Basic Trope: The mood of a scene abruptly changes.
- Straight: Bob is helping an old man cross the road, but then the old man flips Bob off the moment he sees the police, before promptly dashing off.
- Exaggerated:
- Bob is helping an old man cross the road. Cut to 20 people being slaughtered by a crazed sociopathic cop.
- Big-Lipped Alligator Moment
- Wham Episode
- Wham Line
- Bob is playing fetch with his dog Tropey. A'blargh wakes up from its eternal slumber and destroys the entire universe.
- Bob is sleeping with his wife Alice, with their heads lying on each other's shoulders. Cut to them being captured by a serial killer and them ending up with a pair of rusty drills slowly drilling into their eyes.
- A montage of Alice slowly recovering from breast cancer abruptly cuts to Alice being hit by a car on their way to the hospital and a sad montage of Alice's funeral, flashbacks of past moments of Alice, and her husband Bob committing suicide by hanging.
- Downplayed: Bob is helping an old man cross the road, but then the old man talks about how he used to do the same thing to people older than him when he was younger.
- Inverted: In a scene where the mood abruptly changes every few seconds, it suddenly stops changing, and stays consistent throughout the rest of the scene.
- Subverted: The old man looks like he's going to change everything, but instead says "What a nice lad."
- Double Subverted:
- Of course, he said this right after a policeman shot a gun in the air.
- "What a nice lad... Charles, take him out."
- Parodied: Bob enjoys tea with a little girl. The world blows up not long after.
- Zig-Zagged:
- The entire work is dedicated to messing with your expectations about what will happen with Bob, the old man Flipping the Bird, and the badass policeman with the gun. Mind Screws will be driven.
- Cerebus Rollercoaster.
- "What a nice lad. Charles, take him out... to the Super Bowl! And torture his family and kill him, Charles... what? I was reading a book! Take him home after that."
- Averted: The tone stays the same.
- Enforced: "Hey, this scene is just lame with nothing happening." "I know! Let's have something crazy happen. That'll keep the viewers watching."
- Lampshaded: "Wow, one minute Bob is walking some old man down the road, the next some psycho kills a guy with a knife. God, this town is crazy."
- Invoked: Charles, the old, brilliant, charismatic man he is, has the knife-wielding cop in on the whole mess. He planned everything.
- Exploited: Alice, just a passerby when the Mood Whiplash happens, robs a nearby bank when all is said and done.
- Defied: Due to counseling, the cop held down his sociopathic urges for one day-or, if The Shrink is good enough, is rid of them altogether.
- Discussed: "Hey, man. You know when a show looks bright and happy, and then suddenly everything gets dark fast?" "Yeah, whats up with that?"
- Conversed: "Hey, did you see that episode of Trope Tales?" "Yeah dude, and I did not see that coming."
- Implied: When Bob comes in shell-shocked, Alice asks, "Hey, what happened?", to which Bob replies, "You. Don't. Want. To. Know.''
- Deconstructed: ???
- Reconstructed: ???
- Played for Laughs:
- Played for Drama: Bob is helping an old man cross the road, but then the old man kills Bob with a knife. Even the sociopathic cop thought this was wrong.
Back to Mood Whiplash, you loathsome mortal- ya dig?
