Basic Trope: Something which causes something bad to happen to anybody who sees or hears it.
- Straight:
- Whenever Alice, a Creepy Doll, sings, whoever hears it goes unconscious.
- If Alice speaks for a decent length of time, eventually people hearing it will feel physical pain.
- Exaggerated:
- If anyone hears Alice sing one note, even from a distance, they will contract every disease in the world.
- If Alice so much as says a single word, everyone in earshot outright dies.
- Downplayed: Hearing Alice sing from up close makes some people a little bit dizzy.
- Justified:
- Alice was created by a witch, who designed her with a spell that was meant to render people unconscious for whatever reason.
- Alice is a Paradox Person whose existence is inherently contradictory to the setting, and it manifests via her speech causing harm.
- Inverted:
- Alice's song is able to wake unconscious people up.
- Alice immediately calms people down whenever she speaks.
- Subverted:
- Bob is found unconscious, holding Alice. Carol and Dave, who is deaf, do a test where Carol lets Alice sing to her and Dave checks if she goes unconscious. She doesn't.
- Alice's "song" was actually a distorted ancient alarm for chemical weaponry. People start hemorrhaging after they hear it because of the chemical weapons leak.
- Double Subverted: Turns out that Carol is just immune, because she's an alien, or has superpowers, or it only works on men, or whatever.
- Parodied:
- Alice's song is just annoying, but the narrative treats it as though it's driving people insane.
- Fan Disservice is portrayed as one of these.
- Zig-Zagged:
- Bob is seen unconscious holding Alice. Carol and Dave do a test and Carol doesn't go unconscious. Only that's because she's actually an alien and it doesn't work on her species. Then, Edward hears Alice and he doesn't go unconscious. But he is a Cyborg, so it's left ambiguous as to whether Alice really is magical, or whether cyborgs are just immune.
- Alice's song sometimes has a bad effect, sometimes a good effect, sometimes a neutral effect, and sometimes no effect.
- Averted: Alice is just a normal singing doll.
- Enforced: "Hmm, we don't have any ideas for something scary... ooh! How about making people go unconscious when they hear Alice sing?"
- Lampshaded: "I've heard of songs that put you to sleep, but that's just ridiculous."
- Invoked: Fiona, a witch, puts a Curse on Alice that will make everyone who hears her sing go unconscious.
- Exploited: Dave uses Alice to make Emperor Evulz, the Big Bad go unconscious.
- Defied:
- Bob knows a bit of magic and puts a spell on Alice, making her unable to be cursed.
- Bob makes everyone immune to Alice's song.
- Discussed: "I had a nightmare where that doll on my shelf started singing and making everyone pass out!"
- Conversed: "Man, that episode was so scary that when I heard that song playing, I checked my pulse."
- Implied: Bob is seen unconscious holding Alice, but the mystery of why he was unconscious is never solved.
- Deconstructed: Alice can't sing or even say anything at risk of making everyone go unconscious, despite her not being truly evil. Her wicked reputation comes from the fact that she can never explain herself.
- Reconstructed: Yet by writting about it she is able to explain her curse and the witch that created her removes the Brown Note effects of her voice.
- Played for Laughs: The only "bad" thing Alice's song does is make people speak with a helium voice.
- Played for Drama: Alice's song made Bob unconscious and that's bad news, because Bob is the only one who knows how to save the day.
- Played for Horror: Hearing Alice sing causes the listener to deform and stretch into various abominations, ending up with them turning into a blob with flesh and hair.
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