Basic Trope: An insect character is a depicted with traits of the wrong sex.
- Straight: Bob is a male honeybee who functions as a worker and has a stinger. (In Real Life all worker honeybees are sterile females.)
- Exaggerated: Antonio is a male honeybee queen who lays eggs for the hive.
- Downplayed: Tara is a female tarantula who is smaller than her mate, a male tarantula. (In real tarantulas, the female is usually bigger than the male.)
- Justified:
- The gender of Bob the honeybee is purely aesthetic; functionally, he is still a sterile female honeybee.
- Bob is part of a fictional species of honeybees where there are both male and female workers.
- Bob is part of atypical fictional hive hierarchy. Alice, the Hive Queen, is responsible for reproduction - while Bob, the Hive King, is responsible for all actual political decisions.
- Subverted: Bob is a female honeybee in both sex and gender; she merely has a Gender-Blender Name.
- Double Subverted: ???
- Inverted: Neither male or female honeybees have stingers.
- Parodied: ???
- Averted:
- Bobbi is a sterile female worker honeybee.
- Antonio is a male honeybee drone with no stinger.
- Tara is a female tarantula who is way larger than her mate, a male tarantula.
- Defied: Any male honeybees that try to even stick around in the hive are forcefully driven off by the female honeybee workers.
- Zig-Zagged: A honeybee colony has male drone honeybees, but also male worker honeybees.
- Lampshaded: "Aren't all worker honeybees female? Why is this one a "male"?"
- Discussed: ???
- Conversed: "Did they even do their research on bees? In the real world, all worker honeybees are female!"
- Invoked: Bob the honeybee refuses to work as a drone and decides to be a worker honeybee instead.
- Exploited: Bob uses his stinger (which only female honeybees should have) as a weapon.
- Played for Laughs: ???
- Played for Drama: ???
- Played for Horror: ???
- Implied: Bob appears to be a worker honeybee, but has an Ambiguous Gender.
- Deconstructed: Bob is outcasted by his fellow honeybees for wanting to work instead of just being a sperm producer for his queen.
- Reconstructed: ???
Back to Insect Gender-Bender.