Duct Tape for Everything/Playing With

Basic Trope: Objects are conspicuously held together with duct tape.

• Played Straight: Bob seals a leak around a pipe with duct tape.
• Exaggerated:
  • Most of the items in Bob's house are held together with duct tape.
  • Bob's SPACESHIP is held together with duct tape. And it works.
• Downplayed: Bob seals a cardboard box with duct tape.
• Inverted: Bob patches a strip of duct tape with a pipe.
• Justified: Bob is lazy.
  • Bob doesn't have much handyman's skill and the only tool he really has is duct tape.
  • The situation needs a temporary quick-fix, as there's no time to do an actual repair--or else, the materials for a more permanent fix aren't readily available.
  • Duct tape is very useful, and if it isn't involved with water then duct tape can be a VERY good fix for cracks or broken parts. It may just be better to work over the item with duct tape than to try something else.
• Subverted:
  • Bob notices the leaky pipe and considers using duct tape... but then sets out to fix it properly.
  • Bob considers using duct tape... but ends up calling the plumber, who comes over right away.
  • Bob tries to use duct tape, but it doesn't hold together.
• Double Subverted: Tomorrow. Today, he's much too busy, so he takes 5 seconds and wraps a length of duct tape over it.
  • And then uses duct tape to fix the pipe and charges Bob an arm and a leg.
• Deconstructed: Duct tape is meant to be a temporary solution.
• Reconstructed: But somehow, it holds together for hours, days, weeks, months, years, and Bob has more time to do things he wants to do.
• Parodied:
  • The house, Bob's clothes, in fact pretty much everything in town is held together with (or outright made of) duct tape.
  • Duct tape is actually Bob's superpower!
• Lampshaded: "If it ain't broke, don't fix it. If it is broke, just put some duct tape on it!"
• Averted: Bob calls the plumber, or fixes the leak using something other than duct tape.
• Enforced: Rule of Funny
• Invoked: Alice asks Bob to fix the leaky pipe, but Bob just wants to watch the game on TV. So he wraps tape around the pipe and calls it good.
• Defied: Bob feels that this job is a little too big of a fix for duct tape and either does actual repairs or calls the plumber.
• Discussed: "Duct tape fixes everything!"
• Conversed: "The duct tape gag? Writers must like that one."
• Played For Laughs:
  • It's part of a Doom It Yourself project of some sort.
  • Bob calls the plumber, who fixes the leak with duct tape and charges Bob an arm and a leg for the "repair."

"Three hundred dollars?! For a tape job?! I coulda done that myself practically for free!"

• Played For Drama: A hostage is duct taped to a chair.

---

Back to Duct Tape for Everything