Basic Trope: A chess player is surprised at being checkmated.
- Straight: Whitney and Blake are playing chess. Whitney surprises Blake by checkmating him.
- Exaggerated:
- Blake has a massive advantage and has been taunting Whitney about her "inevitable loss" for half the game. Then he checks Whitney... and she responds by checkmating him.
- Blake, who's supposed to be a skilled player, falls for the Fool's Mate and genuinely did not see it coming.
- Downplayed:
- Before he was checkmated, Blake knew that he was losing. He just thought he could last a few more moves than he did.
- Whitney makes a move, and Blake suddenly realizes that he just stepped into a mate in four.
- Whitney is in a losing position, but surprises Blake with a swindle
that salvages a draw.
- Justified:
- Blake didn't foresee Whitney's attack because he wasn't paying attention and/or just sucks at chess.
- Blake was in serious time trouble, and failed to notice one of Whitney's mate threats.
- Whitney pulled a brilliant swindle that Blake missed the point of.
- Blake has spent most of his time playing against professionals and thus hasn't dealt with the amateur/novice/wtf moves employed by Whitney in way too long.
- A very awkward board position makes Blake miss an incoming checkmate.
- Whitney is a chess hustler who sometimes manipulates the board when her opponent isn't looking. Blake didn't notice what she had done before it was too late.
- Inverted:
- Blake makes a random move, and is shocked when he discovers that he just checkmated Whitney.
- Blake is relieved after Whitney misses an obvious mate-in-one.
- Whitney accidentally stalemates Blake.
- Subverted:
- Whitney claims she has checkmated Blake. He's surprised for a few seconds before discovering that it's not checkmate. He breaks the check in his next move, and they keep playing.
- Whitney responds to Blake's check with a checkmate. Blake was expecting it; the checking move was one last desperate attempt to get out of his hopeless situation.
- Double Subverted: Whitney's next move checkmates Blake for real.
- Parodied:
- Whitney, who has a losing position, makes a move and excitedly proclaims "Checkmate! I win! You lose! Hahaha!". Blake then tells her that (1) her move was illegal, and (2) even if it were legal, it still wouldn't be checkmate.
- The entire chess game is a comedy of errors, culminating in both players missing a mate-in-one for ten consecutive moves. Blake is shocked once Whitney finally spots it.
- Zig Zagged: ???
- Averted:
- Blake knows his position is lost well before he's finally checkmated.
- Blake realizes his position is hopelessly lost and resigns.
- Enforced:
- The original script featured a more realistic game between two competent players, but the meddling executives thought it would be more "dramatic" to "illustrate Whitney's skill and foresight" by having her checkmate take Blake by surprise.
- The script called for one or a few games of chess happening in the background: the one in question had a genuine Surprise Checkmate during take 14 that the produces decided to keep for levity.
- Lampshaded: "You really didn't see that checkmate coming?"
- Invoked: ???
- Exploited: ???
- Defied: Blake calculates and finds a move that prevents Whitney from checkmating him.
- Discussed: "No thanks, I don't want to play chess. I suck so much that I'd probably end up falling for a simple checkmate."
- Conversed: "How come the idiots on TV never seem to see a freaking mate-in-one coming?"
- Played For Laughs: Blake throws a tantrum and launches into Ocular Gushers after losing the game he was so sure to win.
- Played For Drama:
- The chess game is used to illustrate Blake's crippling lack of foresight.
- Blake is playing Chess with Death and thinks it's going well, only to suffer a surprise checkmate.
Back to Surprise Checkmate
