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Trial Balloon Question
- 236 statements
- 42 feature instances
- 32 referencing feature instances
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Alice has been going through some rough times lately. She discovered something about herself — something about her interests, preferences, or even species — that wasn't exactly conventional. It could range from the silly, like being a fan of a bad sports team; to the serious, like being a lesbian; or the fantastic, like being something other than human. This discovery caused Alice a fair amount of personal anguish, but eventually she came to accept it. This trope is about the fact that she's now keeping a huge secret from those around her, and she wants to let it out rather than live a lie. Complicating matters is that mainstream society (or at least her social circle) does not approve of the group to which Alice now belongs. To them, "those people" are acceptable targets for mockery, violence, or worse. So she tests the current by floating out a metaphorical balloon to find out what happens — asking her dear friend Bob a Trial Balloon Question. She asks (hypothetically, of course) if he would still love her if she turned out to be a member of this new group. What she hopes is to hear that The Power of Friendship would overcome this social obstacle — but what she often hears is that he'd be the first in line to cut off her head. The truth about Alice will eventually come out, forcing Bob to decide if he loves her for who rather than what she is. If enough people reject her before and after the revelation, she may switch factions entirely either due to disillusionment or for simple survival. If the answer to Alice's question "Would you still love me?" is "Mostly", expect it to be followed with Have You Tried Not Being a Monster? If the answer is "Of course I'd still love you", Bob's actual reaction when learning the truth could still go either way. He may have an unrealistic picture of his own prejudices. The only safe answer is "Meh", really, as it would mean Bob couldn't care less, and this really wouldn't change anything at all. Due to prejudice this trope can be Truth in Television for some people, notably LGBT folks who field a hypothetical question about another LGBT person to gauge the safety of coming out to someone before doing so. Compare I Have This Friend, Comic Role Play, Rhetorical Question Blunder, Suspiciously Specific Denial. Not to be confused with the Armor-Piercing Question, where the one posing the questions is trying to force a realization in another (hence "armor piercing"). |
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This happens in Megamind, which goes well for the currently disguised Megamind, with Roxanne saying that it's what's on the inside that counts. Of course, when the disguise fails, Roxanne immediately dumps him because inside, Megamind is a Supervillain through and through. | |
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The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air: At the end of "Mistaken Identity", Carlton — refusing to believe that the cops that arrested him and Will earlier were targeting them for being black — asks his father a hypothetical question and gets an Armor-Piercing Response in return. | |
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Inverted in But I'm a Cheerleader, where everyone except the main character knows she's a lesbian: It's her friends and family who ask her the question and she doesn't react well. | |
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In That '70s Show, Eric says that he and Donna should keep their engagement a secret. To demonstrate, he asks Donna's father what he'd do if they got engaged. The answer is "I'd kill you", prompting them to keep it a secret for a while. | |
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In an episode of The Simpsons, Maggie runs away from home whilst Marge is on vacation. When Marge calls home, Homer takes the opportunity to put up a test balloon by asking how she would feel if the dog ran away. Marge reacts with horror. Homer finds this discouraging. | |
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In Avenue Q, Rod asks Christmas Eve what he can do to help his "friend" who is struggling with his sexuality, and what might happen if this friend, hypothetically, were to come out. Christmas Eve assures him everything will be just fine. (At least until she finds out said "friend" is a Republican.) | |
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In Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow, Soma asks Mina if she'll still like him if he's Not Himself. Confused, she tells him that no, she wouldn't if he changes too much. Unlike most examples, she immediately realizes that something is amiss for him to suddenly ask that but doesn't figure out what exactly prompted the question in the first place (since Soma tends to run off if she tries). | |
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Eli in Let the Right One In asks Oskar, "Would you still love me if I weren't a girl?" The audience assume Eli means "I'm a vampire", but actually Eli was given an involuntary, non-surgical penectomy. | |
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Calvin and Hobbes: One strip has this exchange between Calvin and his dad: In one Sunday strip, Calvin is sneaking about, preparing to throw a water balloon at Hobbes, only for Hobbes to catch him. Hobbes then asks Calvin a totally hypothetical question, that if he knew today was his last day on Earth, but also knew if he did something different, it might not be his last day on Earth, would he do something different? |
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Johnny Test: In "Johnny Mint Chip", after Dukey gets sucked into an ice cream packaging tube, Johnny proceeds to ask the tour guide what would happen if someone fell in a giant vat of ice cream, to which the guide (completely oblivious to Dukey behind him) cheerfully responds that they would be swirled into ice cream, chopped up into three-gallon rolls, and placed into a super-cold freezer where life would become unsustainable after the three-minute timer for the final freezing process. Johnny makes a mad dash to save his dog after hearing all that. | |
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The Simpsons Movie: When Bart tries to tell the police that he skated nude through town because Homer dared him to: | |
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The Order of the Stick: Elan makes a particularly feckless attempt at this to avoid admitting that he just activated the self-destruct rune, forcing the party to flee and abandon a huge amount of treasure. | |
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Veronica in Fallout: New Vegas tells the player character she had a run-in with the Brotherhood of Steel and asks them to fill her in. There are a variety of possible answers, ranging from (paraphrased) "Don't they shoot lasers from their eyes?" to "I know enough to kill them when I see them." Once she's a companion, she reveals that she's a member of the Brotherhood herself; the player has another variety of reactions correspondingly. | |
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In Superman's Girl Friend, Lois Lane #106, Lois uses a transformation device to become African-American for a day. On the cover/inside, she directly asks Superman if he'd still love her if she wasn't white. Surprisingly progressive for the time, anyway, just for raising the question. | |
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In Genesis of Aquarion, Sirius asks Reika what she would do if it turned out that there was a Shadow Angel in their midst. She thinks he's talking about a mole, so she reacts rather aggressively to the idea. When she finally finds out the truth she decides she doesn't care, but she hesitates a half-second too long to prevent his Face–Heel Turn. | |
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In the Smallville episode "Visitor", when a delusional Freak of the Week claims to be an alien, Clark casually asks Chloe and Lana how they feel about the possibility that it's true. Chloe thinks it would be cool; Lana finds it scary. Unfortunately, it's Lana he's had a crush on forever, not Chloe, the latter of whom later finds out in Season Four and accepts him completely. | |
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In the musical Spring Awakening, Moritz tries to ask his father what would happen, "hypothetically speaking," if he failed his exams. His father immediately sees through it. | |
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At the start of Season 2 of Iron Fist (2017), Davos asks Danny Rand whether he'd give up the Iron Fist if he had the chance, not mentioning that he knows of a way to transfer its power to someone else. Danny says he wouldn't, so Davos feels free to enact his Evil Plan, acting like Danny has refused a Last-Second Chance to avoid violence. | |
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A variation in Power Pack: Julie's mother tells her that she'd still love her "even if you sprouted wings and flew". Well, while Julie never grows wings... | |
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Tales of Symphonia: Played with — Lloyd skips having the question asked by Colette — and in two cases directly tells her that no matter what happens to her or what she becomes, he will never treat her any less. Colette later repays the favour by reminding Lloyd he's still him after he finds out his dad is Kratos. Also played with/subverted a bit with Genis to a degree. In one of the skits, Lloyd is ranting about how much he hates Desians (half-elves), and how much better the world would be without them. Genis, also a half-elf (though posing as a full-blooded elf; half-elves... aren't well-liked in Symphonia's world... it's complicated), asks him if he thinks the world would really be better that way. Then comes The Reveal that Genis and his sister are in fact half-elves aaaand... Lloyd doesn't care, they're still friends and all that jazz. |
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Marinette Dupain-Cheng's Spite Playlist: After Gabrielle's ex-boyfriend gleefully reveals that her family is no longer wealthy, Marinette tries to test the waters with her friends in this fashion in order to gauge whether anyone else sympathizes with her situation. | |
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One version of Peter Pan, which took a lot of liberties with the source material, had Wendy telling stories and acting like a mother to both the lost boys and the pirates. When Peter Pan finds out the pirates have a mother, she nervously asks what he'd do if he found her... | |
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In Swinging Pendulum, Kaien tells Ichigo that he and the Shibas have Ichigo's back, Ichigo asks if they would stand by him if he was declared a traitor. Kaien answers seriously that he would help Ichigo because he believes that Ichigo would have a very good reason for being traitor or was framed. | |
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In Will & Grace, Leo grows bored of living in New York and wants to go back to Doctors Without Borders in Cambodia, but he has to tell Grace first. | |
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In an episode of Transformers: Prime Smokescreen (keeping the fact that he was almost a Prime a secret from the rest of the team) asks Bumblebee if he'd ever like to be a Prime himself. When Bumblebee responds that he'd prefer the rank of warrior, Smokescreen can't help but agree. | |
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The Jungle Book (1967): After Bagheera convinces Baloo to take Mowgli to his own kind in the man-village, Baloo struggles to find a way to get Mowgli to see it the same way, including asking the same hypothetical question that Bagheera asked him. | |
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In an issue of Ultimate Spider-Man, in a crowd scene with various different conversations running in the background, one is of a couple asking each other a series of "Would you still love me if I was..." questions, one of them being a reference to Spider-Man enemy Scorpion. | |
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Secret Vampire: After James tells her she can get rid of her cancer by becoming a vampire but would have to fake her death and never contact her loved ones again, Poppy asks her mother what she would do if, 'hypothetically', she could travel far away to be cured but would never be allowed to return. Her mother says that while she'd miss her terribly, she'd let Poppy go wherever she needed to be saved "but there isn't such a place". Hearing this helps Poppy to make up her mind to accept James' offer. | |
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In The West Wing, when President Bartlet considers announcing that he has multiple sclerosis, the staff decides that it would be a good idea to have Joey Lucas do a poll asking voters how they would react if a governor announced a comparable illness. They're briefly concerned that it might look like they're announcing the illness because of the poll, but C.J. points out that this would be ludicrous; the lies that Bartlet has told (mostly by omission) would eclipse any other political fallout. Joey Lucas does the poll, and the results are not encouraging, but they go ahead with the announcement anyway. | |
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"Fairest of All": Everyone needs to know their heart's desire in order to get through the portal to a different realm. Brogan asks Siofra what her desire was, and she answers "Freedom." This disappoints Brogan, whose answer would have been "You," and was hoping Siofra felt the same way about them. | |
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In Little Shop of Horrors, Seymour was only keeping Audrey II (the plant) alive because he thought that if it died Audrey (the girl) wouldn't love him. He asked her if she would still love him, and she said that she definitely would. This is presumed to be an honest response but it is never confirmed because she dies. | |
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In A Safe Place (1971), Mitch asks Noah how she'd feel if he murdered his other girl, Rita. When Noah asks him if he actually murdered her, he replies that he did. Neither Mitch nor Noah seems terribly upset about it. | |
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Not the intended use (Zantetsuken Reverse): Done in a roundabout way in A Game of Cat and Cat. Soma Cruz is Dracula's reincarnation, and when discussing reincarnation with Kazuya, he asks if Kazuya considers Aoi's reincarnation to be the same person as her. Kazuya answers in the affirmative, which Soma takes as confirmation that he shouldn't tell Kazuya about his past life. | |
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Im Giving You A Nightcall: On two seperate occasions, Roy is asked what he would do if Edward turned out to be the Vigilante Man Fullmetal. Both times, Roy misses the point, outright refusing to consider the possibility and stating that there's simply no chance he could be... and if he was, then obviously he'd arrest him. | |
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Friday: The story features a plot twist like this when the eponymous character asks another member of her line marriage if she would still be accepted if she were an Artificial Person. The revelation ends up breaking the family apart. Later on, Friday puts the same question to a man she's planning to have casual sex with, only for him to do a runner — it turns out that he's also an Artificial Person, and he assumes from the question that Friday would be prejudiced against him. |
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In The Stainless Steel Rat for President, Jim diGriz asks a member of the local gentry who is helping him overthrow the local Banana Republic regime how he would react if diGriz advocated redistributing estates to the peasants. He responds, "I would shoot you on the spot." Jim disclaims having any such intentions, while thinking to himself that it will ultimately happen, but at a pace that the local culture can handle. | |
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Battlestar Galactica (2003): In Season 4, Anders says he'd still love Kara if she were a Cylon, and she replies that if he were a Cylon she'd put a bullet between his eyes. Little does she know that he is a Cylon, and that wasn't exactly what he wanted to hear. It happens in season 1 with the copy of Boomer on Cylon-occupied Caprica (later known as Athena) and Helo, after she decides to run away with him for real. She suggests Cylons can, y'know, love? And maybe they were misguided and indoctrinated into nuking the Colonies? Helo's 'No, they knew perfectly well what they were doing, they're just machines' visibly upsets her before she hides it. In both of these cases, after they actually learn the truth, Starbuck and Helo decide they love them more and accept their partners for what they are. Kara violently defends Anders and Helo bandages up Athena after shooting her. In the latter case, her being pregnant by him helped turn him around. |
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Dragonball Z Abridged: When Krillin is tasked with explaining the opening incident to Chichi, he nervously asks how she'd respond if someone told her that her husband was killed and her toddler son was kidnapped by his greatest enemy. Her answer ("I'd castrate the messenger with a rusty carving knife!") isn't encouraging. | |
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Done a couple of times in The Falcon and the Winter Soldier: In Episode 3, Sam immediately shoots down the idea of breaking Baron Zemo out of prison so that he can help them track down the Flag-Smashers. Bucky, unfazed, proceeds to lay out a "hypothetical" plan that would allow Zemo to escape. His explanation is intercut with a series of flashbacks of the plan being put into action, and just as Sam realizes that it's too well-thought-out for a hypothetical, Zemo walks in. The following episode, John Walker asks Lemar whether he would take the Super-Soldier serum if it were offered to him, and whether he would be scared about the serum "changing" him. Lemar enthusiastically states that he would take it, and that the serum only makes a person "more of themselves". Unbeknownst to Lemar, Walker has the last remaining vial of serum, and Lemar's words convince him to take it. |
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From Calvin & Hobbes: The Series: | |
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Early on in the anime Esper Mami, Mami has developed Psychic Powers, and her teacher catches her daydreaming about being a superhero. He quickly warns Mami's parents that she's letting her imagination run away with her, and they'd better stifle it for her own good. So when Mami starts querying her parents about their thoughts on special abilities, they mention that in the old days, people with such powers were known as "witches", and if they existed today, well, we'd just have to Burn the Witch!, wouldn't we? Mami decides not to tell her parents. | |
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In the season 1 finale of Breaking Bad, Skyler discovers that her sister has been shoplifting. Her husband Walt (who just robbed a chemical depository in order to make meth, while claiming he was away at a Navajo sweat lodge) asks her what she would do if it was him. She says she hopes she never has to find out. | |
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