The TVTropes Trope Finder is where you can come to ask questions like "Do we have this one?" and "What's the trope about...?" Trying to rediscover a long lost show or other medium but need a little help? Head to Media Finder and try your luck there. Want to propose a new trope? You should be over at You Know, That Thing Where.
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openPinball Playfield Prop
AKA a "Toy." This is basically what it says on the tin. Pinball tables with figurines of some description, ranging from a statue/doll to an animatronic.
Examples include:
Physical Pinball Tables:
- Apollo 13 has a Saturn rocket (the titular Apollo 13) and the moon, which has an electromagnet in it to make balls orbit.
- Mary Shellys Frankenstein has a bust (plus both arms) of The Monster, who acts as a Popper for the balls.
- Stern's Starship Troopers has a Brain Bug.
Digital pinball tables:
- Pinball Deluxe:
- Jurassic Links has several; a quartet of dinosaur eggs (that can be hatched with a skillshot, whereupon they react when hit), a bronosaurus figurine, and an animated golf cart being chased by a T-Rex.
- Rydes has a diner in the Town section, a gas pump in the Garage, and a quintet of traffic cones that play a honking car horn SFX.
- Tradewind is studded with various toys (a mine, a windmill, and some pine trees on table 1, and a gem mine and more pine trees on table 2. In the Galactic Trade skin it's changed to a centrifuge and cooling stack, and the trees are kept in biodome sattelites). It is a very quest-heavy table, with various Toys needed to be hit in order to collect and refine various resources.
openMistaking warning for outburst
You try to warn someone, but they think you're disrupting them. Here's the example:
- SpongeBob SquarePants: In "Food Con Castaways", SpongeBob and Patrick repeatedly annoy Mr. Krabs and Squidward in the car on the way to Food Con, and the former forces them to not make one peep until they get there. Suddenly, SpongeBob repeatedly screams, "PEEP!", and Mr. Krabs thinks he's disrupting again until everyone realizes they're going over Peep's Cliff.
resolved Parting Gift
Is there a trope where a character leaves something behind when they die - like, for lack of a better description, a video game character dropping loot after defeat? Intentionally or unintentionally.
openPoison the Antidote
A kind of gambit where a first attempt at something is a feint to see what the victim does, the second is the real deal.
e.g.
- Alice wants to poison Bob, who is paranoid about poison. She puts emetics in his food, not enough to kill him but enough that he thinks he's in mortal danger, and he pulls out a vial of antidote from a chain on his neck. Now knowing where he keeps the bottle and what it looks like, Alice can replace the contents with poison, and put emetics in Bob's food again, this time successfully killing him once he downs the bottle.
- Charlie is a general tasked with taking out a fortress. He first sends a mass attack wave of Cannon Fodder and takes careful note of where the traps, snipers, artillery etc. are located. His second attack uses combined arms to specifically target those locations first, neutralizing them and quickly swamping the defenders.
openHuman Computer
An occupation found in some science fiction/fantasy settings where Omnidisciplinary Scientists or similar folk serve as general-purpose intellectuals, usually in service to a noble.
Examples off the top of my head are Mentats from Dune or Maesters from A Song of Ice and Fire. Are there any other examples for this to be trope-worthy?
openSupernatural Compass
A trope where someone has a compass or similar trinket that, rather than pointing towards North, uses supernatural powers to point towards something else.
- Holly's pendant that points towards the Phoenix in Monster Rancher.
- Jacks' compass that points towards the holder's greatest desire in Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl.
- Syaoran's Compass in Cardcaptor Sakura can point towards Clow Cards, and I think Sakura's staff can as well? That one I may be misremembering.
- In Are You Afraid of the Dark Universe?, Nestor (and later Hunter) has a scale from The Creature that points towards where the Black Lagoon is currently located.
openNo need to act through the phone Film
A scene that reveals a Twist - Bob recieves a call from Alice, who sounds like she's feeling one thing (scared, in love, friendly). Then we cut to Alice's side of the conversation, and she's acting cold and unemotional. It becomes clear she's lying to Bob about her feelings, and since they're on the phone, she doesn't need to fake the facial expressions to sell the lie.
It feels like it doesn't make much sense to me - if someone's pretending to be crying, even on the phone, they'd probably be making the facial expressions regardless - it'd be harder to act by only changing her's voice, but not her physicality. Especially if she's used to lying in person to begin with.
openFind a suitable trope, please! 5
Hello! I need your help to find a trip about that:
Character won't hearing about something, what he hates. Possible about Lotso from Toy Story 3, who starts dislike Daisy. Just, if character hears what he won't to hear, it makes him angry.
Please! Help me find examples for this discussion.
openFan with strings on them to show when the air is flowing Film
So in visual medias, you very often have little strings of fabric or paper attached to the blades of fans, vents, etc. Presumably the purpose is to show when they're running (and starting/stopping, although in some cases the fan is just on and this doesn't seem to be relevant in any way), but naturally nobody randomly attaches stuff to their fans in real life, so it's a bit jarring. Is there a trope for that?
openWar between different deities creations
Different gods create their own types of life, which fight.
Example being Evangelion where Humans, created by lilith, engage in war against the Angels, created by adam.
openMorton's Fork but it's just someone finding any reason to justify doing what they want to do
Like, Lily & Marshall making a bet where if Marshall wins, they have sex in the bathroom, but if Lily wins, they have sex in the bathroom.
Or Hitori Bocchi noticing that someone is shy like her, so she shouldn't speak to them, then noticing that someone else is super outgoing, so she shouldn't speak to them.
openx, y, and z walk into a bar...
Do we have a trope for the stock phrase "an X, a Y, and a Z walk into a bar"? I see jokes with that particular set-up everywhere.
openI'm Caught...Actually no
It looks like someone is going to be caught, only for someone else to get blamed.
- Dexter: In season two, Dexter is called to the police station in the middle of the night. He thinks this means they've realized he's a Serial Killer. However, it turns out that the police believe someone else is responsible for his crimes.
openHappen to choose September 11 for minor disaster Literature
In a book published in 1997, September 11 is the date when a sinkhole opens under a row of temporary buildings. Everyone is rescued alive and only minor injuries reported, but the connection with the date 4 years later is an intersting coincidence.
openThe Dismissive Friend Group
Do we have a trope for when someone is super excited about a certain event coming up, but none of their friends seem to take it seriously, and that leads the person to get increasingly disappointed/angry? Off the top of my head, I can think of "The One Where No One's Ready" from Friends, as well as that that MLP episode, "Suited for Disaster."
openout of season songs
I vaguely remember finding a trope about non-seasonal songs being played during specific holiday seasons (e.g. The Cranberries' "Zombie" getting played around Halloween even though it has nothing to do with actual zombies), but I don't remember the name.
A character is presumed dead, but is alive and in danger nearby. The character will yell to a mourner, to which the mourner will say that they can still hear the character, before finally realizing what the person is saying and going off to help. Usually "I can still hear them now" or similar phrases are said.
Edited by DrOlson