TV trope name for monologue to unexpected off-camera recipient?
TV trope name for monologue to unexpected off-camera recipient?
Theres a definite technique where the cameraman is focusing solely on character A who is speaking to character B, and character B is not within view for the TV viewer. Then, when it is revealed who person B is, it is completely surprising and often to comedic effect.

It is close to the Trick Dialogue, with a bit of Subverted Trope, not a Fourth Wall Psych.

Trick Dialogue:


A subversion of the most fundamental aspect of Dialogue: whether a character is talking to someone else or not.
Commonly, a character will appear to be making a brave confession, and then be revealed to have just been practicing before a mirror. Or, he will seem to be explaining his life to someone, and then be shown to be talking to a gravestone.
Alternatively, a character will clearly be talking to himself, but we find out that someone just happened to overhear. (Bonus points if it was the intended recipient of a difficult request.) This can follow on the first kind for a Double Subversion of dialogue.
Visual media typically use a Reveal Shot, often a Close-Up on Head, to execute Trick Dialogue. Compare Fourth Wall Psych (where the character appears to be speaking to the audience but is actually talking to another person). See also Not So Dire.


Subverted Trope:


Basically, this is playing bait and switchnote  with a trope. A work makes you think a trope is going to happen, but it doesn't.
But how could people know a trope is going to happen? Well, tropes live in the minds of the audience. As such, sufficiently Trope Savvy audience members can predict a familiar trope coming based on the hints dropped by the writer. So when the writer decides to build on this expectation, only to reveal that the expected &quot;trope&quot; was a Red Herring while an entirely different situation results, you have a Subverted Trope.