Basic Trope: A character goes to church and the sermon specifically pertains to whatever crisis they're going through.
- Straight: Bob is having trouble in his marriage, and Father Troper just happens to be covering marriage in that week's sermon.
- Exaggerated: Bob's having trouble in his marriage, is on the downslope of his career and is in debt. Somehow Troper's sermon covers all of this.
- Downplayed: The sermon is more generic in nature but it somewhat applies to Bob.
- Justified: Father Troper knows Bob has been having trouble in his marriage, but also knows Bob would never come directly to him. Thus, he tailored his sermon to pertain to Bob.
- Inverted: At no point has one of Father Troper's sermons pertained to Bob.
- Subverted: Bob's having trouble in his marriage, sure, but it just happened to coincide with the church's 10-week series on marriage.
- Double Subverted: But then next week when Bob is in debt, the church switches to a "finances" series.
- Parodied:
- Father Troper frantically calls Bob on Saturday night, saying he can't write tomorrow's sermon unless he knows what problems are going on in his life.
- Father Troper follows Bob around - when Bob goes to a stripclub for instance, he preaches about how stripclubs are bad.
- Zig Zagged: ...But the debt sermon series continues even after Bob stabilizes his finances.
- Averted: Some sermons apply heavily to Bob, some a little, some not at all.
- Enforced: The work in question is religious in nature and is meant to drive church attendance.
- Lampshaded: "I wonder what the sermon will be at Plot Contrivance Baptist Church this Sunday?"
- Invoked: Bob's friend Dave tells the pastor about Bob's troubles, hoping he'll include it in his sermon.
- Exploited: The pastor uses his intimate knowledge of Bob's problems to blackmail him.
- Defied: "I know some of our parishioners are going through a tough time in their lives, but today's sermon will still be about Job."
- Discussed: ???
- Conversed: ???
- Deconstructed:
- The father only knows what to preach to Bob because he's way too involved in Bob's life. He eventually becomes too attached, which freaks Bob out and drives him from the church.
- The other parishioners get extremely pissed off that Father Troper is only paying attention to Bob, which causes attendance (and thus giving) to plummet.
- Reconstructed:
- The father keeps track of many of the churchgoer's problems, tailoring some of his sermons to subjects that concern as many of the listeners as possible. Either Bob is exceptional insofar as at the time of some of the sermons, he is the only attendee with significant problems, or he tends to have problems shared by many other churchgoers unusually often. In either case, Bob is not the only target of the sermons, and sermons suitable for him are not criticised by the other churchgoers because either they are also benefiting or Bob is clearly having a worse time and could do with some help.
- Implied: Bob was planning on divorcing his wife, but he decides to keep working on his marriage after going to church. It's not revealed what was actually said at the sermon.
Back to Suspiciously Specific Sermon, my child. And remember, next week we'll be covering "Useful Notes" in our sermon.
