Basic Trope: Rubbing one's fingers together as though playing a tiny violin, as a way of saying someone is being too whiny.
- Straight: Alice rants about dropping her ice cream cone as though it was very sad. Bob rubs his fingers together and makes violin noises.
- Exaggerated:
- Downplayed:
- Justified:
- Alice and Bob are Vitriolic Best Buds.
- Alice is a Drama Queen and Bob is a Jerk with a Heart of Gold.
- The implication is that Alice is dramatic enough that she'd want violin music, but the violin is small because it's not really that big of a problem.
- Inverted:
- Subverted:
- Double Subverted:
- Parodied: Bob plays an actual tiny violin.
- Zigzagged:
- Averted: Bob does not make the violin gesture, no matter how dramatic Alice gets.
- Enforced: "Have Bob make the violin gesture to show that Alice's sadness isn't meant to be taken seriously."
- Lampshaded: "Hey, Bob, cut it out with the violin thing!"
- Invoked:
- Exploited:
- Defied: Bob considers making the violin gesture, but decides not to.
- Discussed: "Where did that 'small violin' thing come from, anyway?"
- Conversed: "I first learnt about the World's Smallest Violin from a movie I watched."
- Implied:
- Deconstructed:
- Reconstructed:
- Played for Laughs:
- Played for Drama: Bob does the violin gesture when Alice talks about how her parents died, to cement Bob as evil.
- Played for Horror:
Back to World's Smallest Violin.
