Amusing Alien/Playing With
Basic Trope: An otherworldly character appears in a work to make people laugh.
- Straight: Bobdoz from the planet Tropetar amuses the audience when he mistakes parking meters for robots.
- Exaggerated: Bobdoz dates parking meters and plans to marry one.
- Justified: Bobdoz's behavior is normal from where he comes from.
- Inverted:
- Bobdoz acts in a perfectly normal way, but everyone laughs anyway.
- Bobodoz is The Spock and Cannot Tell a Joke. He finds our illogical behavior odd and amusing.
- Bobdoz is the Straight Man or The Comically Serious, and is surrounded by perfectly human neighbors who handle the wacky sitcom antics while Bobdoz reacts.
- Subverted:
- Bobdoz acts in a very amusingly weird manner, but everyone acts as if it's ordinary.
- Alternatively, Bobdoz is expertly familiar with human customs and technology, but uses Obfuscating Stupidity so that humans consider him a harmless fool. They are thus unprepared when he launches his Alien Invasion from within.
- Double Subverted:
- ...Except for Alice, that finds his buffoonish antics incredibly irritating, and unintentionally becoming a comedic duo with him.
- ...the invasion is hilarious.
- Zig Zagged: In light-hearted or breather episodes, Bobdoz is The Klutz who doesn't know one end of a toaster from the other and is generally treated as the series comic relief. In a more serious episode however, he no longer has trouble with human technology and becomes serious and competent. Then when the action is over he goes back to being the technologically challenged comic relief again.
- Parodied: Every alien on story happens to have a thing for comedy. Some of them are rather clever and get good amounts of laughs, but others are just Incredibly Lame Pungeon Masters that cause groaning (in-story and on the audience) whenever they show up.
- Deconstructed: Bobdoz's amusingly weird antics attract the attention of the authorities.
- Reconstructed: ...who use his advanced alien technology to spread his amusingly weird antics around the world.
- Averted: Despite their unfamiliarity to Earth's customs, no alien on this story acts in a particularly wacky manner.
- Enforced: "The Bobdoz Show" is created to fill a hole in the network's programming.
- Lampshaded: When Bobdoz first meets Alice, she predicts that he'll entertain her with his odd mannerisms.
- Invoked: It turns out Bobdoz is rather savvy regarding Earth's social norms and culture, but he prefers to act as wacky as possible because, being a former habitant from a planet where almost no one has humor sense, he likes making people laugh.
- Defied: When Bobdoz first meets Alice, she gives him a crash course in Earth cultures and customs.
- Discussed: "Bobdoz has been living with us for months now. Why is he still having trouble telling the radio and the toaster oven apart?"
- Conversed:
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Alice: "You know, I was watching this show where there's this alien called Bobdoz. He's really friendly, but doesn't have a clue how human technology works." |
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