Basic Trope: A character threatens two or more characters to end their conflict.
- Straight:
- Flash Young threatens to shoot Harry Oswalt and Eddie Roque if they don't stop fighting each other.
- Harry and Eddie have been arguing for three hours now. Flash's request for them to shut up and make up starts with him blasting a hole in the wall with his sidearm.
- Exaggerated:
- Flash threatens to torture Harry and Eddie in highly disturbing details if they don't end their fighting. It works so well.
- Flash threatens to blow up the entire planet if humans don't stop being assholes to each other.
- Harry and Eddie pull a Mexican Standoff. Flash, who is in the same room, pulls out a hand grenade and threatens to turn the entire room into a Jackson Pollock painting with their collective blood splatter (yes, including his) unless they toss their guns away.
- Flash threatens to kill Harry, Eddie and anybody stupid enough to try to stop him (be it friend, foe, family member, cop, pet or divine being) if they ever so much as think of ever telling one another a Your Mom joke for the rest of their lives (being their personal Berserk Button and all). Knowing that this means Flash has threatened to kill the whole town essentially, Harry and Eddie don't wanna risk getting such a blood bath on their consciences.
- Flash's preferred way to shut up Harry and/or Eddie when they start going on one of their childish tirades (knowing they will soon start to blame the other guy for whatever is ailing them) is to put a loaded shotgun to their faces point-blank and (in an eerily calm and polite voice) tell them to stop. And they know he'll fire. They have the reconstructive surgery bills to prove it.
- Downplayed: Flash threatens to leave Harry and Eddie stranded in the wilderness if they don't stop bickering.
- Justified:
- Flash feels that solving conflicts peacefully isn't effective enough.
- Harry and Eddie keep dragging others into their fights, usually people Flash cares about, and Flash is determined to prevent any further collateral damage.
- Harry and Eddie's idea of an Escalating War usually involves property destruction in the multiple figures and lengthy hospital stays by the time they decide to call a truce... all thirty seconds of it. Flash is way beyond "fed up" with their shit.
- Flash is Ax-Crazy and Eviler than Thou ("thou" being Harry and Eddie). He is Offing the Annoyance, in a figurative sense.
- The group is in imminent mortal peril, and Flash cannot afford to let Harry and Eddie work out their shit peacefully/at their own pace.
- It may be Teeth-Clenched Teamwork at the moment, but this is teaching Harry and Eddie how to work as a team… the problem Flash has is that the "teeth-clenched" part of the trope is really overriding the "teamwork" part.
- Flash tried, and very hard, to obtain a peaceful resolution in this conflict. Harry and Eddie took this as a personal offense and hurt him. Peace (or at least one not enforced by Flash) is literally no longer an option.
- Flash tried to point out that there is a common foe that needs to be stopped and Harry and Eddie are struggling together. Their response: "We ARE Struggling Together". Now with proof that Harry and Eddie will prioritize destroying each other over getting anything done, Flash stops treating them as teammates and begins treating them as pawns that must be brought to heel.
- Inverted: Harry and Eddie threaten Flash with horrifying harm (and maybe that they will double-team to inflict it) if he even thinks of trying to stop their feud.
- Subverted: Flash gives Harry and Eddie a Death Glare when they start to argue and stands up straight, showcasing he's freakishly taller than both of them. Harry and/or Eddie pulls out a Sinister Switchblade and yells at Harry to sit down, which he does...
- Double Subverted: ...only because it's easier for him to pull out the .500 S&W Magnum revolver he's carrying on an ankle holster if he's in a sitting position. One Dramatic Gun Cock later, Harry and Eddie stand down.
- Parodied: Flash manages to end a war between two countries by threatening to stab each soldier (individually) with a spoon.
- Zig Zagged: Flash, Eddie and Harry are determined badasses who won't back down. The bickering of who is going to stop and who is going to make who stop and what kind of brutal things they will do to each other to make it happen is every bit as loud and extensive as Eddie and Harry's regular matches.
- Averted: Flash doesn't threaten Harry and Eddie to get along.
- Enforced: "Listen, guys, having Harry and Eddie going on an Escalating War for the smallest of discussions was all well and good as a Running Gag, but we want to establish Flash as a capital-B Badass with a Hair-Trigger Temper, so why not have him put his foot down on one of the guys' discussions and threaten them to stop? Doesn't needs to work more than once, but at least it will keep things fresh."
- Lampshaded: "Flash would make a great cop one day for stopping disputes like that."
- Invoked: Flash works on becoming threatening so that he can mediate between argumentative people.
- Exploited: Pete Perkins is utterly sick and tired of Harry and Eddie's unending vitriol, so he asks his step big brother Flash to meet them one day. He knows very well that his Big Brother Instinct and the violent impulses that it triggers within him will provide a perfect Gunboat Diplomacy support to his request for them to stop.
- Defied:
- "Threaten violence to stop violence? That seems brutal to me."
- "Flash, before you go to them, I need to remind you that getting violent with them may lead to a lawsuit."
- Discussed: "Flash is the kind of man who gets so brutal when he's ticked off that he will threaten his own friends if they argue too loudly."
- Conversed: "Don't you think Flash is... kind of too brutal?" "What do you mean?" "Last week he threatened to shoot Harry and Eddie if they could not agree on what movie to put on." "Harry and Eddie would have let it become a Silly Reason for War and we would have been patching up walls for a month while they tried to out-beat each other. Flash is just pragmatic, is all." "I fear the day Flash decides to get "pragmatic" on me."
- Implied: Flash's picture in the living room has a Death Glare on it. Harry and Eddie notice it when they begin to argue and they immediately stop.
- Deconstructed: Flash's constant attempts to make people play nice by threatening both sides turn him into The Dreaded, and not even his closest of friends or lovers want to talk back to him on anything, even the smallest of digressions. Flash, thus, ends up being cut off by his peers.
- Reconstructed: But Harry and Eddie are such pains in the ass that, in the choice between Gentle Touch vs. Firm Hand in order to keep them in line, "Firm Hand" inevitably wins... and nobody can provide that firm hand better than Flash.
- Played For Laughs: Harry and Eddie, the protagonists of the show, are on another of their prank wars. Flash (who is not only a bigger badass, but also built like a Sumo wrestler) threatens to give them both a multiple-hour "Dutch oven" session at the same time if they don't stop. They do.
- Played For Drama: Local Law & Order copy "Alice and Bob: The Series" has an episode where two people called Harry and Eddie are the Victim of the Week duo, having been torn apart while they were alive in ways that would make the Cenobites puke. Turns out that their constant bickering and Escalating War bouts damaged the livelihood of the sister of the (now former, having been kicked out in disgrace) member of the Neighborhood-Friendly Gangsters named Flash. He told them that he would kill them if they didn't stopped their stupid prank war — or, at the very least, if they ever dragged his sister into it ever again. They thought he was blowing smoke up their asses. It became their last mistake. Ever.
- Played for Horror: Flash slaughters an entire roomful of people just to make a point of what he can do to Harry and Eddie if they continue their feud and makes clear he wants them to defy him.
Back to Threatening Mediator, and if you wanna go home in one piece, then shut the fuck up and quit your bickering.
