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"What's it all about, really, when you get right down to it?"
Omphaloskepsis. A type of meditation where one stares at ones navel. Navel-gazing has come to mean anyone being extremely introspective or existential.
When contemplating his or her navel, a character will sit quietly and contemplate the purpose of Life, the Universe, and Everything. In visual media, this can be accompanied by surreal visuals (sometimes an excuse to recycle material from previous episodes). In written media, this can involve long, usually internal monologues.
Depending on the show, this can be thematically appropriate or a pause in the action. When used as filler, these scenes are usually very annoying, because so little thought is put into them — the poor viewers have to sit through five minutes of "Who am I? Who is me? I is me, but you is not me. The universe is not real to me, unless it is real to you, but who is you? Who is..." and so on against a Clip Show background. But in rare moments, it can be really creepy.
When a character does a voice-over of the same nature during the series, it's called a Fauxlosophic Narration.
When the moment becomes significant as an energizing, self-motivating speech, it is a World Of Cardboard Speech. When a character frequently indulges in navel contemplating, said character is The Philosopher.
Compare with Character Filibuster. And compare with Author Filibuster, where the character is giving answers instead of questions.
Examples
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Anime & Manga
- In an example of a version of this trope well done, Yu Yu Hakusho does this during the Younger Togero fight. It comes off as Ayn Rand trying to challenge the Shounen hero's Power Of Friendship.
- And later in the series, Yusuke has one of these (verging on a full-fledged Heroic BSOD) halfway through his final fight with Yomi, as he blanks out in the middle of a fight upon realizing that he's been fighting for so long that its lost all meaning.
- One episode of Serial Experiments Lain consisted almost entirely of live photographs scrolling by while the Narrator provided Expospeak. But, given the deeply intellectual nature of the series, contemplating the Purpose Of Life in this series not only makes sense, it can also be insightful and even chilling.
- The last two episodes of Neon Genesis Evangelion, plus a few minutes in episode 14.
- Paranoia Agent shows more restraint and only does this for a few seconds in the next episode previews (which usually aren't important anyway). It shows why this trope rarely works: the characters are creepy precisely because they don't babble their inner thoughts to the audience.
- Duels in Yu-Gi-Oh and GX have a tendency to drift into this, as emotional issues from traumatic childhoods to tragic romances rise to the surface for whoever's the bad guy, turning duels more into intense mental therapy sessions. The GX dub frequently lampshades this: "Is he gonna duel or stand there and ponder his purpose in life?"
- Of all things, this may be Truth In Television for those who play the card game casually. Right? Right?
- Koizumi Itsuki from Suzumiya Haruhi is an Olympic-level navel-gazer, who often finishes off his bouts of philosophy with a 'just kidding'.
- Parodied in Prince Of Tennis: Shinji Ibu from Fudomine is infamous for his long, odd mumbling rounds. So much that the voice messages in his single CD's are all composed of random mumbling about practically anything.
- The second season of The Big O made the viewers Contemplate Our Navels a lot — sometimes this and the token mecha fight would be the whole episode. Nietzsche Wannabe Schwartzwald ranting, brief scenes of every character looking puzzled at what was going on, Roger sitting paralyzed at the controls of his mecha while worrying about his destiny — and several characters worrying that they may be tomatoes given intelligence. Unusually, these scenes were never excuses for recycled footage, and were always lavishly animated (Schwartzwald ranted over a background of his mecha running amok through the wilderness).
- Mnemosyne did this out of nowhere in its last episode. This troper found it very strange and misplaced, though she wasn't quite surprised as strange and misplaced seems to be the theme of the series.
- Bounen No Xamdou lampshades this when the main character starts to slide into a monologue, and another character tells him this isn't the time to be navel-gazing.
- Yokohama Kaidashi Kikou has Ridiculously Human Robot Girls contemplating their robotic navels in front of Scenery Porn, of all things. And does it extremely well, too.
- Cowboy Bebop features this in episode 23, Brain Scratch, where the climax of the episode is villain Londes' lengthy speech on the philisophical nature of television. It was actually really creepy and very well done, but then what else would you expect from Cowboy Bebop?
- .hack//Sign characters do this a lot, spending a great deal of time discussing all manner of deep subjects. It comes as a relief to this troper when he gets to see Sora, the only character who regularly acts like he's actually playing a game...
- Gundam series usually feature several battles where opposing mobile suit pilots debate about the nature of truth, honor, war, peace and just about every philosophy topic in existence while blasting each other with laser cannons and giant lightsabers. And when they're not fighting what do they do? They continue debating. All the time, over and over, IT NEVER STOPS. To the point that viewers will wonder if screaming at each other about the nature of reality is really the unseen power source of their gundams...
- Code Geass does something similar in the epic battle in the finale.
- Negi of Mahou Sensei Negima does this on occasion, primarily during the Mahora festival arc, where he contemplates whether or not maintaining The Masquerade is the right thing to do. It's subverted as he never really finds an answer, and decides to maintain it simply because the Big Bad can't prove that breaking the Masquerade is worth screwing over some of the mages.
- It's also lampshaded like crazy as several characters tell Negi to knock off the contemplation because he's only ten years old and should spend his time having fun and being a kid, not debating the moral implications of his actions.
- Ghost In The Shell does this frequently. Admittedly in the movie the English translation made it sound a lot more like an Author Filibuster than the Japanese original seemed to intend - the Major was definitely not sure of herself in the Japanese voicing, yet seemed to be talking directly to the viewer in the English one.
- ARIA as some elements of this. Mostly a rather fluffy series (in a good way), it sometimes plunges deep into nostalgia and questions about the purpose of life, hinting at the Japanese philosophy of wabi sabi, sprinkled with copious amounts of zen—especially prevalent in Akari's mindfulness. This is most prevalent in the Arietta OVA, which coincidentally contains even more scenery porn than the TV series.
- In Rurouni Kenshin, the titular character often talked his foes into submission, and at one point, it was the only way he could win against Sojiro Seta.
- Rakka in Haibane Renmei does a lot of philosophizing about things, such as the nature of the Haibane and whether she deserves to be happy or not.
- FMA: Brotherhood has Hohenheim contemplating the nature of humanity in Episode 27 with the standard Clip Show format.
Film
- The Matrix Reloaded and The Matrix Revolutions were both crammed with navel-contemplation. The original wasn't free of it either, although it was far more pronounced in the Two Part Trilogy.
- I Heart Huckabees was filled with this, which makes sense as the main action of the movie involves characters going through an existential crisis or ten. Lampshaded by one character not yet willing to admit he's also going through one:
Dawn Campbell: You can't deal with my infinite nature, can you?
Brad Stand: Of course I can... what does that even mean?
- The Thin Red Line is possibly the epitome of this trope. Nearly every soldier has a ridiculous voice-over monologue, and many times there are more than one of them onscreen, making it impossible to tell who's actually saying it. After watching, one reviewer commented that it sounded like a series of high school papers asking "Why is there War?" and noting that he felt compelled to yell letter grades at the screen. And then you find out that the studio had to chop the film down from six hours....
- Cloud gets into the habit of this during Advent Children as part of his wangsting phase.
- Kiss Kiss Bang Bang has one of these with a nice moment where Harry looks back at his unrequited love's apartment and sighs.
- "Y'all wanna be staring very intently at your own belly buttons."
Literature
- Robert Asprin's later Myth books started to do this more and more.
- Orson Scott Card likes to do this in his books. This editor recalls a scene from one of the Shadow books involving Ender's mom and Graff talking about whether it's intentions or actions that determine one's supernatural fate, for example. This other editor also remembers the most plot-vital revelations in Xenocide are strongly obfuscated behind long, confusing Fauxlosophic Narrations.
- The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy refers to the three phases of civilization as being characterized by the questions, "How can we eat?", "Why do we eat?", and "Where shall we have lunch?" (The Restaurant at the End of the Universe is one possible answer to the last question. And that's not even getting into Bistromathics...)
- also parodied in the scene with the whale and the bowl of petunias.
- Somewhat happens in Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451 during the speeches of Montag's boss Beatty. Beatty actually does mention people cleaning their navels in one speech.
- Subverted, in that Beatty is deliberately trying to fuck with Montag's mind.
- The activity which most concerns Pierre in War And Peace. It's not enough to be stinking filthy rich, no, he must learn the secrets of Life, the Universe, and Everything.
- The Illuminatus Trilogy is made of this, with long dialogues about how the human mind thinks, the significance of religion, why anarchy and chaos are better than order and authoritarianism, and the respective positions of the Illuminati, the Justified Ancients of Mummu, the Legion of Dynamic Discord, and Erisian Liberation Front on what poeple should be doing. It is remarkably unprentious and often even fun to read, though.
- Notably, chaos eventually isn't decided to be better than order, after all, even though that appears to be the initial premise; the idea is that there simply has been an overflow of order recently, and some extra chaos is needed to balance things out.
- In the Principia Discordia, from which many of the ideas of Illuminatus! are drawn, the opposition is not between order and Chaos, but between order and disorder, and Chaos is the principle into which both transcend.
- Stacy in Scott Smith's The Ruins does something like this towards the end of the novel.
- Happens on occasion in Terry Pratchett's Discworld books, especially the later ones in the series.
- Robert E Howard's Kull does this a lot. Especially in The Mirrors of Tuzun Thune, where Kull gazes into a mirror and wonders if perhaps the mirror image is the real man and he is but a mirror image himself... and more from that drawer.
Live Action TV
- In Babylon 5 the two Sufficiently Advanced Alien species repeat the Armor Piercing Questions "Who are you?" (Vorlons) and "What do you want?" (Shadows) to force the "younger races" to contemplate their navels (or biological equivalents).
- Of course, the two races themselves have been asking the questions for so long that they don't know their own answers, and have ended up adopting the Order Versus Chaos framework without really understanding it. They have become roughly equivalent to divorcing parents trying to get "the kids" to choose a side.
- This comes to a head when a third, even more Sufficiently Advanced Alien (to continue the metaphor, the Vorlons' and Shadows' parent figure) shows up with his own question: "Why are you here?" This helps the main characters realize it is time to start kicking butt. Philosophically.
- Three words: "In a hospital, ..."
- Heroes opened most episodes (and closed some) of the first season with an astoundingly generic monologue about fate and destiny, a practice which has decreased but not completely died out in later seasons. They're so similar that if a TV network accidentally put the monologues in the wrong order, few people would ever notice, at least for the opening monologues. The closing monologues tend to be more relevant to the plot of the episode. Regardless of their lack of content (or perhaps because of it), they can be a very soothing way to ease the viewer in and out of the episodes, especially since Sendhil Ramamurthy reads them as though whispering a fairy tale to a child. > See Fauxlosophic Narration.
- It also helps greatly that the man has a damn smexxy voice. Too bad he's so f*d up in the third season.
- Its precisely for that reason that his initial monologues after the treatment are so jarring. Our calm narrator has gone mad so it seems that reality has gone mad with him. And given that this comes at the moment of his would-be world changing breakthrough, its appropriate.
- Tubbs on Miami Vice was especially prone to this kind of behavior; most anything involving the Big Bad from season 1 or his daughter would immediately launch the audience into a five minute long flashback Big No-filled Slow-Mo montage.
- The X Files occasionally suffered from somewhat portentous and long-winded voice-over monologues of this nature.
- Desperate Housewives: Every episode opens and closes with Mary Alice's voice-from-beyond-the-grave yattering off some inane blabla about life, happiness and whatnot.
- Parodied in Garth Marenghis Darkplace - every episode closes with Rick Dagless indulging in some introspection on the hospital roof at sunset. Given the deliberately poor quality of the writing, the topic of his navel-gazing is frequently a Wangsty, incomprehensible and pompous Character Filibuster of some kind.
- Parodied in the Dennis Moore skit on Monty Python.
- Hell's Kitchen, of all things, turns into this whenever Marco Pierre White opens his mouth.
- Literal example; in one episode of Get Smart where Max infiltrated a group of both male and female hippies. The guru told all the hippies there to contemplate the navel. The Guru had to tell max "Your OWN Navel"
Music
Video Games
- At the very end of Star Ocean: Till the End of Time, the characters find out that their entire universe is a video game. The man who created the video game destroys it; however, the heroes choose their last moments to do some navel contemplating and their perceived universe is forced to spontaneously generate.
- Metal Gear Solid does this from time to time, usually at the worst possible moments. Towards the end of the first game, the Big Bad actually tied the hero up and spent a good 15 minutes lecturing him on the troubling implications of genetic engineering while nuclear bombers made their approach.
- And let's not forget the excruciatingly long codec conversation with the Patriot AI in the sequel, where Solidus patiently waits not 10 feet away until it's over to try and kill you.
- Metal Gear Solid 4 loves this. While presumably during an ongoing battle, Snake finds time to listen to repeated philosophical discussion of the war economy and nanomachines that one person could do in a two minute summation.
- Big Boss proves he really was a Patriot at the end of the game, by blathering on for almost as long as the AI's did.
- All of these tend to fall under either comic book dialogue, or are (not) justifiable by Snake, in all incarnations, being just that damn good. Under attack? Hold up your finger, and they'll WAIT to shoot you while you converse with Mission Control if you're that badass. And Snake, well, is.
- Or you break the Fourth Wall and take advantage of the fact that (most) games automatically pause whenever you open up a menu.
- Indeed. You might never really question the ability to speak for 15 minutes into the codec in any given situation because you subconsciously have learned that the gameplay pauses when you open the codec menu. A clever use of Gameplay And Story Segregation perhaps, allowing story exposition to be inserted at any time.
- Interactive Media game Vortex: Quantum Gate II is about 30% navel gazing, but it's pretty realistic since you have just found out your mission wasn't to kill giant bugs but friendly little fae folk. And then it makes sense again after the second revelation that Earth has only five years left and the shadowy mining company you work for (which is utterly huge, on the level of Eurocorp in Syndicate Wars) has been covering it up by 'disappearing' whistleblowers left and right in a vain attempt to hide the truth from the public until they can take over this new world and spring a manufactured heroic revelation onto the public. Drew's faced with the choice of saving his whole race or exchanging a sizeable portion to save the newly encountered race. (Note that it's not really spoilery as any attempt to find information on this obscure game has people trying to sell used copies by blabbing the whole plotline anyway. Even Amazon gives away the revelations. Yeesh.) It's a stupendous effort, Myst with simpler puzzles but a heavily political/philosophical plotline.
- Used literally in Star Control 2. The player can talk the Thraddash into contemplating their navels, but the player learns that the Thraddash require three mirrors to properly view their navels.
- Spoofed/Lampshaded in Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney, during case 4-3:
Trucy: This is no time for navel-gazing! Let's crack this case!
- Also made fun of in Justice For All.
Edgeworth: This is a trial, not the Phoenix Wright Wax Philosophical Power Hour!
- Let us not forget Kreia, from KOTOR II. Kreia is an excellent example of this, as nearly everything she says argues a Nietzsche Wannabe philosophy, but her grandmotherly tone renders it profound, not mere filler. This troper came away from several sessions with the game wondering whether doing good things were actually good, or whether doing bad things were actually bad, paralyzed with fear of doing nearly anything. Gamespy says "Kreia can teach a player more about basic moral philosophy and the flaws of Nietzsche in one game than a full semester in college -- and make a trip full of heavy-duty thought a whole lot of fun.".
- Shadow The Hedgehog has had this in is own spinoff title to the point where it has become exaggerated by the fanbase.
Webcomics
Western Animation
- The phenomenon is also parodied in Avatar The Last Airbender with the episodeThe Firebending Masters, when Zuko and Aang are exploring an ancient temple and, lacking any better ideas when they run out of clues as to what to do next, Zuko suggests "contemplate our place in the universe?"
- In Transformers: Energon, there were filler episodes every once in a while, where a couple of characters would sit around, and contemplate what happened since the last Recap Episode.
- It happened in The Tick vs. the Protoclown. Tick gets knocked into orbit unconscious, and his mind (a six-winged vision of his head) tells him he can only get home by answering the question "Why am I here?" The Tick's brain is mostly desert. There's the pleasure center (a giant smiley face that will make him enter an endless coma of ecstasy), the brain's defense mechanisms (little Ticks armed with fish), and a giant Tick statue that will answer only one question ("How's it going?") The Tick eventually stumbles across the answer himself: "I'm here because a big clown hit me!"
Web Original
- Anime Explains the Epimenides Paradox.
- Done well (and hypnotically) on a very regular basis in Broken Saints.
- As he proceeds through the game, very much Bobby Jacks of Survival Of The Fittest - with a lengthy speech on his morals and/or deconstructions of his own motives cropping up every two scenes or so. Given that by the point he started to seriously do this he had wasted no fewer than seven people, you might argue that it took a little too long for his conscience to catch up with him.
- Associated Space has an entire coastal village on the University Planet of Clonmacnois dedicated to the contemplation of esoteric philosophy. Which leads the hero Fatebane to remark, "We're all failed philosophers, in one way or another."
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