It's Probably Nothing/Playing With

• Basic Trope: Dismissing something as just one's imagination, no big deal, etc.
• Played Straight: Alice and Bob hear a noise one night, and Bob just writes it off as the house settling, and they go back to sleep. In the morning, they find out they've been robbed.
• Exaggerated: Bob gets up to go get a midnight snack, actually sees the burglars, and pays no attention to them.
• Justified: Old houses really are quite noisy sometimes.
  • Every other time Bob has gotten up to investigate, it was just the house settling. Why should this time be any different?
• Inverted: Alice and Bob hear a noise. Bob thinks it's a burglar, grabs his gun, and goes to investigate... only to determine that it was just the house settling.
• Subverted: The noise they heard really was just the house settling
• Double Subverted: But then the burglar sneaks in
• Exploited: The burglar makes a lot of noise that could be written off as normal noises (house settling, wind, animal outside, etc.) so that he can get into the house more easily.
• Deconstructed: After hearing the noise, taking no action, and getting robbed, Bob gets mad at himself for not doing anything about it and suffers a Heroic BSOD.
• Reconstructed:
• Zig Zagged: Sometimes Alice and Bob get worked up about things that go bump in the night, other times they don't.
• Parodied: Bob sees a burglar carrying things out of the house and dismisses it as the house settling.
• Lampshaded: It's Probably Nothing. Go back to sleep, honey.
• Averted: Alice and Bob know what noises are normal and what aren't.
• Enforced:
• Invoked:
• Defied: Alice and Bob get out of bed, grab weapons, and head downstairs to investigate.

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Wait, was that the main page I just heard? (Beat) ...Nah, couldn't be.