Basic Trope: A hilariously tiny bribe.
- Straight: Carl the cop catches Alice doing 60 in a 40 zone. After he tells her she'll get a $1000 fine and 4 penalty points on her licence, she tries to bribe him with a cheap watch.
- Exaggerated: Carl catches a very drunk Alice doing 100 in a 40 zone to flee the scene after shooting her husband. After he says he'll confiscate her licence and arrest her, she tries to bribe him with used chewing gum.
- Downplayed:
- Carl: You'll get a $1000 fine and 4 penalty points.
Alice: Can we say $1500 and 2 penalty points? - Alice is caught swiping a pack of gum, and offers a stick of gum as hush money.
- Justified:
- The police in Alice's country are known to be highly corrupt. Alice just underestimated how large her bribe had to be, or assumed the cop would be stupid enough to believe her watch was expensive.
- Alice tried to grab some $100 bills, but accidentally handed Carl a bunch of $1 bills instead.
- Alice is too drunk to understand why the cop won't appreciate her offer of a used chewing gum.
- Carl is Alice's Friend on the Force, so he lets her off light anyway; the "bribe" is their equivalent of a Swear Jar.
- Alice is The Scrooge, and we mean the obscenely cheap, "that dollar-store watch alone is torture to part with" type.
- Inverted:
- Alice offers Carl several million dollars.
- Comically Small Demand
- Subverted:
- Alice offers Carl a pile of notes. The note at the top is just $10, but the rest turn out to be $100.
- The watch is only a down-payment on the fine… only $995 to go.
- Alice knows Carl is a watch collector, and it actually works.
- Double Subverted:
- Alice took the wrong wallet. She intended to offer ten $1 notes, and upon realising her mistake, quickly replaced the hundred dollar bills with the smaller notes.
- Alice still continues to mistake the fine's amount some time later and really hoped that the watch covered the whole thing.
- Carl already owns ten of those watches.
- Parodied:Carl: I'll give you a $1000 fine.
Alice: Maybe this shiny quarter will change your mind...
Carl: Accepted! - Zig Zagged: ???
- Averted:
- Alice's bribe is reasonably large.
- Alice decides to not bribe Carl, since bribery is more illegal than the thing she was caught doing.
- Enforced: The writers really wish to make clear to the audience that Alice is The Scrooge of the cast.
- Lampshaded: "You seriously thought he'd let you go free in exchange for that crappy watch?"
- Invoked: Bill stole all of Alice's money, so even if Alice was willing to be lawful and just pay the fine, she is still screwed.
- Exploited: Alice wants to give Bob something for free, but the law demands that some payment be made. Bob offers $1 as a "bribe", and Alice accepts it.
- Defied:
- Carl: "If you're reaching for your wallet, I want to make clear right now that I won't accept bribes of less than $100,000, and that is only my base rate."
- Jim, Alice's passenger, hands Carl $50,000 before Alice can start her stupid attempt at haggling.
- Discussed: "I wonder if it's possible to bribe someone with this cheap watch."
- Conversed: "I don't know what the writers were thinking by making Alice a cheapskate. I know Scrooge McDuck rip-offs act like they are being asked to tear their arms off when you tell them they need to pay a fine, but if the alternative is spend fifteen times that amount of money on lawyer fees, you'd think they would prioritize."
- Deconstructed: The tiny bribe just pisses off Carl and gets Alice into more trouble.
- Reconstructed:
- Alice simply offers $2000 in exchange for 0 penalty points. A confused Carl ends up accepting this and gives back $500.
- Carl collects watches, and the one Alice is offering happens to fill a gap in his collection, so he accepts.
- Alice has a backup plan to screw Carl over that is nasty enough he will accept the five bucks just to make it stop.
- Played For Laughs:
- Carl accepts the used chewing gum as a bribe.
- Alice offers a donut.
- Played For Drama: The bribe is so small because it's all Alice can afford to part with; once Carl sees this, he takes the bribe and lets her off with a warning.
- Played For Horror: Carl shoots Alice in retaliation for the insultingly small bribe.
- Implied:
- The Mr. Lincoln Alice offers is implied to be a penny not a hundred dollar bill.
- Carl derisively snorts at Alice's unseen or unheard bribe.
Back to Comically Small Bribe.
