Basic Trope: Circumstances where the real thing doesn't match with the advertisement.
- Straight: Bob goes to an impossibly cheap hotel for a vacation. The brochure and the real hotel differ horrifyingly.
- Exaggerated: The hotel brochure shows a luxurious palace with an indoor and outdoor swimming pool, five bedrooms, a game room, and a big kitchen. The real place is a run-down shack that would fall down after a stiff breeze.
- Downplayed: The actual hotel is not quite as nice as the ad, but not terrible.
- Justified:
- Bob is reading an old brochure, back when the place was still nice-looking. Now it's scheduled to be demolished in a week.
- The company is trying to cash in on unsuspecting customers.
- Bob found an advertiser's compositing test using stock photos instead of the, at the time, still-being-developed photos of the actual hotel. Why he didn't see the words "STOCK" placed across the image is unknown.
- Inverted: The real thing is actually better than the advertisement.
- Subverted:
- Bob realizes the hotel looks nothing like the brochure and is upset, but he is soon directed to the actual hotel.
- The brochure from 1992 clearly states that it's an artist's impression, with construction to commence in 1993. Bob went too early.
- Double Subverted:
- Which happens to be even worse than the one before.
- Bob notices the foundation of the hotel looks vastly different than the brochure.
- Parodied: Charlie, the manager of the hotel blatantly admits that, yes, he used false advertising, and laughs at Bob for being such a gullible fool.
- Zig-Zagged:
- The hotel's exterior looks worse than the advertisement, but the actual room matches the picture, except the bathroom is in disrepair, the swimming pool is much more luxurious than the brochure, and the view is of Mordor, not the Ghibli Hills.
- The hotel is currently under repair, meaning that some areas are broken down and need work, while others have been recently updated and are better than the picture.
- Averted: The brochure and the real thing look exactly the same, no more, no less.
- Enforced: "Why don't we add some comedy, by having Bob get tricked into staying in an abandoned hotel?
- Lampshaded: "Gee, that certainly doesn't look anything like the brochure..."
- Invoked: The hotel owners use photos of a nice hotel to advertise their rathole of a hotel, knowing a lot of people are gullible enough to believe it.
- Exploited: Bob sues the hotel owners for false advertising.
- Defied: Bob only stays at hotels his friends have recommended.
- Discussed: "Wow, this place looks too good to be true! Especially for that price..."
- Conversed: "Bob just won a vacation at a really swell-looking hotel, according to the brochure. But since the work always loves to abuse Bob, the real thing is probably a rathole."
- Implied: "So how was the hotel?" "I'd rather not talk about it..."
- Deconstructed: As more and more people find out how different the advertising and the hotel differ, the hotel starts losing customers.
- Reconstructed: The way to gain them back? Lie to them some more!
- Played for Drama: Bob and Alice check into a hotel that has the selling point of being one of the safest hotels in town. When Alice falls off the oh-too-short balcony and dies, Bob sues the hotel and wins. The hotel closes and is demolished the next day, with Alice's grave placed on where the hotel once stood.
Back to Very False Advertising.
