only have themselves to blame if they trigger it.
- Averted: No one pretends to surrender.
- Enforced: ???
- Lampshaded: "Of course he didn't actually surrender! Why did we ever think he could be trusted, anyway?"
- Invoked: The Token Evil Teammate Dave wants Evulz dead regardless if he's surrendered, so he mistreats and abuses Evulz in order to cause this.
- Exploited: The Anti-Hero Carol thinks that Evulz is faking a surrender, and decides to plant a remote-controlled bomb on him when he's not aware.
- Defied:
- Alice and Bob have already learned that if someone surrenders that easily, it's likely that they're faking the surrender in order to catch them off guard. They decide not to fall for Evulz' trick.
- Alice and Bob demand Evulz hand over all of his weapons before they capture him.
- Discussed: "Is he really going to let us capture him? He doesn't seem trustworthy..."
- Conversed: ???
- Deconstructed:
- The heroes catch Evulz trying to attack after surrendering. Realizing he has lost, Evulz then tries to surrender for real, but the heroes would rather kill him than get fooled a second time.
- Feigned surrenders become so common that nobody takes genuine surrenders seriously, resulting in unnecessary deaths.
- Reconstructed:
- General Drake remembers what happened to Evulz, so he has a better plan in place for when the heroes corner him.
Back to I Surrender, Suckers
