Probably used wrong more often than right.: Shut Up Hannibal

This is often used for "hero refutes villain's philosophy" in examples like Woody calling Lotso out on his lies, or Batman telling Joker that not everyone is like him, etc... which is arguably the opposite of this, since this seems to be about interrupting the villain instead of refuting them... or not even being willing to debate the villain... or being dismissive...

Come to think of it, what is this trope? The examples are of a wide variety of different kinds of things, and the description doesn't seem entirely clear either.

... and also, what should be done about said misuse?

Bump...

I don't see how "you are wrong" is misused when you say "this is why you are wrong". The one is just a more specific form of the other. It might deserve it's own subtrope.

The examples are very widely varied and it's clear that not all of them belong under a single heading. The main problem is that Shut Up, Hannibal! almost always coincides with Crowning Moment Of Awesome. It's not surprising that tropes want to include all their favorite awesome speech responses/interruptions under this heading.

Case in point, the Firefly example. Mal's one-word response to Crow followed by his shocking execution is clearly awesome. But Crow was just making a simple death threat. Nothing about it even remotely resembled a Hannibal Lecture. Likewise, the 300 example. Leonidas epically responds with a... terse statement and then kicks the messenger guy to his death. But again, it was a response to a demand that he took offense to, nothing resembling a Hannibal Lecture. If one doesn't exist already, we may want a new trope that's a variation on Killed Mid-Sentence: when a person is expected to respond with some kind of counter argument but instead responds by shockingly killing the other person.

The other criteria that I think is really important is that the Shut Up, Hannibal! line should almost always end the conversation. You can't have a SUH in the middle of a conversation. If there's any further exchange of words, it doesn't count; that's just a Hannibal Lecture followed by conversation. Whether it's because they're fighting or no longer in the same room, the hero should say nothing more after the Shut Up.

Based on just these two criteria alone, a huge number of these examples could be purged.

Some official confirmation on what this trope is might be useful before we use that as a basis for cleaning up its examples sections and crosswicked examples.

Just wanted to point out there are 2 TRS pages for this trope. I didn't read all the way through, but they seem to be the same problem, and the other dates back to last year.

So Hannibal is that Carthagian warlord that took his elephants across the Alps to attack Rome, yes? I'm not sure why he should shut up, I don't think he did a lot of speeching.

Actually, it's about Hannibal from Silence Of The Lambs. So I suppose the trope name doesn't work for people who don't know the series.

Hannibal clearly means "Bad Guy." The trope could be Shut Up Bad Guy and it wouldn't lose any meaning. Shut Up, Hannibal! says the same thing and is wittier; why not use that?

And before any accusation of Fan Myopia set in, I haven't seen a single movie with him in it. All I know is that he was the villain.

How's that? "Hannibal" translates as "glory of the lord", and has been the name of about two dozen historical figures (most of which aren't bad guys by any stretch of the word), as well as five cities, an airport, a record label, and a group of islands near Australia.

It's patently obvious that the name does not just mean "bad guy".

And how many people actually know(much less care) what a name's supposed to mean? Mr. Lector is much more well-known than the elephant whisperer.

[citation needed].

Seriously, don't pull facts out of thin air (FWIW, my source is Wikipedia). To assume that "hannibal" means "bad guy" or to assume that the most famous Hannibal just happens to be the one from a movie you like is pure Fan Myopia. The name fails the One Mario Limit big time.

You're the one being myopic here - Roman history isn't exactly well-known outside some broad strokes and the names of their enemies even less so. Silence Of The Lambs, on the other hand, has significant Pop-Cultural Osmosis - and Lector's at the forefront of that.

And for the record, I haven't seen the movie or read the book.

I'm not saying the Carthaginian warlord is the most famous Hannibal. I am, however, saying that there's dozens of famous people and places called Hannibal, so it should be obvious that (1) the name does not automatically refer to that one guy from that 20-year-old movie, and (2) the name does not automatically mean "bad guy".

Heavy sigh. Why is it so freaking hard for people to

A. Do a search before starting a thread?

and

B. Behave like civil human beings?

Here is a link to the previous discussion [1] so that you have a frame of reference.

And if you can't post politely, don't post.

The laconic says "Rejecting the villain's deconstructive speech." The object of rejection in that is linked to Hannibal Lecture. That's what I always saw as the point of the name. But since it has now as far as I can tell been determined once and for all that Hannibal Lecture does not and will not mean that (since clearly at least this trope isn't about interrogation situations specifically), this makes the name all the more misleading, since for those who know the trope name "Hannibal Lecture", this is easily seen as a reference to that.

So as far as the name goes, I agree it's not good, and propose "Shut Up, Villain!"

Does someone have a definite suggestion for what to do with this? At least two TRS threads about it seem to have turned into circular arguments between a small number of tropers.

Has anybody provided evidence a la Wick Check?

I could support the charge that Shut Up, Hannibal! gets sused in other contexts such as Talk to the Fist (which may or may not be misuse of SUH, but either way doesn't belong there), but where's the evidence?

edited 13th Feb '12 9:47:41 AM by Stratadrake