Basic Trope: A character gets fatter, thinner, or more muscular, but only temporarily.
- Straight:
- Alice becomes fat surprisingly quickly and by the end of the episode, she's back to normal.
- Bob becomes extremely skinny. By the end of the episode, he's back to normal.
- Charlie builds up his muscles and becomes very muscly, but by the end of the episode, his muscles are back to normal size.
- Exaggerated:
- Alice goes from morbidly obese to normal-sized in only a few minutes.
- Bob goes from being thin enough to be mistaken for anorexic to his normal build in only a few minutes.
- Charlie goes from having a bodybuilder physique to being normal-sized in only a few minutes.
- Alice is normally skinny, Bob is normally fat, and Charlie is normally scrawny, so it's a very drastic change.
- Downplayed:
- It takes a few episodes for Alice, Bob, and Charlie to get back to normal.
- By the end of the episode, Alice is still a little tubbier than normal, Bob is a little bit skinnier than normal, and Charlie still has noticeably bigger muscles, but they're nearly back to normal and come the next episode, they are completely back to normal.
- Justified:
- Weird things happened with Alice and Bob's metabolisms.
- Alice, Bob, and Charlie are Sizeshifters.
- Inverted:
- Subverted:
- Alice tries to lose weight, but fails.
- Bob tries to put on weight, but fails.
- Charlie thinks his muscles will shrink, but they don't.
- Double Subverted:
- Alice and Bob try again to lose and put on weight respectively, and this time, it works.
- But eventually, Charlie's muscles do shrink.
- Parodied: We see Alice, Bob, and Charlie instantly poof back to normal.
- Zigzagged: Alice loses most of her weight but remains slightly fatter than usual, Bob goes back to normal, and Charlie stays muscular.
- Averted:
- Alice stays fat.
- Bob stays skinny.
- Charlie stays muscular.
- Nobody changes size.
- Enforced:
- The writers wanted to make A Weighty Aesop, but didn't have an already-fat character, so they made Alice fat and had her lose it for the Aesop.
- They needed Charlie to become muscular so that he could be strong enough to do something plot-related, but this show follows the Status Quo Is God rule.
- Lampshaded: "Well, I went back to normal size quickly!"
- Invoked: Diana invents something which changes people's build.
- Exploited:
- Defied:
- Discussed: "I had this coworker once who showed up to work very fat but the next day, she was normal-sized! Talk about surreal!"
- Conversed: "How do these characters go back to normal sized so fast?!"
- Implied:
- Alice is never seen again, but she's mentioned to only weigh 137 pounds.
- Bob is never seen again, but someone mentions him wearing the clothes he normally wears.
- Charlie is never seen again, but somebody talks about him being embarrassed that he isn't muscly.
- Deconstructed: Having such quick alterations to their bodies causes a great deal of physical pain.
- Reconstructed:
- Played for Laughs:
- Played for Drama: This is the first sign that aliens are experimenting on Alice, Bob, or Charlie.
Back to Temporary Bulk Change.
