Basic Trope: A glass contains an object to use when a certain emergency occurs. It happens and a character breaks the glass.
- Straight: Alice is a Crazy Survivalist who keeps garlic in a glass box in case vampires appear. They do, so she breaks the glass.
- Exaggerated: Alice has several glass boxes with all sorts of items to deal against vampires — garlic, wooden stakes, a special anti-vampire gas, holy water, etc.
- Downplayed: Alice doesn't break the glass, she just makes a hole in it.
- Justified:
- Alice knows there have been many vampire attacks in the past.
- Glass boxes happen to be the best containers to preserve garlic in the long term.
- Inverted: During the emergency, Alice needs to build a glass box and store stuff in it.
- Subverted:
- Alice doesn't get to break the glass for some reason. Maybe Bianca already has garlic with her.
- Alice takes the hammer below the box but then Bianca turns her hand intangible and extracts the garlic without breaking the glass.
- Double Subverted:
- But then, Bianca runs out of garlic, so they need Alice's, and she (or someone else) breaks the glass.
- The glass box has a removable lid that Alice uses to open it.
- Parodied: The glass box doesn't contain anything. It's the act of breaking the glass what is purportedly needed to solve the emergency.
- Zig-Zagged: Instead of vampires, it's werewolves who start attacking. However, Alice still breaks her glass box with garlic to use against them.
- Averted: There's an emergency and supplies for it are stored in a wooden box or in someone's pocket. No glass box in sight.
- Enforced: Breaking glasses in case of emergency is the Creator Thumbprint, present in every work made by said creator.
- Lampshaded:
- The glass box reads "break in case of vampires".
- Alice says it's a pity she needs to break the glass, what with it being such a nice box.
- Invoked:
- After the first vampire attacks, Alice says she'll store garlic in glass boxes just in case.
- The Government issues such glass boxes to be put in public buildings.
- Exploited: The local glass factory only produces glass boxes that cannot be opened, just destroyed. This way, they profit more because people will always need more of them.
- Defied: The glass reads "Do NOT break in case of emergency".
- Discussed: Alice and Bianca debate over whether breaking the glass is wise. After all, the vampires have sharp hearing and the noise will alert them. On the other hand, they need the garlic.
- Conversed: Alice is having a normal day at work and finds garlic encased in a glass box. She jokes with Bianca that she will break it when she forgets to spice her rice.
- Deconstructed: Alice ends up unable to access the garlic because the box was designed to be resilient against a fair amount of roughness, including punching and kicking, negating accidental breakage. And her fists and feet are all she has, any weapons she may have had either aren't present or were taken from her.
- Reconstructed: When a vampire comes to attack, Alice uses Deadly Dodging to cause the vampire to crash into the box and break it open for her. The vampire is so frenzied with its bloodlust that its charging attack hits the box with just enough force to damage it and get the garlic free.
- Implied: Bianca asks what to do. Alice looks at the glass box and takes the hammer below it. In the next scene, they are seen hurling garlic at the vampires.
- Played for Laughs: No matter what she does, Alice cannot break the glass. She smacks it with a hammer and it endures.
- Played for Drama: Alice cuts herself with the glass shards, causing the vampires to smell her blood.
- Played for Horror: Shortly after, it's revealed glass boxes are sentient and all of this breaking is, in fact, genocide.
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