Basic Trope: A beverage that has all the qualities of coffee without actually being coffee.
- Straight: The people of Tropeland drink "schmlorp", a stimulant beverage that is served hot.
- Exaggerated: Schmlorp is brown, made from beans, and stated to have a bitter flavor, and Aerith likes her schmlorp with sugar and cream. Also, there are "schmlorp centers" which not only resemble coffee shops, but sell baked goods as well as the schmlorp.
- Downplayed: Schmlorp is shown as a hot beverage that is popular in Tropeland. No word on whether it's a stimulant or has anything else in common with coffee.
- Justified:
- Schmlorp is coffee — Earth has been conquered by aliens, and "Schmlorp" is what they decided to rename coffee.
- Schmlorp is a coffee substitute invented when Tropeland was at war, under economic sanctions, or when the government imposed heavy duties on such imported products; such that the natives took to it and it became an inherent part of their culture.
- Schmlorp is the go-to alternative for people suffering from caffeine intolerance but needing the effect of coffee.
- Someone managed to get the effects of coffee using very different ingredients, so they had to use a new name.
- Inverted: Tropelanders consume a cold, bright green semisolid, which they refer to as "coffee".
- Subverted:
- Aerith (a native) tells Bob (a Wikistani foreigner) that schmlorp is really mud.
- Schlorp actually isn't coffee, even though it looks like someone took a cup of a hot, brown beverage that also functions as a stimulant.
- Double Subverted:
- Aerith was lying so Bob wouldn't drink her schmlorp.
- "Mud" being slang for Bad to the Last Drop schmlorp.
- It's actually Tropelandic Hot Chocolate.
- Aerith was lying so Bob wouldn't drink her schmlorp.
- Parodied: Tropelanders refer to the substance we call coffee as "eeffoc", but don't understand that they are similar.
- Zig-Zagged: Schmlorp resembles coffee, and what the Tropelanders call "coffee" is what we would call mint ice cream shakes, except coffee-flavored ice cream exists in that world and it tastes more like schmlorp. It turns out this was all in local slang for the area, and the greater area calls the hot stimulant liquid "Boper".
- Averted:
- Tropelanders drink coffee and call it "coffee".
- There is no beverage resembling coffee.
- Enforced:
- "The plot relies on Aerith and Bob drinking coffee, but we want our fantasy kingdom to have as little in common with the real world as possible. Let's invent a Suspiciously Similar Substitute for coffee."
- The translator mistook the onomatopoeia for a grigrasa drinking coffee for them saying the beverage's name. note
- Lampshaded: "This stuff is great! It looks and tastes like the coffee we have back home." "What's a coffee?"
- Invoked: Alice replaces all the "coffee" signs at the local cof—er, schmlorp stations with new signs calling things strange names such as "schmlorp".
- Exploited: Bob wants to stay awake all night, but there's a rule against coffee in his home, so he drinks three cups of schmlorp he got from Tropeland.
- Defied: Bob introduces coffee to Tropeland.
- Discussed:Aerith: Want to try some schmlorp?Bob: That's just coffee but not, isn't it?
- Conversed: "Another fantasy show with a Suspiciously Similar Substitute for coffee? It's like everything we have here on Earth has a fictional counterpart in at least two of these shows."
Back to Not Quite Coffee ... I mean, Uncoffee!
