Basic Trope: A nursery rhyme or other innocuous tune is used for creepy effect.
- Straight:
- Dracone sings "Ring Around the Rosy" as he looks for Bob and Alice while carrying an axe.
- Marie sings "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star" during a mental breakdown.
- Exaggerated: Dracone sings a medley of every single innocuous song in the world while setting off a Doomsday Device to bring about The End of the World as We Know It.
- Downplayed: Dracone sings "Ring Around the Rosy" while walking around a graveyard.
- Justified:
- Dracone is a Psychopathic Manchild and loves child-friendly tunes.
- Dracone is singing the tune to intentionally freak out Bob and Alice in an attempt to gain a psychological advantage.
- Inverted: Bob sings a creepy song in a way that makes it seem more comforting and optimistic. In other words, an Unironic Nursery Tune.
- Subverted:
- Dracone sings "Ring Around the Rosy" in a creepy way while sharpening a knife...but then it turns out he's just getting in the spirit for a scary party.
- Creepy Child Claire sings "Ring Around the Rosy" in a creepy way over and over again without pausing until she's eventually foaming at the mouth and gurgling her words.....but it turns out she doesn't mean to be creepy about it, she just likes that song so much she can't stop singing it.
- Double Subverted:
- Never mind, it turns out he was planning a nasty surprise for someone at the party.
- Dracone appears in the shadows, singing "Have You Seen The Muffin Man?" and eventually "Oranges and Lemons" in a creepy way, and intends to make creepy yet innocent little Claire into his next victim.
- Parodied: Dracone delivers "Ring Around the Rosy" as a Piss-Take Rap.
- Zig Zagged:
- Dracone sings "Ring Around the Rosy" in a creepy way, but then it turns out he's getting ready for a scary party. Then we find out he's laid a trap for someone at the party. But when the trap is sprung, it's just a harmless prank...or that's what Dracone wants everybody to think.
- Creepy Child Claire sings "Ring Around the Rosy" in a creepy way, but is never once shown doing anything malicious. The lighting makes her look terrifying when her mouth becomes full of saliva and she begins smiling creepily. Alice tells Claire to swallow her spit, she stops singing, shoots a Death Glare at Alice and Bob, and then....starts to cry. She then says a bunch of demonic sounding words in an angry voice while foaming at the mouth, drooling, and grinning maniacally, but it turns out she was just incomprehensible because of her saliva and was actually just accusing Alice of being mean to her. Or so she says, she doesn't have a good track record for honesty when called out on creepy behavior.
- Averted: No one sings a nursery tune in a creepy way.
- Enforced: The nursery rhyme fits the theme of the story, and so the writers put it in by having someone sing it creepily.
- Lampshaded: "Oh, not the creepy nursery rhyme of doom again."
- Invoked: ???
- Exploited:
- Knowing about Dracone's fondness for innocuous songs, Bob makes "Ring Around the Rosy" the trigger for the traps he sets up to ensure they catch only their intended target.
- Dracone genetically engineers an army of uplifted weasels. Alice and Bob promptly demoralize the army by singing "Pop Goes The Weasel" through megaphones.
- Claire is a genuinely nice girl but is bullied for being "the weird kid", she learned if she sings "Ring Around the Rosy" in her usual creepy manner, the bullies back off, sometimes even run away. Her perpetual creepy expression helps really sell it.
- Defied:
- Dracone doesn't sing, all the better for sneaking around.
- Bob aims a damaging blow at Dracone's vocal cords to shut him up.
- Nobody reacts to Claire's creepy singing and just treats it as normal kids being kids stuff.
- Discussed: "Remember when nursery rhymes were unironic fun for children?"
- Conversed: "Have you ever noticed how often nursery rhymes are used to be creepy in movies?"
- Implied: Bob and Alice come back battered from a mission to find Charlie singing "Ring Around the Rosy" to his little sister Eva. They shudder and yell at him to sing something else.
Back to Ironic Nursery Tune, Ironic Nursery Tune, Ironic Nursery Tune... brrr.
