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redirected from Main.MrExposition
alt title(s): Mr Exposition; Mister Exposition 
Mr. Exposition takes pride in his job.
"Thank you, Mr. Exposition."
"I know! That's what I told 'em, but no! All the cruddy exposition goes to me! I've got to talk and talk and fiddle with the computer and talk some more and fiddle and talk! I feel like Obi-Wan cruddy Kenobi!"
A character whose purpose is to explain the plot. Ostensibly, this is for the benefit of the protagonists, but most of the time their real reason for existing is to provide Exposition to the audience, sometimes to the point of an Infodump. This is why they spend so much time explaining things the protagonists already know. Popular in Science Is Bad stories, where you can bet the Mad Scientist in charge will have a tape recorder with him at all times that he's always dictating his progress to.
In spite of the name, this is an equal-opportunity position, as the many female examples below demonstrate.
The Watson — especially if the Elephants Child — may force Mr Exposition into this role.
See also Captain Obvious.
Examples:
Anime and Manga
- Dr. Inez Fressange of Martian Successor Nadesico abuses this trope to the point of parody: she is actually acknowledged as the "explanation woman" by the whole crew of the Nadesico battle spaceship. There have been cases where she senses her explanations are needed from several rooms/decks over, and she once uses exposition as her talent in a beauty contest.
- Seira in Kaitou Saint Tail.
- Ryou and sometimes Keiichiro in Tokyo Mew Mew.
- A hilarious example of this occurs with Masaya in the first episode of Tokyo Crystal Mew. He even feels the need to describe what he looked like in his Deep Blue form.
- Subverted in FLCL by Commander Amarao. He tells Naota (and the audience) that Haruko is searching for her lover Atomsk, the pirate king (the scene is accompanied by a humanoid fire creature). Actually, Haruko wants to absorb the powers of Atomsk, which is actually a giant flaming bird. Amarao was just guessing.
- Yuko Ichihara ends up becoming the Ms Exposition in the latter parts of Tsubasa Reservoir Chronicle and xxxHolic, the point that some fans have begun comforting others about the recent Wham Episode by saying that "all will be explained" in the Yuko-monologue inevitably coming up in the next few chapters.
- Which proves problematic now that she exploded into flower petals/hair/an illusory butterfly. With her dead/disappeared/whatever, we don't have anyone to explain what happened to her, why, or what exactly she dissolved into even!
- She's back, at least in Tsubasa. Chapters 216 and 217 were pretty much her exclusively explaining what the hell's been going on.
- Suzumiya Haruhi hangs a lampshade on this; Kyon, the sarcastic narrator, constantly tells Koizumi, the Mr. Exposition character, that he talks too much and no one cares what he has to say.
- Every single character in Yu-Gi-Oh (The 4Kids Dub anyway), often to downright ridiculous lengths. Everyone feels compelled to remind one another (ie: the viewers) of the continuous effects of every card in play, the effect of a card that has already been played before in an episode (especially "Monster Reborn"), all the way to what happened two minutes ago. This expo-speak always happens at the start of episodes, (referencing previous events), which wouldn't be a bad thing if not for the fact that each episode includes a "last time, on Yu-Gi-Oh" opening bit. Also always occurs after a commercial (because, well, you know), but sometime even for no reason at all. As an example of the last type, pick any duel in the Battle City finals/semi-finals and count how many times the fact that one of the characters possesses an Egyptian God Card is mentioned. For the truly ambitious, ''drink'' every time it's mentioned, and kiss your liver goodbye.
- Subverted in the movie when Kaiba interrupts Pegasus' exposition of a card-effect with "Do you ever shut up?"
- Also Lampshaded in one episode where an opponent starts to explain the effects of Painful Choice before Kaiba cuts him off with "I know what the card does, you fool."
- ... And then he explains it anyway
- Reversed in Eyeshield 21 in the form of Yamamoto Onihei, ace lineman of the Hashiritani Deers. In fact, everything that he says will be proven otherwise. It doesn't help that the team he usually tries to predict is one of the most unpredictable teams in the whole of Japan....
- On the two few occasions when The Omniscient Council Of Vagueness in Neon Genesis Evangelion told anyone anything, they have been told "But I already know all of this" by the person they were speaking to. It serves solely to inform the audience, and yet it doesn't.
- Reborn in Katekyo Hitman Reborn! does this almost every time a battle is plot-important and he happens to be watching. Most of the rest of the cast is guilty of this at various occasions as well, but it's usually Reborn that does the exposition. In fact, it's consistent enough that one can tell if a fight is plot-important when Reborn is nearby by whether he's beating people up or currently being Mr Exposition. For everything not related to the most recent level-up, there's Ranking Futa, who seems to be a recurring character primarily for random exposition.
- This is Autor's main function in the final episodes of Princess Tutu. Well, that and putting Fakir through the Training From Hell.
- And pretty much Edel's entire function in the first season until she dies. Sort of.
- After being introduced to the Infinity Library, Yuuno of Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha was reduced from being The Lancer to this.
- Yue Ayase in Mahou Sensei Negima, usually due to her innate smarts or her Book Of Shadows. She tends to indulge in Walls Of Text, but isn't usually heard.
Yue:(long explaination about Celtic mythology, the "other world" and paradise).
Nodoka: Yue, they're not listening.
Yue: Say what!? This is important background information!
- Ergo Proxy had a very interesting method of revealing its backstory: the characters ended up in a bizarre gameshow, where most questions and answers were directly related to the plot. The gameshow host MCQ played the part of Mr Exposition.
Comic Books
- If any Marvel Universe plot has magic in it at any time whatsoever, you can bet Dr. Strange will be there to explain the nuts and bolts of how Magic A Is Magic A. Or just Deus Ex Machina the heroes out of it.
- Nate Morgan used to fill this role in the Archie Sonic The Hedgehog comics, offering pages upon pages of technobabble-laden exposition for the "benefit" of the reader.
- The Inhumans in Marvel Comics (at least in their early appearances) are an entire race of Mr Expositions. They also do recaps. A lot.
- The Key, from DC Comics. Lampshaded and subverted in that opening up your entire mind to the universe (A God Am I) has the side effect of causing a lot of monologuing.
Film
- Basil Exposition (with British Intelligence) from Austin Powers, is both an obvious send-up of this type of character, and a good alternate trope name.
- Ric Olié in The Phantom Menace has dialogue that consists entirely of exposition such as "That little droid did it, he bypassed the main power drive!" Same thing with Admiral Ackbar in ROTJ ("It's a trap!")
- Reese in The Terminator explaining to Sarah why a man completely resistant to shotgun blasts (the title character) is trying to kill her. In the DVD commentary they point out that he's doing exposition (which usually brings the pace of the movie to a screeching halt), however he does it while they're on the move which works in this case.
- Mr. Gibbs in the Pirates Of The Caribbean trilogy seems to exist primarily to tell Will about Jack's backstory or Pirate lore.
- And he takes it very personally when Those Two Guys, Pintel and Ragetti, try to do his job for him.
- James Bond's "M".
- The nameless voice (presumably the Secretary) who provided the tape-recorded briefings on Mission Impossible.
- Ardeth Bey in The Mummy Returns, which actually is quite at odds with his characterization in the first film. As Stephen Sommers says on the commentary track, "In the first film Ardeth Bey was this cool, mysterious character. Here he's just a chatterbox. Every chance he gets, it's just wave after wave of exposition."
- In fact, he refers to the character by name as Mr. Exposition.
- Grave-Robber from Repo! The Genetic Opera. His song, 'Zydrate Anatomy', introduces himself, Amber Sweet, Blind Mag, some AppliedPhlebotinum in the form of zydrate, the veritable epidemic of surgery addiction, and reveals the first of Rotti Largo's many, many plots.
- The Princess Irulan
 manages to pull this off seriously in Dune.
- Mr. Universe in Serenity to the point where Joss Whedon refers to him as The King of Exposition in the DVD commentary.
- Lindsay Brigman in The Abyss does a slightly Lampshaded version of this in the early descent scene, as she explains the (plot critical) perils of prolonged deep water diving to a SEAL team that is thoroughly familiar with them.
- They end up finishing most of her sentences for her.
Literature
- In the Harry Potter books, Dumbledore fills this role quite a bit. From beyond the grave, at one point!
- Subverted in the Wheel Of Time, Robert Jordan had stated that several times characters are guessing when giving exposition so you can never tell which Forsaken is the strongest (especially between men and women), or how the hell Mat's dagger actually works. The best example, is in Crown of Swords, where the Aes Sedai accompaning Elayne, and Nyneave, tell her the Kin are a small group of women who help runaways, and the Aes Sedai use them to find the runaways. Later in the book the leader of the Kin explain that the Kin number about 2,000, and are actually a well organized group who hide their numbers so that the Aes Sedai will not notice them.
- The elderly wizard Gereth Yaztromo often fulfills this role in the Fighting Fantasy gamebooks, most particularly those by Ian Livingstone, explaining the latest evil threat before asking the reader to try and solve it. The reason he can't do it himself, of course, is because he's just too old.
- Winter Celchu, Leia's aide in the Star Wars Expanded Universe, tends to fulfill this when she has more than one line of dialogue at a time. Why? Holographic memory.
- Mike Hanlon in Steven King's IT. Being the only member of the Lucky Seven who stayed in Derry, and therefore the only one who remembers anything at all about what happened when they were kids, Mike is something of an exposition god in the book. Not only does he provide exposition to his friends little by little, his journal entries provide exposition as to the history of It, and whenever another character gets to do some expositioning they generally turn to Mike and ask if whatever they just stated is correct. Interestingly enough, it works. Contageous amnesia can apparently be a wonderful exposition tool so long as someone is immune.
Live Action TV
- CJ Cregg, the White House press secretary on The West Wing. She patiently reports every single piece of news, including those with not the slightest connection to the US Government.
- Giles from Buffy The Vampire Slayer. In the dream sequence episode 'Restless' he even gets to deliver the exposition in the form of a song.
- Which is exactly what he's trained to do for many years. Watchers are supposed to tell the Slayer how to kill the evil monster.
- At the beginning of every Allo Allo episode, Rene breaks the Fourth Wall to explain to the viewer what's been going on. In one subversion he starts off by discussing the doings of some of the townspeople, before saying "You have never met these people, nor are you ever likely to. I am simply giving you the local gossip because with my own affairs I don't know where to start."
- Samantha Carter from Stargate SG-1.
- Exposition duties were usually tag-teamed by her and Jack or Daniel and Jack. Sam (or Daniel) would give a technobabble-laden exposition of what's happening, then Jack would force them to repeat it in English.
- In Star Trek The Next Generation, Data was the main choice for any Technobabble plot exposition, although really nearly any character on the various Star Trek shows was at some time forced into that role. Once she had been introduced to Star Trek The Next Generation, Guinan became the mouth through which the writers often introduced backstory information, i.e. about the Q, the Borg, etc.
- Usually, Data and Geordi did technical exposition, Worf what another ship is about to do/is doing/did, and Troi the emotional state or motives of whatever grouchy alien they ran into that week. Of course, in Real Life, exposition to the CO is what each section is supposed to be doing.
- Subverted slightly in that for a long time, Data did not know when it was appropiate (or not) to do the infodumpage.
- Avoided entirely with Troi because her empathic suggestions were universally uselessly vague. (e.g. "Troi, can you tell why they might be shooting laser death missiles at us?" "I sense ... Pain. Pain ... and anger.")
- In Star Trek The Original Series, Spock the Omnidisciplinary Scientist usually filled this role - including much knowledge about history. In the fourth movie The Voyage Home, he's aware of the "colorful metaphors" used on 20th-century Earth.
- One exchange in the episode "I, Mudd":
Spock: Whatever method we use to stop them, we must make haste. They have only to install some cybernetic devices aboard the Enterprise, and they'll be able to leave orbit.
McCoy: How do you know so much?
Spock: I asked them.
McCoy: ...Oh.
- Holly and Kryten in Red Dwarf. Note the redundancy; the producers did, and when they needed to get rid of a character for the sixth season, Holly was Put On A Bus with the rationale that the exposition could be given to Kryten. The writers later found themselves in the same position again, when the newly-introduced Kochanski became Ms. Exposition, and Kryten was relegated to the servile mother-figure that he'd grown out of over the course of the series.
- Joel and the Robots of Mystery Science Theater 3000 humorously pointed this out while watching a movie, labeling two cop characters "Sergeant Exposition" and "Captain Backstory."
- The Doctor from Doctor Who, to such a degree as this editor wonders if he has some kind of condition...
- The Doctor always has a traveling companion from modern Earth who would be in the dark if The Doctor didn't explain everything. That seems to be the main function of the cohort, a "Watson" to his "Sherlock".
- (Though in some cases Fan Service seems to take over as main function...)
- And who claim that they can't be both?
- Alfred Gogh and Miles Millar cast Alison Mack as Chloe Sullivan on Smallville because of her "rare ability to deliver large chunks of expositionary dialogue conversationally."
- Col. Tigh in the reimagined Battlestar Galactica often performs the role of Mr. Exposition, although in one episode, President Roslin subverts this by annoyedly thanking him for his insight.
- Anders managed to be one of these for one episode, finally explaining what the deal with the Final Five was, as well as some background on the Cylons in general. This being BSG, everything was working against him, and only got about halfway through it. Cavil filled a somewhat similar role in the same episode, but he also didn't spill the beans completely.
- "Finally, I caught up with you! I'm a mob hitman... They call me Jimmy the Exposition."
- Captain Jim Brass, the Homicide detective from CSI has been affectionately nicknamed "Captain Exposition" by the fandom, even though all he does is deliver factual data on the victim du jour (such as name, occupation, family, circumstances of death...)
- All the Supernatural characters have been this at some point, although recently it's been mostly Bobby being the sensible one (most notably, Tall Tales and Dream A Little Dream Of Me) and doing the explaining.
- The character of Sara on the Canadian comedy series Trailer Park Boys served this function in the early seasons, explaining many of the goings-on in the trailer park and putting things into context for the audience. Her doing this was justified by the series being framed as a documentary filmed by a camera crew following the main characters around, so it only made sense that the documentary crew would try and find a way to explain things to the audience.
- Delenn on Babylon5. Whenever she begins a speech with, "As you know," expect a recap of the whole season thus far.
- In the recent seasons of Lost, Daniel Faraday fits the bill, though he doesn't quite know everything. Nor does he tell all that he does know. Nor does he think everybody else would understand if he tried.After the episode "The Variable", he becomes a posthumous Mr Exposition once his journal outlives him.
Theater
- Parodied in the Real Inspector Hound by the play-within-a-play's Mrs. Drudge, who answers the phone, "Hello, the drawing-room of Lady Muldoon's countrry residence one morning in early spring?" and "I'm afraid there is no one of that name here, this all very mysterious and I'm sure it's leading up to something, I hope nothing is amiss for we, that is Lady Muldoon and her houseguests, are here cut off from the world, including Magnus, the wheel-chair-ridden half-brother of the ladyship's husband Lord Albert Muldoon who ten tears ago went for a walk on the cliff and was never seen again." And then there's the treacherous fog.
- The musical Urinetown, which parodies almost anything that moves, has Officer Lockstock, the narrator, reference this trope on several occasions.
Video Games
- Since he's been in similar situations before, Leon S. Kennedy takes this role the Capcom's (mercifully Alice-free) CG film Resident Evil: Degeneration. That said, he still gets to kick more ass than every other character combined.
- Pretty much any supporting character in the Metal Gear Solid series. Particularly Col. Campbell and Dr. Naomi in the first Metal Gear Solid (the latter whom goes into in-depth detail explaining the backstories of every boss in the game), Rosemary and Pliskin in Sons of Liberty, and Drebin in Guns of the Patriots to name a few.
- The Colonel, Otacon, and Mei Ling all serve this role in Snake's codec conversations in Super Smash Bros Brawl, explaining information on Nintendo characters that Snake doesn't know about.
- This is the sole purpose for the existence of Travis in Killer7. As you go through each mission, he informs you why you're there and what's happened thus far. Since the Killer7 are only called in once things have degraded to where someone has to die, this is essentially Late To The Party embodied in a character. And you can never be sure if Travis (who openly despises you) is telling the truth, either...
- Even better than that, while Travis does display open contempt for the Smiths at points, he shows it by being the most honest and trustworthy character in the game. When he says he'll talk "straight up," he's usually getting ready to tell you something you'd really rather not know.
- Maechen from Final Fantasy X. The difference being the fact he doesn't explain the plot. Instead, he goes in long-winded description of the areas you visit for the first time. Nicknamed "Exposition Man" on VG Recaps.
- Auron and Lulu from the same game are guilty of this at certain points, but Auron's a Badass so of course you'll listen to whatever he says, right? Right?
- Somewhat justified in both cases. Tidus is the game's Watson, and Lulu knows a lot about the world, having gone on two (failed) pilgrimages before accompanying Yuna, and Auron is actually the only character (maybe, aside from Seymour) that actually has any clue what's really going on.
- Namine gets this role in Kingdom Hearts II, explaining to Roxas (and the players who haven't played Chain of Memories) just what the heck is going on in the Prologue.
- In the final chapter of Mother 3, it's revealed this was the entire reason Leder did not have his old memories erased, in case anything corrupts their lives again. His monologue is so big, a stinkbug helpfully memorizes most of what he's revealed if you happen to forget.
- Morris O'Dell from Splinter Cell gives exposition in cutscenes at the beginning of missions. Justified, as he is a news anchor.
- Pick any character with a speaking role in Mass Effect. ANY. CHARACTER.
Webcomics
- The bard Elan in the webcomic Order Of The Stick even has a spell called "Summon Plot Exposition" which creates dramatic illusionary pictures that accompany Elan's voice-overs.
- He also cries when someone else pulls off a good plot recap.
- Redcloak often fills this role on the villain's side, with the help of a series of short-lived, lower-ranking hobgoblin clerics.
- Mr. Verres from El Goonish Shive, who recently exclaimed "I am an endless barrel of exposition!"
- Parodied with Dr. Viennason in Sluggy Freelance. His DVD series "A Visual Guide to Timeless Space" gives pretty much all the exposition during the "Oceans Unmoving" arc ... and he does it so poorly most characters consider it a form of torture.
- Red Mage usually does this in 8-Bit Theater, although Thief took the role when the Light Warriors were in Elfland.
- Rainer from MSFHigh is this, combined with being a Handsome Lech. He's getting more and more lampshade hanging.
Web Original
- Captain Exposition from Protectors of the Plot Continuum has been known to appear and deliver some information on an Agent's past when said Agent is in a Heroic BSOD because of the bad Fan Fic. The information pertains in some way to why the Agent is in a Heroic BSOD.
- Impro Fanfiction's Do-Gooders's Sailor Exposition is a parody of this, she defeats monsters by talking to them.
- Any of the time travelers from TRU-Life Adventures
- In the Whateley Universe, a lot of the teams at Whateley Academy seem to have them. Ferret of the Good Ol' Boyz, Stopwatch of the Masterminds, Foxfire of the Whitman Literary Girls (well, it's not really a superhero team).
- Agent Washington from Red vs. Blue: Reconstruction dispenses all sorts of information about Project Freelancer and the AIs it uses. According to the DVD commentary, Church served in this role for plot recaps in the original series.
- Gubaru from the web fiction serial Dimension Heroes, while serving a purpose as mentor and part-protector of the multiverse, serves the majority of the series as an exposition machine.
- In KateModern, Sophie's main purpose is to compile recap episodes and discuss plot events with the viewers.
Western Animation
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