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alt title(s): Medium Confusion
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A character who tries casting himself as the Brave Peasant Lad Who Outwits The Troll may find that he is actually one of the Twenty Poor Peasants Eaten Before The Knight Comes Along. Or even the Devious Little Human Squashed By The Troll Hero. (Troll fairy-stories are not very subtle.)
Sometimes, you can take being Genre Savvy too far, and wind up just as Genre Blind as the poor idiots who split up in a haunted house where one of you is a murderer.
If a character in a series that has a Fourth Wall thinks mainly in terms of tropes, you've probably got a character who's Wrong Genre Savvy. Even if you're correct about being in a story, it's possible for you to guess wrong about your role in the story, the genre of the story, or where on the various sliding scales your story is. Any way you spin it, it's still a common way of subverting Genre Savviness.
See Heroic Wannabe, Wide-Eyed Idealist, Grumpy Bear, Prince Charming Wannabe, and Lord Error Prone for characters with this trait and Genre Savvy for when characters get it right. Death By Genre Savviness is a related trope, but with a large amount of Take That to the audience mixed in. See also This Is Reality, Hero Of Another Story.
Examples:
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Anime and Manga
- Sanji from One Piece seems to think he's in a Shojo anime (such as in the Enies Lobby arc and filler) and completely fails to get the girl at all times.
- Very, very ironic when you consider that early on, he actually was popular with (non plot-relevant) women. This trait seems to have been eased out of his characterization, probably when the artist realized Sanji was a little too perfect and needed to be funnier and more over the top.
- Luffy seems to be affected for the one moment he attempts being Genre Savvy, assuming that Chopper's scope attack will in fact be a beam, a la Dragon Ball. ("BEAM, BEAM! IT'S GONNA BE A BEAM!")
- He's got the genre down, One Piece just happens to be rather non-traditional.
- He and Chopper are both (in)appropriately enthusiastic when they witness Bartholomew Kuma lookalike PX-4's beam attack
- More traditionally, Donquixote Doflamingo, whose steadfast belief in a world without dreams runs contrary to... basically everything about One Piece.
- Konata from Lucky Star seems to believe that the world should be run by tropes (mostly Dating Sim), and is often disappointed when it isn't.
- 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. Madarame seems to visualize life as a Dating Sim, and beats himself up about it when he realizes it.
- The eponymous character of Suzumiya Haruhi hopes to meet aliens, time-travelers and espers, experience super-natural mysteries and expose ancient conspiracies. Since she is a Reality Warper, it actually does happen all around her, but she doesn't notice. One could put it so that she makes herself an accurate Genre Savvy.
- Example: She expects a student president who runs the school and all the clubs like a dictator. There isn't one, so Itsuki hires some guy to play the part of a jerkass president. He's a jerkass in a different way entirely, though. Of course, since this is Haruhi he starts having trouble differentiating himself from the role he is playing, and will possibly end up exactly as Haruhi thinks he is. Wrong Genre Savvy -> Genre Savvy!
- Gai Daigouji and the Jovians in Martian Successor Nadesico spent too much time watching ultra-idealistic Super Robot anime in the vein of the original Getter Robo, and failed to realize they were in a much more conspiracy-filled, morally grey, and lethal Real Robot series.
- In the Super Robot Wars games, he sometimes gets to actually be genre savvy — for example, in the Super Robot Wars W stage where
Voltron Golion is introduced, the cast is shocked when the lions combine... except for Gai, whose reaction is something along the lines of "Yeah, OF course they were gonna do that."
- Amusingly enough, this is probably why he survives in Super Robot Wars despite being swiftly killed off in his own series.
- Noboru Yamaguchi from Cromartie High School acts as though the world around him follows the rules of traditional (read: old) styles of comedy, despite the world of Cromartie being one of the most surreal places ever.
- Edo Phoenix of Yu-Gi-Oh GX thinks he's The Hero. In fact, he practically thinks he's Batman... in a shonen anime. He intially sets out to defeat Judai, thinking he's the enemy. Then when Judai is getting ready to defeat the Big Bad, Edo rushes off to fight him, believing he will win because of a promise he made, not realizing he is not The Only One Allowed To Defeat You.
- Cancer Deathmask, of Saint Seiya. He decides to serve the corrupt Pope because Utopia Justifies The Means and Right Makes Might, and points out that winners write the history books, which is technically true. Unfortunately, he's in a Shonen Jump series, so he is bound to pay dearly for that remark.
- Berserk is a Seinen manga (which is mature and more realistic) that contains orgies of violence and sex, of both the consensual and non-consensual types. Despite this, Isidro seems to have convinced himself that he's not only in a Shonen manga (which are generally idealistic and where good always triumphs over evil), but thinks he's the main character. Suffice to say, if it weren't for the fact he's the Plucky Comic Relief, he probably would've died a long time ago.
- Naga in Slayers believes that she is The Rival when she's actually more of a sidekick. Lina often corrects her when presenting themselves to a new character. In the TV series, Amelia tries desperately to uphold Justice in a slapstick fantasy world.
- In Puni Puni Poemi the eponymous character is convinced (apparently correctly) that she is the main character — and her voice actress. In the final scene the show's director (who is also a character) reveals that the main character is apparently her love interest.
- Asuka in Neon Genesis Evangelion arguably thinks of herself as a Action Girl. However, she doesn't realize in what kind of Anime this particular Action Girl appears.
- Yuka Sugimoto from The Twelve Kingdoms anime. Alright, she is living a novel concept (that she managed to grasp quite nicely), and she is kinda Genre Savvy about that on her own, but her extremely twisted concept of being the Chosen One, despite all hints pointing to Youko Nakajima, is what makes her the Wrongest Genre Savvy in the history of anime adaptations. Ever.
- In the original novels, she never even reached the Twelve Kingdoms in the first place. That should put things in perspective.
- In G Gundam, young Maria Louise from Neo France is a Rebellious Princess with a crush on the local Knight In Shining Armor, George de Sand. She's depressed because he doesn't fight for her, but for her country. So, if she stages her own kidnapping and recruits Domon Kasshu, a rival that George spurned, he'll fight for her honor, right? WRONG! The far more Genre Savvy George does come for her, but delivers a What The Hell, Hero? speech on how he's much more likely to be absorbed into fighting Domon than on Maria's honor. Domon's partner Rain has to bail Maria out, and she's Put On A Bus until the second part of the series.
- Haruka Akashi of Kamen Tantei is a huge mystery buff and aspiring mystery author who keeps running into mysteries. So far, so good. Unfortunately, she's a "fair play" mystery fan trying to apply "the rules" of such to a world where psychic powers, ghosts, All Just A Dream endings and fictional characters come to life are regular occurrences.
- Pretty much everyone in Hayate the Combat Butler. Nagi thinks she's in a shounen manga in a case of First Girl Wins. Most of the rest of the cast thinks they're in a genuine action series instead of a parody. Sakuya comes the closest by realizing she's in a comedy series, but even she has the style of humor wrong.
- Would-be hard-boiled private eye Guy Kurosawa in Darker Than Black either doesn't know or refuses to admit that he's in an SF/F series.
- His Genki Girl secretary Kiko appears to be completely convinced that she lives in a shojo comedy. She doesn't. It also gets sort of turned around in the OVA, since it parodies the main series; Mayu has exactly the same ideas as Kiko about what genre she's living in, and starts stalking Hei because she thinks of him as a romantic hero. Hei and company spend so much time dealing with crazy Spy Versus Spy plots and counterplots that it never occurs to them that Mayu might be following him due to nothing more than a huge crush and start speculating that another, previously unknown organization is after them, briefly making them Wrong Genre Savvy.
- In the third episode of Ouran High School Host Club, Tamaki identifies the show as a high-school romance anime, calling himself and Haruhi the main pair destined to be together, and identifying the rest of the club as "the homosexual supporting cast". Kyouya later shows him up by coming up with a better plan to save Haruhi from being exposed by the physical exam and saying "I just don't think I'm supporting cast, homosexual or not."
- The protagonist Sugisaki Ken from Seitokai No Ichizon is this. He seriously believes that he is inside a H-Game, always says that the student council is his harem, always getting downplayed by Kurimu: "This is not a harem, it's the student council!".
- " Don't be ridiculous. I don't think I'm in a dating sim. In a dating sim I get all the girls! Have you ever seen me with a girl?" Yep, that'll show her. Still spends too much time looking for flag events though.
- Code Geass: Poor, poor Shirley Fennette. This isn't a shoujo anime, and hers is an especially tragic case. Just two episodes after her proclamation of The Power Of Love, and right after she seemingly consummates her one true love, she gets mercilessly killed off for trusting the wrong person. All the more tragically ironic in that said power also had just earlier inspired Lelouch as Zero to make his inspiring speech about the Power of Passion after he and the Black Knights liberated China, and may have also saved Lelouch from falling into madness, and his eventual self-induced demise via Zero Requiem if not for Shirley's murder.
- Minor example from the second episode of the 2005 Gaiking series. The main character fires off his Rocket Punch, expecting it to fly back to him afterwards. It doesn't, and he even screams out "But don't these things usually come back?!"
- Haruka and Michiru of Sailor Moon, otherwise known as Sailor Uranus and Sailor Neptune, seem to think they are in a much more cynical series than they are. Therefore, though they are both very competent fighters who can certainly get the job done, they don't seem to understand that Sailor Moon could have the problem solved in half the time with twice the number of happy endings and tend to do things that make the ultimate situation worse. See the series' Grand Finale for more details.
- From Super Robot Wars Original Generation Divine Wars. During a live-fire training, Ryusei Date believes it's impossible for tanks to outmaneuver and down a mecha. His mech's disabled and shot down in a matter of minutes. He's actually figure the genre right, except this show is hybrid and "Super" part doesn't kick in until much later.
- Rotton in Black Lagoon seems to believe he lives in a much more idealistic series. One that allows In The Name Of The Moon speeches. He actually does have genuine genre savviness to go with it, though, but even this is only about 50% effective. Wearing a bullet proof vest: Good idea. Basing all your fighting on trying to be cool: Bad idea. You're not supposed to try.
- Winner in Karin thinks he's the star of a Shounen vampire hunter series. Unfortunately for him, he's a side character in a Rom Com.
- Matt in Death Note:
Matt: You got me, I'm part of this whole kidnapping incident. That means you'll have a lot of questions to ask. You won't shoot...
(The Japanese police open fire.)
Comic Books
- The Invisibles has a scene where a redneck in a diner is giving Lord Fanny, the Brazilian transvestite shaman, a hard time. In response, King Mob grabs the man's groin (and not in a good way) and says "I'm telling you that you're in the wrong film, fatboy. You're not in the cowboy film you thought you were in. This is a different kind of movie. And you're in the scene where the redneck shitkicker picks on the stranger in town, only it turns out to be big Arnie [Schwarzenegger] or a gang of vampires. I'll bet you've seen that a million times, cowboy." Needless to say, the redneck apologizes and leaves intact.
- In the Donald Duck comic book Sheriff of Bullet Valley, Donald keeps comparing the present situation to various Western movies he's seen, resulting in his getting everything backward and inadvertently helping the villains.
- Garth Ennis: Crossed features many characters thinking like a "normal" zombie or invasion movie, not realizing it's a Garth Ennis comic and the butt rape zombies will get you no matter how clever you try to be.
- There were two Batman villains who went by the name "film freak", and both were defeated (and in the case of the first one, killed) because they thought life would play out like a movie. Of course, it was a comic book.
- In Fun Home, Alison considered herself the heroine of a Coming Out Story, until she finds out about her father and realizes she's only the comic relief to his tragedy.
Fan Fiction
Film
- Lady in the Water has a scene where the hero, Cleveland Heep, consults the movie critic in order to identify the tenants who fill in the roles of Story's helpers. However, when their plan goes awry and Story is attacked and injured, Cleveland realizes that he incorrectly identified himself.
- In Star Wars, Obi-Wan is extremely Genre Savvy when he tells Anakin that Aristocrats Are Evil. Too bad he's applying this trope — and that of God Save Us From The Queen — to Padme instead of anyone else... say, Palpatine? Padme is in fact an example of The High Queen and probably the most moral character in the whole Star Wars universe.
- An identical scenario happens in Arsenic and Old Lace where the theater critic describes in great detail and mocks what happens to the stupid unsuspecting victim characters in a play that he had just seen, inadvertently giving the Big Bad ideas.
- The unease audiences feel toward Hannibal Lecter in Silence of the Lambs is heightened by his seemingly unsavvy placement in the structure of the story. Genre conventions would make him the villain. But the story's villain is Buffalo Bill. "Hannibal the Cannibal" is actually the Mentor. He is Yoda to Clarisse's Luke, the shadow counterpart of her FBI academy instructor. Other characters call him a monster, but Clarisse addresses him as she would a teacher and he is among those who congratulate her when she graduates. His function in the story places him much closer to the main character than we would expect him to be, and far too close for comfort. With his breakout at the end of the film, this genre-savvy character sheds the mentor role and assumes a more conventional role as villain. In a sense, his act signals a return to order.
- Last Action Hero: Main kid starts to play chicken with the main villain, reasoning that it has to work because he's in a non-R rated movie where the kid would never die. Then it dawns on him that he's the comedy sidekick, and those never get the cool stunts in the movies. Cue ET visual gag.
- Pixar's Toy Story 2: Through much of the film Pete the Prospector plays the role of Sage, dispensing advice to other characters. But a glimpse of Woody's Roundup, the TV show that represents his origin, shows Pete playing a self-sabotaging buffoon. The glimpse hints that his sagely nuggets of wisdom may actually be fool's gold. By the end of the film his true role is revealed.
- A positive example: Guy from Galaxy Quest goes through the events of the film in a depressed and terrified state, because he is convinced that he is nothing more than a designated Red Shirt among the Show Within A Show's stars. In the end, he is told that he has a promising future as the Plucky Comic Relief.
- In fact, everyone in that movie who acts like it's a movie is proven wrong, and everyone who acts like it's real is proven just as wrong.
- For even bigger payoff, pay attention during the shootout on the bridge. Everybody except Guy gets shot.
- Jack Burton of Big Trouble in Little China is actually a decently competent western action hero. Unfortunately for him, he's in an eastern action movie, so he's comic relief half of the time. The other half, he manages to make it work for him anyway.
- According to the director, John Carpenter, Jack's real problem is that although he is genre-savvy, he thinks he's the hero when he's really the sidekick.
- Near the end of The Madness of King George, Lord Chancellor Thurlow wastes time announcing the king's return to health by bemoaning the messenger in King Lear who arrives too late to save Cordelia. The whole film is an averted Lear—something the king seems to recognize, even if Thurlow doesn't.
- Chad and Lynda from Burn After Reading both start acting like they're in a Spy Drama after they find a disc with the financial records of a former CIA analyst, acting all mysterious around the analyst and refusing to give their real names. However, they're in a Black Comedy, so Hilarity Ensues.
- In the second Pirates of the Caribbean movie, when the Kraken is taking down a ship full of Red Shirts, one of the merchants runs forward, bravely offering what they had previously thought was the dress of a ghost who was haunting their ship. That would have worked out a lot better for him if he had been in a ghost story, and if that ghost story was actually about him.
- In The Man Who Knew Too Little, the "hero" thinks he's in a huge role-play featuring acted danger and spying.
- An exchange from Detroit Rock City, about whether or not some road-tripping stoners should pick up a hitchhiker:
Jam: It's a teenage girl walking along the side of the highway. They make scary movies that start out like that!
Trip: But they make porno movies that start out like that too, man!
- Park Chang-yi in The Good, the Bad and the Weird is basically a melodramatic and serious Shonen anime villain stuck in a goofy Korean parody of Spaghetti westerns.
- Stranger than Fiction is a unique case, where the main character realizes he's in a story after he starts hearing his own narration. He seeks out help to try and become Genre Savvy, and correctly deduces that in the context of his narrator's story, he's in a tragedy, which is ironically Wrong Genre Savvy as the meta-story (the movie about the story about a man who hears his own narrator, i.e. the movie you're watching) is actually a comedy.
- The hostages in From Dusk Till Dawn, particularly Scott Fuller, have all the Genre Savvy needed to survive in a heist film or hostage-taking film. Scott even lampshades this by telling his father, "I've seen this on TV, Dad!" Pity for them the bar the Gecko Brothers choose to stop at is full of Fricking Vampire Strippers!
- Return of the Living Dead: When confronted with a reanimated cadaver, a group of characters put a pick axe through its brain based on what they know about zombies from seeing Night of the Living Dead. It has no effect.
Burt: I thought you said if we destroyed the brain, it'd die!
Frank: It worked in the movie!
Burt: Well, it ain't workin' now, Frank!
Fred: You mean the movie lied?
- The college kids from Tucker and Dale vs. Evil believe they are in a typical Friday The Thirteenth-style horror film after 2 red necks take one of their friends and they start dying one by one. In actuality they're in a comedy and the two had saved the girl from drowning, are taking care of her, and all the deaths are a result of the "victims" being Too Dumb To Live.
- In the little-known Alien ripoff Creature, someone says they remember seeing an old movie (specifically, The Thing From Another Planet) where they tried to stop the monster from killing everyone with an electrified forcefield. Not too effective against this monster.
Literature
- Don Quixote's madness is a version of this, thus making it Older Than Steam.
- Sansa Stark begins A Song of Ice and Fire thinking of heroic ballads as the way of the world in a world where it's a wonder they came up with a concept of heroism to write the ballads about. Yeah, the results weren't pretty.
- Catherine Morland from Jane Austen's novel Northanger Abbey. She admires a sinister-looking old mansion and, inspired by her Gothic novels, gets the idea that her host has killed his wife. Actually she's in a Regency romance and her love interest, the son of the man she suspects, isn't pleased about her thoughts.
- Henry Crawford of Austen's Mansfield Park honestly seems to believe he's the Prince Charming character who will marry the Cinderella-esque heroine and rescue her from her depressing life with her neglectful family. Thus, he feels completely confident after she rejects his proposal that they'll still inevitably be married, and both he and his sister still consider the marriage a sure thing. Unfortunately, he's actually the Handsome Lech character who only passes himself off as Prince Charming to seduce women for fun, which he can't give up even after supposedly falling in love with Fanny Price. He came so close to being the romantic hero he wanted to be... and he blew it.
- Illuminatus! has 00005, a Captain Ersatz for James Bond who's highly genre-savvy for a spy novel, except that he's not in a spy novel but a Cosmic Horror Story instead.
- Abby Normal in Christopher Moore's You Suck appears to be thoroughly aware that she's in a vampire novel. The problem is that she appears to believe that the aforementioned vampire novel is Twilight.
- Being a science fiction author, the protagonist of Inferno by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle is completely prepared to deal with an artificial world created and inhabited by Sufficiently Advanced Aliens who have resurrected humans for an elaborate Sadist Show (in a possible Take That at Farmer's Riverworld)... but not exactly prepared to deal with a mythical, supernatural Ironic Hell, which is where he really is.
- Sir Apropos Of Nothing (from the book of the same name by Peter David) is convinced that he is in a heroic tale, and works to seize the protagonistship by sheer force of will. The very idea of an Anti Hero, and that he's been the protagonist all along, would come as a shock to him.
- It wasn't just force of will. The instant he realizes it's his place in life to be the useless sidekick to the local hero-to-be who is fated to receive all good things, he proceeds to heft a rock at the proto-hero's head and take his place.
- That's the first book. In the second book, he's destined for the role of Evil Overlord to a hero. This time he doesn't realize until near the end of the book that he's in a hero's story again (because the evil overlord doesn't care about the hero or regard him as a threat!) and he plays his role as if he's Contractually Genre Blind until he finally does meet the hero. That leads him to recognize his own role, and everything changes.
- Christopher in Everworld initially seems to believe that not just the fantasy world the heroes have landed in but the real world as well works according to the rules of action movies, and spends a lot of time calculating whether a given person will survive the current crisis. The others all consider him a bit nuts, and he learns better pretty soon.
- Sybil in The Picture of Dorian Gray believes in the tropes she's learned from theater, and thinks she is a peasant girl of a fairy tale who gets swept off her feet by Prince Charming and lives Happily Ever After. Unfortunately for her, she's actually the lower class character who gets seduced and abandoned by the evil lord of the manor.
- Overlapping with Death By Genre Savviness, the Villain Protagonist of Malice Aforethought is knowledgeable of mystery stories and real-life spousal murderers, and aims to commit the perfect murder. What he overlooks, is that everyone else who tried to do this has failed. He also buys into the stereotype of the police as morons, which while often true in Christie Time fiction, isn't true of the police inspector he encounters.
- The villain of the Lord Peter Wimsey novel Whose Body? has a similar goal of perfect murder and gets the benefit of dumb police. However,as is lampshaded by the incompetent Inspector Lestrade at the end, brilliant murderers still invariably end up getting caught in mystery novels.
- Gustave Flaubert's Emma Bovary expects her life to conform to the romance stories she's read. Unfortunately for her, the novel she's in is realistic and rather cynical.
- Depending on whether or not you think the governess is an Unreliable Narrator, it's possible to read Henry James' The Turn of the Screw as a tale told by someone who desperately wants to be in a Gothic romance. However, Your Mileage May Vary.
- Speaking of The Turn of the Screw, A. N. Wilson's A Jealous Ghost features an American Ph.D. candidate who decides to pick up some extra cash by working as a wealthy lawyer's nanny. She convinces herself that she's in James' story, which leads to unfortunate results.
- The Hoard of the Gibbelins by Lord Dunsany, another early example, is noteworthy for being a partial case — for instance, the main character manages to convince a dragon to surrender by asking it if it's ever heard of a dragon that won a battle against a hero. When he errs is when, realizing that everyone who's tried a logical plan for robbing the Gibbelins has been defeated, he tries to make a plan that's Crazy Enough To Work, instead getting one that's simply crazy. Final line: "This is one of those stories that do not have a happy ending."
- Princess Vivenna of Warbreaker thinks she's The Hero who has to rescue her younger sister Siri from an arranged marriage to an Evil Overlord in a world with Black And White Morality. In fact, she's one major character in what is largely a political intrigue story where Rousseau Is Right but not almost everyone has a hidden agenda of some sort. She gets better.
- In Terry Pratchett's Unseen Academicals, Glenda objects to Trev for Juliet because he's not Prince Charming. When she gets involved in romance of her own, she wises up; while she thinks that these events don't happen in romances, she doesn't act as if it ought to be one.
- Buck Williams in the first Left Behind novel seems to believe the Rapture explains mass disappearances for no reason other than that he's read his own book jacket, but he's always narrating about how his life is like an action/thriller movie...only it's not. Nothing ever, ever happens. His belief (and I think the authors' belief) that he's a hero makes him oblivious to how stupid and mean he acts.
- Miles Vorkosigan falls into this in the novel A Civil Campaign. Throughout the series, he's a masterful Guile Hero who always succeeds through is cleverness, but then he attempts to apply his military strategy to wooing his love interest, despite all of his family and friends trying to warn him that this is a terrible idea. Sure enough, when he proposes, she feels emotionally manipulated and walks out on him.
- The entire cast of The Westing Game seems to think they're in a murder mystery story with a fabulous inheritance as the prize to the winner. Only Turtle ever realizes they're not. To be fair to them, they're actively misled about which genre they're operating in in-story.
- This is actually a major plot point in Charles Stross' The Jennifer Morgue, where the Dangerously Genre Savvy villain actually has a magical device that forces the events of his plot to conform to the literary conventions of an Ian Fleming novel. The heroes use this against him; both the villain and the main character assume that the latter is the hero figure, when in fact he's been set up as the love interest that the (female) hero must rescue, blindsiding the villain.
- In the Wild Cards novel Card Sharks, Harvey Melmouth, an Ace known as The Librarian, viewed his participation in the Iranian hostage crisis rescue mission as bad adventure fiction, and was thus certain that he wouldn't die. Unfortunately, he turned out to be part of a gritty spy thriller. On the positive side, his failure to take things seriously lead him to cross a street standing straight rather than hunched over like his fellow team member, Jay Ackroyd. As a result, he was the taller target and was thus the guy who got shot in an ambush, ensuring that the mission critical teleporter wasn't taken out and thereby saving most of the remaining team when things went completely FUBAR.
- Centerburg Tales: More Adventures of Homer Price by Robert McCloskey includes a story about a mysterious old man who has spent twenty years alone in the mountains inventing a humane musical mousetrap. The Centerburg residents are impressed with his similarity to a storybook character and, once the librarians determine the most fitting one, refer to him patronizingly as Rip Van Winkle. It isn't until all the children in Centerburg are following his musical mousetrap out of town that they realize he's a lot more like The Pied Piper Of Hamelin.
- Perdido Street Station includes an adventuring party straight out of Dungeons And Dragons. Since they're in the Crapsack World of a Mieville novel, they all die pretty quickly. They're also pointed out for the amoral tomb-robbers most traditional D&D parties are.
- In John Hemry's A Just Determination, Jen warns Paul against this, because he's obviously read too many books about a Knight In Shining Armor.
Live Action TV
- Alex Drake from Ashes to Ashes is an especially interesting case: having been aware of Sam Tyler's experience, she thinks she's starring in Life On Mars. Of course since Ashes To Ashes is the sequel to Life on Mars some of what she thinks is right, and some isn't.
- In the American version of The Office, Michael Scott often attempts to be Genre Savvy about real life, much to the confusion of the rational people around him.
- Dwight Shrute often treats real life as if it were a different genre of fiction. He treats the threat of layoffs as if he were participating in a competitive reality TV show like Survivor, keeps hidden weapons as though violent attacks were imminent, and a robbery plan that would be Genre Savvy if he existed in a crime thriller.
- Also, he uses the vampire tropes when he thinks Jim was bitten by a bat (sharpened stake,etc). In fact, Jim's pranks use this a lot, like the way he recruited Dwight to the CIA.
- In the Torchwood episode "Countrycide," the team investigates a series of killings by predatory aliens. They don't know that aliens had nothing to do it. A clan of cannibalistic Serial Killers committed the murders.
- Arthur in Merlin believes he is the main character, that all the monsters of the week can be solved with his sword, that Merlin is just a sidekick of his and that his Lawful Evil Knight Templar Dad has the right idea in seeking to eliminate all the wizards and witches.
- Monty Python's Flying Circus occasionally featured an army colonel who was so very close to being genuinely Genre Savvy. He knew he was in a comedy sketch show all right. Unfortunately he didn't realise which one, and so he thought that sketches should have clearly-defined jokes in them, with vaguely plausible premises, and punchlines. As a result he ordered an early end to many a sketch which he considered to be far too silly.
- In the It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia episode "The Gang Solves the Gas Crisis," the characters try to figure out a Five Man Band configuration which, if they stick to it, will lead to their inevitable success. This being Sunny, it obviously fails miserably.
- Maxwell Smart once did this in an episode of Get Smart. He was kidnapped by KAOS and hypnotised to kill the Chief, put in a cell, and left to escape. Every time the KAOS agents tried to help him, he misinterpreted it as an attempt to kill him.
- In an episode of Friends, Joey receives a visit from an unhinged, obsessed fan. Anticipating violence, he grabs a frying pan. Chandler suggests that he comes up with a backup plan in case she isn't a cartoon character.
- They manage to get it right when the fan comes to Joey accusing him of cheating on her, and then expressing confusion as to how he can be in two places at once (since she believes Days Of Our Lives is real, and that Joey is Drake Ramoray) by having the others tell her that Joey is actually Drake's Evil Twin, and citing a number of over the top crimes he has committed to convince her.
Joey: I'm not Drake.
Ross: That's right, he's not Drake, he's Hans Remore, Drake's evil twin.
Erika Ford (Stalker): Is this true?
Rachel: Yes, yes it is true. And I know this because... because he pretended to be Drake too, to sleep with me.
[Rachel throws water in his face]
Monica: And then he told me he would run away with me, and he didn't.
[Monica throws water in his face]
[Chandler throws water in his face]
- Flight of the Conchords had a weird example when Bret tried to woo a woman with techniques he'd seen in a sitcom. Now, Bret is in a sitcom, but he did stuff that never works even in sitcoms. At one point, Jemaine asks whether what Bret is planning on doing worked in the sitcom he saw it in. Bret says that it didn't, but as this is real life, his chances are better.
- In the last episode of Firefly, Wash gives us this exchange:
Wash: Psychic, though? That sounds like something out of science fiction. Zoe: You live in a spaceship, dear. Wash: So?
- Lost: Although Hurley usually fills the role of the Genre Savvy, he sometimes ends up wrong as well — after the cast ends up 30 years into the past, he tries to operate on the assumption that their time travel works similar to the Back To The Future rules. He is, however, wrong, their case being a Stable Time Loop and You Already Changed The Past. Other characters have some trouble explaining this to him.
- In the short-lived NBC series Something Is Out There, the female alien Ta'Ra is constantly puzzled by her human partner saying things like "Where's the Self Destruct Mechanism on this spaceship?" and "Can't you set that raygun on stun?"
- Contestants on Hells Kitchen will use the usual Reality Show tropes such as alliances, sabotage, and backstabbing...while apparently forgetting that the man they're trying to please is Gordon Ramsay, who has repeatedly ignored the "standard" rules and eliminated whoever he felt like despite all the Survivor-style plotting, usually while reprimanding the perpetrators for thinking they're clever.
- Likewise, in The Apprentice contestants will often try to rig the boardroom in their favor by bringing back the person that they intend to get fired, along with whoever was the strongest person on their team — or even someone that has immunity from being fired — in an attempt to manipulate the boss into firing the other person. Needless to say, this strategy almost never works.
- In The Celebrity Apprentice 2, Scott Hamilton actually told Donald Trump that he had brought back Tom Green, who he wanted to be fired, and Herschel Walker because he thought that Walker probably wouldn't be fired and would support him in getting rid of Green. Honesty was most definitely not the best policy here though, as this revelation led pretty much directly to Hamilton's firing.
- This strategy actually did work for Ivana in the second regular season of The Apprentice, albeit in a completely different manner to what she intended. She brought back Bradford, who had earned immunity the previous week, and Stacie, who was Ivana's intended victim. Just when it was looking like Ivana was going to be fired, Bradford suddenly waived his immunity, feeling that he had performed so well in the task that he didn't need it. Bradford's stupidity earned him an instant firing, and postponed Ivana's exit from the series.
- In that case, Bradford waived his immunity before Ivana had to choose who to bring with her to the final boardroom. It hadn't occurred to her to bring Bradford back with her until he gave up the immunity. Trump seemed to be wavering between Bradford, Stacie and Ivana when he was pondering who to fire, and when he ultimately chose to fire Bradford, Ivana began rocking back and forth in her chair with her hands over her mouth, stammering "Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God..." because she felt so guilty that her decision to take Bradford to the final boardroom with her (despite his good performance during that week's task) led to his firing.
- While Richard Castle's Genre Savvy skills are often an asset to his crime fighting, he also likes to play with being Wrong Genre Savvy. In one recent example, he acts as though he's in a vampire show instead of a They Fight Crime procedural:
Castle: Whoa, whoa, whoa!
Medical Examiner: What is wrong?
Castle: If he's a vampire and you pull that [stake] out, he comes back to life!
Medical Examiner: If he does, then we can all go home early.
- When Sisko was trying to catch the rogue officer Eddington in Star Trek Deep Space Nine, he realised that Eddington saw himself as a heroic figure for the Maquis, which Eddington pretty much confirmed by likening himself to Jean Valjean in Les Miserables. Sisko ended up having to become genre savvy himself and forced Eddington to become a martyr for his beliefs.
- Ant, a moderately good singer, brought his brother, Seb, an utterly hopeless singer to the pre-auditions of The X Factor, with Seb's terrible performance ensuring they'd get to the actual judges. The duo hoped that the judges would just put through Ant, as they had often done with groups with only one good singer; unfortunately that year the show started only putting through groups as a whole and not individual members, stopping the plan dead in its tracks.
- On an episode of The Avengers, a famous bullfighter sees a cart rolling toward him and, assuming that his skills are being tested, whips out his cape. It turns out he's right that the cart was sent against him by the villain but wrong about how it's going to kill him.
- Buffy the Vampire Slayer, the Musical Episode "Once More With Feeling". The person who tries to change the town's genre to a happy musical has forgotten that "horror movie" trumps musical. At least in Sunnydale. Turns out people are dancing themselves to death. Oops.
- Relatedly, when Jonathan turns his whole life into an action movie. Fails to quite work out.
- Anya says to Xander (paraphrased) "If you're ever thinking of leaving me, I want it to be like one of those movies where the bomb is counting down, and at one second to go I cut the wire and you don't leave." Wrong genre savvy since this is a Joss Whedon production, so the 'bomb' goes off at the most tragic possible time.
- In a season 4 episode, Willow falls out with Buffy when Buffy attempts to instruct her on the course of action, claiming "I'm not your Sidekick!" despite her clearly being so.
- The Trio are an example of this trope; they attempt to be stereotypical comic book supervillains inside a story that's more nuanced and mature than that. The season 7 episode "Storyteller" is about confronting Andrew with this fact.
- In a conversation with Angel, Spike once mentions "the old Anne Rice routine" — telling a woman you're a vampire, convincing her you're a tortured soul who only wants to overcome your curse and be good, then eating her when she lets her guard down.
- The eponymous Remington Steele is a classic movie buff, and every case he and Laura Holt solve together reminds him of a classic movie. Often the wrong one...
- A recurring sketch in The Armstrong And Miller Show features a butler who thinks he's in a Jeeves And Wooster-esque Edwardian comedy of manners, except that his Upper Class Twit boss is less of a Dogged Nice Guy getting into amusing misunderstandings, and more of a Soap Opera-style Magnificent Bastard who needs someone to hide the bodies.
Puppet Shows
- This Swedish Chef sketch
 has two Wrong Genre Savvy talking pumpkins. They try to use Briar Patching, advising the Chef to use increasingly bizarre/dangerous implements to smash them, on the assumption that he won't have them. However, this is the Swedish Chef we're talking about, who can always pull a sizable arsenal out of hammerspace.
Tabletop Games
- Players in Tabletop Games often fall victim to this if the players and Game Master aren't quite on the same page about what sort of game they're playing.
- Also worth noting is the uh oh moment when you design your character under the assumption that the game is going to be a certain genre and then find that you have made a character completely unequipped to get by in the gamemaster's world.
- For example, statting up a political operative... in a combat heavy scenario. Or statting up a character who does nothing but combat... in a scenario all about political maneuvering. Or either... in a Cosmic Horror Story scenario.
- In Traveller, during the Interstellar Wars the Vilani Imperium had been deliberately clogged with Obstructive Bureaucrats to prevent change even if the change meant technical advance. This is a seemingly stupid idea but It Makes Sense In Context. You see, long ago the Vilani had conquered every single power around and rearranged the universe exactly the way they wanted. With no outside threat the only danger was civil war. If they could make their imperium run on autopilot the danger of that could be minimized. The problem was that this only made sense when there was no outside threat. Unfortunatly the Vilani discovered a Barbarian Tribe from a certain Insignificant Little Blue Planet, which had different ideas about such matters...
Theater
- Rodrigo of Othello fits this on two levels. He thinks he's the rake protagonist who seduces the pretty young wife of an old man, but he's actually more like a Leisure Suit Larry-type who gets conned by the conniving servant. Making things worse is that he's in a tragedy, not a comedy, and the conniving servant is Iago.
- Lampshaded in Stephen Sondheim's Into The Woods — when the Baker's Wife is being seduced by Cinderella's Prince, she sings, "This is ridiculous, what am I doing here, I'm in the wrong story..."
- The Narrator suffers from this worse. He thought he was in a classic fairy tale and his job was to tell the story from the safe side of a thick fourth wall.
- In Sweeney Todd, Anthony thinks that he's the hero who rescues the beautiful maiden who's been locked in a tower by an evil old man. Unfortunately, he's in a Stephen Sondheim musical ...
- In the 18th century play Nathan the Wise, Nathan's servant Daya is reasonably savvy of the "Columbine" role in commedia del'arte and thus sees it as her duty to find a mate for Nathan's daughter. However, the young crusader that Daya tries to fix up with the daughter turns out to be the daughter's long-lost brother. In commedia del'arte, this kind of Contrived Coincidence is fairly common, so you could say that the guy would either be the love interest or the long-lost brother, and Daya made the wrong conclusion. There's also an aspect that although Daya knows that Nathan is a nice guy, she has antisemitic prejudices, and thus tends to act like the play she is in is The Merchant of Venice.
- Polonius in Hamlet thinks he's in a Star Crossed Lovers comedy, where every problem is caused by unrequited love and can be solved with eavesdropping. Unfortunately for him, he's in a revenge tragedy. As with Rodrigo, he fits a commedia del'arte stock character who happens to be in a tragedy (Rodgrigo is a Captain/Miles Gloriosus type, and Polonius is the Pantalone/Dotore character).
- Deconstructed with Tybalt in Romeo And Juliet, who doesn't realise he's in a romantic comedy, and winds up derailing the plot into a tragedy with his killing of Mercutio.
Video Games
Webcomics
- The title character of Mechagical Girl Lisa ANT sees the events of her story as following the tropes of magical girls anime... including when they don't.
- Red Mage from 8-Bit Theater believes he's in a world that follows the rules of a tabletop RPG. To be fair, his efforts sometimes do work, but usually just when it's funny.
- Like, for example, when he survived a fatal fall by "forgetting" to write the damage down on his character sheet.
- We should note though, that the first Final Fantasy game did go much more closely with D&D design/rules than the series does now.
- He did recently mention that only a certain number of enemies could be onscreen during any given fight. I don't think even Red Mage knows what genre he thinks he's in anymore.
- This is a world where the actual success of any given plan is almost invariably inverse to the sense it makes.
- Example of a failure: Trying to kill Sarda by having everyone's near-ungodly powers focused into an optimum role (i.e. Red Mage's varied attacks go into distraction and Fighter deflects all counterattacks while Black Mage and Thief go in for the kill) in an all-or-nothing surprise blitz attack. An example of a success? Black Mage killing Astos... with a terrible retort ("Astos? Mo' like yo ass is toast!")
- In an early arc from Sluggy Freelance, the otherwise-nameless Captain of a starship believes he'll be the sole survivor of an alien rampage because he's the "handsome masculine lead", but Torg questions the logic he used to reach that conclusion, calling him a "shallow, one-dimensional stereotype" and suggesting that Riff and Torg will be the sole survivors instead because they have the more interesting backstory. The captain shouts "What is this? A sci-fi thriller or a goofy buddy movie?" The alien promptly answers his question.
- Poor Piro from Megatokyo thinks romance works like either a Japanese Dating Sim or a shoujo manga, and constantly beats himself up for not being able to live up to the kind of situations he figures romance should entail. It's hard not to laugh when he whines about how he should be an "expert" at the subject considering all the games and mangas he's played and read, totally without irony.
- Largo on the other hand defines himself by Action Adventure Tropes, playing the hotblooded action hero in totally inappropriate situations. Ironically, his girlfriend actually finds herself oddly attracted to this, despite or possibly due to her own deep-seated cynicism.
- When Yuki is awakened as a Magical Girl, she instinctively reacts by seeking out cute, impractical uniforms and acting as if she were the main character in a series of that genre. She gets this drummed out of her when the "impractical" part makes itself apparent.
- Thankfully, the second thing she does is meet Largo, who immediately dresses her in something resembling tactical gear. Also a wonderful example of how Largo is both Genre Savvy and Wrong Genre Savvy at the same time.
- Othar Tryggvassen, Gentleman Adventurer! from Girl Genius. He's convinced that he's the leading man, Baron Wulfenbach and Gil Wulfenbach are the diabolical mastermind and the mastermind's fiendish right hand man respectively, and Agatha Clay is the leading man's beautiful young sidekick (even if she's not the Mad Scientist's Beautiful Daughter like he originally thought). Unfortunately he's completely insane and doesn't realise that he's wrong on all counts, so his genre-savvy plans are almost always inappropriate.
- Once he realizes that Agatha is a Heterodyne, he changes on the last part and treats her as The Hero of her own story (possibly with himself as some manner of Mentor Archetype) — which doesn't solve his problem, since he's still completely insane, and Agatha knows it and wants nothing to do with him.
- Word Of God is that he's re-cast his delusion slightly, Agatha is now the tragic love interest (he's going to kill her last, in some sort of love-suicide pact).
- It would be helpful, at this point, to point out that this story Othar thinks he's the Hero of is a quest to save the world by killing every last Spark. Including, last of all, himself.
- Othar is more a case of Right Genre Wrong Story. We have been shown that the way he thinks is the way their world works. Doesn't make him any less insane.
- To be fair to Othar, though, when he's in his own stories, he's actually quite effective.
- An odd example that may be both a subversion and a straight example occurs here. Lucy believes that she and the rest of the group are in a horror movie plot, which the current arc certainly resembles. This worries her because, due to the tropes associated with horror movies, none of them will survive. However, she isn't in a horror movie; she's in a webcomic. Given that the webcomic is Something Positive, her chances of survival might be even worse.
- Shortly afterward Wil Wheaton gets his arm cut off because one of the survivors is acting like its a zombie movie, and thinks a bite means infection... the catgirls don't work like that.
- In Chainmail Bikini, a D&D webcomic, the players see the new players' character fighting undead. They stand around and watch, thinking it's the scene where she impresses them with her power and they ask her to join their team. When she turns out to be losing the fight, they figure out that they've "picked the wrong cliched introduction" and that this is actually the one where they save her life and ask her to join their team.
Ramgar: Hold up. I think this is the cliche introduction where we see the new character kick so much butt we ask them to come with us. It's a classic of the medium. Let her have her moment of glory.
Lucretia: Will you imbeciles get over here and help? I'm inundated with undead!
Sapphire: Looks like this is the classic "we rescue someone and THEY ask to join US" intro.
Ramgar: Sorry, I wasn't sure which cliche we are supposed to be doing!
Lucretia: Expediency over verbosity, gentlemen!
- Wonderella after
rescuing a genie finding a Djinn, here.
- Elan of The Order Of The Stick gets this sometimes. For example, the first time they defeated Xykon he activates a Self Destruct Mechanism in order to invoke a Load Bearing Boss situation. And then won't escape the castle until the last possible second to be more dramatic. On another occasion he correctly predicts the current villain will try the old abduct-the-love-interest ploy...but doesn't realize that he's The Chick.
- Kevyn from Schlock Mercenary pulls one of these.
- "Repeat after me: Despite what magical girl anime has taught me, the monster does not go down with the first strike."
- Bogleech Comics did a series in which fans of Romero-style zombie movies go up against monsters that are similar to zombies, but not identical to them. It isn't pretty.
- Eri-Chan from Okashina Okashi. She views her group and every world they end up in through Shojo-colored glasses.
Western Animation
- Valerie of Danny Phantom is a Well Intentioned Extremist who thinks she's The Hero, thinks The Hero is the villain, and thinks the Big Bad is her Mentor.
- My Little Pony: Paradise is well-versed in the tropes of fairy tales and legends, and yet she, a winged pony living in a Magical Land with unicorns and dragons, wonders why her life can't be more like a storybook. Uh...
- One episode of Bonkers featured a Screwy Squirrel-type character (a weasel, I believe, but the name eludes me) who goes on a crime spree. At first Bonkers thinks he's unstoppable, because the character always wins in his cartoons. Then Bonkers comes to the realization that this is his cartoon, and so is able to defeat him.
- South Park: In "Stanley's Cup" the characters correctly realize that they are in a typical sports movie and thus deduce that 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 the final match, which they also do. In the end they turn out to be Wrong Genre Savvy and are beaten brutally: the opposing players were the real protagonists all along.
- In The Simpsons episode "Homer Goes to College", Homer is convinced that Dean Peterson of Springfield University is a Dean Bitterman type and spends most of the episode pulling ill-conceived pranks on him, even going as far as to try and run him over with a car at one point. The irony is that Peterson is actually a good-natured younger guy who gets on well with the other students.
- Homer also reacts to the rest of the college environment as though it were some kind of raunchy teen college movie when it quite patently isn't.
- In The Fairly Odd Parents, Timmy's wish to never have been born was (admittedly) a desperate attempt to salvage his bruised ego (having obviously seen the Trope Namer movie). Unfortunately, Von Strangle uses the opportunity to test him in a particularly cruel way.
- On Harvey Birdman Attorney At Law, Judy Ken Sebben aka Birdgirl seems to think she's in a superhero cartoon, much to Harvey's chagrin.
- On an episode of Jimmy Two-Shoes, as Beezy is being dragged to the altar for his Shotgun Wedding, he remains confident that Big Damn Heroes will save him. Of course, being on a Sadist Show, the trope gets subverted, and the wedding goes through though it still gets annulled.
Web Original
Real Life
- Who among us has not made this mistake at some point?
- Some gun owners consider lever rifles to be preferable for home defense. The reason, of course, is that Western heroes typically had lever-actions on their rifles; if they're forced to shoot someone in self defense, they'd like the police and the jury to see them as the hero, not the villain. This may overlap with a non-villainous form of Dangerously Genre Savvy.
- Given how poor common knowledge about home defense law is, not to mention how ridiculously arcane the rules are, any little bit helps. Of course, there is a reason lever rifles went out of style very quickly... The smarter thing to do is get yourself a pump action shotgun; the distinctive pumping sound is unmistakable, and intruders are probably going to be less apt to start things once you work the action within earshot.
- Well, it's not that smart. You pump the action to clear out the used shell casing after you've fired the gun in the first place. Any intruders that hear you work the action should have already heard that much more intimidating BANG when you first discharged your weapon. But yeah, that'd still discourage 'em from starting anything, most like. Or convince 'em to stop.
- You could leave the empty shell from the last time you fired it for just such an occasion.
- It may waste a shell, but that won't exactly be a problem as long as you've got more than one loaded. Besides, intimidation doesn't have to make sense.
- It actually doesn't "waste" a shell, because you can always reload it into the weapon. And if you need to use more than what you have already loaded after that point, you either ticked off the mob, or you need to go to a shooting range.
- Oh come on, folks! The Real Life next safest way to store a pump-action shotgun (after unloaded), is with the chamber empty but the magazine full, thus requiring a cycle of the pump action before firing the first shot.
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