Basic Trope: A cutting edge is established as being to a microscopic extreme.
- Straight: Emperor Evulz describes his Cool Sword as having an edge as thick as one atom, so it can cut through anything.
- Exaggerated: Evulz smugly says to watch out for the sharp string. Bob laughs and makes a sarcastic remark about yarn, but Evulz grins harder and says, "Not that kind of string."
- Downplayed: The blade of Evulz's sword is made of obsidian. (See the Real Life section of the main page)
- Justified:
- The characters are anthropomorphic microbes. A blade of carbon nanotubes (which can be as small as six carbon atoms arranged in a hexagon) used by characters at that scale (averaging 250 micrometers), while still abnormally sharp and a serious threat, is far from implausible.
- The blade is treated with Applied Phlebotinum and/or some kind of magical enchantment that allows it to maintain its otherwise impossibly-thin edge.
- Everyone in the setting wears armor that will stop any other attack. The only way to damage someone wearing such armor is by literally severing the atomic bonds of the armor itself.
- Inverted: Evulz's sword is so MACROscopic that it's meant for cleaving entire planets asunder.
- Subverted: Emperor Evulz describes his sword as having an edge one atom thick, but it turns out he was bluffing and the sword was never that sharp.
- Double Subverted: While Evulz' sword isn't really monomolecular, his dagger is.
- Parodied: ???
- Zig-Zagged: ???
- Averted: Evulz never puts a number on the sharpness of his sword.
- Enforced: ???
- Lampshaded: ???
- Invoked: Evulz programs a laser to sharpen his sword to that level.
- Exploited: Bob tricks Evulz into furiously slashing things with wild abandon, which very quickly dulls the sword to at least mundane levels.
- Defied: When a minion suggests sharpening Evulz' sword to a single atom, he yells about how such a blade would be so fragile that it would break after a single swing.
- Discussed: ???
- Conversed: ???
- Deconstructed: The sword will slice clean through anything... once.
- Reconstructed:
- Knowing he only has one chance to use his sword, Evulz makes it count.
- Evulz keeps a large number of smaller monomolecular blades on him, allowing him to pull out another when one breaks.
Back to Sharpened to a Single Atom.
