Tropedia

  • Before making a single edit, Tropedia EXPECTS our site policy and manual of style to be followed. Failure to do so may result in deletion of contributions and blocks of users who refuse to learn to do so. Our policies can be reviewed here.
  • All images MUST now have proper attribution, those who neglect to assign at least the "fair use" licensing to an image may have it deleted. All new pages should use the preloadable templates feature on the edit page to add the appropriate basic page markup. Pages that don't do this will be subject to deletion, with or without explanation.
  • All new trope pages will be made with the "Trope Workshop" found on the "Troper Tools" menu and worked on until they have at least three examples. The Trope workshop specific templates can then be removed and it will be regarded as a regular trope page after being moved to the Main namespace. THIS SHOULD BE WORKING NOW, REPORT ANY ISSUES TO Janna2000, SelfCloak or RRabbit42. DON'T MAKE PAGES MANUALLY UNLESS A TEMPLATE IS BROKEN, AND REPORT IT THAT IS THE CASE. PAGES WILL BE DELETED OTHERWISE IF THEY ARE MISSING BASIC MARKUP.

READ MORE

Tropedia
Advertisement
WikEd fancyquotesQuotesBug-silkHeadscratchersIcons-mini-icon extensionPlaying WithUseful NotesMagnifierAnalysisPhoto linkImage LinksHaiku-wide-iconHaikuLaconic

Basic Trope: Upon hearing something shocking, a person messily spits out what they were drinking.

  • Straight: Upon hearing that his father was a feared demonic prince, a character spews out the coffee he was drinking.
  • Exaggerated: Upon hearing his father has a gray hair, a character sprays out his drink. Alternately, the character spews drink out of his mouth, his nose, and his eyes.
    • A character, upon being shocked, starts spitting his drink. Even though he wasn't drinking anything.
    • Alternately, the character does a spit take involving more of the liquid than has actually been imbibed.
  • Justified: Truth in Television, and a staple of physical comedy.
  • Inverted: Upon hearing his father was a feared demonic prince, a character nearly chokes to death on his coffee.
    • A character, upon hearing something shocking, takes a deep swig of whatever he was drinking.
  • Subverted: A character is drinking coffee when someone tells him something extraordinary. He starts to react, then calmly continues drinking.
  • Double Subverted: ...until the last fact is mention, which either makes the whole thing much more important, or would seem like the least shocking part of it.
  • Parodied: The character's spit take hits everyone in the room, staining their very nice clothes. Alternately, the character takes a drink just for this purpose, after hearing the news.
  • Deconstructed: The character's indiscretion earns him a Death Glare from everyone who was in the line of fire, and the conversation is derailed for a few minutes as he cleans up after himself.
  • Reconstructed: ???
  • Zig Zagged: Something shocking is said to an entire group of characters drinking. Some react with a spit-take, some take a sharp swallow, some do neither.
  • Averted: A character receiving shocking news while taking a drink does not spit any of it out.
  • Enforced: "So I told our actor about his bonus, and he did an honest to God spit take! It was hilarious! I say we work it in."
  • Lampshaded: "I should have waited until you swallowed that drink... this was a new coat."
  • Invoked: "Wait, wait, let him get a sip of that before you tell him... it'll be hilarious!"
  • Defied: "I need to tell you something that might upset you..." "Wait, let me put this cup down."
  • Discussed: "Yeah, I'd say that's the sort of news might cause someone's drink to go flying out their mouths."
  • Conversed: "Funny as it is, I don't think I've ever really seen anyone do a spit take in the real world."

(spits out drink) You want to go back to Spit Take!?

Advertisement