Dancing on a Bus/Playing With

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


Basic Trope: A Crowd Song that takes place on a bus or train, usually in a Bollywood film.

  • Played Straight: Everyone on the bus starts singing and someone gets up to dance.
  • Exaggerated: All the others start dancing and playing musical instruments, too.
  • Inverted: The Crowd Song in question takes place at the bus stop, not actually on the bus.
  • Justified:
  • Subverted: The number begins at the bus stop.
  • Double Subverted: But continues on the bus.
  • Deconstructed:
  • Reconstructed:
  • Parodied:
    • The song in question is "The Wheels on the Bus," "99 Bottles of Beer," or some other such car song.
    • The number takes place on a school bus, sung by elementary school or Junior High aged kids. (Bonus Points if the song is a really sappy Bollywood-like song one wouldn't expect to hear from kids.)
    • On the subway, someone takes a swing around one of the support poles.
    • Even the bus driver gets into it...but who's driving the bus?
    • In a deconstructive parody of the above, the bus driver's involvement causes the bus to crash.
  • Lampshaded: "No Bollywood musical numbers on the bus!"
  • Averted: Everyone sits quietly on the bus.
  • Enforced: We need a musical number in here...
  • Invoked: Someone starts singing in a typical show tune fashion.
  • Defied: The crowd believes that singing is OK, but dancing would be unsafe, so they all stay in their seats.
  • Discussed:
  • Conversed: "Even the bus driver is part of this number...how have they not crashed yet?"

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