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:
openOnly I can XYZ!
What trope could this quote represent?
openOne Person is Literally Everything
Mostly a comedy sketch trope, maybe cartoons, but the idea is a single person who holds literally every job and/or position of authority in a small town. Need to see the sheriff? He's right there? The Mayor? Same guy. The mayor's opponent in the coming election? Same guy (wouldn't do to run unopposed). Need a Justice of the Peace? Guess who?
open"ignorance ball"?
I'm almost certain we have this one - vaguely recall stumbling upon it in the past - but for the life of me, I can't remember the name.
In short, there's a thing in the story that should be strange or implausible to the cast, but inexplicably no one actually notices or questions it.
Example: Alice is underage and lives alone, without a guardian. Somehow no one seems to be surprised by this, even if it's a country where such state of matters is illegal. It's neither addressed by the story nor discussed by the characters.
openClouds Indicate Doom
If the bright blue sky is covered in dark clouds, something tragic/bad will happen.
JOJO PART 5 SPOILERS AND YAKUZA: DEAD SOULS SPOILERS
The sunny sky was covered in dark clouds. Minutes later, Abbacchio would be murdered by the Boss.
On the day Haruka said goodbye to Kiryu and the rest of her family to go celebrate her old orphanage's anniversary, dark clouds covered the sky. Not long after, she would get kidnapped.
Edited by ReapeageddonopenUnable to save someone
In the original draft of JumpStart Adventures 3rd Grade: Mystery Mountain, the Big Bad gets an implied death scene where she's trapped in a room that's filling up with gas until she collapses. The Hero tries to help but fails to reach her.
open"Heroic -> Anti-Heroic -> Villainous" Gag
A joke that goes like this: A character performs a heroic action, then reveals it was for less-than heroic reasons, then the punchline makes his actions outright villainous.
e.g.
- Bob: My grandfather hid a Jewish family in his basement during the Holocaust.Alice: That's good!Bob: He made them pay rent.Alice: That's... less good.Bob: I wonder if we should tell them the war's over though.
-
- Bob: My grandfather died at Auschwitz.Alice: Oh, I'm so sorry. How?Bob: Well, he was drunk...Alice: Oh.Bob: ... and fell off the watchtower when he was on guard duty.
openStaged Murder Attempt Print Comic
Wednesday Comics: The Batman story revolves around Batman trying to solve the murder of a rich man named Franklin Glass. The Big Bad later has their henchman stage an assassination attempt on them to draw suspicion away from the Big Bad. The Big Bad reveals that the assassination attempt was a fraud after they're exposed.
open"I finally got to draw it!" Webcomic
I've seen it mostly in webcomics but I'm sure it crops up in other media.
The author plans a specific scene long in advance, but for whatever reason, they can't or won't create it until it actually shows up in the work. When it does, the author is elated that after all this time, they've finally drawn/written/filmed it.
-
Gunnerkrigg Court rant text:
"I've been waiting since Chapter 3 Page 23 to draw this."
https://www.gunnerkrigg.com/?p=214
-
Daughter of the Lilies rant text:
"this freaking page that i got to draw and ink after over a year of waiting
totally worth it"
https://www.daughterofthelilies.com/dotl/556
-
Wilde Life comment by the author:
"This is one of the scenes that I pre-drew in 2013 when I was working on the script. It's always exciting for me when I get to them for real!"
https://www.wildelifecomic.com/comic/199
Edited by Pumpkin_CakeopenA trope I’m wondering if it exists
Where a Role-Ending Misdemeanor is barley discussed (if at all) in the fandom(s) the person is involved in, despite the fact said most people would know who creator/voice actor/whoever else is involved in (or at least know his/her face/voice.)
openNo Title
Is there a trope for when a creator disagrees with something the sequel (written by other people) did to their original work? I know there's Creator Backlash, but that seems to refer to the creator outright disliking their work. The case I'm thinking of has the creator just disagreeing with something the sequel did, which was changing the nature of a relationship between two characters, without actually saying if they dislike it or not.
Or would that simply count as a Retcon?
Edited by Lancelot07openOne row of teeth
An artistic choice in which a character giving a toothy smile is drawn without a clear dividing line between their top and bottom rows of teeth, sorta making it look like they have a single line of teeth.
openScare Disguise Backfire
Someone's trying to scare others at a slumber party or overnight event by using a disguise. It works at first, but they either trip, immediately found out by someone else, get scared themselves by something else, or get the snot beaten out of them, all leading up to victim's/victims realizing it was a prank much to their shock. Cue scoldings.
Speaking of which, I wonder if there's ever been a subversion (besides fanfics). That is, in which it LOOKS like they'll be defeated or found out, only for the victim(s) to think that the creature is really unstoppable and back away in a corner. Cue the culprit revealing themselves and laughing at their face(s).
openPartial Retcon/Some choices don't matter? Videogame
Is there a trope where, in a "choice based" game, a later entry in the series goes against some of the players choices, but not others. A broad example would be choosing to kill off a character in the first game only to see them alive and well in the second game, either with a flimsy excuse as to how they survived or no mention of their supposed death whatsoever. If a player did not kill off this character, then there is no problem, but if they did, the sequel invalidates that player's choice.
I'm not sure if we have a specific trope for this circumstance, or if it's just a hodgepodge of tropes working together.
openAmbiguous Time Span
We have Extremely Short Timespan when a story takes place over a short period of time and Generational Saga for when it takes place over a long period of time, but I'm seeking a trope for when it is unclear how much time passes in a story.
I've found that this is extremely common in video games which have things like a Fast-Forward Mechanic. You might do one mission of the main quest, then go off and do side quests for an in-game month, but when you pick up the next mission of the main quest, it's treated as if no (or very little) time has passed since the previous quest. Red Dead Redemption 2 is a prime example, where it explicitly begins in May 1899 and the main story (not counting the epilogue) seems to take place over 1-2 months max, though hundreds of days can pass as you play. The Elder Scrolls series is similar, with the official timeline of the series having most of the games take place over the course of about a year, but depending on how quickly/slowly you progress, it can take much less or more time than that.
Differs from Ambiguous Time Period where the setting's time period is unclear, often with anachronisms. For this trope, it would be the span of time that has passed which is unclear.
TIA!
openOC/Canon pairings in fanfic
Do we have a trope for the thing where people pair their OC (not strictly necessarily a self-insert) with a canon character? Relationship Sue exists, of course, but do we have a more neutral trope for the concept itself without the flamebaity "this story sucks you horrible Mary Sue person" judgement aspect?
openA song that celebrates a character’s return Music
I am trying to find a trope that fits the song “Beautiful Creatures” from the movie Rio 2 (a song that celebrates Jewel finding her tribe again after being separated from them due to illegal loggers). So I want to ask this is there a trope about about a type of song that celebrates a character’s return after being gone for so long?
Edited by Pokemon439openNot real jewels
Is there a trope for when an item is thought to be valuable only for it to turn out to be worthless?
For example, a diamond-encrusted belt buckle is revealed to be covered in plastic diamonds and not real ones.
Deceased/missing characters conveniently happened to provide hints about what happened on random diary-like notes they left around. Most commonly shows up in video games, especially horror ones.