Basic Trope: A character goes off on a tangent and then gets back to their original point.
- Straight: Bob is speaking about his plan to defeat the bad guy which involves a car, suddenly talks for thirty seconds about his favorite car company, and gets back to the plan with "But I digress."
- Exaggerated: The tangent is almost five minutes long.
- Downplayed: Bob talks for only about ten seconds and the tangent is materially relevant to his original point. His plan involves Car Fu, so he brings up his favorite car company to explain that they are his favorite because they make a particular car that is a Lightning Bruiser.
- Justified: Bob really likes to talk about the subject of the tangent.
- Inverted: Everyone is talking about apparently unrelated things and Bob is finding, or trying to find, a common theme to them.
- Subverted: Bob is speaking about his plan to defeat the bad guy which involves a car. He says, "Oh, that reminds me..." and Alice rolls her eyes, thinking he's about to go off on a tangent, but Bob makes a relevant point he genuinely meant to make earlier.
- Double Subverted: Bob goes off on a tangent after he finishes his remembered point, and finishes, "But I digress."
- Parodied:
- Bob takes up the whole allotted time for the meeting on his tangent.
- A Funny Background Event happens while Bob is on his unrelated tangent.
- After fifteen minutes of Motor Mouth talking about multiple unrelated things, Bob explains his whole, remarkably well-thought-out, plan to defeat the bad guy ... it's too bad everybody else has left by then.
- Zig-Zagged: Bob continues to get in and out of tangents, always ending with "But I digress."
- Averted:
- Everybody sticks to the original topic.
- No original topic was planned.
- Enforced: The characterizations provided by the tangents are nice and all, but (the executives believe that) the plot needs to maintain a certain tempo to keep the audience's attention.
- Lampshaded: "Bob always says that after he finishes with an irrelevant tangent." "So does Alice and every other person."
- Invoked: ???
- Exploited: ???
- Defied: ???
- Discussed: ???
- Conversed: ???
Back to But I Digress.
