Basic Trope: Genetic engineering used as the in-story justification to any kind of weirdness going on in the setting.
- Straight: Bio-Labs creates and accidentally releases a deadly genetically engineered bacterium/virus/parasite/animal that kills millions.
- Exaggerated: A corrupt government pays Bio-Labs millions to release a GM bioweapon "accidentally."
- Downplayed: Bio-Labs creates and accidentally releases a mildly annoying genetically modified disease.
- Justified: The strain was completely innocuous at first. Natural selection caused it to mutate into a deadly plague.
- Inverted: Bio-Labs creates a drought and pest-resistant wheat strain, ending a famine and saving millions from starvation.
- Genetic engineering is used to remove previously introduced abnormal elements.
- Subverted:
- While it seems to be dangerous at first, the new GM bacteria is actually harmless, and the media and/or environmental groups exaggerated the affair.
- Despite Bio-Labs working on all sorts of pathogens the supposed "bioweapon" turns out to have naturally evolved.
- Double Subverted: It's actually really dangerous, and Bio-Labs has been bribing or killing people who know.
- Parodied: Bio-Labs creates a GM bacterium that doesn't do much of anything. Everybody acts like it's a hundred times worse than a nuke.
- Zig-Zagged: Bio-Labs plans to create an innocuous genetically engineered organism, but it goes horribly right (or wrong, as the case may be) in the real world. All their attempts to stop it using preexisting technology fail. In desperation, they create a genetically engineered Super-Persistent Predator for the original threat. It works, but now they must deal with that organism's effects on other organisms and the ecosystem.
- Averted:
- Bio-Labs cannot properly modify anything with genetic engineering.
- Genetic engineering is banned.
- Bio-Labs refuses to get involved in genetic engineering, and sticks strictly to regular medicine.
- Enforced: "How can we create a backstory for the Crapsack World our hero lives in?"
- Lampshaded: ???
- Invoked: ???
- Exploited: A terrorist group blackmails Bio-Labs to create the perfect bioweapon.
- Defied: Bio-Labs realizes its projects are too dangerous and shuts them down before any harm is done.
- Discussed: ???
- Conversed: ???
- Played for Laughs: A deadly GM bacterium is released because some bumbler at Bio-Labs just HAD to see what that Big Red Button did.
- Played for Drama: Doctor Bob, the bacterium's creator, angsts about what it means for his reputation, life, and livelihood.
- Implied: The circumstances of Bio-Labs' closure are referred to as a Noodle Incident/Cryptic Background Reference.
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