Super Drowning Skills/Playing With

Basic Trope: A character drowns the instant he hits the water.

Straight: Max drowns as soon as he falls into a lake.
Exaggerated: Max ~~drowns~~ disintegrates when he steps in a puddle.
- Max dies vomiting blood and guts as soon as he has drank one drop of water.
Up to Eleven: Max drowns if he so much as looks at water.
Justified: Max is wearing extremely heavy equipment or suffered a traumatic experience in a swimming pool when he was younger.
- His entire family has been cursed to suffer horrible drowny deaths. But only if they try swimming in water deeper than waist-level.
- The water is filled with things that really like to eat people.
- The water contains lethal poisons that instantly kill people when touched.
Inverted: Super Not-Drowning Skills
- Max dies as soon as he emerges from water.
- Inverted in a more hellish way: Walk On Water.
Subverted: Max falls off a bridge and successfully manages to tread water...
Double Subverted: ...for about five seconds. Then he succumbs.
Parodied: Max is executed... by splashing a bucket of water in his face.
- fish can drown.
Deconstructed: Because he knows he can't swim, Max is ridiculously afraid of water and panics if he so much as goes outside in the rain. He ends up locking himself in his house due to his fear.
- Emperor Evulz, being aware Max can't survive underwater at all, puts one of the plot coupons Under the Sea, rendering the task difficult, if not impossible.
Reconstructed: With a little therapy, Max learns to overcome his fears and go out in the world, perhaps even learning to swim.
- Max rents a submarine to collect the Plot Coupon.
Zig Zagged: It's nearly impossible to predict which bodies of water Max can survive in and which he can't.
Averted: Max can survive underwater.
Enforced: The programmers weren't sure how to implement swimming physics, so they decided to avert the whole thing.
Lampshaded: "What, he can slay monsters left and right but he can't swim?"
Invoked: Max dons a suit of heavy armor to give himself an edge in Drownball.
Exploited: The villain challenges Max to a swimming contest, knowing he won't stand a chance.
Defied: Max moves to the middle of the desert where the water won't bother him.
Discussed: "Okay, we have to ford this river. You're not one of those stupid video game characters who can't swim, are you?"
Conversed: "I'd avoid the river route if I were you. You know how bad these characters are at swimming."
Played For Laughs: Max screams and flails his arms in terror when he falls in a small stream, even though he's clearly okay.