Basic Trope: Skunks that are either shown spraying something, or smelling bad by default - usually with no stimulus required to activate their scent glands.
- Straight:
- Stinky the Skunk drives people off with his scent.
- When the Big Bad Wolf shows up, Stinky sprays at him to save his friends.
- Whenever Stinky gets too stressed or worried, he sprays at his friends.
- Exaggerated:
- Stinky's scent is so bad, it makes even him disgusted to the point of losing his lunch or making him pass out.
- Stinky's scent is foul enough to cause death.
- Whenever Stinky sprays, it's a literal Fart Bomb that causes death to everything around him.
- Downplayed:
- Stinky is smelly, yes, but it's only really bad when he sprays a target with his scent glands. Otherwise he just smells 'a bit off'.
- Stinky rarely sprays, and only does when he needs to.
- Justified: Skunks produce noxious-smelling chemicals as a natural defense mechanism.
- Inverted:
- Stinky sprays out pink clouds of flowery perfume.
- Or, standard skunk musk is considered attractive in this setting.
- Everything stinks but skunks.
- Subverted:
- Stinky doesn't smell all the time.
- Stinky is about to spray his friends because they stressed him out, but then he is told to stop, and he stops.
- Double Subverted:
- Stinky only sprays and smells when he's really ticked off.
- Stinky stops, only for someone to encourage him to spray them and he does so anyways...
- Zig Zagged:
- Some skunks constantly smell bad, others don't.
- A single skunk's smell can go from bad to good to bad again.
- Parodied: The smell can be smelled on the other side of the world, and maybe even from space!
- Averted:
- Skunks don't smell in this setting, as with domesticated skunks who have their scent glands removed.
- Skunks don't even exist in this setting.
- Enforced: The writer has a fear of skunks, so he decides to write skunks as Elite Mooks.
- Lampshaded:Bob: Eeeww!!! Who ran over a skunk?!Stinky: No one ran over me. I'm stinking up the room.
- Invoked: Bob and his drunk friends tease Stinky, and he eventually gets fed up and gives them what they asked for.
- Exploited: Big Bad uses Stinky to stink up the The Hero's team.
- Defied:
- Stinky decides to conserve his stink for when he really needs it.
- Stinky gets his scent glands surgically removed.
- Discussed: "How could something so little and cute smell so bad?"
- Conversed: "I got sprayed last week. It was horrible."
- Implied: People hold their noses in Stinky's presence, but no one mentions his odor.
- Deconstructed: Skunks are ostracized as Always Chaotic Evil, because Evil Smells Bad, even if such stereotypes are far from the truth.
- Reconstructed: Skunks find better roles in society eventually, and their stink is found useful as a deterrent to not just themselves, but others.
- Played For Laughs: Stinky sprays a group of people by accident, who then have to bathe in tomato paste to get rid of the smell.
- Played For Drama: Stinky feels sad because no one likes him.
- Played For Horror: Big Bad Stinky the Evil Skunk Emperor and his army of evil-and-mephitid-all-over Mooks fart out venomous, disgusting smells that makes every of the animals but skunks suffocate to death from poisoning. Their farting gas are toxic enough to cause planetary apocalypse.
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