Basic Trope: A person whose family is usually eccentric asks their family to act like "normal people" to leave a good impression on their friend/Love Interest/coworker/whatever.
- Straight: Alice, who is seventeen, is a stereotypical "normal" teenager but she lives in a Quirky Household that consists of herself, her father Bob who likes to build building block towers and find creative ways to knock them over as a hobby, her mother Carol who is a Perky Goth and an abstract artist who tries to be psychic but fails, her twin sister Diane who likes to organise and sort everything in sight, and her and Diane's nerdy younger brother Evan who always seems to bring up astronomy or zoology. When Alice invites her boyfriend Frank over, she says "You must act normal, so Dad, no knocking over blocks, Mom, no art and no freaky otherworldly stuff, Diane, no sorting, and Evan, no science."
- Exaggerated: ???
- Downplayed: Alice asks her family to change from their usual attire to more "normal" clothes, but she otherwise allows them to act the same.
- Justified: Alice is easily embarrassed and has a strong crush on Frank, who is pretty closed-minded.
- Inverted: Alice is a nonconformist, but she lives in a household of people with no quirks to speak of. Frank is also a nonconformist so she asks her family to act goofier.
- Subverted: Alice asked them to act normally, but by 'normally', she means how they normally act.
- Double Subverted: ???
- Parodied: Alice is a human who's been adopted into a family of Starfish Aliens that must act like humans to impress Frank.
- Averted: Alice does not want her family to act "normal".
- Enforced: ???
- Lampshaded: "Why must we act normal?"
- Invoked: Frank says "I will only tolerate your family if they're normal"
- Exploited: ???
- Defied: Alice's family refuse to act normal because they're proud to be eccentric.
- Discussed: "How can I act normal when normalcy is practically an illusion?"
- Conversed: "Those characters should stop forcing their families into normality"
- Implied: Alice's family are acting eerily "normal", although it is unclear why.
- Deconstructed: Alice develops self-esteem problems from being too shy to be in a relationship with Frank. In addition, the family feel they have to suppress their personalities.
- Reconstructed: Alice's embarrassment wears off after the infatuation's worn off, at which point her family are free to go "back to abnormal".
- Played for Laughs: Hilarity Ensues when Alice awkwardly cuts off Edward's talk about astronomy at her calling Frank "a star", whispers at Bob not to knock down his block tower, un-sorts Diane's objects and tries to keep her from re-sorting them, and tries to hide Carol's art and her crystal ball.
- Played for Drama: ???
Back to One Normal Night.
