Discussion Main / AndYouThoughtItWasAGame

I'm placing two zero context examples, and one incomprehensible example here in the hopes that someone will either elaborate and make it into something that can be put back on the page, or make them go away. First, incomprehensible:

• The plot of Interstellar Pig, basically. Barney plays a round of the eponymous board game with his new friends, then gradually notices them getting up to some strange business, and starts nosing around himself when he notices a few things in his house that seem relevant. The next time they invite him to play, humans have been added to the game, represented on the cards by Barney, because by that point Barney's found the real Pig, and also his "new friends" are actually aliens who are willing to kill for the thing. Also, humans have the lowest possible intelligence score, because Barney refused to leave well enough alone.
  • Later inverted, as the contest to claim the Pig is supposedly a quest for ultimate power and to prevent the extinction of your species... when the whole thing is a set-up to make various races hunt for what amounts to a glorified tape recorder so it can gather information on them.

Next, Zero-Context:

• This happened to Inspector Gadget all the time.

and

• Happens with Commandant Lassard in the fifth Police Academy.
  • To the point of him helping the kidnappers get away.
  • Subverted in that, when he finds out the truth, he doesn't faint or feel embarrassed. He immediately disarms the head kidnapper with a single move, who doesn't expect it from an old man.

The sidequest "Whodunit" in The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion. Several guests are invited to a "party" where they are supposed to play a "game" and uncover "treasure".

The point is really for you to KILL EM ALL AND KILL EM ALL AND KILL EM ALL.

Would one of the final scenes from Dumb and Dumber fall under this trope? Harry is given the task of saving Lloyd and Mary from a kidnapper who intends to kill them. He understands that the situation isn't a literal game, but since he has been given a bullet proof vest, he assumes, like those in a game, that he is perfectly safe from any harm. He also has a similar moment of sudden realization.

Harry: "She explained what was going on. Then they slapped this bulletproof vest on me and gave me a gun!" Lloyd: "...But what if he shot you in the face?" Harry (looking to the cop who set the whole thing up): "What if he shot me in the face!?!"