Basic Trope: Alcohol as a means to bring someone's true colours out.
- Straight: Alice the stoic Deadpan Snarker goes to a pub and drinks. Once she gets drunk enough, something triggers her. She breaks down crying, reveals just how much of a Stepford Snarker she actually is, and might even confess her until now barely-hinted-at love to one of the other characters.
- Exaggerated: Alice never shows any emotions unless drunk. When drunk, she becomes a Large Ham with hints of Cloud Cuckoo Lander.
- Downplayed: Alice The Stoic gets drunk... And actually snickers quietly at the silliness going on around her, rather than snarking about it.
- Justified: Alcohol does have its effect on people...
- Inverted:
- Somehow, Alice's guise as a Stepford Snarker becomes more convincing when she's drunk.
- Alice's friend Bob, usually the most honest person around, becomes a Bad Liar who just keeps telling little (and not so little) fibs.
- You learn more about a character who is always drunk, when they suddenly sober up and become their normal self.
- Subverted: Alice doesn't actually feel that way — she took a bet to convince people she did.
- Double Subverted: That's what she claims the morning after, anyway.
- Parodied: Just a hint of alcohol in the air is enough to invoke a big change in Alice's behaviour.
- Zig Zagged: Whether Alice becomes more honest with herself while drunk or not depends both on how much she's drunk and who she's out drinking with. There are several scenes where she goes to the pub, all of them ending differently.
- Averted:
- Alice might do crazy things while drunk, but doesn't give any big Reveals.
- The only difference between a sober Alice and a drunken Alice is the smell of her breath.
- Enforced: The plot needs to move in a particular direction, and any other way to get it moving would involve making the characters OOC and thus disappoint the audience.
- Lampshaded: One of Alice's friends goes over to her house to help her with her hangover. Alice is not happy to find out what she has been saying last night and wonders out loud why she didn't keep her mouth shut.
- Invoked: Alice's friends drag her along and try to get her drunk.
- Exploited: ... So she will reveal where the MacGuffin is, or if she actually likes somebody, et.c.
- Defied:
- Alice refuses to go partying in the first place.
- Alice's friends go to any location that supplies liquor of any kind in the range Alice can get to and advice them to not sell Alice any booze, with bribes (and reinforcement of other more physical types) handed out as needed. All liquor in their homes is also imbibed as soon as it is purchased or locked down too tight for Alice to get it.
- Alice makes damned sure that she will never be able to do this kind of stupidity while intoxicated. Whether this involves mere Training from Hell or more direct (and disturbing) methods depends on the writer.
- Discussed:Charlie: "So, uh, does Alice always have that stern look on her face?"
Bob: "Unless you take her to the pub for a few hours, yes." - Conversed:Random Fan A: "Y'know, the series finale is coming up in a few episodes. The writers are probably gonna make Alice/Bob canon at last... But how would they make her confess believably?"
Random Fan B: "Booze." - Implied: One of the Big Bads henchmen managed to extort vital information out of Alice. When asked how they managed, said henchman just holds up a bottle of whiskey and grins.
- Played For Laughs:
- Alice confesses that she has a very unusual Fetish, or even several. Even the bartender is Squicked out!
- Alice is so milquetoast that her idea of "angry drunk roaring out her dark secrets and disdain for the world" is to write a Strongly Worded Letter.
- Played For Drama: Alice ends up revealing how much disdain (or levels of love that are either unattainable or disturbing for one reason or another) she has for certain people, and must deal with the consequences once she's sober.
- Played For Horror:
- Alice's hidden disdain is a full-on desire to murder people who annoy her, and guess what happens now that she is drunk, surrounded by said annoying people, and with a variety of weapons within easy reach?
- Alice reveals she loves someone while drunk. That someone exploits said feelings to rape Alice.
- Alice reveals she loves someone. The alcoholic lack of inhibitions also turn her into a raging Yandere.
- The secrets Alice reveals while drunk are the kind of secrets that no human mind can withstand.
- The drunken Alice gets rid of her Mask of Sanity.
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