Follow TV Tropes

Following

Playing With / Imagine the Audience Naked

Go To

Basic Trope: A person nervous about talking in front of a large group of people is advised to overcome their anxiety by pretending that everyone in the audience has no clothes on. They follow this advice. Hilarity Ensues.

  • Straight: Brian is uneasy about giving a speech to an assembly of fellow golf enthusiasts. His friend Bob suggests that he get over it by imagining that his audience is naked or in their underwear.
  • Exaggerated: Brian imagines everyone he talks to in a state of undress, even when he's just partaking in casual conversation with people he's already comfortable talking with.
  • Downplayed:
    • Brian only imagines a few people are naked or in their underwear.
    • Brian decides to imagine that the people in the audience are wearing ridiculous outfits.
  • Justified: Bob thinks imagining a less formal setting will make the speech more comfortable.
  • Inverted:
    • Brian overcomes his fear of speaking in front of an audience by imagining himself in the nude.
    • Brian deals with the awkwardness of being around naked people by pretending that he is giving a speech.
    • Brian is giving a speech to a nudist convention and imagines the audience clothed.
    • Brian, who is powerful but mercurial, inspires more fear in the audience members than vice versa, so they compensate by imagining him in the nude.
    • Brian, speaking naked in front of an audience for some reason, imagines himself clothed.
    • Brian is speaking naked in front of an audience for some reason, and they try to imagine him clothed.
  • Subverted:
    • Brian appears to use this tactic successfully, but it's revealed that he had been giving the speech at a nudist club.
    • Brian instead decides to imagine his audience is wearing funny clothes.
    • Instead of visualizing the audience naked, he visualizes them reacting positively to his speech instead.
  • Double Subverted:
    • The knowledge that he remained calm while speaking in front of people who were naked encourages Brian to imagine the next audience members he has to speak to naked.
    • He switches to picturing his audience naked when the "funny clothes" and "positive reaction" approaches don't work.
  • Parodied:
    • Brian is a nudist nervous about speaking in front of people, and Bob advises him to imagine his audience is clothed.
    • The members of the audience know that Brian has a problem with giving speeches, so they decide to save him the trouble of imagining them naked by all actually stripping naked before he starts giving his speech.
    • Brian imagines the audience members in a group Shower Scene, saying and doing various hilarious things.
  • Zig-Zagged: Brian is advised to imagine his audience naked. He is indecisive about whether to go through with it and some of the people in his audience are indeed naked.
  • Averted: No one advises imagining the audience in a state of undress as a tactic for overcoming nervousness.
  • Enforced: Having a character imagine their audience in the nude is a common way of employing Naked People Are Funny and Fanservice.
  • Lampshaded: "Are you sure that's going to work? I mean, some of the people in the audience I don't want to see naked."
  • Invoked: Brian gets extremely nervous during his speech and quickly decides to imagine his audience is in their birthday suits.
  • Exploited: Alice, whom Brian has been dreaming about seeing naked for a long time, is in the audience. Getting the opportunity to imagine her naked gives him a jolt of adrenaline and confidence.
  • Defied: Brian refuses to imagine his audience naked during his speech.
  • Discussed: "I don't understand why anyone thinks imagining the audience is in the buff is a good idea. Picturing the people naked is more likely to make their anxiety worse."
  • Conversed: "Not to mention that depending on who's in the audience, the speaker is likely to be either scarred for life or distracted because of their hormones."
  • Implied: We don't hear Bob's advice or have a clear indication of what Brian did, but after his speech fails miserably, Brian chides Bob for his advice and remarks that because of how he imagined his audience, there are now things he wishes he could unsee.
  • Deconstructed:
    • Brian gets traumatized from picturing really unattractive people in the nude or suffers from even greater anxiety than before from imagining attractive people naked and never gets the nerve to give speeches ever again.
    • Brian bursts out laughing in the middle of his speech.
  • Reconstructed:
    • Brian knows that there are certain people he really doesn't need to see in the nude, especially not while giving a speech, so he only imagines his audience naked when he's certain it won't lead to becoming more nervous or being mentally scarred.
    • Brian prepares for the Naked People Are Funny reaction by getting Alice and Bob to let him look at them naked so he knows exactly what it's like.
    • Brian manages to play off his laughter with a joke, amusing and entertaining the audience.
  • Played for Laughs: Brian says out loud that he's imagining the audience is naked. Cue a lot of awkward stares from the audience.
  • Played for Drama: Brian's thoughtless decision of heeding Bob's advice prevents him from ever being able to make speeches and he's deeply traumatized by seeing people in the nude he'd rather not.
  • Played for Horror: Brian imagines his audience naked, but his brain cooks up tattoos that are Nightmare Fuel for him, and whether the other people even have them is immaterial.

Before you go back to Imagine the Audience Naked, it might be a good idea to pretend everyone who looks at your edits is in their undies.

Top