Captain Obvious Discussion - Television Tropes & Idioms

Citizen: I would have really liked to have put Shirou's famous "People die if they are killed"

◊ screenshot, but I'm not one to overwrite someone else's picture with my own judgement. =/

Ununnilium: I'd say both could work, if you edited the Shirou pic down to where it's as think as the Not-Captain-America one and put it underneath.

Citizen: This trope doesn't have very much text, though...

Ununnilium: See, that works perfectly. And yeah, but it makes it nicer-looking.

Boobah: That is possibly the best illustration of any trope on this site.

osh: I'd suck out the fun by mentioning the stupid phrase in question is playing on a idiom, but I love it too much to suggest removing it. <3

Zeke: I love this one too, but I've given it a little context in the notes. Shirou gets a bad rap.

Cassy: Hi, just dropping by to say this picture makes my day every time I see it. I can't believe it's actually in an anime, this sentence is so utterly stupid! OK, bye now. I'm leaving. I'm pushing the "Send" button to edit. The page loads. Then I go on with my life.

ILP: The sentence looks stupid because it's been poorly translated; it's actually quite witty. I challenge tropers to find out just how many of these anime entries are here because translators aren't doing their jobs properly rather than writers being idiotic.

Ununnilium: Taking this out, because it's not a subversion, it's something completely different:

The syndicated daily comic strip Non Sequitur by Wiley Miller features as one of its recurring characters the Super Hero Obviousman, who subverts the trope by valiantly trying to force the oblivious people around him to see the absurdities and contradictions in their lives.

Cassy: I can see your point but I think it would fit here as an aversion. The way I understand it, it's about how people don't see the obvious or what's right in front of them.

32_Footsteps: Not that I'm going to put this on the page, but I knew a guy like this in real life. It got to the point that anytime anyone pointed out something obvious to someone (even if it wasn't completely obvious to everyone), someone would shot "Field of Nelson!" in honor of this friend. So for at least me and my college friends, this is a case of Truth In Television.

Looney Toons: Snipped this

Dorothy in The Wizard Of Oz had a stunningly fine moment of this when the technicolor tipped her off to the fact that she wasn't in Kansas anymore.

because it's a distinction only to the audience, a choice of artistic direction to give the viewers a sense of the contrast between Kansas and Oz. As far as Dorothy was concerned, she was always in color.

pawsplay: Removed this one. Admiral Akbar is giving an order to retreat, and explaining the reason why is perfectly logical under the circumstances.

Of course, the most famous Captain Obvious moment from Star Wars is Admiral Ackbar's classic line, "It's a trap!"

Did noone else think of Randy Disher from Monk, particularly in later seasons? Other chaacters even point out in many of the episodes that he repeatedly states the obvious.

Scud East: Removed the following

Speaking of wrestling saying that you like watching said wrestling will attract at least one person who will point out that it is fake which is not a secret at all

Because it may be well known however its not at all obvious to the casual viewer by the way punctuation is a useful skill

I can't believe that nobody's linked to Uncyclopedia yet.

Gizensha I always thought the They've Gone of "Gone to Warp Integer ... They've gone" was short for 'they've gone out of sensor range', since the sensors at times seemed to be able to track ships for a few light years, they could conceivably have had 'They dropped out warp in the star system 4 light years that-a-way.'

Seven Seals: You're clever for thinking of that, but I'm pretty sure the writers weren't. The scenario you describe never actually happened, and it would have been a little strange if it did — if you're running away you're obviously going to run away as far as is reasonable, not stop while your pursuers can still see you.

If we're really going to grant them that they could track ships for a while, why didn't they ever give chase effectively? Point your ship in the last known direction and go to warp factor eleventy zillion yourself... Instead they always seemed to wait for the con to confirm that no, the ship was just gone, too bad.

Luke is not being Captain Obvious. Leia has no way to know what his name is, or why he is there.

Seven Seals: Took out this:

Though I'm sure military personnel have to report when they are under attack to their superiors, and their superiors have to order them anyway.

First of all, I'm pretty sure that military personnel don't need to report things their superiors see happening right in front of their eyes — at least not without adding some more detail. And second, while the Jedi are technically generals, they don't really use a military command structure among themselves (the masters certainly don't). Yoda ordering Mace Windu (rather than just, you know, giving him gentle, wise, unrefusable suggestions to do something) would be weird.

I'm not sure how to 'deal' with the Dark Knight paddy wagon episde. If my life depended on the actions of the driver, I'd be informing him of threats coming up. "Homicidal vans at three o'clock!". Heck, I do this anyway when I am a passenger. Florida traffic doesn't have crazy clowns behind the wheel, but the drivers are insane. Mad I tell you. No, really, it's some scary crap on Florida roads.

Webrunner: How is the Legolas example the Trope Namer? The term "captain obvious" has been around for years.. I don't even know when it started, but here's a google cache of a post from 2001 (before the movie came out) saying that they heard it in the mid 90s: http://74.125.47.132/search?q=cache:ylImXHFN1FUJ:www.drewvogel.com/actwin/month.200108/msg00304.html+captain+obvious+1995&cd=13&hl=en&ct=clnk&client=firefox-a

Fatjose: Forget that, how is Legolas being a Captain Obvious in the first place? He has better eyesight and is telling his friends, who almost always are too far behind to see or always hidden behind a rock, what's ahead. One example places the phrase that states "Red Sun=Murder" as obvious. WHO KNOWS THIS? What planet did the original poster live in where a red sun immediately means that a murder has occurred and is common knowledge to everyone? I really want to just wipe the whole idiotic thing but it seems to have some sort of historic place on the page and I can't litter the page with justifying edits for every idiotic and out of context example. I figure I should place it on here for discussion first. A Captain Obvious is someone who states what everyone in the movie/book/cartoon as well as the audience knows. (For an example, reread that sentence.) Considering, Legolas was the scout and had the best eyes out of everyone in the group, very little of what he said was "obvious" to his comrades.

{Muninn}}: Is there a reason the old picture was replaced? I thought it was a great illustration (although that might just be me)

Blork: A lot of these seem to be cases where the audience knows everything that is said but the character that is being spoken to probably doesn't. "I'm Luke Skywalker and I'm here to rescue you" is a prime example - yes, we know who he is and what he's doing, but which part was Leia supposed to consider obvious? The name of some guy she's never met before or the fact that a person wearing a stormtrooper uniform onboard an imperial spacestation is actually trying to break her out?

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