Examples Searching for a Trope

Seen something of interest in a work of media, but you don't know what it is an example of? Put it here.

Subtrope of Outside Context Villain or Filler Villain?

  • Was playing Sonic Shuffle and thought about how, since Eggman is the villain in most main Sonic games, you'd think he'd have some story importance if not being the main villain. But aside from board events and mini-games he doesn't appear at all and isn't even in the story.

Variant of Badass Damsel? Casual Danger Dialog? Something Else?

  • So in the Mega Man episode "Campus Commandos, Roll says "I'm going to get even with that two-timing Top Man for tampering with my emotion circuits!" (Basically, Top Man has been flirting with her throughout the episode, and has just revealed he is in fact a mole working for Dr. Wily.). She seemingly chooses to disregard the fact that she has bigger problems on her hands, like for instance, the fact that she's currently moments away from being crushed between clock gears. Is this a trope? It seems like it could be Casual Danger Dialog, but for the fact that Mega more or less snaps her back to reality with his response (Roughly "We won't have ANY circuits if we don't figure a way out of this!").

Dissimile or Subverted Simile?

I'm a mixed martial artist, so I think boxing is to fighting like pillow fighting is to fighting.

What would you say that is? Dissimile? A simile subverted?

Recoil Damage

  • In Mega Man ZX, we can modify the trajectory of the bullets of Model F to create odd bullet maneuvers. Do we have a trope for this?
  • This Troper saw a local play called "Gold Fever at the Rough and Ready." It starts In Medias Res with the protagonist about to be hung. There's some brief dialogue between the characters, and they're about to hang him when the love interest comes in with the giant gold nugget they were about to hang him for stealing. The characters are surprised, they accidentally knock over the chair the protagonist is standing on, and then the protagonist rewinds to where the chain of events leading up to it began. We see the same scene again at the end of the first act, only it ends with the other love interest shooting out the rope. This isn't the example. The example is in the second act, where the same exact scene is repeated again with different characters in all of the roles (The first love interest is the one being hung, the second love interest is the one who comes in with the nugget, etc.), with the same dialogue (but with the names switched). Just as the chair is knocked over, the Dastardly Whiplash character unexpectedly shoots out the rope.

"What? You can't tell me that you didn't expect that, we did this scene twice already."

    • I'm pretty sure it's an echo trope, but I'm not sure which one.

I Know Mortal Kombat or I Don't Know Mortal Kombat or Something Else Entirely?

Circa 10 years ago there was this commercial for SOCOM. So it's I Actually Do Know Mortal Kombat? I Don't Know Mortal Kombat subverted?

Is this a Cargo Cult or something else entirely?

What is this I don't even

    • Um...AdaptationDisplacement? When the "adaptation" is slash fic?

Arrogant Mistakes Cost Dearly

Okay, another one from me. In Cat-Eyed Boy, the eponymous character is confronted by the 100 Monsters Group, who want to recruit him to help them turn people who are ugly on the inside (the greedy, plagiarists, etc.) just as ugly on the outside. However, during the recruitment, they let slip that they're all just deformed humans and they believe there aren't any real monsters. To a genuine supernatural monster who frequently comes into conflict with other genuine supernatural monsters. Whoops. Turns out the Cat-Eyed Boy finds this so obnoxiously arrogant that he decides to stop them just because of this, when he previously liked the sound of their plan. I could swear I once found a trope this fit, but I can't remember for the life of me.

Related to Through the Eyes of Madness

I once read a retelling of The Emperor's New Clothes in which a second character—the brother of the Emperor who wanted to usurp him—who's the viewpoint character helps set up the con to humiliate the king... only for the child in the end to be a young page who's unfit for his position in the royal court, thus leaving both him and the audience wondering if it was the same as the original story... or if the clothes were real and the fact that he could never see them proved he was unfit for his position. It's a bit lighter than most examples of the above trope, but it's the same sort of ambiguous "what was real" ending.

Constantly Squinting?

Okay, I was about to make an edit from the Phineas And Ferb page at TV tropes. The trope is "Twitchy Eye", which Milly (The Fireside Girl with brown curly hair) supposedly has. I found this at the Phineas and Ferb Wiki.

"Milly does not have a twitch.

The line over the bottom of her eye is her cheek, as it is only visible when she is smiling (or her mouth positions are smiling). This is a type of design aspect commonly used in animation, as it makes the character cuter."

There's no specific name for it, and it doesn't fit with the Twitchy Eye description, so it must be somewhere else. I also need to know what other characters similar to Milly that constantly seem to squint.

Not quite a Gilligan Cut

  • One of the better-known gags in Bone is spread out between two panels, and I'm having trouble thinking of a trope that describes the transition. It's very similar to a Gilligan Cut, but it's almost the exact same position and angle, just a few seconds later—in fact, the change is really no different from any other panel transition, except that it skips those few seconds forward past a transitory event (the rat creatures' jump), and that skip is essential for the comic timing. (Also worth noting is that I don't recall ever seeing this kind of transition in a manga.)
    • That looks like playing with a Gilligan Cut. The important part of a Gilligan cut is the juxtaposition between "they won't do X " and "they are doing X". The length of the time skip can vary enormously and the change of location is optional.

Not Using The C Word?

  • In the various Muppet materials, Gonzo is strictly referred to using non-species-specific terms like "Whatever" or "Geek"... but his appearance and fondness for chickens would seem to strongly suggest he's a chickenhawk. Similarly, besides a bit from Snake in Super Smash Bros Brawl, King Dedede is never called a penguin, despite quite obviously being one. It doesn't really fall under Not Using the Z Word as written... it's related to Call a Rabbit a Smeerp, but in this case it's about refusing to call a mundane creature by any name at all, rather than calling it a fantastic name.

Something to do with virginity

  • This shows up in chapters 9 and 10 of the recent manga series GE - Good Ending, and I have no idea what it's an example or subversion or inversion of, because I can't seem to connect it with any of the virginity-related tropes. The relevant character is a girl who's trying[1] to lose her virginity in order to become more appealing to the guy she has a crush on, because she heard a friend of his say that sex with a virgin wasn't as good. I mean, it makes sense, but I can't see where it fits in the trope scheme.

Console Digital Distribution

  • I dunno wether this should be listed in Abandonware or Emulation or Digital Piracy or whatever, but what happens in the event that a game formerly offered on a Console-based Digital Distribution system(Xbox LIVE, PlayStation Network, Wii Wii Ware) ceases to be offered. Abandonware is pretty much a PC-exclusive domain, and this isn't a media-based thing that can be bought/sold on a secondary market... So what happens here?

Surprisingly important trait

  • I don't know if it's Chekhov's Gun, Chekhov's Boomerang, or something else, but I was thinking about Stinky Pete from Toy Story 2. One of the first things we learn about him is that he's in mint condition, helping to establish that he, Woody, Jessie, and Bullseye are there for a collection. Later on, however, his mint condition turns out to be one of the most critical aspects and drivers of his character—which makes perfect sense, but in a way you don't think about earlier on.
  • I'm sure there's a trope for this, but I can't find it. Basically, a character wants something very, very badly, after unsuccessfully trying to obtain it for the better part of the episode, it turns out that someone else has got it for them as a gift. Popular in sitcoms.
  • I know we have a trope for difficulty increasing in sequels, but apparently neither Difficulty Creep nor Sequel Escalation is it. Halp? We have a redlink on Rock Band because someone thought it was "Sequel Difficulty Creep" and I don't know what to fix it as.

Knights of the Old Republic, continues from Did I Just Say That Out Loud?

HK-47: Retraction: Did I say that out loud? I apologize, master. While you are a meatbag, I suppose I should not call you such.
Player Character: You just called me a meatbag again!

  • Ok, from chapter 247 of Mahou Sensei Negima (FRAKKING ENORMOUS SPOILERS): Do we have something for when one character absorbs the power of another character and uses it against them, like what Negi does with Jack's attack? The closest I could find was Playing Tennis With the Boss, but that's more reflecting an attack back as opposed to sucking power out of an opponent.

Ninja Lid Perch

  • A small creature (Team Pet, Head Pet, whatever) hides from a Muggle by hiding inside a hat or box. Of course said Muggle must lift the lid or the hat. Cut to a shot of the creature inside the lid/hat stretched out to the sides to hold him/herself in place. I saw Kero do it in the first Cardcaptor Sakura movie.

Wait, was that room always there?

  • On Batman Beyond Bruce opens a secret door to reveal the really top-secret part of the Batcave (where he keeps all of his Kryptonite). Is there a trope for this sort of thing, where a character walks past something every day and they have no idea that there's actually something there?
  • In Ninja Warz there are Relics offered in the the Relic Shop when in the description saying they were behind/under this daimyo statue that you get bonuses all the time A combonation of Hidden in Plain Sight and Hidden Right Under Your Nose ?

Unfortunate Implications meets I'm a Humanitarian... sorta

  • In Rabbit Fire, Daffy pulls "1000 ways to cook a rabbit" out of Bugs' hole.

It was awesome! Until... this happened.

Robert: Marie Curie. She was a remarkable woman who made great advances in the fields of science. Until she... died of radiation poisoning from her own experiments...

    • Example from The Simpsons

Lisa: "Solitude never hurt anyone. Emily Dickinson lived alone, and she wrote some of the most beautiful poetry the world has ever known... then went crazy as a loon."

Hiding but found

  • Someone is being chased by someone else. The first person or group is hiding out while the second party is searching everywhere for them. The person, or someone in the group, brings to the others' (or the audiences') attention that the second party is right outside the building. Cut to the second person outside holding up a photo of the first to a random bystander. The bystander points up to the window the first party is looking out of and they are spotted by their pursuer(s). A chase scene usually follows. Has this trope already have a page or does one need to be made?

Reverend Reiko

  • That chaplain off ER. Hippy sort of Christian, rather attractive. Played by Reiko Aylesworth. Blonde Republican Sex Kitten or something different?
    • Something else entirely. As anyone from Massachusetts can tell you, religiously conservative does not necessary equal politically conservative. Call it Cool Priest or something.

Inuyasha

  • That weird "throbbing" or "pulsing" visual effect that happens to Inuyasha whenever he changes back from full mortal to half-demon.
    • Also used for swords, basically when ever the manga specified "pulse of power" SFX, this is how the anime represented it.

Doctor Who

  • In "Partners in Crime", when the Doctor and Donna constantly fail to notice each other from a few steps away due to looking in different directions or other circumstances.

Old School Donald Duck shorts:

  • In one Don shoves a stick of dynamite down a telephone, the audience can see the natural conclusion coming from a mile away: It's going to blow up in Donald's face. However, there is such a long delayed reaction that it makes the audience put their guard down, so when the inevitable explosion happens we're taken aback.
  • In another one, Donald's being menaced by a bee. So he put a flowerpot over his rear end to protect it from the stinger, the bee starts dive bombing for the hole at the bottom of the pot. Then Donald, in a sudden moment of clarity, realizes that the bee would sting him through the hole, so he puts a cork in it.

24

  • The fact that Jack Bauer makes it through the six worst days of his life without uttering anything saltier than 'damn', and this is including several instances of being tortured, but (on a DVD extra), casually drops an f-bomb after getting fired...
    • Maybe he would then want to do as much damage as possible after being fired.
    • This was referenced by the author of Dr. McNinja in the alt-text as his 'one curse', like Jack Bauer.
    • I've heard several DVD commentaries for PG-13 movies pointing out that they are permitted exactly one use of the word "fuck", including the thought process that goes into finding the best place to use it. For most of its run, Bob and George made a running gag of using the word uncensored once per year, always on the same day.
    • Sounds like Precision F-Strike.

Street Kings

  • One of the bad guys is searching for a DVD. Rather than just simply pressing the eject button on the DVD player, he uses a flathead screwdriver to tear it apart.

Roomies (It's Walky?)

  • One of the characters takes a psychology course, complete with a textbook. Just by virtue of having read the material, she becomes a ridiculously good Chessmaster, capable of manipulating everyone on such a micromanagement level that it borderlines on godlike psychic powers. It all gets handwaved by her explaining that "everything you need to know to make people do anything is in this book".

Clue, the board game

  • The goal of the game is to guess the killer, right? And each player supposedly plays as one of the suspects. So, even if you play as the character who turns out to be the killer, you still win if you guess it right. How messed up is that?
    • I'll do you one better. How does it make sense that, if you are playing as the killer, you wouldn't know that you did it or how? Somehow, I can't see it being Laser-Guided Amnesia...
      • I guess confession just isn't enough; they've got to prove to the police that they killed him or they just won't care. Maybe the prof's will pardons and\or rewards the killer? Perhaps the real killer captured whoever is found to be the killer, disguised themselves as him or her, framed him or her (by "proving" it was them who did it), and then released the suspected killer to the waiting hands of police while slipping away.
    • Clearly an example of Fridge Logic. ;)
    • Of course, in Kill Doctor Lucky, you know you did it (or at least wanted to), and are rewarded for succeeding....
    • Whatever trope this is, it's lampshaded in the video game version (Genesis, likely also SNES), depending on who wins. For example, if you catch yourself as Mr. Green, he says "I won! I won! I'm in jail but I won!"
    • This troper finds it helps to think of it as the killer having to hide their actions. If they correctly guess as themselves, congratulations, you just hid the evidence and are off scott-free!

Music

  • The song "Hey There Delilah," written by Tom Higginson of the group Plain White T's, is a charming love song about a long-distance relationship. However, it starts getting a little bit weird when you learn that the Delilah mentioned in the song is a real person, and that she never went out with Tom because she was involved with someone else. I'm reminded of Misaimed Fandom and Stalker with a Crush, but it doesn't quite fit either of those.

Literature

  • Melvin Burgess, a British author of controversial novels for teenagers, wrote a book called Lady: My Life as a Bitch, about a promiscuous, 16 - year - old self - described "bitch" who is ironically turned into a dog. She discovers that it's really no different to her life of casual sex and dossing around when she was a human. Surely this includes a trope of some sort? Even if it's just an Aesop?

Pretty Cure

  • The following three episodes are completely different in structure. The situations depicted therein have totally different implications. The first two are treated as dramatic and serious while the third is played for all the laughs it's worth.
    • The eighth episode of Futari wa Pretty Cure, the series which kicked off the first of the three Pretty Cure universes, focuses on Nagisa and Honoka having a fight with each other, getting all awkward, then finally reconciling at the end, and briefly explores the effect that their fight has on their combat abilities.
    • The eighth episode of Futari wa Pretty Cure Splash Star, the series which contains the second of the three Pretty Cure universes, focuses on their counterparts Saki and Mai having a fight with each other, getting all awkward, then finally reconciling at the end, and briefly explores the effect that their fight has on their combat abilities.
    • The eighth episode of Yes! Pretty Cure 5, the series which kicked off the third of the three Pretty Cure universes, focuses on Rin and Karen (who are clearly based on Nagisa and Honoka) having a fight with each other, getting all awkward, then finally reconciling at the end, and briefly explores the effect that their fight has on their combat abilities.
      • Power Rangers SPD episode Walls (the fourth episode) had a plot similar to the above, although Sky had fallen out with Jack since episode 2 and the episode didn't really explore the effect on combat abilities, if anything it explored the effect of Sky disobeying one of Jack's orders-Emperor Grumm getting another of his materials for his invasion of Earth. Anyhow, what would this trope be called? Reconciliation 888? That title wouldn't work with the Power Rangers example though, unless someone thinks it should go elsewhere.

Lego Star Wars

  • The character controlled by the player is the ONLY one capable of damaging enemies or using their special abilities outside of certain specific events in the Story Mode. You could have a party of 6 characters, and all 5 of the ones that aren't controlled by the player could gang up on a single Stormtrooper and pound him for upwards of 20 minutes, but he won't go down until the player-controlled character decides to attack. Dunno what this would go under... Maybe Fake Difficulty or something?

The Simpsons

  • Fat Tony causes a rival mobster's car to go out of control. It crashes into a vinegar truck. Then a baking soda truck crashes into them both. As the mobsters's car starts filling with foam, the mobsters look at each other and shrug, saying "This isn't so bad". Then a TNT truck crashes into the mess and blows everything up.
  • That's a regular formula for Simpsons jokes, where everything seems fine or even just briefly peaceful, and then something worse sneaks up to get the character. Examples include the French waiter badly hurting himself, falling out of a building into a truckful of mousetraps, and groaning "At Least Zere Were No Beeg Ones"...only to be interrupted by the snap of a very big one. Similarly, Luke Perry is shot out of a cannon in "Krusty Gets Kancelled", goes through several walls, and lands in a pillow factory...which is promptly demolished.

X-Cops

  • The Cops episode of the x-files. What exactly do we call this? Is it a cross over? a show-within-a-show? Since Cops is a "real-life" show, is it a fictional cops within the x-files world? Or is it that it's the x-files in the real world? Is it postmodern? meta-fiction? Does it count as breaking the fourth wall when the cops/crew/etc address the camera? Oh, wouldn't it be nice if it were something easy to categorize, like the Thursday Next books.
    • Not having seen it, Document N would expect it to be a show-within-a-show. If it was an X-Files episode of Cops, it might be something similar to a non-interactive ARG, a Mockumentary, a viral-marketing play or Lonelygirl15.
      • I've seen it. Technically it is a show within a show, but Cops is a documentary. Mulder and Scully aren't playing fictional characters, they're being filmed as Mulder and Scully. It's as if there was an X-Files episode where they appeared on a talk show—we wouldn't call that a show within a show (even though it is) or breaking the fourth wall (even if they're smiling for the camera).
        • Still sounds like Show Within a Show to me. I've edited the description on that page slightly to fit it better.

Penny Arcade

  • In the "Armadeaddon" storyline, there's apparently nothing unusual about the idea that a prop-replica bat'leth in a comic book store would be a fully functional zombie-killing weapon. (Similarly, in a Goats storyline the stormtroopers at a nerd convention are of course carrying actual blasters.)
    • Well, in most shows/stories, zombies may be tough combatants, but that is owing to how much damage they can dish out, and their resistance to conventional harm, like bullet holes—Even a flat-edged Wave-Cutter sword like the one Anne uses could do some serious harm to dead flesh, especially if these are on the decomposing end of the Zombie Scale.
      • Doesn't the ending out the incident as some really, really, really, screwed up tabletop RPG? Except it was real?
      • It might be two tropes: "in comedy, fiction and reality are often blurred" and "in comedy, things that the viewer knows perfectly well could never work can work when it's useful to the plot, Finagle's Law notwithstanding.".

Captain SNES

  • The cat. Certified as being perfectly ordinary, yet it's part of some of the most crucial events of the Myth Arc. It belonged to Hope Keene, it was pulled into Videoland when the Game Master was supposed to be summoned, it was present when Alex was summoned, it's with him in his cell...what's up with it? Come to think of it, most of the original characters of the comic are shrouded in mystery (Bob, Ryan, Hope, the Sovereign).

Antihero for Hire

  • In this strip, Dechs points out how he's really, really overmatched physically with the villain. I'm sure it's a trope, but I can't think what.

Working In Formal Attire. For some reason, the characters are doing their jobs in clothing that is far more formal than appropriate. Getting to see the actors in formal outfits can be a form of Fan Service.

  • In an episode of CSI, the investigators get called out of an awards banquet to the scene of a death at a posh prom party.
  • In House, MD, the team has to leave a Casino Night fundraiser to see after a patient.
  • Several times in Doctor Who—I'd say "The Lazarus Experiment", "Voyage of the Damned", and "The Unicorn and the Wasp". And in The Movie, there was the scene where Grace had to perform surgery in the same clothes she'd been wearing to the opera.
  • The videogame Parasite Eve does this, too—protagonist Aya Brea starts the game on an opera date, until things start heading for the Cosmic Horror side of things. Apparently, though, she kept her service automatic in her evening gown. Among deadlier things, on repeat playthroughs.

The Wizard of Oz

  • "Weren't you frightened?" "Frightened? Child, you're talking to a man who's laughed in the face of death, sneered at doom, and chuckled at catastrophe... I was petrified."

Monk

  • Not sure if this is a lampshading of a trope, or just a lampshade of the show's particular situation, but in the episode with the CSI Take That, an obsessive fan is outside the murder scene and asks Sharona to get her petition to the lead actor, complaining about the show changing theme songs. Sharona agrees that she hates when they do that. This, of course, was after Monk changed its theme from an instrumental to "It's a Jungle Out There". To hammer it in, at the end of the episode, the fan ends up at Monk's house at one in the morning, having shifted her obsession to Monk after he arrested the lead actor for the murder, tells him that he should get his own TV show some day, and then makes him promise that when he does, he'd never change the theme song. The old theme song then plays over the closing credits rather than the new one.

King Kong (2005 film)

  • Not sure if this listed anywhere, but two things:
    • One, the insane chaotic violence surrounding the characters in any given action scene, like selective character shields on flippin' steroids. If I were to name it, I'd probably say Jackson Heroics (as this also afflicts The Lord of the Rings at times, especially in Return of the King.)
    • Two, when people do die, usually there's a whole lot of people killed at once. Given the amount of people we've seen previously, it's pretty reasonable to guess that it would thin the group down to the central characters... but this is not the case. If I were to name it, I'd say... Regenerative Crew.

Fear Itself:

  • Just saw the latest episode, "New Year's Day", and I'd like to update the Cruel Twist Ending page, but I'm not entirely sure if it's an example of that or Karmic Twist Ending... Help, anyone? The twist in question is that the character we've been following throughout the whole episode was a zombie the whole time. The episode actually ends with what I shall call "Zombies In Loooove!"; she and a male zombie are seen holding hands, stalking a helpless woman... then the film "melts" for no reason. Speaking of degrading filmstrips, what trope does that one go under?

Lord Loss

  • We have about a billion tropes for heroic characters doing rather odd things, so we probably have this, but I don't know what it comes under. In the first chapter, the main character is told off by his parents for underage smoking and discovers that his sister told them. In revenge, he finds some dead rats, cuts them open and spreads the guts over his sister's towel. His sister isn't a main character; by next chapter, she's dead. He never does anything like this again.

Genius Warrior

  • A character is both brilliant and kickass, wielding a weapon and a lab kit with equal alacrity.
  • These generally fall under either Badass Bookworm—for ones who conform more to the "smart person" stereotype in appearance, or Genius Bruiser—for ones who look like good fighters and happen to be smart as well.

Urgent Transformation Crisis

  • What tropes do we have about characters pinching themselves to make sure they're awake? Pinch Me doesn't seem to fit. Here an unexpectedly animorphic kid pinches himself and screams - he still thinks that the change is totally awesome, he just didn't realize that he was using claws.

Local Commercials

  • The camera pans the restaurant/furniture warehouse/car dealer's lot/etc. and then cuts to shots of individual dishes/couches/parked cars while either the non-insane proprietor or an unnamed local announcer describes the business, service and (in general terms) product on offer. Finish up with an exterior shot of the store with voiceover and supers of the store name, address and phone number
    • Sometimes includes a "donut hole"—an empty space in the middle of about 10 seconds where a "weekly special," etc. can be dropped in. Same commercial can go on for years with just the middles being changed as necessary.

Other Location Counterpart

  • I'm thinking like on Bones when B&B went to England and met "the English version of us" there and ran around with a cop and another forensics guy. This has to have been done on other shows (or is troped somewhere and I can't guess what it might be called), right?
  • This happened once on an NCIS episode. Gibbs and the rest of the team didn't go anywhere special, they just ran into carbon copies of their personalities with different faces. I also haven't seen it troped anywhere. It's been done in at least one other show, but I can't remember what show that was.
  • This would be Similar Squad.

SpongeBob SquarePants

Code Geass

  • Throughout the series, Lelouch's catchphrase when geassing people is "Lelouch vi Britannia commands you.....". In the last episode, when assuming his Evil Overlord persona, he for the first time says the phrase to an audience without using geass, commanding the whole world to obey him. I'd call this an Ironic Echo, except that deals with one character echoing a quote from another, not the same character doing it both times.


Captain Flamingo

  • The show's setting is persistently referred to by the odd name "Halverston and area." It's even subtly Lampshaded at times, with the narrator uncomfortably tacking on "and area" where it doesn't really fit the flow of the narration.
    • A one-person version of Insistent Terminology?
      • It's more of a locational version. It doesn't quite line up, but it's the closest we have.

Crush-grip of warning

  • Seen it a million times: An exceptionally strong character will grip the hand or wrist of another character and apply pressure enough to cause pain, while exhibiting no outward signs of effort. Extreme examples will cause the gripee's knees to buckle in pain. Often used by the Technical Pacifist or a Ridiculously Human Robot.

Fallout 3

  • On the Enclave Radio station in Fallout 3, Eden, in a rant about the threats to the security of America, specifically singles out The Brotherhood of Steel, and the ghouls. If you know Fallout, but don't know of the Enclave (having not gotten far enough in Fallout 2), this will send up immediate warning bells that he's a villain—The Brotherhood of Steel has almost universally been portrayed as a force for good, and the ghouls are, despite looking like decaying corpses, ultimately no worse than normal humans.

Blackadder

Josiah Hardwood: Mind sir, or I shall take off my belt, and by thunder me trousers'll fall down.

Possibly Symbolic Character Costume Coordination

  • In the first two seasons of Angel, Angel, a vampire with a soul, wears black and other dark colors (as he does throughout the series), while Wesley, a former Watcher (which is like a Slayer's Jedi Master), wears a lot of light-colored clothing. Consequently, there's always a nice contrast when they stand next to each other, and it's hard not to think, What Do You Mean Its Not Symbolic? Also, Wesley's wardrobe gets considerably darker as he becomes a darker character.
    • Another troper has noticed the same effect between the Fifth Doctor and The Master. Probably coincidental, since it never seems to occur with other incarnations, but it's a striking visual anyway.

Reverse Expy

  • Watching Lupin the 3rd: The Castle of Cagliostro recently, I realized that Clarisse and Count Cagliostro himself are dead ringers for Nausicaa and Kurotowa from director Hayao Miyazaki's Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind - except Nausicaa came later. (Mind you, their personalities are completely different...)
    • Wouldn't that just mean Nausicaa was an Expy of Clarisse? (I haven't seen any of the works involved, so if this makes no sense for some reason...)
    • Perhaps we need something like Beta Expy, for when the more well-known version is the one encountered first, and the viewer realizes later that they're really an Expy of the original. For example, we meet Owen Burnett way before we meet Preston Vogel on Gargoyles.


A Recurrent Phrase Thing

  • What would you call the repetition, in The Hobbit, of sentences like "Bilbo wished he was safe at home. Not for the last time."? It's not a Catch Phrase, because it's in the narration; it's not an Author Catchphrase, because it only shows up in The Hobbit; it's not Arc Words, because it's insufficiently Invested With Significance...
    • I think that's just a running gag.
  • This also happens in The Adventures of Conrad Stargard, where the narration repeatedly has Conrad wishing that he had gone to the beach for his vacation instead of going on a hike that gets him Trapped in Another World.

Never Happens On Camera

  • In The Big Lebowski, the Dude never bowls a single frame on camera. I don't think there was any intended significance to this, it was apparently just an accident of editing. Still, it feels like this is an example of something. The only thing like it I can think of is how in Ferris Buellers Day Off, Ferris and Rooney never actually interact; during every "conversation" they have, one of them is either completely silent or a recording.
    • First one could be Informed Ability?
      • Eh, not quite. If the Dude's bowling skills were being talked up the whole movie, then it would be Informed Ability. All we're told is that he bowls, not that he bowls particularly well.
    • The first is close to Second Hand Storytelling, but doesn't quite fit there, as it's not really relevant to the plot. I'm not sure the second is anything tropeworthy in particuar.

Dumb Fans

  • Not Fan Dumb, but fans who are actually ignorant of what actually happens in a series. Not Fanon Discontinuity either, where they know it exists but choose not to; something like an example I've found in Real Life:

After the recent revelation of Tobi being Madara Uchiha in Naruto, I mentioned this to a person who was going to cosplay the former for Halloween. His response? "No, Tobi is Obito Uchiha!", which led to the following.

Me: But they just disproved that theory.
Him: No, my sister says that Tobi is Obito!

And so on.

Persona series

  • In the end of Persona 2: Eternal Punishment you find out that the events of the entire series were nothing more than a contest between two representatives of the Powers That Be -- Philemon, representing human strength, and Nyarlathotep, representing human weakness -- to see which was truly the more powerful aspect of humanity. You actually do get to punch Philemon for what he put everyone through for the sake of a game with his Evil Counterpart.
    • Reality Is A Chessboard? This can be seen in the Xanth books, too, where the various planet demons are engaged in a game, and use the characters as part of it. Also seen in some Star Trek eps, and Stargate Atlantis, when Shepherd and McKay find a "game" that turn out to be giving their orders to two countries as Word Of God. Maybe I'll launch that.

Tales series

  • Does the tendency for Namco (Bandai) US to remove the J-Pop/J-Rock main themes out of Tales games for US release, in order to please an audience for the games that—as far as anyone can tell—doesn't actually exist fall under any translation or marketing tropes? It seems like it should, but..
  • Does Klarth from Tales of Phantasia fall under any of the traditional RPG tropes? You'd think the party's resident summoner and professional scholar would be a Squishy Wizard but he has the best defense in the game, and his offense isn't bad for the first half either, considering that all his weapons are books. Badass Bookworm? Not really, the looks don't fit, he's a scary looking guy covered in tattoos. More like the kind of person you'd hope not to see at the end of an alley rather than someone with their own personal library. Adventurer Archaeologist?
    • Genius Bruiser, maybe?
      • Eh, he's not particularly big or strong either. Just vaguely menacing looking in a shamanic witch-doctor sort of way. Perhaps it's best to just stick with The Smart Guy.

Mana Khemia

  • What exactly is Sulpher, trope-wise? The player and main character can understand him just fine, but none of the other characters can hear him as doing anything but meowing, requiring Vayne to translate for them. It seems related to The Unintelligible, but doesn't fall under any of the accepted permutations of that trope.

Elfen Lied

  • I want to add the Vectors somewhere for how rigidly defined and limited they are, compared to how variable similar telekinetic powers often are—they act just like an extra set of arms, albeit invisible, superhumanly strong and flexible, freakishly long arms. But the thing is, this is the exact opposite of a Green Lantern Ring, and they don't fall under Minovsky Physics, since it's for particles and energies with rigidly defined properties, not powers.

A commercials trope:

  • Whatever this fake PSA is parodying.

Promoted to Main Plot

  • Is there a trope for background plot elements—fluff, basically—that get promoted to a major plot element in another part of the same universe? Two examples that immediately come to mind, both from Dungeons & Dragons: the Blood War in Planescape, and the Beholder Genocide Wars in Spelljammer.
    • Something like a Plot Tumor, I reckon?
      • It's similar, but I wouldn't call it exactly the same thing—it's not so much a minor element taking over a continuity, as being given a corner of the continuity where it can be freely expanded upon without crowding out other content. Another example sprang to mind while I was considering it -- Suikoden V focuses on an event that was significant to the backstory of a few minor characters, but wasn't expanded on or terribly core to the main plot until it got a game devoted to it.

New continuity for fanfic

  • The Superman fanfic Veritas takes advantage of the multiple DC continuities in a way I've never seen any other fic do anything like. It's a little like a Patchwork Fic, but not really. Instead of fitting the fic into an established Superman 'verse, it constructs a new one to serve the purposes of the plot.
    • Sounds like an Alternate Universe fic to me.

Video game ghetto

  • When Wikipedia's article on Half Life 2 became a featured article (a honor which goes to the best articles), one of the users claimed that "something so trivial, commercial and unimportant as a computer game" was unfit for featuring on the main page. He also suggested that it "should either not be in a wikipedia, because it's importance is not obvious, or it should have a far smaller entry to reflect it's unimportance in the order of things." Also, it's "barely a suitable subject for inclusion in an encyclopaedia", and video gaming in general is "a trivial area, not deserving of much effort in recording." Wheeee.
    • Sounds like Public Medium Ignorance.

Can't lift off without it

  • When the Phoenix is about to take off in Star Trek: First Contact, Zefram Cochrane realizes he forgot something and acts like it's really important, saying "we can't lift off without it!" Just as Riker and Geordi prepare to abort, Cochrane finds it, pushes it into the cockpit's dashboard and switches it on. Rock music blares.

Green Lantern

  • The way the Silver Age Green Lantern kept justifying his failures through some nonsenical invocation of his Weaksauce Weakness to yellow, like saying that the enemy contains a yellow compound, or that there is some "invisible yellow" or that the monster is giving off "infra-yellow" radiation.

Big Damn Shuttle Launch Watching movies like Armageddon or Apollo 13, where there are enormous scenes JUST for the sake of getting the guys onto the rocket and into the air, let alone anything they actually do in space. These can last up to twenty minutes, almost as though they're in real time as opposed to movie-sped-up time.

Pushing Fireball This is when someone gets hit by a fireball, but instead of burning or melting or whatnot, they just knocked aside (and possibly knocked out). This happened in the X-men movie when the fire-mutant-kid attacks the police with fireballs. I know that fireballs involve expanding gasses, and that this can push people around, but let's not forget the 'ridiculous heat' that tends to be involved.

Not the same as "Outrun the Fireball", because no one needs to be running.

What's Cloudcuckoolander Going To Do Next?

  • This is when two or more people are talking about a Cloudcuckoolander who has been built up as harmless, yet shows signs of becoming dangerous. Neither the former nor the latter can be discredited as Obfuscating Stupidity or an accident. Character A asks, "What do you think he/she's going to do next?" In Firefly, this happened to River, but I know I've seen it before. The answer was, "Either blow us all up or rub soup in her hair."

The Mask Fools No One Just something I noticed on Code Geass: Lelouch actually wears a second mask under his iconic Zero Mask, which consists of a cloth mouth and nose covering. Thing is, said mask fools absolutely no one, despite covering a good portion of his face still. Though if I recall, the few times this happened, the person who saw him had already figured out his identity.

Ringu

  • In the film Ringu, the protagonist and her love interest conclude that they need to find Sadako's body and bring her closure to break the curse. This ends up accomplishing absolutely nothing, and it turns out the real way to break the curse is to copy the video tape and show it to someone else -- Sadako just wants to kill people, and as long as she's given a new target, she'll leave you alone. This seemed like it would be a subversion of some sort of "Never given a proper burial" trope, but I can't find any sign of such a trope.

Asatte no Houkou

  • In the anime, Tetsu and Karada make a great couple. In the manga, Tetsu forces her to give him a hand job and any potental they have to become more then friends is ruined. Basicly, Schrodingers Cat but with the nature of the relationship between characters, rather then their deaths.

Assassin's Creed I

  • In the game's manual, it's mentioned that the Anima device is actually controlled by a game controller appropriate to whatever platform you're playing on, as the familiar interface makes the adjustment easier for subjects. Although ultimately just a device to help make a Justified Tutorial by making references to pressing buttons actually make sense in-game, it has a "meta" quality that seems like it should fit under one of the Fourth Wall or Metafictional tropes. I can't find one it quite fits, though.

Tongue Feet If someone is made entirely of tongue, then they taste wherever they walk: there's an example of this in Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends and once in the animated version of The Tick (animation).

Takes all the fun out of it

  • Just read the latest Girl Genius; hairbrained schemes being deflated by a practical solution (and the reaction to said solution) has to be a trope, but danged if I can find it.
    • Don't know if it's a trope, but if it is the perfect title would be Occam's Razor Burn. (Can't make a YKTTW with just one example, right?)

What if we didn't live in a fantasy world? The last few panels of this Order of the Stick strip have got to be a trope, but which one?

Over 9000 percent complete?!

Wrong frame

  • The main character find someone doing something wrong(usually tag writing) and he says him to stop doing it. The guy escapes, leaving the weapon/spray can/whatever was holding to do what he was doing. The hero takes it to get it off, and someone coming that way looks at him and thinks he did it and call police.

Dotted-Line Eyesight

  • I see this a LOT in silent-era cartoons. A character looks at something, and a series of dotted lines make a pathway to what he's looking at. I also saw it once in a Chuck Jones Tom and Jerry short.

Sound Test Spoiler?

  • In Sonic Battle, the reward for clearing all the stories is unlocking a Green Hill Zone battle arena. Anyone who listens to the sound test before unlocking it would be spoiled by the iconic music, if the devteam hadn't deliberately left it out. I wanted to list this as an aversion of Interface Spoiler, but someone deleting examples for "not a menu option" makes me think it might not fit. Halp?

Let's fool the readers!

  • A magazine posts fake news and it says it's real. Some days ago I found a magazine showing some fanmade Ben 10-themed Yu-Gi-Oh! cards and saying they're the 5 most rare cards in the new Yu-Gi-Oh! expansion Bringer of the Omnitrix and talking about a whole Structure Deck about the "Omnitrix Alien" monster type.

Literally illustrated cliché

  • A gag from Camp Lazlo: Lazlo says "Wait a minute...", a silde is briefly inserted reading "ONE MINUTE LATER...", then Lazlo finishes his sentence. Similar to a common Tex Avery gag where a cliché is illustrated literally (he even did one entire cartoon, "Symphony in Slang," consisting of nothing but these gags). It doesn't seem to fit under the pun-related tropes—not a play on words here, but a visual representation of a literal reading of a metaphorical or figurative cliché. Whatzit?
    • Some ideas: Reenacted Metaphor, Metaphor Reenactment, Unmetaphorical Reenactment, Non-figurative Phrase, Non-figurative Metaphor, Literal Phrase Gag, Visual Phrase Gag, Literally Illustrated Phrase, Phrase Reenactment, Phrase Reenactment Gag, Literallustration, Unmetaphorical Metaphor

The whole Drew Curtis Jon Stewart... thing.

  • So Jon Stewart is asked about the Internet's impact on the Rally to Restore Sanity. He says that they'd had it planned for months, but Reddit "didn't hurt." Drew, almost certainly drunk, posts a two-screen-long rant about Jon understating the Internet's contribution. Pretty much every last active member tells him he's out of his mind. He ends up being interviewed on Fox News, and Reddit publicly posts that they love Fark, but they're not mad at Jon Stewart. A mock "award" is created for Drew "getting an entire social networking site to agree [that he's flipped]." Everyone's fans are left shaking their heads, laughing like idiots. I feel like this has to fit into a trope or two.

Upgrading the Walker Machines in Super Robot Wars Alpha Gaiden

  • In Super Robot Wars Alpha Gaiden, if you fully upgrade the walker machines (some of the most useless mechs in the game) and sell the WMs, you get a ton of useful items you couldn't get otherwise. It seems to be a Magikarp Power (useless unit becoming useful), but the effect is much more indirect than is useal for Magikarp Power, so I'm not sure.

Extreme School Demotion

  • In The Emperors New School It was discovered that Kuzco did not complete his requirements for Kuzcogarten, and he was sent back there to complete them.
  • In The Simpsons When Sideshow Bob was elected mayor, Bart was demoted to Kindergarten as revenge for getting him sent to prison in the first place.
  • In Phil of the Future Phil is sent back to second grade to gain legible handwriting, because by the time the Diffy's came from, handwriting is essentially obsolete.
  • In My Life as a Teenage Robot, Jenny is sent to kindergarten because despite being, well, a teenage robot, she has only been built for five years.
  • Unknown Popeye Cartoon: Olive Oyl refuses to date popeye unless he can get an "edumacation": he first starts out in the eighth grade but bungles so many times that he eventually gets demoted all the way to Kindergarten.
  1. ↑ the main obstacle being her own fear/insecurity; she eventually propositions a guy she's sure she can trust, because her friend trusts him
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