Basic Trope: A character drowns the instant they hit the water.
- Straight: Max drowns as soon as he falls into a lake.
- Exaggerated:
- Max disintegrates when he steps in a puddle.
- Max dies vomiting blood and guts as soon as he has drank one drop of water.
- Max drowns if he so much as looks at water.
- Everyone in the setting dies when they come into contact with a larger body of water.
- Downplayed: Max can swim for a few moments, but only a few. Then he starts to drown.
- Justified:
- Max just never learned how to swim. He panics the moment he gets submerged in water a little too deep.
- Max is wearing extremely dense and heavy equipment, not good for buoyancy at all.
- Alternatively, 'Max himself' is extremely dense and heavy, so he sinks like a rock.
- His entire family has been cursed to suffer horrible drowny deaths. But only if they try swimming in water deeper than waist-level.
- The water is filled with things that really like to eat people.
- The water was polluted.
- Max had some sort of electronic device, getting electrocuted upon swimming.
- The water has some particularly nasty undercurrents which Max gets caught in.
- Inverted:
- Super Not-Drowning Skills
- Max dies as soon as he emerges from water.
- Inverted in a more hellish way: Walk On Water.
- Swimming in water is how Max recovers hit points.
- Subverted: Max falls off a bridge and successfully manages to tread water...
- Double Subverted: ...for about five seconds. Then he succumbs.
- Parodied:
- Max is executed... by splashing a bucket of water in his face.
- Max is a fish who can drown!
- Zig Zagged:
- It's nearly impossible to predict which bodies of water Max can survive in and which he can't.
- Max sinks like a rock because his body is extremely dense, but he's not in any danger of actually drowning since he also doesn't need to breathe. Still, he should avoid depths where the pressure would be extreme enough to literally crush him.
- Averted:
- Max can survive underwater.
- There is a force which prevents Max from entering any deep body of water.
- There is no water which is exposed.
- Enforced: The programmers weren't sure how to implement swimming physics, so they decided to avert the whole thing.
- Lampshaded: "What, he can slay monsters left and right but he can't swim?"
- Invoked: Max dons a suit of heavy armor to give himself an edge in Drownball.
- Exploited: The villain challenges Max to a swimming contest, knowing he won't stand a chance.
- Defied:
- Max moves to the middle of the desert where the water won't bother him.
- Max decides to attend swimming lessons in order to avoid drowning.
- Max makes sure to wear a life-jacket at all times.
- Discussed: "Okay, we have to ford this river. You're not one of those stupid video game characters who can't swim, are you?"
- Conversed: "I'd avoid the river route if I were you. You know how bad these characters are at swimming."
- Implied: Max falls into the lake. He is never seen again.
- Deconstructed:
- Because he knows he can't swim, Max is ridiculously afraid of water and panics if he so much as goes outside in the rain. He ends up locking himself in his house due to his fear.
- Emperor Evulz, being aware Max can't survive underwater at all, puts one of the plot coupons Under the Sea, rendering the task difficult, if not impossible.
- Reconstructed:
- With a little therapy, Max learns to overcome his fears and go out in the world, perhaps even learning to swim.
- Max rents a submarine to collect the plot coupon.
- Played For Laughs: Max screams and flails his arms in terror when he falls in a small stream, even though he's clearly okay.
- Played For Drama: Max and Bob were Childhood Friends, so when Max drowns in the lake, Bob has a Despair Event Horizon.
- Played For Horror: Max screams horrifically as he falls into the lake. When he hits the water, piranhas come over to gruesomely eat him, resulting in lots of gore.
- Plotted A Good Waste: The Aesop is that you shouldn't go into deep water if you can't swim yet.
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