Zzzzzzzzzz
The very first line on the page is this: "When listing off three or more things, apparently the rule is not to finish strong. Give two strong examples in your list followed by a very weak example." The trope isn't specific to crimes, and we don't need to emphasize that lists of crimes are often used for it.
edited 20th Jul '11 7:03:38 AM by Madrugada
...if you don’t love you’re dead, and if you do, they’ll kill you for it.
I've been browsing Tvtropes for over a year now, and I literally have yet to find an example of this trope that doesn't relate to someone doing something wrong. Maybe I'm not looking hard enough, but that speaks volumes about how the trope is used.
Zzzzzzzzzz
Then that's a failure to crosswick, not a failure of the trope. There are plenty of examples on the trope page itself that aren't lists of crimes. They simply need to be crosswicked.
...if you don’t love you’re dead, and if you do, they’ll kill you for it.
Anecdotally speaking, I've come across plenty of wick which use it in such a matter. I'm not seeing a problem. Doing it with crimes and mistakes is an incredibly common form...which makes an issue that can be solved by putting a line into the description.
I've seen plenty of examples not related to crimes. For example, in The Lonely Island's song "Like a Boss", the Boss sings about "eat(ing) some chicken strips" in between a bunch of squicky and/or violent actions.
Looking through the examples, I see that most or all of them refer to a situation where a character is being yelled at/whatever for committing a string of crimes, and then the last crime is something minor.
The trope description barely alludes to this, if at all.