The Red Stapler/Playing With

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


Basic Trope: A fictional character's tastes drive real-life demand for a product.

  • Straight: Alice, a character on Generic Trendwhores, wears a specific T-shirt week in and week out. This causes demand for the T-shirt to skyrocket at stores that carry it.
  • Exaggerated: Every item Alice wears, drinks, or uses is met with a giant bump in demand.
  • Justified: Alice is the most popular character and is seen as a fashion maven.
  • Inverted: Bob, The Scrappy, wears a specific T-shirt, which causes a huge jump...in returns to the various stores.
  • Subverted: The item they specifically created to utilize this jump in demand is met with lukewarm response...
  • Double Subverted: ...at first. It eventually catches on.
  • Parodied: Alice spends five minutes naming not only the clothing store where she got her T-shirt, but every clothing store that might carry it.
  • Deconstructed: The demand lasts for all of a few weeks. People soon get sick of seeing the same shirt everywhere and voice their displeasure in their viewing options.
  • Reconstructed: The producers are Genre Savvy and make sure there's another fad for the viewers to latch on to.
  • Zig Zagged: The item takes a while to catch on. Even then, sales aren't what they hoped. Then it really catches fire.
  • Averted: The demand was separate and apart from the TV show.
  • Enforced: "Our sponsors need to sell more T-shirts! Stick one of 'em on Alice, she's popular!"
  • Lampshaded: "Such a nice T-shirt! Where did you get it?" "Well, I'll tell you...right after this commercial break!"
  • Invoked: The producers give Alice a distinct T-shirt to wear, hoping for this effect.
  • Defied: The shirt doesn't become popular for whatever reason.
  • Discussed: "Haven't I seen that shirt somewhere before?"
  • Conversed: "Ugh, I remember how cool I thought that shirt was! What was I thinking?"

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