Basic Trope: Animals have the ability to sense evil beings, dangerous situations, and/or supernatural phenomena.
- Straight: Rydia has a pitbull, Torch, that growls when Baron Veli comes around.
- Exaggerated: Torch mauls anyone who has a hostile thought about his owner.
- Downplayed:
- Torch refuses to acknowledge and generally snubs Baron Veli.
- Torch is cold and untrustworthy towards everyone but Rydia, but is particularly aggressive with Baron Veli.
- Torch is affectionate with every one of the heroes except the Jerk with a Heart of Gold.
- Torch likes the Affably Evil Noble Demon but turns aggressive when he sees the Complete Monster.
- Justified:
- The dog is a police/military dog trained to recognize suspicious people and guard their handlers against them.
- A dog was a stray and can recognize a person who was cruel to it.
- The aforementioned Torch has the magical ability to see people's intentions.
- Baron Veli has made a Deal with the Devil, and Torch can actually smell the influence of evil on him.
- Torch saw Baron Veli hurt Rydia once, and since then has stood ready to defend its owner from a proven threat.
- Baron Veli gives off subconscious indicators (facial expressions, scents, etc.) that reveal his malice; Torch has the sensory awareness to pick up on them.
- Inverted:
- Torch is both the Team Pet and the Token Evil Teammate (or has a Horrible Judge of Character). He loves evil people.
- Torch can sense the virtue in people and that he knows that Veli is Good All Along, remaing fairly calm and silent around Veli while Rydia thinks he's on the side of evil.
- Big Bad Lyon has a pet hellhound that can sense good.
- Subverted:
- Torch growls at a goblin, but it turns out he's just racist against goblins. Rydia never noticed before, because she'd never met a good goblin.
- Alternatively, Rydia's best friend has joined the Masquerade, and Torch treats him/her the same way.
- Torch is just indifferent to evil people.
- Double Subverted:
- Torch was right; that goblin was evil.
- Rydia's best friend was Good All Along.
- Torch becomes hostile towards the villain.
- Parodied: When Lord and Lady Dark enter a zoo, every single animal there starts making more noise than a heavy metal concert.
- Zig Zagged: Torch doesn't growl at Baron Veli even though his evilness can be detected by devices. Then its revealed Veli just has the scent of evil clung to him. Thus once Baron Veli becomes truly evil Torch growls at him. Yet when the Dark Lord makes an appearance...
- Averted: None of the animals in a work have a predefined reaction to people based on alignment, and individual animals all act differently.
- Enforced: "We need to show evil how Baron Veli is to the viewers. Have Rydia's dog detect his evil."
- Lampshaded: "Why does Buster always seem to spot the bad guys before we do?"
- Invoked: "I'm not so sure about that Baron von Goodguy... somebody go get a dog."
- Exploited: A police K-9 unit uses their dogs to do all the detective work.
- Defied: "Seriously, you don't trust me because your dog barked at me? Excuse me, I'm off to find a hero with a bit of brains."
- Discussed: "If this was a TV show we could find out who the spy for the Dark Lord is by seeing who Rover doesn't like."
- Conversed:"Have you ever noticed that animals are very good at spotting bad guys?"
- Deconstructed:
- Baron Veli fails to ambush Rydia and is defeated relatively quickly before things could go south.
- Animals can detect evil, but since everyone is evil it doesn't matter.
- Alternately, despite being a good judge of character, the Team Pet is a True Neutral who espouses moral relativism and sees things in shades of grey
- Reconstructed: Even though this setting has Black-and-Grey Morality, the animals only respond to the worst of the worst.
I don't like it here, it's making Rover nervous. Let's head back to Evil-Detecting Dog.
