Basic Trope: Two or more enemies have a drink. One of the drinks is poisoned and the glasses get switched around.
- Straight: Alice and Bob, who are bitter enemies, share a drink. Alice poisons Bob's drink. Bob saw her poison the drink and switches their glasses.
- Exaggerated:
- Alice and Bob keep switching back and forth.
- At a 50-person meeting, most of them try to poison someone else. Everyone's drink gets switched at least twice.
- Downplayed: Alice noticed Bob tries to get away with filling her glass with cheap wine while saving the best for himself. She "corrects" this.
- Justified: Bob sees this as a perfect opportunity to give Alice a Death by Irony, and Alice thinks Bob doesn't know she wants him dead.
- Inverted:
- Bob pours the poisoned drink into Alice's glass.
- Alice puts Super Serum in her drink. Bob switches the glasses because he wants the serum.
- Bob and Alice are poisoned. They only have enough Magic Antidote for one of them. Neither of them wants the other to die for them, so both try to trick the other into taking the antidote.
- Subverted: Bob says Look Behind You and prepares to switch the glasses, but Alice turns around too quickly.
- Double Subverted: Then Alice switches the glasses because she thinks Bob actually switched them.
- Parodied:
- Alice pours three drinks, visibly poisons two of them, and moves them around rapidly. She challenges Bob to keep track of the safe drink.
- Bob and Alice discuss which drink is poisoned. It may or may not involve Insane Troll Logic.
- Alice and Bob switch their glasses like crazy, but Alice's minion somehow ends up with the poison.
- Alice and Bob use increasingly silly and stupid distractions as they switch the glasses.
- It turns out that Alice forgot to poison the drink.
- Alice poisons her own coffee before Bob arrives. Once he arrives, she puts sugar into Bob's coffee in an attempt to make him suspicious and switch their cups. Bob, being too dumb to pick up on the bait, thanks her for the sugar. Bob refuses to let the coffee cup out of his sight - he Must Have Caffeine after all - and Alice has a frustrating time trying and failing to get him to switch the cups.
- Alice poisons Bob's coffee, which he witnesses. Bob switches their cups while she's away, then takes a sip out of his... and realizes that Alice was originally doing him a favor, because somehow, even diluting it with poison makes it less deadly.
- Zig Zagged: Alice puts something in Bob's drink and then turns away for a moment. Bob tries to switch the glasses, but doesn't have time to do it before Alice turns back. Alice considers switching the glasses, but buys new drinks for both instead. It turns out that the drinks were just a distraction and that Bob's food is poisoned, but he predicts this and switches their food while Alice gets the new drinks.
- Averted:
- Bob goes for a Discreet Drink Disposal instead of trying to switch the glasses.
- Bob refuses to share a drink with Alice because he knows sharing a drink with one's bitter enemy can be a very bad idea.
- Enforced: Alice needs to be killed off, but Moral Guardians don't want Bob to kill her because that would "set a bad example". The writers' solution is making Alice a Self-Disposing Villain who gets too paranoid, switches the drinks when there's no need to, and ends up killed by her own poison.
- Lampshaded: "Ugh, I'm feeling so ill right now. Apparently that idiot Bob managed to switch the glasses."
- Invoked: Alice tries to make Bob suspicious of his drink. She has actually poisoned her own drink and pretended to take a few sips. Now she needs him to switch their glasses.
- Exploited: Bob does this to everyone that's Genre Blind enough to try to poison him this way.
- Defied:
- Alice keeps an eye on Bob to make sure that he doesn't switch the glasses.
- Alice dispenses with the poisoned drink shell game nonsense all together and just shoots Bob.
- Alternatively, Bob is pissed off when he discovers Alice's plan to poison him, and just shoots her.
- Alice has an Acquired Poison Immunity, so she poisons both glasses and mocks Bob for never seeing The Princess Bride.
- Discussed: "Are you going to poison Bob? Make sure he doesn't get you poisoned instead!"
- Conversed: "Why do they drink that when they know about the risk? You know, the 50% chance of being poisoned because you can't know for sure which drink is poisoned. It's worse than Russian Roulette."
- Implied: The camera focuses on Alice, who looks away from Bob for a moment. When the camera and Alice turn back, Bob smiles cunningly. Alice smells a rat and disposes her drink.
- Deconstructed:
- Bob chooses incorrectly and gets poisoned.
- Bob is poisoned and tells about what happened, and nobody bothers with trying to treat him because they think he only has himself to blame. After all, he knew about the risk of being poisoned, but drank anyway.
- Reconstructed:
- However, he tells others what Alice did to him, and she gets punished.
- Bob, knowing that he's dying, does The Last Dance, which includes revenge against Alice.
- Played For Laughs:
- Alice drinks red wine while Bob drinks water. Alice still doesn't notice that the drinks have been switched.
- A non-lethal variation with shaken soda cans, soda with added salt, or similar.
- Nina, Bob's friend, gives this advice: "I think you should make your date drink from your glass, considering that your previous date tried to poison you."
- Played For Drama: Of course this is a risky action for Bob, but he's well aware of the risk, and doesn't mind it because he's tired of life and won't mind if it for instance turns out that both drinks were poisoned and that Alice has Acquired Poison Immunity.
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