LEGO Genetics/Playing With
Basic Trope: Changing a few chemicals in DNA give fantastic abilities.
- Straight: Sarah Miller has wings because scientists put bird genes in her.
- Exaggerated: Sarah has wings and a beak because she was injected with bird blood.
- Justified: Sarah is actually an alien who can easily take on other species' attributes through DNA injection.
- Inverted: In the future, a person's DNA has to be modified to make them 'normal'
- Subverted: A winged person is involved with a genetic engineering plot, but they got their wings from magic.
- Double Subverted: Said magic is just a magical way to alter DNA.
- Parodied: Sarah dissected a radioactive bird and got wings!
- Deconstructed: Genetic splicing experiments rarely creates anything viable, and when it does, the results are horribly twisted abominations.
- Reconstructed: Sarah is one of the only subjects of DNA experimentation to form correctly, and the experimenters value her very highly.
- Zig Zagged: Sarah and everyone else in the story engage in a Multiple Choice Past explanation of her abilities.
- Averted: Genetics are never brought up concerning a characters strange abilities.
- Enforced: Meddling Executives don't think the audience could understand proper genetics, and so demand that when genetic engineering occurs, it has to be simple and Lego-style.
- Or the writers don't understand proper genetics and legitimately believe they work like that.
- Lampshaded: "Really? Instant wings, just add bird DNA? That's how genetics work now?"
- Invoked: ???
- Exploited: The resident Mad Scientist takes advantage of the ease with which genetic traits evidently can be transferred by genetically engineering Mix-and-Match Critters to do his bidding.
- Defied: "No, no, no, you can't just magically acquire wings by squirting bird DNA around. Also, ew."
- Discussed: "Where'd I get my wings? Well, from bird DNA of course!"
- Conversed: "Are we really expected to believe there's suddenly exactly one 'wing gene' in birds that you can just stick in a person with no horribly deformed consequences?"
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