Bait-and-switch
Troy has a habit of clearly setting up a sentence to lead to a statement, only to switch it with another one. For example, most all opportunities to reference the title of a Goosebumps book will be changed to another one.
Original Goosebumps books[edit | edit source]
- The Barking Ghost has this chestnut:
[...] countering a lame prank with a lame reaction is still, you guessed it, what Ashton Kutcher wrote in big letters at the top of his Punk'D Brainstorming Legalpad.
- The Haunted Mask's entry has one immediately after recounting a part where Carly Beth accidentally eats a worm:
For those of you who got really excited by the synopsis of this scene, RL Stine would eventually go on to write an entire book about worm-eating. That's right, I'm of course referring [to] Goosebumps #20: The Scarecrow Walks At Midnight. [Of course, you would expect a reference to Go Eat Worms!, the twenty-first book.]
- Stay Out of the Basement has two of these: the first is when Dr. Brewer first "utters the titular line, Be Careful What You Wish For..."
- The second example occurs when Casey wants to watch a unspecified violent movie said to star Arnold Schwarzenegger, "so it is obviously Junior [a comedy where he gets pregnant]."
- The entry on the final story in More & More & More Tales to Give You Goosebumps ends by proclaiming it "infinitely more exciting than the Michael Bay movie with the similar plot. Of course I'm referring to Bad Boys II." [The entry was posted the same year Bay released the first of his live-action Transformers films, which (like the story) feature robots.]
- From Monster Blood:
Andy rushes off to her piano lesson, apparently unaware that The Werewolf of Fever Swamp. [Werewolf was the series' 14th book; one would expect a reference to Piano Lessons Can Be Murder, the 13th.]
- In the entry for Monster Blood II, as Troy introduces school bully Conan Barber to the reader, he relays the notion that the kids often call him, "you guessed it, Genghis Sean." [The actual answer, as revealed in the very next sentence, is "Conan the Barbarian".]
[More to come!]
