Basic Trope: Ripping the tag off a mattress or pillow is illegal and treated as a heinous crime.
- Straight: Alice rips the tag off her mattress, and gets arrested and sent to Prison for it.
- Exaggerated:
- Alice is executed for pulling the tag off her mattress.
- An entire FBI SWAT Team is dispatched to Alice's home just because she ripped the tag off.
- INTERPOL gets involved over this.
- Downplayed: Alice is fined for ripping the tag off her mattress.
- Justified: Alice is the owner of Mattresses Inc., meaning that it really is illegal for her to rip the tag off a mattress that she's selling.
- Inverted:
- Alice is rewarded for ripping the tag off her mattress.
- Alice is released from Prison for ripping the tag off her mattress.
- Subverted:
- Shortly after she rips the tag off, the police show up at her door, but they do not arrest her. They are there asking witnesses or potential witnesses to a crime.
- The mattress she ripped the tag of was still at the store.
- Alice has been ripping off tags and replacing them with other tags that lie about the mattresses' construction and materials, as part of a larger scam to pass off cheap items as luxury goods.
- Double Subverted:
- The police see the mattress tag stuck to Alice's shoe, and arrest her. The crime they were seeking information about was the missing mattress tag.
- Alice had just finished making the sale, but the employees still have her arrested.
- The Summary Execution Section of the Better Business Bureau makes clear that the moment Alice ripped the tag she was a dead woman walking and her swindle just added one more crime to be read off before shooting her.
- Parodied:
- Alice gets to prison and meets her new cellmate, Betty. Alice asks her, "What Are You in For?", and Betty replies that she's in for killing her husband. She then asks Alice the same question, and Alice replies that she's in for ripping the tag off her mattress. Betty is shocked and appalled. Word quickly spreads around the prison of what a hardened criminal Alice is, and none of the other inmates even try to mess with her.
- Alice goes to Hell, and Satan notes that she ripped the tag off her mattress. Even he is scared of her!
- Alice is arrested on charges of Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking, and removing her mattress tag. She pleads guilty to ripping the tag off her mattress, and the judge acts as though that's worse than even the jaywalking.
- Alice accidentally tears the label off of Bob's mattress. In a panic, he grabs her and dives out the window. A second later the room explodes.
- Zig-Zagged: Some are arrested for pulling the tag off, and some are not. Some are fined, some are imprisoned, and some are sent to Death Row.
- Averted: Alice doesn't rip the tag off her mattress.
- Enforced:
- Lampshaded: "You're under arrest for ripping the tag off your mattress! You have the right to remain silent..."
- Invoked: While changing her sheets, Alice notices the tag, with a warning that it is illegal to remove it. Alice wonders "What Could Possibly Go Wrong?".
- Exploited:
- Alice's best friend Betty is arrested in some Noodle Incident, and Alice is trying to get arrested and sent to jail to be with her or help her escape.
- Betty was Dragged Off to Hell, and Alice is trying to get sent there to rescue her.
- Defied:
- Alice does not rip the tag off her mattress, fearing that she'll be arrested.
- The police decide to not arrest Alice for removing her mattress' tag.
- The legal text on the tag is phrased to make extremely clear even to the dumbest of individuals (on all sides of the law) that tearing it off after you bought it from the store does not turn you into a criminal.
- Discussed:
"Would someone really get arrested for taking the tag off their mattress?"
"Not in Real Life, unless they were a vendor or manufacturer of mattresses. And even then, it would probably be a civil issue."
"Not in Real Life, unless they were a vendor or manufacturer of mattresses. And even then, it would probably be a civil issue."
- Conversed:
"So in this episode Alice goes to jail."
"What did she do?"
"Mattress tag"
"What did she do?"
"Mattress tag"
- Implied: The character is in jail with the mattress tag obviously visible in a sensitive area. When asked What Are You in For?, they reply "What do you think?"
- Played for Laughs: The villain's evil deeds include kidnapping the hero's wife, plunging worlds into darkness and swiping the tags from mattresses.
- Played for Drama: After ripping the tag off her mattress, Alice learns that it is illegal. Although never a bad person before, Alice discovers a fondness for Evil Is Petty acts, realizing that to her, Evil Feels Good. So begins Alice's life of crime, in which she soon graduates to more outright evil acts, destroying her own life and that of her family.
- Played for Horror:
- Ripping off the tag makes Alice the target of the local Inspector Javert Rabid Cop, the one who thinks he is emulating Dirty Harry but is copying Judge Death instead, who will annihilate her in the most gory act of Police Brutality he can devise to teach everybody else a lesson.
- Alice rips the tag off a mattress. The mattress starts bleeding.
Back to Mattress-Tag Gag
