Basic Trope: Thirteen is an unlucky number.
- Straight: Bob checks into hotel room 13. Later, he falls down the stairs and becomes disabled.
- Exaggerated: Thirteen-year-old Bob checks into hotel room 13, on the 13th floor, in the 13th hotel in the row of the 13th street on a Friday the 13th in 2013. (For those keeping score, this means it would take place that September or December.) Later, his entire family (of thirteen) gets killed, he gets raped, a fire breaks out in his room, and Bob dies (or worse) while trying to escape the room.
- Downplayed: Bob checks into hotel room 13. Later, he receives a painful paper cut.
- Justified: The hotel room was cursed by an evil wizard.
- Inverted:
- Bob checks into hotel room 13. Later, he wins the lottery and gets a billion dollars.
- Bob checks into hotel room 7. Later, he wins the lottery and gets a billion dollars.
- Bob checks into hotel room 7. Later, he falls down the stairs and becomes disabled.
- Subverted: Bob checks into hotel room number 13. Later, he falls down the stairs and becomes disabled, but the room number falls down and it is revealed to be 12.
- Double Subverted: Then it falls down again and the room number is revealed to be 13 all along.
- Parodied:
- Bob checks into room 13. Later, a Hockey Mask and Chainsaw maniac chases Bob around before pieing him in the face at the end of the chase.
- Bob checks into room 13. Bad things happen to him at the hotel in an Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking order: he can't get the water in the shower to a tolerable temperature, he can't flush the toilet, he gets food poisoning, and then, as the final insult, he gets a $50 surcharge.
- Zig-Zagged: Bob checks into room 13; he gets injured. But, when Aaron enters room 13, he's perfectly normal. Alice goes in and she gets injured. Then Brenda goes in, but she comes out unscathed as well.
- Averted: Bob checks into hotel room 13. Nothing bad happens.
- Enforced: The producer is superstitious and demanded this appear in the work.
- Lampshaded: "Knew it was unlucky!"
- Invoked: The hotel does not have room number 13 for this reason, using this as an advertising point.
- Exploited: Emperor Evulz, the Big Bad, disguises room number 13 as another room, hoping to catch Bob.
- Defied:
- Bob sees the room he checked into is room number 13. He decides to ask the receptionist to move him to another room.
- Upon learning he's in room 13, Bob scoffs and declares that he makes his own luck.
- The hotel was built with no more than twelve guest rooms.
- Discussed: "Don't go into room thirteen; it's bad luck."
- Conversed: "Why is thirteen always bad luck in these stupid films?"
- Implied:
- Bob's stay at the hotel happened offscreen, but he comes back and mentions that he had a horrible time there. "It all started when they put me in room thirteen..."
- Bob checks into the hotel and gets assigned room 13. The last time we see him, he goes into his room, and he doesn't check out.
- Deconstructed:
- Nobody wants to stay in room 13, costing the hotel business.
- Superstition about the number 13 makes it harder for people to talk about small numbers at all.
- Reconstructed:
- No Such Thing as Bad Publicity is not at all in effect, and it's always best to make sure no guest comes to harm.
- The characters get around their superstition by saying formulations like "ten plus three", "the cube root of two thousand one hundred ninety-seven", et cetera.
- Played for Laughs: See Parodied, or at worst, Bob incurs Amusing Injuries because he was in room 13.
- Played for Drama:
- Bob has heard that thirteen is an unlucky number, so the story is all about his angst over what will happen to him, how, and when.
- Bob was molested by a family friend when he was 13 and still suffers from it in the present.
- Played for Horror: Bob checks into room 13, then meets an Eldritch Abomination and suffers Cold-Blooded Torture and a Cruel and Unusual Death.
Back to 13 Is Unlucky, but don't stay too long, for goodness' sake. Oh, Crap! There were thirteen words in that sentence...
