Basic Trope: Wish-granting entities always give you EXACTLY what you ask for, based on the direct wording of the wish, but don't consider what you meant.
- Straight: Bob wishes to be attractive. He ends up becoming magnetic, because he never specified what he was supposed to attract.
- Exaggerated:
- Bob's wish is "I dunno, do something. Surprise me." The genie snaps his fingers and nothing happens- the genie did indeed do something, and Bob was surprised that his wish wasn't granted.
- Bob wishes he was Superman. Since "Super" literally means "above," Bob is permanently placed in the highest place on Earth possible — the exosphere.
- Downplayed: Bob wishes to be attractive. The genie understands that he means to humans, but since he never specified any particular group of humans he wanted to be attractive to, he attracts them all equally. Even the ones whose attention he really wouldn't want.
- Justified:
- The genie is bound by some kind of oath of literalism that grants them their powers.
- The genie is Literal-Minded, and doesn't understand that the people don't mean it literally.
- The genie has been imprisoned for centuries and only recently let out. Why should he know all the intricacies of modern slang and the English language? Furthermore, his mother tongue is 12th-century Arabic. He's literally only heard American English a minute ago, and it was Bob's wish.
- He's a mild Jackass Genie — He figures if he does his job poorly enough, people will stop asking him for wishes.
- The genie is an AI, and not the futuristically super-intelligent kind. Computers have no ability to make leaps of logic, cannot deduce things, and only understand words in the ways they are programmed to, so the genie is incapable of understanding what the wisher really intended and granting the wish that way.
- The genie is a roundabout Benevolent Genie who thinks that making Bob magnetic will be more useful than giving him luck with the ladies.
- The genie was a Jackass Genie before being bound into the lamp, so to keep it from twisting the wishes the binding included a stipulation that it must grant wishes exactly as stated.
- The genie is a Troll.
- Genie wishes have to go hilariously wrong somehow. It's a magical law. The path of least resistance simply happens to be "exactly what the wisher said they wanted."
- Inverted:
- "I know what you said, but I think this is what you really meant."
- The genie is a bit of a Cloudcuckoolander, and interprets wishes in often bizarre and nonsensical ways. Sometimes they're better, sometimes they're worse, but they're almost never what you'd expect.
- Be Careful What You Wish For — in which Bob's wish is interpreted and granted with no problem, but he ends up regretting it nonetheless.
- The genie tries to suss out the "real reason" for Bob's wish and give him what he really wants, but no, there was a reason Bob phrased his wish in a particular way, and a literal interpretation would have been better for him.
- Subverted: Wish-granting entities gives Bob exactly what he asked for, even if different from what he wished. Later, it's revealed to be the best way anyway, and Bob is happy.
- Double Subverted: Bob's wish is granted literally, making him look like an idiot or a jerk. He invokes the trope to prove that the spirit of the wish was really different, and everyone is fine with him. Only, he really just wanted the literal effect ... but couldn't admit. For example, he asked for "a romance with a hot piece of ass", which leads to a disconcerting experience with a donkey steak. He protests the wrong use of terms, but it was what he really wanted the whole time.
- Parodied:
- The genie wants to be a Benevolent Genie, but everyone's wishes are so vague that he keeps misunderstanding them and falling into this trope.
- All genies are like this to the point where it becomes a common form of gambling to have someone make a wish while onlookers place bets on how the genie will misinterpret the wish.
- The genie massively misinterprets Bob's wish, causing Bob to mutter wondering why the genie is like this. The genie, thinking that's another wish (and because the next wish can't be granted until the previous one is finished), proceeds to give an extremely detailed explanation of his thought process, preventing Bob from having any quiet for a week.
- Bob asks that his wishes are applied according to the spirit of his agreements and not the word. The genie then summons the spirit of his agreement and asks it what Bob means by that. Nonplussed, the spirit slaps the genie over the head.
- Bob, being Genre Savvy, knows that genies tend to screw up. He tells the genie to go fuck itself. Twelve traumatizing minutes later, Bob starts begging the genie to remove his memory of the last few minutes...
- Zig-Zagged: It first appears that the wish has been granted literally, but then it turns out that it was not granted at all ... but wait, not being noticed was the intention of the original wisher.
- Averted: The wish is granted, but it considers the intention behind the wish rather than just the Exact Words.
- Enforced: "There's not much of a plot if the main characters always get all their wishes granted the way they wanted!"
- Lampshaded: "Wow, the genie was literal about your wish. Didn't See That Coming."
- Invoked: The genie is a Stealth Mentor who grants Bob's wishes literally to make him think about what he wants before he wishes for it.
- Exploited: The villain makes sure the heroes have access to one of these genies, profiting off the havoc that occurs when the genie misinterprets the wish.
- Defied:
- Bob very carefully, explictly and deliberately words his wish so that it can't be taken any way other than what he wants.
- "First wish: I wish you to take into account the spirit, including any and all confusing idioms, metaphors or similes, in addition to the letter of each wish."
- "I wish for every genie to interpret every wish as its wisher would."
- "Before I grant your wish, I'd like you to clarify whether you meant your request literally or were using a figure of speech that I might not have understood."
- The genie reads the wishers thoughts to see in vivid imagery what they truly want in ways words cannot express.
- Discussed: "Any real person would be smart enough not to leave such obvious loopholes..."
- Conversed: "Why is it that these movies always have the same plot?" "The genies must be jerks or something."
- Implied: A man known to be insecure about his genitals gets a genie. We don't see what his wishes were, but later he is seen in the company of a 12-inch-tall man playing a tiny piano.note
- Deconstructed: Genies, due to not regularly interacting with human society, suffer Blunt Metaphors Trauma and don't recognize figures of speech. Therefore, they follow the wish directly, and everyone abandons them to their fate.
- Reconstructed: Genies resent slavery and therefore are engaging in passive resistance as a way of frustrating their masters.
- Played for Laughs: Cringe Comedy, Amusing Injuries
- Played for Drama: Bob had a Missing Steps Plan and figured he'd lucked into the missing step(s) when he met the genie. Now that the genie has failed to act in line with his/her/their/its "role", he's even more lost.
- Played for Horror: The Genies wishes cause gruesome results, made more disturbing by the genuine lack of malice on the genies part.
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