Basic Trope: A moral dilemma is set up, and then settled in a way that doesn't take a stance on said dilemma.
- Straight:
- Denise gets Teen Pregnant and has to decide whether she wants an abortion. She has a Convenient Miscarriage before she makes her mind up.
- Emperor Evulz is initially presented as an evil tyrant, but it's then shown that life under his rule is actually pretty nice for most people, causing the heroes to debate whether defeating him would be just or not. Then it's revealed that Evulz was actually planning on feeding his entire kingdom's population to an Eldritch Abomination in exchange for god-like power, making it clear that letting him be is not the right choice.
- Exaggerated:
- Denise, Ellie, Flora and Gina get pregnant and have to choose between abortion and giving birth. Denise has a miscarriage, Ellie dies in a car accident, Flora finds out that she has a Soap Opera Disease that will kill her if she tries to abort (don't ask how she can survive giving birth), and Gina gets kidnapped by Henry, who forces her to give birth.
- A war breaks out between Ruritania and Idiomstan. Should Troperia interfere, we get a Class X apocalypse (Planetary Annihilation) when a huge asteroid world crashes into the Earth, destroying it and killing everyone.
- Downplayed:
- Denise gets a Teen Pregnancy and has to decide whether she wants an abortion. She tentatively decides on an abortion, with some of the cast supporting her choice and others condemning it, but has a Convenient Miscarriage before she could've actually gone through with it, sparing her the consequences & social reprecussions of abortion.
- Part of Emperor Evulz's motivation is to turn the world into a paradise, which intially seems to be simple lip service until the heroes find out that life under his rule really is pretty nice... at least on the surface, every resident there is, on closer inspection, EmptyShells lacking any kind of opinions or drive due to Evulz taking away free will from them. While the heroes unanimously agree that letting him be isn't the right choice, it's left ambigious for the audience if Evulz did have a point on The Evils of Free Will or not
- Justified:
- Miscarriage is far from rare, even for women who want to give birth. The possibility of miscarriage is discussed before Denise actually has one. The stress of being forced to make a difficult decision also had an impact on Denise and her fetus's health.
- The miscarriage was traumatic for Denise, so no one brings it up afterward because it would be crass, tasteless, and downright cruel to focus on a now-theoretical moral dilemma when Denise needs their support the most.
- The debate regarding abortion had gotten ugly or was rapidly going in that direction, now everyone wants to forget it ever happened just to keep the peace.
- Inverted:
- Denise willingly gets pregnant. Near its end, the pregnancy suddenly becomes life-threatening, and Denise is suddenly forced to choose between abortion (killing the fetus) and risking her own death in giving birth. This dilemma comes from nowhere and isn't subverted.
- Emperor Evulz wants to sacrifice an entire kingdom to an Eldritch Abomination in exchange for godlike power... but at the very last battle, it turns out that he only did that to make sure his own kingdom would be happy and prosperous. This motivation of his comes completely out of nowhere, as Evulz was simply depicted as an Generic Doomsday Villain up until that point.
- Subverted:
- Denise dreams of miscarrying.
- Denise miscarries, but then clearly states what choice she would have made if she hadn't.
- Double Subverted: Then the dream comes true.
- Parodied: Denise gets Teen Pregnant and has to decide whether she wants an abortion. She tells of her plight to a friend, which is then overheard by a nearby news reporter who wants to use Denise's story as an editorial piece on the dilemma of pregnant teenagers. Denise gets on the TV news, and she becomes the face of the issue of teenage abortions, with bloggers, politicians, and the general public talking about it as Denise gets invited onto talk shows, to participate in documentaries, and to give interviews in newspapers and magazines. A biography becomes a top seller. Congress fiercely debates over "The Denise Act." Then, at the height of her popularity, Denise undergoes a Convenient Miscarriage, and she suddenly becomes yesterday's fad and everyone forget about her except those who know her personally, her life returning back to exactly how it was before.
- Zig Zagged: Subverted, then Denise claims that she had a miscarriage. Then it turns out that she had had an abortion and lied about it to avoid being ostracized by her society.
- Averted: Denise doesn't have a miscarriage, and either chooses abortion or to give birth.
- Enforced:
- "If she has an abortion, we'll alienate much of the audience. If she decides she has to give birth, we'll alienate much of the audience. We'll have to Take a Third Option."
- "Wait a minute... I don't actually know how to debate this!"
- Lampshaded: "I'm kind of glad the miscarriage meant that I never had to choose."
- Invoked: Due to the abortion laws in Denise's country, she can afford to put off a possible abortion, so she takes her time making her mind up.
- Defied: Denise makes her mind up as soon as possible. If she decides to give birth and has a miscarriage, at least she knows what she would have chosen.
- Discussed: "If I have a miscarriage, I won't have to choose."
- Conversed: ???
- Exploited: ???
- Played For Laughs: Denise is relieved because she doesn't have to choose, and decides to do some Dead Baby Comedy.
- Played For Drama: Even though Denise ultimately didn't have to make that choice, the ethical dilemma sticks with her and taxes her mind because she still can't honestly decide what she would have done had it not been for the miscarriage. She may even interpret the miscarriage as a sign of some twisted cosmic Easy-Mode Mockery because of her inability to make a stand either way.
- Deconstructed: In a similar vein to being Played for Drama, a later storyline dealing with a similar or identical issue shows that the characters either didn't learn anything from the issues raised by Denise's pregnancy, or worse, learned the wrong lessons from it. As a result of this, when another Teen Pregnancy happens in their circle of friends they attempt to help because they've been through this before, but their advice and assistance is not only at odds with each other but also makes the situation far worse than it ever would have become if they'd stayed out of it. The resulting drama badly damages friendships and lives, and the more sensible characters realize that they only have themselves to blame because they failed to learn from the earlier dilemma.
- Plotted A Good Waste: Just because Denise had a Convenient Miscarriage doesn't mean that everyone has forgotten the dilemma it presented, and various characters bring it up afterward as a topic of discussion, with how Denise herself reacted to the miscarriage playing a part in her involvement with these discussions or if she's even around when they happen. If the experience was traumatic for her, then bringing it up around her without any pressing need to do so is a *very* dick move, and anyone who tries is called out for being a Jerkass.
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