Basic Trope: Hippos are portrayed as aggressive, evil, and/or dangerous.
- Straight: Henry the Hippo is a villain that is very aggressive and dangerous.
- Exaggerated:
- Hippos are an Always Chaotic Evil species in the work.
- Fat Bastard Henry is a Xenophobic Herbivore Jerkass God who likes to fight and torment other animals.
- Henry is so voracious that even the local lions and crocodiles avoid him like the plague.
- Downplayed:
- Henry is a Jerk with a Heart of Gold.
- Henry is a nice character, but Good Is Not Soft, and he can prove to be a force to be reckoned with.
- Justified:
- Henry has some sort of Freudian Excuse that made him who he is now.
- Truth in Television — Henry would be very territorial and intolerant of trespassers.
- Inverted: Huggy, Huggy Hippos
- Subverted:
- Henry is believed to be dangerous but turns out to have been Good All Along and/or a case of Mean Character, Nice Actor.
- Henry is a Pakicetus, an extinct cetacean closely related to hippos.
- Double Subverted:
- But then he undergoes a Face–Heel Turn.
- ...Oh wait, turns out he was just pretending to be good all along. He really is evil. Whoops.
- Parodied: Henry just outright MAULS Jane the Doe who's merely passing by. Why? Because she existed too close to him.
- Zig-Zagged: There are some friendly hippos in the work, and some dangerous ones.
- Averted:
- There aren't any hippos in the work.
- Hippos don't really have any distinct personalities in the work.
- Enforced: To prove that despite their cute appearances, hippos can still be rather dangerous in real life.
- Lampshaded: "But I thought hippos were friendly!"
- Invoked: Henry "Hippo" Smith is a thug who is nicknamed after a hippo because of his imposing size and violent disposition.
- Exploited: Bob is being chased by another human who means to kill him, so Bob tricks the other guy into angering Henry so that Henry will deal with him.
- Defied: Henry is taking anger management therapy to reduce his violent tendencies.
- Discussed: ???
- Conversed: ???
- Deconstructed: A government official in Africa realizes how dangerous hippos can be and orders them to be hunted to extinction, thinking this will keep the people safe.
- Reconstructed: The hippos realize that they're being treated as monsters and become even more aggressive.
- Played for Horror: Henry is the Kaiju of a horror movie where he picks off a group of explorers in Africa.
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