The TVTropes Trope Finder is where you can come to ask questions like "Do we have this one?" and "What's the trope about...?" Trying to rediscover a long lost show or other medium but need a little help? Head to Media Finder and try your luck there. Want to propose a new trope? You should be over at You Know, That Thing Where.
Find a Trope:
open"Old People Reminisce" Plot Print Comic
Is there a trope for a story built around a Framing Device of a group of decadent and/or disfunctional characters getting together (sometimes against their will), with the plot being told through flashbacks to their younger, more active days?
openComic-Book Trope? Print Comic
Is there such a trope for when works are re-issued for nostalgia reasons, even though the content is obviously an Unintentional Period Piece?
I'm basing this on a What Could Have Been for when Motor Trend planned to re-issue the November 1996-2003 issues as a collector's item for fans, with no edits to the original (the idea was nixed).
It's not a comic book, but is there a trope for re-releasing a comic-book or other print medium with no changes ?
openQuick to pick sides Print Comic
A character is thrown into a strange scenario, wherein two groups are fighting. He immediately sides with one of them, despite knowing nothing about the conflict (usually because Beauty Equals Goodness). He's usually right, but if not, it can be a Tomato Surprise.
For instance, our heroes land on an alien planet and see a Green-Skinned Space Babe. They look at her for about three seconds, then Big Creepy-Crawlies show up, and they're already fighting by her side - though she might be the evil one in the first place...
Edited by Mac_RopenDreamed the solution but it was gibberish Print Comic
This has been told verbally (or printed in magazines) as a joke, and as a Dave Berg "The Lighter Side" comic in MAD Magazine. I would give a cosmic gold brick to learn what was the original source for this.
Someone has been struggling with a problem at work and is still thinking about it while going to sleep. A few hours later, Eureka! they wake up with the perfect answer. It's so profound it'll solve everything! They write it down so they won't forget.
So then they get up in the morning and look at the note and it says "five dollar gardener." (Or in the Dave Berg cartoon, it was complete gibberish).
Edited by CaptEquinoxopen"Time travel makes my head hurt!" Print Comic
Do we have a trope for when a character complains that the details of time travel are complicated to keep track of?
resolved "Everyone is super easy to kill in the future" Print Comic
Is there a trope for a scene, in the beginning of the story, where the characters are desperately trying to get to a time machine, and the villains start killing them, one by one, despite the fact that those characters are extremely powerful (or have Plot Armor) in regular continuity? And then, the one survivor manages to reach the time machine to go back into the present and Set Right What Once Went Wrong?
resolved Klingon Romance Print Comic
A society is structured so that if a guy kills someone, the victim's fiancèe/wife is now bethroded to the killer.
openTwo visual anger tropes Print Comic
Are there tropes for either of these scenarios:
1 - A character gets angry, or threatens to start a fight so he pulls one of his sleeves up while balling his fist (either to show his muscles, or to avoid getting blood on his shirt). Also done by cartoon animals that don't even wear clothes.
2 - A little girl / young woman gets angry, so she balls her fists and moves them perpendicular to her arms, keeping them straight down - this shows she's angry, but still cute.
resolved Don't use the character's name! Print Comic
I've been reading some superhero comics paperback collections, and I've noticed that on supplementary material, the creators avoid using the names of characters published by a different company - for instance, in the Batman: Hush deluxe edition, Jim Lee mentions he wanted Nightwing to jump around like "a certain spider-theme hero", instead of saying Spider-Man.
I dunno if that's just a joke, or if they're not allowed (either legally or by editorial mandate) to mention the competition... is there a trope for that?
openUntitled Print Comic
So here's the situation; the protagonist wakes up in the morning and finds out that a bounty hunter is after his superhero alter ego and is minutes away from finding his apartment. He does so by following old heat signatures. So the protagonist, who knows who that bounty hunter is cause he's read his file, immediately comes up with a plan to cover his identity; he jumps off the window to get a drop on the hunter (the window is almost on top of a skyscraper, so nobody on ground level would notice when it broke), and then he follows the same path he took the previous day to cover his old trail, and jump out of his apartment again, while telling the AI assistant to pretend she didn't know who the masked guy is. All to disassociate his heroic alter with his real identity.
I was thinking Indy Ploy, but the whole thing seems too complicated for that. So is it that or Xanatos Speed Chess?
Edited by LermisopenStockCharacter transition Print Comic
We've god Genre Refugee, where a stock character from one genre shows up in the wrong genre, but is there a trope for when a Stock Character becomes a different type of stock character?
openSome type of homage? Print Comic
So the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles were originally created as a parody of Daredevil (same origin stories, similar villains and settings etc). What exactly trope is that? Spiritual Successor? Homage? Shout-Out?
openGhost of the Living Print Comic
We have Undercover When Alone, for when a character acts like someone else even when nobody's around because it wasn't revealed (or decided) that he's actually The Mole. But, what about when we see a character's ghost (or some other afterlife equivalent) when afterwards, it's revealed that the character faked his death, or whatever? Is there a trope for that?
Edited by PisthetairosopenHome Base Cross Section Print Comic
Is there a trope for when a comic book shows a Cross-Section map of the heroes' Home Base, as a sort of "sneak peek" for the readers? Usually, the map makes no sense since artists are making the base up as they go, and they need to fill space with stuff like "supply room" and "bunker".
openSelf-Deception Print Comic
After acting X for a while, Bob is revealed to be Y.
But, then, why did we, the readers, see Bob being X even when he was alone? Or why did he keep the pretense up with someone else in on the con? Or, even worse, did his thought bubbles indicate he was X? Was he lying to himself?
I've seen that happen a lot in comic book retcons, when a character is later revealed to have been evil or savvy all along, contradicting previous thought bubbles. But it also happens in self-contained stories, especially in ones featuring a Gambit Pileup.
openSeen in the same room with your alter-ego Print Comic
I'm pretty sure this is a common way to protect a secret identity (by faking a simultaneous appearance of a character and that secret identity), but I'm not sure that there's a trope for it.
Is there a trope for when a a bad guy is actually a hero in disguise or Fake Defector, who uses his influence among bad guys to keep them performing Innefectual Villainy, but never Becomes The Mask?