Basic Trope: When something significant occurs, a flock of birds, usually doves, takes flight nearby.
- Straight: A dramatic scene occurs, and suddenly some birds fly by, taking to the skies.
- Exaggerated: A huge swarm of doves takes off during a dramatic moment, blacking out the sky and continuing to the point where you wonder if it'll ever end.
- Downplayed: During a dramatic scene, a single bird flies by.
- Justified:
- A character's shouting during a dramatic scene startles a group of nearby doves, who take flight.
- Alternatively, a character has had his First Kiss, which in the heat of the moment activates his Puberty Superpower of summoning birds.
- Inverted:
- During a dramatic scene, a bunch of doves land on the ground nearby.
- Alternately, the doves take off and actually cause a moment of drama. For example, a little kid is distracted by said doves and falls off a cliff.
- Subverted: During a dramatic scene, there is a shot of a bunch of nearby doves... who stay on the ground the whole time.
- Double Subverted: Something important happens, and we see a shot of a bunch of birds, but they don't take off. Then, we see some different birds, doves this time, fly past.
- Parodied:
- One of the doves drops its, er... Feces on the head of one of the characters and completely ruins the moment.
- The flock of doves completely obscures the scene until it has lost any dramatic interests.
- A strange and somewhat random kind of bird is used (pigeons, flamingos, penguins, etc.)
- Zig Zagged: During a completely uneventful scene, a bunch of birds take off.
- Averted: Something dramatic happens. No doves are seen.
- Enforced:
- The producer insisted that the writers work in his friend's trained birds.
- The director of the movie is John Woo
- Lampshaded: "Why are there always doves nearby when things get emotional?"
- Invoked: A character captures a few doves and releases them at a certain moment, usually a wedding.
- Exploited: The Big Bad chooses, as the location of the climatic battle, a gathering place for a bunch of doves. There are so many, in fact, that the air is filled with flying doves throughout the fight, providing an ideal dramatic backdrop (and hopefully distracting The Hero).
- Defied: A character makes sure to talk quietly in an emotional scene, as not to scare the poor doves over there, and make them fly off.
- Discussed: "Where do these doves keep coming from whenever something important happens? Are they following us?"
- Conversed: "You suppose if doves were extinct in that world nothing dramatic would ever happen?"
- Deconstructed: The tendency of doves to fly past has to do with their being augurs of fate; the characters eventually realize this, and tension is replaced by a gloomy fatalism
- Reconstructed: There are lots of birds around in the setting, and the characters' relationship to nature is part of the story.
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