Previous TRS thread
. Seems like non-crimefighting examples are misuse, but I wonder if it's The Same, but More Specific of Wunza Plot and whether both are ultimately Just for Fun in practice (similar to X Meets Y, another pitch trope that was deemed JFF).
^ The problem is, the few times I see this trope is used is for in-line joke description of works in other trope pages, and it's almost impossible to tell from the entry itself whether or not the characters actually fight crime (although I've seen one where they've put a note to clarify that they don't actually fight crime).
Calendar enthusiast
They Fight Crime! originally meant Wunza Plot, but since people used it exclusively for crimefighting, it was decided to move the description to Wunza Plot (helped by that being the trope's actual name), and reserve They Fight Crime! for wunza plots in which they fight crime.
Ukrainian Red Cross
Trans Siberian Anarchestra (it/they)
And now it turns out people don't use it exclusively for crimefighting? :P
The Revolution Will Not Be Tropeable
Again, this sounds like a Just for Fun thing where tropers attempt to describe their favourite works with the Wunza Plot format and ending it with They Fight Crime! as a joke.
Look at this one:
- Taken to an extreme in the Homecoming Saga. She's a functionally asexual scientist! He's a gay librarian! They Fight Crime!!note They get married! They have kids!
Edited by Adept on Sep 24th 2022 at 11:19:53 PM
So, what exactly is They Fight Crime!? It's almost always used as a joke description of a work rather than a trope entry, and a lot of time the characters involved don't even "fight crime", but work together for other purposes.