Basic Trope: A character takes poison in small doses for a long time and becomes immune to it.
- Straight: Bob decides to inject diluted snake venom in his body to become immune to it. Over time, he develops an immunity and snake poison is now harmless for him.
- Exaggerated:
- Bob injects a little drop of poison in his body. The next day he is immune to all types of snake poisons.
- Bob injects himself with small doses of numerous toxins, immunizing himself to all of them.
- Downplayed: Bob's injections render him highly resistant to poison, but not immune.
- Justified: Bob works with snakes and wants to avoid the post-effects of snake bites.
- Inverted:
- Bob injects poison, but over time his immunity falls down, making him even more weak to poison.
- Bob has been exposed to so many cures and healing potions that he has built up a tolerance to them and thus can't be healed magically.
- Bob injects an extremely concentrated dosage of poison into his body and, after weeks of hospitalization, becomes completely immune to it.
- Subverted: Bob is known for injecting poison and hopes it will help him. Then he is bitten by a snake and is taken to a hospital with a severe poisoning. Looks like that was the type of poison he had not thought about.
- Double Subverted: Later Bob finds a similar snake who bites him, but the bite makes him just feel dizzy, and he gets better much more soon.
- Parodied:
- Bob becomes not only immune to snake poison, but develops snake traits; his tongue becomes long and he starts hissing.
- Instead of gradually taking small doses of poison, Bob decides to drink an entire glass of it all at once to speed up the process. It works, and now Bob is not only immune to poison but finds it quite tasty.
- Bob has acquired the immunity entirely by accident by being bitten by multiple snakes. It is a miracle that he hasn't died from it; he doesn't even know the snakes are venomous.
- Zig Zagged:
- When handling snakes, Bob is bitten by one, and the poison immunity helps him. Then he is bitten by another one and falls ill.
- Whether or not this works depends greatly upon the poison. Some poisons this is a perfectly legitimate thing to do. Others are completely unaffected by this. Degenerative toxins go two ways both bad. Doing this always results in chronic sickness from it and it may or may not even protect from the immediate lethality! One particularly insidious one is an odd reversal. Being exposed fresh to even massive amounts the first time won't be lethal. However subsequent exposures become more deadly in what is heavily implied to be an autoimmune reaction. In short it is vital to know the precise nature of the poison before attempting this.
- Averted: Bob is not injecting anything. Or he is not working with snakes at all.
- Lampshaded: "I will now inject this and then the snakes won't be a threat. I've read a book about this."
- Invoked: Bob the Knight is about to fight a vicious snake lord. Preparing for a fight, he injects snake poison in his body, and at the fight day he is sure that the snake lord will not poison him.
- Exploited: A group of adventurers need to traverse through a snake-infested dungeon, so they hire Bob to help them wipe out the snakes.
- Defied: Bob has to earn for a living by handling snakes. But he does not like this job and does not want to stay with snakes for too long, so he just uses thick leather gloves.
- Discussed: "I've heard snakes can't poison this guy. Maybe he is immune to their poison?"
- Conversed: "A good character for a party. Now we need to find another one with a poisonous spray attack!"
- Implied: Bob the Snakemaster is rumored to be immune to poison.
- Deconstructed: Bob becomes immune to snake poison and he relentlessly walks through the snake-infested dungeon, thinking he will be alright. But the little aggressive snakes leave him with many bite marks, and when he gets out of the dungeon, he is not poisoned, but bleeds heavily.
- Reconstructed: When he is forced to go to this dungeon another time, he puts tanned leather clothes, and the snakes can't bite through them. Later, at the end of the dungeon, Bob fights the snake lord. He bites Bob, but the leather clothes soften the damage and the lethal poison on the fangs does not affect Bob, allowing him to defeat the villain.
Back to the non-lethal version.
