It's Probably Nothing/Playing With
- Basic Trope: Dismissing something as just one's imagination, no big deal, etc.
- Played Straight: Alice and Bob hear a noise one night, and Bob just writes it off as the house settling, and they go back to sleep. In the morning, they find out they've been robbed.
- Exaggerated: Bob gets up to go get a midnight snack, actually sees the burglars, and pays no attention to them.
- Justified: Old houses really are quite noisy sometimes.
- Every other time Bob has gotten up to investigate, it was just the house settling. Why should this time be any different?
- Inverted: Alice and Bob hear a noise. Bob thinks it's a burglar, grabs his gun, and goes to investigate... only to determine that it was just the house settling.
- Subverted: The noise they heard really was just the house settling
- Double Subverted: But then the burglar sneaks in
- Exploited: The burglar makes a lot of noise that could be written off as normal noises (house settling, wind, animal outside, etc.) so that he can get into the house more easily.
- Deconstructed: After hearing the noise, taking no action, and getting robbed, Bob gets mad at himself for not doing anything about it and suffers a Heroic BSOD.
- Reconstructed:
- Zig Zagged: Sometimes Alice and Bob get worked up about things that go bump in the night, other times they don't.
- Parodied: Bob sees a burglar carrying things out of the house and dismisses it as the house settling.
- Lampshaded: It's Probably Nothing. Go back to sleep, honey.
- Averted: Alice and Bob know what noises are normal and what aren't.
- Enforced:
- Invoked:
- Defied: Alice and Bob get out of bed, grab weapons, and head downstairs to investigate.
Wait, was that the main page I just heard? (Beat) ...Nah, couldn't be.