Basic Trope: Something minor is treated as though it has more importance than most people in Real Life think it does.
- Straight: In the year 20XX, hopscotch has become a major league sport. Millions of people watch hopscotch games live or on Three-V, the best hopscotch players make excellent money, and kids want to grow up to be just like their favorite "scotchers". The main characters of the story all either play hopscotch, or are the close friends and relatives of those that do. Other games and activities are mentioned from time to time. (Katie was a champion ropeskipper before crosstraining into hopscotch, and Ken can be seen in regular boring classes every so often between matches.)
- Exaggerated:
- In the second season, hopscotch has become the only sport on Earth. Top scotchers are worshipped like rock superstars in our world, Ken and Katie attend a special school that teaches hopscotch (and apparently nothing but), every player has named special techniques, and there's an Ancient Conspiracy out to rule the world by taking over the hopscotch league. Characters who don't play hopscotch are reduced to Combat Commentator or Damsel in Distress roles.
- Multiple interplanetary wars have been started over hopscotch.
- Downplayed: Ken and his teammates/rivals take hopscotch seriously, but the rest of society just thinks of it as a game, and not a particularly important one.
- Justified:
- In order to be the best at a particular sport or activity, you have to treat it with seriousness, even if it seems silly to outsiders to do so. Plus the prize money of ten million dollars doesn’t hurt things either.
- To emphasize the above bullet point, the Serious Business du jour has a big cash prize. Even the greatest pooh-pooh-ers have to accept (grudgingly) that earning two or three figures is a good enough reason to get good at playing it. And the Loan Sharks do not care if you bet your money on hopscotch, only that you have it.
- Due to a whim of an ancient god, hopscotch gives untold mystical powers to those who can master it.
- The universe works based on the focus of people. Hopscotch happened to become all powerful because so many people played it as kids they remembered it well, causing good things to happen when it's played.
- After many conflicts (local or international) have gone way too out of hand, a number of organizations have managed to convince people to use sports to solve their issues without reaching for a gun (or lawyers). Of course, humans are humans and hopscotch has just become one more reason and tool to get very, very hostile to each other.
- In a conflict between two major blocs, they will use anything (and that is anything) as a tool of political superiority. It does not matters if it is hopscotch or nuclear weapons, that superiority is to be maintained by any means necessary.
- Everyone knows it's just a game, and it's precisely because of that reason that so many take it seriously - they can do so without any real consequences and still have fun playing at the end of the day.
- Inverted: Normally serious things, like war or disease, are treated as though they're no more important than children's card games.
- Subverted: In the middle of a tense hopscotch match, Ken stops and says, "Dude! We're taking this all way too seriously! It's just a game, we should relax and have fun".
- Double Subverted:
- But then Team Evil reveals that Katie's been poisoned, and the only way they'll give Ken the antidote is if he wins the match.
- Katie refuses, claiming "This stopped being a game the moment we started hopping".
- Katie then answers that President Krush has ordered her family to be taken hostage and unless she wins and bring more greatness for the the People's Republic of Evilstein to rub on Jerseyland's face, he will have them executed. And with this, she unleashes her greatest hopscotch technique with a pained "I'm sorry, Ken!"
- Parodied:
- While the hopscotch players are engaged in their fierce battles, we cut to ordinary people getting on with their ordinary days, completely uninterested in the proceedings. When one side loses, it has no effect on the larger world.
- Both sides of a major war, who have been bitter enemies for generations, halt their aggressions mid-battle when a corporal comes running out into the battlefield yelling that he has the results of the Hopscotch World Championship.
- The series tries to Handwave why hopscotch is worth taking as serious business, but it is pretty obvious the writers (deliberately) didn't made much of an effort.
- The series gets an Alien Episode and the aliens, seeing how much of the series' conflict is caused by (and solved with) hopscotch, take it as proof that Humanity Is Insane.
- The protagonists begin to suggest using hopscotch to solve any issue, even the ones that are impossible to solve by a bunch of teens, let alone via hopscotch. For extra parody points, hopscotch becomes a perfect solution anyway.
- Whenever someone cheats, Katie pulls out a gun and threatens to blow their brains out if they don't admit they cheated.
Katie: This is HOPSCOTCH for Chrissake's! There are RULES that you HAVE to follow! - Zig Zagged: Most of the episodes concentrate on the fierce hopscotch battles for the fate of humanity, but we also see the characters taking days off to do other things that are important too, or just playing hopscotch for fun.
- Averted:
- While all the characters enjoy their favorite activities or sports, no one gets carried away with it.
- Alternately, even those not involved in volunteer firefighting know that it is essential to protect people's lives. Thus, the volunteers take the duty seriously, and the general public expects them to do so.
- Enforced:
- "Is there anything we haven't made a sports anime out of yet?" "Ummm...hopscotch?"
- It is easier, more accessible for all audiences (and legally safe) to make a satire of some major issue or character if it is filtered through, say for example, a high school election run amok or a hopscotch tournament with kids hopped up on Frappuccinos.
- Lampshaded: "You know, I bet that no one back in the 2010s would have believed that hopscotch would ever get so big". — "You mean other than Konami?"
- Invoked: Ken decides to become the best hopscotch player 'ever, no matter what.
- Exploited: While the world obsesses over hopscotch, Kim gets away with using a ton of underhanded tricks to make money through a trivial, unimportant institution: the stock market.
- Defied: "Oh for God's sake, it's just a children's hopping game. I'm not going to let it take over my life".
- Discussed: "You know Bob Bigbux lost all his money betting on pro hopscotch? Me too".
- Conversed: "Anime can make anything look awesome and important, even hopscotch".
- Deconstructed: Ken and Katie suffer all the normal effects of concentrating on one activity to the neglect of all others. Their school grades suck, they have no normal relationships with outsiders, and they start taking performance-enhancing drugs with all the side effects those have.
- Reconstructed: "Quintuple Square Hop Inversion!" Damn, that's cool.
- Played For Laughs: The view on the game is split. Those who take it seriously, and those who don't get what the fuss is all about. You see one side who many glows and explosions before they start skipping, and then you see normal people watching other hop around, occasionally preforming a gymnastic feat.
- Played For Drama: Our heroes have suffered an awful lot because of hopscotch. They have seen the absolute best and worst of humanity in the hopscotch community. They have been conned out of all their money, kidnapped, traumatized, crippled, or even killed because of that game. They have had literally everything depending on placing their foot inside that square with precision. The rest of mankind may go "it's just a kid's game, dammit!", but for them the time when they could be part of that mentality has long since passed them by.
- Played for Horror: Add a whole lot of mass, gory murder, torture, rape and mental breakdown of the "looks like the closing scenes of Requiem for a Dream" type to "Played for Drama".
This is a Matter of Life and Death! Hopscotch Back to Serious Business!
