Basic Trope: A character's crippling phobia.
- Straight: Alice is terrified of heights, and cannot go up tall mountains or fly in a plane without getting queasy.
- Exaggerated:
- Alice screams for her mother whenever she looks downstairs from her bedroom because the height is too much for her.
- Alice faints every time she sees a picture that was taken from the top of a building that shows the landscape below.
- Downplayed: Alice is afraid of heights, but it's not too great to prevent her from doing things such as indoor climbing
or other small height-related activities. - Justified:
- Alice nearly died falling off a cliff when she was very young, and had to be taken to the hospital. That experience prevents her from finding joy in being high up somewhere.
- Alice lost a friend or relative to a height-related accident, and now she's paranoid that the same thing will happen to her.
- Alice lives in a place where people are known for falling down huge canyons, and dying as a result, and the frequency increases her paranoia that the same thing will happen to her.
- Inverted: Alice finds immense comfort being in high places, and feels rather underwhelmed while being on ground level.
- Subverted: Alice looks concerned whenever she's in a helicopter, but when Bob asks her if she's okay, she responds by saying that she's perfectly fine.
- Double Subverted: Alice is just saying that to comfort herself. She's terrified as all can be.
- Parodied: Alice faints dramatically when she has to go down a little bit.
- Zig Zagged: Alice appears to be afraid of the height that the small glass elevator she's in is going, but tells Bob that she's fine. But wait, now the elevator's gotten stuck, and Alice is terrified that the elevator will crash and kill them both. However, the elevator starts moving again, and Alice says that she's fine. Then they get to the top of the building, and Alice faints from the sheer height that the building is at.
- Averted: Alice isn't exceptionally scared of heights.
- Enforced: "Oh, crap, our protagonist's becoming too powerful! Uhhh, crippling fear, that'll slow 'em down!"
- Lampshaded:
- "Oh god, we're going up...please tell me we won't fall..."
- "Ever since I lost my uncle in a plane crash, I've never been able to be go higher than 3 feet off the ground in my life".
- "Please, Bob...I can't do this. We're too high up...we're gonna crash..."
- Invoked: Alice was born in a bio-engineering laboratory, and the scientists there did several height-related experiments on her that scarred her for life.
- Exploited: The villains place Alice in a high place to incapacitate her.
- Defied:
- Alice refuses to let fear of heights rule the rest of her life, and ultimately manages to overcome her phobia after lots of work and tears.
- Bob and Carla both take Alice to a therapist, where Alice is treated to let go of her fear of heights.
- Discussed: "It's okay that you're afraid of heights; lots of people have crippling fears."
- Conversed: "I wonder how Alice became so afraid of heights all of a sudden? She's never mentioned it in Season 2 at all."
- Implied:
- Alice gets on a roller coaster looking nervous. Minutes later, she's seen throwing up over a balcony.
- Alice starts stuttering whenever she gets on a plane, or whenever she's looking down.
- Deconstructed: Alice's fear of heights goes to the point where she has a panic attack, and is unable to look to go up any sort of height without a nervous breakdown.
- Played For Laughs:
- Alice's fear of heights is used as a way to get Alice to make a fool out of herself every-time the roller-coaster starts going up, much to the audience's amusement.
- Alice's phobia turns out to be of something that nobody should really find scary, and is used to make Alice look like a fool whenever the chance is available.
- Absurd Phobia
- Played For Drama: Alice has to climb the tallest mountain in the world in order to hit a switch that shuts down The Dragon's powers. Her fear of heights is pushed to the very limit during this time.
Oh god! It's the unabridged version! Why does it have to be the unabridged version!?!?
