Basic Trope: A minor offense is considered to be a serious one, and punished accordingly.
- Straight: Bob has a Potty Emergency late one night, and urinates on a tree in the park when he thinks no one is looking. Unfortunately for him, Officer O'Hara was patrolling the park and arrests Bob. Bob is sentenced to 20 years in prison (plus becoming a registered sex offender) for peeing on the tree.
- Exaggerated:
- Bob is executed for urinating in public.
- Bob violates the state's "three strikes" law by being caught jaywalking three times and he gets sentenced to life in a maximum-security Hellhole Prison because of it.
- Bob is sentenced to 20 years in prison, registration as a sex offender, is forced to be a slave of the only person who will hire him when he comes out, and is constantly treated as a person of interest by the government for just being in the same state as any crimes that happen with the Police Brutality that ensues… because he chuckled at that scene in North that parodies the old Coppertone ads and how people now find them obscene.
- Downplayed: Bob is sent to jail for six months, consequently losing his job, for peeing on a tree.
- Justified:
- In this setting, All Crimes Are Equal; public urination is just as serious as, say, murder.
- The judge who handles Bob's case is a Hanging Judge, perhaps with a grudge against Bob or some social group Bob identifies with.
- Bob peed on a tree in a popular public park in the middle of the day. People really could have seen, and the judge finds it hard to believe Bob wasn't being an exhibitionist.
- Inverted:
- Bob rapes and murders Alice in the park, and gets off with a $100 fine.
- Karma Houdini
- Subverted:
- Bob is taken to the police station, but only gets a $100 fine.
- Drunkenly urinating was a cover story, Bob was deliberately sexually harassing people.
- Double Subverted:
- His finger was covering up the other 6 zeroes.
- Bob still had the bad luck of being caught, then processed and sentenced, by the one bunch of law enforcers in the whole state who will throw the book at him no matter what Bob was actually doing.
- Parodied: A sign near the tree on which Bob is about to relieve himself reads, "Don't even think about it!" Bob stops and thinks about it, and is arrested.
- Zig Zagged: Once Bob moves his fingers, the officer realise he made a mistake on the fine saying that's way too big, and rewrites the fine so that it's 2% smaller.
- Averted:
- Bob is not arrested or fined for urinating on the tree.
- Public urination is perhaps frowned upon, but it's not illegal in this setting.
- Bob doesn't urinate on the tree, mustering up the willpower to hold it until he either gets home or finds a gas station bathroom.
- Bob only has to pay a fine, given that this was a one-time response to a potty-emergency, not an attempt to entice someone or anything like that.
- Enforced:
- Writer on Board.
- Bob is the series' Butt-Monkey and the writers think his life was severely lacking in unhappiness recently.
- Lampshaded: "I can't believe I'm being sent to prison for pissing!"
- Implied: Bob's treated as some kind of grand criminal by the cast, but when we get a quick glance at his rap sheet later we only see he only has one crime, and even if we don't see the specific crime we can still see that it is labeled as a "misdemanor".
- Invoked: Bob is stumbling home drunk after a night at Carl's Bad Tavern, and suddenly feels the urge to pee, desperately, as he passes by a park.
- Exploited: Bob's arch-enemy, Andy, talks him into a drinking contest, knowing that Bob has a long walk home, then follows him and calls the police when he pees on a tree.
- Defied:
- Bob sees a police car nearby and decides to hold it until he gets someplace more appropriate.
- The registry list makes sure to list why Bob is on the sex offender list, and Bob will not have to be on the list forever, due to the nonviolent and petty nature of the offense.
- The sex-offender registry laws in this setting only require people convicted of things like rape or child molestation to register, not things like public urination.
- Bob pisses himself. It's humiliating but it's not illegal.
- Discussed: "So, Bob's being locked up for 20 years just for peeing on a tree? So much for justice!"
- Conversed: "But what if a child saw him or something? And even if he had no ill intentions, do we really want to send the message that it's OK to pee or expose private parts in public?"
- Deconstructed: People start to rally, demanding the laws change due to the limited freedom everyone has and the fact people are getting put into jail for so long over such a minor offense. People also start breaking these minor laws as a sort of civil disobedience, but it doesn't seem to be working. Naturally, since nothing seems to be working, everyone revolts, and everything collapses.
- Reconstructed: Control is exactly what the leader(s) wanted.
- Played For Laughs: Bob's an Action Survivor in a comedic caper story who is Mistaken for Badass by all sides because they believe a man who served as many years as he did in a prison as harsh as the one he was in could only be some kind of criminal mastermind.
- Played For Drama: Bob being put on the sex offender registry means that every concerned parent in town believes he's going to kidnap and rape their children — and to make matters worse, if/when children do start to be sexually assaulted, he'll be the first guy they suspect.
- Played For Horror: Bob is lynched by concerned townsfolk as a "pre-emptive strike" against whatever evil they assumed he was going to perform because of the criminal record he got as a result of jaywalking/public smoking/public urination/tax dodging/coughing without covering his mouth.
- Intended Audience Reaction: Bob is Mistaken for Badass by the cast because he has a criminal record until he reveals that he was arrested for filming Snow Flying On Cedars. Cue Oh, Crap! from the other members, who really needed his knowledge and/or connections.
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