Basic Trope: Someone wedges another person’s underpants between their buttocks.
- Played Straight: Barbaric Bully Flash Young gives Lovable Nerd Pete Perkins a wedgie.
- Exaggerated: He then proceeds to do this to everyone; People are given an atomic wedgie, an eternity wedgie, a hanging wedgie, a Melvin wedgie, a messy wedgie, a flagpole wedgie and essentially every single type of wedgie there is and they’re given wedgies Once per Episode at the absolute minimum but normally several more than that.
- Downplayed:
- Flash occasionally gives his victims wedgies but he prefers other forms of bullying
- Flash gives wedgies every chance he gets, but since there's only one of him, wedgies are still an uncommon occurrence.
- Justified:
- It's just funny to him.
- This is actually Pete's secret fetish.
- Subverted: Flash looks like he will give Pete a wedgie but he initiates a civil conversation with him instead...
- Double Subverted: ...and then gives him a wedgie.
- Parodied: Every single named character is given a wedgie at some point (By Flash, obviously) and the entire point of schooling is treated as being to give nerds wedgies.
- Zig-Zagged: A character starting at a new school known for its bullying fears getting a wedgie but when he starts his bullies all bully him in completely different ways then that but than a bully shows up who actually gives the character a wedgie so he exacts revenge by giving the same bully a wedgie but then the other bullies all punish the victim by giving him all kinds of wedgies every day one by one but then they get bored with it and stop but then there’s a limited number of other ways to bully him so they go back to giving him the occasional wedgie so he transfers schools to get rid of his bullies but then meets a new bully he believes will wedgie him but who refuses to do so since he dislikes that cliché but that bully is then expelled for other reasons and a new bully shows up whose preferred method for bullying the main character is to give him wedgies.
- Deconstructed: Wedgies do lasting physical damage and possibly emotional as well.
- Reconstructed: But said damage is actually not permanent and it’s possible to recover from the trauma as long as the victims don’t live in a world where there are no therapists.
- Averted: No one gives anyone any wedgies at all.
- Lampshaded: “I thought bullies only wedgied nerds in movies, why me!?”
- Enforced:
- Network executives say that if the show has bullies they better be giving wedgies.
- Being fond of giving wedgies is an Establishing Character Moment as part of his characterization or alternatively it’s a work based on a true story incorporating one of the real life examples of this trope.
- Implied: A character is being stared down by a bully followed by a cut to said character in pain complaining he’s running out of undamaged underpants.
- Played for Laughs: It’s a running gag for someone to receive a wedgie, and nobody knows who's next (obviously Flash is out of the wedgie lottery due to being the one who gives it out in the first place).
- Played for Drama: Any of the real life dangers or harms associated with wedgies actually takes place.
- Played for Horror: A character is given so many painful wedgies so often that he becomes completely desensitized to all pain and as a result develops an utter Lack of Empathy for anyone else who is suffering which eventually leads to him enjoying inflicting pain upon others and becoming an Axe-Crazy serial killer.
- Invoked:
- Pete's Genre Savvy enough to know that if he gets transferred to a new school he’ll be bullied and prepares for the inevitability of wedgies.
- Bullies don’t believe people who try to join their ranks are serious about unless they start to give people wedgies.
- Defied:
- A Genre Savvy character figures out how to avoid getting wedgies.
- "Uhh, what's an undie?"
- Flash refuses to give wedgies in favour of different bullying methods
- Exploited: Flash can never resist giving wedgies and that becomes his weaksauce weakness.
- Discussed: Do the bullies give wedgies like in the movies?
- Conversed: It seems like on shows the bullies always seem to wedgie their victims.
