Basic Trope: A movie dealing with serious subject matter is nominated for and/or wins many major awards, specifically the Academy Awards.
- Straight: An Afternoon at the Trope Café deals with Alice and Bob's struggles on the home front during World War II, while their black employee Charles deals with '40s-era racism. It is nominated for the Best Picture Oscar and wins Best Supporting Actor for the actor playing Charles, Best Costuming, and Best Score.
- Exaggerated: As well as the foregoing, in AA@tTC, Bob and Alice lose their newborn baby, Charles' son Danny comes back from the war with amputated legs, Alice and Bob's Japanese neighbors Hiroshi and Ikue are taken away to an internment camp, and Danny's girlfriend Ellie dies in a back-alley abortion, all of this Based on a True Story. It is nominated for every possible Oscar (even Best Foreign Language Film and Best Animated Film), and is given the Best Picture trophy without contest.
- Downplayed: AA@tTC is nominated for three Oscars but wins none, but still receives critical praise.
- Justified: AA@tTC has excellent acting, directing and writing.
- Inverted:
- A comedy film sweeps the Oscars.
- Exaggerated Inversion: Chug Those Tropes, a Wacky Fratboy Hijinx comedy consisting entirely of fart jokes, drunken projectile vomiting and sexual escapades with buxom foreign exchange students, sweeps the Oscars.
- A seeming Oscar Bait film ends up being ignored by the awards ceremonies.
- The film that sweeps the Oscars is Tropey the Fox a kids' live action/animation hybrid action-comedy movie based on a video game franchise currently in an Audience-Alienating Era.
- Subverted: AA@tTC' gets critical praise but doesn't appear to be the frontrunner for Best Picture.
- Double Subverted: But on Oscar night it wins anyway.
- Parodied: An overwrought played-for-laughs melodrama wins Best Picture. In fact, one of its Signature Scenes is this:Bob: [Punching the air with Berserker Tears]Alice: What the hell are you even doing?
- Zig-Zagged: As often is the case, darker pictures win Best Picture in some years, while in other years more comedic (although usually dark comedies) win.
- Averted: A light fluffy comedy sweeps the Oscars.
- Enforced: Originally AA@tTC is just about Alice and Bob, but then producers add Charles' story to add Academy appeal.
- Lampshaded:Charles: If they ever made a movie about me, it'd win all the Oscars.
- Invoked: AA@tTC uses these qualities to appeal at the Oscars in its "For Your Consideration" campaign.
- Exploited: On its home video release, AA@tTC uses the win as a selling point. "See the movie that swept the Oscars!"
- Discussed: AA@tTC features a scene with Charles talking about making a movie about his struggles, suggesting it'd win several Oscars.
- Defied: Director Harold makes AA@tTC without any stylistic or thematic elements the Oscars are believed to reward, even though the subject matter lends itself to a lot of them.
- Conversed:
- Troperz, a comedy TV show, does a parody of the Oscars to lampshade this trope.
- All the Tropes Fit to List, a commentary web show, uses the Oscars as the subject of their show "Top Ten Ways People Try and Get Oscars."
- Deconstructed: The Academy sees AA@tTC as so excessively and cynically manipulative that the film receives neither nominations nor awards.
- Reconstructed: Troper, My Troper deals with similar subject matter to AA@tTC. However, using the former film as a cautionary example, the creators of TMT concentrate on solid storytelling, subtle dialogue, understated but compelling acting, and tasteful cinematography. As a result, the film is critically acclaimed, receives five Oscar nominations, and wins for Best Picture and Best Director.
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