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:
openstilts
openHero's walk?
What's the best trope for the opposite of Perp Walk or Walk of Shame, where The Hero is paraded before a crowd of cheering admirers?
openFirst encounter with bad guy to prove not strong enough! Videogame
This happens a lot in video games, but I've also seen it in movies. Essentially whenever the protagonist meets up with the big bad guy in the beginning of the work, it is a horrible defeat to show how much growth the protagonist needs to succeed.
A few examples: Megaman X, the first stage you encounter the villain and he beats you up.
Lord of the Rings: Gandalf's first encounter with Saruman, he gets beat up to prove that he is not yet strong enough.
Many martial arts movies have this sort of thing. Kung-Pow, for example- chosen one meets up with Betty and loses badly in the first half of the movie.
Is there a trope for this?
openCompete the task under fire
Is there a trope for when someone needs to get a task done, say getting a command put into a computer while there is a gun fight going on around them.
openChild's first encounter with death?
A specific type of Very Special Episode where a young person encounters death for the first time (a member of the extended family/a beloved pet/an injured animal they had tried and nursed back to health, etc) and does not understand it, so it falls to the adults to teach them that death is a part of life.
openYMMV trope involving finding annoying characters worse than evil ones?
Like, the example I can think of in my head is that Umbridge and the Dursleys are more hated than Voldemort in Harry Potter.
openNot everyone can use magic
Do we have a trope for when only a select amount of individuals in a fantasy setting can use magical powers? (Like how not everyone in Avatar: The Last Airbender can bend elements, or how Ian in Onward could use magic but his brother Barley couldn't.)
openWorld Of Assholes
I've seen this a lot in isekai media: a world where just about the entire population exists almost solely to humiliate and belittle (or worse) the protagonist like a collective of Jerk Jocks, Alpha Bitches and the Freelance Shame Squad, making it much easier to cheer when horrible things happen to them (not even necessarily at the protagonist's hands).
Like a worse version of All of the Other Reindeer, because here there's no real reason for them to be so gratuitously cruel.
openVague settings?
I asked this before but I was watching Schitt's Creek and it just has a very vague sense of place. But the sense of place is symbolic of perhaps small-town Ontario? Very hard to say.
Or Brockmire's season one location of Morristown is the Rust Belt.
Green Acres might have also been the same instance.
Maybe Parks and Recreation and Pawnee since it isn't explained where it is in Indiana (which is a pretty big state)
I was going to say Family Guy and Quohag but someone said it's pretty easy to identify Quahog as Providence.
So the town is symbolic of the kind of place you'd see in a region and it's definitely well-researched from traits of a certain region, but it never pinpoints the exact place.
openTells completely opposite opinions
There's this character who can convincingly tell that god exists and has a plan for everyone to one perdon in one scene and tells that there's neither god nor a plan to another character in anothef scene.
openTwin child Film
When a pair of characters that are parent (or other ancestor) and adult child and are played by the same actor, making the child basically the identical twin of the parent. It can either be a situation where the parent and child are shown at different points in time and so are at equivalent ages, or they're contemporaries and the parent character is aged using makeup.
The two examples that I can think of most readily are from two Brian De Palma films - the Geneviève Bujold characters in "Obsession", and the John Lithgow characters in "Raising Cain". "Forest Gump" also has this, over several generations. I'm sure there are other examples.
Anyway, is this in TVT and if so, what's it called?
openSignificant Same Name
Two characters have the same (first / given) name, and it has some plot significance.
The example on my mind is: Alice likes her currently favorite romance novel because that novel's protagonist is also called Alice.
openSome kind of missing the point Live Action TV
Early on in "Mr. Monk and the Girl Who Cried Wolf", Monk helps Benji set up a formation of dominoes. Once the dominoes are all set, it's time for the most fun part of all: putting them away one by one. Fortunately for Benji, his mom slamming door causes the first domino to fall on the next one and set off the chain reaction.
I think this is some kind of Completely Missing The Point, except that's been split off to two sub-tropes, neither of which quite fits this thing with the dominoes (though Monk does provide several examples of both, and to a lesser extent the other regulars).
What is this trope of setting up something elaborate to have it fall over or set it on fire or in some other way disturb it, but a character thinks the payoff is neatly putting it away?
Edited by AlonsodelArteopenTemporary Childish Reversion
Bob is a grown man who meets an authority figure (Stern Teacher, Beloved Smother, etc.) from his childhood/adolescence/period of time when he was a clear subordinate, and basically reverts to that state for the duration of the conversation with them (or otherwise acts like his mind has reverted in the presence of such an authority figure).
Can be played for Cringe Comedy or drama.
- In The Light Fantastic, Rincewind gets yelled at by University professors and starts blubbering like a university student ("please sir, it's me, Rincewind sir") to the embarrassment of the other people around him.
- In Life Of Brian, the graffiti scene plays out like a Latin teacher teaching a lesson to a student, except the student and the teacher are around the same age.
- SCP Foundation: One SCP functions as a Deal with the Devil. A Foundation lawyer who was sent to make a contract with it reported seeing his old law teacher and clearly came out traumatized by the experience.
openMascot is different in other countries?
Like how some Kellogg's cereal mascots are different in other countries (I think the Cookie Crisps mascot is this, like he's a wolf in the US but they still use the dog one in some other countries like the Philippines) or the recent thing going on with Sesame Street having different Big Birds internationally
openPerson A: 1, Person B: 0
Do we have a trope for this sort of scenario:
Person A gets some kind of victory over Person B.
Then the narration (or Person A themselves) says:
Person A: 1, Person B: 0
openAnti-fantasy genre Literature
I would like to know if there is a trope or genre covering the dismissal of fantasy tropes. As an example say there are two sides to a narrative, the “chosen one” who is guided by prophecy to lead his people against another country, and on the other side a country whose philosophy does not follow a fantasy model. The story progresses but in the end the “Chosen one” and his people fail because their actions were guided by devotion to outdated directions. Prophecies are nonsense as realistically you can’t predict the future. I discovered rational fic but this doesn’t quite fit as it involves allowing the reader to follow step by step to reach a conclusion. I also don’t believe such a thing as an author polemic is quite right. The story isn’t out to mock belief, it’s just that the motivation of one side has no merit. The rational side bears no malice towards the other they’re just not prone to flights of fancy. I’d like to read such stories but am not aware of any examples. I realise such a genre would go against the needs of a traditional narrative structure, or risk alienating potential readers.
openNew Exposition Just In Time Literature
When we get new information that is crucial to the plot right before the rising action or climax. Best example I can think of is how Harry Potter never hears the words "horcrux" or "hallow" until the final two books of the whole series. We knew some hints about them but they were not outlined in exposition until they became relevant.
openExaggerated Ship Tease
Do we have a trope for Ship Tease taken to the extreme, but not quite Official Couple? I was thinking of taking it to the Launch Pad, but I feel like I’ve seen something like that before.
openPre Ds advanced wars interface screw? Videogame
I don't think it fits in trope finder, but are Fog of War with The All-Seeing A.I. are considered Interface Screw
Edited by Baolen2445