Main Tropes Index

Troperville

Editing Help

Tools

Toys

Narrative

• Universal
• Applied Phlebotinum
• Characterization
• Characters
• Characters As Device
• Dialogue
• Motifs
• Narrative Devices
• Paratext
• Plots
• Settings
• Spectacle

Genre

• Action Adventure
• Comedy
• Commercials
• Crime And Punishment
• Drama
• Horror
• Love
• News
• Professional Wrestling
• Speculative Fiction
• Sports Story
• War

Media

• Animation (Western)
• Anime
• Comic Book
• Fan Fics
• Film
• Game
• Literature
• Music And Sound Effects
• New Media
• Print Media
• Radio
• Sequential Art
• Tabletop Games
• Television
• Theater
• Videogame
• Webcomics

Topical Tropes

• Betrayal
• Censorship
• Combat
• Death
• Family
• Fate And Prophecy
• Food
• Holiday
• Memory
• Money
• Morality
• Politics
• Religion
• School

Other Categories

• British Telly
• The Contributors
• Creator Speak
• Creators
• Derivative Works
• Did Not Do The Research
• Language
• Laws And Formulas
• Show Business
• Split Personality
• Stock Room
• Trope
• Truth And Lies
• Truth In Television
• Weirdness Isolation

Ironeye: I cut

• Animation Age Ghetto: Wall E was the best film released in 2008, hands down, with the single possible exception of The Dark Knight (a comic book movie, and another example of Animation Age Ghetto). Of course, the Oscars are rigged so that a "cartoon" won't even be considered for a Best Picture Oscar anymore...

because it seemed a bit too subjective.

fleb: There's a way to rephrase that without the "hands down" certainty it would win. I'll put this back:

• Animation Age Ghetto: Despite being a serious contender for best film in 2008, animated or otherwise, the Oscars are still rigged so that a "cartoon" won't even be considered for a Best Picture Oscar anymore...

---

It's claimed that Its All There In The Manual as to why our WALL-E unit is the only one to survive so long, that he's the only one who activated properly. Where does this come from? I just figured he was the first to realise that hoarding spare parts was a good idea.

• Altimadark: Actually, it's because they turned off all the others — notice how all the other machines just seem to be frozen in the middle of whatever they were doing? The basic premise of the movie was asking, "What if mankind had to leave Earth, and somebody forgot to turn off the last robot?"

---

Altimadark: ChekhovsGun: The Captain has never even heard of the word "Manual" until the receives the instructions for returning to Earth (And he still needs Auto to show him how to use a BOOK); in the climax, he sees Auto's panel open up, revealing Auto's On-Off switch — which is labeled "Auto" and "Manual," respectively! Does this count?

Rebochan: Probably not, because "Manual" the book and "Manual" the setting are different. Plus, he'd still understand the concept that if a power switch has two settings and its' already set to on, switching other setting would shut off the power. Since all he does is hit switches all day.

Altimadark: It still seems symbolic in some sense. Irony, perhaps?

---

Altimadark: I think I had a Fridge Logic moment during the WALL-A scenes. It's not simply that the Axiom has been producing and dumping tons of garbage, but that they've been doing it in SPACE. For nigh on 700 years. How is that possible?

fleb: Maybe in The Future they have a fusion-powered matter fabricator that takes in hydrogen the robots harvest? It Just Bugs Me has a bullet point on this.

---

Adam850: How is AUTO's voice a Take That? Deleted.

---

Indigo: EVE did not have mutual Love At First Sight with WALL*E. She considered him a threat, then a nuisance, and then interesting but nothing special. She didn't develop mutual affection for him until she saw the playback of him taking care of her while she was in her dormant stage.

Karalora: It started earlier than that—when she saw that he had rescued the plant from the exploding pod, I think. Immediately following that was the space dance, so there was definitely something mutual going on by that point. The playback just drove it home for her what a sweet 'bot he was.

---

Freezair For A Limited Time: Cut:

• Strangely enough, WALL-E's reaction is more realistic than what regular humans see diamonds as. Diamonds are actually fairly common and not at all rare. They only seem that way because theres a monopoly on diamonds run by one corporation that fakes the whole diamonds are rare thing by determining who can get diamonds, how much and when. By now since the company is more then likely gone from Earth anyway, WALL-E and the film creators unwittingly demonstrate how worthless diamonds really are.
  • Is this an Anvil I see before me?

For the second comment being natter-y and the first probably going outside the bounds of the Rule Of Cautious Editing Judgement.

MrOnimusha: Is there a Death Is Hilarious trope out there? If so, anybody else think GO-4's death counts? In any other film he'd splash straight into the swimming pool or bounce off the diving board first, but here, no, it's just splat into the ground.

shadowwolf75: Anyone else think AUTO might count for Draco In Leather Pants? Cripes, just look on Dev Art . . .

Erica MZDM: cut

• To be fair, natural colorless diamonds of more than a few karats ARE very rare, and it is brownish or tan diamonds that are more common (and widely used in industry)

It's a non-sequitur due to earlier edits.

---

Adam850: Seriously, we need a example cleanup here. My word, so much natter, so many contradictions, bullets out the wazoo!

---

The Defenestrator: Cut:

• It is strongly implied that AUTO killed the previous captains. Heck, he even tries to kill the current one. Onscreen.
• Strongly implied? This troper didn't see anything of the sort . . . if anything, the captains' lifespans got longer as time went on.
• I saw this too. The Captain stairs at each of the dead captain's portraits, each of which has the evil AUTO hovering menacingly behind them, which causes him to realize that AUTO is going to kill him.

because it really isn't implied, and he doesn't.

I think that what upset the Captain in those portraits wasn't that AUTO was hovering menacingly behind them, it was that AUTO seemed to be hovering closer and closer to the camera with each one. What that implies, however, is open to interpretation.

Mr Death: Pretty clear what it implies: That AUTO was taking more and more control each time.

---

Trope Misuse: Mary-Sue

• Mary Sue (WALL•E. Name five characters who both aren't evil and don't like WALL-E by the end of the movie.)
• (A well-done one though. Honestly, not liking him would be akin to playing soccer with a puppy as the ball)

A Mary-Sue has to be perfect, in every form and way, with no distinct character flaws or weaknesses. Wall-E is for example a klutz and somewhat neurotic and unlike EVE, the Action Girl, he isn't built for combat of any kind. Just because he shares one aspect with a mary sue, everyone loves him, doesn't make him one. Its a major misuse of the term and I believe it should be cut.

The Toon Geekette: Snipped it out.

---

Erica MZDM: Removed:

• This has nothing to do with Textbook Evolution as taught in schools. The genetic code, the DNA, only stores information of how to make the basic building plan of the anatomy (number of limbs, organs, etc), which allows room for variability. When genes (or rather their exons a.k.a. encoding sequences) are expressed (a process called transcription) the gene product is either ribosomal RNA or a messenger RNA that is important in protein biosynthesis. Structural genes encode for proteins. Control genes regulate the expression/activity of other genes by coding for regulatory proteins such as repressor proteins (which bind to nucleotide sequences called operators) or activator proteins (which bind to promotor sequences that allows DNA downstream of them to be transcribed). How the body actually turns out, the phenotype, is massively influenced by outside influences, starting during embryonal development. The body reacts to low gravity by not wasting resources on building up muscles and bones, so they atrophy. Some outside influences (such a heat, disease, stress, and nutrition, just to name a few) can even switch gene activity on or off by themselves!
  • Some evolutionary biologists like Allan Wilson have proposed that evolution in promoter or regulatory regions may be more important than changes in coding DNA sequences. That hypothesis is supported by recent research data by a Svedish primatologist and paleogeneticist working in Germany (Professor Svante Pääbo). He found that the actual genetic differences between human and chimp are less significant that previously thought (human and chimpanzee genomes differ by just 1.2% between the coding genes). Instead, the differences between Homo sapiens and chimp are to a large part down to gene regulation. By altering transcription factors instead of coding genes, the entire regulatory network can change with very few mutations. And latest research indicates that microevolution in humans is still ongoing, and may work much faster than previously thought, making changes not in millenia but within a few centuries/generations.

Since, y'know, wall-o-text. Irrelevant text at that - at most one or two snippets might belong in Hollywood Evolution. Actually, the entire Hollywood Evolution section might stand to be removed.

Also removed:

• Actually, there is no convection in space. Flying that close to the sun would involve absorbing a hell of a lot of radiant heat, but it had already been demonstrated that WALL-E was pretty heat-resistant.
• Arguing physics in a Pixar movie is something of a pointless endeavour; but note that the fiberglass substrate board that at least some of WALL-E's internal components are mounted to (EVE quite clearly replaces one) isn't exceptionally heat resistant, though it handles vacuum quite well. The gamma-ray flux off a star is another thing, however.

From the Convection Schmonvection bit for being natter-y

---

(Deadpoolfan says...)

• The Power Of Love (When WALL•E is essentially killed and then rebuilt by EVE, his memory is lost and EVE tries everything she can think of to bring him back, practically giving up she finally sadly "kisses" him and the electric spark jolts his memory.)

Why was this removed? It fit the standards for the Power of love perfectly. is. Prevented a Disney Death through the use of a kiss. Its only three lines, so its not natterly or a wall-of-text. Is there a reason it has been removed?

Edit: Nevermind, I see its just been changed to True Love's Kiss. I wasn't aware. Sorry for bothering you.

---

fleb: Took a heavy-handed swipe through the article. Like Deadpoolfan noticed, I changed The Power Of Love to True Loves Kiss. Also changed the captain's Took A Level In Badass into What Do You Mean Its Not Awesome; the latter fits better considering the Thus Spake Zarathustra. And I don't think WALL-E can be both The Chew Toy and The Woobie, so the former's gone. Then I cut the Love Boat shoutout natter, the MacGuffin Justifying Edit, plus a few others, and completely cut the Hollywood Evolution section (pasted here), and merged a lot of the bullet points into the main bullet point they're contradicting.

...And just now, cutting "** AUTO looks like [[Portal GLaDOS]] what with the spheres-with-eyes fashion statement." off-topic bullet point under Robot War.

---

TheNinthDoctor: How has anvilicious not been added yet? First, the extreme environmentalism anvil. Second, the video games and junk food are ruining the next generation anvil. And then Writer on Board for embracing a synthesis of biology and technology to save the human race from the evils expressed in the anvils. (Come on, a feminine robot named EVE carrying the spark of life in her womb?)

fleb: Maybe because some of the implied Aesops were completely incidental to the story, according to Word Of God. The whole pollution thing was chosen as the best explanation for the 'Humanity leaves robot behind on earth' premise the movie got started on. The Aesop most obviously embedded into the story structure is about free will, independent thought, and taking responsibility for your own life.

But where did you get video games from? I can see junk food, because of the Big Fat Future, but technically, they all eat Food Pills, so the Aesop's more like "Go exercise," or "Sedentary lifestyles are a bad idea on multiple levels of Maslow's hierarchy."

TheNinthDoctor: Videogames: A major part of the lifestyle on the Axiom was entertainment- which we saw shift from the commercials of golf with virtual elements to completely virtual golf where the guys were just pushing buttons to make the club swing. Though I can see how that just fits in with the parts you mentioned.

So Word Of God is that pullution was just there to forward the plot. I can buy that. But I still see embrace biology and technology as more deeply rooted in Wall-E then think for yourself.

A bit of fridge logic just revealed some night mare fuel to me: if the robots of Wall-E are actually sentient, then the movie gleefully had an insane psychopath brutally murder dozens if not hundreds of sentient beings.

I think it's supposed to be that only the robots who learn to resist their own programming qualify as sentient. AUTO's security bots were still just mindlessly following AUTO's commands, while the defective bots had personalities.

---

It's claimed that Its All There In The Manual as to why our WALL-E unit is the only one to survive so long, that he's the only one who activated properly. Where does this come from? I just figured he was the first to realise that hoarding spare parts was a good idea.

---

Removed Justifying Edit:

(Big Fat Future): possibly justified in that the effects are attributed to the humans in the movie having lived in space for 700 years. Microgravity does have significant effects on the human body—astronauts start losing muscle mass after just a week on the Space Shuttle—but how much poetic license Pixar took with said effects is unknown to this troper.

Probably because this justification was taken back right after it was mentioned. It's very heavily implied that humans could have kept themselves in at least a functional state the whole time, but just chose not to. Not even the captain of the friggin' Axiom knew about the on-ship jogging track.

---

People typing "BnL" without the Not A Wiki Word markup were making red links to a nonexistent "BnL" page. I figured I'd save us some confusion by setting it to redirect here. -Sylocat

---

Whoever added the Facebook review, thank you for picking one of the biggest idiots possible to quote. It makes this movie look even better.

• I'm just worried that snippet is a bit too long for the quotes section, and not just because I'm a crazed WALL-E fanboy.
• Also, maybe quoting user reviews isn't the best thing. Maybe we should take out all three quotes just to be fair.

Freezair For A Limited Time: I went ahead and cut all of them. They did kind of bug me, to be honest.

---

fleb: Pruning time again... Mostly cutting natter, but also, AI Is A Crapshoot isn't at work in this movie at all, and the red eyes are Colour Coded For Your Convenience, not a Shout Out.

---

If the pre-webcrawler is spelled like the word Gopher, then it's definitely not a Shout Out. And... I'm not seeing how AUTO's a Draco In Leather Pants. How bad can his Deviant Art pictures really be? (He does possibly count as a Well Intentioned Extremist, if he can be said to have intentions beyond slavish obedience.)

To answeryour question...And that's just the tip of the iceberg.

---

Filby: Removed AI Is A Crapshoot, because Auto and GO-4 were doing exactly what they were programmed for.

---

Topcatyo: I don't want to be negative or anything, but "I don't want to survive, I want to live" was a very not Crowning Moment Of Awesome for me and my brother. For us it was, really, a grilled Narm and Cheese Sandwich.

---

Spoony Just to get this straight, in the Draco In Leather Pants entry, the "Uber-sparkly God Mode Villain Stu" mentioned...that's Arkham-Insanity's Magici-N, right? I don't know much about the character, but he keeps coming to my mind when I read that section, and not knowing has been bugging me.

• Feh, he certainly counts, but I was initially referring to Naomi-wiflath's Dark Auto . . .

---

Nano Moose: In Did Not Do The Research, correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm sure the commentary mentioned that WALL-E was supposed to be a part of a chain - he and his fellow units compacted the trash, and the cubes were moved to incinerators...I'll have to go check.

---

CR How exactly does WALL-E qualify as a Stalker With A Crush ? Wanting to be around the first intelligent being you encounter after hundreds of years of isolation makes you a stalker???

---

Rebochan: I pulled this:

• Did Not Do The Research — The environmental Aesop, while effective, is completely and utterly impossible. Stuff doesn't last that long, trash compactors are completely different than trash disposal devices (WALL•E should have been an incinerator or a composter). The Fridge Logic would really killed this movie if it weren't so darn cute.
  • Except that the filmmakers aren't exactly trying to create a completely realistic future. When writing satire, minor breaks from logic are acceptable.
  • If you listen to the director's commentary, etc., it becomes a bit clearer. The large crane-like robots seen in the beginning of the movie are the incinerators. The WALL•E robots crushed the garbage into cubes, which were then loaded into the larger incinerator robots. Once the incinerators broke down, however, WALL•E was left with standing orders to make cubes, and nobody was there to break them down. The end result was that, presumably, almost all of the massive towers of garbage cubes were made by this single WALL•E unit over a seven hundred year span. No wonder he was so lonely!

It's not this trope - the film deliberately exaggerates much of reality of the point of telling a story, so obviously its going to exaggerate certain aspects, such as a VHS tape that can still be played 700 years after it should have degraded. Since the entire film is already about a robot that gains a soul, we're obviously bending reality right with the premise. The fact that the original examples appears uninformed on aspects of the film is simply amusing.

---

owh: AUTO fits a lot of tropes, but Draco In Leather Pants and Mary Sue aren't one of them. Maaaaybe the former, certainly not the latter. Now, Well Intentioned Extremist or Cyber Cyclops or Creepy Monotone I could understand.

Some fans will idolize anything in a sort of softcore Rule34, I understand, but Pixar didn't deliberately do anything to impose sex appeal or personality on it in the first place.

shadowwolf75: Draco In Leather Pants is not about what PIXAR intended, it's about what the fans do to a character in their fanworks. Given the stuff I've seen in various places, then hell yes they decided to treat Auto like that. As for the line 'Mary Sue target', it's Exactly What It Says On The Tin, most of the Mary Sues tend to focus on him, either by being the driving force behind any potential redemption or just already being on the Axiom and working for him/falling in love with him.