Basic Trope: A character acts as though something neutral or only slightly negative is very scary or bad.
- Straight: Alice's last name is Rider (with an 'i'), but when she saves a child from the Monster of the Week and ends up on the news, the story calls her "Alice Ryder" (with a 'y'). Alice reads the error and then reels back in what looks like fear and says, "Oh, no! God, no! That is so bad! NOOOOOOOOO!".
- Exaggerated: Alice thinks it's a Sign of the Apocalypse and Faints in Shock when they misspell her name with a 'y'.
- Downplayed: Alice looks scared when it'd be more logical to look annoyed, but she doesn't ham it up.
- Justified:
- Alice has a Why Did It Have to Be Snakes? for spelling errors.
- The y-Ryders and the i-Riders are feuding and because their last names are spelt so similarly, they're all a bit paranoid of being mistaken for the other family.
- Alice is a bit scared of the y-Ryders due to a bad experience with Bob Ryder telling a Ghost Story she thought was true, and the thought of being one of them scares her.
- The y-Ryders have a bad rep, due to the fact that a y-Ryder once tried to steal The Mona Lisa and some people, Alice included, think all y-Ryders are evil due to being related.
- Alice is very proud of her heritage, which is one that the y-Ryders don't share, and she's scared at the prospect of not having that heritage.
- Inverted:
- When Alice hears that Satan has been spotted in her area, she shrugs it off.
- Alice's surname is often misspelt as "Ryder" so when someone finally spells it with an "i", she acts like she's won the lottery.
- Subverted:
- It turned out she was just annoyed, not scared.
- It turned out she was scared of something other than the misspelling.
- Double Subverted:
- But she was scared of the fact that there was a grammatical error at one point in the newspaper.
- That "something else" was another misspelling.
- Parodied: Alice ends up visiting Bob, who is The Shrink and telling him, "It's "Rider" with an "i", not a "y"!"
- Zig-Zagged: Alice flip-flops between all emotions at the misspelling.
- Enforced: Alice has an irrational fear of spelling mistakes, which will later become a plot device, so the creators throw that in.
- Lampshaded: "Spelling mistakes are annoying, especially when people misspell your name, but they're not really scary, Alice".
- Invoked: Charles gives Alice a bad experience with either the y-Ryders or with spelling mistakes, in order to make her scared of them for whatever reason.
- Exploited: Diane, The Rival to Alice, intimidates Alice away by spelling her surname with a "y".
- Defied: Alice somehow gets rid of all irrational fears she has.
- Discussed: "Why was Alice acting so scared when someone spelt her name with a "y"?"
- Conversed: "Why do these characters act so scared of things that aren't scary?"
- Implied: Alice's reaction looks like fear but it could be anger or disgust.
- Deconstructed: Alice's fear of her name being misspelled stems from serious trauma connected to the name "Ryder," and feels guilty that her fears aren't taken seriously by others because they don't have that context.
- Reconstructed: Even though Alice does have a legitimate reason for why she's afraid of something so innocuous, she comes to admit that a misspelled name is really not a scary thing.
- Played for Laughs: Alice does a hammed-up speech on how her last name is spelt with an "i", not a "y".
- Played for Drama: Alice is Driven to Suicide because of her name spelt like this.
- Played for Horror: Alice is a Serial Killer who will target anyone who gets her name wrong.
Oh no! Not the link back to Faux Horrific!
