Basic Trope: Meet your neighbor by asking to borrow something from them.
- Straight: Lance meets the friendly Girl Next Door Mary by knocking on her door and asking to borrow some sugar.
- Exaggerated: Lance asks for sugar, bacon, eggs, and an entire breakfast meal.
- Downplayed: Lance is vaguely acquainted with Mary already, and calls her over the phone to see if she has sugar.
- Justified: Coming in with a small, easily fulfillable request is a good way to have an interaction with someone.
- Inverted: Lance wants Mary to come to his house, so he sneaks into her house and steals her sugar so she has to go to him and ask for it back.
- Subverted: Lance is about to walk up to Mary's door and practices reciting asking for something. He can't go through with it and turns around.
- Double Subverted: He walks to his other neighbor, Wendy, and asks her for sugar.
- Parodied:
- Everyone in the neighborhood keeps large containers of sugar in their house, just in case people ask for it. It begs the question why they'd even need to borrow any in the first place.
- Lance asks for sugar. Mary reaches behind her back, grabs a big bag of it, and dumps the entire thing over him. Lance is satisfied.
- Averted: Lance doesn't ask for anything from Mary.
- Enforced: "We need to introduce Lance into this part of the story! What if Mary was doing something and he stopped by because he needed something?"
- Lampshaded: "Do you have any sugar I can borrow? You'd do that for a neighbor, right?"
- Invoked: "If you wanna meet that girl next door, just go up to her and ask for something small."
- Exploited: Lance actually wants to get to know Mary better, and uses this as an introduction.
- Defied: Mary has made it clear that she does not accept requests from people who aren't close friends.
- Discussed: "Do you think people in the neighborhood would stop by if they needed to borrow anything?"
- Conversed: "I've never had my neighbors come by and ask for sugar in real life."
- Played for Horror: Unbeknownst to Lance, Mary is a Serial Killer, and he's just entered her house.
"May I Borrow a Cup of Sugar?"
"Oh, sure! Come on in!"
