Troperville
Help us survive. All donations are anonymous on the wiki and unacknowledged, as we don't wish to create a hierarchy among Tropers.
Editing
Tools
|
An enigmatic word or phrase that appears, unexplained and without context, here and there throughout an Arc, and (with luck) is finally explained at or near the climax. A way of building up tension and mystery, as well as an indicator that anyone using the words knows more than they're telling. Can also be used as a memetic way of advertising the show. A typical element of a Mind Screw.
Note Arc Words are not the same thing as a running gag, a Catch Phrase, or even just a phrase that ends up popping up a lot due to being used a lot in the plot. Alternatively, Arc Words can be a way to hint at the Aesop or one of the themes of a show, often in the form of a question the characters must find an answer to.
Often shows up on the Internet Movie Database "memorable quotes" page for the show, with the label "repeated line".
Note that the Arc Words often do not have attention drawn explicitly to them; eagle-eyed/sharp eared viewers are left to notice for themselves. In the "Bad Wolf" example below, the words appeared as, among other things, a helicopter's callsign, a reference in dialogue to "The Big Bad Wolf", a piece of graffiti, and even in other languages (the Welsh Blaidd Drwg, the French Mal Loup, and the German Böser Wolf).
Examples:
Live Action TV
Literature
- The words "copper" "silver" and "gold" in that order are in every story of "Gödel Escher Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid" until the big reveal that you are actually reading a book written by a guy named Douglas Hofstadter, and every person you've grown to know and love in it is actually a character inhabiting stories written in the pattern of Bach's songs
- The number 19, in Stephen King's The Dark Tower series.
- "Who is John Galt?" from Atlas Shrugged.
- Philip K. Dick's "Ubik", especially. Ubik varies from chapter to chapter, finally culminating in Ubik declaring itself as God.
- Also, "The Empire never ended", from several of his later works.
- "In the Country of the Blind, the One-eyed Man is King", from H. G. Wells's short story "The Country of the Blind". These Arc Words are a paraphrase of Erasmus; Wells's story gives them an ironic connotation as the protagonist repeatedly fails to prove the superiority of his sightedness in a Lost World inhabited entirely by blind people.
- The Black Company series had a number of these, especially near the end. They even became the names of two of the novels, Water Sleeps (which in context means "Revenge is coming") and Soldiers Live ("and wonder why", referring to survivor's guilt).
- Tad Williams' Otherland features a significant and enigmatic character who keeps repeating "an angel touched me".
- Pretty much the entire purpose behind Thomas Pynchon's The Crying of Lot 49. The words are "Trystero", "WASTE" (apparently an acronym for "We Await Silent Trystero's Empire"), "DEATH" ("Don't Ever Antagonize The Horn"), and a picture of a muted postal horn (trumpet). The best part, though, is that we never find out if it means anything.
- "Here comes a candle to light your bed, here comes a chopper to chop off your head!" from 1984, and the associated rhyme.
- "Delial" from House Of Leaves.
- A Song Of Ice And Fire is crawling with these; every major noble family in Westeros has its words (with House Stark's "Winter is coming" getting the spotlight). There is also valar morghulis and valar dohaeris, the code-phrases-cum-mottos of the Faceless Men.
- The initials V.F.D. and later J.S., in A Series Of Unfortunate Events, as well as various names and phrases that begin with them.
Comic Books
- The number 52 appeared throughout The DCU for a year between 2006 and 2007, hinting at the mystery surrounding the weekly series 52.
- "Something fell" from Cerebus.
- Stephen Marley's Spirit Mirror has Chia, Black Dragon Sorceress, the amnesiac Action Girl heroine, asking herself: "What happened in Egypt?" We never really find out what happened in Egypt until the next book, though. Similarly, the sequel, Mortal Mask, has Chia pondering her long-lost Egyptian lover's enigmatic plea of "Forgive me".
Anime
- "4423", from Dennou Coil. What could it be? A time? A date? A telephone number?
- "The Beautiful Night" and "Can happiness be achieved without sacrifice?" from the Giant Robo OVAs.
- The Fauxlosophic Narration at the start of each episode of Noir ("..Two maidens who govern death..") is promoted to Arc Words later on in the series itself. Also, "If love can kill people, surely hatred can save them."
- "Who the hell do you think I am!" from Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann.
- That's really more of a battle-cry, though. Hence Kamina and Simon and occasionally other people shout it at key points in a battle when they're about to do something badass.
- "Fooly cooly" from FLCL. Despite being the basis for the show's title and appearing at least once in each episode, "fooly cooly" is never explained. In the final episode, Naota's father tries to goad him into revealing the answer to this, "C'mon, you have to know. The main character always knows stuff like this!"
- Mai-Otome has Arc Words in the form of a song ("Hoshi ga Kanaderu Monogatari"). Each of the three main characters -- Arika, Nina and Mashiro -- knows and sings one stanza each, and its real significance is only revealed in the final arc.
- The number 25 appears all over the place in Macross Frontier - it's the 25th migration fleet, the Macross-class ship is called the Macross Quarter (=25%!), the hero mecha are VF-25, one of the characters is a quarter alien, etc. Whether all this leads up to something actually meaningful (as 52 above) is still up in the air.
- Perhaps not so coincidentally, Macross Frontier celebrates the 25th anniversary of the franchise.
- "Cast in the name of God; ye not guilty' from The Big O.
- Fafner In The Azure Dead Aggressor "Are you there?"
Web Animation
- Several Strong Bad Emails in a row in Homestar Runner featured the words "DNA evidence", which later turned out to lead to a cartoon of the same name, where the seemingly out-of-context utterances were explained. (The last email to feature these words only did this in an Easter Egg, which involved Homestar wearily saying these words after a long silence, as if he was obliged to continue the gag.)
Video Games
- Bioshock: Just about everything you're asked to do to continue the game is prefaced with "Would You Kindly". While at first it seems like Atlas is just being polite, he later reveals that not only is he not who he claims to be, "Would You Kindly" is in fact a genetically coded key phrase that compels you to unquestioningly obey the "suggestion." This is a particularly cunning reveal since up until this point, chances are good you have (dun dun duuunnnn!) followed Atlas' advice without wondering where all this might be coming from.
- Portal: "The cake is a lie!" is seen scrawled in various places around the Enrichment Center.
- "She's watching you" is also seen (written in blood) in various places, although less frequently than the meme-tastic quote about the truthfulness of the cake.
- Chzo Mythos: "it hurts", the final entry, in its entirety, in a diary belonging to one of the game's murder victims. It's never explicitly mentioned precisely how, but it's implied that John Defoe was born twisted or deformed, and was locked up and eventually beaten to death by his own father.
- Final Fantasy XI: An ancient song, prophecy, and/or history, the "Memoria de la Stona" is critical to the first three story arcs, most of the various Home Nation story arcs, and is likely a part of the as-yet unfinished storyline to "Wings of the Goddess". The first verse is the spoken-word intro to the first cutscene in the game. After completing the first storyline, the "true" meaning of the first verse is revealed: upon beginning the second, it is immediately and forcefully reinterpreted. Throughout the Chains of Promathia storyline, many major NPCs are in possession of one verse, which they have usually misinterpreted In Bahamut's case, so badly that he wishes to destroy all sentient life on the planet; in Tenzen's, he merely wishes to kill the player.
- "What can change the nature of a man?" from Planescape: Torment.
- According to the Word Of God, the title 358/2 Days won't make sense to players until the game's end.
- Actually, the concept trailer "Another Side, Another Story [deep dive]" from Kingdom Hearts Final Mix is entirely composed of Arc Words. The thing is filled with quotes and random concepts that are subtly included in Kingdom Hearts II (non-existent ones and "You are the source of all Heartless," anyone?) In can make chills run up and down the savvy fan's spine.
- This troper cheered when she realized she was right about who "This time, I'll fight" was said by.
- Urban Chaos: Riot Responce has one. While not a sentence, or a phrase the Company, Shift It appears everywhere! If you look for it of course. The reason it's so important is that Shift it are actually the Burners. The CEO is the leader of the gang, and forceably brainwashed all of his employes into the animals that are the burners.
- killer7 has the phrases "Don't gain the world and lose your soul", "How soon is now"', and "666" scrawled in various places.
The World Ends With You: "To right the countless wrongs of our day, we shine this light of true redemption, that this place may become as paradise. What a wonderful world such would be..."
Webcomics
- Subverted/Parodied/Lampshaded in the Stick Figure Comic Stickman And Cube: For about nine strips, every comic contains the word "potato salad" somewhere. When the characters call the author on it, he admits that the words were foreshadowing something: they were foreshadowing their own exposition, and meant absolutely nothing.
Real Life
- Supposedly, in 1791 James Daly made a bet that he could invent a word within 24 hours. The next morning, the word "quiz"—which had no meaning then—was scribbled in various places. Puzzled onlookers believed they were being tested, and thus infused the nonsense word with meaning, and Mr. Daly with extra money.
|
|
