Hey It's That Guy needs repair: ptitlezbs18uz6sqww

Specifically, the examples from Live Action TV. They should be more organized according to show. I can't tell whether a particular example has been used already or not. A few more separate categories for the shows that have multiple examples would be nice, as well as organization by show in the miscellaneous examples.

I'm in your fanfiction, correcting your spelling.

Hey Its That Voice may need some looking at as well.

Keeper of The Celestial Flame

I think attempting to organize Hey Its That Voice by show will be a monumentally difficult task, given the ridiculous number of English and Japanese voice actor examples. It seems like it's better off as is.

My FF.net account

I'm bumping this thread for a different reason than the one that started it.

I've noticed that Hey Its That Guy (and to a lesser extent Hey Its That Voice) is getting put in just about every single film and series article. At one point it seemed like it was about pointing out minor characters that you recognize from later, larger roles. But now it seems like it's just a dumping ground for every other role an actor has ever played. It's lost any value it may otherwise have had through Trope Decay.

My points are as follows:

• If this is a real trope, it needs to be defined and that definition stuck with. I'll gladly delete improper examples but I need to know that I won't get into an Edit War over them.
• If this is, as it's listed, a Just for Fun trope, examples should be kept to the trope page and off the main articles.

edited 7th Jul '10 7:49:35 AM by Fighteer

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"

I think alphabetical by last name makes the most sense for an organizational scheme if it needs a better one. Most of these people are in multiple media. It'll cut down on duplicates.

Reality is that, which when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away. -Philip K. Dick

The whole "I'm not going to mention the actor's name, just pothole one character he played" thing is seriously tired and renders the page pretty useless as anything but a game. And if we're going to keep it, it needs to be limited somehow to people who show up every-flippin'-where, doing all sorts of different things. Otherwise it becomes nothing more than Actors Play Lots Of Different Roles Over Their Lifetimes. which is right down there with People Breathe, about four notches below People Sit On Chairs on the tropability scale.

edited 7th Jul '10 7:59:04 AM by Madrugada

...if you don’t love you’re dead, and if you do, they’ll kill you for it.

^ Exactly, Madrugada. It's become a meme that's lost any humor value it may have originally had. I'm all for cutting it entirely.

edited 7th Jul '10 8:08:07 AM by Fighteer

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"

There was a previous thread on the topic. It too was 6 posts long and contained Madgrudada and Fighteer. However it did come to a particular solution which led to much rejoicing.

Hey Its That Guy is basically a trope about actors so the examples should be actors. The main description goes on about particular character actors who will fulfil certain roles with a bankable dependency.

Hey, It's That Guy.

Now I should be the one to clear it up only because I've been saying "I should clear that up" for two year and invented Role Association so that I could say to people "What you've got there is Role Association. So fuck off."

So I think we should cut the individual work pages which are basically dumb and do such a massive overhaul of the example, you'll be thinking it was cut. Give me some time, let's say four hours, I will work on organising it by actor (I'll do it in a separate page) and if you don't like that I will personally get a flight, go all the way to the server in Arizona and burn the relevant section off the harddrive with a blowtorch.

edited 7th Jul '10 8:15:40 AM by SomeSortOfTroper

I couldn't find the old thread, sadly. :-( And I'm mainly talking about the use of the trope on works pages; I couldn't care less about the main article, although I appreciate that others might.

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"

Honestly, would it hurt anything for the Hey It's That [guy/voice/whatever] pages to not have examples, with a note specifying that examples should go on the works pages?

Have you completely ignored everything I've said in this thread? It's frankly insulting. I want the works pages to be stripped of this trope, completely.

edited 7th Jul '10 9:15:47 AM by Fighteer

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"

If we use "Hey Its That Guy" the way it is used almost everywhere else, including the book mentioned in the description, and the (now-defunct) website the book is a result of, where it first came into prominence, as soon as an actor becomes well-known by name, he ceases to be a Hey Its That Guy. The whole point of the thing was that you don't know his name, but you recognize the face from some other show: "Hey, the cab driver — look it's that guy who played the pirate with the fake eye in Pirates of the Caribbean! What's his name?"

What we have now is better suited to a Just for Fun page called something like Crossed Casting: "Forrest Gump and Hack execute the Quiznos voice-over guy."

edited 7th Jul '10 9:31:22 AM by Madrugada

...if you don’t love you’re dead, and if you do, they’ll kill you for it.

We already have that Just for Fun page. Have you completely ignored everything I've said in this thread? It's frankly insulting.

We can just destroy the wicks. No, in fact, we'll have to destory the wicks. That'll be what it has to come down to either way. There's basically no other option. The only thing is that unlike I Am Not Making This Up they'll exist in paragraphs and bullet points which make them a pain.

I've also discovered something, Only So Many Equity Members was merged with this page.

Sorry, I've probably been ninja'd because I've just spent the last 15 minutes speaking in Angrish. I'm sure it was well intentioned and I'm sure it was basically just completely the wrong move and made after just scanning the Hey Its That Guy front page without full comprehension.

That can be split off, I think I can spot the examples.

"Forrest Gump and Hack execute the Quiznos voice-over guy."

That's actually covered by Role Association, so the other trope needs to be separate.

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

Then all examples of Hey Its That Guy that are actually Role Association need to be changed. I'm not qualified to do this, as I couldn't tell you what 90% of the names I see bandied about have been in.

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"

Shall we make a draft page for completely redoing the examples and axing the majority?

BTW, I'm a chick.

I agree with Madrugada above, and as I remarked in the Image Pickin' thread (which resulted in an image that's frankly better than the trope page itself, IMO), it's almost a Zen thing. Once an actor becomes recognizable as That Guy, he ceases to be That Guy. For instance, Fred Thompson used to be That Guy, but is now just Fred Effing Thompson.

The more I ponder it, I think it's actually not a trope (except, perhaps, for the rare in-universe examples like Troy Mc Clure.) A Just for Fun thing, but not tropeable as such.

Jet-a-Reeno!

I say so.

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

^ Agreed. Actors are actors, and act in different things. Sooner or later, some make it big; some never do, but keep appearing in various roles. That seems like a description of the vocation, not a trope per se. I think the audience just should know that, if they watch something that's not brand new, it could have an actor in it that later became much more well known for something else.

What about if an actor that has made it big then appears in something small, with the rest of the cast composed of haven't-made-it-big-yet actors, so that seeing (or hearing) that one actor jars the audience's Willing Suspension of Disbelief...is there a trope in that?

edited 7th Jul '10 1:43:57 PM by MoCellMan

Searching for plausible mechanisms.

I think the current trope is a trope. But I don't think it's one that can be given examples per se because once they become an example and are listed they cease to be the trope. It should be knocked back to in universe examples (i.e. Troy Mc Clure), and while that won't be that many, that's not a bad one. The Real Life ones just change too fast to track them.

edited 7th Jul '10 1:56:17 PM by shimaspawn

Reality is that, which when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away. -Philip K. Dick

^^ I do believe that's Stunt Casting or WTH, Casting Agency?.

I think it's crowner time for knocking down Hey Its That Guy.

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"

While we're at it, is there a trope for seeing famous people in bit parts on an old show from before they became famous? For instance, watching Adam12 reruns, I see people like a young Lindsay Wagner playing a teenaged store clerk.

Jet-a-Reeno!

^ Pretty much, but I was thinking about when the actor really was very well suited to the role, and their fame was the only thing getting in the way of Willing Suspension of Disbelief.

edit: I guess that is covered in Stunt Casting...it just doesn't seem to be from the description.

edited 7th Jul '10 2:21:01 PM by MoCellMan

Searching for plausible mechanisms.

Well, you also have Typecasting, Adam Westing, and I Am Not Spock for variations.

To me, this actually seems like what Hey Its That Guy started out as, or has mutated into, one of the two. It's certainly how it gets used a lot on the wiki, often combined with the in-jokey way it's written.

edited 7th Jul '10 2:24:52 PM by Fighteer

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"

"While we're at it, is there a trope for seeing famous people in bit parts on an old show from before they became famous?"

Retroactive Recognition.