Basic Trope: Someone pretends to be drunk or high.
- Straight: Alice pretends to be drunk; staggering around, slurring her words, and doing crazy things like dancing on the table.
- Exaggerated:
- Alice pretends to be on several drugs at once.
- Alice pretends to be The Alcoholic.
- Downplayed: Alice already is drunk, but she's pretending to be drunker than she is.
- Justified:
- Alice doesn't drink, but fears her friends will laugh at her if they find out, so she pretends to be drunk at all social situations.
- Alice is pregnant but trying to hide it.
- Alice is playing a drunk woman in a play.
- Alice wanted to get away with something that she wouldn't get away with if she were sober.
- Alice practices the way of the drunkard.
- Inverted: Alice is drunk, but pretends to be sober.
- Subverted: Alice usually never drinks, so when she's seen acting drunk, it appears that she's pretending. However, it turns out that she did try drinking.
- Double Subverted: She had one drink but it didn't get her drunk, so she pretends to be drunk so that her friends won't think she lied about drinking.
- Parodied: Alice is such a good actress, she even fails a breathalyser test despite actually being sober.
- Zigzagged: Alice doesn't normally drink, so it seems as though she's just pretending to be drunk. However, it turns out that she did try one drink at the party, but it didn't get her drunk, so she pretended. However, Alice then gets drunk for real.
- Averted:
- Alice really is drunk.
- Alice doesn't pretend to be drunk.
- Enforced:
- Lampshaded: "Alice, I know you're sober. Nobody drunk can do that."
- Invoked: Alice is embarrassed to admit to her friends that she doesn't drink, so her boyfriend Bob, who she trusts with the secret, tells her to pretend.
- Exploited:
- Defied: "How about I pretend to be drunk?" "No, bad idea."
- Discussed: "How does one pretend to be drunk?"
- Conversed: "That lady from that show pretended to be drunk last episode. She was a terrible liar."
- Implied: Alice behaves drunkenly even though she usually doesn't drink.
- Deconstructed:
- Reconstructed:
- Played for Laughs: Alice is ludicrously bad at pretending to be drunk— she looks stilted when she pretends to stumble, does things only a sober person could do, and when she talks, she sounds way too calculating.Alice: "I currently have no inhibitions. Therefore, I will now dance on the table."
- Played for Drama: Alice pretends to be drunk because she doesn't want to admit that she's Mormon and face discrimination.
- Played for Horror:
Back to Playing Drunk.
