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.
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openGuts Expy TLP
I remember seeing a trope draft about expies of Guts incubating in the TLP, but I can't seem to find it. Its title was something like "Guts Copy" or "Black Swordsman Archetype". Does anyone know where it is?
openGovernment Censored Textbook
The government makes textbooks that censor events going against their ideals.
openDropping a mechanic for the next game Videogame
Is there a trope regarding criticism towards getting rid of a mechanic that was there in a previous game? I ask this due to the lack of evolution events in New Pokémon Snap. The closest I can think of is They Changed It, Now It Sucks!, but it's not like they changed anything. It just wasn't implemented in any way.
openEvery chapter ends on a cliffhanger Literature
Is there a trope for this? Goosebumps is probably the Trope Codifier, as other than the first few books almost every chapter of every book ends this way (even if it's the first chapter there's often something along the lines of "Everything seemed ok now, but little did we know what lay in store for us.") I guess this could happen in other media but I can't think of any examples offhand.
Edited by BootlebatopenBlaming tears on environment
I can't find this on the Tear Tropes page. Someone tries to blame their tears on something other than their emotional state. It's cold, smoke got into my eyes, it's dusty in here, I'm sick, my makeup is running, etc.
- In the Pokemon song "I Keep My Home in My Heart" Misty asks if Brock has been crying. At first Brock tries to blame the cold.
- In A Christmas Carol Scrooge tries to claim that a tear on his cheek is just a pimple.
openVindicated By The Enemy
Bob believes in a particular ideology during a time of conflict. He realizes the people best exemplifying that ideology are the enemy rather than him.
i.e. Bob is A Nazi by Any Other Name believing in the survival of the fittest, the strong ruling the weak, A Real Man Is a Killer, his country's fated destiny as ruler, etc. His outpost is attacked by a single Super-Soldier who slaughters Bob's soldiers by the dozen with perfect efficiency, killing without seeming to feel the least bit of discomfort from it. Bob realizes that the super soldier is in fact embodying Bob's ideals better than Bob ever could and has something of a mental breakdown over being proven wrong so decisively.
openA few things
- A person who is disgusted by sex in general.
- A science base that's more like a small city, complete with gaming collections, furniture departments, clothing departments, etc, and it's HUGE. It's also in the arctic, but I don't think Eerie Arctic Research Station fits, since it's ridiculously comfy, all things considered.
openAll-Knowing Being Assures Unlikely Event Literature
An omniscient/all-knowing being (does not have to be omnipotent or all-powerful) saying or doing exactly the right thing to the right character at exactly the right time, leading to what would otherwise be a one in a million/billion/trillion chance event. but because all-knowing beings are all knowing, this was all calculated in advance and the low-chance event was practically assured.
Edited by hbms432openBattered messenger
When a person bursts into the room dying or wounded to announce that a danger is approaching…
openPhone Bad, Book Good
Old people claiming phones are bad/addictive/something else that's bad while you should read books.
resolved Must I do everything myself?
Do we have a trope for when a villain, on finding that their minion(s) failed miserably at some form of task, is forced to complete it personally, often after uttering something very similar to the phrase above?
Edited by Azorius24openLost on the Audience
Do we have a trope for when the intention of a show is to portray an idea or bit of behavior as bad, and the audience misses that intention and sees the episode/storyline in question as an example of the bad behavior/idea? This may venture into Your Mileage May Vary territory.
An example is the episode "The Bad Old Days" from the old Dick Van Dyck Show. The plot of the episode centers around Rob Petrie's feeling neglected, which prompts Buddy Sorrell to launch into a rant about how things were in "the old days." Rob later has a dream which is a comically dour caricature of life in the 1890's, with Rob as a humorless patrician patriarch and his wife Laura as an exhausted drudge. Many have interpreted Rob's dream as "bizarrely misogynistic" when that misogynism is actually the point. The dream is meant to call out the fact that the reality (or caricature thereof) depicted in Rob's dream isn't a good thing. The title of the episode actually points this out. Rob wakes up and no longer feels he has it so bad in the Modern Age.
Another example is the 2016 film Passengers which at least one reviewer cited as misogynistic because of the actions of Chris Pratt's character Jim Preston. While the film gives the audience Preston's point of view, it never says his actions are meant to be viewed as acceptable. Therein lies another factor: audiences often seem to think presenting understandable motives for a characters actions is meant to excuse those actions, and/or that if a characters actions aren't explicitly condemned then they are condoned.
openNot sure what nation trope to apply Literature
Hi everyone I’m undergoing the daunting task of making a page for my favorite book series, the Castle Federation series, and I need some help.
The main antagonistic force in these books is the Terran Commonwealth. The nation as a whole has a tendency to think all humans needed to be unified under them in anyway possible, including war and occupation (even if their own planets) But they aren’t openly cacklingly evil, some of the people who are in this nation are actually pretty good people, they have elections and most of the older planets seem to be very happy to be in the Commonwealth. It’s just the whole unify by force thing that makes them antagonistic the M Cs home star nation.
(They did look to be turning into Rome IN SPACE! but only on literally the last page of the series)
would they still be The Empire in this context or am I missing a better trope to slap on them?
openTime travel mishap
A time machine messes up what it’s supposed to do, either accidentally traveling to the wrong time or traveling completely by accident.
openOnly young people can be queer
The idea that there are no LBTQ+ people in older generations.
Edited by MysteriumopenLower than the Lowest
I was watching Phelous's bootleg zones series tonight, and one of the episodes had a skit where the characters (the Amicable Herculean figures) were trying to get into an event, but were rejected for being too ugly. When they realized even Baltard, who everyone considers to be "the biggest loser on planet Ferror" got in when they couldn't, they realized how pathetic they were and sought drastic measures to get in.
Basically, the trope I'm hunting is the one where a character realizes that even the character everyone else hates is being treated better than them, to emphasize how low on the ladder they actually are.
openCopy is as good as the original
Is there such a trope for "a copy is as good as the original if you can't get it"?
I know that we've got Doppelgänger Replacement Love Interest for this:
- In a Period Piece set in The '80s, Bob likes Madonna, but she's rich and famous so she wouldn't go out with him, but dates Identical Stranger Sabrina instead, although Sabrina is far nicer than Madonna.
But is there a trope for this:
- Alice wants to hire Selena Gomez but can't get her, so gets Carly, an impersonator for her cousin Carol's birthday party.
- Bob needs to promote his casino in Las Vegas, however, he wants Taylor Swift, but she's unavailable, so he gets a celebrity impersonator who's that much of an Identical Stranger.
- The Flash (2014): Barry Allen can't get Killer Frost to help in a battle as she's incapacitated, so gets a metahuman who looks almost similar and with Combo Platter Powers to fill in for her as they take on the Villain of the Week.
Is there a trope other than Identical Stranger for "a lookalike of a person is as good as the original"?
openCouncil of Evil
Looking for a trope that covers a sort of evil gathering. It is not a standard council but more of that several unrelated villains gather after being summoned by someone or something. They might or might not be allies and what happens at the gathering is a mystery, however even if they are enemies they now enter an armistice while the gathering is taking place.
Any trope for this?
Is there a trope for this? Like, some kids, teens, and even 20-somethings in modern times seem to view things like The '70s as basically equivalent to Ancient Egypt (i.e so long ago it doesn't really matter to anyone but historians and the like), even though it was only 40-50 years ago and people born then are still alive today.
Edited by Bootlebat