Basic Trope: When certain people are running, you follow them without stopping to question them.
- Straight: When she spots Bob racing past, Alice immediately starts running to catch up.
- Exaggerated: Bob runs away, and the entire township takes off running.
- Downplayed:
- Bob starts walking very fast, which gets Alice's attention, but she first asks what's going on.
- Bob starts backing away in fear, so Alice primes herself to start running, just in case.
- Justified: Alice knows that Bob is a badass, and if he's running, whatever caused it must be very dangerous.
- Inverted:
- The situation looks dangerous, but Bob isn't running yet, so Alice stands her ground.
- If Bob is running away from anything, Alice runs towards it. Whether it's because she's a stronger fighter than Bob or she's an even bigger Fearless Fool is up in the air.
- Alice notices Bob is here. And since she knows Bob's only called when something big and disastrous is about to happen, she decides to leave immediately.
- Subverted:
- Alice sees Bob running — from a harmless little bunny rabbit.
- Bob isn't running away, he's racing the clock. So please, don't get in his way.
- Double Subverted: ...Which turns out to be the Killer Rabbit of Caerbannog.
- Parodied: Bob takes a vacation somewhere, and the locals run even though there is no danger in sight.
- Zig-Zagged: Alice sees Bob running from an apparently harmless rabbit ... which turns out to be the Killer Rabbit of Caerbannog. But Bob was mistaken, so Alice approaches it ... and it swallows her whole with a Burp of Finality to punctuate her death.
- Averted: No one starts running away from danger.
- Enforced: The author doesn't want to ruin the Nothing Is Scarier vibe of his monster by having Bob explain why he's running.
- Lampshaded:Charlie: Was that Bob who just ran past?Alice: Yes, and we'd better be next.
- Invoked: The heroes have drills training everyone to start running when they see one of the others do it.
- Exploited: There's a certain threat that needs to be taken care of that Bob knows is out of his league but also knows Alice can take care of. Alice, however, is a Reformed, but Rejected Hero with Bad Publicity of the Ascended Demon type; if she starts using her power the populace is liable to panic and attack her with holy water. Alice is willing to take on the threat, but she's rather tired of the harassing she's gotten due to her origin and Bob sympathizes with her predicament. When the threat begins to emerge and the civilians need to be evacuated now (but not in a way that demoralizes them and incites panic), Bob makes a show of running towards the danger, then gets to a point where Alice can step in behind closed doors to deal with the threat itself while he rushes back out acting haggardly, saying only "That won't hold much longer!" while running away to draw all the civilians away from the threat so that Alice can go full-throttle without being witnessed.
- Defied: Alice sees Bob running and grabs him, yelling at him to stay where he is.
- Discussed: "I am a bomb technician. If you see me running, try to keep up."
- Conversed: "Wait, Bob's running? That can't be good."
- Implied: The Five-Man Band races into headquarters, where Bob's mentor asks what scared them all. Alice answers, "How should I know? We were all following Bob."
- Deconstructed: The panic from everyone running kills more people than the problem would have.
- Reconstructed: ...Or so you might think, but nobody was panicked, they were hyper-focused on following Bob.
- Played for Horror: When everyone sees Bob running, they take off after him ... but it turns out that Bob is a Villain with Good Publicity who is leading them into a trap.
Yikes! Get back to the main page — Don't Ask, Just Run!
