Situational Trip-Up

''Are you okay... little chair? Is that fatass suffocating you?''

When the current scene gets the audience to expect one outcome just to pull the rug from under them. With the audience's expectations acknowledged, this gag does a reversal on itself to evoke a laugh from them. Since this gag is a little overplayed, it might not work. An example of a Situational Trip-Up is if Guy punches a wall in rage, breaking the shelf a trophy was placed on, then that trophy drops on his head. Guy gets knocked out and falls to the floor with the trophy. Moments later, Hugo runs into the room to check on what caused the large noise. Hugo shouts in fear and hurries over to Guy and the trophy. He gets down to the floor and checks on... the trophy that he won in a 2nd grade spelling bee instead of Guy, the one who just got concussed by the trophy. Situational Trip-Up, being a gag, is a tired and even hated method of comedy. Like many other low-tier UnTrashes, there is some potential for it to be used for more than rolling the audience's eyes. Good comedy relies on the unexpected to function and keep everyone guessing. Though what earned Situational Trip-Up is how writers don't care for taking it to greater levels than a gag. It can be a full-blown joke, but this possibility is overlooked in favor of more accessible humor that doesn't amuse.

A related UnTrash nested under Situational Trip-Up is Emotion Trip-Up. In it, a person speaks in a tone that implies that they're upset with somebody else only to show that they really aren't.