Red Herring Twist/Playing With

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


Basic Trope: A part of the plot is given attention, but abruptly dropped and Left Hanging with no resolution.

  • Straight: Debora joined Alice and Bob's rebellion against the wishes of her father, an officer of The Empire. After they defeat the Big Bad and end his rule, no mention is made of what happened to Debora's father.
  • Exaggerated: A great deal is made of her father, Debora, and the conflict inherent. The instant she joins, Debora is flattened into a character whose only purpose is to shoot.
  • Justified: It's All There in the Manual.
  • Inverted: Debora's conflict with her father grows into the main conflict of the series, pushing Alice and Bob Out of Focus.
  • Subverted: On rewatching the series, the viewer realizes that the plot thread was resolved...
  • Double Subverted: ...But it's only if one assumes her father was killed with no fanfare whatsoever during the final battle.
  • Parodied: The entire plot is focused on the conflict between Debora and her father and then the story ends without any resolution at all.
  • Deconstructed: The author decides to not mess around with plot threads brought up in the sequel because fans kept demanding for resolution of the Debora's father plot thread.
  • Reconstructed: The author lied, and so uses it again in the sequel.
  • Zig Zagged: Debora joins Alice and Bob in defiance of The Empire and her father. This isn't mentioned for ages afterward, but is abruptly picked up again when her father is promoted and becomes a major adversary. Eventually, the heroes defeat him and the issue seems to have been resolved by force... but Debora doesn't feel any closure. Then it turns out her father is Not Quite Dead, and it's hinted he's going to come after them again... but that scene's the last the audience ever sees of him, as he's never mentioned again or makes any obvious moves against the party.
  • Averted: Nothing appears in the story that leaves open the question of what happened to whom.
  • Enforced: The executives dislike the shades of gray Debora's subplot is bringing into the series; rather than write her out entirely, the creators compromise and simply drop the thread entirely.
  • Lampshaded: In the DVD commentary, the writers note that they never resolved the issue of what happened to Debora's father.
  • Invoked: ???
  • Defied: "Yes, we all know you want to know what happened to Debora's father. He was shot just after the last time we saw him."
  • Discussed: "Don't you hate it when they build up something like it's gonna be important and then they just abandon it?"
  • Conversed: ???
  • Plotted A Good Waste: The writers never intended to resolve the thread in the first place; Debora's father and his My Country, Right or Wrong philosophy existed to introduce the idea that not everyone in The Empire was evil and foreshadow other plot elements, such as Bob having a Heroic BSOD after being forced to hurt innocent citizens of the empire while defeating a Villain with Good Publicity. The exact question of what happened to Debora and her father after The Empire's defeat was Left Hanging so the audience would think about the ramifications of the heroes' actions.
  • Played For Laughs: "You know if Debora's father showed up here it might be an interesting plot twist -- huh, looks like we won't get it."
  • Played For Drama: ???

Back to Red Herring Twist.

Retrieved from "https://allthetropes.org/wiki/Red_Herring_Twist/Playing_With?oldid=965265"