Dramatic Shattering/Playing With

Basic Trope: A Sub-Trope of Rule of Drama. Breaking something for dramatic effect, or the breaking of something emphasizes drama.

• Played Straight:
  • Bob drops his wineglass in shock when someone tells him bad news or reveals shocking information.
  • Alice is a burglar, and the story (or the advertisement for a security system) begins with her breaking into a window or glass door.
  • Windows or other glass breaks from an earthquake, tornado, explosion, or other disastrous event.
  • Charlie slams his guitar down onto the stage as he finishes the last solo of the tour final.
  • Someone gets thrown through a window.
  • In a chase, someone's route takes them through through the Sheet of Glass.
• Exaggerated:
  • Bob doesn't only drop his wineglass in shock, he throws it at the wall and screams.
  • Every piece of glass nearby shatters in the disastrous event, even if there is no reason for it to do so (e.g. the disastrous event is a flood or disease outbreak or something else that doesn't exercise explosive force on glass)
  • Alice is a Giftedly Bad opera singer, and creates a Glass-Shattering Sound with her voice.
• Inverted: Bob picks up the pieces of a Fatal Family Photo or the MacGuffin or another meaningful object left in the ruins of the disaster, the drama is about him piecing it back together rather than shattering it.
• Justified:
  • A situation where the glass or objects *would* be believably broken, such as a disaster.
  • Rockers Smash Guitars
  • A break-in or break-out where no one cares about setting off likely alarms on the glass.
  • News so shocking that someone would Drop What You Are Doing.
• Subverted: Bob holds onto his wineglass, his hand shaking around it...
• Double Subverted: ...only to hold it so tightly it is crushed into pieces, cutting his hand as well as shattering.
• Deconstructed: The Dramatic Shattering is a Dull Surprise that no one notices.
• Reconstructed:
  • The reason it is a Dull Surprise is because the event that caused it is so overwhelming no one even cares that glass is breaking.
  • It is played entirely straight for drama.
• Lampshaded: "Oh my god, he's such a drama queen. I bet when she tells him she's leaving he'll drop his glass and cry."
• Parodied:
  • In the chase scene, Report Siht runs from a screaming Angry Mob through Sheet of Glass after Sheet of Glass because Trope Co had nothing better to do than to clog up an entire street with back-to-back sheets of glass. When he finally crashes through the 100th Sheet of Glass and loses his pursuers, he lands in a Fruit Cart.
  • The glass drops on the floor, doesn't break, and talks saying "Why do those people always try to break me? I didn't do anything, I'm just a glass..."
• Averted: Charlie swings his guitar as if he's about to smash it, then grabs it at the last minute, yelling into the mic "you [fill in the blank with expletive], I'm not going to smash a thousand dollar guitar for you!"
• Enforced: In any Disaster Movie or even any action movie, glass exists to be broken. It's a Chekhov's Gun.
• Invoked:
  • Bob picks up the glass before the dramatic moment.
  • There's warnings of a looming disaster and shots of what will become, in moments, Scenery Gorn and possibly, if there's people around, literal Gorn as well.
• Defied:
  • The band doesn't smash their instruments.
  • Alice is about to break in somewhere, and her partner in crime suggests the glass. She reminds her partner that glass break alarms are everywhere and that she knows how to pick locks/has a hacked card key/that they can talk their way in if they don't look like a Blatant Burglar.
• Discussed: "Let's have a lot of glass break in this scene, as it is a very good way to establish serious and dramatic events are taking place."
• Conversed: "Let's have a lot of glass break in this scene, as it is a very good way to establish serious and dramatic events are taking place." "You really believe that? Glass breaking is a cheap way to show drama. I'd rather have the dramatic event be absolutely silent, after all, Nothing Is Scarier." "Maybe we should just have one glass break."
• Played For Laughs:
  • This trope itself, any time that it is not Played Straight:
  • The Blatant Burglar and his fellow Stupid Crooks smash through a building where the entry doors are entirely glass because it looks so easy to break through - only to realize that it's the new police station.
  • Alice's Giftedly Bad opera singing as both Exaggerated Trope and this.
  • Report Siht checks his pockets to find his Hero Insurance card is gone, and Trope Co's insurance subsidiary wants to charge him for the run through the art exhibit "100 Sheets of Glass."
• Played For Drama: This trope itself, any time it is Played Straight.