Basic Trope: A dangerous animal is used as a tool of assassination.
- Straight: Charlotte hides a venomous snake in Dave's hotel room.
- Exaggerated: Charlotte hides a dozen venomous snakes in Dave's hotel room, rental car, luggage, and hat.
- Downplayed: The snake is only meant to hurt Dave, not kill him.
- Justified:
- Snakes are a problem on the island, so Charlotte has good reason to believe that the police will dismiss Dave's death as an accident.
- The snake is anthropomorphic or at least a Talking Animal and actually hires itself out as an assassin.
- Inverted:
- Charlotte hides Dave in a snake pit.
- Dave is "the animal" and needs to take out the snakes.
- Dave has a pet snake as a guardian against assassination.
- Subverted:
- Charlotte tries to hide a venomous snake in Dave's hotel room, but it bites her instead.
- Charlotte hides a venomous snake in Dave's room to distract Dave so that he won't see her coming when she attacks him
- Double Subverted:
- ...but when she drops it and runs to find a doctor, it hides on its own, and later bites Dave anyway.
- ...the snake bites Dave before Charlotte gets the opportunity to attack.
- Parodied:
- Every time Dave steps into his hotel room, he staggers out again shortly afterwards, having been comically savaged by some new spider, scorpion, snake, or jellyfish that was hidden in there.
- The snake is dressed up like a hitman.
- Charlotte sends a tortoise with a switcblade taped to the top of its shell to assassinate Dave.
- Zig Zagged: Charlotte is accidentally bitten trying to hide a snake in Dave's hotel room... and Dave is the only doctor on the island, forcing her to confess to him... needlessly, since he doesn't actually know anything about that particular kind of medicine... causing Charlotte to loose her temper, pick up the snake, and start beating him with it... until a passing herpetologist casually informs them that the snake isn't actually a poisonous variety in the first place... at which point Charlotte and Dave resolve what turns out to have been their lovers' quarrel. (And in a little snippet after the credits, we see Charlotte getting fined for cruelty to animals, the snake having finally escaped to call the cops on them.)
- Averted:
- Charlotte decides to just shoot him.
- Or kills Dave some other way.
- Enforced: The execs insist that Dave can't go around hitting girls, so the writers need to find ways for Charlotte to threaten Dave's life indirectly rather than in a straight-out fight.
- Lampshaded: "And they told me being an assassin would be glamorous... I feel more like a zookeeper!"
- Invoked: Charlotte specifically decides to use a venomous snake after seeing it in a movie.
- Exploited: "Psst. Wanna buy a dangerous animal? I got snakes, scorpions, spiders... the works. Sure, they're expensive... but I don't ask questions, ya get me?"
- Defied:
- Dave has his room thoroughly checked before he goes into it, and makes certain there isn't any way for something to be slipped in while he's asleep.
- Charlotte, having a sudden attack of Pragmatic Villainy, decided it would be much easier to just shoot the bastard, and releases the snake to relative safety.
- Discussed: "What, you think this snake got in here by accident? Haven't you ever seen a James Bond film?"
- Conversed: "Why do movie assassins always use animals? They're so unreliable."
- Deconstructed:
- Charlotte is shown having so much trouble acquiring, looking after, and delivering the snake that she realises what a waste of time it all is.
- By default, a snake has little interest in biting humans with the exception of those disturbing it. When the snake is released, it just huddles next to the radiator and stays there until animal control picks it up.
- Reconstructed:
- But the snake ends up in Dave's hotel room anyway, bites him, and the death is dismissed as an accident. The expenses Charlotte incurred finding and caring for the snake are more than offset by her payment for the job.
- The snake in question has been selectively bred for aggressiveness, magically controlled, or otherwise made abnormalcy complaint to Charlotte's needs. Furthermore, due to the above difficulties in employing this trope, most insvitgators dismiss the death as an accident and miss the telltale signs that the snake is in any way abnormal.
- Played For Laughs: Bob is a Friendto All Living Things, and ends up keeping the snake as a pet... To Charlotte's eternal frustration.
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