Main Tropes Index

Troperville

Editing Help

Tools

Toys

Narrative

Genre

Media

Topical Tropes

Other Categories

Custom Search

Big Lipped Alligator Moment
"This is named after the random musical number sung by a big-lipped alligator towards the end of the film All Dogs Go To Heaven. A scene that comes right the fuck outta nowhere, has little to no bearing whatsoever on the plot, is way over the top in terms of ridiculousness even in the context of the movie, and after it happens, no one ever speaks of it again."
Nostalgia Chick, explaining the term after using it to describe the "rapping lizard" scene from Ferngully

Sometimes in a work or film, the writers will try to inject a sense of spontaneity into their work by giving the viewer a scene that seems a little out-of-place, but at least still generally ties into the plot of their work without breaking the flow.

Some writers forget to tie it to the work entirely, creating a moment of the Ultimate Nonsequitur. From this, a Big-Lipped Alligator Moment is formed.

Big-Lipped Alligator Moments, abbreviated "BLAM" (an appropriate term in itself, as they tend to appear with the suddenness of a shotgun blast), occur when something completely random happens. This has to happen in a story that, even if comedic or fantastical in nature, is otherwise fairly straightforward or follows its own sense of logic. This relatively normal story is then shot full of some kind of drug and veers sharply into Mind Screw territory. And then upon exiting the scene that bizarre moment is not considered unusual and has no bearing on the rest of the story.

This doesn't mean that any inconsequential scene is a BLAM, because if you were to cut down any story to its most base necessities, a three hour movie would become 30 minutes. While a scene may not have anything to advance the plot and may seem unimportant, it may be there to provide insight to a character's motivation and therefore has important connotations in the story (making it not a BLAM).

If you can imagine the characters asking each other, "WTF just happened?" off screen after such a moment, you've got yourself a BLAM.

(Oh, by the way...)

The reason for many such moments is simply to stretch the length of the movie. It makes sense to pad the film with an out-of-nowhere oddity; if you have to, you can remove it and not affect the plot in any significant way. This Trope was first mentioned by the Nostalgia Chick when she reviewed Ferngully, but the Trope Namer is All Dogs Go To Heaven, with the Big-Lipped Alligator being... well, yeah... So to accurately explain the origin of this term, The Nostalgia Chick from That Guy With The Glasses is the Trope Namer, All Dogs Go To Heaven is the Trope Maker, and Ferngully is the Trope Codifier. Yeah, just try wrap your head around that.

A reminder that this has to happen in a story that is otherwise normal or tries to follow some form of logic (For example most Monty Python productions are intended to be a sequence of gags that don't relate to each other). And this is not supposed to be singling out an out-of-place one-liner.

May often be a Disney Acid Sequence that you'd swear was produced in an altered state of consciousness. See also That Reminds Me Of A Song, Filler, Wacky Wayside Tribe, and Giant Space Flea From Nowhere.

In Indian film, an upbeat song that has no relation to the plot is called an Item Number.

Important: Note that it's a Big Lipped Alligator Moment. That is, it isn't very long, usually a scene. Whole episodes, story arcs, and entire movies are not to be listed here. For that, we have BLAM Episode.

When the unspoken decision not to talk about such a moment gets the characters in trouble because it turns out later on that it actually was important, it's a case of Poor Communication Kills (this is one reason why these moments are easier to define in hindsight.) If there is a spoken decision to not bring it up, you have Let Us Never Speak Of This Again. When the moment actually has some plot relevance (even if it may not appear to at the time), it's a "Wait, What? Whoa...". If your work of fiction ends with a BLAM-style Mind Screw, you've got yourself a Gainax Ending.

Please remember not to put personal examples on this page. Use the Troper tales page.

Examples

    open/close all folders 

    Trope Namer 

    Anime and Manga 

    Comic Books 

    Film 

    Interactive Fiction 

    Literature 

    Live Action TV 

    Newspaper Comics 

    Opera 

    Professional Wrestling 

    Theater 

    Video Games 

    Webcomics 

    Web Original 

    Western Animation 

    Real Life