Misused for "they should have done this, but didn't".: Missed Moment Of Awesome

I admit I was guilty of it before. The name implies an awesome opportunity was missed on a show, and a number of wicks use that context, but technically nothing is missed, just not shown. So the name should reflect that, something like Unseen Moment Of Awesome or Awesome Offscreen Moment.

I'm on the internet. My arguments are invalid.

Or Offscreen Moment of Awesome.

Rhymes with "Protracted."

Isn't this the second time this has happened to this trope? This one used to be Epic Fail and wound up needing a rename for almost the exact same reason. And yes, I am seeing a fair amount of misuse as basically "They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot... Opportunity". Actually, even the subjective banner seems there to reflect that. "Action-packed offscreen moment" seems fairly objective, especially when so many examples are explicitly lampshaded.

I like Offscreen Moment of Awesome.

edited 5th Mar '11 11:41:07 PM by Tyoria

Looks to me like the description really is "missed," though. The first couple of paragraphs (sigh), once you get through them, describes something left out altogether, not implied.

Jet-a-Reeno!

There's also a lot of overlap with Adaptation Decay of the "they cut out my favorite scene" variety.

Actually, it was renamed from Epic Fail because that was already a pre-existing term whose normal usage didn't match our trope.

People taking the name at face value to arrive at a misunderstanding of the intended trope is what I was getting at. In both cases, the name fails because people think they know what it means and don't double check. In the case of a pre-existing term, they would have even less reason to think they needed a check, but still.

That's just plain ol' misuse. Offscreen Moment of Awesome sounds good.

In my opinion, though, even after a cleanup, this still is probably subjective.

edited 6th Mar '11 11:03:16 AM by nrjxll

If something is implied, but not shown, it's still in the show. Just lampshadings are more obvious about it.

Or we could drop the "awesome" part, as there are a lot of things in a show that clearly have the context of being reasonably shown, but skipped over. Like characters running off to do something, cut to a commercial, and after the break, that thing is already taken care of.

edited 6th Mar '11 11:09:38 AM by DragonQuestZ

I'm on the internet. My arguments are invalid.

Just to help, here are some examples of misuse. (After I removed them of coarse.)

GIJoe

• What Could Have Been: In an episode where COBRA hosted a black-market telethon, they were originally going to sing a parody of "We Are The World" entitled "We Want The World!", but for whatever reason this never came to be.

MissedMomentOfAwesome.Real Life

• Sesame Street Muppeteer Carroll Spinney describes a bad encounter in his autobiography. One day, some moron drove onto his lawn, rolled down the window and yelled, "Hey! You the Bird? Do the voice!" Spinney says he wished he could yell "Get the hell off my property!" in Oscar the Grouch's voice, but instead just silently went inside in case any of his young fans were watching.

What Could Have Been seems to have this problem also.

edited 6th Mar '11 12:08:12 PM by nuclearneo577

I took a chainsaw to much of the comic book section. Also I deleted the link from They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot where they call this a related trope and basically describe it as it is being misused. Oops.

I just cleaned out the Real Life page, and there was only one actual example left.

• During the Evo 2010 Super Street Fighter IV grand final match, the online stream, being watched by over 27,000 people at the time, went out. During the final moments of the match.

I'm gonna put it back on the main and cut the subpage.

The Video Game section has now lost about 95% of its original content. WOW was that a mess.

I cleaned Western Animation. Killed 70% of it. Not as bad as the Video Game section, but close.

Should we delete all of the subpages and merge it back into the main article?

Web Media was only one example and 3 parodys left. Good god.

If it's this bad, we can probably merge them back to one page again.

Also, if this misuse is this serious, I can definitely support a rename.

Rhymes with "Protracted."

Me also. Offscreen Moment of Awesome sounds good.

I just slapped the Theatre page on the Cut List for having two non examples. Going at Tabletop Games now.

Tabletop Games had no examples, so that is on the Cut List now.

In short: ya wrong.

Longer version: No. The thing can be missed out, it's not just "hiding things" it is setting up the anticipation or potential for a thing and then not having it, with no constraint on the not having it. This worry about the misuse didn't come up in the rename thread and it wasn't incorporated into the name. This doesn't mean there isn't misuse. I've probably seen "I wish this had happened" a couple more time then I should have but it is perfectly reasonable for the "anticipation" to be that it happened in the book and the let down to just be "they didn't put it in the film adaptation".

Also, "it's too short" is not a reason for cutting an established category page. Otherwise, yeah, those were not examples on the tabletop games list.

edited 6th Mar '11 4:07:10 PM by SomeSortOfTroper

Real Life had one example that was put back on the main page, how is that not too short?

In that the decision for making a page for a category is "Do we have the category?" and the length doesn't matter.

Poke. Any ideas what to do?

Double poke. Can we get a rename crowner?