Basic Trope: Someone is caught faking a performance.
- Straight: Poppy Stardom lip-syncs while giving a concert. Then the lyrics and music start repeating, and the audience realizes she wasn't really singing.
- Exaggerated: It's also revealed that Poppy's entire band is merely pretending to play. As they leave the stage, they accidentally reveal that the "backup dancers" are 3D holograms.
- Downplayed:
- Poppy is only performing for a small audience, and gets them to agree to shut up about that little mishap.
- Poppy is caught lip-syncing. However, her act involves a lot of jumping around, flipping and fast dancing, so lip-syncing is pretty much a given, so the audience wasn't surprised and don't really mind.
- The audio glitches in a way that suggests she might be lip-syncing, but doesn't come close to proving it. While some people find this suspicious, most give her the benefit of the doubt.
- Justified: Poppy was really out of breath having to dance and sing at the same time, and she went on for multiple hours. Cut her some slack! Too bad the speakers began bugging out...
- Inverted: Poppy is caught singing live when she's supposed to be lip-syncing, as evidenced as her inexplicably having two voices singing at once.
- Subverted:
- Poppy manages to pass off the Repetitive Audio Glitch as deliberate.
- It turns out that the disastrous "concert" was merely a rehearsal to test if the special effects worked.
- Double Subverted: Then the recording stops working altogether, and the audience figures out what's up.
- Parodied:
- Poppy's lip-syncing has been incredibly obvious for years, but everyone is still shocked to find out that she doesn't actually sing her songs.
- Poppy doesn't even try to make the lip-syncing look real, but she's still shocked when the audience realizes she's a fraud.
- Poppy isn't lip-syncing and even accurately sings alongside the Repetitive Audio Glitch.
- Zig Zagged:
- The band is playing along to the music, while Poppy is singing for real.
- Poppy has a physical ailment that affects her performance. If she can't perform, she uses a backing track. When audiences find out, the explanation is Poppy is just trying to finish her final tour before retiring due to said ailment.
- Averted:
- Poppy doesn't get caught lip-syncing.
- Lipsynching is accepted as completely normal amongst Poppy's audience. You can't get "caught" when it's not a problem in the first place.
- Enforced: Poppy's music is actually done by a Reclusive Artist who hired her to act as the public performer. If anyone finds out, they can always just prove her innocence by admitting it was their idea.
- Lampshaded: "If Poppy was going to lip-sync, she should've been better at not getting caught."
- Invoked:
- Poppy's main rival sabotages the playback to out her as a fraud.
- Poppy is unhappy about being forced to lip-sync for a TV show, so she deliberately makes it clear she's not singing live.
- Exploited: Poppy's rivals throw Take Thats at her and advertise that their performances are genuine.
- Defied: Poppy's team quickly shuts down the malfunctioning audio player, and stops the concert due to "problems with the audio equipment". The audience buys this excuse.
- Discussed: "Please make 100% sure this recording works. We don't want Poppy to become the next Milli Vanilli."
- Conversed: ???
- Played For Laughs:
- Poppy insists that she can sing for real. Cue Cringe Comedy when she turns out to sound like a cat being strangled.
- The music completely stops, but Poppy continues to lip-sync as if nothing happened. Everyone applauds at her dedication to finishing the song anyway.
- Played For Drama: Poppy usually sings for real. She catches a cold on a concert day, and the producers force her to lip-sync instead of cancelling the concert. When the audio malfunctions, everyone assumes all her performances were faked. She becomes a target of ridicule, and her career is ruined.
- Played For Horror: A bomb has been planted that's set to go off when Poppy sings a certain note. The producers have been forced to letting the concert go on, and try getting around this by lip syncing to a recording. When the audio stops, the staff has to act quickly before the audience's lives are put in any more danger.
Back to That Syncing Feeling.
