Basic Trope: Something that turns others into itself or into entities subservient to itself.
- Straight: Bob is bitten by a zombie. He transforms into a zombie, and bites Alice. Alice becomes a zombie, too.
- Exaggerated: Bob is bitten by a zombie. He transforms into a zombie, and then duplicates himself nine times, becoming ten zombies. He bites Alice, Carol, David, Emma, Finn, George, Hilda, Isaac, John, and Kim, and they also transform into ten zombies each.
- Downplayed: Bob is bitten by a zombie. He dies, but the corpse is contagious and may infect others, turning them into zombies.
- Justified: A pathogen would become extinct if it cannot spread from host to host.
- Inverted:
- Undead skeletons spread a virus that only affects undead. Living people are unaffected.
- Bob is a zombie, and is bitten by a human. He transforms into a human, and bites Alice. Alice becomes a human, too.
- Subverted: Bob is bitten by a zombie, but he doesn't transform - he just dies.
- Double Subverted:
- Then a werewolf bites Alice, and she turns.
- It’s later revealed that Bob reanimated. He just took longer to turn.
- Parodied: Bob is bitten by a chicken. He turns into a turkey, and bites Alice. Alice becomes a peahen.
- Zig-Zagged: Bob is bitten by a zombie, but he doesn't turn. Then a werewolf bites Alice, and she becomes a werewolf - but only at night. A zombie bites her in broad daylight, and it turns out that werewolves are susceptible to the transformation. However, because she is now a zombie werewolf, she only eats werewolves, and she remains an ally and friend to Bob... until a werewolf bites Bob.
- Averted:
- There are no transformations.
- A human-sized amoeba kills Bob. The amoeba eats Bob, and converts his mass into more amoeba. The amoeba splits into two organisms that are completely unrelated to Bob whatsoever.
- Enforced:
- Lampshaded:
- Invoked: The resident Mad Scientist creates an organism that infects humans, and spreads through the bloodstream - inflicting a wound, for example a bite, was the natural course of action for the virus to take, so that it can enter the target's bloodstream.
- Exploited:
- Defied:
- Resist the Beast
- Upon infection, Bob dons a gas mask so that he can't bite anyone when he turns.
- Discussed: ???
- Conversed: ???
- Played For Laughs:
- Bob gets bitten by a zombie. He was immune to the zombie virus, but not to herpes.
- Bob gets bitten by a werewolf. The werewolf he got bitten by immediately tries to recruit him into a werewolf religion/cult while Bob is trying to survive a Painful Transformation.
- Bob is so lazy that he doesn't notice that he became a vampire after that bar fight, as he didn't go out in the sun much anyways.
- Played For Drama: Bob, as a zombie, is a Tragic Monster with a dose of And I Must Scream.
- Deconstructed: Bob gets bitten by a zombie, and while he has impaired cognition and a slight craving for meat for a few days, eventually his immune system successfully fights off the infection and he makes a full recovery.
- Reconstructed: The virus specifically targets the host's immune system as its infection vector so that the main means of fighting it off is compromised from the start.
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