Basic Trope: A character is in a bad mood. They turn on the radio and get a song about the thing that put them in the initial bad mood.
- Straight:
- Alice is sad because her cat ran away. She turns on the radio and gets a song about a runaway cat.
- Bob loses his license. “Driver’s License” comes on the radio.
- Exaggerated:
- Whenever anyone is sad, everything on the radio will be about why they're sad.
- The song about the runaway cat pops up on the radio, on TV, Bob sings it, Charlie whistles it, Diane plays it on the piano, etc, etc.
- Bob loses his driver’s license. “Driver’s License” comes on the radio, Carol calls him to tell him that she passed her driving test, and on TV, is a show about driving tests.
- Everything on the radio consists of three songs about cats running away, an ad for lost pets and a news story about someone with a lost cat.
- Downplayed: The song is not solely about a cat running away but it does have one lyric "My cat ran away".
- Justified: Alice and Bob were just unlucky.
- Inverted:
- The song is about cats coming back.
- Bob gets his license back. “Driver’s License” comes on the radio.
- Alice finds the sad songs when she's happy.
- When the cat comes back, Alice turns on the radio and the song "The Cat Came Back" plays.
- Subverted:
- The song seems to be about a runaway cat but the cat comes back by the end of the song.
- The chords appear to be those for “Driver’s License”, but they’re not.
- Double Subverted: It was a cover of “Driver’s License”.
- Parodied:
- The song comes with a warning: "If you have a missing pet, don't listen."
- Alice fails to notice the irony, and the song actually brightens her mood.
- Zig Zagged: The song is about a cat that keeps going away and coming back.
- Averted:
- There are no songs.
- None of the songs are about what's making people sad.
- Enforced:
- The writers set this up to invoke sympathy in Alice.
- The writers wanted to lighten up the sad moment with a joke.
- Lampshaded: "Is this song mocking me?"
- Invoked: Bob plays the song to tease Alice.
- Exploited: ???
- Defied: Alice refuses to listen to music until she finds her cat.
- Discussed: "I'm so glad Fluffy's back. I cried so hard when she ran away, and the fact that a song about a runaway cat was on the radio didn't help."
- Conversed: "Man, that character's sure having bad luck with music."
- Implied: Alice's cat runs away. Alice mentions not liking a song that was played on the radio, but it is unknown if the song was about cats running away or if she didn't like it for some unrelated reason."
- Deconstructed: ???
- Reconstructed: ???
- Played for Laughs: The whole episode is about Alice trying to find her cat and has a Running Gag where the song plays and she gets annoyed.
- Played for Drama: Alice cries when the song plays.
Back to Mocking Music.
