Suspiciously Specific Denial/Playing With
Basic Trope: A character denies a hypothesis so detailed that there is no reason to think of it were it not true.
- Straight: When Alice finds Bob on her computer and asks, "What are you doing?" Bob says, "I'm not changing your desktop!"
- Exaggerated: "I'm not hacking the Nielsen ratings to make curling appear more popular than hockey! I'm just ... uh, updating my resume."
- Downplayed: "I'm not browsing the Internet -- I'm just keeping it from going to sleep!"
- Justified: Bob is a Bad Liar.
- Inverted: "Calm down! I'm just jiggling the mouse so your computer doesn't go to sleep!"
- Subverted: "I'm not ... uh, what did you say I was doing?"
- Double Subverted: "...well, whatever it is you think I'm doing, I'm not doing it!"
- Parodied: ???
- Deconstructed: Bob really wasn't doing what Alice thought he was doing.
- Reconstructed: ???
- Zig Zagged: ???
- Averted: "Just a sec -- I'm not done pranking you yet."
- Enforced: The thing being denied is the central element of an Ignore the Disability gag.
- Lampshaded: Alice replies, "You realize I never said anything about my desktop, right?"
- Invoked: Bob doesn't want to admit to constructing a computer virus, so he states that he is not changing her desktop around...which is actually true, but makes Alice think that's actually what he's trying to hide from her.
- Exploited: Could Say It, But....
- Defied: When Carol hears Alice come in, she interrupts Bob before he can blurt out anything incriminating.
- Discussed: "The secret to hiding something is not to deny its truth, but to pretend to know nothing one way or the other."
- Conversed: "This character's such an idiot. If he were more vague with his denials, he wouldn't end up in the doghouse every single episode!"
I'm not putting a link to Suspiciously Specific Denial on this page -- it's a Rickroll, honest!