Basic Trope: A character feels a supernatural and irresistible hunger for other humans.
- Straight: After becoming a vampire, Alice gains a thirst for blood.
- Exaggerated: If Alice spends more than an hour without drinking blood, she's instantly plagued with Vein-o-Vision and Warm Bloodbags Are Everywhere.
- Downplayed:
- Though after becoming a vampire, Alice's cravings for food are replaced with those for blood, the hunger is actually less than what she felt before she changed.
- Alice's cravings are satisfied by drinking blood from any mammal, but she's not so uninhibited as to attack a human. Just never leave Alice alone with your cat or dog.
- Justified: As a Technically-Living Vampire, Alice has to drink blood in order to stay nourished, heal any wounds, and use superhuman powers, otherwise she slowly starves and weakens.
- Inverted:
- Alice is plagued with a supernatural Chronic Hero Syndrome, and she has to constantly resist becoming a Martyr Without a Cause.
- Alice is a vorarephile and is letting her twisted fantasies run wild.
- A human somehow needs to eat monsters in order to survive.
- Subverted:
- Alice has a massive lust for blood... because her kink is Hemo Eroticism, not anything supernatural.
- Alice isn't a vampire; that's just a nasty rumor someone started after seeing her Jabba Table Manners. She's merely severely hypoglycemic, eats a lot, and likes her meat barely cooked and bloody. Owing to the rumors going around, expect someone to confuse "steak" for "stake" in conversation.
- Double Subverted:
- ...Which is the lie she tells human groupies to trick them into thinking she's human as well, she really does have a Horror Hunger.
- Though this turns out to merely be a convincing excuse for Alice's true medical problems, which makes her rather vampiric for all intents and purposes.
- Parodied: After becoming a vampire, Alice develops an unquenchable thirst for blood... oranges.
- Zig Zagged:
- Becoming a vampire has made Alice ravenous for blood, except it's actually a hypnotic suggestion by her sire, but once she's deprogrammed it's revealed that her sire put it there to ease Alice's conscience since all vampires do have a Horror Hunger.
- Alice’s dependency on blood is directly proportionate to her physical condition, being a Perpetual-Motion Monster when healthy and uninjured, but after she’s injured past a certain point, the hunger comes back until she drains enough blood to properly recover from her injuries.
- Averted: While vampires can gain sustenance from human blood, there are plenty of Vegetarian Vampires who suffer no physical or psychological ill effects.
- Enforced: It's a Horror story so having Alice suffer implacable hunger for those she loves adds drama.
- Lampshaded:
- "The biggest problem with siring new vampires in the 21st century is finding converts with self-restraint. Otherwise they'll leave a trail of corpses and then wonder where that stake in their heart came from."
- "You have to kill Alice; no matter how nice she was as a human, she's not going to be able to resist her thirst for blood. It may be hard, but she'd thank you herself."
- Invoked: In order to dissuade the Vampire Vannabe from pestering her to become a vampire, Alice invokes this trope and pretends resisting tearing out her throat is like an addict talking to a line of cocaine.
- Exploited:
- Knowing Alice attacks ambulances, Dr. Van Helping steals an ambulance and spikes the blood packs with garlic.
- Alternatively, Dr. Van Helping recruits Lucy (whose Trademark Favorite Food happens to be garlic) as The Bait, knowing that Alice can't stop herself from pouncing on Lucy.
- Defied:
- Alice uses Heroic Willpower to avoid killing or becoming a monster.
- Alternately, Alice buy/invents a cloned blood substitute that makes her thirst easy to manage and helps humanity.
- Discussed: "An 'irresistible thirst for blood?' What do you take me for, an alcoholic? Vampires aren't soccer hooligans, we're wine connoisseurs."
- Conversed: "So if every vampire has this massive thirst for blood, why would an elder vampire ever sire? The younger ones would just be competition."
- Implied: Most vampires are remorseless monsters not because vampirism is The Virus; it's because only by becoming evil can a normal person cope with the insatiable thirst for blood.
- Deconstructed: A drug-like addiction to blood makes vampires so inherently hostile and unable to plan that they quickly burn out. They either commit Suicide by Sunlight, leave an easy trail for a Vampire Hunter to follow, or run out of food. Because of this, vampires went extinct centuries ago when human populations were much smaller.
- Reconstructed:
- The hunger comes with a subtle Transhuman Treachery, making the victim want to drink blood while keeping The Masquerade intact.
- Alternatively, Alice quickly realizes her hunger is basically a drug addiction, so she uses all the existing tools available (self help books, support groups, "substitutes") to mentally strengthen her resistance to the hunger while avoiding killing.
- Played for Laughs:
- Alice is a Friendly Neighborhood Vegetarian Vampire with an impish Enemy Within constantly making snide suggestions about who to eat, and to top it off everywhere she goes people are suffering cuts and bleeding profusely.
- Bob manages to draw Alice out of a crowd by putting a blood bag on a fishhook.
- Played for Drama: Alice tries her best to be a Friendly Neighborhood Vegetarian Vampire, but this is no easy task, so she lives in constant fear of losing all self-control and attacking innocent people or even her own loved ones...
- Played for Horror: ...Eventually, Alice does end up attacking her friends and family in a ravenous fugue; either killing them as a result, or turning them into more bloodthirsty monsters like herself. Needless to say, she's burdened by the guilt of what she did and the self-loathing of what she became.
- Played For Symbolism: Alice's condition causes her literal bloodlust, which makes it look almost identical to sadism. Throw that in with becoming a vampire via injury and how it spreads epidemically as a result, and vampirism becomes disturbingly reminiscent of many real-life examples of The Power of Hate.
We know you can't resist the hunger... go back to Horror Hunger.
