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opentrope for songs with lyrics that contrast with the music itself? Music
"knife" and "two weeks" by grizzly bear are big examples of this although they're about lying straight to peoples' faces and the breakdown of a relationship respectively they still sound "romantic"
openScary geography
Is there a trope for when geographical features deliberately look scary (such as an island looking like a bone or skull)?
openYou Thought They Disapproved For X, But Y IS The Issue
There is a gay couple and one of them is ashamed to present their family to the other one. A thinks it's because they're gay, but it's actually for another reason (race, family feud etc.)
openOpposite Character/Actor
Something like a supertrope to Mean Character, Nice Actor and its inverse, where an in-universe character played by an actor are complete opposites though not on a morality scale. e.g. Alice is The Lad-ette best known for voice-acting a Shrinking Violet, Bob has made several fortunes portraying characters in Perpetual Poverty, Charlie has several degrees in scientific fields but plays Dumb Muscle, etc.
Darths And Droids has Jim, a geophysicist with a tendency to play Idiot Hero characters, and Pete, a ruthless Rules Lawyer in-game and a subversion of Amoral Attorney in reality.
openThought the wrong person was on the phone
A person picks up the phone, makes a mistaken assumption about who the caller is, and says something embarrassing before realizing their mistake. For example, a person gets a call that they think is from their archenemy and screams "FUCK YOU!" before realizing it's their boss. A Discredited Trope thanks to Caller ID.
open"Nice" person who's only mentioned positively is actually evil
Alice often talks about her late father fondly, but when Bob brings him back to life Alice freaks out because as it turns out, Alice was just choosing to remember him positively and he's actually a massive jerk.
openIncreasingly painful attack
Encountered this in some video games, a possibly homing beam attack that deals more damage the longer the target is exposed to it.
openMutually Guilty
Two characters independently doing something illegal / immoral catch each other at it. Awkwardness ensues in that they can't berate the other as would normally happen if only one of them was guilty (although sometimes one does start chewing out the other before their hypocrisy is revealed).
For example:
- Alice goes to a speakeasy during Prohibition, telling her husband Bob she's going to visit a friend. Once there, she runs into Bob, who is just as mortified to see his wife as she is to see him there.
- Alice goes cruising singles bars despite being married to Bob. One day she sees Bob sitting at a table, clearly there to enjoy himself as well, and sits down at his table. She starts giving him a tongue-lashing for his infidelity, when the waiter drops by saying "Here's your usual, Bob. And yours, Alice." Bob suddenly looks a lot less guilty as Alice looks flustered.
openUsing a tape recorder for a decoy?
The character closes in on someone making noise, maybe even saying things like "he's right on top of me!"
They find the hiding person and it turns out it's just a radio, or a tape recorder, or something like that.
Seen It a Million Times, but can't seem to find it.
Edited by Mimic1990openNo Title
A character who everyone thinks is just the love interest of the hero is captured, so as to lure him into a trap. While being tormented by her kidnappers, she makes what they think is an ineffectual death threat. Unbeknownst to them, and the audience, she's taken a level in badass, and by the end of the story she takes them both down herself, making good on her threat.
Is this foreshadowing? A subversion of ineffectual death threat? Cassandra truth? Or soemthing else?
openSoul literally leaves body
Do we have a trope for someone's soul/consciousness literally leaving their body? Like, someone dies and their ghost separates out of their body?
openmagic leaking in
do we have a trope for when magic/monsters/weirdness etc in our world is explaned as being basically, leaks into our reailty? like there is a realm of magic, or a sleeping eldrtich god or something, and only a few monsters, or tiny leaks of magic can make it into our world
openCharacter Counterparts Gag
A parody/joke that is sometimes seen in series or movies is when there are what appears to be canon "bootlegged" versions of our main characters.
This joke is made in the Shawn of the Dead movie, where the main characters come across the bootleg counterparts. Paranatural also does this joke a few times with minor characters that resemble the main ones.
openWoobie Of The Week
With shows like Say Yes to the Dress where almost every character has had something horrible happen to them and a sob story.
openNaively Evil
A character who plans to do evil, but in an extremely uninformed way (he knows it's evil, so not Obliviously Evil, and it's not self-harming evil for evil's sake as with Stupid Evil).
For instance, Bob is told about insurance companies giving money when you suffer an accident. He promptly tries to fake an accident that anyone can tell was self-inflicted, and yet reacts as though he was the first person in the history of mankind to think up insurance fraud.
openPure of Heart, Pure of Mind
Being pure of heart also comes with being an airhead or a Cloudcuckoolander.
Edited by CurtisMarauderopenCriminal Love Interest
I've seen this formula in a few shows now and wonder if this has a trope in particular.
Bob is introduced as a love interest or established romantic partner of Alice. Bob gets some screentime and character interactions to lure the viewer in. A good chunk of time later, a crime happens or a conspiracy is about to be revealed and Bob and Alice work together to find the culprit or the mole. At the end of the investigation it turns out that it was Bob all along. Foreshadowing is optional and usually subtle.
The reveal leaves Alice betrayed on two levels, making this a traumatic event or emotional turning point for her.
Bob often doesn't show up again, but can also return as a villain or rarely do a heel-face turn
(It is important that the crime in question has been comitted after Bobs introduction to the viewer or has continued into that timeframe, otherwise that would be more of a dark backstory deal)
Edited by remem95
What's the trope for when the villain is on a monitor taunting the hero and they get mad enough to shoot, smash etc the monitor (which isn't always a bad idea, as sometimes the villain can see through the monitors, and breaking one puts one of his "eyes" out.)?