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Genre Savvy
"I've seen this movie; the Black Dude Dies First."
-- Orlando Jones, Evolution

The exact opposite of Genre Blindness. A Genre Savvy character doesn't necessarily know they're in a story, but they do know of stories like their own and what worked in them and what didn't. They know every Simple Plan is doomed to failure from the start and instead of participating, sit back and wait to get in their "I told you so." They can spot someone being controlled by The Puppet Masters from a mile away (usually). They're more likely to listen when they catch someone in a compromising position who sputters "It's Not What It Looks Like!" And they've seen enough horror movies to know that when there's an ax murderer on the loose, the last thing you want to do is either split up or boink your significant other. They know how to avoid getting a bad rank on the Sorting Algorithm Of Mortality.

The Genre Savvy live to hang lampshades, give Aside Glances, and say, "You just had to say it, didn't you?" right after use of a Tempting Fate Stock Phrase. Their exasperation with the sheer stupidity of the entire universe usually makes them a Deadpan Snarker. They are likely to be told that This Is Reality, and likely to be the one who always wanted to say that. A useful person to have around if you get Trapped In TV Land.

They will often try to take advantage of tropes, either to fail embarrassingly (often because they're actually Wrong Genre Savvy), or to achieve remarkable feats to everyone else's astonishment.

Genre savviness sometimes occurs when The Man Who Knew Too Little discovers that his situation is real. This is a Justified Trope in situations where the character was initially recruited for their knowledge of the genre. (Galaxy Quest, The Last Starfighter, The Three Amigos!)

Like playing with the Fourth Wall, having one or more Genre Savvy characters is indicative of Post Modernism.

The most extreme, who know what Genre Blindness is and that they're supposed to be, remain Contractually Genre Blind. When a villain instead says "screw that!" and dodges every trope and Idiot Ball that comes their way, they are Dangerously Genre Savvy.
Examples:

Anime
  • The Twelve Kingdoms (originally a series of fantasy novels) features a Double Subversion of Genre Blindness -- one of the secondary characters, Sugimoto, is convinced she is the heroine of a fantasy novel. (Naturally, the Big Bad exploits her delusion for all it's worth.) Of course, if she were really as big a fantasy fan as she appeared to be, she'd have realized that Yoko was the heroine.
  • Inuzuka Koushi from Sumomo Mo Momo Mo is the only person who sees the lunacy of an underground martial arts war, constantly quoting the various laws they are breaking.
  • The title character of Suzumiya Haruhi No Yuutsu sees everything in terms of TV and anime tropes, even where they might not otherwise have been. To a certain extent, everybody else in the SOS Brigade has to become Genre Savvy so they can anticipate Haruhi's crazy ideas, especially Itsuki (who tends to attempt to dish up exactly what Haruhi expects) and Kyon (who merely prefers to make snide remarks).
  • Normally Kyoko in Maison Ikkoku tends to think the worst of Godai when it comes to other women. The exception being schoolgirl Ibuki Yagami, who has an (unreturned) crush on Godai-sensei. Nothing that she tries fazes Kyoko the least (Godai isn't so lucky). Kyoko's late husband was one of her teachers and she knows that story inside and out.
  • Akira of School Rumble is the only one who actually understands the Love Dodecahedron, even using that knowledge to manipulate people. As demonstrated in the Beach Episode, where a naked Harima winds up grappling a bikini-clad Eri, not only is Akira fully aware that it's Not What It Looks Like instead of jumping to the obvious conclusion, she is also capable of explaining in great detail exactly what happened.
  • Konata of Lucky Star is Genre Savvy to the point of being a trope-fixated Cloudcuckoolander. She recognizes tropes and conventions...but never seems to be able to tell which actually apply to her own genre. Sometimes she gets it right, but other times, she applies tropes that are spectacularly wrong for her situation, referencing Dating Sim event flags or deciding the dentist sounds like a Shounen anime.
  • Houshakuji Renge from Ouran High School Host Club is an Otaku example. All of the other main characters (except Haruhi), as well, to the extent of deliberately playing up their specialized bishonen stereotypes to please their customers.
  • In Mahou Sensei Negima, the "library girls", quite understandably, read a lot of books... which means they're quite willing to accept the idea that their teacher is secretly a wizard. In particular, Paru (Saotome Haruna, herself supposed to be an amateur manga artist!) is all too willing to participate in cliche storylines.
    Paru: But mostly I want to help because IT SOUNDS LIKE A BLAST!
    • But then, one character is Genre Savvy enough to freak out when she realizes that she's in a Love Triangle, and those never end well... (especially not in Japanese literature!)
    • In a curious and almost tragic use of this trope, Ako expresses her lack of self-confidence and feeling of being "ordinary" by saying she's literally "just a supporting character". Negi, of course, tries to reassure her that she is important... but in the context of the manga as a whole, she's exactly right about her lack of importance. At least so far...
  • Shows up a lot Hayate The Combat Butler, which has No Fourth Wall. Almost everyone is Genre Savvy about the fact that they're in a shounen anime/manga and what that usually entails. Key word: usually.
  • Most of the characters in Genshiken are major, major otaku and therefore genre savvy, but share Konata's affliction of being unable to tell exactly what kind of anime they're in. Most of the guys seem to visualise life as a dating sim, and beat themselves up about it when they realise it.
  • Zola in BlueDragon. In the second episode, after she effortlessly destroys several dozen enemy robots, the remaining ones begin combining into a single much larger robot. Zola notes that it would be stupid of her to wait for them to finish, and successfully attacks before the Transformation Sequence is finished.
  • Dio Brando of Jojo's Bizarre Adventure gets into Dangerously Genre Savvy territory, as he usually does not take chances when it comes to his known weaknesses (he's a vampire, after all). For example, instead of throwing one knife (which he knows the hero can block), Dio stops time and throws about 10 to 20 knives in succession so that he can't possibly block them all. And, just to be really, really sure, he drops a steamroller on him. Is it any wonder that this guy is one of the most beloved anime villains of all time?

Western Animation
  • This was the main shtick of Slappy Squirrel on Animaniacs, who, as an old hand at cartoons, was pretty Genre Savvy.
  • In the Teen Titans episode "Fear Itself", the Titans are investigating strange goings-on in their base after watching a horror movie. Starfire suggests they split up, but Beast Boy vehemently protests this plan:
    Beast Boy: Did you not see the movie?! When you split up, the monster picks you off one by one, starting with the good-looking comic relief... me!
    • Beast Boy's knowledge of tropes would come in handy again in the Trapped In TV Land episode.
  • Due to being TV-holics, mulitiple characters on Family Guy are Genre Savvy.
  • Kim, Ron, Shego, and Senor Senior Jr. are of the most Genre Savvy on Kim Possible. This however doesn't prevent from falling victim to Genre Tropes, but does make for some great Lampshade Hanging afterwards.
  • Avatar The Last Airbender:
  • Flash from Justice League occasionally shows traits of this, as this quote from "The Brave and the Bold" demonstrates:
    Flash: Usually when it's this empty, flesh eating zombies show up.
    Green Lantern: You watch too many horror movies... *interrupted by the sound of a brainwashed mob*
    Flash: Maybe you don't watch enough.
  • The smooth, fast-talking Hades in Disney's Hercules, especially appearent within the syndicated series. Unfortunately, he is surrounded by GenreBlind, idiotic minions.
  • Played straight and surprisingly seriously in The Incredibles. A former fan who was rejected as a sidekick by Mr Incredible, Syndrome used his Genre Savvy to master exotic new technologies with which he built a fortune as a weapon designer... and then decimate the ranks of the surviving superheroes. He even cuts himself off in the middle of 'monologuing' when when Mr Incredible tried to trick him into spilling the beans.
    • Syndrome's one moment of Genre Blindness is when he fails to realize the ultra-sophisticated robot he built is smart enough to wonder why it has to take orders.
  • In an episode of The Boondocks where Robert is telling his grandchildren an obviously fake story of his ancestor Catcher Freeman, Riley's Genre Savviness ruins the story by pointing out all the bad action movie cliches and even predicting how the climax is going to be.
  • Also happened in an episode of Legion of Super-Heroes. Bouncing Boy is the 21st Century horror movie aficionado, so he warns them of the rules. And then, the disappearing of teammates begins, and:
    Bouncing Boy: Here, Kitty, Kitty... Oh, no... I went back for the cat.
  • Surprisingly, the otherwise extremely dimwitted Fry from Futurama, to the point where tropes seem to be all he does understand. It's very heavily implied that this is from his near-constant intake of television, movies, etc.

Literature
  • Terry Pratchett's Discworld features quite a few characters like this, thanks to the Theory Of Narrative Causality. Several of the witches, especially Granny Weatherwax, have a feel for "stories", and can use them to their own ends if they have to. Commander Sam Vimes of the Ankh-Morpork City Watch is pretty Genre Savvy when it comes to tropes of detective stories and police procedurals. Malicia from The Amazing Maurice And His Educated Rodents is either too Genre Savvy, or not Genre Savvy enough. She insists on always seeing things in terms of stories, ranging from fairy tales to Kid Detective novels like Tom Swift, The Hardy Boys, and The Famous Five (she even claims at one point that four kids and a dog is "the right number for an adventure"). Furthermore, she has trouble in coping with subversions and exceptions, and always makes herself out to be the main character of the "story". Rincewind the Wizzard [sic], meanwhile, is very much aware of Finagles Law and similiar narrative conventions that keep his life interesting. He hates them.
  • In Cold Comfort Farm, a satirical novel about a young woman who goes from the city to live with her backward relatives on the titular farm, Flora Poste has read all sorts of novels about young women who go from the city to live with their backward relatives on farms. She thus correctly guesses that they'll have names like Seth, Amos, and Judith, identifies Aunt Ada Doom as "the Dominant Grandmother Archetype", and keeps an eye peeled for subversions and exceptions. The book was written in 1932, making this one of The Oldest Ones In The Book.
  • In the Lord Peter Wimsey Mysteries by Dorothy Leigh Sayers, characters discourse at length about how their situations would be different if they were in a detective story.
  • Mercedes Lackey's "500 Kingdoms" series uses this idea -- indeed, it is central to its premise. The idea is that the world in governed by a mysterious force called "The Tradition" which forces peoples' lives to follow traditional story tales, like Snow White, Sleeping Beauty, etc. The main characters are either Godmothers or are being helped by Godmothers to achieve the story's end -- or to change the story from one with a fair amount of deaths to one with a happy ending. As such, all Godmothers need to know what story they are in and, preferably, numerous other stories they can try and manipulate.
  • The Oldest Ones In The Book: The titular protagonist of The Epic Of Gilgamesh notably rejected the goddess Ishtar's advances because he knows how mortals sleeping with gods and goddesses always leads to tragedy. To make his point, he recites a list of the myriad tragic fates of Ishtar's lovers in other myths.
    • It's probably worth noting that the epic plays with the trope a bit here: this embarrasses her so much she retaliates by freeing the Bull of Heaven to rampage around in Uruk.
  • The characters of the Harry Potter series seem to have some degree of this. The kids have discovered that any danger in Hogwarts will inevitably be attracted to Harry (this is attributed to him being The Chosen One) and that every Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher will end up lasting a single year. It has also been noted that Harry has a "saving people thing", which Voldemort has used to his advantage. However, they do not seem to notice that most plot points get wrapped up at the end of each school year.
  • Sergey Lukaynenko's Rough Draft and its sequel Final Draft are practically dripping with genre savvy. Characters frequently reflect on how the events of the story follow certain genre conventions. Sometimes their observations foreshadow the actual outcome, sometimes they turn out to be wrong and other times their realization of what genre convention they wound up facing comes too late to do any good.
    • In one of the early chapters, the main character meets up with a science fiction writer (a thinly-veiled Lukyanenko stand-in) in order to try to figure out the solution to his decisively supernatural problem. The writer winds up explaining how various Russian science fiction authors would resolve it, ending with his own take (which didn't match the actual ending of the novels.)
  • Catherine Morland in the Jane Austen novel Northanger Abbey is very savvy about her preferred genre -- "horrid" Gothic novels. Unfortunately for her, the story she's actually in is a Regency romance.
  • Many characters in John Ringo and Travis Taylor's Looking Glass series of novels are perfectly aware they've been thrown into a science fictional situation. In the second novel, Vorpal Blade, being science fiction fans is seen as a useful characteristic for the new Space Marines and officers flying the first human starship, the captain of which takes a giddy delight in being able to give orders like "Ahead Warp 1" and "Engage warp drive".
  • The Artemis Fowl books have a strongly "action movie" sensibility and several of the characters are fans of action movies and are shown to compare their own experiences with the genre.
  • If fanfiction counts as "literature", there's the wacky but surprisingly good Zombie Apocalypse fic "The Rampant Disease", in which House and Co. invoke every trope in the book--only some of which end up being true.

Live Action TV
  • The main characters of Buffy The Vampire Slayer are almost all Genre Savvy.
  • The sisters in Charmed hovered between Genre Savvy and pathetically, if not redundantly, Genre Blind.
  • After WWE wrestler Batista's Heel Face Turn, his entire gimmick became that he was Genre Savvy enough to see all the Heels' dirty tricks coming a mile away.
  • The Doctor, especially in his most recent incarnation. To a lesser extent, Martha Jones, his companion in Series Three; at least she knows about Time Travel Tropes, including the dangers of stepping on a butterfly or killing one's own grandfather.
    • And in the revived series' third Christmas special, the entire population of London turns Genre Savvy - after two straight years of horrible disasters and alien invasions on Christmas, they evacuate the city en masse on December 25, certain that some cruel god is going to have it in for them again. Not surprisingly, they're right.
    • The Master is Genre Savvy enough to state that he's not going to hang around telling the hero all his plans, though not enough so to just kill the heroes rather than keeping them around to gloat.
  • This seems to be a racial trait unique to Tau'ri (Earthlings) on Stargate SG-1, while all of the aliens are hilariously Genre Blind (except when they've been exposed to enough of Earth's pop-culture):
    • In one episode the plan to attack the Big Bad's superweapon involves attacking in many small ships to hit the single, small target that is its only weak spot. Jack O'Neill points out that it's a stupid plan with ridiculously low odds of success and gets everyone who agrees with him to raise their hands, which most in the briefing eventually do...including Carter, who came up with it. And when a similar plan goes into effect in a later episode, Jack expresses disappointment that his call sign for the mission isn't "Red Leader".
    • O'Neill and Teal'c have to get to the command center of Thor's ship, get prepared to fight off the Replicators to do it, only to find on opening the door that the room is literally crawling with them. For The Hero normally this is the point where they rush in, guns blazing, against incredible odds only to be forced out after a massive firefight. Jack's response is to mutter "To hell with that", close the door and go off to get a new plan.
    • In another episode, Jaffa Master Bra'tac details the massive defenses between the team and the ship's Phlebotinum, which they will have to fight their way to... at the bottom of a large shaft that they are standing next to. O'Neill shrugs and drops several grenades down the shaft.
    • During a briefing where Carter explains that an asteroid is heading towards Earth and will surely destroy it, O'Neill says in a stage whisper, "I've seen this movie. It hits Paris."
    • Daniel Jackson is also genre savvy, waxing sarcastic about being left in a chamber all alone while the redshirt guy with the gun went out into the corridor all alone when there was a serial killing monster on the loose.
    • At one point, a character remarks, "we might as well be wearing red shirts!"
    • The episode 200 was full of genre-savviness. Among other things.
    • In another episode, O'Neill and Teal'c are trapped in a Groundhog Day loop, and eventually take advantage of it for Hilarity Ensues. When they finally confront the person responsible, O'Neill asks him if his plan is to become "the king of Groundhog Day".
    • Jack was rather disappointed when his suggestion of a name for Earth's first starship was rejected. He thought Enterprise was appropriate.
  • Not just limited to the Milky Way Galaxy: on Stargate Atlantis, when trapped in a room with a pregnant woman, Sheppard informs her that she's probably going to go into labor because that's what always happens in movies. (Fortunately, it ends up not happening.)
  • As seen here, Genre Savvyness isn't limited to fictional stories.
  • Surprisingly enough this even showed up in a Star Trek series (Deep Space Nine). Sisko, chasing the traitor Eddington, realizes that Eddington sees himself as a noble hero straight out of fiction. Sisko then arranges things, by intentionally playing the bad guy, so that Eddington's only option is to sacrifice his freedom in order to save innocent people.
  • Space Cases: Commander Goddard, perhaps because he's the one with the most experience and has learned the rules of sci-fi tropes, i.e. "Which one is which? This always happens with Evil Twins!"

Film
  • Pretty much the entirety of the Scream franchise is based on the characters being Genre Savvy, to the point that they make comments like "I know what happens to the black dude, and I'm getting out of here." Randy Meeks was a veritable font of knowledge about how to survive a horror movie.
    • Until he found a giant Idiot Ball and turned his back to a dangerous area. This is actually the weakness of the films. Most deaths were from Idiot Ball incidents.
  • The film Hot Fuzz plays off one of the characters' detailed knowledge of action cop films.
  • Played for endless laughs within the Austin Powers trilogy, particularly any scene with Dr. Evil and his son.
  • Goes double for just about everyone in Not Another Teen Movie. Several scenes featured characters taking a moment to stand around describing the quirks and apsects of their character portrayal with great detail.
    Ricky Lipman: I am not going to let you hurt Janey again. Okay? Besides, I love her.
    Jake:Well, so do I.
    Ricky Lipman: [slight pause] Yes, but I'm the best friend, and I have been in front of her face the whole time, and she just... hasn't really realized it yet, but she will.
    Jake:Well, I'm the reformed cool guy, who's learned the error of his ways. She's gonna forgive me for my mistakes, and realize that I really love her.
    Ricky Lipman:[pause] Dammit, that's true.
  • Pretty much all of Galaxy Quest. When the characters realize they're in a real space battle, they try to use sensible, real-life tactics, and fight the tendency to act like the characters they play--which backfires, because they're much more effective once they start acting their parts. The Plucky Comic Relief is the most Genre Savvy of the bunch, leading to him being convinced he's doomed because he used to play a Red Shirt...
  • The plot of Lady In The Water revolves around the characters realizing that they've stumbled into a fairy tale. This gets subverted when things go horribly awry because they're acting out the wrong roles in the story.
    Harry Farber: This is precisely the moment where the mutation or beast will attempt to kill an unlikable side character. But, in stories where there has been no prior cursing, violence, nudity or death, such as in a family film, the unlikable character will escape his encounter, and be referenced later in the story, having learned valuable lessons. He may even be given a humorous moment to allow the audience to feel good about him. This is where I turn to run. You will leap for me, I will shut the door, and you will land a fraction of a second too late. (He turns to run and immediately gets killed.)
  • One of the few good things about Independence Day was a scene during the initial attack on the alien ships. As soon as Will Smith's character sees their missiles exploding at some distance from ship with a special effect he immediately yells "They have shields!" and everyone knows what he's talking about.
    • A similar, yet inverted instance came up in the (also) much maligned 2005 War Of The Worlds film. Near the end, when the alien tripods are going a little nutty, Tom Cruise's character yells at a soldier who can't hear him in the panic: "Look at the goddamned birds!" (best line in the film, yo.) Sure enough, the soldiers pick up on their lack of shields and proceed to bring them down with their rocket launchers.
  • In Mystery Men, Mr. Furious insists -- correctly -- that Lance Hunt is actually superhero Captain Amazing, and that it's only by wearing or removing a pair of glasses that he is able to switch his identity. Unfortunately, his colleagues are not quite so savvy, and this leads to many frustrating arguments in which they insist that Hunt can't be Amazing because "He wouldn't be able to see."
  • Peter Venkman in the Ghostbusters movies and cartoons, in addition to being the more street-smart (if Book Dumb) Ghostbuster, also tends to display some genre savviness. In the second movie in particular, he's savvy enough to realize that ranting and raving about a demonic painting attempting to possess a baby at midnight on New Year's Eve is only going to make them look crazy to the psychiatrists at the asylum where they have been instituted, and so goes along with events in a calm and rational manner until someone wises up to let them go and deal with it. It's a matter of some frustration to him that his colleagues don't seem to have realized this.
  • Preacher in Deep Blue Sea at one point exclaims, "Ooh, I'm done! Brothers never make it out of situations like this! Not ever!" Ironically, perhaps, he's one of only two survivors at the end of the movie.
  • In Last Action Hero, Danny Madigan, the kid from the real world, having seen so many action movies, knows all the cliches and plot devices when he winds up inside one. Jack Slater, the fictional Hollywood action hero who lives in the movie, refuses to believe him, suffering from Genre Blindness.
    • This is partially subverted later in the film, where Slater reveals that several of the observed tropes were intentionally set up by him to look good.
  • John McClane in 2007's Live Free or Die Hard turns out to be pretty Genre Savvy: for example, at one point he asks whether there's some sort of "Henchmen 'R' Us" where the Big Bad gets all of his Mooks from. But then, he has been through roughly the same plot three times before, with only the details changed, so you'd be a bit worried if he hadn't spotted a pattern.
  • Nick Cannon's character in the Day of the Dead remake. Could also be considered Death By Genre Savvy, as someone dies moments after he says this (but it's a teaser, so that's up for debate)
  • Genre savviness abounds in the 1985 film Rustler's Rhapsody, a parody of The Western that spoofs everything from its stock characters to clean-cut "singing cowboys" like Gene Autry to gritty "spaghetti westerns".
  • The Operative in Serenity shows an awareness of genre conventions while fighting Mal. In his own words, "Nothing here is what it seems. He is not the plucky hero, the Alliance is not some evil empire, and this isn't the grand arena."
  • One person in Diary of the Dead was Genre Savvy enough to suggest that people could survive the Zombie Apocalypse from watching how he and his party had survived.
  • When a zombie starts causing trouble in The Return of the Living Dead some men, armed with the knowledge that Night of the Living Dead was based on a true event, feel they know how to handle zombies. Unfortunately for them, Night of the Living Dead was based on a true event, but only very loosely, and the zombies in The Return of the Living Dead were completely different from the ones they saw in the movies.

Webcomics
  • Elan, from Order Of The Stick is a bit like Malicia in the Pratchett example, in that he suffers from being too genre savvy. The other members of the titular band of adventurers also tend to lack Genre Blindness, but Elan's the only one notable for occasionally needing some.
    • Really, one of the main points of Order Of The Stick is genre savviness. Try this comic page where even the stupid orc chieftain is hilariously genre savvy.
  • Cherry Blossomfeather, of RPG World, has an uncommon lack of genre blindness. While it's eventually justified, she's largely a way for the author to poke fun at RPG tropes.
    • Contrast with Ardam from Adventurers! -- he plays the same role in the comic, but eventually it's a subversion of Genre Savvy, as he finally realizes that no matter how nonsensical the rules of the world are, they're still the rules of the world, and it's irrational to go against them.
  • Othar Tryggvassen, Gentleman Adventurer! of Girl Genius is largely aware of the conventions of the genre, and jumps into their application a bit too quickly at times.
    • When Agatha (the heroine) meets him, he's being held captive by the Baron. His first words to her are "Ah, you must be the villain's beautiful daughter. Just in time." Or, if not, he assumes she's the "plucky lab assistant," and in any case, is going to rescue him and become his "spunky girl sidekick." Barring one minor incident, he persists in thinking of her as his sidekick no matter how much she protests. Later on, when they meet again, he tells Agatha that she's a hero by nature, which she denies -- proving her own genre blindness, as even the cat understands her destiny.
      • Agatha actually is Genre Savvy (except for her refusal to admit she's a hero), which she demonstrates by not releasing Othar:
        Agatha: Look, no offense, but I've been around labs most of my life.
        Othar: Oh?
        Agatha: I'd rather not be the easily-duped minion who sets the insanely dangerous experiment free.
        Agatha: Or the hostage who ensures the smoothtalking villain's escape.
        Othar: Er...
        Agatha: I don't have any proof that you are really Othar Tryggvassen or even really human.
        Othar: Ah...
        Agatha: This girl sidekick job doesn't call for a lot of smarts, does it?
  • Ellie, in Okashina Okashi is familiar with manga tropes. But like Sugimoto, she's never the heroine of those stories.
  • In this issue of Bitmap World, Cyan speculates on who her teacher may be, based on various Schoolteacher Tropes. After being reminded that she's not a character in a sitcom, she discovers her teacher is the Hippy trope.
  • Sam Starfall in Freefall knows about genre conventions, and will set them up, but doesn't get the point of them.
  • The two title characters in Stickman And Cube have No Fourth Wall, and thus know their tropes.
  • Meji from Errant Story is quite up-to-date on her tropes. Among the more noteable examples is her awareness of the dangers of Superpower Meltdown ("All the stories that starts like this ends with 'And then his head exploded...'") and her instant recognition of the sheer number of tropes involved in the backstory of the Amraphel siblings. Ellis, as well as several minor characters, also gets in on the action from time to time, but she's a step ahead of them -- at one point, she deliberately invokes Deus Ex Machina. Literally 'invokes'...
    • Read forward -- It works...
  • Sam Sprinkles, from Zebra Girl, is a former cartoon actor who is way too Genre Savvy for his own good, and has a tendency to get very, very mouthy with people over their role in the story.

New Media
  • Sooni in Tales Of MU qualifies for the subtrope of "Genre Savvy for the wrong genre." As has been made clear in recent chapters, her odd behavior towards Mack is because she believes herself to be in a Shojo anime, with herself as The Hero and Mack as The Rival. This probably started when they both ran for Student Senator for their floor: Sooni naturally saw herself as the beautiful, clever, and friendly heroine (like the "Pretty Science Princess" of her favorite show), instead of the petty, cruel, and psychotic individual that she actually is. Naturally, she sees Mack as the evil demonic Schoolgirl Lesbian who needs to be defeated to become her friend. When Mack continues to refuse to admit defeat and cede the election to her, she flies into a homicidal rage and begins attacking her, to the extent that the almost-invulnerable Mack ends up in the hospital (granted, this was mostly because Mack was using more magic than she should have been, but still). Sooni later visits Mack and happily tells her that she has defeated Mack, and therefore they can be friends now. To repeat: this is someone she has insulted, bullied, and physically attacked on multiple occasions. Mack, exasperated, finally agrees if only to get her to go away.

Comic Books
  • As a result of his innumerous adventures and encountering just about every being in the Marvel universe (and then some), Spider-Man is teeming with Genre Savvy. At times, he sarcastically expresses boredom at how redundant and predictable his life can be.
  • Likewise, Deadpool displays a similar amount of Genre Savvy, though for a different reason -- because of the inoperable brain tumor that ultimately, through Super Science, lead to his healing factor, he also has No Fourth Wall.
  • The comic Zombies Calling by Faith Erin Hicks is built around the main character being savvy to the "rules" of zombie movies.
  • The new Star Trek comic book series, which picks up the adventures of the crew right after the last episode of the original series, has the characters showing they've gained some Genre Savvy.
    • After being stunned and thrown in a cell, McCoy is surprised to see Kirk pull a small phaser out of his boot and blast the door. McCoy asks when he started carrying a hidden weapon. "You get knocked out and thrown into a cell enough, you start to take precautions."
    • After returning to the ship at the end of another issue, Kirk asks Spock how he knew to adjust the shields in anticipation of an attack. Spock replies by giving the percentage of times the ship has been attacked after losing communications with Kirk.

Video Games
  • The protagonist's genre savviness is what jump-starts the plot in the FMV game Brain Dead 13. Teen computer ace Lance is sent to fix a computer at the home of Mad Scientist and brain-in-a-tank Nero Neurosis, and quickly identifies it as a typical mad scientist's lair. Dr. Neurosis flies into a rage after Lance refers to him as an "average villain", and he sics his homicidal toady Fritz on our hero.
  • Almost all the characters in the Disgaea series, particularly Etna. Mao from the third game is dangerously so, concluding that the quickest method of kicking his dad off the throne and rule with his own iron fist is to actually become the hero of the game.
  • In the Grand Theft Auto series, a pedestrian having a conversation about a nearby dead body will occasionally mutter "Don't worry, he'll respawn!" or something similar.
  • Kyle Katarn (at least in Jedi Academy) is genre savvy, lampshadeing tropes such as the fact The console for opening a door is probably hidden in some room twelve floors up and that That Luke Skywalker ''always'' senses a disturbance in the Force.
    • He's like this to a lesser extent in Jedi Outcast, too. Never trust a bartender with bad grammar.
      • He also finishes one of his mission objectives (disabling the Doomgiver's shields) during Glaek's monologue.
    • In a lesser example, he always knows how to find keys.
  • City Of Heroes has one involving the Trolls and the Tsoo: while interfering with a meeting between the two gangs, heroes will come across Mr. Ting, a Tsoo, complaining to the Troll leader "Haven't you learned anything? When you kidnap people, capes show up."

Tabletop Games
  • The Imperial Guard of Warhammer 40000 are generally, despite the best efforts of Imperial propaganda, aware of just how expendable they are, meaning their morale is pretty poor.
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