An index of tropes about how characters breathe or respire.
Compare Mouthful of Index and Nose Tropes.
Tropes:
- Aerosol Spray Backfire: A spray or other airborne substance backfires on the user/s.
- Artificial Gill: A special device allowing a character to breathe underwater.
- Batman Can Breathe in Space: Oxygen tanks are optional in space.
- Breathable Liquid: A liquid that characters with lungs can breathe in.
- Breath Weapon: One's breath can damage things.
- Cathartic Exhalation: Taking a breath after something intense happens.
- CPR: Clean, Pretty, Reliable: CPR is an efficient way of reviving a character who's stopped breathing.
- Deep Breath Reveals Tension: Taking a few deep breaths reveals how stressed a seemingly calm character actually is.
- Fire-Breathing Diner: Hot food turns one's breath into fire.
- Hyperventilation Bag: A character breathes into a brown paper bag during a panic attack.
- Inflating Body Gag: Inhaling gas or liquid causes a character's body to swell up.
- Kiss of Life: Reviving someone with CPR also counts as a kiss.
- Knockout Gas: Breathing this in will knock you unconscious.
- Laughing Gas: Breathing this in will cause you to laugh.
- Mobile Fishbowl: A device that allows an aquatic character to breathe outside of water.
- Oxygen Meter: A meter telling how long a character can hold their breath.
- Reed Snorkel: Using a hollow stick to breathe while underwater.
- Sigh of Love: A character sighs to indicate they're in love.
- Stop Drowning and Stand Up: A character believes they're drowning but they can just stand up.
- Super-Breath: A character can breathe strong winds.
- Super Not-Drowning Skills: A character who doesn't have to worry about breathing underwater.
- Vacuum Mouth: Taking a deep breath creates a forceful vacuum.
- Vader Breath: Characters who breathe heavily and ominously.
- Visible Sigh: A deep breath can be seen in anime.
- You Need a Breath Mint: A comment on someone's halitosis.
The following tropes are about conditions that make breathing a lot harder, sometimes to the point of death:
- Almost Out of Oxygen: A character's has a rapidly depleting air supply.
- Breath-Holding Brat: Holding one's breath to annoy other people.
- Choke Holds: Choking another character by holding them a certain way.
- Deadly Gas: Breathing this in will likely kill you.
- Drowning Pit: An enclosed space which slowly fills with water.
- Erotic Asphyxiation: Choking someone in a sexual way.
- Hanging Around: Using a noose or tie around one's neck to cut off someone's air supply, usually to the point of death.
- Hollywood Drowning: Drowning is very dramatic.
- Noose Catch: When a villainous character falls from a great height and somehow gets a rope, vein, cord, etc. wrapped around their neck, killing them.
- Psychic Strangle: Strangling someone with telekinesis.
- Sinister Suffocation: Suffocation is an especially evil type of torture/murder.
- Suicide by Sea: A character drowns oneself in the sea.
- Super Drowning Skills: A character easily drowns in water, no loss of oxygen required.
- Supernatural Suffocation: The ability to make someone else stop breathing.
- Vorpal Pillow: Easily smothering someone with a pillow.
