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Basic Trope: An incredibly conspicuous attempt at stealth.

  • Straight: Alice attempts to sneak into a building at night. She ends up bumping into furniture, knocking things to the ground in the process, walking into walls in the dark and stepping on squeaky floorboards.
  • Exaggerated: Alice blows the door open with explosives, sways down the hallway while wearing a pair of accordions as shoes, curses loudly when she crashes into things (in a house where everything is made of loudly-shattering glass) and generally causes havoc, all while stepping on squeaky floorboards. She's still trying to be stealthy.
  • Downplayed: Alice is mostly quiet and knows not to yell when she accidentally stubs her toe, but she does step on a few squeaky floorboards and open a few creaky doors.
  • Justified:
    • Alice is a young child, and as such doesn't really get the concept of stealth.
    • Alice thought that nobody would be present, and as such didn't bother to be sneaky.
    • Alice's desperately unstealthy attempt is deliberate- she's trying to make people think that she can't sneak to save her life, so it will come as a surprise when she actually does.
    • Alice is under a curse that causes people to not notice her. She doesn't have to be stealthy, because people won't pay attention to her either way.
    • Alice is a Stupid Crook.
  • Inverted: Alice is trying to make herself noticed, but she's so much of a Shrinking Violet that she ends up being more unnoticeable than before.
  • Subverted: Alice at first is really careless of being stealthy, but she eventually wises up and actually makes an effort.
  • Double Subverted: Despite all her efforts, she's still not good at stealth.
  • Parodied:
    • Alice happily tells everyone near her how very stealthy she is.
    • Alice's approach is about the most obvious thing ever. Still, no one notices her.
    • The loud noises don't attract anyone's attention...but Alice whispering quietly does.
  • Zig Zagged: Alice is very unstealthy, so Bob, owner of the building, comes to investigate. He doesn't find Alice, because it turns out she's very good at hiding in one place, but once he goes away, it's back to crashing into things again.
  • Averted: Alice is a big and loud person in her normal life, but can do stealth just fine.
  • Enforced: "We need to get Alice into prison. Having her apply her total lack of stealth skills to breaking into a building would probably do the trick."
  • Lampshaded: "Knocking over the vase. Very stealthy."
  • Invoked: Alice has been wrongly informed that Bob is half-deaf, so Alice thinks she doesn't need to try to be stealthy.
  • Exploited: Charlie uses Alice as a distraction, as her "stealthy" approach would attract everyone's attention to her, and thus away from his actually sneaky approach.
  • Defied: Charlie refuses to let Alice break into any buildings until she's gotten herself some stealth lessons.
  • Discussed: "Alice, I think it would be best if you would lay off the breaking and entering for a while. You're just too conspicuous to be good at it."
  • Conversed: "Is there a definition of 'stealth' in Alice's dictionary?"
  • Implied: Alice and Charlie sneak into a building and split up. The camera follows Charlie. One scene later, a series of offscreen crashes occur. Charlie winces at the first one and rolls his eyes at the rest.
  • Deconstructed: Bob, the owner of the building, notices that Alice is there and calls the police, who easily catch her and add 'destruction of property' to her charges.
  • Played For Laughs: Alice is entirely oblivious to how noticeable she is and thinks she's actually a master of stealth.
  • Played For Drama: Alice's unstealthy ways endanger a very important mission.

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