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Basic Trope: Offered only two options, a character chooses a third of their own devising.

  • Straight: Emperor Evulz holds two cities up with his army and Hiro can only go to one in time to save it. Rather than struggle to decide which one, not least because both have strategic and sentimental value for him, Hiro summons the goddess Troperia and she gets some of her personal army to aid one city while the heroes liberate the other.
  • Exaggerated: Evulz gives Hiro two options which will probably both have horrid results. Hiro breaks all rules of logic, out of nowhere, and manages to succeed with it and make everything go perfectly in the plot because of it.
  • Downplayed: Evulz forces Hiro to choose between saving his lover Alice or his friend Bob, and Hiro finds a way to save both of them.
  • Justified:
    • The two options were given as a Secret Test of Character to get Hiro to use his imagination in finding a way out.
    • Evulz was trying to force Hiro into making a hasty gut decision so he wouldn't have time to find an alternative.
    • Hiro realizes that Evulz has in fact offered him a False Dichotomy. There are several other options available to him.
  • Inverted:
    • Hiro and his friends cover both of Evulz's escape routes, forcing Evulz to improvise to get away.
    • Evulz forces Hiro to choose between saving one of three cities from his forces. While Hiro is considering his options, one of the cities manages to repel the villain's forces, leaving Hiro to choose between the other two.
    • While Hiro considers which city to save from Evulz, the goddess reveals that her personal army can defeat Evulz's forces in both cities. The third option is played without Hiro having to make the choice.
  • Subverted:
    • Evulz planned for and prevented the third option Hiro attempted.
    • At the last moment, Hiro suddenly realizes that the correct choice was the second one all along.
  • Double Subverted:
  • Parodied:
  • Zig-Zagged:
    • In attempting to find a third option, Hiro finds fifty-six more...none as appealing as the first two.
    • Alternatively, he finds sixty-nine more, which are viable options...but the villain planned for all of them.
  • Averted: Hiro chooses one of the options provided, never considering the possibility of a third option.
  • Enforced: Choosing either of the two options given would involve killing off one of the fans' favorite characters.
  • Lampshaded: "He'll find a way to save us both. That's what he does."
  • Invoked: Evulz intentionally omits an obvious third option to fool Hiro into a trap.
  • Exploited: Evulz knows Hiro will most likely pick a highly illogical or unexpected third option and plans for it.
  • Defied:
    • Hiro tries to take a third option, but Evulz puts him down with extreme prejudice, taunting him by saying, "Like I said, there is no third option."
    • There really isn't a third option at all.
  • Discussed: "Is this one of those situations where I have to think outside the box to figure this out? I hate those."
  • Conversed: "Oh, it's that episode of Tales of Troperia: The Hiro Chronicles where he has to make a Sadistic Choice. You know he's gonna get around it though, because he's goddamn Hiro."
  • Deconstructed:
    • Hiro's attempted third option comes at a bigger cost than choosing one of the other two would have been. Because of the unintended cost, Hiro starts to doubt his abilities and it slowly throws him into a Heroic BSoD
    • Hiro takes so long deciding that neither option gets picked, resulting in two cities being destroyed.
    • Hiro's attempt at taking the third option fails, leading to both cities being destroyed.
    • Even if the Third Option benefits both sides, few of both sides still disagree with the decision, and believes their choice is better.
  • Reconstructed: After a talk from his friends, Hiro finds out that, despite the tragic cost, it was actually better than what the other choices were by far, giving Hiro resolve to keep going and giving him new insight into the way Evulz plans.
  • Played for Laughs: When Hiro was given which option to pick, to save one city or the other, Hiro replied: "Yes."
  • Played for Drama: Hiro is given the choice to sacrifice himself or the lives of innocent people. Instead, he takes the third option and earns a scathing speech from Kyoya, who chastises him for his selfishness: a real hero wouldn't have hesitated to sacrifice himself for others, instead of searching for a third way out that may not have existed. In doing so, he put thousands of lives at risk for his own, even though it all worked out in the end. This acts as a moment of insight as to Kyoya's distorted sense of morality.
  • Implied: Evulz made Hiro choose to save one of two cities a day's travel from his current spot and on opposite points of the compass from each other. Later, both are shown intact and loyal to Hiro, though we never learn through what mechanism.

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