Basic Trope: A reaction to a minor offense is ridiculously exaggerated, usually for laughs.
- Straight: Alice finds out about that Bob has some overdue library books that he hasn't returned yet. She becomes rather furious about it, and after a long lecture, she forces Bob to return them and pay the fines.
- Exaggerated:
- Bob is at the park eating peanuts and he throws some shells onto the grass. Upon seeing this, Alice falls on her knees and breaks into tears as she says her faith in humanity has been destroyed.
- Bob throws a chocolate wrapper on the ground, which summons a special team with lots of guns, helicopters and a tank from nowhere. They threaten him with the use of lethal force unless he picks it up and deposits it in a proper place.
- Bob jaywalks by accident, and he gets put on death row.
- Bob says "Damn", and is immediately Dragged Off to Hell.
- Downplayed:
- On finding out that Bob has some unpaid parking tickets, Alice gives Bob something of an earful to pay them.
- Alice is mad at Bob for several minor offenses (littering, unreturned library books, jaywalking, etc.) but still reacts disproportionately.
- Justified:
- Bob and Alice are a duo of criminals are escaping from justice, so even a minor infraction might attract unwanted attention if they aren't careful.
- Alice and Bob live in a society where the laws are completely harsh and/or the leader is The Caligula.
- It's an All Crimes Are Equal setting.
- Alice overreacts to Bob's careless habits as a way to make him more disciplined and organized. Upon achieving that objective, she drops her act.
- Bob was on his final warning, and this was just the one last thing to get him under arrest.
- Alice has a persecution complex which is making her put it down to misogyny.
- Inverted:
- Bob arrives home very agitated and tells Alice he set a bus full of little cancer patients on fire. Without flinching the slightest bit, Alice faces Bob and casually berates him: "Bob, stop setting little cancer patients on fire, or you can say goodbye to dessert today!"
- Designated Hero
- Kick the Dog
- Moral Event Horizon
- Understatement
- Subverted:
- "Oh, no! Bob, you threw that soda can on the floor, now the police will come after you!" "What?! Are you serious Alice?!" "Ha ha ha ha! Not at all, just kidding you..."
- Alice was mad for some other reason, so she used Bob's littering instance as an excuse to release her repressed feelings.
- Double Subverted:
- "... In fact, the punishment for littering is death. By my own hands!" "Aaaaaaaaargh!"
- She was mad at Bob for another trivial offense.
- Parodied: Alice gets mad at Bob for breathing one decibel louder than she wanted.
- Zig Zagged: Alice only over-reacts to Bob's infractions, which makes the whole deal really confusing for him when she doesn't say anything like that to other people's bigger mistakes.
- Averted: Alice's reaction is directly proportional the magnitude of the offense.
- Enforced: "We wanted to use this episode to teach kids about littering... However, I think we exaggerated a little bit."
- Lampshaded: "For goodness's sake, Alice, I just littered. My own mother never scolded me like that, even when I shaved the cat."
- Invoked: Bob is a Troll and knows she'll overreact to everything, so he does to piss her off.
- Exploited: Charles steals Alice's wallet while Alice is in her rage.
- Defied: Despite feeling kinda touchy, Alice calms herself before speaking, and politely asks Bob to pick up his trash.
- Discussed: "We are defenders of justice, Bob! What would the kids think if they found out their heroes go around polluting like a pair of ordinary criminals?"
- Conversed: "You know, I kinda identify with Bob's predicament. Once I got suspended from school a whole week when the teacher caught me chewing gum." "You Monster!!"
- Implied: Bob litters in Alice's presence, and later tells Charles that Alice gave him an earful over nothing.
- Deconstructed: Because of her overreactions to minor offenses, Alice is branded as a harsh and uptight person.
- Reconstructed: Bob convinces everyone that Alice is very polite as long as you don't piss her off, and suddenly everyone wants to be her friend.
- Played For Laughs: The reaction is done with such Large Ham dramatics that it crosses into Mundane Made Awesome.
- Played For Drama: A dystopian society has reached a point where even the minor crimes get punished with extreme violence, leading to the deaths of lots of innocent people and sending everyone into a perpetual state of paranoia and fear.
- Played For Horror: The execution for jaywalking is a week-long round of torture, culminating with being publically drawn, quartered and decapitated a la Braveheart. And the audience gets to see all of it. And this is far from the most brutal death this system unleashes, or the smallest misdemeanor that warrants one.
If you go back to Felony Misdemeanor, you are officially worse than Hitler.
