Basic Trope: There are cacti everywhere there is a desert.
- Straight: Alice and Bob see cacti in Saudi Arabia.
- Exaggerated:
- Alice and Bob see cacti in a desert on another planet, even though it doesn't have any other life.
- Alice and Bob explore literally every desert on Earth and cacti is shown in each one.
- Downplayed:
- Alice and Bob see cactus-looking plants that aren't cactuses.
- Alice and Bob see a saguaro in southern Nevada, just outside the plant's native range.
- Justified: Someone brought the cacti to Saudi Arabia.
- Inverted:
- Alice and Bob explore the Sonoran Desert, but never see a single cactus.
- Alice and Bob explore an unspecified desert, and see many plants from every habitat on Earth. None of them are cacti.
- Subverted:
- Alice thinks they are cacti, but to her surprise, they're not.
- Alice sees a large cactus in Arabia, but then a gust of wind blows it over, revealing it to be a prop.
- Double Subverted:
- They are cacti, just not the kind with which she's familiar.
- But hidden underneath the prop cactus is a real one of a smaller type.
- Parodied:
- Alice plants a cactus on her yard. Fifteen minutes later, her whole garden has turned into a desert, complete with a miniature pyramid and even a roaming mummy.
- Alice and Bob are both stuck in an Arabian desert, but Bob keeps arguing with Alice that they're not in a desert at all because there are no cacti around to prove it.
- Cacti are the only defining characteristic of deserts so anywhere there are cacti is considered a desert.
- There are cacti in Antarctica, because it is technically a desert.
- Zig Zagged: Cacti are only in deserts that they shouldn’t be in
- Averted: There are cacti only in North America.
- Enforced: California Doubling
- Lampshaded:Alice: Why are there cacti in Saudi Arabia?
- Invoked: Charlie starts a program to introduce cacti into deserts worldwide.
- Exploited: Alice and Bob need to collect cacti and plan a trip to the nearest desert to do so, which happens to be an Arabian one. Charlie warns them that not every desert on Earth has cacti. They disregard the warning and succeed at finding some anyway.
- Defied: Alice burns any cacti she sees outside of their native habitat.
- Discussed:Alice: I wonder if I'll see any cacti here in Arabia.
- Conversed: “Why does Troper Time have cacti in every desert?”
- Implied: When Alice and Bob return home from a trip to the Arabian desert, they're shown covered in cactus thorns.
Back to All Deserts Have Cacti
