Basic Trope: A Boarding Pod used to assault ground-bound defences from orbit/from the air.
- Straight: The Troperion attacks Emperor Evulz' fortress by hitting it with D.R.O.P-Pods, heavily fortified re-entry vehicles filled with Space Marines
- Exaggerated: the D.R.O.P pod is less a pod and more a small meteor filled with angry soldiers.
- Downplayed:
- The 'drop pod' is basically a jetpack with delusions of grandeur.
- A Drop Ship
- Justified:
- The soldiers need to land right NOW, and slower craft like shuttle will be taken apart by point defences.
- Bob may be a Super-Soldier with Super-Toughness but a drop from orbit is too much even for him.
- Inverted: A Boarding Pod, a small vehicle designed to rapidly enter orbit from the surface, is used in order to board spaceships from a planet.
- Subverted: A strange projectile slams into a building from orbit, and the camera lingers on the door... but it's unoccupied and is just a projectile.
- Double Subverted: Long after the bombardment is over, Bob leaves the drop pod, satisfied that the enemy forces don't know it was occupied.
- Parodied: Super-soldiers use drop pods for everything, even something as mild as visiting the store.
- Zig Zagged:
- D.R.O.P pods are used for a variety of situations besides orbital assaults: The can be used as an Escape Pod, a Boarding Pod, even as a shuttle in dire cases.
- Drop pods are fired at a fortress, but they are empty and are just being used as projectiles. Evulz eventually calls his point-defiance to ignore the bombardment, after which full drop pods are landed to take advantage of Evulz’s reaction.
- Averted: ???
- Enforced: ???
- Lampshaded:Space Marine Bob: "Man, can't they make these things more gentle?"Space Marine Alice: "They're called Drop pods, not 'saunter gently downward' pods!
- Invoked: The Troperion's designers don't expect to need to assault an earthbound fortress from orbit, but include the option to do so in their quest to cover every possible situation.
- Exploited: Evulz baits the D.R.O.P-pods to land, knowing it's a one-way trip and he is now free to board the Troperion without resistance.
- Defied: "We can't design anything that can deorbit that rapidly and remain intact, let alone one that leaves the crew inside it intact! We'll just have to land normally like sensible people."
- Discussed: ???
- Conversed: "As cool are the orbit-to-earth rapid-transit pods are, it does make one wonder why they don't just use the teleporter..."
Get in the pod to Drop Pod!
