"Oh, I'm so very happy you talked to me. Unless we're especially lucky, characters like me without notable personalities often wind up overlooked and ignored. But I'm happy. You talked to me. You've acknowledged me, in other words. Oh, I'm so happy!"
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. More sophisicated versions will also know they can't tell which genre they are in (and are often in far more realistic or complicated genres that the stories they remember), or which characters they are.
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", or even a "We Could Have Avoided All This". They can spot someone being controlled by Puppeteer Parasite 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!".
They can tell fairly early that the strange old man who's offering free lollipops is probably best avoided. 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 splitup, boink your significant other, or investigate strange noises in the Sinister Subway. 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 FateStock Phrase. Their exasperation with the sheer stupidityof the entire universe usually makes them a Deadpan Snarker. They are likely to be told that This Is Reality or just ignored, 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. The sophisticated savvy can realize that they do not know what characters they are playing, or whether they are exactly in the same genre as the books they read.
Genre savviness sometimes occurs when And You Thought It Was a Game shows up. This is a Justified Trope in situations where the character was initially recruited for their knowledge of the genre. (Galaxy Quest, The Last Starfighter, ¡Three Amigos!!) It can also be justified through experience — hopefully, after going through dozens of Let's You and Him Fight scenarios a superhero will eventually see them coming and start trying to avoid them ahead of time.
There are two finely-distinguished varieties of genre savvy. The first comes form being familiar with fiction. A good example of this is the Scream series, where the genre savvy characters are savvy because they've watched horror movies. The other kind comes from being a character in some sort of serial fiction, and having a good memory. For example, many modern comic book superhero characters exhibit a lot of savviness, simply because they can remember all the weird things that've happened to them, and thus are not surprised when yet another evil twin shows up.
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. On the other hand, when they're incorrect in their assumptions on what they're supposed to be, they're of the Wrong Genre Savvy persuasion. Clever characters can be well aware of the possibility of Wrong Genre Savvy and additionally that they may not realize what roles they are cast in, and launch many a quip and discussion about whether a certain trope is or is not in play.
When a villain instead says "screw that!" and dodges every trope and Idiot Ball that comes their way, they are Dangerously Genre Savvy. When they don't, it's Death By Genre Savviness. If a character uses his Genre Savvy just to make humorous observations, he's a Meta Guy. When characters are just Genre Savvy enough to accept the premises of the story, they are Functional Genre Savvy. When an entire story is built around the audience being this and the characters subverting or showing it, it's often a Cosmic Comic Story. Compare with Medium Awareness.
Examples:
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Anime and Manga
In Tsurupika Hagemaru-kun, Hagemaru suffers from this and Medium Awareness.
Hagemaru: Hey, Kaka, don't sneeze like this while you're naked or the censor guys will cut the scene!
Hagemaru: I can do anything, I'm the hero of this series!
Note - These lines are from the Hindi version
The title character of Suzumiya Haruhi sees everything in terms of TV and anime tropes, even where they might not otherwise have been. She borders between being a wrong and being an accurate Genre Savvy. Since she is an all-powerful Reality Warper with unstoppable willpower, she actually makes herself become accurate.
Koizumi himself is a Genre Savvy character too, using it to his advantage to convince Haruhi of certain things. Sometimes it does work, sometimes it backfires at him.
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.
Misaki Takahashi of Junjou Romantica, to his eternal despair. He knows very well what Usami would want as a present.
Usami: "You."
Misaki: (internally) "I knew it was me!"
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.
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.
Ex: In the English version, there is a point where Tetsuju falls off a hovering space ship and crashes to the floor of a rocky canyon. Sora then assures Seikichi, "Don't worry, he'll be fine. He's the comic relief!"
Shinza says the same thing about himself after he narrowly escapes being arrested and is nearly sliced in half inside his hiding place. "Good thing I'm the comic relief!"
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...
Not to mention that the sole reason that Negi is even able to get back up after Jack Rakan pounded him is because he promised her he would win and he's going to win. That's pretty important.
Shows up a lot in 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.
The trick is, they don't know they're in a parody.
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 Blue Dragon. 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.
Edward Elric from Fullmetal Alchemist shows great perception through the manga like realizing that he can imitate the attack of the enemy or realizing that pressing the enemy's Berserk Button actually helps in a battle, or that a shadow monster doesn't exist without light, etc.
Got a villain who can himself into an invulnerable material? No problem! Transmute that armor-skin into something else, and THEN stab him!
In the same manga (and Brotherhood anime), Roy Mustang, who knows How to Survive a War Movie , loses his cool in a flashback to the Ishvalan War when his buddy Maes gets all excited about a letter from his girlfriend Gracia. Maes survives the war, though does not learn from his mistakes.
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?
Steamroller came later. But the scene plays out like this. Jotaro is lying on the ground, apparently dead. Dio first listens for breathing. Then he moves closer and listens for a heartbeat. Jotaro first holds his breath, and then uses his stand to keep HIS OWN HEART FROM BEATING. So then Dio decides to grab a stop sign from the street corner and DECAPITATE Jotaro, just to be sure.
On the heroic side, Jotaro shows signs of this during the battle against Akira Otoishi. He forces his opponent to switch to plan B by correctly guessing his entire strategy before they even started fighting, including any bluffs and gambits that Akira might employ given the current situation.
Keima of The World God Only Knows is an internet-famous genius when it comes to Dating Sims, so when Hell has a problem with evil spirits hiding inside schoolgirls—where making them fall in love is the only way to exorcise them — they call him. And despite Keima's dislike of real girls, it works.
You can tell from early on when he's able to point out the local rich girl is a tsundere because she has cat eyes, light hair, a visible forehead and twintails. He's a little disappointed that she's not short to make it perfect, but then Elsee points out she's also wearing high heels.
"A stranger appearing in a time of crisis is 100% SUSPICIOUS!!"
To be fair, she's not really jumped at the call so much as delighted having people who can be recognized as family (she's an orphan). Although she made a fine commander after the Time Skip.
Simon of Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann becomes rather Genre Savvy in the last two arcs, recognizing that they've always snatched victory at the last second from the jaws of defeat merely by being sheer bloody-minded Determinators, in stark contrast to Rossiu who thinks things like "plans" and "logic" have any effect in a universe governed by the Rule Of Cool. Kamina has the same mindset before Simon, but this is less to do with being Genre Savvy than it does Kamina being the kind to charge in without a plan. Fanboys try to ignore all the times this didn't really work.
To be fair, Rossiu was very savvy as the rest of the cast fell for the hotspringstrap.
Ikki Tousen is basically "Romance of the Three Kingdoms, Gender Flipped and as a High School AU". Well, the teenage fighters know they're the reincarnations of these heroes, and several of them use such knowledge to their advantage as they fight their ways in the story, searching for a way to either fulfill or screw their fates.
In Kannagi, Akiba Meguru, being a "self-conscious akiba-freak", is Genre Savvy to the extreme, even recognizing that Mikuriya Jin for what he is:
'If this is a comic, you are the main character!'
Bleach mangaka Tite Kubo has got a reputation for having characters enter fights by attacking their enemies from behind, so when Ichigo tries this on villain Sousuke Aizen, what happens? Absolutely nothing, as Ichigo then gets told that Aizen never enters battle without applying protection to the back of the neck, "the weak spot of every living creature."
Later on, Urahara shows up and seems to finally actually do damage to Aizen and the chapter ends with the villain's figure hidden behind the wall of fire coming from the attacks. When Ichigo attempts to talk to Urahara at the start of the next chapter, he gets told to stop. Urahara: "Not Quite Yet. It'd be cute if that's all it took to finish things. In that case he'd be just like any other monster. He'll be back...any minute now." He's right.
Yammy, of all people, seems to be the most genre savvy espada. He is the first and only character to notice Wonderweiss's "special condition" on his own Aizen knows too, but then again he was the one who did it to him. He also states that "he never expected Ulquiorra to die first." Not only does he seem to be aware that all of the espada are going to die, but that since Ulquiorra received much more screen time and character development, he would logically last longer than he himself would.
However, this was immediately after saying that he thought he would be able to kill Rukia, Chad, and Renji in time to go help Ulquiorra fight Ichigo, so he wasn't savvy enough to realize that it is almost impossible to kill a hero in Bleach, let alone three.
A minor example occurs during CharlotteCuulhorne and YumichikaAyasegawa's fight. Charlotte believes strength equals beauty, immediately targets Yumichika's body, and shatters his arm in three places. Yumichika believes victory equals beauty so targets Charlotte's hair and stands back smiling, waiting for Charlotte to release his full power. Why? Because both characters fit The Dandy trope. In other words, Yumichika sped up the fight in accordance with his aesthetic of equating victory and beauty by playing on the fact that a dandy cannot bear to be mussed up in a fight.
In Bizenghast, Edaniel comes to after being knocked out, and looks for the others, who have managed to get lost. Edaniel claims that he "knew this would happen."
The first Beast Fighter fought in GoLion (what Americans would know as Voltron) was extremely Genre Savvy, being the only monster in the series that was smart enough to attack the separate lion robots before they could combine.
Pokémon Hunter J from Pokémon could be this. She's the only villain that hasn't been arrested or beaten voluntarily. In the two-parter Riolu episode, she is removed from the plot after delivering her quarry, then, when Ash and Company show up, she tells her henchman that they have their money, and they depart, leaving the client to be arrested.
She's also one of the few villains of the show to use the expedient of attacking the Kid with the Leash, rather than the mons themselves. This forces them to scramble for defense and throws them off their game. She is furthermore completely unaverse to directly trying to kill Ash.
In one episode, an Officer Jenny manages to instantly defeat the poacher that, earlier, has beat Team Rocket to a pulp...by having her Growlithe steal the poacher's Pokéball containing his Tyranitar, completely bypassing the need for a Pokémon battle. A very rare occurrence in the anime.
In Pokémon Special, a particular Galactic mook notes the fact that anyone who comes across a Pokedex will play a key role in a major, region-wide battle involving legendary Pokemon. In other words, he knows who the main characters are in the story.
Subverted, though. Said Galactic Mook is under control from Sird, who has fought and seen fights with the Pokedex holders and knows that they are often involved a lot. That said, this makes Sird very Genre Savvy herself.
Amon: Simple, I call out their names dramatically and they rise up!
Pain in Naruto is most certainly this. Unlike every other villain in the entire manga, he doesn't take the time to explain or brag about all of his abilities, drastically improving his effectiveness. Several people die just trying to figure out what he can do. It isn't until his abilities are discovered through old fashioned trial and error that anyone is even slightly effective against him.
Happy in Fairy Tail fancies himself very genre savvy about the comedy genre, often predicting the outcome of various gags only to be proven only partially correct.
Kid Buu in Dragon Ball Z might count as well while almost every major villain in Dragon Ball Z threatens to blow up the Planet they're on to kill the heroes, Buu is the only one who actually does it before fighting the heroes and without announcing first.
In a filler scene in the Cell arc, Goku is on the hunt for the dragonballs again, and finds one of them held by his old foe Mercenary Tao. Tao knows full well he doesn't have a prayer of defeating Goku in a fight... but he does know that Goku isn't the sharpest knife in the drawer. So he makes a deal: if Goku can figure out a few wire puzzles before dawn of the next day, he gets the dragonball. Goku, good sport that he is, accepts, while Tao uses the opportunity to get as far away as possible just in case he lost his bet. Unfortunately for Tao, Goku is able to undo the wire puzzles in time, and thanks to his new instant transmission ability, takes the dragonball anyway.
In the arc of Ah! My Goddess where Urd is split into her Goddess and Demon selves, Skuld shows a bit of Savvy when Demon Urd mixes the two of them up and tries to play Spot the Imposter. It doesn't work, because Skuld wrote an identifier on Goddess Urd's backside before they even found the other: this was totally not just for Fanservice.
Various characters in To Aru Majutsu no Index point out certain things, including making references to dating sims when talking about Touma's harem, among other ways.
By the end of Code Geass Kallen's become familiar enough with Lelouch's Large Ham tactics to know that, if he says a cool-sounding philosophical line while making a dramatic gesture with his hands, it means he's about to do something incredibly improbable to screw over his enemies.
Reiko Himezono, the titular character of Reiko the Zombie Shop. Genre savvy in that she's very competent at her job and is intimately familiar with the things that could go wrong, such as a resurrected zombie going berserk if the person responsible for their death is nearby, knowing that said zombie would not attack a complete stranger for no reason, and carrying around a tape recorder with pre-recorded chants with her if something goes wrong. The latter proves handy when she crosses paths with psychotic child murderer Saki Yurikawa and has her throat slit. Reiko anticipated something like that would happen and switched on a recording of her standard resurrection chant beforehand, zombifying herself in order to personally deal with Yurikawa. She gets better in the next volume, though.
In Violinist of Hameln, the demon generals immediate orders after conquering a country are:
Hell King Bass: "Kill all the women and children in case one of the women gives birth to a child and he grows up to be a hero or something."
Dragon King Drum: "Ain't that always a bitch?"
Amamiya Yuuhi from The Luciferandbiscuithammer displayed a large amount of dating sim genre savviness on multiple occasions. One occasion during which he specifically chose to walk in on Asahina changing, knowing this type of situation usually engenders "special events".
At another time, instead of opening the door onto a changing girl, he felt accomplished instead, by having a girl walk in on him naked as a "special event"
Sami also remarks, at a certain point when Yuuhi suddenly grabs her face in during a dream that, had this been a romantic comedy, he'd have grabbed her boobs instead of her head.
The Inazuma Eleven anime tends to portray Megane this way sometimes, although he usually fails at trying to use it to his advantage. On one occasion, he starts with an annoyed rant in the middle of a soccer match, and gets even more annoyed when an opponent tries to steal the ball from him in mid-speech, because Talking Is Supposed To Be A Free Action.
Megane: How dare you attack in the middle of a stirring lecture or a fusion! As a robot otaku, you fail!
In Spirited Away, it could be chalked up as childish fear but Chihiro immediately knows that something is wrong with the abandoned amusement park she and her parents had stumbled upon, as well as eating food that doesn't belong to them.
Comics
Ambush Bug is not only extremely Genre Savvy, he also loves breaking down the Fourth Wall, and the Fifth, Sixth and Seventh Walls, just in case.
Spider-Man routinely teams up with Wolverine. During their section of the latest Marvel Team-Up series, Peter makes a quip about the fact that they start brawling every time they meet. Every time. Even though they have teamed up many times and know each other socially. And they were most likely teammates on the Avengers at the time. This may stem from their rather rocky relationship with one another, made clear in their first encounter, or from Wolverine's habit of hitting on Mary Jane, but still…
In Paradise X Saga, Peter Parker (now a cop), demonstrates a ridiculous level of Genre Savviness when he deduces the Guardians of the Galaxy's motivation with a two-word reply:
Peter Parker: I know you guys are gettin' ready to go back to the 30th century an' all, but I've been wonderin' — Where's Nikki? Vance Astro: "Nikki" who? Peter Parker: Oh wait, I know this one too. You're the Guardians before Nikki joined the team, right? You haven't even won your war in the future yet, right? Earth's still in danger? So you're looking for a way to... let's see... no, not clone, don't even say the word "clone"... No, you want to mutate and empower the people of Earth so that they can defend themselves against some alien invaders, right? An' that's why you're here. (cue Vance and StarHawk's totally shocked faces) Peter Parker:(absolutely nonchalantly) Really, it's not that hard... when you're doing this as long as I have, it's kind of difficult to be surprised by a twist like that anymore.
In an issue of Marvel Adventures, at the end of a Let's You and Him Fight Spidey says, "It was a textbook superhero misunderstanding battle. Happens all the time! Luckily, this is the part where we make up for it by working together to stop her."
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.
And then there's Rick Jones, whose genre-savviness is given a name: "Comics Awareness" (as opposed to buddy Captain Marvel's "cosmic awareness".)
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.
The DCU's Infectious Lass in "Architecture & Mortality". For example: "That's what we learned in the future about team-ups. First you fight..."
In Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons' Watchmen,Adrian Veidt, aka Ozymandias, declares that he is not a villain from a Republic Films serial and therefore had already completed his plan 35 minutes before beginning his Hannibal Lecture.
In The Sandman, Morpheus is possibly one of the most genre savvy entities in the whole universe. As the Prince of Stories, he knows that life literally imitates art (and vice versa) and is more than capable of controlling it. While teaming up with John Constantine to enter a house haunted by renegade dreams, Constantine shows some genre savviness himself, recalling what happens to people in horror movies when they split up. He asks Morpheus for reassurance that they'll stick together.
In Marvel's Incredible Hercules series, Hercules is aware that as a figure of myth, he is trapped in endlessly repeating patterns that he cannot escape from, as they are a part of his essential being. Of course, he also routinely has flashbacks to assorted contradictory incidents, which he accepts with equanimity, as these are also part and parcel of being 'mythic'. This would mildly backfire at one point, when Hercules was presented with a situation of comparing his recent partners to companions in the past, such as individual Argonauts. When he comes to who Amadeus Cho is like... "No idea."
This is partially because Cho is Athena's attempt to replace Hercules and thus naturally doesn't fit into the patterns he's used to.
This later came up when he gave a thumbs up to Amadeus for "scoring" with the Amazonian princess, unaware that Amadeus had found out that the (main) reason for her interest was due to her believing him to be being Hercules' eromenos... and Amadeus was all too aware of what that term meant.
Cho himself has gained some Genre Savviness, after reading a book by Athena called The Hero's Journey.
Guardian from another comics by Incredible Hercules writing duo, has show similiar traits. Upon being attacked by his wife and teammate, Vindicator, first explanations that come to his mind are brainwashing, alien impostor and robot duplicate.
There was a Justice League storyline where they were investigating a series of unlikely events, and as usual the JLA were scattered across the world dealing with different problems. This exchange happens:
Big Barda: Where's Batman? Who was with him last?
Superman: Oh, right, you're new. You really expected him to work together with someone. —>Plastic Man: Batman? Isn't this fight kind of beyond his means? Wouldn't he just slow us down? —>Green Lantern (Kyle Rayner): Heh, listen to the other new guy. We need Batman to explain what the hell's going on!
In Avengers: The Initiative issue 21, Gorilla Girl and Batwing have the following conversation:
Batwing: Where are you headed, Gorilla Girl? Gorilla Girl: Home. I asked them to put me in the reserves, and they did. Batwing: But you did such a good job against the Skrulls! Gorilla Girl: Yeah, Batwing... and I came out alive, which is practically a miracle. I turn into a gorilla, I'm black, I'm female, and nobody's ever heard of me. I might as well have "Cannon Fodder" stamped on my forehead. You can keep pushing your luck if you want, but I'm getting out while I'm still in one piece. Vaya con dios, kids.
Later in the issue, she completely ignores her own advice, not due to any Idiot Ball interaction, but because it's the right thing to do, earning her a Crowning Moment of Awesome.
The Amory Wars/Coheed and Cambria storyline's villain, the Trimage Wilhelm Ryan, sort of does this when addressing his robotic general, Mayo Deftinwulf:
"There is no room for mistakes, Mayo — nor young ones' vendettas!"
Used in Uncanny X-Men # 254 when an alien fleet is about to attack Earth in a parody of DC Comics' Invasion. When an alien fleet is about to attack Earth, a nameless researcher turned up the fact that Earth has fought off Skrulls and Badoon, repelled attacks from Galactus multiple times, is the home to Galactus's herald and the Phoenix, etc. His conclusion: "We're doomed!" They are.
Similarly, in one Blue Beetle story, a group of would-be invaders are talking to each other about the beings on Earth. When one reports that the Earth houses not only twoKryptonians, but also multiple Green Lanterns, one turns to the other and goes, "Maybe we should rethink this invasion thing."
In JLA: Year One this was actually the main cause of the alien invasion; when an alien warlord sent his greatest warriors to a 'distant mudball' for a battle to decide the new ruler, they were defeated by local superheroes before the fighting even began. He decided that Earthlings were too great a potential threat to remain alive.
In Uncanny X-Men # 143, Kitty Pryde declares: "If this was a movie, the monster would be waiting right outside the door, ready to bite my head off the moment I show myself."
Kitty further demonstrated Genre Savvy during a recent issue of New X-Men:
Kitty(sitting at the computers): And then nothing. Look, the whole board rolled over and died.
Colossus: It could be nothing, Katya.
Kitty: It doesn't feel like nothing, Petey. I can't raise Scott's team either. I even pinged Cable in Providence, and guess what? More deafening silence.
Colossus: Do you want me to take Blackbird Two and rendezvous with Scott and the others?
Kitty: You mean 'split up'? Some day I've got to sit you down in front of some good horror movies, babe.
In the final two issues of Alias, the Purple Man actually scripts the comic as he speaks and makes references to main character Jessica Jones having to please her fanbase.
An Incredible Hulk example: Bruce Banner, having been permanently stopped from turning into the Hulk — and having had his condition confirmed by several of the finest scientific minds in the Marvel universe — starts planning for the Hulk's return. As Banner himself says, "the Hulk always returns".
Hulk himself demonstrates a decent amount of savvy in the Planet Hulk storyline, first when the rebels try to recruit him;
Hulk: You don't get it, do you? Puny pinkies, just like puny humans. First they call you a monster. Then they want you to save them. Then they call you a monster again.
And then later when Caiera is trying to convince him to surrender to the Red King;
Caiera: He'd kill millions to get to you.
Hulk: He'd kill 'em anyway.
In Joss Whedon's run on Astonishing X-Men, Kitty Pryde confronts Colossus;
Shadowcat: You have to know that if you're a clone or robot or, yeah, a ghost or an alternate universe thingie, I can deal, ...but if you are some shapeshifter or illusionist who's just watching me twist I will kill you and I will kill you with an axe so right away just prove it, say something, show me something, I can't ...
Colossus: Katya ...
Shadowcat: You died! Piotr Rasputin died and I know this because I carried his ashes to Russia and scattered them myself!
Volt, from Mark Waid's Irredeemable, is well aware that as an electric black superhero he is basically cannon fodder. He turns out to be right.
Being Genre Savvy is the main motivation behind Max Damage's Heel Face Turn - he is well aware that with Plutonian, the Earth's strongest champion, turning into a mass murderer, and the average threats a typical superhero universe has to face every week, without a new protector humanity is doomed. He is also aware of his own status as a Complete Monster who has no idea how to be a superhero so he gathers several people to serve him as moral guides.
Plutonian himself proves to be Genre Savvy when his former enemies want to join him. He gives each one of them a button and says that pressing it will render him completely powerless and vulnerable to any attack. They all press it before he even can finish the sentence. He then informs them that they just triggered the auto-destruction mechanism of the facility they're in.
The US Government seems to have acquired some Genre Savvy in the Superman books of the last few years, establishing a high-tech military unit specifically trained and equipped to take down Superman. Out of paranoia, or fear that he'll try to conquer the world? Nope. Out of recognition that he gets mind-controlled by villains about twice a month. Superman, being Superman, agrees that this unit is a good idea.
Same reason he gave Batman a kryptonite ring (not that Batman needed it, he just added it to his secret stockpile)
In an early Post Crisis comic, Mr. Mxyzptlk traps Superman in a Saturday Morning Cartoon world. Superman has little trouble with most of his tormentors — after "Frankie Fieldstone" hits him with a club, Superman just picks him up and drops him into a tar pit. But Supes meets his match when attacked by the flying, caped "Marvy Mouse", who's faster and stronger than he is. In a sudden attack of Genre Savvy, Superman reaches into his cape pouch and, to Marvy Mouse's horror, pulls out Streaky the Super-Cat!
In Omaha The Cat Dancer everything is ready for the big party, but the guests don't start arriving until Omaha and Shelley realize they have forgotten to do "the secret chant". It goes "It's going to be a disaster. Nobody's going to come." As soon as they finish, the doorbell rings.
In Return To Wonderland, Calie is nearly raped by The Mad Hatter, but she gets the upper hand and knocks him out. She declares that she will not repeat the mistake that girls usually make in horror movies (knocking out the bad guy, then leaving the room), and continues the beatdown on Hatter until pretty much all of his bones are broken. It doesn't stop him from coming back. The inhabitants of Wonderland are eternal and eventually reappear every time they die, but Calie didn't know that.
In the Batman comic A Death In The Family, after Batman chases the Joker onto a helicopter, shoots up said helicopter in the ensuing fight, then jumps out into the Gotham river, the helicopter crashes and explodes magnificently with the Joker still in it. However, when Superman swoops down to rescue Batman, Batman just frantically yells at Superman to find the Joker's body, knowing that such a death means that the Joker is probably still alive. Obviously, he's right.
Superman once lays a hilarious smackdown on the Ultramarines for engaging in a fight using deadly, efficient, well-planned, logical tactics; because they get their asses almost killed due their lack of savviness about how the DCU's earth works and forces the Justice League to bail them out with standard ridiculous Crazy Awesome comic book heroics.
In the latest War Machine's series, called Iron Man 2.0, James Rhodes is hired to find out how a scientist was able to smuggle his invention out of a secure facility and supply them to terrorists after he committed suicide, especially when he was kept in isolation without any outside phone or internet access during his contract. Both Rhodes and the security team he's working with display a frightening amount of genre savvy, almost to the point of Lampshade Hanging the Fantasy Kitchen Sink aspect of the Marvel Universe. Observe the following (paraphrased) conversation:
James Rhodes: "Maybe this guy was getting his mind read or sending out telepathic transmissions somehow."
Security Consultant: "We have Reed Richards and Tony Stark sweep for telepathic transmissions."
Rhodes: "Maybe he's a mutant."
Consultant: "Four times a year, the feds take over Cerebro and sweep to make sure people in sensitive positions aren't concealing mutant powers."
Rhodes: "I feel stupid for saying this, but could he be a ghost?"
Consultant: "We consulted with Doctor Strange and he didn't detect any spirits or astral forms."
In Ultimate Spiderman, Bolivar Trask demonstrates this when he asks if the stasis field in the lab he's in can contain Venom. When he's told that it can, he says that he's seen King Kong, and so will be leaving.
In the Night Raven series, the police led by Detective Nolan set about trying to determine Night Raven's identity, and went through various files trying to find suspects based on people who had reason to have a grudge against criminals. *
This shows genre savvy when one considers how common the death of a loved one figures in origin stories. It shows wrong genre savvy, though, in that the Night Raven stories took place in the early 1930's, prior to most of those revenge origin stories. Early revenge origins, such as those of the Domino Lady and the Phantom [Christopher Standish] appeared in 1936.
Nili's Lord of the Rings fanfic A Taste of Disaster shows how genre savvy Legolas, Aragorn, Elrond and company get after Aragorn and Legolas have been through a few action/adventure fics. Hilarity Ensues.
Often present in MS Paint Adventures forums, especially in the Fan Adventures. A sample suggestion, explaining what's going on to a new character, is clearly very genre-savvy.
Mikey: "Then you can be my escort tonight before it's too late! You'll do it, right! It's important! I need it! And you love me, so you'll do it! Right!"
Breech: "I never agree to do anything without knowing what it is first. How do I know you're the real Mikey, and not some Dai-Oni possessing his body with the intent of making me promise to do something awful?"
In the Mass Effectself insert ficMass Vexations, Author Avatar Art goes through pretty much the entire fic noting the events of the game as they go on. He ends up lampshading just about everything he notices, including making an offhand comment about one of the game's Playing With Syringes examples.
Several characters in Total Drama Battlegrounds, though Heather deserves special mention after seeing Rodney die in one of the virtual reality challenges:
Luminosity: Bella realizes that her life is a Romance Novel. Relying on her status as the protagonist may be part of why she makes some risky decisions.
Mike: "Ponies don't start randomly thinking about this kind of thing unless it's about to become some important plot point in a corny story they're in!"
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 fountain 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 characters dying from stupid mistakes is actually the main point of many of the deaths. The only characters who die are the ones who make stupid mistakes. The characters know this, and discuss mistakes that should never be made, such as going off on your own.
And long before the Scream movies there was There's Nothing Out There, which had the premise of a single genre-savvy character surrounded by genre-blind people in a horror film and trying to convince them of what's happening.
In the Halloween series, Dr Loomis is able to anticipate most of Michael Myer's actions. Sadly for him, he isn't savvy enough to stop any of the killings though.
Hot Fuzz plays off one of the characters' detailed knowledge of action cop films.
The Jean Claude Van Damme movie Double Impact has a hilarious moment when a Mook is genre savvy enough to look in the opposite direction of the noise the main character makes, however said character even anticipates his genre-savviness and knocks him out.
Played for endless laughs within the Austin Powers trilogy, particularly any scene with Dr. Evil and his son. Austin's father Nigel also has a lot of fun with this, such as when he's being escorted at gunpoint
Nigel: "Oh, put the guns down. Is this the first day on the job or something? Look, this is how it goes, you attack me one at a time, and I knock you out with a single punch. Okay? Go." (henchmen attack one at a time, he knocks them out with one hit each)
Dr. Evil: "Oh he's good!" (another henchman approaches Nigel)
Nigel: "Do you know who I am?" (henchman nods) "Do you have any idea how many anonymous henchmen I've killed over the years?" (nods) "And look at you, you don't even have a name tag, you've got no chance! Why don't you just fall down?" (henchmen drops his weapon and slowly slumps to the ground)
Subverted in the Mortal Kombat film, in which Liu Kang refuses to bow to a "mere beggar" whom his grandfather identifies as the god Raiden. Liu's grandfather begs Raiden's forgiveness and explains that America and too much television has made him crass — yet, not two minutes later, Raiden asks Liu to attack him and Liu promptly gets trounced. Apparently Liu has, in fact, not been watching enough television.
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 aspects 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.
Areola: I am here only to serve as object of lust for poor American nerds who cannot get pussy.
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. He manages to survive and gets upgraded to a main character with the rank of security chief. Guy actually starts out as the onlyGenre Savvy member of the crew (and Only Sane Man) before they all wise up.
Guy: Don't you guys ever watch the show?
In possibly one of the most well done moments of villain genre savviness ever, once shown the "historical documents" Sarris is the only nonhuman character who actually realizes that he is dealing with actors who have been mistaken for real explorers. This implies that unlike the Thermians, his own race produces entertainment.
Sarris: How adorable. The actors are going to play war with me!
Which creates a bit of Fridge Horror when you realize the Big Bad empathizes with humans much easier than the kind, gentle Thermians.
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 many 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.
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. Interesting to note, originally he died and Saffron Burrows' character lived, but test audiences disliked her character so much (reportedly screaming "DIE BITCH!" at the screen) and liked his, so they re-shot the ending.
In Last Action Hero, Danny Madigan, the kid from the real world, having seen so many action movies, knows all the clichés 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. However, Slater does have flashes of Savvy apparently learned from experience, such as always shooting his closet when he gets home to kill the inevitable assassin. Several of the tropes that Danny points out are actually set up by Slater to make him look good.
Michael Jordan becomes this at the very end of Space Jam to save the day when he stretches his arm like a cartoon to make the final dunk in the basket.
Justified: He knew it was possible for the cartoons to do weird things, he just didn't know he could until it was pointed out to him, during the last few minutes of the game.
Scarecrow in Batman Begins. When told that Batman had infiltrated Arkham, he told his men to do "what anyone does when a prowler's around. Call the police." His plan was to lure Batman outside, where the cops would take care of him, reasoning that his own operation had gotten far enough that there was no way it could be stopped. It didn't work, but it was a much more intelligent decision than most villains tend to make.
Also the cop in charge of watching the Joker in The Dark Knight. He refuses to play along with Joker's Hannibal Lecture, telling him: "I know the difference between punks who need to be taught a little lesson in manners, and the freaks like you who would just enjoy it." When he ends up falling for it anyway (because the Joker's just that good), he says to the other officers: "It's my own damn fault, just shoot!"
Batman gets his own Genre Savvy moment at the same point in the movie: he warned the officer not to let the Joker piss him off, as he'd just be playing into the Joker's hands.
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. As brilliantly parodied by Ben Stiller on The Ben Stiller Show with Die Hard in a Supermarket:
Stiller (as McClane): How can the same thing happen to the same guy so many times?
The first movie has Hans show the slightest bit of Genre Savvy as well. When Holly comes to him with requests, one of them starts with, "We've got a pregnant woman out there..." and Hans immediately rolls his eyes, as if to say, "Oh lord, she's going to go into labor, isn't she?" until Holly clarifies she's not due for weeks.
Hans virtually accuses McClane to his face of being Wrong Genre Savvy, for expecting to ride off triumphantly into the sunset like a Western hero!
Nick Cannon's character in the Day of the Deadremake. 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 Rustlers' 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 singing cowboy hero has gone through the same western formula so many times that he's able to see exactly what's coming. However, this time, the villains get Dangerously Genre Savvy themselves. Realizing that good guys always defeat bad guys, the villains hire another good cowboy to fight the hero. It turns out that the other good cowboy is also a lawyer, so he's not good enough to defeat the hero.
The Operative in Serenity shows an awareness of genre conventions while fighting Mal.
"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."
"I am of course wearing full body armor. I am not a moron!"
Unfortunately he fails to realize that Inara is not a helpless Damsel In Distress.
The Operative seems to be Wrong Genre Savvy. Mal is pretty plucky, and a Badass, and the Alliance is a status quo power in a setting with Grey and Gray Morality at best and probably Black and Gray Morality, which means that the Alliance is, yeah, pretty evil. True, they aren't in an arena when he says all this, but which genre calls for that? He seems to think he's a particularly rough and ruthless Cowboy Cop, but in fact he's a Well-Intentioned Extremist.
The Alliance isn't an evil empire. It just kidnaps and experiments on children to turn them into combat psychics who are partially insane. And that's just one of the secrets the Operative DOES know about.
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. The characters were making a horror movie using some classic tropes and then lampshading them when they happened for real.
Subverted in The Return of the Living Dead in which Night of the Living Dead was loosely based on a true event. Frank, the medical supply warehouse manager, later tells his boss, Burt, how to dispose of a zombie, based on what was done in the movie; unfortunately, it turns out "the movie lied!"
Eddie Valiant, in Who Framed Roger Rabbit, had a special kind of Genre Savvy. His past dealings with Toons gave him insight on how they worked, and allowed him to manipulate multiple situations to his advantage, such as using the Duck Season, Rabbit Season trick to get Roger to take a drink and ripping a road marker to trick Mina Hyena into running into a brick wall. Judge Doom had similar abilities, allowing him to capture Roger at one point, by tapping "Shave and a Haircut" in a bar Roger is hiding in, knowing that Roger's old-school humor style wouldn't let him not finish the line.
Of course, Doom's in-depth knowledge of Toons comes from the fact that he is one himself.
In Jeepers Creepers, the heroine runs down the Creeper with her car and skids to a halt a short distance away. When her passenger asks if it's dead, she says, "They never are." Then proceeds to throw it into reverse and run the creature over several more times. Unfortunately, it still doesn't work.
Also as Darry is climbing down the drain pipe looking for a dead body, Trish tells him, "You know the part in scary movies when somebody does something really stupid, and everybody hates them for it? This is it!"
Many of the recurring characters in Kevin Smith's films seem to be genre-savvy. One glaring example is Azrael from the film Dogma, who, as his plan for the destruction of all reality comes together, is asked how he did it and what he needs to do by the imprisoned good guys. Azrael's response:
Smith in The Matrix Revolutions, specifically near the end of his climactic brawl with Neo. Even though Smith — thanks to the Eyes of the Oracle — can see how the fight will end, he still thinks Neo might be tricking him into defeat when the protagonist gets up to offer himself as the sacrificial lamb one final time.
Jentee of Magical Legend of the Leprechauns seems perfectly aware that the circumstances around him are a romantic tragedy waiting to happen — to the degree that when the protagonists in love come to him for help, he suggests that committing suicide might persuade their warring families to resolve their differences. Turns out he's right.
In Time Bandits, Kevin, at least, knows what's up when they meet Robin Hood. He even tries to explain to the dwarves afterwards that of course Robin is going to hand out the treasure they stole to the poor.
Ash knows that, just because a Deadite is down, doesn't mean it's dead. This is largely due to experience, though, as he gets caught by the same trick in the first film.
Ash: It's a trick. Get an axe.
In Road to Morocco, Hope and Crosby try the old "pat-a-cake" routine (used to great success in the series' earlier films) on the villain's henchmen, only to get clobbered:
Bing: Yessir, Junior, that thing sure got around. Bob: Yeah, and back to us!
Jim in 28 Days Later candidly points out why driving into a dark tunnel after a zombie outbreak is a stupid idea, even if the driver isn't in the mood to listen to him:
Jim: No, no, no... see, this is a really shit idea. You know why? Because it's obviously a shit idea! You drive into a tunnel full of fucking smashed cars and broken glass, and it is really fucking obviously a shit idea-
Frank: HOLD ON!
(Frank's car rockets up the pile of wrecked cars, and travels across its flattest point for about ten seconds before landing back on the road with a shredded front tyre.)
Selina: [To Jim] What d'you think's going to happen? We find a cure, save the world or just fall in love and fuck? Staying alive is as good as it gets.
Pretty much the entire point and struggle of Stranger Than Fiction revolves around the lead character (who hears a voice narrating his life) trying to figure out what kind of story he's in. If it's a comedy, he'll live; if it's a tragedy, he'll die. For help he visits a professor of Literature, who asks him bizarre questions like "Are you the King of anything?" and "Do you have magical powers?" His negative responses eliminate fantasy, mythology, historical fiction and other genres in order to find out the type of story he's in.
In Stay Tuned, a TV addict played by John Ritter buys a TV set from the Devil, and he and his wife end up Trapped in TV Land. Every show is a hellish parody, and all of them are specifically designed to kill them. At one point, he and his wife end up as animated mice being hunted by a robot cat. After finally getting some respite, he starts to wonder what a "real" cartoon mouse would do... and promptly orders a robot dog from the ACME company. It arrives immediately, and chases away the robot cat.
Nero in Star Trek, thanks in large part to the research he did about the Enterprise and Kirk in his own timeline. Granted, once he destroyed Vulcan and completely altered the timeline, all bets were off.
Of course, he already messed up the timeline on arrival...
Tanner (to Bond, over a cell phone): She wants to know about Slate.
Bond: Slate was a dead end.
Tanner (to M): He said it was a dead end.
M: Damn it! He killed him.
M is rather aware of what James Bond is all about in most of her appearances, and not above an one-liner or two of her own;
Admiral: (watching Bond wage a one-man assault on a massive arms sale to prevent a nuclear incident) What does he think he's doing?
M: His job.
In GoldenEye, the villain Janus is veryGenre Savvy, though this is justified as he's a former MI 6 agent. He lampshades this throughout the film, such as when Bond asks him where Natalya is, and he replies, "Ah, yes. Your fatal weakness."
He's also savvy enough to have Bond hand over his watch after capturing him, and asks, "So how is old Q? Still up to his usual tricks? Still press here do I?" before using the watch to deactivate the explosives Bond has placed.
However, he isn't savvy enough to take away Bond's pen grenade... or to just kill Bond when he has the chance.
The two cab drivers in the diner in The Hudsucker Proxy, who are smart enough to provide a running commentary on Amy's (staged) attempts to meet Norville.
Penelope and Stephen Bloom in The Brothers Bloom, a rather Genre Savvy movie altogether.
Bloom: This isn't an adventure story.
Penelope: It totally is!
Ned from, of all things, 17 Again. Particularly strong when he tries figuring out what triggered Mike's transformation.
Ned: Are you now, or have you ever been, a Norse god, vampire, or time-traveling cyborg?
Mike: You've know me since, what, first grade? Maybe I would have told you—
Tallahassee, Columbus, Witchita and Little Rock's survival in Zombieland is entirely attributed to Genre Savvy. Say them with me now — Rule # 1: Cardio, Rule # 2: Double-tap, Rule # 3...
Although the Friday the 13th sequel Jason Goes To Hell doesn't avert sequelitis, it does open with a great moment of genre savviness. As the movie starts, a woman is being chased through the woods by Jason Vorhees, as usual. Once she reaches a small clearing, though, she jumps to safety and it's revealed that she's a part of an FBI operation and this is a trap. Cue gunfire. Now, Jason is usually Immune to Bullets, so that wouldn't help anything. Except then, a small army of agents armed with every caliber and variety of firearm imaginable suddenly pops out of hiding, opens fire in a hailstorm of bullets, and doesn't stop firing for more than a minute, until the last agent's out of ammo and Jason's body has pretty much been torn to shreds. Due to an egregious display of New Powers as the Plot Demands, this doesn't actually kill him for good, but it does show that law enforcement really did their homework this time around.
Quentin Tarantino's Pulp Fiction, in addition to being a textbook genre buster, is also a study in genre savviness. Its main heroes undergo something of an education in this trope as the movie progresses: Jules' character arc starts with cheap burger commercials and ends with an Aesopian and lofty shift from gangster to drifter. Vince's tragic end, while primarily connected to the Idiot Ball, also can be seen as either Genre Blindness or perhaps Death By Genre Savviness, or perhaps both. The most interesting example the movie gives of this trope however, is Butch, who after escaping from Zed's basement, is savvy enough to know that he will never survive a proper gangster film if he runs off like a coward. He therefore decides to go Genre Shopping, starting with various violent genres, (Crime Thriller, Gangster, Horror) until he ends up with Samurai. He chooses wisely, not necessarily for survival purposes (Toshiro Mifuni dies in his movies as often as not), but because, live or die, Butch is now destined to Take a Level in Badass.
In the comedy film Evolution, African-American scientist Harry Block is asked to snag a mutated alien from a meteor-crash site, and refuses as seen in the quote up top.
Paris (Orlando Bloom) in Troy has a flash of this near the end. The Greek fleet has disappeared, leaving a giant wooden horse behind. Paris tells his father to burn it. He doesn't listen.
Earlier, Achilles refuses to fight Hector, because you can't have the two greatest heroes fight each other on the first day. This fight has to wait for a more climactic point of time.
Both the main characters in Kiss Kiss Bang Bang use their knowledge of the plots of mystery novels to foresee the events which will occur in the movie. At one point there is a false end where the female lead says something along the lines of, "this isn't how it ends, this can't be how it ends. Usually at this point there's a big action sequence where the hero kills a bunch of people for no good reason." Shortly thereafter the hero becomes engaged in a big action scene where he kills a bunch of people.
In Dead Snow, a Norwegian film, the characters are hiking into the snowy mountains (without cell phone reception, of course) when one of them remarks "How many movies start with teenagers going on a trip without cell phone reception?" This does not actually deter them, which is unfortunate considering they all wind up slaughtered by Nazi zombies. In a Crowning Moment of Funny, another character says "Friday the Thirteenth" only to have a third say, "Yeah, because they didn't have cell phones."
The Genre Savvy character actually causes some problems for the other characters, as he tells everyone not to get bitten when he realizes that they're under attack by zombies. One character later saws his own arm off with a chainsaw after being bitten because of this, even though it's never been established that being bitten by a zombie leads to zombification.
You're going to have sex? Don't! Every time someone has sex in a horror story they get murdered!
Carl in Van Helsing, with one of the film's best lines: "If there's one thing I've learned, it's never be the first to stick your hand into a viscous material." This turns out to be very good advice.
O'Connell in The Mummy Returns. Upon learning about the Scorpion King and the army of Anubis hidden in a lost oasis, he immediately concludes (correctly) that none of the expeditions send there have ever returned, and that if awakened they will wipe out the world. He later has to point out that mummies don't use doors.
The soldier mummies anyway. From the climax of the first movie, the ones leaping around and scaling walls like Spider-Man. The shambling slave mummies? Sure, locking the doors would work for a while.
By the third film of Universal's The Mummy films, The Mummy's Ghost, Kharis the mummy has come to realize the films essentially repeat themselves, and that it never ends well for him (which the actor manages to bring across without dialogue and using only his eyes). So when his summoner begins to go on about becoming immortal and claiming the MacGuffin Girl for himself, Kharis kills him.
The Fallen himself from Transformers. He believes (or at least knows) that he could be defeated by a Prime, so he refused to go to Earth until Optimus was taken care of. And when the Matrix of Leadership revives Optimus, he immediately attacks Optimus and rips the Matrix from his chest and teleports away, leaving Optimus critically injured.
Elijah Price from Unbreakable is how someone could use Genre Savvy to discover the world's first superhero and become the world's first supervillain.
Lake Placid Three. Susan is trying to turn on a chainsaw to cut down the massive croc that's trying to break into her husband's car when her son tells her she has to press the red button.
Susan: How did you know that?
'Connor: It's always the red button!
Darth Vader shows a good bit of genre savviness in Star Wars: A New Hope. Having formerly been a hero prior to his Face Heel Turn, he knows the lengths to which the heroes will go to in their attempts to thwart the Empire. As a result he correctly predicts that Leia would never reveal the location of the Rebel base, and he knows that Obi-Wan would risk his life to help his teammates escape. And during the final battle he also knows that the heroic freedom fighter types have what it takes to stop an evil planet-killing juggernaut, so he flies out in his own starfighter to deal with them personally.
Inside Out: Erotic Tales of the Unexpected has a segment called, The Traveling Salesman, in which a traveling salesman's car breaks down near an old farm. As his car breaks down, the salesman remarks that this is just like all the jokes. When the farmer offers to let the salesman sleep in his barn for the night, the salesman remarks that he knows that he'd better not mess with the farmer's daughter or he'll have to face a preacher and a shotgun. The farmer replies, "Nope, just a shotgun."
Marty in Back to the Future III. He's seen enough Westerns to know how to survive in the Wild West for real despite having no prowess with gunfighting whatsoever.
Discussed by comedian Daniel Tosh of Tosh.0 when reviewing The Human Centipede, stating that anyone who had ever seen a horror movie would've taken one look at Dr. Heiter and just walked away.
Insidious. To paraphrase Something Awful, "this is one of the few haunted house movies where the protagonists try moving."
In the 1974 film Death Wish, Inspector Ochoa notes that he suspects the vigilante to have served in the Vietnam War. This serves as a genre savvy moment, considering the various vigilante novels and films featuring Vietnam veterans acting as vigilantes. *
Gordon's War, the Executioner by Don Pendleton, Hitman/Dirk Spencer, Kill Squad, The Exterminator, etc..
Both brothers in The Boondock Saints.
Murphy: That's stupid. Name one thing you gonna need a rope for.
Connor: You don't fuckin' know what you're gonna need it for. They just always need it.
Murphy: What's this 'they' shit? This isn't a movie.
Connor: Connor: Oh, right.
Subverted in the second Home Alone movie. Just before Harry and Marv decide to chase Kevin up the stairs, they remember that one of the booby traps they encountered in their last showdown involved getting bashed on the head with swinging paint cans. After fooling Kevin into dropping the cans, the duo proceed to rush up the stairs... only to get hit by a large pipe.
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 tooGenre Savvy, or not 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 Finagle's Law and similar narrative conventions that keep his life interesting. He hates them.
It's even the whole basis of the plot in Witches Abroad. The stories want to be told, whatever the effects on their players. Lily is arranging the city of Genua along the lines of these stories. The toymaker will be a jolly, red-faced man who whistles while he works if he knows what's good for him. The servant girl will marry the prince, with the help of her fairy godmother, whoever has to get hurt along the way.
"...Exactly one in a million?"
Perhaps the most obvious example (and subversion) of this comes from the Guards! Guards! novel, when Vimes has just confronted the hidden villain of the story. The villain, (using the title of the book) summons several mooks to take Vimes into custody. However, the mooks, despite Vimes having no weapons and just standing there, show extreme hesitation. When the villain demands an explanation, they indicate they know what happens in situations like this: the likelihood is that if they try to take Vimes into custody, he will kill them all by engaging in swashbuckling clichés such as performing somersaults or swinging off chandeliers (the villain points out, somewhat hysterically, that there are no chandeliers in the room at all). It actually takes Vimes' assurances that he will not do so and would not know how to do so if he tried before the mooks actually take him prisoner.
Also inverted in Discworld with Moist Von Lipwig, who knows very well how things are supposed to go... and plays the part of the hero, because he knows that the innate genre savviness of the public will view him as a hero if he does. As a con artist, taking advantage of what people expect to see is his major skill.
Cohen the Barbarian and his Silver Horde in The Last Hero are confronted by Captain Carrot. They're about to fight him when they realise that's there's only one of him and nine of them, and that he's trying to save the world. All experienced heroes who have spent decades winning against incredible odds, they see that the fight can only go one way and back down.
This is pure genius considering that the Horde took advantage of that very trope themselves in their first appearance in Interesting Times (though it didn't end quite the way you might think).
And all the moreso, in that the Horde's dangerous actions were spurred on by their belief that the time of heroes has passed. It has, but only for their kind of kick-in-the-door, rob-the-temple, big-thug-with-a-sword hero. Carrot, who routinely risks his life for a city salary the Silver Horde wouldn't consider enough to tip a barmaid, represents a new type of hero: one who's simply determined to do the right thing. The Silver Horde are confronted by this generational and cultural transition — from heroing to heroism — and it floors them.
Taken to its logically subversive extreme when the Silver Horde meet up with Evil Harry Dread and his minions. They spend quite some time reminiscing about how Evil Harry used to follow The Code by doing things like having the standard dress code for his soldiers include helmets that fully covered his face, hiring ridiculously stupid henchmen who couldn't tell the difference between an old washerwoman and a hero dressed like an old washerwoman, and so forth. Basically how Evil Harry always did everything the Evil Overlord List, something with which he is clearly intimately familiar with, says not to do — on purpose. After complimenting Harry on the utter stupidity of his current batch of minions, they go on to complain about how the current generation of Evil Overlords go about doing everything The Evil Overlord List says to do, which just isn't right. That is, if they bother with the Evil Overlording at all and don't just go straight into bureaucracy.
At the same time, Evil Harry Dread is complaining about how the new heroes are refusing to live up to their end of the bargain by doing things like sabotaging the Evil Overlord's escape tunnel. Guys like Cohen always left the escape tunnel intact, even thought they knew the Evil Overlord would inevitably escape through one. The reasoning behind this is that Evil Overlords are a hero's bread and butter, so killing them all off would leave them unemployed.
Rincewind demonstrates a PERFECT level of this trope in this story. At one point, he announces to Lord Vetinari that he does not wish to volunteer for the mission. He's GOING, of course, because he's perfectly aware that that's how his life goes, but he wants it known that he doesn't WISH TO. The other wizards present, knowing what kind of things he's gone through (for what appears to be rather more than 20 years by this point) concur with him on this point.
The Patrician has wearily recognised the pattern of supernaturally powered fads running riot over his city (Soul Music, Moving Pictures) etc., but interestingly when he says so in The Truth he's actually being Wrong Genre Savvy, because the fad in that book — newspapers — isn't supernatural and doesn't fade away like the earlier ones.
Cohen the Barbarian shows a moment of Genre Savvy in Interesting Times: knowing that Grand Viziers are always evil, he asks Twoflower, "Do you know anything about Grand-Viziering?" Twoflower says no. He gets the job, precisely because someone who knew something about it would be evil.
And it's not just the good guys who are Genre Savvy. The old Count Magpyr in Carpe Jugulum has huge stocks of lemons, holy water, and wooden stakes; his servant Igor even added a handy anatomy chart to help vampire hunters find the heart. Windows were easily opened to the sun, and dozens of objects could be converted into an easily recognised holy symbol. Why? His role was the recurring monster, and he knew what people would do if he tried Going Too Far.
His nephew, the new Count is just as Genre Savvy, but more ambitious. As savvy as he is though, he's not quite a match for Granny Weatherwax.
Johnny and Kirsty in Only You Can Save Mankind. Of course their genre awareness is actually influencing the setting to some degree.
Princess Cimorene of the Enchanted Forest Chronicles is fairly genre savvy, as are most of the characters to one extent or another. She just refuses to conform to type.
Note that this is an Affectionate Parody universe where genre savviness is actively taught to people; Cimorene's education included things like the right way to scream when being carried off by a giant.
Her son, Daystar, is even more so, to the point of being a Tyke Bomb.
In Andrew Lang's Prince Prigio, the genre-savvy King of Pantouflia wants to get rid of his obnoxiously intelligent eldest son by sending the princes after the monster, knowing that the youngest son will be the only one who can triumph. Prigio, being genre-savvy himself, does not fall for this — and STILL gets it wrong.
In the Lord Peter Wimsey mysteries by Dorothy L. Sayers, characters discourse at length about how their situations would be different if they were in a detective story. It sometimes helps: in Gaudy Night when Harriet receives a phone call summoning her back to the college:
She remembered Peter's saying to her one day: 'The heroines of thrillers deserve all they get. When a mysterious voice rings them up and says it is Scotland Yard, they never think of ringing back to verify the call. Hence the prevalence of kidnapping.'
She rings back to check, and discovers that the call was a fake. (Dorothy L. Sayers, Gaudy Night, ch. 18, p. 349).
Similarly, most Agatha Christie books contain at least one line where a character exclaims that "It's just like a detective novel!" and several suspects in various mysteries show nervousness because they're the least likely character to do it and hence, if it were a mystery novel, the one most likely to be fingered. Sometimes it's true, sometimes it isn't.
Mercedes Lackey's Tales of the Five Hundred 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.
Shin-tsu begins to joke that he's in a novel and both Kouma and Ryo try to utilize story structures to make sense of his life. It works.
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.)
In Timothy Zahn's The Domino Pattern, Frank Compton and his colleague Bayta seem aware they're in a detective novel (albeit one in a science-fictional setting.) Therefore they are careful to have the conversation with the being who has important information before he can be the next victim leaving them clueless, and even comment on the importance of not waiting to speak to him!
Many characters in John Ringo and Travis Taylor's Into The 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".
In the sequel Claws That Catch this is taken to a slightly surreal extreme when some conflicts between various alien technologies cause them to hallucinate that they are anime characters. One of the main characters laments the fact that he is clearly a secondary character since as anime characters the hero is clearly identifiable.
The Artemis Fowl books have a strong "action movie" sensibility — several of the characters are fans of action movies and are shown to compare their own experiences with the genre.
A spinning kick, Butler. How could you?
Invoked in The Opal Deception, when Holly asks Artemis to think like a videogame character in order to divise a solution to their predicament (being attacked by trolls). Artemis decides to think like a character in a war game, tries to create a list of exploitable weaknesses that the trolls possess, and forms a plan based around their hatred of bright lights.
Peter Pevensie demonstrates a degree of Genre Savvy in C. S. Lewis's [1], particularly when — after Edmund suggests the robin they are following might be leading them into a trap — he observes that in all of the stories he has read, robins are creatures of good.
Edmund also has a Genre Savvy moment or two near the beginning of [2], drawing upon his knowledge of adventure stories for ideas on how he and his siblings can get by after they find themselves in an unpopulated wilderness.
He has another in [3] when they are considering what has happened to the man whose armor they have found; it is explicitly cited that he reads mysteries.
Eustace, by contrast, has his initial lack of Genre Savvy pointed out multiple times — he's said in the narration to have "read none of the right books." In his diary, when the ship is becalmed and drinking water is at a premium, he recounts how Caspian warned that anyone caught stealing water will "get two dozen" and that he didn't know what that meant until Edmund explained it to him. "It comes of the sort of books those Pevensie kids read." (Even the Pevensies have their lapses, like when they first arrive back in Narnia in Prince Caspian and think they might have to live off the land. They think they remember reading about people eating roots, but they're not sure what kind; Lucy "always thought it meant roots of trees.")
Subverted in The Dumas Club by Arturo Perez-Reverte. Rare book finder Lucas Corso has read enough to recognize a trope when he sees one and insists on following them until he can nab the Big Bad. He's mostly right but the Big Bad is someone completely different than he suspected.
Subverted in A Dance With Dragons: Quentyn Martell knows that, in stories, princes always win fights against dragons and get the beautiful princess afterwards. Too bad for him it is A Song of Ice and Fire we're talking about, so saying that things go spectacularly wrong is a bit of an understatement.
Happens a lot in K. A. Applegate's Everworld series, about four young adults thrown into a world in which everything from all the mythologies in the history of the world co-exists. Odds are at least one of them will know enough about whatever figure they encounter to know how to deal with them. They still don't believe Cassandra, though.
In The Lord of the Rings, most of the good guys are pretty Genre Savvy, since legends are a major form of entertainment in Middle Earth. In "The Stairs of Cirith Ungol," Sam wonders if he and Frodo have reached a part of the story that the audience won't want to hear. Frodo, however, rightly points out that it's the dark, scary parts that keep people interested.
Gandalf in particular is Genre Savvy enough to recognise that Gollum is a Chekhov's Gun. "My heart tells me that Gollum has some part to pay"
Parodied in Mark Twain's The Story of a Good Little Boy, in which the protagonist longs to be the hero of a Sunday school book and goes around trying, unsuccessfully, to do all the right things: taking in a stray dog, getting a job with only a signed tract as a reference, etc. The main thing that bothers him is that all decent Sunday school book heroes die so he'll never get to see the book he's in.
Joe Hill's short story Best New Horror involves an editor who slowly realizes that he's wound up in a situation that conforms to horror genre specifications. He finds this oddly exhilarating.
John Dickson Carr's detective Dr. Gideon Fell is well aware that he's in a detective novel.
In The Three Coffins, he stops the action to explain to everybody how a locked room murder mystery can be pulled off, explaining that there's no point in pretending they're not in a detective novel.
In Through the Looking Glass, Alice's familarity with Mother Goose leads to Genre Savviness. She knows that the king has promised to send all his horses and men to help Humpty Dumpty, and she awaits the crow with great anticipation, to break up the fight between Tweedledee and Tweedledum.
E. Nesbit's Melisande is a variation of Rapunzel set in a fairy tale world where everyone is Genre Savvy. For example, the king and queen deliberately refuse to hold a christening party, knowing what happened to the Sleeping Beauty. When all the fairies are furious that they weren't invited, and they want to curse the princess, the king points out that traditionally, only one of them can curse the princess or they'll go out "like a candle-flame". He's more or less bluffing, but since the evil fairy Malevola already did the cursing, they decide not to risk it, thank the queen for a lovely afternoon, and leave.
The whole point of Charles Stross's TheJenniferMorgue. The villain, a Dangerously Genre Savvy billionaire trying to take over the world, recognizes he's a living trope and creates a Xanatos Gambit by creating a magic spell that turns everything around him into a James Bond adventure, so that only a British agent conforming to the Bond stereotype would be in a position to stop him and save the world last the last moment. The plan is to then end the spell, making the agent an ordinary person again and so easily contained and killed, with no one else able to get there in time. Unfortunately for him, the British are even more Genre Savvywhen the agent they send isn't really the Hero, he's the Bond Babe, acting as an initially oblivious decoy for his girlfriend who is the real Hero sweeping in at the last minute with commandos to save the day.
In the comic mystery play Any Number Can Die, a wannabe detective urges a reluctant informant to tell him the name of the murderer, because otherwise she'll get killed and only have time to whisper him a cryptic clue. Sure enough, she gets shot, gives him a clue, and he says in frustration, This always happens in stories!
In Jasper Fforde's Thursday Next and Nursery Crime novels, the lead characters are successful because of their Genre Savvy. Thursday works in the Literary Crime division, making sure that novels stick to the conventions of their genre and using her Genre Savvy to get out of many sticky situations. The main problems come when she has trouble identifying the genre she has stepped into. Jack Sprat, in the Nursery Crime novels, is an interesting character because he not only investigates crimes committed by nursery tale characters, but he also has a strange empathy for the genre-driven urges that make them commit the crimes.
Commissar Ciaphas Cain is this in universe. He realizes that acting like the rest of the Imperium's commissars (trigger happy hardasses) will only get him killed faster, and realizes that giving a damn about his troops means he doesn't get fragged, they give a damn about him, and he more chances to avoid getting killed. He also realizes the grim dark setting for what it is, and realizes that most forms of danger are better avoided if he doesn't try to run. It gets truly insane how Genre Savvy he is when realizes that being a fanatical jackass makes him expendable, so unlike the rest of the Imperium (who put insane amounts of faith in the God Emperor of Humanity), he decides to proactively work very hard at saving his own ass himself, making him one of the smartest humans in the whole series.
Harry Dresden in The Dresden Files. Not exactly harmed by such details as Dracula having been written to educate people about how to kill a certain kind of vampire.
Lampshaded in Dead Beat:
"The trick was to figure out which movie I was in. If this was a variant on High Noon, then walking outside was probably a fairly dangerous idea. On the other hand, there was always the chance that I was still in the opening scenes of The Maltese Falcon and everyone trying to chase down the bird still wanted to talk to me. In which case, this was probably a good chanceto dig for vital information about what might well be a growing storm around the search for The Word of Kemmler."
A failure of Genre Savvy is lampshaded later in the book. When Sue, the reanimated T. Rex eats a ghoul, the ghoul does nothing but scream and throw up its hands to shield itself. Butters points out that never did any good in the movie, and Harry notes he must not have seen it.
Also Nicodemus. At one point, Harry tries to trick him into telling him his master plan, but Nicodemus sees right through it, causing Harry to suspect he's read the Evil Overlord List.
In Proven Guilty Harry has a plan that hinges on a group of monsters impersonating horror movie creatures ambushing him. When they fail to do so, he threatens to take "drastic, cliched measures" like walking through doorways backwards.
Gentleman Johnny Marcone. Competent, ruthless, and precautionary to a tee, he nearly always manages to both place himself on the good side of a certain wizard, and talk his way into learning about the threat of the book. Since the start of the series, he has survived quite handily through attacks from vampires, werewolves, fallen angels, fae, undead, ghouls, and has even established himself as a member of the setting's regulatory body for supernatural war and diplomacy.
To give an idea of not only how Genre Savvy, but Badass this last point makes him; he is a perfectly normal mortal human being, no special powers whatsoever, and he's a member of a group consisting of the most powerful elements of the supernatural world.
As an example, in the first book, Harry confronts Marcone by blowing the doors off his club. In Even Hand, Marcone notes that since that incident, he's refurnished the entrances to his establishments: While strategic entrances are properly secured and warded, dramatic entrances are made with cheap balsa wood so that any other wizards attempting such an entrance won't harm anyone with the shrapnel.
Upon coming face to face with his sub-concious, Harry says "So I'm good Harry and you're Evil Harry and you only come out at night?"
Left Behind has an "unintentional" variant that cripples the narrative from the get-go. Many of the characters, who should have shown emotions at certain times, seem to be aware of the type of book they are in; they thus either do not display the appropriate emotions, or merely go through the motions. This cripples the first book of the series to an extreme extent in regards to making the characters seem real.
In book two of Tanya Huff's Smoke And Shadows trilogy, the production team and main cast of a Vampire Detective Series are trapped in a Haunted House while filming an episode about a haunted house. A large part of their defenses are ripped off from Charmed or The X-Files, and much of the dialogue consists of witty observations — and creative criticism — of their predicament, and blatant self mockery of Show Within a ShowDarkest Night.
In Jeffery Channing Wells' online masterpiece, Mundementia One, there exists the Humility Company. This group of bodyguards is the best in the entire world because they refuse to say that they are the best out loud. By continuously downplaying their own skill they manage to survive for another battle. They even have an android Cardinal Richlieu to tell them when they've become too badass and have to sacrifice the rookie to the mysterious monster in the darkness.
Frankly everyone in Mundementia One is genre savvy, though Charles is still trying to fully gain his.
A few characters in the X-Wing Series are at least a little genre savvy.
Many of Jane Austen's characters display hints of genre savviness, from Mr. Darcy and Elizabeth discussing the moral of their story, to Sir Thomas Bertram predicting that inviting his poor niece to live with him will end with her marrying one of his sons. Catherine Morland of Northanger Abbey is also very savvy about her preferred genre — "horrid" Gothic novels. Unfortunately, the story she's actually in is a Regency romance; fortunately, her love interest Henry Tilney is even more savvy.
In John C. Wright's The Golden Age, The Phoenix Exultant, and The Golden Transcedence, the accuracy and applicability of Daphne's stories to the events happening to them is a matter of great discussion. Sometimes it definitely helps, as when Daphne's response to hearing they are under attack is to throw herself out of the line of fire, saving her life.
The children's book Dear Peter Rabbit shows that the wolves of both the Three Little Pigs and Little Red Riding Hood tales show a rather remarkable dose of learning their lessons from their given genre (though we only see it for one page). The wolf from the Red Riding Hood tale consoles the Big Bad Wolf over losing his tail to the pigs and their brick house, and suggests that as painful as it would be, they would have to change their diets to exclude pigs and little girls - it was just too dangerous. The Big Bad Wolf, looking very glum and having an artificial tail being sewn on, doesn't look like he's too inclined to disagree.
In the novel The Phantom of the Opera, Raoul seems to know he's the "safe" love interest in a Gothic romance, given his utter lack of surprise at Christine's love for her stalker/kidnapper despite no recognition of Stockholm Syndrome as such at the time.
In the Joe Haldeman's The Accidental Time Machine our hero, who accidentally builds a time machine which can only travel into the future, shows an incredible amount of genre savvyness. When, after a jump, he is apprehended for a murder he didn't commit, someone of his physique places the exact amount of money needed for his bail with a proxy, even before the bail is even set (and the amount known). The hero then deduces that it must be himself from the future having found a way to travel backwards in order to set him free for his next jump. He then goes on to continue his adventure in relative fearlessness, because he knows he will be alive in the future to travel back into the past.
George Beard from the Captain Underpants books is very genre savvy, more so than usual in the book "The Perilous Plot of the Purple Potty People". Harold Hutchins, the other protagonist of the series (and rather Genre Blind in his own right), is constantly spouting things like "At least it can't get any worse!" George replies in disdain, claiming that whenever someone says something like that, things are inevitably going to get FAR worse (and rightly so, since they always do). When the police arrive to haul the boys off to jail for the rest of their lives, Harold spouts his "can't get any worse", and sure enough the evil mastermind Professor Tippy Tinkletrousers arrives in his giant, freeze-ray equipped pants bent on revenge against the boys.
In the Liaden Universe books by Sharon Lee and Steve Miller, Clan Korval has had plenty of time to become accustomed to its own Weirdness Magnet and Coincidence Magnet nature. As a result, it takes some pretty bizarre happenstance to more than mildly startle its more-experienced members, and they are at least somewhat able to recognize and take it into account in their planning (as when Daav advises Theo that she needs a dependable co-pilot to help deal with the trouble her Korval nature will attract in Ghost Ship). To some extent, the rest of the galaxy has also realized that Korval tends to attract trouble, even if they don't rightly understand why. (Even Bechimo was advised by his builders, hundreds of years ago, against having anything to do with Clan Korval, and yos'Phelium in particular.)
The kids in Hero.com and the protagonist in its sister series Villain.net are familiar enough with superhero stories to hang lampshades and snark, though Lorna inexplicably wanted to try and garner fame with their powers.
Renfield becomes quite Genre Savvy in Bram Stoker's Dracula: when he realizes that the Count is going to cheat him of his promised prize he figures to himself that since madmen are supposed to have supernatural strength, he could fight Drac on at least somewhat equal ground. It actually works, as he attacks Dracula in his smoke-form with his bare hands, and manages to force him back to material form! Ofcourse after that things go downhill for him.
In Privilege by Kate Brian, after Ariana kills someone and throws them in the lake, instead of just leaving, she puts her favorite necklace on the body and waits for the body to float back up. The police assume that the body was her trying to either escape juvie or kill herself and they cremate the body. She is now free to assume the identity of the person she actually killed.
In John C. Wright's Count To A Trillion, Menelaus notices that the future does not match what was promised in SF he read as a child.
Nearly every single character in Skulduggery Pleasant, which is fairly justified since most of them are hundreds of years old and so have the experience.
In the Star Wars Expanded Universe, one of Tarkin's cohorts ask him why he doesn't just use the Death Star to blow up Coruscant and become Emperor himself. Tarkin replies that Palpatine obviously has measures to prevent this, and any attempt would just get them all killed.
In Geoph Essex's Lovely Assistant, Lyle and Lloyd aren't just Genre Savvy, they're trope savvy, dropping tropes practically by name in some cases and reciting examples from the corresponding entries. The topper comes in the climax, when Lloyd brags to The Dragon: "Crowning Moment of kicked your ass!" They also manage to piece together the Big Bad's identity and some key elements of the Evil Plan through their encyclopedic knowledge of tropes, blatantly suggesting that the characters (and the author) are One of Us.
In P. G. Wodehouse's Hot Water, Medway, the lady's maid, speaks of how the book she's reading has a detective in disguise as a maid, causing much consternation among characters to plan to crack a safe. Actually, she's the criminal, out to crack the safe herself.
Live Action TV
Joey in Friends is toogenre savvy when he tells Monica who would win in a fight, she or Phoebe:
Joey: Definitely Phoebe. She has lived on the street, she can be really mean when she's angry, and ... she is not standing right behind me, is she?
Spike to Buffy in Blood Ties: "You'll find her, just in the nick of time. That's what you hero types do."
Also when Spike kidnapped Xander and Willow, Buffy immediately concludes that he hid them at the abandoned factory. Spike says, "You think I'm an idiot?" They are, of course, at the abandoned factory.
Also note Buffy's staking of Dracula after he attempts to regenerate — "You think I don't watch your movies? You always come back."
Their genre savvy is justified because they don't start acting so genre savvy until several seasons in. During the early seasons they aren't nearly as genre savvy.
In Angel, Spike is even more Genre Savvy. See episode 4: "Is this the part where I say 'Who's there?' and something creepy happens?"
Abed of Community is Genre Savvy beyond all reason. The other characters typically ignore him when he points out various tropes and it won't be too surprising when a WMG goes up saying that Abed knows he's fictional. It's even better than that. There's a WMG that he's a troper.
In one episode, Abed is so genre savvy he has the ability to predict the future.
In the episode 'Horror Fiction in Seven Deadly Steps,' Abed is bored by a cliche horror story and then revises the story to make the characters more genre savvy. His and Britta's characters in the story hear a noise outside and discuss what to do:
Britta: Should we go check it out?
Abed: No. We should call 911 on my fully-charged cell phone, lock the doors, and then stand back-to-back in the middle of the room holding knives.
Richard Castle in Castle is amazingly genre savvy, being a mystery novelist in a Police Procedural, and uses this to help the actual police. His partner pokes fun at this, but it works.
For a miniseries which purports to deconstruct fairytales, surprisingly few characters in The 10th Kingdom seem to be Genre Savvy. Street smart Virginia certainly isn't, other than when she realizes that "everyone in this place is crazy!" Wolf only gets a few moments now and then, one of the most memorable being his knowledge of fairy tale endings: "We either live happily ever after or we get killed by horrible curses." (Another would be his explanation, after Prince gets turned to gold, that "things have a way of bouncing back here"... only to admit, when confronted by Tony, that he was "just saying that" and proceeding to tempt Prince with a stick with delicious snark.) The most truly Genre Savvy moment in the entire miniseries, surprisingly, comes from Tony, after the Blind Woodsman explains how they can obtain his magic axe... by guessing his name — except if they fail, he chops off Wolf's head:
Tony: What is it with you people? What kind of twisted upbringing did you have? Why can't you just say, "Oh, that'll be a hundred gold coins"? Why is it always "Not unless you lay a magic egg, or count the hairs on that giant's ass"?
Of course this is immediately subverted when Tony, believing he knows which fairy tale he's in, agrees to the deal and guesses the Woodsman is named Rumpelstiltskin. Wrong! Good thing that magic bird came along when it did.
And another great Tony moment, when he's told by a talking frog that one door leads to the castle, while the other leads to certain death. The frog says they can ask him any question, but he always lies. Tony flips out, has a similar rant to the one with the woodsman, only a little longer, picks up the protesting frog, opens one of the doors and throws him in, closing the door. Moments later, an explosion is heard from the other side of the door.
Ida: We've come this far, there's no turning back.
Doctor: Oh, did you have to? "No turning back"? That's almost as bad as "Nothing could possibly go wrong" or "This is gonna be the best Christmas Walford's ever had."
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. The Doctor was also able to accurately predict that the Master would have to have a ticking clock as part of his plan.
Doctor: How do you think? A good wizard trapped it.
River: I hate good wizards in fairy tales, they always turn out to be him.
River's knowledge of the Doctor's future makes her pretty genre savvy regarding the Doctor, when they're trapped by the Weeping Angels, she says, "No pressure, but this is usually when you have a really good idea."
The Ninth Doctor displays this in "Boom Town", when an alien murderess he is dining with gets him to turn his back on a spurious excuse. Naturally, she uses the opportunity to spice up his drink... and when he turns back, he switches their glasses immediately.
Rory Williams - from the way he worked out from his own research why the TARDIS is bigger on the inside, to the fact that he's perfectly aware that "We come in peace!" never stops the mooks from trying to kill you, Rory has always been fairly savvy about both science and sci-fi.
In "The God Complex", Rory comes up with a somewhat dark and Harsher in Hindsight example:
Rory: Every time the Doctor gets pal-y with someone I have this overwhelming urge to notify their next-of-kin.
In "Closing Time", the Doctor drops in on Craig as a social call.
The Doctor: The Doctor: Just popped in to say hello.
Craig: You don't do that. I checked the upstairs when we moved in. It's real. And next door, both sides. They're humans. Is it the fridge? Are there aliens in my fridge?
Amy Pond often has moments of Genre Savvy:
Amy: Were you being extra charming and clever?
Doctor: Yeah, how did you know?
Amy: Lucky guess.
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.
Then switched around when O'Niell disparages at the guards preventing their escape and Bra'tac shows him a "real" grenade.
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 quite genre savvy in "The Tomb", one of SG-1's (thankfully) few attempts at horror. On seeing the redshirt — er, Russian military officer walk down the hall to confront the monster, he waxes sarcastic: "Yes, you go down the dark hallway alone and I'll wait here in the dark room alone."
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.
Fridge Brilliance: They wouldn't be able to use that name because another ship currently serving has that name: A US Navy aircraft carrier.
Lieutenant Colonel Cameron Mitchell also displays genre savviness through memorized mission reports and old sayings (usually attributed to his Grandma). It seems to be a prerequisite for the series male leads to have quick wits and knowledge of tropes.
Most villains are Genre Blind, but Ba'al sometimes manages to be Dangerously Genre Savvy; he's the only system lord who doesn't believe his own A God Am I propaganda, and is quite willing to manipulate SG1 into helping him take out his rivals. Even so, there are moments when he's clearly holding the Villain Ball (or is it Villain Ba'al?).
Also Vala, at least some of the time. Like when she shoots an apparently dead monster, and when she repeatedly points out that Nerous the Goa'uld will betray them. "What a surprise!"
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, though when later trapped on a ship in the next season it does.)
Similarly, Dr. (Meredith) Rodney McKay is a Star Trek fan to the point of Genre Savviness. He even says that Dr. Beckett is their Dr. McCoy, due to his views on Stargate travel (hint: it's McCoy's view on transporters). After an alien woman falls in love with Lt. Col. Sheppard, he exclaims "Oh God, he is Kirk!"
In Stargate Universe, EverymanGeek GeniusEli Wallace seems to share this trait, in large part due to his enthusiasm for science fiction. A promo had him comparing an ice planet to Hoth and the recently aired Air, Part 3 has him warning the expedition party that splitting up is a verrrrry bad idea. Three guesses as to if he's right or not. He is, though nothing too dramatic happens. Basically half of the team goes through the stargate to an unexplored planet where they have a heavily implied Offscreen Death.
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.
Sisko isn't the only one either; Dax (or at least Jadzia) occasionally has flashes of this, but usually only enough to get a good line in. Garak on the other hand seems to know he's trapped in a fictional world, usually using his savvy to poke fun at Dr. Bashir's chronic Genre Blindness. Which is even funnier because Bashir's main hobby for much of the later seasons is playing holographic recreations of not-quite-Bond novels, about which he is extremely Genre Savvy and Garak knows nothing...
With extra bonus irony from Garak being an actual former intelligence officer.
Of course the magic really happens when Garak and Sisko finally team up to bring the Romulans into the war with the Dominion. They set up an elaborate scheme to create false holographic evidence that the Dominion will invade Romulus. The evidence is of course discovered by a Romulan senator to be fake, and Garak knowing beforehand that this was a risk that was too big to take in a Crapsack World where things rarely turn out well, already arranged in advance to have the senator blown up with the remnants of the evidence salvaged by the empire and assumed to be genuine.. Best. Episode. Ever.
No one in Trek is more Genre Savvy than Weyoun, one of the most impressive diplomats to ever grace television. (Of course, it helps that his race is genetically engineered specifically for it.) One of him (he's a series of clones) correctly predicts that any serious resistance or uprising against Dominion control if/when they conquer the Alpha Quadrant would come from Earth. As such, he plans to wipe out the whole planet as soon as the war is won.
Also the episode "A Fistful of Datas" in Star Trek: The Next Generation. Deanna Troi has read enough Westerns to know that the villain will try double-crossing Worf during the prisoner exchange.
The episode "Elementary, My Dear Data" has its major conflict come up because of Data, in the role of Sherlock Holmes in a holodeck story, veering past Genre Savvy straight into cutting straight to the ending by telling the first policeman he sees who the villain is and the crime because he already knew the story without doing any sleuthing; the resultant discussion over how Data could "enjoy" the exercise leads to the self-inflicted, ship-endangering mishap of the week.
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!"
Given a half-twist in Ashes to Ashes. Alex, having been Sam Tyler's psychologist in 2006, is very quickly convinced that she's hallucinating during a near-death experience, that she knows exactly what the rules of her imaginary world are, and that there will inevitably be some sequence of events that will allow her to wake up; rather than gradually assimilating into 1981, as Sam did to 1973, she seems almost to be trying to game her way out of it. Unfortunately, her assumptions tend to be less than infallible since she's working on the rules from Life on Mars, only some of which carried over to Ashes to Ashes.
Much to the sadistic glee of Zippy and George, apparently.
The Hybrids (the semi-humanoid computers of the Basestars) in Battlestar Galactica seem to be aware that they're on a TV show ("Throughout history, the nexus between man and machine has spawned some of the most dramatic, compelling, and entertaining fiction"). Also, Admiral Adama says in the episode "Revelations" that if they give the alliance with the rebel cylons any more time it will just fall apart again, and gives the order to jump with the Rebel Basestar to their mutual destination instead of sending a scouting party first.
Another Battlestar Galactica example is Sam Ander's admission to Starbuck that his resistance team really just lifts tactics out of movies. Which, apparently, Cylons have no real interest in reviewing.
The Middleman himself and his Side Kick Wendy are both Genre Savvy, as is potential Love Interest Tyler. Wendy and the Middleman have a tendency to make plans along the lines of "You go get the villain to start monologuing, while I sneak around behind him to disable his dimensional portal."
This eventually backfires when the villain doesn't show the slightest intention to give his monologue, demonstrating that he, as well, is Genre Savvy.
The first episode of LA 7, aka S Club 7 in LA, entitled "Into the Unknown" has them lost in a forest in which group of film-makers disappeared, which sounded awfully familiar to them.
Some (but not all) of the characters on Lost are Genre Savvy. Boone suspects he is a Red Shirt. Hurley and Charlie often question the wisdom of traipsing into a monster-inhabited jungle.
On an episode, as Hurley and Charlie bury Ethan, Hurley says that he sees the situation ending badly, with Ethan becoming a zombie and chasing him and Charlie.
In season 5, after (most of) the Oceanic Six end up back on the Island in 1977, Hurley hilariously attempts genre-savviness concerning time travel. However, it seems that the entirety of his knowledge on the subject comes from Back to the Future, and he has, let's say, a lot of trouble grasping the show's more realistic implications, much to Miles' exasperation.
In season 6, he manages to describe things easily to Jack saying Jacob's appearing to him like Obi Wan Kenobi
Hiro Nakamura on Heroes. "You're telling us your plan? What kind of overconfident nemesis are you?"
Though not Genre Savvy enough to just listen to the plan.
Ando, too. Hiro travels to the future and sees Ando attacking him. He tells Ando, and Ando suggests that it could be a robot or a shapeshifter.
In the Farscape episode "Twice Shy", Crichton and D'Argo take it for granted that the Distressed Damsel they've rescued will turn out to be a villain, and resolve to dump her on the first habitable planet they come to. However this turns out to be not so easy as she's actually a giant shapeshifting spider that feeds on emotions.
In House, characters occasionally realize where they are in the script. Thus, Wilson sometimes points out that he's just provided House with his routine epiphany, while, in one episode, House complains that the epiphany went to somebody else.
NCIS: "Tony, your dying words would be 'I've seen this film.'"
The episode "Missing": "Way to go, MacGyver! If that bomb were real, we'd be washing you off the streets of Baghdad right now! Never assume that a bomb timer is accurate! Bad guys watch movies, too."
In one episode of Psych the characters realize they're surrounded by slasher movie cliches but then even more Genre Savvy Shawn figures out all the cliches are a set up, but then people do start dying.
In The Worst Witch TV series, Miss Crotchet gains this toward the end of the third season. She says in the penultimate (aired) episode that even though she has only been at the school for a year, she knows how arguments go between the teachers. Miss Hardbroom will argue for a change in the treatment of the pupils, Miss Drill will argue in favour of the pupils, she will say something and get ignored, then Miss Cackle will enter the argument and everything will revert to status quo. However, things don't pan out like that in that episode.
Sheriff Andy was apparently programmed for Genre Savvy. Faced with a situation where only a main character could succeed he refused to go (because he was programmed to follow the town charter, which says the sheriff cannot take unreasonable risks). Once Carter went in Andy was able to follow and help because he knew that Carter being there increased the odds of success dramatically.
All the main characters are Genre Savvy enough that when someone observes that S.A.R.A.H.'s AI started its life as a war-game simulator, and she immediately responds by asking "Shall we play a game?", the answer is an emphatic and unanimous "NO!"
Instead of lecturing a henchman who has promised to hunt Mal down and kill him, Mal simply shrugs, takes him at his word, and kicks the guy into an engine intake.
When Mal and Saffron get interrupted trying to steal the Lassiter, Saffron starts talking fast and Mal plays along. Much to their relief, Haymer appears grateful and leaves to get Mal a reward. When he returns, however, he informs them that he had alerted security the second he saw them and now armed Alliance guards are coming to take them in.
Supernatural: In the Season 1 episode, "Asylum," Sam and Dean investigate a haunted, abandoned mental hospital. They find a teenage couple wandering around inside, just for kicks. Dean gives the girl, Kat, this piece of advice:
Dean: You watch a lot of horror movies, right? Kat: Yeah, so? Dean: So next time you hear a place is haunted don't go in.
A Game Show example: In the original Let's Make a Deal with Monty Hall, when it came time for The Reveal of the endgame, Monty would always save the door with the Big Deal of the Day to be revealed last, opening the other two first. Contestants quickly figured this out, and would start Squeeing and jumping for joy as soon as the door they had picked was the last one left unrevealed, or would become disappointed as soon as the door they had picked was opened without being saved for last.
Game shows in general aired during a place theme or holiday can fit this, most notably Wheel of Fortune. Wheel's puzzle rounds during a theme week are likely to have a puzzle that is related to a cultural or holiday event which contestants and home viewers who are savvy enough will solve sooner than usual.
Found in Hannah Montana, believe it or not, where about midway through season 1 Lilly begins to develop a dangerous understanding of how Miley's Zany Schemes usually work, sees them coming a good minute and a half before they actually happen, and why she can't say no, even though she knows she should.
In more recent episodes, Miley is gaining more savviness about Robbie Ray's Once an Episodeheart-to-hearttalks, always beating him to the punch when he advises her to "listen to (her) heart", or asking him not to tell her "I Told You So" when a plan backfires, etc.
In an episode of The Avengers, one character points out that although it seems that they are all trapped in a thriller, the eyes in a painting aren't moving.
Everything Tempus says in his appearances in Lois and Clark: The New Adventures of Superman flaunts his extreme genre savvy. From saying "I'm the bad guy, we always have a plan" to "The heroine creates her hero, a mythically moving moment." In the episode, "Tempus, Anyone?" he greets Lois Lane by lampshading her previous inability to figure out that her fiance is the originator of Clark Kenting.
Tempus: Remember me? (Lois stares on confused so he removes his glasses) How about now? (He laughs when she doesn't get his glasses/no glasses reference to Clark) Private joke.
Master Vile in Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers. Apart from anything else, he was genre savvy enough to cut his losses and decide to try his hand at conquering everything outside of the galaxy holding that Insignificant Little Blue Planet, since, as he puts it, the good guys tend to win around here for some weird reason.
The Rangers themselves have their genre savvy moments. One example in season 2 would be Goldar ransoming some captives for the Rangers' Power Coins. He, of course, doesn't hold up his end. However, the Rangers had been in this spot before last season, in "Return of an Old Friend". Goldar cheated them then, too. So this time, instead of giving him the actual Power Coins, they gave him chocolate coins in Power Coin wrappers.
Goldar in the movie once he sees the Zord he knows they screwed and flees
Subverted in an episode of Smallville. (A subversion, but not Wrong Genre Savvy. The character was right about what was going to happen, but still didn't realize just how dangerous it was.) A meteor crashes near two kids playing basketball. One of them goes to look in the miniature crater, but his friend warns him not to. "Hey man, don't you watch any movies?" The guy who looked in the crater gets possessed by the alien inside it and casually kills his friend. By the end of the episode, he's free of the alien's control and back to normal, but his friend is still dead. Apparently being Genre Savvy isn't enough sometimes.
Shown by a suspect on The Glades. When the suspect immediately confesses after Jim announces they have the killer's DNA and just have to get his to compare, Jim immediately believes it was too easy and that the man was protecting his son, the man realizing that while a DNA comparison would clear him, it would indicate that a male relative was the killer. Jim Lampshades the genre-savviness by pointing out that thanks to TV, more people know about what DNA comparisons can show.
The whole reason for Maddy and David on Moonlighting not to continue their relationship was because they knew they were in a TV show that depended on the UST of the two leads.
One episode of Ultraman Tiga had the leader of the human military grumbling about the fact that he realizes that no matter how much artillery they throw at any given attacking monster, it's always Tiga who ends up saving the day (normally, military leaders in Kaiju shows, and Ultraman in particular, just don't acknowledge this kind of thing). But, by the end of the episode, he's reconciled himself to it, and is happy to have Tiga around.
The Nennog of Maddigan's Quest: "It's said that the talisman, once matured, will end my reign. Of course the science of prophecy is not well tested, but who wants to take a risk?"
From the Golden Girls episode, "That Old Feeling," which focused on Blanche's feelings upon reuniting with the brother of her late husband:
Rose: Dorothy Zbornak, you might show a little compassion!
Dorothy: Catch me on a day when the story's about me.
Happens several times in The Walking Dead. In the first season, the survivors are generally savvy enough to avoid most zombie-related cliches - they go for headshots whenever an opportunity arises, they make sure any walker that's still moving is permanently put down for good, they use stealth whenever possible, and anyone who has been infected is immediately outed by other survivors and dealt with. In "Guts", the group of survivors that arrives to save Rick and Glenn is wearing hockey pads and helmets while they beat on the walkers with baseball bats.
On Survivor, some of the players from later seasons have watched the previous seasons, and know how certain returning characters will play or what strategies will or will not be used at what stage of the competition. The Fans Vs. Favorites season would have been this, had said Genre Savvy fans not been picked off because they spent too much time fawning over the Favorites. On Redemption Island, Russell was voted out second from his own tribe because they had seen his previous seasons (Samoa and Heroes Vs. Villains) and knew that he would try to pull the same trick of forming an all-girl alliance and dominating the game again.
Fails in an episode of Sliders, when the group slides into a world stuck in the 19th century, and the whole thing turns into a western. Then they find out that the local town villain is an enemy of theirs and a Kromagg (humanoids evolved from different apes) to boot. Mr. K uses his species' Psychic Abilities to frame Quinn and Rembrandt for murder. Quinn suggests using their knowledge of western films to set a trap for the jail guards and escape. Quinn climbs and hides above the jail cell door, and Rembrandt yells that Quinn's escaped. Unfortunately for them, Mr. K walks in and the first thing he does is look up. He laughs off their attempts and notes that Kromaggs have their own version of westerns where exact same tricks are employed.
On one episode of The Mentalist, Cho and Rigsby stumble upon some marijuana in the woods:
Rigsby: There's a pot plant here. Actually, there's a whole bunch of pot plants here.
Cho: It looks like a farm.
Rigsby: Oh, yeah. Which means there's probably some bad guys with guns.
(Cue gunfire.)
In Misfits Simon is a good example of this and it's scarily useful when it comes to the hiding of dead bodies, when it has to do with anything else no one tends to listen to him.
Nathan: Now, I'm not saying we have but what would happen if hypothetically speaking if it came to light that we may have killed one or two people——probation workers and such, no one important.
PR Woman/Super Manager: I would say that these people you may or may not have killed were evil, you were protecting society——you're not murders; you're heroes, superheroes, rich, famous superheroes. And if that doesn't work we banish the bodies and pay off the relatives.
Nathan: Good answer.
Curtis: Sign us up.
PR Woman/Super Manager: Good.
Simon: You're making a mistake.
Alisha: We should all stick together.
Kelly: Just do it with us.
Of course, it all goes horribly wrong.
On Chuck Morgan becomes Genre Saavy when he realizes he's a supporting character in a spy series. He even recognized the choreographic fight sequence Shaw engaged in and realized the failure to find Shaw's body meant he wasn't dead. He shifts to Wrong Genre Savvy when he gets the Intersect and believes he's now the main character.
By the last few episodes of Legend of the Seeker, Darken Rahl has grown genre savvy about the hero, Richard, and, as the world's nearing an end, is content to sit back in a hot-tub and relax, comfortable in the certainty that Richard will solve everything in short order.
Mythology
Older than Dirt: 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. Not that scorning a goddess doesn't lead to tragedy anyway — it was a lose-lose situation. You'd think if he was really Genre-Savvy, he'd know that part too and decide that as long as he's screwed either way...
In Book Nine of The Iliad, the Greek hero Diomedes doesn't believe Achilles' threats to sail home from Troy because he is fated to die there. He turns out to be right.
Sir Dinadan, the jokester knight of Arthurian Legend. He agrees to enter a tournament after Lancelot promised not to participate. Lancelot is visibly still in the audience, when a woman enters the tournament. Dinadan: "Oh Crap, that's probably Lancelot in drag." In defiance of all logic, but in strict accordance with Rule of Funny, he's right.
As part of 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. (He turned after he overheard his faction plotting against him but played along up until the end.)
On the 4 December epsiode of Smackdown!, the Animal cranked it up to Dangerously Genre Savvy levels by attacking The Undertaker from behind with a chair midway through the Deadman's classic long entrance.
On the episode of WWE Smackdown that aired the Friday before the Unforgiven 2008 Pay-Per-View, MVP and Shelton Benjamin attempted to interrupt HHH's show-opening promo. HHH then made a Genre Savvy speech about the usual course of events that take place during the show-opening promo, where the champion talks for a while about the upcoming Pay-Per-View, his opponents interrupt him and try to attack him, and the champion overcomes the opponents. However, HHH did wind up being attacked by a third opponent he didn't see coming (who could be said to have been Genre Savvy enough to notice how his presence wouldn't be cliche enough to notice).
Triple H displayed his Genre Savvy once again on a Raw episode leading into WWE Wrestlemania 25. Randy Orton had declared his intent to have Triple H arrested for the assault and home invasion HHH had committed the week before, and then use his guaranteed Wrestlemania title shot to go after Edge's World Championship, rather than HHH's WWE Championship. Triple H came to the ring, allowed himself to be handcuffed, and then openly told Orton that this isn't how the story ends; that Orton needed to get revenge for Triple H having expelled him from Evolution and taken away his first championship after a mere 1-month reign, and all of this was just Orton posturing. After more goading from HHH, Orton finally agreed, had HHH released, and officially challenged him for his title.
One of Sting's character traits has been his complete lack of genre savviness. As a nearly career-long face, he'd been set up by the Four Horsemen, Dungeon of Doom and the nWo countless times over the years. Around 2000ish, he was feuding with Lex Luger, and Miss Elizabeth had left Luger and sided with him. During their grudge match, Elizabeth tried to spray perfume in Sting's eyes, but he'd seen it coming and swapped the perfume out with silly string.
One time, Brutus Magnus tried to attack him for behind, but Sting sidesteped because Magnus yelled while charging.
Jonathan Coachman: "I've decided to give Umaga a very well-deserved night off."
John Cena: "A night off? Like I haven't heard that one before. What does that mean, that he's showing up in five minutes? That he's gonna show up when I go to my car tonight? That he's gonna show up when I'm in the sho— You know what, just don't let him show up when I'm in the shower. I don't think any of us want that."
Pretty much any time that a wrestler manages to actually use an obvious way around the usual suspension of the laws of physics needed for some of pro wrestling's more elementary sequences (such as Irish whips that lead to almost "textbook" dodging), although these moments are usually played for laughs. Specific examples would be Samoa Joe in ROH casually walking out of the way of opponents jumping off of the top rope... same goes for Kevin Steen's reaction to Nigel McGuinness' rebound lariat off of the ropes.
Goldust always counters his opponents when they telegraph a move. For example: when his opponent telegraphs a back body drop, he will stop and uppercut them.
Michael Cole showed a rare example on the Season 2 Finale of NXT; after Lucky Cannon cut a promo revealing his Face Heel Turn, he remarked "Oh, so I guess he's a bad guy now."
Jerry Lawler pulled out one of his own the night before. After Kane caused the lights to go out on The Undertaker, Lawler commented "It's like he has Undertaker powers now."
In recent months (especially during his feud with Sheamus), whenever Sheamus would try to run-in during Randy Orton's matches while Orton's back was to the entrance ramp, Orton would deduce that he was coming based on the crowd's pop, and turn to counter the ambush.
Done to hilarious effect by Chavo Guerrero at WCW Bash at the Beach 1998. A very common tactic for heels is to send out much bigger "spoiler" against an opponent the heel doesn't want to face at full strength. Chavo's uncle Eddie Guerrero did this to Chavo at a pay-per-view by sending out the massive (compared to Chavo) Stevie Ray. Chavo, going through a "crazy guy" gimmick at the time, offered his opponent a handshake. When Ray took the bait, Chavo tapped out as though he were in excruciating pain, causing himself to lose, but also keeping himself fresh for the match with Eddie that immediately followed.
One of the elements in the Z! True Long Island Story webshow by WWE's Zack Ryder that's brought it widespread popularity has been his willingness to make not-very-veiled shoutouts to smarks, such as the "Han Solbro" clip or his not being pushed.
A very interesting case with Melina Perez. As part of her ring entrance she does the splits on the ring apron. In two separate matches, her opponent has actually dropkicked her off the apron while she does them. In a variation of this, at Night of Champions 2010 she faced one of the two opponents who had dropkicked her during entrance again. The opponent tried to do it but this time Melina was ready for her and moved out of the way.
The Bella Twins constantly switch with each other to try and win matches, especially after their Face Heel Turn. One match saw Eve Torres bring a permanent marker down to the ring and get the referee to draw an X on the twin who was legally in the match. In a bit of irony they went for the switch and got caught but Eve got distracted by the twin on the outside which allowed the other to win the match.
On the August 8th, 2011 edition of WWE Raw, CM Punk's immediate reaction to the "main event" (a contract signing for himself versus John Cena at Summerslam to unify the WWE Championships) was to point out how often a fight would break out at such an event, and wondering aloud whether he should just flip the table over and get the fight started already.
Punk's genre savvyness is arguably a big part of his popularity. When John Laurenitis had a contract signing for a Triple Threat match between Punk, Alberto Del Rio and The Miz, Punk kept interrupting the segment by asking if he could punch somebody. Near the end, when John was getting ready for a photo shoot for WWE.com with all three men, Punk simply stated: "Man, if you want anything done right... I guess you just gotta do it yourself." He then proceeds to send Del Rio through a table and hit his finisher on The Miz.
"Rowdy" Roddy Piper wrestled much the same style as a Heel or a Babyface, meaning that he often cheated. Moreover; he could anticipate other Heels' cheating, and counter-act with his own moves. He was rarely caught with eye-pokes, chairshots or low-blows like other Faces would, allowing him to gobble up even a Heel's offense and work the guy over without interruption.
Radio
Bluebottle from The Goon Show has learned some Genre Savviness after being explosivelydeaded in most episodes — he seems to know that his appearance will always result in his deading, and has taken some fairly extensive steps to avoid it (such as leaving Neddie tied to a pile of dynamite in England, then going to the middle of a desert in America in about four seconds). Of course, it fails, but that's because he hasn't quite figured the finer points of the Rule of Funny.
Tabletop Games
Norin the Wary from Magic: The Gathering is convinced that everything in the world wants to hurt him. Except lemures. This is more or less accurate.
Changeling: the Lost pulls this like no one's business. It's common knowledge in game, for instance, that the Wyrd likes to play Literal Genie, and the Autumn Court essentially specializes in this Trope. And then there are the Talecrafting rules in the sourcebook Swords at Dawn: characters can purposely force Tropes to occur at will because they realize their own lives work by the rules of stories. The book actually suggests TV Tropes as a good place to find examples of patterns to use!
"Princess! No need to worry. I hope you haven't forgotten my role in this little story. I'm the leading man. You know what they say about the leading man - he never dies."
Another one: Hope knows that tired old tale of "Revenge is not going to solve anything." He doesn't care.
Princess Waltz is a good H-game not just because of its elements that work, but because it gleefully lampshades its own cliches. It's really hard to hate this game for following the stock conventions of its own genres when they cleverly keep poking fun at them at the same time. In fact, the Big Bad and The Plucky Comic Relief are walking fonts of Genre Savvy hilarity.
Heroes of Might and Magic IV includes a sympathetic undead king who gets his underling to draw up plans for invading a neighbouring kingdom — and them sends the plans to that kingdom, so they can fix the holes in their defenses. He explains that even though invading his neighbour would make him the most powerful ruler in the entire world, that would just mean everyone else would unite their forces to take him down.
He later promotes a zombie to Captain and takes the trouble to learn his name for showing the sense and initiative to find out exactly what an enemy's Artifact of Doom did (saving his life in the process), and figures out that there must be a reason why no one has ever activated each of five MacGuffins. He then takes appropriate precautions.
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.
Also from Disgaea 3, after you have defeated Super-Hero Aurum he says "Wait! In these games the final boss always has to take his final form before you can truly defeat him!", to which Mao replies "Ah! Curse you, using that convenient Game Mechanic!"
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.
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."
Many of the NPCs in the game tend to be genre savvy: civilians will complain about they can't walk down the street without someone trying to snatch their purse, kidnap them, or try to use them in strange rituals. And some of the villains are equally savvy; at least one fragment of dialogue for a low-level gangbanger references the endless-loop purse tug-of-war animation with a "No, really! I actually got the purse!"
In the same vein of the low-level gang member, a cry for help on part of the NPC struggling for her purse shows some degree of Genre Savvy as well, recognizing that since crying out about getting mugged won't summon help quickly enough, she yells that there's a fire instead.
This is advice given to people in the real world too.
Meanwhile, the game itself is very Player Savvy. "OK, so I know now that these apples will fall on me, and that the third one will fall up. Ah, but there's a gaping hole between trees there. I can use it to just jump between the two trees and avoid any apples! Alright here I- A SIDEWAYS APPLE?!". Or how about sequences with one insanely hard bunch of obstacles. Once you finally pass the apples/spikepit/enemies and you think you're home free once you reach the platform on the other side... the ground falls away, or a spike lands on that exact spot that you thought was safe, and you die just so that the game can teach you not to get complacent.
Cole from Spirit Tracks might just be the most Genre Savvy villian the series ever had and goes out of his way to eliminate every single trope that could probably make his master's Grand Theft Me on Princess Zelda's part go wrong, from Fighting From The Inside (he removes her spirit first) to All Your Base Are Belong to Us (He didn't attempt to take over Hyrule Castle, like every other villian in the series would have done). The one mistake he makes, pulling an You Have Outlived Your Usefulness on Byrne was finally his downfall.
Dawn of War 2 starts with the Blood Ravens realizing all they need to win the war is one player character.
Arthas, aka the Lich King, of World of Warcraft, as of the newest expansion, has displayed some unexpected genre-savviness, going so far in one early encounter as to deliberately murder your character, simply to prove a point about his own power, knowing full well you'll get right back up shortly and keep coming after him anyway. Now that is Dangerously Genre Savvy.
Even moreso, when you finally do manage to face him, he reveals that he's been letting you kill all his best monsters specifically so that you will 'get stronger' — as in, get their loot — so that you, the player, will be a better, stronger minion when he turns you.
It should also be noted that Sonic himself is also this. With the amount of times he's lampshaded tropes in the games, he fits well. Example being in Sonic Colors he knew right away that the amusement park was just a front for Eggman's evil plot.
A perfect example; "Experience has taught me to investigate anything that glows."
Henry of No More Heroes is made of this trope. He correctly identifies himself as main character Travis' mysterious foil and just goes on from there.
Travis picks up some of it once Desperate Struggle starts, but the king of the trope is the final boss. When Travis can't figure out his motives, the boss snaps, pointing out that You Killed My Father is a staple of every genre known to man — "Shakespeare, for God's sake!"
Guillo of Baten Kaitos Origins displays genre-savviness throughout the game, questioning good guys who turn out to be villains, realizing when something has come "too easily," and knowing to run away before the inevitable "doomed to lose" boss fights.
Zoey of Left 4 Dead is a prime example — as a college student, she's seen a lot of zombie movies, and often spouts out lines relating to their current situation.
"I can't get over how fast they all are! It's not even fair, I'm calling zombie bullshit on that, you know? They're not... allowed to be so fast!"
Unfortunately she's also Wrong Genre Savvy in the comic The Sacrifice she finds out that Her father was actually a carrier so when she shot him in a mercy killing after he was bitten, it was a pointless sacrifice
Guybrush Threepwood occasionally points out a trope during his adventures and tries to take advantage (generally by refusing to do something stupid).
The title character of Eat Lead: The Return of Matt Hazard is not only savvy about every genre he's ever been in, but he's savvy about every other game genre, too. He also has Medium Awareness, and these are half of what he uses to get through his situation. The other half, of course, is lots of guns.
Apart from the whole "evil unkillable vampires" part and stuff of which she is by necessity very genre savvy, Arcueid of Tsukihime also surprisingly displays some genre savviness in regards to relationships. Arcueid notes that Shiki sure is acting nice to everyone else, he says that he is nice to everyone... except her. You idiot! She's thrilled (but can't quite grasp why), because she recognizes him as being a tsundere — and therefore making her the love interest!
After a certain point, Max seems to have simply descended into being a Fourth Wall Observer. He suggests at one point switching to the Rhythm Game genre to take down the Samulacra, and instantly jumps on the opportunity to do a Fetch Quest later on.
Doggelgangers!!!
In Neverwinter Nights, besides of making more explicable efforts to stop the plague, the Big Good and his minions set up an academy to train heroes to save the city. Of course, one of them does. However, this goes beyond any reasoning that might actually make sense in the game world, and seems more like a bad excuse to set up the Protagonist Without A Past.
Carth's smelling a rat about the whole mission in the first Knights of the Old Republic game could be interpreted as Genre Savviness, as could a lot of Atton's behavior in the sequel. In-universe, it's mostly explained as both of them being Force sensitive.
In Uncharted: Drake's Fortune, Nathan Drake invariably ends up in gunfights consisting of several waves of goons. Every so often, Drake will ask to himself "Where do these guys keep coming from?".
In the second game, Among Thieves, Drake in one level has to retrieve an ally from a broken elevator. As he does so, Drake tells himself "I swear to God, if there's a zombie around the next corner...". Mutant Spaniards, or "zombies", were a special foe from the first game, in a level where Drake again had to rescue a friend from a small compartment.
The girls in the Touhou Project games occasionally show that they are very aware of the tropes of Bullet Hell games. Not the least of which is the fact that they explicitly call their attacks Danmaku. One amusing example appears in Perfect Cherry Blossom, whose Stage 4 has an unusually long wait between reaching the boss's area, and the boss showing up. When she gets there, Reimu spends a few moments muttering to herself about what's going on, and when no boss shows up, she demands "Doesn't someone usually pop in with a response right about now?"
In Legacy of Kain: Defiance, Kain shows his level of savvy, likely stemming from several centuries of living, in the Citadel of the Ancients. He encounters a series of very well-proportioned statues with dangerous looking swords, and monologues to himself that there was no way in Hell they wouldn't attack at some point.
Batman: Arkham Asylum, When the player is getting close to completing all of the Riddler's Challenges, the Riddler accuses Batman of cheating, and that he is looking up the hidden locations on the internet.
In Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, in the second-to-last-mission, Soap and Price go on an assassination mission. Once the target realizes that Price is coming after him, he orders a full evacuation of his base and tells his men to simply hold off the heroes until he can escape. An entire military base vs. two men, and the guy knows it's futile to actually try to kill them.
In Singularity, Nikolai Demichev is smart enough to keep plans for the Singularity Reactor, and rebuilds it after the heros blow it up. He also never forgets that time travel is possible. Thus, when confronted with two American Marines in modern-day uniforms even though there hasn't been an American military for about fifty years because the timeline has been altered so the USSR conquered the world in the sixies, he knows exactly what's going on, and doesn't waste time wondering how the two men have become crazy enough to believe the things they're talking about.
Devlin: Name, rank and serial number is all you're getting from us, Ivan. Now, I want to speak to someone from our embassy.
Demichev: You will find that impossible, for a variety of reasons...
In Brütal Legend, Eddie shows a degree of genre savvy right off the bat when he sees a Twisted Coil Battle Nun from behind. "All right. I'm supposed to think you're a nun, but I know you're really some big ugly demon, so let's have it! (she turns and roars in his face) HAH! I knew it! Big, ugly demon."
In Dragon Age: Origins, if you have the human noble story and tell Arl Howe that you're going to kill his wife and daughter, he will respond, "Isn't that precious? Is this where I lament the monster I helped create? Let me show you how it's done: I made your mother kiss my feet before she died, it was the last thing your father saw. Meet my sword, and change that." Unfortunately he's not genre savvy enough to know not to mess with the Warden.
In Command & Conquer: Renegade, after Havoc manages to board the plane and fight off Sakura just before take-off, Sakura immediately radios the crew NOT to attack him (too late, he has attacked them).
In Zettai Hero Project, pretty much everyone is aware of what cliches to keep track of, apparently because Henshin Hero shows are based on real life for them. But their Crowning Moment of Awesome comes when Darkdeath Evilman unleashes a series of energy blasts that land in countless cities across the world, causing mass destruction. Each and every one of those locations was evacuated, because they were all the buildings and landmarks that are always destroyed in movies. There were no casualties at all.
Kouin in Eien No Aselia realizes that being perfectly willing to kill to save his girlfriend makes him less sympathetic than the angsty Yuuto, which means he can't be The Hero. Yuuto himself edges close on occasion.
Mass Effect has Legion, a mobile platform for a race of artificial intelligences who download themselves into cyborg bodies. He explains the entire metaplot of the series in a single comment when he explains how his faction of his race have chosen to create their own future rather than use the technology of others. Adopting the Eldritch Abomination's seemingly benign technology will undermine their independence and cause their society to develop along lines someone else has chosen. It may be a metaphor for cultural imperialism or a Space Whale Aesop depending on your point of view.
In the first game on Noveria, the Peak 15 facility has suddenly been overrun by murderous insect. Even though he has no idea what they are and where they come from, the chief of security doesn't seem very suprised. After all, "Labs like these exist to do stupid crap that gets people killed."
There's also the DLC Lair of the Shadow Broker, and the banter between Shepard and Liara regarding merc tactics.
Liara: The drones are disorganized. They'd be more effective if they all attacked at once.
Shepard: Please don't give the mercs ideas.
Liara: The next wave looks like a big one.
Shepard: You just had to give them tactical advice.
Liara: But now there'll be fewer left to deal with inside.
Shepard: Keep dreaming, T'Soni.
Double Switch. After being attacked by a mummy who turned out to be Eddie a few times, three people hurry to Brutus's room. Why? Because they decided that they need a gun to shoot their attacker, and since they know Brutus has had dealings with the Mafia, they figure who better to come to for a gun? They didn't get a gun, but at least they tried, didn't they?
In one mission in FreeSpace, you lead a raid on a Shivan supply depot. After the first two transports grab their cargo, two more show up to snag the last two. When the first one grabs his container, it promptly explodes, killing the transport. The other transport refuses to grab the last container, knowing that it's set to explode. Command forces the transport to do it anyway. Guess what happens next.
Towards the end of Hunted: The Demon's Forge Caddoc notes that, "Chanting is never a good thing" And it isn't,
In Saints Row The Third, Loren captures Gat, Shaundi and Boss, and offers them membership in the Syndicate. They turn him down. He immediately tells his men to kill them. What's more, he doesn't stop even after the Saints jump out of the airplane they were in. As a matter of fact, he kills Johnny Gat and uses this information to enrage the Saints, possibly to get at their emotions and make them slip up. It works, especially with Shaundi.
Matt Miller is noticeably afraid of the Saints, and is well aware of what they're capable of, to the point where he wisely considers just paying the Saints off instead of fighting them in one mission.
The Saints as well, they often Lampshade and discuss tropes such as help arriving after two waves of SWAT teams and mentioning how they think Loren wouldn't be so cliche as to hide on the top floor of the tallest building of the city "like a criminal mastermind".
Really, one of the main points of The Order of the Stick is genre savviness. Try this comic page where even the stupid orc chieftain is hilariously genre savvy.
Elan's mentor, a dashing sky pirate who helps him literally take a level in badass also displays Genre Savviness — hoping never to meet Elan again, lest he become The Obi-Wan.
Vaarsuvius recently displayed a blend of cynicism and genre-savviness by killing someone (Kubota) just because Elan is holding him prisoner, and V knows that Elan only takes major villains prisoner, and rationalizing it by explaining how the trial would have been a tedious 20- or 30-episode affair which would interfere with the bigger picture.
More recently, our trusty wizard, when confronted with a silver-tongued imp, demonstrates that s/he knows what happens when you make a Deal with the Devil, regardless of its stature.
And then goes on to make a slightly different deal with different devils anyway.
Which is in its own way a bit of brilliance; by first showing that V knows just how foolish such a thing is and then setting him up to do it anyway it becomes a very clear Moral Event Horizon. "Welcome to the deep end of the alignment pool."
Whilst all the characters are Genre Savvy to some extent, Elan is clearly more Savvy than the rest of them; unfortunately, his status as Cloud Cuckoolander means that the others are only inclined to dismiss his concerns in their moments of Genre Blindness, only to learn too late that they really should have paid attention. Eerily, he can come off as a Genius Ditz these days.
Elan:Fight, Fight, Fight, Fight, the urge to say "I told you so!"
Roy is also extremely high on the Genre Savvy meter... so much so, he recently took advantage of Elan's savviness by telling him to find the most aesthetically-appropriate location for a hidden magical gateway. And Roy fully expected Elan to stumble over it by chance, Scooby-Doo-style, rather than deduce its position. Exploiting Genre Savvy as a Xanatos Gambit for the win!
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.
Deconstructed in Girl Genius. All the characters are Genre Savvy, and most of them have the genre correct, but they don't always know their place in or importance to the story, which results in some disastrous misunderstandings. Bystanders make assumptions based on fairy tales which are only partiallycorrect and often lack context.
At one point, Othar Trygvassen, who is a Marty Stu swashbuckler, is being held captive by the regional dictator, who considers him to be dangerously insane due to his habit of killing mad scientists. He tries to convince Agatha Clay, the protagonist of the real story, to release him, first confusing her for the Mad Scientist's Beautiful Daughter or a plucky lab assistant, offering her a job as his sidekick. She refuses to, because she considers herself to have a different part in this genre:
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. 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.
Meji from Errant Story is quite up-to-date on her tropes. Among the more notable 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'...
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.
Considering he browbeats a character into a Heel Face Turn, mouthy doesn't even begin to cover it.
All of the main characters of Sluggy Freelance are highly Genre Savvy, though normally only after they fall into one of the traps of the genre at the time. Best shown in this strip.
There was also a genre savvy bear. She brought her cub along when robbing campsites to provoke in humans the reaction "If you do anything and the bear senses her cub is in danger, she'll kill us to defend it! And it will be our fault!" And when she found herself faced with a small rabbit that was completely unimpressed by her ferocious roar, she gave the heck up immediately rather than take a beating she should have been lucky to escape with her life. It turns out she's a he, too, just taking advantage of the of the whole Mama Bear thing.
Ben Franklin: But the excitement does get to you! I suppose this lifestyle isn't so bad. Gordito:Ah! Don't! Dude, in "this lifestyle" if you say something like that, it's pretty much like pushing a "make the situation worse" button. It's the opposite of the one they have at the office supply store. (helicopter shows up) Gordito:See?! That's Schrodinger's helicopter right there. Ben Franklin: You must mean "Murphy's Helicopter". Gordito: I'm twelve. Ben Franklin: Well it can only be more ninjas, and we've had no problem with those so far. Gordito: Oh please keep talking!
Knowledge Is Power: EmJay is about to ask David to pretend to be her boyfriend, but remembering how poorly that goes in fiction, changes her mind. Whereupon it happens anyway.
The latest arc of MSF High revolves around the fact that the "pocket-universe" in which the story takes place conforms to genre rules. This is exploited by many students most recently in the form of the "runner", an anime girl who will run everywhere eyes closed with an armload of books in the hopes of causing a romantic comedy style collision.
The whole routine of K, the main character of The Antagonist... Though his genre savvy has gotten a little spotty at times ever since getting kicked out of the League of Villains, if they hadn't been actively trying to screw him over on nearly every job, he'd be quite Dangerously Genre Savvy.
The Major in the Hellsing fancomic And Shine Heaven Now is familiar enough with fandom terms that he gives a fanboy version of his famous 'I Love War' speech to subdue the fangirls attached to everyone. It's Better Than It Sounds.
This strip from Subnormality not only has one ercharacter ruefully noting his inability to avoid falling into the "best friends who hate each other" trope (as a result of a ridiculously extreme bet), but actually using the word "trope" to describe it, and hanging a lampshade on it by saying that it's a completely ridiculous and "implausible" trope, like "Time Travel" and "Dinosaurs vs Cavemen", but apparently necessary for conflict. His friend then jumps on the Time Travel reference and inevitably gets his friend into yet another ridiculous and ridiculously implausible scenario. The strip skirts within tripping distance of Breaking the Fourth Wall ... but then again, we're talking about a comic that revels in Post Modernism and Deconstruction, so that's par for the course.
A lot of the humor in Homestuck is derived from Lampshade Hanging and Breaking the Fourth Wall, but Dave is particularly well-versed in tropes and comments on a lot of the increasingly-ridiculous situations the main characters find themselves in. He also serves as a foil to the more naive and Genre Blind John.
EB: i'm in my room again, i really think there's someone else in this house.
EB: like monsters or something.
TG: dude monsters arent real
TG: thats stupid kids stuff for stupid babies
EB: maybe. yeah you're right.
TG: what are you an idiot
TG: of course there are monsters in your house
TG: youre in some weird evil monster dimension come on
TG: skepticism is the crutch of cinematic troglodytes
TG: like hey mom dad theres a dinosaur or a ghost or whatever in my room. "yeah right junior go back to bed"
TG: fuck you mom and dad how many times are we going to watch this trope unfold it wasnt goddamn funny the first time i saw it
Karkat has a same reaction to being told that Kanaya is a Rainbow Drinker
PCG: I GUESS I HAVE NO CHOICE TO BELIEVE YOU BECAUSE SKEPTICISM IN THIS SITUATION IS FOR IDIOTS RIGHT?
PCG: IF I SAID "YEAH RIGHT! IF THERE'S A DRINKER IN THIS HIVE I'LL EAT MY COCOON!" I'D BE LIKE THE DUMB LUSUS IN THE MOVIE WHO DOESN'T BELIEVE THE KID WHEN HE TELLS IT THERE'S A RAINBOW DRINKER IN THE CLOSET.
PCG: SO I GUESS BY REVERSE PSYCHOLOGY I SHOULD NOT BE THAT DUMBASS, YELL "OH FUCK", AND TELL EVERYONE TO GET IN THE SCUTTLEBUGGY BEFORE IT'S TOO LATE.
The crew from Schlock Mercenary, despite being repeatedly portrayed as mostly dumb grunts, do have their moments of savvyness, for instance in the Running Gag where they realize they should never say "What's the worst that could happen?" Then there's this one..
Orwing Battler in Lovecraft Is Missing is a pulp writer who basically finds himself in another pulp writer's universe. Naturally, he feels like he's in one of his own stories and will occasionally comment on the action.
Blue Hat from Gengame tends to make a lot of decisions based on genre conventions. Justified in that it's a video game in which the mechanics of her character are somewhat based around genre conventions. She also isn't very savvy about the actual comic's genre.
Played With in Mokepon; Atticus is one of the only characters who has a decent amount of common sense, and often lampshades the ridiculous nature of the Pokémon world. On the other hand, he's still not completely sure about how his world works, and sometimes his Genre Savvy moments (such as setting a Beedrill on fire to set off a chain reaction that'll get rid of the rest of the bugs) backfire on him.
Web Original
Flaky in Happy Tree Friends is scared a lot of the time, and damn well should be. She always knows that danger will find her in the sadistic world of this show.
Most of the protagonists in the Whateley Universe grew up reading Marvel Comics and DC Comics, and watching lots of anime, so they're pretty well suited to be growing up as mutants in a superhero universe. Deadpan Snarker Phase is probably the most genre savvy of the group. although they all get into the act sooner or later, even the Cloud Cuckoo Lander Jade.
Deconstructed in Sonny Gets Mad Scienced. For all his knowledge about his situation, Sonny's Genre Savvy doesn't actually help him escape. He just happens to be the lucky person on whom the Mad Scientist's experiment worked. Reconstructed when he knows exactly what to do with the henchmen and the scientist when he gets free.
In Survival of the Fittest, v4 character Bounce had been a massive fan of the series prior to her own involvement in it and as such references things like The Power of Friendship never working in SOTF and the fact that, as an unfit, unpopular nerd, there's no point in her making plans because people like her never stand a chance.
In We Are Our Avatars, Awe Striker and Ozbourne, due to being humans from worlds very much like ours, often have familiarity with the fictional universes that many of the other characters come from. This is fairly common amongst most Author Avatars, but a lot of other characters happen to be as well.
This is the source of most of the jokes in the X-Men Flash cartoon "Dark Phoenix Rising". Cyclops references Jean's habit of constantly returning from the dead, the need to put Wolverine on every X-Men team possible and the fact that another group of villains will likely attack while they're being distracted with Dark Phoenix. In "Death Becomes Them", Kitty Pryde asks if the team is counting alternate timelines when they discuss which of them have died and come back to life.
In "84 Egg Sandwich", the employee manning the drive-thru station figures out that the people (Harvey and the gang) are ordering something for an Epic Meal Time project because of how much they're buying.
Cin Wicked tries to avoid the other reviewers in Project Million, stating that he "doesn't want to get involved in crazy shenanigans". He was right to do so.
Sarah from the animated adaptation of Sam Keith's comic, The Maxx. When she briefly snaps and threatens to shoot herself, she has a fourth-wall breaking, voice-over monologue about how "this is the point in the story where I throw the gun away, and have this cathartic revelation about how suicide is wrong, that life's worth living and everything's okay. Y'know, all that crap." Throughout the episodes she is in, Sarah narrates of her motions through the story with an overtone of Genre Savvy sarcasm.
This was the main shtick of Slappy Squirrel on Animaniacs, who, as an old hand at cartoons, was pretty Genre Savvy.
Savvy for her generation of cartoons - in the crossover episode, having swapped places with Dot she didn't get what was the point of going "Helloooooo nurse" to a handsome guard, and ended the episode getting fed up with it and going straight to sticking dynamite in the Saddam-expy's pants.
The title character from Freakazoid! was pretty Genre Savvy himself. Lampshaded quite often, given the series.
Steph: When will I see you again?
Freakazoid: Well, if I know my cartoons, and I do, I'll be back later on to rescue you from something really horrible! Buh-Bye!
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!
And then, sure enough, he is the first one to get captured. As he's pulled back into the darkness, he even shouts out "I told you! Funny guy goes fiiiiirrrrst!"
Beast Boy's knowledge of tropes would come in handy again in the Trapped in TV Land episode.
Kim, Ron, Shego, and Senor Senior Jr. are of the most Genre Savvy on Kim Possible. This however doesn't prevent them from falling victim to Genre Tropes (or that they fall into the tropes as part of a fourth wall bending realisation that they have to do so to have a story), but does make for some great Lampshade Hanging afterwards.
Bonnie was also Genre Savvy when she ends up on missions, asking why Dementor hasn't simply set off his plan instead of gloating, and about how complicated that plan is as well. Both Kim and Dementor tell her to shut up, because, as an outsider to the action-hero/supervillain game, she "doesn't get it."
Sokka, The Smart Guy, is the first to spot Characters as Device like the Well-Intentioned Extremist Jet and the Stepford Smiler Joo Dee. In one episode, after being suddenly awoken, he groggily mutters "Huh? Uh? What's going on? Did we get captured again?" and sure enough, Aang is captured and imprisoned within an impenetrable fortress in the very next episode. He is also aware that the team is a Weirdness Magnet, of the team's Fan Nicknames, of his status as Bad Ass Normal, and even of his own character ("Sokka, the Meat and Sarcasm Guy — it's pretty much my whole identity."). He also has a good grasp of Murphy's Law, "I've never not slept before! What if I fall asleep and something happens? And something always happens!"
Aang, for his part, somehow has pretty good knowledge of Indiana Jones tropes (Zuko, unfortunately, doesn't).
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.
Batman, knowing he was in a parallel dimension where the man who put him into captivity is also the same man he is in his own reality, deduces that the password to his cell is one that he himself would employ. It is.
The smooth, fast-talking Hades in Disney's Hercules, especially apparent within the syndicated series. Unfortunately, he is surrounded by Genre Blind, idiotic minions.
After Hercules makes a deal that only appears to benefit Hades, Hades briefly stops to think that it could be too good to be true. Unfortunately for him, greed and impatience win out over intelligence.
Hades: "The son of my hated rival trapped forever in a river of death... Hmmm, is there a downside to this?"
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 decimated the ranks of the surviving superheroes. He even cuts himself off in the middle of "monologuing" when Mr. Incredible nearly gets the drop on him.
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. Also, at the very end, his non-breakaway cape. Seeing how many in-universe examples Edna could reel off, Syndrome should have known better. This may less an example of genre blindness than an example of death by genre savviness, considering that supers rarely die by jet-intake in their comics or television series. Mainly because capes are usually very detachable and get torn, ripped off, etc.
He also falls prey to Bond Villain Stupidity when he traps the entire family in the same escape-proof room so they can experience his moment of triumph via satellite TV after they've been captured. He even leaves a fully-fuelled rocket in his base so they can follow him in it. He seems to lose his Genre Savvyness as the movie progresses.
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 clichés 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:
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.
Fry also eventually turns out to know every single campfire story ever told.
Leela: Fine, Mr. Know-it-all about something finally, why don't you tell a story?
Cubert was originally intended to have a more frequent role in the series, and would constantly point out plot holes and inaccuracies (usually generic tropes of Sci-Fi) during the episode, becoming an intentional Creator's Pet, to the point where even the characters wanted to hurt him badly.
# 21 and # 24 from The Venture Bros.. In "The Lepidopterists", they are well aware that they posses the perfect combination of "expendable and invulnerable". Upon being sent off on a mission with # 1, they remark that his cool professionalism marks him for death, while their bumbling incompetence will see them through to the end. Later, when they point out that # 1's lack of a name makes him a Red Shirt, he reveals his name, only to have it dismissed as a device to make his impending death more emotional. Ultimately, he meets his fate when his impressive escape techniques draw the attention of Brock Sampson. # 21 and # 24 were pretending to be wax sculptures at the time. Ironically, or at least in a cruel twist of fate, in the season 3 finale, 24 stands near the Monarch's car when it suddenly explodes. He's killed in the blast as 21 unintentionally catches his burning head.
If you're gonna mention The Venture Bros. you can't forget Dr. Venture, who spends half the time making sarcastic genre savvy comments. Brock does it a lot too, especially when they're in danger. Come to think of it, a great deal of the cast are.
Dr. Venture: This is gonna be one of those things, isn't it?
Brock: Uh-huh.
Dr. Venture: I mean, you get a bunch of short-fused, costumed idiots together in one room like this, and what do you think's gonna happen? Any minute now, stuff's gonna start blowing up, guys'll be throwing each other at other guys.
Brock: Yeah, probably.
Dr. Venture: You know, when you're not the one in the middle of it all for once, it's actually totally, completely obvious.
Brock: Welcome to my life.
Hank and Dean notably aren't. They think they are, though, with all their presumed Hardy Boys style mysteries. This occasionally works out for them, one example is in the episode "Fallen Arches" when Triana Orpheus is kidnapped by the super villain Torrid and Dean thinks to run the hot water in the shower so the steam will reveal a message on the mirror.
Lisa: This broom closet is not what it seems. It's a secret surveillance room guarded by a tiny evil robot! Homer: Ugh. Is this gonna be like one of those horror movies where we open the door and everything's normal and we think you're crazy, but then there really is a killer robot and the next morning you find me impaled on a weather vane? Is that what this is, Lisa?
Played straight when there's an episode where Homer becomes an opera star and someone is trying to murder him (long story). To protect him during an opera, Chief Wiggum orders the chandelier to be pre-crashed.
Also, Lisa manages to apply it to real life in a somewhat rational fashion, as she plans to be a jazz musician who is unappreciated in her time but discovered as a genius decades later. "And I may or may not die young, I haven't decided yet."
Also in a halloween special, Bart and Lisa are trapped in Itchy & Scratcy's universe and are inside a car about to be murdered. Bart uses his cartoon knowledge to draw an eject button, press it and escape.
Homer applies a bit of genre savviness to help Apu and Manjula get pregnant by setting them up in a scenario with every cliche in the book of the Law of Inverse Fertility.
[Homer, holding a script, stands next to Apu's car where Apu and Manjula sit in high school uniforms]
Homer: Now, this situation is guaranteed to end in pregnancy.
Apu: I'm willing to play the high school jock but did you have to cut the roof off my car?
Apu: [reading] Uh, gee Betsy, it's such a nice night. Why don't we go all the way?
Manjula: [reading] But Greg, my dad will kill me! And you have that scholarship to Ivy League State.
Apu: Loosen up, baby. Tomorrow I'm shipping off to Vietnam. I— [breaking character] I thought I was going to Ivy League State.
Homer: My mistake. Stay in the moment.
Manjula: Just promise not to forget me on your dinosaur bone digging up trip.
In the episode "The Twisted World of Marge Simpson," the Mafia and the Yazuka are fighting on the lawn. Marge thinks that they should go inside.
Homer: But, Marge, that little guy hasn't done anything yet. Look at him. He's going to do something and you know it's going to be good.
(This leads to an offscreen moment of awesome when Homer and Marge go inside and later hear a loud yell and a body drop.)
Homer: Aw...
South Park makes regular use of this trope, most recently in "Pandemic", in which minor character Craig spends the whole episode complaining about how genre blind the main characters are. "Stanley's Cup" uses this trope heavily. Partially subverted in "Butt Out" in which smart-guy Kyle attempts, and fails, to convince the other major characters to not follow the show's formula for once.
In "Stanley's Cup" the characters correctly realize that they are in a typical sports movie and thus are bound to win against all odds. They also understand that to achieve that, they need to invite a really good player to their team for their final match, which they also do. This is brutally subverted when they turn out to be Wrong Genre Savvy and are beaten brutally: the opposing team were the real protagonists. Similarly, in "The Losing Edge" the team remarks that at this point of the movie, they should include a new, special player in the team to achieve their goals. Only their goal in to lose and the player is absolutely terrible.
Or the episode "Canceled" when the boys realize they're in a rerun of the very first episode.
Lampshaded by Token, whose name fits this trope, as he clearly is the token black guy and token rich guy.
For a presentation about the reasons for the American Revolution, Cartman constructs a device that will drop a stone on his head while he is wondering out loudly what the Founding Fathers were thinking back then. His reasoning is that he will pass out and have a wacky flashback episode in which he is present during the declaration of independence.
Gwen from Total Drama Island tries to educate the other campers about the rules of horror movies only to be blatantly ignored... except by fellow horror-buff Duncan, who successfully becomes the Final Guy because of it.
When Sierra drops her Obfuscating Stupidity in the confessional, she's revealed to be having this in spades, up to intending to manipulate Heather; all due to her being an Fangirl that watched the show obsessively.
In Gargoyles, Xanatos manages to restrain several of the gargoyle heroes, and sets up a deathtrap-like situation where a vat of acid will pour down upon them.
Xanatos: It's my first real stab at clichéd villainy. How am I doing?".
On the whole, David Xanatos is clearly aware of what is expected from a cartoon villain, and sometimes comments on the cliches he's performing or avoiding. He still rarely achieves Dangerously Genre Savvy levels, since the methods by which he's foiled are usually relatively standard fare, even if he never admits defeat.
That's because his plans usually gain more for him if he is apparently defeated. Only against Thailog has he ever truly admitted defeat and come out on the losing side of the exchange.
The latest Strawberry Shortcake series paints Sour Grapes as slightly genre savvy, at least enough to know that any plan the Peculiar Purple Pieman tries to pull off against Strawberry is going to fail miserably.
Pinky and the Brain: Brain has a Genre Savvy epiphany in "Megalomaniacs Anonymous".
Brain: The whole universe is playing a little cosmic joke! "We'll give Brain an obsession with taking over the world and then never let him succeed!" Hah-hah-hah-hah! Isn't it funny?!
Most of the characters on Titan Maximum know the conventions of the Mecha Show. As well as several other film genres. For instance, the following exchange between Palmer and Willie after they hear banjo music in the distance:
The Weekenders tends to feature a fairly interesting variation in that each of the four main characters take turns being Genre Savvy. For example, if Tino is the one learning the lesson for the day, Tish, Carver and/or Lor will spend most of the episode either A) waiting for the "I told you so" opportunity to arise, B) actively discouraging him from doing whatever it is he's supposed to be learning not to do, or C) helping him do it, because they need to be taken down a peg in the same department, too. Lampshaded occasionally.
Lor: How do I know this is going to end in disaster?
Tino: Years of experience.
An episode of The Fairly OddParents had Timmy wishes the world was like an action movie. Wanda correctly predicts that everything would go from bad to worse. Come to think of it, Wanda's awareness that everything will go wrong on every wish probably qualifies her for this trope.
Played with in an episode of Stroker And Hoop, where Stroker, in an attempt to be genre savvy, assumes that the suspects in the murder investigation must include a corrupt mayor and a corrupt sheriff. The latter, incidentally being Hoop's half-brother (or something), is in the room and Stroker quickly adds "no offense." Turns out he was right.
Hoop: You clichedly evil bastard!
In Storm Hawks, one of the Mooks was Genre Savvy (but not dangerously so) enough to try and promote himself to the main credits, under the belief that he did not have a name until he did something worth earning it. Unfortunately for him, "worth" does not necessarily come in the form of positive gain.
On Phineas and Ferb Doofenshmirtz shows a general knowledge of all the mad scientist/spy clichés he and Perry deal in, while Candace is shown to have basically mastered an understanding of what will happen when she tries to bust her brothers. This rarely helps either of them, however: Doofenshmirtz will go along with formula by choice and usually fail, while Candace is simply too neurotic to break her usual habits.
Doofenshmirtz's stickler for genre savviness at one point caused him to sabotage another evil scientist's plan that would have succeeded, had he not added a button inside Perry's cage to let him escape, as well as a conveniently placed self-destruct button.
Candace's genre savviness is on extra display in "Leave the Busting to Us," when she calls every event as it happens, and "The Beak," where she's the only one who figures out the titular superhero is her brothers ("something impossible + that thing existing in real life = Phineas and Ferb!").
From "A Hard Day's Knight":
(Candace is dressed as a princess for the medieval fair)
Candace: Hold on a sec. Is this one of those things that could backfire horribly on me? Nah.
Jiminy Cricket, as it turns out, is incredibly genre savvy. In a appearance on House of Mouse he went onstage to talk about how you should always let your conscience be your guide. What starts as a standard do the right thing speech quickly turns into him sarcastically pointing out all the things every character should and should not do in a Disney movie. These include:
Played for laughs on Johnny Test. "When did we land in a bad decade genre medium?" is a running gag, e.g. "When did we land in a bad 70s cop show?"
Ren from The Ren & Stimpy Show has shades of this, particularly in the episode "A Yard Too Far". The titular duo is starving as they suddenly sense a delicious smell from someone's backyard.
Ren: Wait a minute! I'm not stupid. I've seen cartoons like this before! If I set foot into this yard, I'll probably get ripped into shreds by some enormous dog!
This is parodied shortly after when Stimpy convinces Ren to go after the pie anyway only for Ren to attacked not by a dog but by a killer, psychotic baboon.
Valmont from Jackie Chan Adventures was smart enough to poison Jackie Chan and keep the antidote hidden so that it couldn't be stolen.
Shendu also showed this when he refrained (twice) from revealing his name to Jackie and the others. If it weren't for Tohru's Heel Face Turn the heroes would never have known how to stop him.
In Disney's Aladdin, Jasmine is insulted that Aladdin actually thought she wouldn't recognize him through his Paper-Thin Disguise.
Jasmine: Did you think I was stupid? That I wouldn't figure it out?!
To be fair she didn't catch on right away. It was asking her "Do you trust me?" and the way he gave her an apple that clinched her seeing through it.
To be fairer, she was suspicious from the beginning. She played along with it when he wouldn't admit it, and consequently tricked the truth out of him by asking about Abu.
In Batman Beyond, the Red Shirt cops and villianous mooks have all learned some Genre Savvy. In Betrayal one of the guards driving the truck at the start is particurally skilled at it. The truck skidded to a halt to avoid a seemingly wrecked truck that was blocking the road. But this guard is from Gotham and knows what a setup looks like.
Guard 1: I've seen month old fish that have smelled better than this.
Guard 2: Are you for real? Somebody might be hurt.
Guard 1: All right. Go check. *tosses large gun to other guard* Here. In case it's a fish.
Guard 2: *humoring him* Right. *decding to be a little savvy himself* Lock up after me.
Guard 1: You don't have to remind me. *locks cab*
This being Gotham and them being mooks, however, means that not even the Genre Savvy can help becuase the second guard gets too scared/squicked by Big Time to shoot him depsite having plenty of time. And Big Time can get into a locked truck cab.
Roger from American Dad is pretty Genre Savvy. In one early episode he joins a car dealership:
Roger: Oh, it's like a sitcom come true! I'm part of a workplace ensemble! He must be the sarcastic guy. And he's the dumb guy. Oh! He must be the black guy who doesn't talk! *said guy glares at him* Yessss!!
Well, you've survived this long, implying that you have at least some amount of genre savviness... Or you've just had the dumb luck not to walk into anything requiring said savviness.
Anyone who's been on this site long enough has learned what to expect from Spoilers based on the sentence and Spoiler length. Sadly, this starts making spoilers quite useless.
Many people who have been voracious readers for a long time will tell you that stories are often predictable, particularly to someone who's read a great deal or devoted to a specific genre — a sort of Only Six Plots. As these people age (or the more they read), the less they tend to read for the story, and the more they read for how the story is told. Most of these people, though, will also tell you that Genre Savviness Is Not Bad.
Occurs more quickly to actual writers, and not exclusive on a medium basis to text. Watching a lot of movies, for example, will still help you predict what will happen in a book, and the other way around. Most studies of characters & plots will boil down the archetypes to less than 10. For example, The Seven Basic Plots.
Character based approaches like to build page count by separating archetypes into what boils down to male and female takes on a single archetype.
To some extent, the "nicer form" (so to speak) of counterinsurgency can be said to require this to some extent, at least to avoid a 0% Approval Rating.
Ever since Alexander the Great there have been stories of great commanders who ate hardtack, showed off their scars, and exchanged dirty jokes with their men. Because of course it is a great way to remake oneself into a Magnetic Hero and it worked for Alexander.
Hell, everyone at this wiki may as well count. I mean, the idea on its own. But especially in the Wild Mass Guessing page sometimes. It's possible to become so savvy about the genre and the creator's themes and habits that you can predict certain revelations and plot points way before they happen.
To the point that some viewer ideas are better than what the writers had planned and become a case of Ascended Fanon.
Most gamers usually become Genre Savvy, especially those who specialize in playing a couple genres of games. This also makes some things easier — such as when people learn common tricks and obstacles or variations of them. For example, players of RPGs will be aware of Linear Warriors, Quadratic Wizards and may roll a mage. Players of Shmups would know common tactics that can make even new games much less frustrating. And players of FPSes will know how weapons work and what the best situation is to use them. This, coupled with age and experience, causes many gamers to cry "It's Easy, so It Sucks".
People who watch plenty of movies can't help but notice certain casting patterns: if it's Sean Bean - he probably won't survive, Denzel Washington's character gonna be real rough, and so on. While most of the time it's no big revelation, this can blow surprises when you notice that out of X characters, only 1 is played by famous actor - you naturally expect that character to turn out the most relevant.
This in turn is sometimes played with by authors, when the real surprise is always intended for said recognized-face character to not have a secret or relevance in the end.
A few people in reality TV shows were often Genre Savvy — Todd of Survivor fame, Kevin in the American Big Brother, and the list goes on.
Hank Earl Carr accidentally shot his girlfriend's son with a rifle, then was arrested. Unfortunately, he was a repeat offender, and Genre Savvy enough to keep a handcuff key on him at all times. He managed to free himself and acquire the driver's weapon, killing both detectives, and later a state trooper, before taking a gas station clerk hostage and then killing himself.
If you go out to eat with someone who has worked in a restaurant or another sort of commercial-scale kitchen, odds are there will be a few menu items they will vehemently tell you to avoid; they know, or at least have an idea of, the dark secrets that go into the making of these items.
One killer on The First 48 has apparently murdered his boyfriend, but had an extremely high IQ and never admitted a thing about the crime, though he did cry at one point. The detectives then had to charge him without a body, only the third time it had been done in that state. They noted how unsatisfying it was not to have proper closure.
Handcuffs built by the British police use a bar between the cuffs rather than a chain. This is specifically to make it impossible for the wearer to choke someone else in the unlikely event that they manage to get the handcuffs in front of their body and around someone's neck.
Since some tabletop RPGs rely on movies as the inspiration, a very easy way to tick off the DM is to be Genre Savvy, and trying to justify the character being so, while they're trying to assert that your characters have a case of Genre Blindness.
A depressing case of Genre Savvy happened at the recent hostage taking in the Philippines. In the said case, the gunman used the television inside the tourist bus to watch the movements of the police, thus nullifying their actions in the first place.
Ferdinand II of the Two Sicilies, otherwise known as King Bomba, was listening to his ministers argue what color uniform his soldiers should wear. Perhaps in recognition of the combat value of his mooks, he said "Dress them in red, blue or green, they'll run away just the same."
James Lind, the man who started noticing that citrus fruits prevented scurvy, carried out experiments to make sure of his idea, then published it in A Treatise of the Scurvy. It was ignored. So he wised up and specifically targeted the Royal Navy as his audience by republishing his ideas under Essay on the most effectual means of preserving the health of seamen. He definitely got noticed that time, and citrus would start being carried around by the navy as a result (though not as actual rations until much later).
This is why smart cops keep a surrendering suspect covered by at least one, preferably more, officers until he is fully secured. I Surrender, Suckers is real.
Medical professionals have quite literally heard just about any story you might come up with already. It's OK. You're not going to freak them out, or get judged, or anything else because, simply, no matter what kind of Noodle Incident you have gotten yourself involved in, someone else has done it before, and they probably had to at the very least study that sort of thing in school, assuming they themselves did not actually deal with a similar case the weekend before. So go ahead and tell them about how that cat got stuck.
Subverted by Roman dictator Fabius Maximus. In order to defeat Hannibal, Fabius set up a Xanatos Gambit; Hannibal was raiding an enclosed valley at the time, and the only way out was through one of several mountain passes. Fabius put an army at each one of these passes. If Hannibal attacked any of them, the other armies would be able to converge on that area and destroy him, but if he stayed put, his army would starve. Hannibal, being the Magnificent Bastard that he was, took a Crazy Awesomethird option: tying dry wood to the horns of oxen, then lighting the wood on fire and setting the oxen on the Roman positions in the middle of the night. The Romans had no idea what was going on, so they panicked and attacked Hannibal. Fabius, suspecting that this was bait for an ambush, did nothing. He was sort of right; it was an ambush, but only for the army defending the mountain pass. Hannibal was counting on Fabius recognizing an ambush, so he simply destroyed the enemy in front of him and escaped.
The Israeli Army issues two pairs of dog tags, one around the neck and the other worn in a pocket in the boot-just in case a soldier has his head blown off. it's mentioned at the beginning of Battle Los Angeles, though with US troops.
Amber Benson, of Buffy fame, refused to return to the show once her character was killed off. Her reasoning was she knew that Joss Whedon would have done something horrible to Tara, or used her as part of a Xanatos Gambit to kill Willow.
The Amish may abstain from most technological conveniences, but they're hardly ignorant of the world at large. They're quite Genre Savvy about the world they live in.
You know those warning labels on everything? In many cases, they actually have a lawsuit behind it. Companies learn fast, and don't forget.
