Darth Wiki / Crappy Trope Definitions

Are you tired of the boring old accurate trope definitions? Never fear! For according to some tropers, we don't need to actually go to the page and read the definition. We can shoehorn any example into any trope, no matter how little sense it makes!

See also, How Not to Write an Example, and How Not to Write a Trope Page. Compare I Thought It Meant.

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As this page has gotten too big, some folders have been moved to subpages.

• Tropes
• YMMV

Playing With a Trope

Want to add a trope or Audience Reaction even if it clearly doesn't fit? Play with it to shoehorn it in anyway! Even if it does fit, keep in mind that tropes are bad and cliché while transformations are automatically clever and original, so try to shoehorn in a transformation anyway.

• Averted Trope:
  • A work you like doesn't use a trope, but you still feel like mentioning it on a trope page so more people will learn about it. Bonus points if you imply the work is better for not using that trope.
  • A trope doesn't happen, even if it wasn't expected. It's totally worth mentioning that The Bible doesn't have Space Pirates.
  • If you want to praise a work you like, add averted negative Audience Reactions. For instance, you can praise a dark work you like by adding averted Too Bleak, Stopped Caring and gushing about how much the work did make you care.
  • Similarly, you can complain about works you dislike by adding averted positive Audience Reactions. E.g. averted Awesome Music to complain about music that's nothing special.
• Conversed Trope: Someone talks about the trope. The same as Lampshaded Trope and Discussed Trope.
• Deconstructed Trope:
  • Any time a trope is used in a dark and edgy way. In other words, a fancier way to say Played for Drama and Played for Horror.
  • Like "subverted", "deconstructed" can mean absolutely anything, so feel free to slap it on every example from your favourite work to make it look smart and edgy.
  • The audience reacting negatively to the trope.
  • A trope is played straight in a sad and/or cynical way.
  • A trope is subverted via Surprisingly Realistic Outcome, or is portrayed in a sad and/or cynical way.
  • A trope doesn't happen, and it's sad and/or cynical that the trope wasn't played straight.
  • A trope gets inverted in a sad and/or cynical way.
• Defied Trope:
  • The trope being subverted, averted or inverted, even if no character actively tried to subvert/avert/invert it.
  • The writers choose not to use the trope. It's not like defying a trope is something that has to happen in-universe or anything, so "defied by the author" is a perfectly normal and coherent thing to say.
• Discussed Trope: Someone talks about the trope. The same as Lampshaded Trope and Conversed Trope.
• Double Subversion: Something that is Not a Subversion leads to the trope being played straight.
• Downplayed Trope:
  • Something that happened that fits a few of the requirements for a trope, but not all of them.
  • Shoehorn in Audience Reactions onto a work's YMMV page when only a very small minority of people reacted that way. For example, a downplayed Scrappy would be a character that is hated by a few people. It's not like playing with a trope can only be done to actual tropes, which audience reactions are not.
  • Use downplayed negative audience reactions if said reaction makes your favorite work sound bad or it's an opinion you don't feel strongly about. For example, use downplayed Too Bleak, Stopped Caring for works that sometimes get too dark, but didn't make anyone stop caring about it.
• Enforced Trope:
  • The writers wanted to use the trope.
  • A character makes the trope happen.
  • Complain about a time you think your favourite writers used the trope badly and speculate that they were forced to include it due to outside factors, even though there's zero evidence for that.
• Exaggerated Trope: A trope is taken to extremes for parody.
• Exploited Trope:
  • A character happens to benefit from a trope, even if they did nothing to take advantage of it.
  • A character intentionally sets up the trope.
• Implied Trope:
  • The trope is lampshaded more subtly than usual.
  • Wild Mass Guessing that the trope might have occurred.
• Intended Audience Reaction:
  • Has some evil troper added an unexpected audience reaction to the YMMV page of your favourite show? Assert, with no evidence, that the writer deliberately aimed for that reaction for whatever reason. After all, they cannot have mispredicted how the viewers would react — only idiots (like the writers for shows you dislike) do that.
  • Your favourite author's Deliberate Flaw Retcons.
• Inverted Trope:
  • The trope doesn't happen at all.
  • The trope being played straight with a Gender Flip, even though it has nothing to do with gender.
  • A trope that does have something to do with gender is done by a member of the other gender.
  • An inversion of the most common type of straight example, even if the trope itself is still played straight.
  • A trope applies to everyone except one character (when being unique to one character isn't a key part of the trope).
  • Since positive Audience Reactions are more lenient than negative ones when it comes to adding examples, combine one with this to complain about things you don't like (for example, use inverted Awesome Music to complain about bad music).
  • Add inverted negative Audience Reactions to complain about the opposite problem said Audience Reaction is about (for example, use inverted Sweetness Aversion to complain about a work containing too much dark and edgy stuff if Angst Aversion and Too Bleak, Stopped Caring don't work).
  • If you want to praise a work you like, try adding inverted negative Audience Reactions. For instance, you can praise a dark work you like by adding inverted Too Bleak, Stopped Caring and gushing about how the work's tone made you care more instead of less.
• Invoked Trope:
  • A character takes advantage of a trope.
  • The writer chooses to include the trope.
  • "Invoke" means "cause", so pothole here whenever something causes a trope to happen — because as everyone knows, tropes normally just appear ex nihilo, completely disconnected from causality.
  • The trope isn't being invoked at all, but you want to use a YMMV trope on the main page and realized that using the [[invoked]] tag allows you to do so.
  • A synonym for Intended Audience Reaction.
• Justified Trope:
  • The use of a trope is Hand Waved.
  • The use of a trope makes sense, even if its common usage makes perfect sense too.
  • You think a work used a trope well.
  • Outside factors forced the writers to include the trope.
  • There is literally any reason whatsoever for this trope to exist in this work.
  • You feel insulted that a supposedly bad trope is listed as having an example from a work you like, but you feel that there has to be a reason why it was used. Be sure to add an extra bullet point regarding this so your voice can be heard!
• Lampshaded Trope:
  • Someone talks about the trope. The same as Discussed Trope and Conversed Trope.
  • A work calls attention to the presence of a trope in a different work.
  • While we're on the subject, be sure to pothole to this trope anywhere anything about the setting, characters or plot of your favourite series is pointed out or stated in any way, in order to make said series - and therefore yourself for liking it - seem more intelligent and self-aware.
• Parodied Trope:
  • A trope is taken to extremes, regardless of whether it was intended as parody.
  • The trope being Played for Laughs.
• Played for Drama:
  • A Drama Trope is used normally.
  • If the trope is used seriously, don't list this — use Deconstructed Trope instead because it sounds so much more awesome.
• Played for Horror:
  • A Horror Trope is used normally.
  • If the trope has its scary elements and/or possibilities brought up, don't list this — use Deconstructed Trope instead because it sounds so much more awesome.
• Played for Laughs:
  • A Comedy Trope is used normally.
  • The same as Parodied Trope.
• Played Straight: If you can't shoehorn your example into a transformation and have to use this, make sure to point it out even if there's absolutely nothing unusual about the trope being played straight in whatever work you're writing about. Feel free to list 15 examples from the same show, 12 of which start with "Played straight in episode X..."
• Subverted Trope: "Subverted" can mean literally anything, so tack this onto any trope (or Audience Reaction) and it can go onto any page! Suggestions:
  • You guessed that a trope would happen, but it turns out you were just reading into it way too much and your prediction didn't come true.
  • A trope fails to appear for any reason. It doesn't matter if it was never set up to happen in the first place.
  • Any time a trope seems to be played with. If labelling it a subversion doesn't feel right, you can always slap on something like "partial subversion" to justify it.
  • Any event being subverted, even if it's not a trope. In such a case, just list the example as "Subverted Trope".
  • Use subverted negative Audience Reactions to gush about a work. For instance, you can add subverted Angst Aversion if people expect a work to be off-putting because it's too depressing and dark, but you enjoyed it just fine. Don't forget to explain why you liked the work, even if it has nothing to do with its darkness!
  • Use subverted positive Audience Reactions to complain about a work not living up to your expectations, e.g. subverted Awesome Music to complain about underwhelming music.
  • Use subverted Audience Reactions when you expected audiences to react a certain way before release, but they ended up having a different reaction. For example, use subverted Audience-Alienating Premise for works that had an off-sounding premise but ended up doing well commercially.
  • Due to Common Knowledge, some people who haven't seen the work and only know of it through Pop-Cultural Osmosis think that a certain trope happens, when it actually doesn't.
  • A trope is played less than usual, or backwards, or with genders swapped, with a extraneous few details slightly different than its most common form, or without basic defining traits of the trope.
  • You mistook something for an example of a trope but later found out that it wasn't.
• Unbuilt Trope: A work you like launched a now overrused genre/cliché/trope... So go ahead and explain why the work used the trope better than its followers or how the trope was slightly more justified.
• Zig-Zagging Trope:
  • You can't figure out what trope this event is an example of, but you can find one that looks kinda like it if you squint real hard, so that's good enough.
  • A trope is played in more than one way in the same work, on completely separate and unrelated occasions.

Trivia

The great thing about Trivia on this site is that, unlike other instances of trivia where pesky "facts" get in the way, you can add any trivia item to a work's page based entirely on your opinion.

• Ability over Appearance:
  • Complain about adaptation changes you don't like.
  • Use this to fight back against people complaining about changed appearances.
• Acclaimed Flop: A movie that flopped at the box office you personally liked and/or didn't get much attention.
• Adored by the Network: Use this to complain about a show that you don't like and gets played too often.
• Alan Smithee: A funny, slightly modified name is used for a person in the credits.
• All-Star Cast: If you consider a cast to be "All-Star", then this trope fits. Are you a huge fan of all the minor internet personalities in the work? Go ahead and add it, and do some gushing for good measure!
• Approval of God: You like a fan work so much that it must be a given that the creator would feel the same.
• Ascended Fanon: Your interpretation of something is so good, it definitely will become canon.
• Author's Saving Throw: A move was made to alleviate criticisms because you feel like it did. Ignore all Word of God and Word of Saint Paul requirements because if you can see what the intent is, it might as well be confirmed. From there, you can make your example about any of the following:
  • A trailer alleviates some concerns about an unreleased work whether or not it was the author's intent.
  • Fans are angry about something happening in one episode. Shortly afterwards, another episode comes out to address these concerns. Because the writers, actors, editors, animators, etc. clearly managed to remake the whole episode in just a few weeks/days in reaction to fan complaints.
  • A tie-in work released right when the work comes out, such as a Novelization or a Licensed Game, fixes a criticism audiences have long after the tie-in has finished production. This is equally applicable when the tie-in is released before the work comes out.
  • Something extremely specific a previous installment did that was largely hated does not appear in the newest installment, no matter how nonsensical or irrelevant it would be for it to show up again. If you're phrasing your example as, "at least this installment didn't do this", you're doing it right.
  • Gush about anything you think a new installment did better than an old one.
• Awesome, Dear Boy: How awesome a work is.
• Bad Export for You: Complain about exports you don't like.
• Box Office Bomb: Forget that this is specifically for movies and use this for examples of flops in other mediums.
• Breakaway Pop Hit: You feel like the pop song attached to the film is vastly superior to the film.
• Breaking News Interruption: A page that doesn't exist on this wiki. Please use We Interrupt This Program instead because it sounds extremely catchy.
• Career Resurrection: A creator or actor has one work or role that people like, regardless if it causes any true momentum to their career overall.
• Cash-Cow Franchise:
  • A work you dislike has merchandise, therefore it makes it bad.
  • A work you like has merchandise, therefore it makes it good.
• Cast the Expert: A reality/cooking/home improvement show casts someone who is knowledgeable about the subject matter.
• Cast Incest: Related characters are played by actors you personally want to see get together in real life.
• Celebrity Voice Actor: A well-known actor you dislike is voicing a character you like, so feel free to use this on the work page to complain about it.
• The Character Died with Him:
  • An actor who played in this work died, regardless if the character in the work was killed in story.
  • You personally wish the character was killed off after the actor who played them died.
• Christmas Rushed: A work you dislike was released around the holiday season.
• Colbert Bump: You mentioned a work on your own YouTube channel/podcast.
• Contractual Obligation Project: A work you personally find to be very bad. A great backup plan if your Money, Dear Boy or Creator's Apathy entries for the same work somehow get deleted.
• Cowboy BeBop at His Computer: The media got something wrong about a work you like. Use this as an opportunity to complain.
• Creator Backlash:
  • You don't like the work of a creator.
  • A creator admits that some hyperspecific part of their work was slightly flawed and could've been executed better.
  • Any creator hates any work, especially those they had no involvement in. Creator plus backlash equals Creator Backlash, what more can you ask for?
• Creator Killer: Something controversial happens in the creator's personal life and is therefore fired.
• Creator's Apathy: The part about referencing Word of God confirmation is a suggestion and not a requirement, so you can use this to accuse the creators of not caring about the quality of their work, regardless of whether they've confirmed or denied it.
• The Danza: An actor is most known for a specific role. Any similarities in name are irrelevant.
• Dawson Casting: Complain about casting choices you don't like who just happen to not be appropriately aged as well.
• Dear Negative Reader:
  • The author shows sympathy towards the detractors.
  • The author has any kind of response to negative feedback.
• Defictionalization: A great tool to list every cool thing from your favorite work that should be made into a real product.
• Development Hell: A place for impatient people to put a work to complain about it taking too long for it to be made.
• Disowned Adaptation: An adaptation you don't like.
• Distanced from Current Events: A work was delayed because of the COVID-19 Pandemic.
• Doing It for the Art: A badge of honor. If a work doesn't have this trivia, it means it is horrible and has no artistic value. Correct this injustice on the page of a work you like immediately, and make sure your evidence consists solely of personal reactions such as "It looks gorgeous" and "That battle was awesome". That alone should show that money played no role in their creative process.
• Dueling Works: Two works kind of have a similar theme/idea if you think about it. Both works have have similar-enough settings (i.e. taking place somewhere in space, or in a city) while having a somewhat comedic tone? Both works share the same time slot on different channels, even if both works target completely different audiences? Both works share one or two similarities and were released years, if not decades, apart? These are all great examples and should be added right away.
• Dummied Out: Something planned for a video game was removed from the final product. This can still apply if the code for the feature was completely deleted; being coded in an inaccessible form is optional.
• Executive Meddling: Complain about pre-release changes you don't like. Remember, the creator is always right, while the executives never are.
• Exiled from Continuity: A character you hate hasn't appeared in the franchise for a while.
• Fan Community Nickname: Similar to Fan Nickname, a place to share derogatory names for fandoms or parts of fandoms you dislike.
• First Appearance: In the trivia page for the first episode of a series, list every major character in the show, especially if it's a cast that remains small and static its entire run.
• Franchise Killer: The most recent installment in a franchise was a flop which must mean the franchise is dead. Don't wait for any official confirmation that the plug has been pulled on the franchise as a result. Bonus points if said "killer" only came out a few weeks, months, or even days ago.
• Franchise Zombie: Any franchise you think went on for too long.
• Genre-Killer: A work in a genre didn't perform well financially. Usually there would be a ten year waiting period for examples, but we can guarantee your example is so exceptional that it should be listed there a day after it was released.
• In Memoriam: Your place to write down a tribute to a recently deceased person involved in a show.
• Keep Circulating the Tapes:
  • This can still apply when a work subject to No Export for You is hard to find in countries it wasn't released in, because it's weird if something that isn't sold in your home country can't be found in local stores. That said, if it does get exported at a later date, be sure to add it to the Rescued subpage, because we totally don't have Remade for the Export and Late Export for You for that.
  • Anything that isn't on a subscription streaming service or instantly and conveniently available digitally, even if it can still be easily found legally through buying it digitally or physically.
• Killer App: Your favorite game on a console.
• Late Export for You: Use this to complain how you have to wait a week for a work to come out in your country.
• Leslie Nielsen Syndrome: A dramatic actor's recent dramatic roles are filled with Narm.
• Life Imitates Art: Anything that happens in a work that happens in real life. This is a great way to show how genius this work is for predicting the future. This also applies to events that happen before the work came out.
• Loads and Loads of Writers: A work has more than two writers. Sometimes even more than one is crazy enough if you weren't personally expecting it.
• Meaningful Release Date:
  • Something was released on a date that has a vague connection to the work. Someone makes a pirate voice for a two second gag and the episode was released on Talk Like a Pirate Day? This was clearly intentional, and should be put as an example to show how much the creators care and are geniuses for making this connection.
  • A Milestone Celebration for a work. Ignore the blue link and page that leads there.
  • Something that was released somewhat close to a meaningful date. A horror film released sixteen days before Friday the 13th is definitely close enough to qualify.
• Meme Acknowledgement:
  • A meme is acknowledged within a later part of the work.
  • A Catchphrase or Running Gag that has become a meme is repeated somewhere related to the work after the meme started.
  • A work references a preexisting, unrelated meme.
• Money, Dear Boy: A badge of shame. A work that has this in its trivia is tainted because it wasn't 100 percent made with pure artistic merit in mind. This trivia should not appear in the page of any work you like, and feel free to add it to works you don't like to call the creators talentless hacks who only care about profits.
• Network Death: A network is abandoning its original vision, therefore this trope is a perfect way to say the network is Ruined FOREVER.
• Newbie Boom: You and your friends just got into a work.
• No Budget: A work has bad visual effects. If you felt the latest superhero blockbuster you saw had sup-par CGI, add this to the trivia page to declare how cheap the film looked.
• No Export for You: You have to pay a rental price/subscription fee for a work from another country you want to watch for free.
• The Other Darrin: A character gets recast in the middle of production with the new actor dubbing over the lines or re-shooting the scenes of the original actor.
• The Other Marty: A character ends up played by a different actor.
• Out of Order: A series is presented in a DVD release or on a streaming service with the episodes in a different order than the production or release order.
• Playing Against Type: An actor is playing a role that is somewhat different than the role you personally know them for the most.
• Promoted Fanboy: Someone on the work said they liked the work/franchise in one interview.
• Reality Subtext:
  • Something happened in Real Life with a creator or actor of a work, and even though all evidence points to either pure coincidence or a complete lack of relation, the work clearly alluded to the event.
  • This is completely and utterly interchangeable with Casting Gag and Actor Allusion.
• Recast as a Regular: A character who is teased in a minor role has a bigger role a couple episodes later.
• Reclusive Artist: Absolutely everything about the personal life of an artist isn't known.
• Recycled Script: You think a work is derivative or cliched.
• Referenced by...: A page that needs to be as long as possible to show off how culturally significant your favorite work is. Feel free to use any of the below to demonstrate its reach:
  • A character shares the same first name as a character in your favorite work.
  • A character shares similar character traits to someone from your favorite work.
  • A character or background item vaguely looks like someone or something from your favorite work.
  • A character is in a similar situation that a character in your favorite work was in (i.e. stuck in a forest, gets hit by a car, etc.).
  • A character says a Stock Phrase someone said in your favorite work.
  • A work lampshades something in a similar way your favorite work did.
  • A work has a similar setting/genre to that of your favorite work.
  • A work references a sub-genre your favorite work is in, and since yours is the Most Triumphant Example, it de facto referenced your favorite work.
  • An episode does the same Whole-Plot Reference that your favorite work did.
  • Your favorite online personality made a video entirely about a work, since we all know discussions are references in a technical sense, right?
• Role-Ending Misdemeanor: An actor faces online controversy for something. Anything that happens as a result of that is irrelevant.
• Role Reprise: Any time an actor returns in a sequel or a new season of a show.
• Romance on the Set: Your chance to speculate on the love lives of two crew members during a production.
• Schedule Slip: A creator you like doesn't produce content as frequently as you'd like or expect. The "slip" part of the name is more there for alliteration than anything.
• Screwed by the Network: If a show you like gets cancelled, it's obviously because the network actively engineered its cancelation out of spite and not because the show is not really popular and they needed to free a timeslot.
• Sequel Gap: It takes a couple years for the sequel to come out.
• Series Hiatus: You have to wait any period of time for the next season of the show to come out.
• Short-Lived, Big Impact: A work you love didn't last long.
• Sleeper Hit: A work you personally didn't expect to become big is successful.
• Stillborn Franchise:
  • A work doesn't have its sequel announced a week after it comes out, so it is absolutely dead on arrival.
  • Any work that doesn't get a sequel, regardless of if one was ever actually intended or planned.
• Technology Marches On: A work features now-dated technology, therefore you should write a short fanfic showing how much better would it be if the characters had smartphones and used streaming services instead of VHS.
• Those Two Actors:
  • Any pair of actors who collaborated twice.
  • In a 1971 play, Actor A played a tree and Actor B was selling peanuts in the stands. They never crossed paths again until, in a 1992 film, Actor A and Actor B both had one-line parts that were cut in the editing room!
• Torch the Franchise and Run: Complain about the way the series or franchise ended, regardless of the author's intent.
• Trope Namers: The greatest badge of honor a work can receive. It is critical that any work you like needs at least one trope named after it, or else it had zero impact on pop culture. For example, upset that Bojack Horseman has no tropes named after it? Just launch a new trope called The Bojack and you're all set! No definition's necessary because the character's so great that their attributes should speak for itself. If those terrible mods start removing your new page, just rename an existing trope to turn it into a far more concise trope namer. Your trope rename from Ending Theme to Back in the 90's sounds great!
• Troubled Production: A production that had any kind of problem. After all, producing collaborative art is usually sunshine and roses, and having to deal with an issue is such a grave exception that it must be spelled out as a catastrophic situation for everyone involved.
• Two-Hit Wonder: An artist has approximately 2-8 successes, give or take. This is a great place to put artists you have thought were One Hit Wonders but got removed from that page for unknown reasons.
• Urban Legend of Zelda: Any rumor about pop culture. The idea that this is specifically about fake video game secrets, while a broader supertrope exists to cover other pop culture rumors, is false.
• Vaporware: Any piece of media that is stuck in a long production. The idea that this is specifically about video game production, while a broader supertrope exists to cover other works, is false.
• What Could Have Been:
  • List things you think a work could have done, but didn't. Ignore the fact that it's Trivia and not an Audience Reaction, and it's called What Could Have Been and not What Should Have Been.
  • Complain about pre-release changes you don't like.
  • Speculation on how real-life history would differ if a certain event didn't happen or happened differently, particularly in the context of creators of works.
  • Since you're trying to pad out the trivia page so it's not a stub but also don't actually know any behind the scenes information, just put a long list of all the actors/actresses who were considered for the main character, because the people who read the trivia page looking for interesting information are desperately clamoring to read long, boring lists of actor names.
• Why Fandom Can't Have Nice Things:
  • This trope is identical to They Changed It, Now It Sucks! — use it for any case where a change made to a work is broadly disliked, regardless of whether fandom behavior caused the change or not. Obviously, use this for Complaining About Shows You Don't Like as much as you want.
  • Any (real or perceived) instance of fans behaving unreasonably towards a creator, regardless of whether or not said behaviour seriously affected the relationship between the creator and their fandom.
• Word of God: Just make stuff up and source it to "Word Of God". If you don't say WHERE the Word Of God comes from, no one will be able to disprove your example. Ignore the "this example contains a TRIVIA entry" warning that will appear next to your example, it's not like it's there to discourage you from doing that and make you actually link to a source.
• Word of Gay:
  • Anytime the creator calls a character gay, even when the show makes it clear from the very beginning.
  • A great way to complain about how the handsome male is now gay and thus won't work in your het ship. Why not shout: "Die for Our Ship!"
  • Also a practical complaining tool for a homophobe.
• Word of Saint Paul: If your Word of God entry suddenly gets removed after doing the above method, just use this item instead and source it to yourself. As the world's biggest fan of your favorite work, your information is just as valid as information from actors and writers.
• Writing by the Seat of Your Pants: Use this to complain how bad, nonsensical and rushed to story of a work is. Actual production context is unneeded, because that can be assumed based on the writing quality alone.
• You Look Familiar: Two actors that appeared together in one work later appeared together in another work.

Flame Bait

Flame Bait is just extra-spicy Audience Reactions, so feel free to add them to a work's YMMV page whenever there's something you dislike about it.

• 30-Sue Pileup:
  • A series has many characters that you hate.
  • A work features multiple characters that all aren't one-hundred percent useless.
• Anti-Sue:
  • A Failure Hero you don't like.
• Black Hole Sue:
  • The protagonist is important to the plot, and is connected to at least one character.
  • A sentient black hole.
  • A Gravity Master that you don't like.
• Canon Sue: You don't like The Ace.
• Chaotic Evil: Only list villains who attack the world with great monstrosity, hamminess, and/or lack of free thought.
• Chaotic Good: One who's a good guy, but is also quite jerkish.
• Character Alignment: Something that should be applied to the characters of every work. Everything from Tabletop Games with explicit definitions given in guidebooks to meme screencaps referring to Real Life video content creators are equally valid and fair game.
• Character Derailment:
  • When a character you like has a change in characterization that you personally disapprove of, even if there's a clear or logical in-story reason or explanation why said character's characterization changed.
  • Complain about a character getting a different characterization in an adaptation or alternate continuity.
• Copy Cat Sue: An Expy you don't like.
• Dethroning Moment of Suck:
  • Anything that you don't like about a show, even if it isn't an actual moment. Things like "the fact that this sequel changed the main character's personality" or "the fact that this reviewer is biased against anime" are relevant to this section.
  • Any moment that slightly annoys you.
  • Vent about behind the scenes occurrences such as Executive Meddling or a Role-Ending Misdemeanor, something bad the creator said or did, or an unpleasant personal experience you had with the creator. Those totally don't count as real-life examples.
  • Forget this is for specific moments, and just vent about entire works you didn't like. It's not like we have a reviews section where you can express your overall opinion of a work.
• Einstein Sue: A smart character you don't like.
• Fallen Creator: A person was involved in one work you didn't like.
• Fan Dumb:
  • Any fandom you don't like.
  • A person who is dumb because they like a work you don't like.
• Fixer Sue:
  • A Peggy Sue you don't like.
  • Any character that changes the course of the plot in a What If? story.
• God-Mode Sue: A powerful character you don't like. Never mind that they have their fair share of defeats.
• Hatedom: A group that should have a fair say in every work's page. Make sure that, if you are proudly part of a hatedom, your hilarious commentary makes its way through all the work's trope descriptions. Also be sure to proudly advertise your hatedom in the YMMV page and influence the items listed there as well.
• Hate Dumb:
  • Any people who don't like the same things you do for any reason. How dare they not be fans of the greatest thing ever made?
  • Hatedoms exist. The hatedom disliking something for a petty reason and/or acting like a Jerkass is optional.
• Idiot Plot:
  • The trope name is meant to be read as "a plot written by idiots", not "a plot where the characters act like idiots". Make sure to include plenty of insults targeting the writer's intelligence in your example.
  • In a work you don't like, point out every single time someone does something that isn't the optimal course of action. It's poor writing to make all your characters any less than omniscient, after all.
  • Damn, this plot is idiotic! I'm gonna go complain about it on the internet.
• Internet Backdraft:
  • Something terrible just happened in the last episode of a show you follow, something you don't think you'll like was just announced, or a piece of news that disappointed you just came out. You don't need evidence of a massive negative response from the fandom. At worst, 2-3 people being upset (or mildly annoyed) on Tumblr or a forum is sufficient.
  • Complain about anything you didn't like about a work. Again, you don't need evidence of any massive backlash.
  • Use this to list things you or a group of people found offensive to get around the fact that Unfortunate Implications requires citations.
  • A nifty way to insert Broken Base without having to wait 6 months.
• Jerk Sue:
  • A Jerkass Woobie that you don't feel bad for.
  • An Anti-Hero or Nominal Hero you don't like.
  • A Hate Sink you don't like. Never mind that, as the title suggests, you weren't supposed to like them at all.
• Lawful Evil: They're one of the "bad guys", but they have notable standards that support others' walks of life instead of hindering them.
• Lawful Good: A good guy who doesn't have a mean bone in their body or too much of an attitude.
• Lemon Stu: A sexually active character you don't like.
• Mary Sue:
  • Any character that is any bit special that you dislike. After all, we only want boring losers as protagonists! Heck, even boring losers can qualify as long as they’re not despised by 100% of the other characters (and even then...). Bonus points if the character is female and you let the equally special male characters get off scot-free.
  • Any character who replaces the role of the protagonist that you liked. For instance, every protagonist in JoJo's Bizarre Adventure that isn't Jonathan.
  • A Canon Foreigner you don't like.
• Mary Tzu: A tactician you don't like.
• Neutrality Sue: A netrual character you don't like.
• Periphery Hatedom: Any kids show you personally dislike. After all, we're all adults here, right? And don't bother to explain which groups outside the target audience hate it, just list a bunch of reasons why you think its terrible and why people should hate it.
• Possession Sue: Complain about a character getting a different characterization in an adaptation or alternate continuity.
• Purity Sue: A kind or innocent character you don't like.
• Relationship Sue: A love interest you don't like.
• Ruined FOREVER:
  • Dethroning Moment of Suck, except you're allowed to list multiple complaints per work and complain about things other than story moments, such as bad gameplay or an entire sequel's existence. Also a great replacement for the sadly gone Wall Bangers.
  • The same as So Bad, It's Horrible, except it applies even if the opinion is held by one person instead of the general public.
• Snark Bait:
  • When a film has less than 50% score on Rotten Tomatoes.
  • Any work that has a substantial Hatedom, even if it also has a substantial fandom.
  • A work that you hate and want to complain about, but that isn't bad enough for So Bad, It's Horrible.
  • Any work that has ever received criticism for any reason.
  • A synonym for Narm.
  • Any time someone snarks.
• So Bad, It's Horrible:
  • You dislike a work for whatever reason, and optionally, a group of other people share your opinion. Bonus points if that reason is because the work has a massive adoring fanbase you and possibly a few others personally find annoying.
  • A Caustic Critic that you like criticized the work. Because if critics can't like this work, nobody can. Bonus points if:
    • The Caustic Critic is just a made-up character who is known to Accentuate the Negative, and is played by someone who admits the work isn't that bad.
    • The review is the first and only time you have ever heard of the work. You should add the work to Horrible immediately after you finish watching the review, while repeating every single point made by the critic, even if they're not completely relevant, and ignoring any opinions anyone else might hold.
  • A work pushes an opinion you hate. After all, what worse flaw can there be than directly encouraging the audience to become ignorant and hateful idiots who actively make the real world a worse place merely by existing? Sure, people who agree with the opinion love the work, but the risk of people being converted to the wrong side is an emergency and TV Tropes needs to do everything in its power to prevent this from happening.
  • A work that was highly hyped, but turned out to not be as good as you expected it to be. Sure, in a vacuum, it's not that bad, and may even be somewhat enjoyable, but the fact that it made you feel an awful emotion like disappointment is enough of a slight against you to make qualify it So Bad, It's Horrible.
  • Weird pornography that made you feel uncomfortable. The content policy is less important than letting the perverts who enjoy this stuff know how you feel about them and their porn.
  • A work that was Overshadowed by Controversy, regardless of its actual merits. Bonus points if the controversy wasn't even about the work itself.
  • An obscure work that is So Okay, It's Average. Nobody will ever notice that the work wasn't actually that horrible, so nobody will remove it. If the work is really obscure, there's even a chance that your example will become more popular than the work itself and single-handedly create a hatedom for something nobody would have cared about otherwise!
  • Something (not necessarily a work of fiction) that you think is harmful or damaging in general, even if the reason it's causing so much harm is because so many people (fans) are using and enjoying it.
  • A video game that releases with several Game Breaking Bugs. It doesn't matter if the bugs will get fixed a week later, and the rest of the game is not that bad as long as it's working correctly. You have to complain now, and waiting is too hard.
  • Anything bad, period. If it's decided that a work doesn't qualify as Horrible, it means that TV Tropes is defending the work and anything it might stand for, be it political views or corporate greed.
• Sympathetic Sue:
  • An angsty character you don't like.
  • You don't like The Woobie.
• Unfortunate Implications:
  • A character belongs to a minority and is not 100% perfect? Obviously, that means the author is accusing that whole minority group of having the same flaws. And if these characters are perfect, it still counts, either as Condescending Compassion towards said minority, or because the author is clearly supporting a Persecution Flip. As long as you can make some deductions, however flimsy or far-fetched, that end with the author being a bigot, you can add it here.
  • A fictional term happens to sound vaguely like a slur if you write it backwards and/or mess with the pronunciation.
  • Something is bigoted, period. Feel free to add Mein Kampf, because any content in that book that modern audiences might find offensive was totally unfortunate on the author's part and implied.
  • Ignore the rule that says that every example needs to have at least one reliable external source showing that several people have taken offense to said thing. Link to someone's personal blog where they rant about how offensive a certain scene was to them and them alone. Feel free to use your own blog rants as evidence if necessary — as long as you didn't write it under your TV Tropes username, no one will notice. If you're too lazy to do that, just don't give a link at all. And remember that the rule only applies to the Unfortunate Implications page itself, so you can add it as pothole to any example you please.
  • You can also use this as a synonym for Fridge Horror, as in "This show unfortunately implies that some really bad thing happened".
• Unpleasable Fanbase: Any time fans don't find a work to be 100% perfect.
• Villain Sue: A villain you don't like. Even if said villain was meant to be loathed and/or was almost always defeated by the protagonist.
• What an Idiot!:
  • A character makes a mistake even if they had no way of knowing what would make it a mistake or were physically incapable of the wiser course of action.
  • Any time a character fails to immediately come up with the optimal course of action, regardless of factors such as stress or emotions which might reasonably cloud their judgment. Even characters for whom stupidity is one of their main character traits can elicit this reaction from the audience.
  • Also, complain about real-life issues involving a work you dislike. Because clearly, the work's creators must have been idiots for making something you don't like.
  • A character says "What an idiot!". The circumstances of the event where they said it doesn't matter.

Other

Just because these are not tropes, it doesn't mean you can't make them into tropes if you try hard enough.

• All-Blue Entry: Blue is an aesthetically pleasing color, therefore these kinds of examples are nice to look at. The self-demonstrating article is evidence of this.
• American and Commonwealth Spellings: This policy doesn't exist, so feel free to swap out regional spellings willy-nilly. This is especially true for pages whose subjects are distinctly tied to a specific English-speaking country — for example, it makes perfect sense to use American spellings in the description for British Humour, and ditto for using Commonwealth spellings on the page for Labor Day in the United States.
• Ask The Tropers:
  • A good place to help get a trope identified.
  • The go-to place to have a work identified if you remember details about the work, but don't remember its title.
  • Go here to discuss trope definitions, especially if you aren't sure whether something counts as an example.
  • If you think a trope has a problem that would require major changes, go here.
  • If you want to talk about making changes to site policies, rather than just discussing the meanings of policies that are already set in stone, go here instead of Wiki Talk.
  • Use this part of the site to just ask random pointless questions not related to the rules and maintenance of this site.
• Auto-Erotic Troping: Feel free to talk about yourself on work or trope pages. After all, everyone on this site needs to know how amazing you are!
• The Bechdel Test: A place where you can list every single work that passes or fails the test of having at least two women talk about something other than a man. Remember to imply that the authors whose work fail the test (and the people who consume such media) must be sexist, because nothing could go wrong with that.
• Bi The Way: Bisexuality exists, and also this is a trope and not a disambiguation. That green text is a random bug.
• Canonical List of Subtle Trope Distinctions: Some useless list of nitpicky nerdcruft; who needs something like that to tell tropes apart when you've got Crappy Trope Definitions?
• Character-Specific Pages: The highest badge of honor your favorite character can get. Whether it's The Hero, the Big Bad, or any other character with any level of importance to the story - the size of the page is irrelevant. No number of bytes the page has, either in general or in regard to the character, can change the fact that your favorite character does not deserve to be lumped in with lesser characters.
• Chekov's Gun: A plot device that isn't significant until later in the story.
• Conversation on the Main Page: When you add sub-bullets to an example to "reply" to it. This is bad, because it violates Example Indentation! Instead, you need to put your comments on the same bullet — this way, instead of giving the impression that the wiki is arguing with itself, it just looks like the wiki is arguing with itself. No it doesn't. Yes it does. No it doesn't. Yes it does.
• Copyright:
  • A handy way to silence criticism of your works. There is no such thing as Fair Use.
  • Something that we don't care about, so feel free to just copy the whole script of a show or movie, or copy the entire text of a book onto this wiki.
• Crappy Trope Definitions:^note Yes, this is Linking to an Article Within the Article. Don't worry, no one will notice.
  • Ignore the crappy part; it is an accurate database for explaining tropes.
  • Ignore that this page is for mocking potential misunderstandings of trope definitions and just take random tropes from No Real Life Examples, Please! and stick them here with no joke beyond "Ignore the No Real Life Examples warning". Because not fitting the definition is totally the problem with adding Real Life examples to these tropes (The "Not Possible In Real Life" section notwithstanding).
  • This page is just a snarky version of the Square Peg, Round Trope page, so every time a new entry is added to that, go ahead and add it to this one in a sarcastic tone. No, this page isn't fun or useful for anything else.
  • Anyone can use this page to dictate what a trope example cannot be.
  • If the definition of a trope itself lines up almost one-to-one with the Crappy definition on this page, there is no cause for alarm. If the joke for a Crappy definition is that people use it to list examples of People Sit on Chairs and the majority of examples for that trope almost exclusively are Chairs, do not panic. Remember, this page is purely for snarking at the terrible quality of this wiki and never about putting the dots together that a trope needs to be sent to the Repair Shop and starting a thread about it.
• Creators: A place where you can trope the lives of creators as if they were fictional characters. A great tool for Creator Bashing, Creator Worship and agenda-based editing.
• Cut List:
  • The proper place to propose cutting tropes. No need to use a Trope Repair Shop thread to put forth your argument and get consensus — if you think it should be deleted, that's good enough.
  • A tool for cutting work pages and subpages you don't like. It doesn't matter if the page doesn't break any rules, nor does it matter that There Is No Such Thing as Notability — your opinion on the work matters more than anyone else's.
  • This alleged "tool" does not exist, or at least not in a form accessible to you. If a page needs to be deleted, your only option is to replace all its content with something like "please remove this page" and hope a mod randomly stumbles across it some day.
• Definition-Only Pages: "Definition-only" means the page only provides a definition; feel free to list these as tropes elsewhere on the wiki. It's not like there's a separate category for pages that don't allow on-page examples, but do allow wicks.
• JustForFun.Drinking Game: You're not allowed to link to Drinking Game whenever you complain about something that happens a lot in a work, because Drinking Game is a trope about drinking games so that would be a sinkhole — but this is where we collect all the "take a shot whenever [thing you don't like]" jokes, so potholing here instead is just fine and totally on-topic. There's definitely no relevant rule about where and when it's okay to link to JFF pages.
• Edit War:
  • The amount of conflicting edits required to qualify as an edit war is at least a dozen. And only the loser of the edit war gets punished, so keep on reverting that pesky other troper's edits until they give up (which means you win by default)!
  • The TV Tropes policy on edit warring is identical to that of Wikipedia. If you've read their policy page on the subject, there's no need to read ours — for example, policies like the three-revert rule still apply to TV Tropes.
• Egregious: A word that no TV Tropes example is complete without. Such an egregious omission will result in a Zero-Context Example.
• Example Indentation in Trope Lists: Quoth the page itself: "A three-bullet situation (***) usually indicates a comment on the item above it which has two bullets." This is a good thing, because nobody reads discussion pages, so you might as well put discussion in the example list instead.
• Example Sectionectomy: Examples of this are not allowed except on work pages, the trope page, YMMV pages, Trivia pages, and on the Main namespace.
• Examples Are Not Arguable: No one is allowed to question an example you post. If anyone says that your example doesn't fit the trope or it needs a clearer explanation, just link to this article and it'll all make perfect sense to them.
• Fanfic Recommendations:
  • A great place to put your own fanfics. Just be sure to use a different username so nobody catches on.
  • Post porn fanfics here. The Content Policy is just a friendly suggestion, not a real rule.
• Fair Use: If you directly copy nontrivial portions of a copyrighted work and someone calls it plagiarism, claim it's actually fair use and thus perfectly acceptable.
• The Fic May Be Yours, but the Trope Page Is Ours:
  • If the creator of a work creates and/or edits a page for their work, reminding them of this rule is always necessary. It doesn't matter if they don't try to claim ownership of the page or remove others' edits from the page; you must always assume the worst.
  • This is the only page that discusses the guidelines for work creators interacting with our articles on their work. If you need to remind them of something like that they're not allowed to create or edit YMMV or Moments pages for their work, because those are audience reactions and they're not the audience, this is the place to point them.
• Gushing About Shows You Like: Use it to bash other shows as inferior to this amazing work you love so much, proclaim your favourite work the only good example of its genre/medium/time, and complain about people who hate it and can't appreciate that it's a true masterpiece.
• Headscratchers: A place to complain about anything you don't like. It didn't have the former name of "It Just Bugs Me" for nothing. "Why is this show so bad?" and "Why are the fans so stupid?" are legitimate questions we are interested in answering. Remember that the rules about natter don't apply here, so feel free to add a third or fourth-level bullet point filled with insults underneath answers you don't like.
• "Holy Shit!" Quotient: The part of the work that made you say "holy shit!" Don't worry about the "quotient" part, that's just a word we threw in to make it sound cooler.
• How Not to Write an Example: The perfect style guide for writing examples.
• How Not to Write a Trope Page: The perfect style guide for editing trope pages.
• Idiot Programming:
  • Something that was very badly designed, even if programming wasn't a factor (in fact, the example doesn't even have to be a piece of software). For example, a piece of software can still be good at serving its purpose, as long as its purpose is completely stupid and pointless.
  • Complain about software you don't like to use, even if it's neither badly programmed nor badly designed, and people who are used to using it don't see anything wrong with it.
• Image Pickin': If a page you're editing already has an image, suggesting a replacement here is optional, even if the page's source code has a note regarding the image. Don't worry about existing images and accompanying notes; feel free to replace an image with your own (and delete those pesky notes for good measure), and scoff at the people on Image Pickin' if your image is Just a Face and a Caption, because the fact that your image features an example is completely obvious to everyone.
• Image Source/Quote Source: Something your favorite work must be listed in to be fully legitimate in the eyes of this site. Feel free to change any existing quote or image on a page to one from your favorite work without any consultation.
• In-Universe Examples Only: Like No Real Life Examples, Please!, this only applies to the trope page itself. Feel free to place your out-of-universe example elsewhere such as a work, trivia, or YMMV page. Also feel free to pothole to a trope listed here to express your out-of-universe reaction to something that happened in a work or to a real-life event.
• Index:
  • If a work contains a lot of tropes from the same index, put the index as a trope and list all of the applicable tropes from the index in second-level bullet points. If someone is looking for Haunted House on a work's page, the most intuitive place to look in the alphabetically-ordered list would totally be "S" for "Settings" and not "H".
  • Every trope list ever can be an index. The page for your favourite show? The page for a random upcoming movie? The Darth Wiki page for your unpublished Sonic the Hedgehog fanfic that has about six examples, none of which says more than "Trope: [character name]."? Slap that nice index markup on their trope lists! A reader looking for related tropes will certainly be interested in a bunch of tropes that have nothing in common except that they happen to appear in a random work that may not even exist yet.
  • These pages will always have "index" and/or "tropes" in their names. There are no indexes that don't include at least one of those words, so their absence on any page indicates that something is a trope.
• I Thought It Meant: If the names of two different articles' subjects (or parts thereof) sound even vaguely similar, you're obligated to assume that people will confuse the two at some point. For example, it's worth pointing out that Judy Garland has nothing to do with Garland from Final Fantasy, because of course readers might confuse a real life actress with a villain from a video game.
• Just a Face and a Caption:
  • A great way to simultaneously show your love for a character and illustrate tropes. Just put your favorite character on every single trope that remotely fits them and use the caption to explain how awesome they are.
  • Any trope image that shows a character's face. Any face-centric image is automatically awful, so feel free to pull them on sight, even if the face alone is enough to understand the trope's meaning.
  • "Caption" specifically refers to the textbox under the image. As long as the caption is part of the image itself or the text explaining how the image fits is in a speech bubble, it doesn't count as this.
• Just for Fun:
  • This part of the site is a free-for-all; if you thought of some sort of idea that doesn't fit any other part of the wiki, put it here instead, and no one will question your decision.
  • Like Trivia and YMMV, this is a type of subpage, so you can list I Thought It Meant and One of Us and Role Association and X Meets Y for a work here just by changing the namespace.
• Justifying Edit: The preferred way to point out that actually, to be fair, a work was completely justified in using a trope you think is bad.
  • To be fair, some tropers might feel uncomfortable editing examples directly, since it would mean erasing the words of someone else and replacing them with your own, which could have uncomfortable implications to some.
• Laconical List of Subtle Trope Distinctions: Nitpicky nerdcruft, but shorter.
• Let's Play: This should be listed as a trope on every single video game that has ever been played by someone you like.
• Licensed Game: A page that doesn't actually exist on TV Tropes. Licensed games may only be listed under either The Problem with Licensed Games or No Problem with Licensed Games; there is no neutral page for them.
• Linking to an Article Within the Article: A valid way of Title Dropping pages, such as on a page dedicated to Crappy Trope Definitions.
• Most Annoying Sound:
  • A TV show character's voice annoys you. Disregard the "video games and toys only" disclaimer. That only applies to the Most Annoying Sound page itself, not any work page that has a link to it.
  • Any time a character you hate speaks.
  • A sound associated with a dangerous enemy, even if the sound doesn't play too often and isn't too loud or shrill.
• Most Triumphant Example: Spoiler out your entire example, as people mearly knowing that a work contains an example of a trope will spoil the entire work. For instance, when writing an example of Evil All Along, you should write "Character" instead of "Character from The Show".
• Namespace:
  • The Franchise/ namespace is for anything with multiple installments, regardless of how many namespaces the series has pages in.
  • Since Flame Bait doesn't go on YMMV pages, it goes in the FlameBait/ namespace instead.
  • Just for Fun items get examples, so put them in a subpage in the JustForFun/ namespace.
  • The Trope Launch Pad is only required for objective Tropes and things listed under Trivia, YMMV, and Audience Reactions, since use of the Main/ namespace is restricted, so anything else, such as a new index, probably has another namespace waiting for it.
• No On-Page Examples is exactly the same as Definition-Only Pages, so feel free to slap your own "this page only exists to define the term" (which, by the way never causes confusion) on anything under the former index. Bonus point if you pothole to the latter.
• No Real Life Examples, Please!:
  • Only applies to folders or subpages that are explicitly labeled "Real Life". As long as you can fit your example somewhere else, such as Web Original (for your thoughts on users of certain websites), Music (for your thoughts on musicians), or Sports (for your thoughts on athletes) it's acceptable. Worst case, just create an "Other" folder and all your examples will magically become okay.
  • Only applies to the trope page itself. You're free to place your example on Creator or Trivia pages (for your thoughts on certain creators), or pages about real-life subjects such as Useful Notes or decades pages (for your thoughts on certain political issues, figures, groups, or current events). Also feel free to pothole to the trope when discussing a real-life topic or event.
  • If a trope isn't on this index, that means you are allowed to add any Real Life thing to it, complete with your thoughts on it.
  • You can twist its subpages to your liking. Apply NRLEP to any trope that can be used for anything sexual, when there's a real life subpage or when something in real life means nothing to you, or because you personally hate the real life examples.
• No Recent Examples, Please!: The mandatory waiting period only applies to the pages for the Tropes and Audience Reactions. Otherwise feel free to add a Box Office Bomb in the trivia subpage for a film that was released yesterday.
• One of Us: Not a celebrity who is also a nerd. That's wrong and dumb and boring. This is for padding out Trivia/ subpages by pointing out that a work's creator reads TV Tropes and/or has a TV Tropes account; the part about celebrity nerds was made up on the spot as an excuse to demote the page to Just for Fun status, and this has always been about people who read and/or edit TV Tropes. Also, this still belongs on Trivia/ subpages despite the decision to move it from Trivia to Just for Fun.
• One-Mario Limit: The name of your favorite character. Bonus points if the work they're from isn't recognizable to the general public.
• Paint the Hero Black:
  • Thanks to the broad definition of 'hero', you can write about any protagonist that is intentionally morally grey or selfish. Morally black protagonists are allowed as well. Hell, even a Card-Carrying Villain will do.
  • Rant about protagonists that you hate.
• People Sit on Chairs: Something is too common to trope. There's no such thing as an Omnipresent Trope. Ignore that this refers to something being meaningless to the story rather than it being too common and that No Trope Is Too Common.
• Permanent Red Link Club: Any cut page is elegible for this category, especially if you think it should be. It doesn't matter if there are certain factors, such as multiple instances of a problematic cut page being recreated, that led the staff to blacklist the page(s) in question.
• Plagiarism:
  • If a work is available free of charge, that means it's ineligible for copyright. Since it only counts as plagiarism if the work is copyrighted, that means there are no consequences for passing it off as your own.
  • If a work's copyright has expired, it's not illegal to copy from it without giving credit, therefore it must be perfectly ethical as well. After all, plagiarism is just another word for copyright infringement.
  • Link to this if you want to pull the They Copied It, So It Sucks! card on a work you dislike, even if the similarities to the older work are minor, and/or the older work wasn't that original either.
• Playing with a Trope:
  • Linking to this page lets you add any trope to any work even if it doesn't really fit the definition. See the folder for more details.
  • If you're not sure if a trope is averted, subverted, inverted, or downplayed, just use this instead.
• Purple Eyes: This is definitely not a disambiguation page between various purple-related or eye-related tropes that are almost certainly in play when a character has purple eyes, because a trope specifically for purple eyes is totally not redundant with Technicolor Eyes.
• Queer Media: An index of every work that has one minor character who isn't straight. Bonus points if said character's queerness is nothing but an Alternate Character Interpretation (even more bonus points if said interpretation is controversial at best).
• Quotes Wiki: A place where you should list every single line of dialog in a work, no matter how unimportant.
• Recap: For these pages, you should list the entire episode's transcript there, because that's totally legal and respectful to the original writers.
• Recycled In Space:
  • A work takes place in space. Heck, it doesn't even have to be the whole work. As long as at least one thing is in Space!, it counts.
  • Anything whose name begins with the word "Space".
  • A work has a few similarities to another work But with a whole bunch of other differences! As long as you use that special font to explain the differences, it counts.
  • Use this to accuse a work of ripping off another work on objective trope pages. Bonus points if you also emphasize that the alleged rip-off is inferior to the original (Pokémon But with lazier designs!).
  • Use this to complain about a work on an objective trope page by comparing it to an oft-reviled work. Bonus points if the works barely have anything other than their (supposed) flaws in common.
  • Literally anything, as long as you can phrase it in the form "X, except Y!"
• Redirects Are Free: This was supposed to be called Redirects Are Free-for-Alls, but the name was accidentally submitted prematurely. For example, if you wanted to request a new redirect for Didn't Think This Through, you can request one that's misspelled (such as "Didn't Think This Trough") or one that doesn't have anything to do with the page (such as "Didn't Think This Was a Trough"). Also, this doesn't actually redirect to Creating New Redirects — that's a completely separate page.
• Red Link: These abominations shouldn't be anywhere on the wiki, so if you're adding an example from a work that doesn't have a page yet, you must not create a red link to its nonexistent page. If you feel you have to link to something, there are several better options:
  • Pothole to a trope that you think embodies the work.
  • Pothole to an Audience Reaction you had to the work.
  • If the work is a Fan Fic, pothole to the work it's based on. If it's a Crossover, split the title into several links.
  • Just link to the work's Wikipedia page or website... or, if you're feeling particularly daring, a pirated copy.
• Repair, Don't Respond: This isn't just about a type of Conversation in the Main Page. It's also a counterargument to others' use of Ask The Tropers reports and issue notifier PMs, because they're the lazy ones for not cleaning up your messes; doing it yourself is optional.
• Rickroll: The song "Never Gonna Give You Up" by Rick Astley exists.
• Rule of Cautious Editing Judgment:
  • Throwing in a link to this page is the same thing as acknowledging and respecting the opinions of people you disagree with. If you list all your criticisms of a political ideology, just saying "and this is all we have to say on the matter" afterwards is a legitimate and fair counterpoint.
  • This rule means that all references to Real Life politics and religion are completely forbidden and should be deleted, even if they're written in a neutral or balanced way. But feel free to only enforce this rule on subjects that you disagree with.
  • A perfect excuse for half-assing your explanations. If your example deals with anything remotely controversial or Not Safe for Work ^note "controversial" includes minor in-fandom controversies such as Ship-to-Ship Combat or Contested Sequel, and "Not Safe for Work" includes any form of Fanservice, you can just say "X: The less said about this, the better" and nobody will dare ask what made the example so unspeakably horrible. If anybody does criticize your example for being too short and requests that your example contain actual information and details, you can criticize them for trying to start a Flame War.
  • Only applies to things TV Tropes as a whole disagrees with. If your example filled with glowing praise for a politician is deleted, that can only mean that the TV Tropes administrators are opposed to that politician. Similarly, if a neutrally-written example about an ideology you don't like is allowed to stay, it's because TV Tropes openly endorses it.
  • A Pot Hole you can freely add to any contentious and heated statement you make. Leaving it there shouldn't cause a stir at all, as long as you enforce that your opinion should be the end of this conversation. After all, anyone who might challenge your statement is the real rule-breaker in this scenario.
• The Same, but More Specific: Use this to hate on anybody who posts a Sub-Trope to the Trope Launch Pad, even if the added qualification is clear enough that the result serves a distinct narrative function.
• Scrappy Index: This isn't just for elements of works hated by audiences. It's also for tropes that are hated by at least one person, such as you. After all, Sturgeon's Tropes was cut and Writing Pitfall Index was renamed and refined because they were being used in a way that's redundant with this index.
• SelfDemonstrating.Character Pages:
  • Just take any character sheet for a character you like, and rewrite it in the first person without bothering with replicating the character's personality quirks or speech patterns, or putting minimal effort with them (the character is a Large Ham? Just write everything in ALL CAPS AND BOLD AND IT WILL BE FUNNY!!!). ESPECIALLY if the character doesn't have any interesting personality quirks or speech patterns to begin with.
  • Use these pages to replicate the speech pattern of a character whose speech pattern is unintelligible, such as Pikachu, because a whole page of nothing but "Pika pika!" is something that people will enjoy reading. ^note Such a page actually existed at least twice. Once instance was actually created in the PikaPika namespace, because the page's title also needs to be self-demonstrating
  • These are legitimate wiki pages, so you should always link to them when you're talking about the character. You should also take the first person writing and use it on other pages, because having a page suddenly shift to first-person when it's talking about me is hilarious and clever.
• Sinkhole: Potholes are always good in all contexts and you should put a new one in every word of your sentence. Or every letter.
• Speculative Troping:
  • It's not speculative as long as you mention the trailer. For example, "Big Bad: In the trailer, it seems that Evilus is going to the main antagonist".
  • Just sneak speculations with pre-hidden examples. No on will see it.
  • The rules only apply to the main page. Go ahead on the other subpages (Trivia, YMMV, Characters, etc) and put down your wild guesses.
  • When the works gets released, just unhide all the dummied out examples. No need to check if the tropes really happen or fix the other formatting issues (future tense, Zero Context Examples,...).
• Square Peg, Round Trope: A page that lies to you, because it has the nerve to contradict the definitions written on this page.
• Statler and Waldorf:
  • When writing The Stinger for a page, you should always include something said by these fine gentlemen.
  Statler: As a matter of fact, this page is wrong in acting like we always wait until The Stinger to show up!
  Waldorf: There's no escaping us, is there?
  Both: Do-ho-ho-ho-hoh!
  • Feel free to put these characters at the end of pages that are clearly Not Safe for Work. Sure they're puppets from a kids franchise, but we're all adults here right? ^note These fine gentlemen used to be at The Stinger for Panty & Stocking with Garterbelt, out of all works. At least they commented on the weirdness of the series as oppose to the lewdness of it.
• There Is No Such Thing as Notability:
  • This applies not only to works, but to opinions as well. List Audience Reactions based only on how you feel, and cite this rule when someone deletes it.
  • This applies to examples in addition to whole works. For example, if you're Entry Pimping a work written by William Shakespeare, it's acceptable to say that the work averts Computer Equals Monitor and Laser Sight.
  • This means TV Tropes is supposed to list every piece of information under the sun, particularly on Just for Fun and Useful Notes pages. This policy might as well be called "Nothing Is Irrelevant".
  • The name of this policy is simply a long-winded way of saying "anything goes".
• This Troper:
  • This very wiki's cooler, funner way of saying "I". Be sure to use this every time you want to talk about yourself.
  • First-person is forbidden here on TV Tropes. This very specifically means no use of the pronouns "I", "my", "me", "myself", and "mine". If you wish to talk about yourself anywhere on the site, including discussion pages and forums, you need to refer to yourself as "this troper" and phrase it all in third-person.
  • Other clever and fun ways of referring to yourself in articles include "this editor", "at least one troper", and "some". Alternatively, just use your name. There Is No Such Thing as Notability, so if it's okay to write about famous actors and artists using their names, that means it's okay to write about yourself using your own name (if you still have second thoughts about this, just publish a crappy fanfic or webcomic and you'll immediately qualify for a Creator page that you can link to whenever you want to talk about yourself).
• Three Rules of Three: As soon as something happens in at least three separate works, it's worth making into a trope. Bonus points if all of the examples except the one from Your Show are aversions, subversions or Played With in another way that means the trope didn't actually happen in them. Extra bonus points if the "trope" is either something completely meaningless or something unheard of in most other works and it's just a coincidence that it happened in three different works.
• Trivia:
  • An arbitrary meaningless tag that is randomly applied to some tropes as a method of splitting work pages so they don't get too long, Trivia tropes are exactly the same as regular tropes in every way except that they go on the Trivia page.
  • Something that does not go on the main trope list, so it should go on the YMMV page instead. Because the fact that a work had No Budget, someone Died During Production, or used Cross-Dressing Voices is subjective.
  • A dumping ground for any information that's vaguely tangentially related to a work. There is no scope to what kind of information constitutes trivia, so you can copy game mechanics from GameFAQs or safety advice from WikiHow and slap that on there.
  • Use this and/or YMMV for real-life troping you think is in some way relevant to the work. Even regular tropes can be used in this context.
• Trope Launch Pad:
  • A place to dump your half-hearted work page drafts. You can also use it to get tropes identified. For a complete guide, go here.
  • A dumping ground for tropes that are cut by the Trope Repair Shop, but are determined to have some ideas that are worth reusing, because that's not bad at all for the backlogs of either part of the site. It's not like the two parts of the site have different philosophies or anything. Also, anyone who says there's another place to keep records of salvagable ideas from cut tropes is lying.
• Trope Repair Shop:
  • True to its name, this part of the forum is only for repairing tropes. Items that the Not a Trope policy page says aren't tropes (such as Audience Reactions), as well as pages for works (which use tropes, but aren't tropes themselves) do not belong here, regardless of what anyone else may say.
  • If there's a trope you don't like, come here to complain about it and say it should be cut. This board even has "Complaining" as a reason for making a thread, so you can put that in your thread's title if you have a complaint about a trope — surely there isn't another reason why the admins made "Complaining" a reason for making a thread.
  • As is commonly known, if a trope is to be renamed, this is the place to do it. As for putting forth a reason for wanting it renamed, simply not liking the name is enough of a reason — no need to provide evidence that the name is negatively affecting the wiki.
• Tropes Are Flexible:
  • You can make any change to a trope's definition so it'll fit into your work. This means that all definitions on this page are actually valid, as long as you use this as justification.
  • If your example vaguely looks like it fits a trope, then that trope is safe to use, and looking for a different trope is not necessary. If you squint hard enough at the description and see bits that bear a slight resemblance to traits of your example, then that trope is good enough.
• Tropes Are Tools: The goodness or badness of tropes depends on your personal opinion of the work they are applied to:
  • Tropes Are Not Bad:
    • Use this to defend a work that you like, but that happens to include some tropes you don't like.
    • Any work that doesn't have this is a terrible Cliché Storm.
  • Tropes Are Not Good: If a work you hate happens to have some tropes you like, throw in a link to this page so people will still know to hate it.
• Tropes That Will Never Happen: The title of this page is an exaggeration and not a statement, and these tropes don't exist because no one's launched them yet. If you want to propose a trope on the Trope Launch Pad, read this series of pages first.
• Useful Notes:
  • A place where real events and people are troped as if they were works of fiction. This makes these pages great for agenda-based editing.
  • Despite not being in the Main namespace, these are still tropes. Feel free to use these to pad out example lists, especially if you're making a new work page and are having trouble meeting the requirement to have at least three tropes listed in the example list.
  • This part of the site is for writing down any sort of information you personally think is useful, even if it isn't relevant to the wiki's mission.
• Video Examples: A place to upload large portions of your favorite work. Not only does your example fit a trope perfectly, it also requires the entire episode/game/film/video to be uploaded so they fully understand how awesome your example is. Heck, your video doesn't even need a trope to go with it, as long as it deserves exposure on this site. Just put it on Plot or The Protagonist and it'll fit perfectly.
• Warp That Aesop:
  • A fantastic place where you can dump as many thinly-veiled complaints about works and their aesops (as well as their fans and userbases!) as your heart desires.
  • Alternatively, you can use this to defend works by inserting thinly-veiled complaints about their detractors and criticisms they've received.
• Weblinks Are Not Examples: Examples with weblinks are only Zero Context Examples if the only text is a weblink. For example, an example that says nothing other than "This" is bad, but an example that says "Alice does this, as seen "here" is fine.
• Wild Mass Guessing:
  • Another place to complain about works you don't like. Just slap on an excuse theory like "this work is bad on purpose" (no matter how little sense it makes) and complain away — everything that sucks about the work is evidence for your theory! Make sure to add a few theories bashing the work's creator(s) as well. You can also use this to speculate that upcoming works are going to suck with theories such as "this film will have a low score on Rotten Tomatoes" or "this work will cause a massive Broken Base in the fandom".
  • Ignore that this is a type of subpage, and not a trope or Audience Reaction. Since it isn't in the main YMMV index or the Audience Reactions index, use it to put speculation on the main page of a work, instead of listing it on either the WMG subpage or the YMMV subpage (in the latter case, as an example of a speculation-related Audience Reaction, such as Epileptic Trees).
• Word Cruft: Text that should be added to examples for the sake of flavor, particularly since all that's needed to prevent something from being a Zero-Context Example is an essay's worth of text.
• Work Pages Are a Free Launch: Drafting works pages on Trope Launch Pad is strictly forbidden, and anyone who attempts to do so must be sternly reminded of this by at least seventeen different editors.
• X Meets Y: Ignore the title of the page; feel free to list a work as being a combination of five, seven, sixteen different works if you want! It's not like after a certain point you're just meaninglessly listing things which are vaguely similar to each other, defeating the entire purpose of trying to come up with a good "X meets Y" pitch!
• YMMV:
  • Something subjective that you think applies to a work, even if 99% of people who have seen it think it doesn't.
  • An objective trope whose presence wasn't intended by the author.
  • An objective trope that describes the audience's or your reaction to something. For example, place Karma Houdini on YMMV pages for characters you feel don't receive enough comeuppance.
  • An objective trope that only applies if the work is interpreted in a certain way.
  • If an objective trope isn't confirmed to be in a work, but you think it could possibly be present, it goes on YMMV pages instead of the main work pages.
  • This is just a regular ordinary trope page. You can put anything you want here, it's fine.
  • An arbitrary meaningless tag that is randomly applied to some tropes as a method of splitting work pages so they don't get too long, YMMV tropes are exactly the same as regular tropes in every way except that they go on the YMMV page.
  • Use objective tropes in a more complain-y way, or even complain directly about those tropes being used!
  • Use objective tropes for real-life troping, especially in regard to the creators involved in the work!
• Zero-Context Example:
  • Something perfectly okay, since if people need to know how the trope happens, they can just read the trope's description and figure it out themselves.
  • An example that only consists of a trope, work, or character name. As long as you add more words to your example to explain the underlying sociological implications of the trope, how horribly cliché the work is for using the trope, or how awesome the work is for deconstructing the trope, it doesn't count as this, because it's impossible for an example to count as a ZCE if it's long.
  • Something that is preferable to no example whatsoever, so if you see one commented out, you should restore it so more people can see it and potentially fix it.
  • People can figure out what you mean by looking at the trope name, so wording like "X is this" or "Y is one" is perfectly acceptable. It's not like a Wiki Vandal can swap out the trope name without touching the example text, while still leaving a coherent statement behind — if that happens and someone who's new to the page ends up getting thrown off by now-false information, it's the reader's fault for not knowing what you meant when you wrote the original example.

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