Basic Trope: A character says or does something that suggests nothing bad will happen, thereby daring fate to make something bad happen, and then it happens.
- Straight:
- Alice says "How could this possibly get any worse?" and promptly gets kicked in the shin.
- Alice says "How could this possibly get any worse?" and she gets run over by a stampede.
- Exaggerated: Alice says "How could this possibly get any worse?" and World War Three begins.
- Downplayed: Alice says "How could this possibly get any worse?" and she gets slapped.
- Justified:
- The universe has a cruel sense of Irony and Alice is its Butt-Monkey.
- Alice had been placed under a curse by a witch doctor in which any time she utters the phrase "How could this possibly get any worse?", she is punished by the gods.
- A mean god waits for people to say this, then has them get stampeded because it amuses him.
- Alice's fate-tempting comments were born out of overconfidence or stupidity, and that overconfidence/stupidity led to her downfall.
- Fate was already long planning to screw Alice over whether she said anything or not. Her saying "How could this possibly get any worse?" is just the universe being "nice" enough to give everyone a 5-second warning to duck for cover.
- Inverted:
- Alice says "How could this possibly get any worse?" and then finds money.
- Alice says "How could this possibly get any better?" and the bad guy is defeated in the background.
- Alice mentions how much worse things can get, and they do.
- The situation is fine for now, but Alice warns that things could go very badly.
- Subverted: Alice says "How could this possibly get any worse?" There's a long Beat without anything happening at all.
- Double Subverted: And then she discovers she's glued to her chair.
- Parodied: Alice says "How could this possibly get any worse?" and is promptly stampeded by a pack of water buffalo, run over by an 18-wheeler, struck by lightning, set on fire, and then abducted by aliens. She somehow survives all this, but then gets kicked in the shins and then dies for real.
- Zig Zagged: Alice says "How could this possibly get any worse?" There's a long Beat without anything happening at all, and then she discovers she's glued to her chair, but then remembers that she glued herself to said chair on purpose.
- Averted:
- Alice never says "How could this possibly get any worse?" or anything of the kind.
- Alice says "How could this possibly get any worse?" and nothing happens.
- Enforced: Alice tempts fate in order to create the conflict needed to start/continue the story.
- Lampshaded:
- Bob tells Alice to stop saying that phrase.
- "Oh, so that's how it could be worse. Lesson learned."
- Invoked:
- The God is fed up with we humans' stupidity, so he decides to punish anyone who regularly eats junk food and then says "how would I get diabetes?"
- Alice deliberately tempts fate, as she believes that tempting fate and then surviving it's wrath will provide greater glory than merely continuing on as normal without the added challenge.
- Exploited: In order to defeat the villain, Alice tricks the villain into saying "How could this possibly get any worse?" The universe takes care of the rest.
- Defied:
- Alice begins to say "How could this—" but stops, remembering what's happened the past 500 times she's said it.
- Alice states that belief in this trope is a superstition made by a twisted inversion of survivorship bias, and nothing more. Sure enough, she proceed to tempt fate several times other the next few episodes and nothing out of the ordinary happens.
- Discussed: "If this were an action movie, talking about your family like that would mean you'd be dead in a few minutes."
- Conversed: "According to this show, simply saying a particular phrase will cause bad things to happen to you? That's ridiculous. That would never happen in the real world!" *Cue the stampede*
- Implied: Alice sits despondently on a street corner, and says to herself "Well, you know what they say." It rains the second after.
- Deconstructed: Alice became incredibly pessimistic because terrible things keep happening to her every time she even so much as has a negative thought.
- Reconstructed: Alice's friend, Bob, who notices that Alice has been incredibly pessimistic, constructs a collar for her to help her become more positive. The collar shocks its wearer whenever she says anything negative such as "How could this possibly get any worse?" It can't be removed until Alice learns to be more positive.
- Played For Laughs: Alice says "How could this get possibly worse?". She gets pied in the face.
- Played For Drama: Alice says "How could this get possibly worse?". She then discovers that all of her family and friends are dead.
Head on back to Tempting Fate. What could possibly go wrong?.
