Basic Trope: Voodoo is portrayed as a (rather malicious) sort of magic one can work on another person, rather than an actual religion.
- Straight: Bob left Alice for Carol, and Alice is (understandably) upset. She fashions a little doll that represents Bob, and sticks pins into it, causing Bob lots of pain.
- Exaggerated:
- Alice destroys the doll in a Breakup Bonfire, causing Bob to spontaneously combust.
- Alice creates Voodoo Dolls of everyone she knows.
- Downplayed: Alice tells Bob that she hopes Ezili Freda makes him go broke, and he has a subplot about money troubles that is never explored fully.
- Justified: Magic of any kind must be channeled through some sort of showy trappings, and Alice goes with Hollywood Voodoo because she saw it in a movie.
- Inverted:
- Alice goes to a regular church to pray for Bob's soul, and to ask God to forgive him for cheating on her... and forgive Carol as well.
- Alice practices actual Voudon. She does not poke pins into a Bob doll.
- Subverted:
- Alice is seen at a voodoo or Santeria shrine.
- Alice doesn't stab the doll with the intent of casting a spell on Bob, just as a way to vent her anger towards him.
- Nothing happens to Bob
- Double Subverted:
- Her faith is seen as a Religion of Evil by other characters, or even portrayed as such.
- Bob still suffers a bout of pain, or bad luck, or both.
- But Carol suffers badly.
- Alice utters some kind of Prayer of Malice concerning Bob and/or Carol.
- Parodied: Alice buys a "Voodoo starter kit" that comes with a doll, pins, and idols of the Lwa, including "Owah: The God of Painful Needles" and "Urgha: The God of Raising Zombies"
- Zig Zagged: Alice has cursed people before, but only the people who earned it: she's not about to hex someone who cut her off on the road or accidentally spilled coffee on her shoes, she's not petty. But then she lets slip that she did use a voodoo doll to make someone who pranked her a few years back look like he peed his pants, but come on, that's harmless.
- Averted: Alice does not practice Voodoo. She may not have heard of it. Heck, she might not practice any religion at all.
- Enforced: A Religious Horror where the voodoo is the point of the plot, but the writer didn't do enough research.
- Lampshaded: ???
- Invoked: Alice is feeling hurt and angry at Bob's infidelity... and the fact that he gave her chlamydia to boot.
- Exploited:
- Voodoo dolls are sold (or virtual ones exist online) that allow people to do various things to the doll (good and bad).
- Bob makes a voodoo doll of himself, and whenever he wants to reach high places, he can just throw said voodoo doll up so he gets flung up alongside it.
- Defied: Alice finds another way to deal with her anger, such as taking kickboxing classes, or ripping up an old phone book page by page.
- Discussed: ???
- Conversed: ???
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