Basic Trope: Characters exchanging bodies.
- Straight: Alice and Bob switch bodies due to odd circumstances.
- Exaggerated: Everyone switches bodies with someone else.
- Downplayed: Alice and Bob only switch one aspect of their personalities.
- Justified:
- There's a body-swapping machine or spell that the characters can use.
- Bob wished upon a star for Alice to understand him, this is the method the star chose.
- Inverted: Personality Swap
- Subverted: Alice and Bob seem to have switched bodies, but it turns out they're only faking it.
- Double Subverted: Alice and Bob really did switch bodies, but they claimed to have faked it to avoid attention.
- Parodied: Alice and Bob are so alike that nobody notices the switch. Both of them are rather miffed that their friends and family couldn't tell any difference.
- Zig Zagged: Alice and Bob undergo a simultaneous "Freaky Friday" Flip and Personality Swap.
- Averted: No one switches bodies (or minds).
- Enforced: The writers think that the characters seeing the other from a new perspective opens new possibilities for them.
- Lampshaded: "Oh, no. We've switched bodies."
- Invoked: Alice pushes Bob into the body-swapping machine against his will.
- Exploited: Alice decides to commit a series of crimes while in Bob's body, knowing that Bob will get arrested for them.
- Defied: Bob destroys the body-swapping machine.
- Discussed: "No, we haven't switched bodies. What on Earth made you think we had?"
- Conversed: "They've switched bodies. I wouldn't want to be one of them."
- Implied: Certain behavioral tics indicate Alice and Bob aren't quite who they're supposed to be.
- Deconstructed:
- The Loss of Identity features are played up, the characters slowly slip into themselves and slowly become each other.
- Alice starts to enjoy being in Bob’s body, and has a gender identity crisis when they return to normal.
- Alternatively, the longer Alice and Bob stay in each others bodies, they both start to experience gender dysphoria.
- Played For Laughs: Everyone ends up confused and aggravated because the body swapping has become so rampant without any control.
- Played For Horror: The body swap occurs while at least one of the parties involved is driving, resulting in a horrific car accident.
Feel free to head back to "Freaky Friday" Flip, but please try not to switch bodies with anyone else along the way! I'd like to return to my own body soon.
