Basic Trope: Someone who uses cryonics suffer side effects.
- Straight: When Bob is thawed out, he immediately collapses to the floor and dies.
- Exaggerated:
- When Bob is thawed out, he immediately melts down in a puddle of disgusting goop.
- Literally everyone who uses cryonics inevitably dies when being thawed out.
- Downplayed:
- Bob is thawed out and suffers permanent brain damage but is otherwise still alive.
- Bob is thawed out and suffers side effects which require medical care, but he eventually makes a full recovery.
- After being thawed out, Bob is blind for a while but eventually recovers his sight
- Justified: Cryonics is a highly experimental technology and many kinks remain to be worked out. Body water freezing expands, damaging cellular structures in the process, which means that anyone cryogenically frozen is, for all intents and purposes, dead and cannot be resurrected with current technology.
- Inverted: Anyone who is put in cryonics and later thawed gains Super-Strength, Perfect Health, Super-Intelligence, and permanent minty-fresh breath.
- Subverted: Scientists express great concerns over unthawing Bob and the general consensus is that getting him out of his cryonic pod will kill him. When Bob is eventually unfrozen though, he is absolutely fine.
- Double Subverted: ...until later that day, when he dies and the cause of death turns out to be Cryonics Failure
- Parodied:
- Cryonic scientists use cryo pods as fridges for their food and beer. When they come to get their food back, it turned out disgusting and unedible and the beer is flat.
- The technology behind cryonics is perfectly safe, it's the cryonic technicians who are complete morons and mess things up.
- Zig Zagged: Freezing a patient in a cryo tub is normally very safe, with very few incidents happening, but Bob suffer a heart attack when being thawed, but he survives thanks to immediate medical attention and he goes home, where he suffers liver failure and die from it, with the coroner establishing a direct link between his liver problem and the cryogenic suspension, but Bob is able to be frozen before his body decomposes, and he is resurrected and treated a few years in the future thanks to medical advances.
- Averted
- Nobody is cryogenically frozen.
- Everyone who is frozen is eventually thawed with no problems, and the possibility of death or other unpleasantness is never brought up.
- Enforced: "Cryonics still have serious issues that aren't being talked about. We need to show the realistic consequences of freezing people and then unfreezing them to educate the public".
- Lampshaded: "What's going on in the cryonics department?! This is the tenth failure they've recorded this month!"
- Invoked: A cryogenic pod is deliberately sabotaged to kill its occupant.
- Exploited: Since cryonics have such a high rate of failure, a man deceives his wife into getting cryogenically frozen, hoping it will kill her without having to get his hands dirty, which lets him collect on the insurance.
- Defied:
- The scientists behind cryonic technology work double-shifts to ensure the technology is as safe as possible.
- Each thawing is done with a well-equipped and well-trained medical team nearby and ready to make sure if something bad happens, it can be dealt with.
- Discussed: "This isn't a cheap sci-fi movie where people die for no reason in cryonics. This is a respectable scientific venture and the proper safety protocols are strictly followed specifically to ensure no-one suffers any serious side-effect".
- Conversed: "You know, for such an advanced civilization, their cryonics technology sure backfires a lot."
- Deconstructed:
- Since thawing is effectively impossible for the foreseeable future, only desperate people with incurable illnesses freeze themselves hoping the future will hold a mean to restore them to full health.
- The non-negligible risk of dying from Cryonics Failure makes people shy away from being frozen, which means the company responsible for cryonics faces financial difficulties.
- After enough people have died from Cryonics Failure, the government steps in and outlaw cryonics.
- Reconstructed:
- The cryonics company is ethical and is very upfront and honest about the risks to any prospective customer looking to get frozen. They must sign the proper paperwork indicating that they understand and accept the risks.
- The incredible potential benefits of cryonics means there is a lot of money and time poured into making it less risky. A method to freeze people and thaw them without risk is soon produced and put into practical use.
- Played for Drama:
- In spite of the risk, desperate (and rich enough) people who suffer from serious illnesses freeze themselves anyway hoping for a better future.
- Bob is frozen to avoid death at the hand of an incurable illness and his family is told there currently is no real way to thaw him that won't kill him. As a result they angst and they're unable to completely have closure.
- Played for Laughs: In spite of the risks, people freeze themselves for incredibly petty reasons, like not having to wait for the release of a game.
