This is discussion archived from a time before the current discussion method was installed.
Lale: How did Figure It Out Yourself never come up in YKTTW?
Morgan Wick: 1. 11 inbound links. 2. Being unedited for a long time until recently. 3. This version makes the similarity clearer than any description on YKTTW. 4. They are slightly different tropes, as FIOY has to do with stuff that's important to know for plot purposes and is seen as a negative, whereas this is more neutral and so specialized I wonder if it's even a trope.
gibberingtroper The real trope to me is how the character can only ever understand something by experiencing it in some involved fashion, yet the audience gets it while sitting in their chairs eating popcorn. For example, we all understand what the Matrix is, and none of us had to be awakened from a virtual dream state, squirted out of a pod, rehabilitated or jacked into a fully immersive virtual presentation to get it. The real reason you have to be "shown" the Matrix is that you'll think Morpheus is crazy if he just explains it to you.
