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Superdickery, maybe?
We're not just men of science, we're men of TROPE!
By the way, is there a trope for which these would be subversions? A scene like in Psycho when we hear dramatic music, see a sinister figure rising a knife and then actually stabbing someone? Or is it too trivial for being a trope?
None of those three are quite right. Superdickery is when a work shows something like this on the cover or trailer to get people to watch or read it, but my example happens across three pages of one story. Stab the Scorpion is when someone seems to be attacking someone else, only it turns out they're saving them from another threat. Stab the Salad is a usually comical trope in which someone is implied to be doing something menacing, but it turns out they're just cutting vegetables or something. McLuchador set the man on fire and left him unscathed, he didn't seem to set the man on fire and then it turned out he didn't.
Is there a trope for when someone does something seemingly horrible, but then it turns out it wasn't that bad at all?
For example, in The Adventures Of Dr Mc Ninja, Dr McLuchador sets a man on fire, sends him through a skateboard trick ramp and into a pool of liquid... which turns out to be some kind of super burn treatment substance, leaving the man perfectly fine. It was a demonstration of his medical expertise.
Edited by Fearmonger