Basic Trope: Someone has an over-the-top negative reaction when somebody else steals their food or renders it inedible.
- Straight: Alice is about to eat a cupcake, but Bob eats it. This causes Alice to yell at him in an extremely aggro manner.
- Exaggerated:
- Alice is usually extremely happy-go-lucky and hard to offend, but when Bob eats her cupcake, she gets so angry that she flips the table and starts throwing random objects around.
- Alice's standard response to people stealing her cupcakes includes copious amounts of gunfire, attempted murder, and standoffs with the police.
- Alice's response to having her cupcakes stolen is to run into heavy traffic.
- Downplayed:
- Alice just mutters angrily under her breath.
- Bob doesn't necessarily render the cupcake inedible, but does put some ingredients on it that Alice doesn't like. She gets rather upset, but can possibly pick the ingredients off.
- Justified:
- Alice is a toddler.
- Alice has a Hair-Trigger Temper.
- Bob's been eating Alice's cupcakes a lot, and she's sick of it.
- Alice was extremely hungry, so she's "hangry".
- Alice has a stress eating habit, so when Bob took Alice's food away, her stress had no release and quickly transformed into rage.
- Alice is drunk or high or whatever, so she isn't thinking straight.
- Bob is Alice's Sitcom Arch-Nemesis and taking her cupcake is just one more attack in his campaign to bully and annoy her.
- Alice has had a very bad day, and having nothing to eat doesn't help.
- Alice hasn't eaten in over a week and is literally starving, while Bob is not.
- Alice's food was incredibly expensive and took effort to acquire (for further chain-yanking, it may even have been some kind of limited-edition item that Alice can only enjoy a limited number of times in her lifetime, if not once). She is understandably Not Happy that her efforts to get the damn thing just turned into a waste.
- The piece of food had high sentimental value (ex. made by Alice's children).
- Alice was really looking forward to eating the food.
- Inverted: When Bob gives her a cupcake, Alice acts extremely happy like she's won the lottery.
- Subverted: Alice does an angry face and opens her mouth to speak, but decides not to say anything.
- Double Subverted: She still gives Bob a Death Glare.
- Parodied: Bob eats Alice's cupcake, Alice attempts to kill Bob.
- Zigzagged: Alice flips between sad, angry and apathetic about Bob stealing her cupcake.
- Averted:
- Alice does not overreact to Bob stealing her cupcake.
- Alice gets to eat her cupcake.
- Enforced: Rule of Funny
- Lampshaded: "Jeez, all that over a cupcake?!"
- Invoked: Bob steals Alice's cupcake just to anger her.
- Exploited: Bob does this to distract Alice.
- Defied:
- Alice refuses to get too emotional.
- Bob decides not to steal Alice's cupcake for fear of angering her.
- "Do you have any idea of what I'm going to do to you if you try to kick my ass over a fucking cupcake, uh, Alice?"
- Discussed: "I don't want to steal from her, she might flip her lid!".
- Conversed: "Why did that character go crazy like that over just one cupcake?!"
- Implied: The first scene has Alice preparing to eat the cupcake and Bob looking at it hungrily, the second scene has her angrily chasing him around.
- Deconstructed: The standard way this trope presents itself (violence or the threat of it) is Disproportionate Retribution no matter what. People have a good reason to think Alice is insane.
- Reconstructed: The cast is stuck in a remote valley in the Andes, starving to death and that cupcake Bob just rendered utterly inedible was the only food that remained. Alice has a very good reason to flip her lid.
- Played for Laughs: The episode begins with Bob eating Alice's cupcake and throughout the episode there's a Running Gag of Alice being mad at Bob for that reason.
- Played for Drama:
- Alice actually becomes violent or depressed.
- "You're going to lose everything you worked for over a $2 cupcake! Are you happy?" Alice stops her rampage completely… or just long enough to decide that yeah, she wanted that cupcake this bad enough (or she wanted to kick Bob's ass this bad enough, and the cupcake was as good enough of an excuse as any).
- Played for Horror: Alice doesn't just goes violent — she makes the news as yet another story of a mad person that kills dozens in a merciless massacre before being taken down by the police.
Back to Lost Food Grievance.
