Basic Trope: A character is turned into stone.
- Straight: Alice, a Black Magician Girl, casts a spell on Bob Coolson and he turns into stone.
- Exaggerated:
- Alice casts a spell and everyone on the planet except her turns into stone.
- Alice turns a water elemental into a stone elemental with her spell. All water in the world becomes stone. Including the water in human bodies.
- Alice turns Bob into diamond.
- Downplayed:
- Alice's magic causes paralysis in her victims. They become as immobile as a statue, but are still flesh and blood (although they might even be as resistant as stone in this form, as opposed to non-magical paralysis).
- Basilisk and Cockatrice in this word breathe a strange gas that acts like quick-drying concrete on contact with skin: the victim doesn't turn to stone, but is engulfed in a stone-like cocoon, quickly suffocating. The basilisk then carries its quarry back to its lair, cracks open the 'stone' and eats the victim at its leisure.
- Justified:
- Alice dislikes Bob, who cannot bother her if he is a statue.
- Alice is some kind of mythical monster whose gimmick is turning people to stone.
- Bob just won't stay down after being burnt, sliced, electrocuted etc, so Alice turns him into immobile stone to finally stop him from fighting.
- Inverted:
- Alice turns herself to stone in order to protect herself from Bob.
- David Atlas McMichaelangelo is actually a stone statue that can take on a human form.
- Alice can turn stones into people.
- Alice turns a Living Statue into living flesh and tissue.
- Subverted:
- Bob knew about Alice's magic, and has made himself immune to petrification.
- Alice's spell fails to work because Bob is an elemental.
- Bob is turned to stone, but thanks to a misscast he's still mobile.
- Bob is still able to move.
- Double Subverted: Bob's clothes are still affected, effectively imprisoning him.
- Parodied:
- Alice's spell only takes partial effect; Bob is unharmed but his mineral deficiencies have been corrected.
- Birds poop on Bob.
- Zig Zagged: Alice changes Bob back to normal just long enough for him to answer a quick question, after which she thanks and re-petrifies him.
- Averted: Alice kills Bob with another method.
- Enforced: Alice and Bob are in a series that is, naturally, Merchandise-Driven. The toy manufacturers realize it's a lot easier to emboss Bob on a plastic rectangle than to mold him into something more three-dimensional.
- Lampshaded: Bob is frozen in place with a curiously stony-faced expression.
- Invoked: Alice studies the spell because she is vain and likes to have her conquests on display.
- Exploited:
- Bob lets himself be turned to stone, so that another spell Drake cast on him would make Bob a mobile statue and that much stronger.
- Bob gets Alice to petrify him so he can be snuck in somewhere as part of a Trojan Horse gambit.
- Alice turns Bob to stone in order to save him as he has suffered a mortal wound or curse. This way she can buy time for a potential fix.
- Defied: Alice passes over learning a petrification spell for one that kills people with other methods.
- Discussed: "So she beats people and... turns them into lawn decorations?"
- Conversed: "These fantasy books are too clichéd with transformations. They only turn living beings into stone."
- Deconstructed: Alice comes to realize that petrifying others is a terrible way to solve a verbal conflict and the guilt of Bob's permanent fate catches up with her.
- Reconstructed: Alice overcomes this temporary bout of indecisiveness. She becomes a world-renowned sculptor and her immaculate works are on display in world-class gardens and museums the world over.
- Played For Laughs:
- Other than being a mage, Alice is a painter. When she has to make a painting for someone, she petrifies the subject to make him or her stand still for the best result. She's a world-class thanks to this technique. (Of course she de-petrifies them later, otherwise she will be known as a world-class sculptor and a fugitive.)
- Alice uses her statues as towel racks, hat racks, to tie up clotheslines, for her hammock...
- Alice sleeps by petrifying herself.
- Alice starts to petrify only to sneeze mid process, freezing her in an awkward pose that when Once Done, Never Forgotten after she is freed.
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