All There In The Manual - Television Tropes & Idioms

Information not actually mentioned within the show, but only found in other material related to the franchise. The difference between this and normal merchandising is that this information may actually be relevant to understanding the plot, making the audience wonder why the writers didn't put it in the show to begin with.

For example, many anime OVAs based on a manga begin with a One We Prepared Earlier situation and rarely explain themselves under the assumption an OVA (being an occasional test run for a series) will typically be watched by someone who has read the original manga.

Other information can be found in text novels, video games, radio dramas, and image songs, as the entire franchise is treated as a package. Though if you don't have the money for all that, your best bet is The Other Wiki.

Fairly common in anime, this is mostly unknown in American shows. However, it's very common in American comic books, possibly because of the assurance the sterotypical fan is obsessive enough to collect supplemental material. (See Ultimate Universe.)

Examples:

Anime

The incidents between the Martian Successor Nadesico TV series and movie were explained in various Japanese-only video games, novels, and radio shows, leaving American fans puzzled at the movie's very different tone.
The difference between Gatekeepers and Gatekeepers 21 is staggering, due to novels and a video game.
A large amount of key information useful in understanding the story can only be found in the supplemental materials for Neon Genesis Evangelion.
The Koko Wa Greenwood OVA literally directs the viewer to a specific chapter of the manga to explain a reference.
- This is because the second OVA happens after the next 4 (it even refers obliquely to the plot of 5 and 6). AND it's a sequal to a story they didn't animate.
For an example of a series where all the materials are becoming officially translated for the West, see .hack//SIGN and its sequels - to get the full story, you need to watch a 26 episode anime series, play four games, watch the four OVA anime episodes bundle one with each game, read four novels, and read a three volume manga (and/or watch the 12 episode anime adapted from it). That's not counting the non-canon spinoffs or the sequel project, which consists of much the same combination again.
- The 3 .Hack//GU games, in fact, took place after the 26 episode series .Hack//Roots, directly continuing the story of the protagonist Haseo. However, the first GU game was released several months before the first DVD of Roots was translated and released. Therefore, gamers who had not been watching fansubs of Roots were completely in the dark about who Shino was, what had happened to her, and why Haseo was going so mental over her; especially since the game in purposefully vague on details.
  - Not really. This troper played all three .hack//G.U. games without watching or reading any other related media first, and never felt confused or in the dark. Her brother, on the hand, found the explanations in .hack//G.U. volume 1 to contain quite a few spoilers for .hack//ROOTS episodes which had not been aired in English at that point.
Inversion: Many of the various Sakura Taisen OVAs are effectively supplemental material for the Sakura Taisen video games.
Pokemon - The first movie, Mewtwo Strikes Back, could not be fully understood without the CD drama "Birth of Mewtwo" to accompany it. Fortunately, it was included for American fans in the Mew Two Returns DVD.
The Macross universe includes significant amounts of supplementary canon from books, comics, and video games in addition to the series and OVAs that were actually filmed.
Masaki Kajishima, main writer for the Tenchi Muyo OVA-verse, has regularly released supplemental material, such as novels and self-published doujinshi, with information about that continuity. One of the reasons for releasing the spinoff series Tenchi Muyo: GXP before the Tenchi OVA Revival series was to introduce some of the new characters and other elements from the novels to the audience that hadn't read (or wasn't able to read) them.
Ryo Akiyama from Digimon Tamers is literally from the Digimon Adventure Alternate Universe, and thus he and his Digimon don't follow the same rules as the rest of the cast. This is all explained via the multiple video games he stars in.
- Similarly, Ken's backstory in Digimon Adventure 02 has him disappearing into the Digital World as a kid and reappearing a short time after; later, we see a scene of him adventuring with another kid and getting infected by a Dark Seed. These are both references to the game where he teamed up with Ryo.
Did someone say Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha? Wondering how Nanoha learned the Bind spell during her battle with Fate? Or who that Linith woman was in the Lotus Eater Machine? Or what the heck happened to Arf in the third season? Or what's that gift from Reinforce that Vita was talking about? The answers to these questions and more (such as scads and scads of Ship Tease) can only be found in the various Sound Stages and supplementary manga of the series.
Higurashi No Naku Koro Ni - The anime leaves out a ton of information from the arcs it covers from the game that explains the premise of the show, and leaves out the final arcs that are covered in the second season, which begins with a Time Skip episode taking place years after the last episode of the first season followed by an original arc made solely to throw in important plot points from the first six arcs that the first season left out.
- Also notable is the scene with Takano and Satoko where Takano has the group at point-blank range with her gun. She asks Satoko which is green of the two: Cauliflower, or Broccoli? Satoko answers in the anime with "Cauli-Broccoli." Takano promptly says "Correct" and shoots Satoko. Unless you had checked with online sources or had access to the original material, you'd never know Satoko was colorblind.
  - Before that, the anime mentions several times that Satoko (and her brother) can't tell the difference between broccoli and cauliflower, but this troper didn't figure out why until that fact was stated explicitely in the manga.
AIR, due to time constraints, left out certain aspects of the story; the only one that really matters is the origin of Yukito.
Well into the anime version of One Piece, the crew searches intently for a shipwright, despite passing up no fewer than four without explanation, including three that technically joined the crew (and were fired almost immediately, along with several hundred comrades). The manga delves deeper into the reasoning behind the rejections.
The Tsukihime anime leaves out a great deal of information from the game it is based on, from character backgrounds to explanations about various powers to Shiki being badass. And that's not including all the other games associated with it...
- There is◊no Tsukihime anime.
To follow on the Tsukihime entry above, the Fate Stay Night anime also leaves out quite a bit of detail concerning the plot and concepts of The Verse. Then again, a great deal of it consists of placeholder tidbits for which there is no manual, aside from vague hints in supplemental information books. Like True Magic, especially the mentioned-but-not-detailed Time Travel. And whatever Aozaki Aoko's Magic actually is.
The OVA's of Gravitation take place after nearly the entire manga, only obliquely hinting at its events in flashbacks; Yuki's troubled past isn't even mentioned.
The Melancholy Of Haruhi Suzumiya: at the end of the last (broadcast) episode Kyon intends to reveal to Haruhi all the weird things that go on around her. Once you realize that it's only episode six chronologically, it becomes a plot hole you have to read the novels to resolve.
- Not to mention the talking cat in the first (broadcast) episode, which is never mentioned again in the anime.
xxxHolic and Tsubasa: Reservoir Chronicles have ended up so interconnected that it is nigh impossible to understand one without reading the other.
The Kiddy Grade Artbook contains a timeline for the main characters and the changes in attire as well.
Code Geass actually has quite a few forms of All There In The Manual, including Sound Episodes (released on separate C Ds) as well as Picture Dramas and short story inserts with the DVDs. However, so far only one plot thread from any of these has had any relevance to the series proper. When the show was licensed in America, Bandai (the licensor) won major brownie points with the fans by announcing that all this material would be coming as well, with the Sound Episodes being part of the Limited Special Collectors Ultimate Edition package.
For Gundam SEED there is, in addition to 10 Drama CD's (six of which are set before the series starts, three set during the series, and one post-series), 10 novels that go into more detail about the characters and events, several Manga series, and a few OVA's and TV specials, an official website that has a lot of extra information about the Cosmic Era...including a highly detailed Timeline that goes back about 100 years before the start of the series.
Jojos Bizarre Adventure. The original anime series not only started in the third story arc of the manga, it starts HALF-WAY THROUGH IT. The entire thing presumed you knew exactly what was going on, which, unless you read the manga, you didn't.

Western Animation

In Avatar The Last Airbender, a large amount of supplementary information such as the history and details of locations or the names and background info of minor characters and animals comes from Nickelodeon website and DVD Commentary. The creators have since expanded on this and additional info can also be found within the four Lost Scrolls books, based on screenplays of the show.
- The second All-Avatar Nick Mag, in itself a collaboration of writers of the show and acclaimed comic artists, which contains comics that serve as a bridge for the time jump that occurs between the second Season Finale and the season three premiere.

Video Games

Explanations about the true nature of the Maverick virus in the Mega Man X and Mega Man Zero games, as well as the fate of the Guardians at the end of Mega Man Zero 3, can only be found in the Rock Man Zero Complete Works sourcebook.
Pick a fighting game. Any fighting game. The apparent obligation of having optimal storylines for each character makes it so that plot essentially dissapears within the game, but it's all there, just not immediately obvious.
- Mortal Kombat has an amazingly complex storyline, for example, but you wouldn't know it from playing the game. Not to mention the players don't find out which characters' endings are canon until the next game in the series is released.
- Super Smash Bros Brawl is an example of a fighting game that tries to explain everything in-game, but due to lack of dialogue, multiple plot threads, and a cut sequence, it still requires the explanation page on the game's official website for a reasonable understanding of the plot. Most notably, because a scene featuring Meta Knight and King Dedede was cut from the game, you'd never know how the Subspace Army obtained the battleship Halberd, or how Dedede knew about Tabuu.
Video game example: Rayman 3: Hoodlum Havoc contained several secrets that were only explained in the manual provided, making it a literal example of this trope.
- Additionally, the game uses its manual in-game to break the fourth wall during the opening level by having the character Murphy instruct Rayman by reading to him from the game's manual, occasionally commenting on the manual's various illogicalities.
The English release of the Galaxy Angel manga includes an actual manual detailing things that the writer left out from the game.
A companion volume to the Wild ARMS series reveals that, appearances to the contrary, they actually are directly related to each other — large time gaps and Filgaia's remarkable disaster-proneness obfuscates this, making most of the games appear to be largely unrelated stand-alone titles.
Really common in early (before the mid-80s, approximately) video games. With low resolution and limited storage space, most games would give you no on-screen clues about what to do or why you were doing it. Even worse, many of them had manuals "translated" from Japanese by simply playing the game and making up a new story, leading to some fun confusion when sequels (on later systems with on-screen story) follow the Japanese plot, not the US plot.
- Many plot-heavy early games (I.E.: RPGs) had LITERAL All There In The Manual plots. Partially as an anti-piracy measure, partially to save space on the cassette/floppy, the game would instruct you to read specific lengthy snippets from its manual upon having reached certain points in the game.
Important new plot points are set up in the Japanese only special editions of Kingdom Hearts. Not Japanese? No story expansion for you.
- You also need the spinoff on the GBA to understand some of the plot points of the second game. Which like the first is a PS 2 game.
An almost direct subversion in The Elder Scrolls games. None of it is in the manual. You have to dig around through in game supplemental material to make sense of the setting and the plot. Some fans have assembled an online archive of the game supplemental material.
- This "lore" makes Oblivions level scaling even more ridiculous, as the Ebony Armor every bandit wears after a point apparently makes up a large chunk of the wealth some noble houses have.
Pretty much all of Touhou's plot and characters exist outside the games themselves.
Most of the Warcraft lore is found in the novels, also Lord of the Clans is about Thrall rise from a slave to the Warchief of the Horde, and is important to know why the Orcs went from being Always Chaotic Evil to Proud Warrior Race.
- Although Warcraft Adventures would have had that info apparently - they just canceled the game so it was all put in books.
The videogame Halo 2 ends at the start of an epic battle. Halo 3 starts at the end of the same epic battle. The battle itself is covered in a comic book.
- Even more so, the original Halo begins with the characters having just discovered the installation. What happened before that is covered in Halo: The Fall of Reach.
Fire Emblem Path of Radiance and its sequel Radiant Dawn had its backstory explained at the official Japanese website for the series, namely that Sephiran and Alita founded Begnion together and they were the first couple to bear a Branded child.
Backstory for Portal can be found at the Aperture Science website (LOGIN, CJOHNSON, TIER3).
Trying to make at least some sense of Metal Gear Solid 2's immense Gainax Ending? See The Document of Metal Gear Solid 2 which explains some things such as the existence of both real and AI Rosemarys. All this and more were eventually compiled into the free-for-PS 3-owners Metal Gear Solid Database.
Included and averted in the Myst games
- There is a very detailed backstory available in the books that is never more than hinted at in the games.
- While the first game had very little in-game story until the end, later games have character interaction movies and clips as you go through it.
A horrifyingly bad example is the (also horrifyingly bad) video game Microcosm. Apparently, it takes place on another world in the distant future, involves a multi-generation war between megacorporations, an assassination attempt, and Cyberpunkish corporate espionage. You wouldn't know this from playing the game…it's a rail shooter with controls that makes Baby Jesus cry himself to sleep at night, and an opening FMV that is almost as long as The Godfather II but explains NOTHING about the labyrinthine story. The manual's story lasts for, if i recall, more than twenty pages, including a three or four chapter story, an atlas of the fictional future star system it takes place in and an long essay on why the megacorporations are fighting and how crappy their planet is. All this for a rail shooter that would have to be as bad as Superman 64 to be run-of-the-mill.
Mass Effect seems to be heading this way. The available in-game Codex offers incredibly detailed information on everything from Asari biology to element Zero. In addition, the two novels offers and expands upon the Back Story and provides additional information.
Xenogears had most of its entire second disk removed from the plot due to rushed development, and much of its plot only becomes clear in the Japanese-only Perfect Works.
As it is, killer7 is undoubtedly one of the most bizarre video games ever created, so naturally the developers put out a companion book, Hand In killer7, that provides some backstory and explaination to the game's characters and events. Though this information is hardly any less confusing than that provided by the game itself, and often outright contradicts the game altogether.
Homeworld has a large manual which describes the history and technology of your faction leading into the campaign, and goes into quite a bit of detail. However, the intro cutscene usefully summarizes the parts which are directly important.
- The sequel, Homeworld: Cataclysm, also provides a long, detailed backstory in the manual, along with descriptions of all of your ships and a lot of enemy ships. Again, though, the really important backstory is summarized in game.
- Homeworld 2 plays this straight, though. To really understand the backstory and what's going on, you need to either have shelled out $20 for the strategy guide or waited until the developers released their internal history documents onto the web.

Film

None of the film adaptation of The X Files is comprehensible without the help of a bonus track at the end of one of the soundtrack CDs. And even then it's still pretty bewildering.
A portion of the plot of The Matrix: Revolutions, as well as certain sections of The Matrix: Reloaded, are explained only in the video game, Enter the Matrix. Also, there's a "bridge" episode between the The Matrix and The Matrix: Reloaded in The Animatrix.
In the collector's edition DVD for 2 Fast 2 Furious, there is a special opening that details Brian's travel from California to Miami.
The movie Cloverfield has an entire backstory played out through a prequel online manga and a series of fake websites including My Space profiles, corporate sites and even a "love letter" collection of videos.
Good luck trying to figure out what was going on in Donnie Darko without going to the website. And even then...
- The Director's Cut explains things a bit more.
A classic example: If you're mystified by movie 2001: A Space Odyssey, try the Arthur C Clarke novel of the same name. It even has a nifty Stargate.
- This troper always felt that the book and movie complemented each other. The book explains the confusing parts of the movie including the starchild (the space fetus) and that the movie conveyed the writing through spectacular imagery. It might be because Arthur C. Clarke wrote the book while the movie was being produced.
A lot of the protagonist Leonard's unexplained, highly material history in Memento is found on the Memento website.
The explanation for why General Grievous has robot asthma in Revenge of the Sith is found in the Clone Wars cartoons that were on Cartoon Network between the fifth and sixth movies.
- Hell, General Grievous himself was only introduced in those cartoons. For people that watched the fifth and sixth movies without watching the cartoons, he quite literally came out of nowhere. He's also the first and only character in the Expanded Universe to actually make it into a canon movie.
- Actually, Aayla Secura was originally created for the Expanded Universe comics.
The character of Nightcrawler was a popular part of the second X Men movie, but was mysteriously absent from the third. Apparently his disappearance is explained in a computer game released between the two.

Live Action TV

The true purpose of the DHARMA Initiative from Lost was only revealed in the Internet ARG The Lost Experience.
- However, the writers have specifically stated this knowledge is not crucial to understanding the show; it's meant as a bonus for viewers who want more.
All of the extra material involved with the FOX series 24. The "24 Declassified" book series, the "Counter Terrorist Handbook", the one-shot graphic novel, the prequels that were only included on the DVD release (and are actually important to understanding the context of the season), the online short films (sponsored by Degree) from the first season, the different forms of the 24 website at FOX.com (which gave background information on the characters never mentioned in the show)...there's a lot of it.
- The official video game also deals with a number of subplots that weren't mentioned in the series, including Kim beginning her job as a CTU intern (major spoiler: she gets kidnapped) and Jack finding the mastermind behind the second season's events.
- The season four prequel shows how Jack lost his job at CTU, and shows the audience a tender moment with his new girlfriend, Audrey. The fifth-season prequel shows how Jack was discovered after faking his death for a year. The sixth season prequel is an excuse for a car product placement ad, and has no real bearing on the story. However, there is extra material included on the DVD set that takes place after the sixth season, where Jack elaborates on what happened during the day to two fellow CTU officers, and gives background information on himself.
The show Babylon 5 left out the conclusions of some subplots, because they were going to be covered by the (canon) novels.
To understand some plot points in Heroes, you have to check out the online graphic novels.
Regarding the Doctor Who episode Journey's End: The Doctor Who Adventures magazine reveals that the Doctor left Rose and his human counterpart with a chunk of the TARDIS (presumably so they can go off and have their own adventures), a detail which has a huge impact on the ending shown in the episode. It was apparently going to be filmed, but wasn't, for some reason.
- Reportedly, this had been shot and will be boxed with the DVD set. RTD has stated that whether we acknowledge it is our own choice.
Many of the new-gen Kamen Rider series are prone to this.

Literature

It may surprise some to learn that some of the most famous parts of the Iliad—the invocation of the Achilles heel and the Trojan Horse, for instance—are not actually in the Iliad. Instead, they're in the Odyssey. Similarly, the cause of the war and the recruiting of many of the warriors are told in outside sources.
Farscape: Crichton's notes provide some musings and further information about various technology from the show. The Journey Logs, written from various characters' viewpoints, are also good sources of character insight, wit, and lampshade hanging ("Apparently Scorpy had been able to trace my DNA from the sample he took when he had me in that frelling Aurora Chair, and that enabled him to find my head. Don't ask me how that makes sense. I just work here.") in addition to being episode recaps.
- Also, you have to play the video game to find out how Crichton came to have a favorite gun that he names Winona.
The Merchandise Driven Bionicle storyline is like this: the main story has to focus on current toy sets, so information on other characters and general world-building can be the domain of supplemental guidebooks and web-published side stories (and occasionally Word Of God). Of course, the toys themselves come with no story material whatsoever - that's in stuff like the book series or movies - so when they say it's All There In The Manual, they mean it's All There In The Manual.
The Whateley Universe has its own "Canon Material" in its own forum area, covering things like the Cosmic Horror backstory, stuff about the Superhero School Whateley Academy, what the different superpowers are, and so on.

Comic Books

The DCU's super-hero espionage comic Checkmate has a supplemental website whose address, www.gideonii.com, was hinted at within the story. Username CARL DRAPER, password wilhelmina; subject to change. It's ostensibly the diary of a minor character within the story, written in the first person, with entries detailing various elements of the series in greater depth and hinting at future plot events.

Tabletop Games

Warhammer 40000 has a small library of rulebooks, rules supplements, codex sourcebooks, codex supplements, alternate army lists, Imperial Armour collections, Chapter Approved collections, etc, etc. And that's just the latest edition.
The metaplot in the old World of Darkness. You can play the roleplaying game without the metaplot, but the game writers scattered the metaplot and canon character background stories across various rule supplements, novels set within specific gamelines, crossover novels between the different gamelines, and computer games. Vampire: The Masquerade especially had the whole series of "clan novels" towards the End of the World metaplot. The final supplements that detailed the final fate of the various races and factions (or at least gave lazy Write Your Own Ending options to chose from) still sucked.

Music

Parts of the backstory for the Rock Opera Space Crackers can only be found on the band's website.

Webcomics

Misfile If you really want to understand how the Celestial Depository works and the effects of reversing the misfile, and find out just how Tempest has such a cool mountain racetrack you need to have read the "about" section on the website, read the Ask Ash column, and ordered the print books so you could read the liner notes.

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