Basic Trope: The traits of werewolves vary heavily from work to work.
- Straight: When Alice turns into a werewolf, she gains fire manipulation powers.note
- Exaggerated:
- Becoming a werewolf grants Alice power over fire, the ability to teleport and read minds, stretchable arms, and a knack for picking locks.
- There are multiple werewolves in the story, and they're all very different.
- Downplayed: Unlike traditional werewolves, Alice transforms during the new moon, rather than the full.
- Justified:
- There are actually many different forms of lycanthropy, and the term "werewolf" is just a catch-all for the lot of them.
- Alice is actually a mage, and one of her spells lets her turn into a wolf. The rest of her powers are all other spells she's learned.
- Inverted:
- Alice is a wolf to begin with. Being bitten by a werewolf causes her to change into a human on a full moon.
- Alice transforms into the moon whenever she's in the presence of a wolf.
- Subverted: At first Alice's fire powers seem to have come from her werewolf form, but then she remembers she was a fire mage before she became a lycanthrope.
- Double Subverted: ...But she wasn't a highly skilled fire mage, and couldn't control fire to as high a degree as she's doing now. Seems her new form is powering her up somehow.
- Parodied:
- Alice is bit by a werewolf. She gets rabies and dies - the story is about how God Is Evil.
- Alternatively, instead of turning into a werewolf, she turns into a were-poodle.
- Zig Zagged: Many characters are shown to look like different wolf subspecies when they transform into werewolves. It's revealed though that the differences are just cosmetic similar to how humans have different faces and the curse is the same for all of them. Then it's revealed that while the curse is the same for everyone, the way the curse works differs slightly based on the infected's race. Orcs become T-Rex-like werewolves and Fairies become winged human sized Slender Man-like werewolves for example.
- Averted:
- All werewolves are the same.
- The werewolves in the work have powers expected from folklore and nothing more.
- Werewolves don't exist.
- Enforced: There is more than one werewolf movie coming out that year, and the writers want to distinguish their story from the competition.
- Lampshaded: "Okay, what? Being a werewolf gets me THIS? That doesn't even make any #@&*$ing sense."
- Invoked: Alice becomes a werewolf, but soon learns that her werewolf rival Betty is also a master of cryokinesis, so Alice decides to take up pyrokinesis instead.
- Exploited: An evil werewolf that is capable of keeping his humanity when transformed, and controlling his transformation frames a good one that has an animal mind when transformed, and only transforms during a full moon. Since most people and even the good werewolf know only the good one's type, everyone assumes that the good one goes berserk when transformed and don't even suspect that its a setup.
- Defied: A werewolf acts like a spirit guide lover-of-nature druid sort after transforming, then once it's convinced the humans that Their Werewolves Are Different, it tears them to shreds and feasts on their flesh, taking advantage of the surprise.
- Discussed: "I can understand being able to command wolves, but how did you get pyrokinesis?"
- Conversed: "What? Werewolves don't work that way?" "And what way ARE they supposed to work, genius?"
- Deconstructed: Alice sees a doctor for a lycanthropy cure, but the heavy variation among types of werewolf makes it nearly impossible for the doctor to diagnose her accurately, let alone cure her.
- Reconstructed:
- Doctors have been studying lycanthropes for years, and have developed a list of all the various types of werewolf. Alice's type of lycanthropy is matched up with one on the list and a cure is easily found.
- Werewolves behave like just that: wolves. They prefer to hunt deer and oxen rather than humans, whom they fear (simply recognizing humans as kin the same way wolves do other wolves also a possibility).
- Played For Laughs: Alice deliberately gets infected by the werewolf curse on the basis she'd gain fire powers. Unfortunately, she finds out too late that she got infected with the wrong werewolf curse. So instead of becoming a fire manipulating werewolf, she becomes a werechihuahua.
Back to Our Werewolves Are Different.
