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.
This sounds like a threesome of Too Rare To Trope, People Sit On Chairs, and shoehorning.
Edited by sailing101 Ye who would Tope Meaninglessness. Ye who ignore All We Have. I say to you You Shall Not Pass!
Sounds like one for the Forgotten Tropes list, actually. It is in fact a thing, just a very old and mostly forgotten thing.
Hat Shop includes Tinfoil Hat. I don't see why a paragraph about this couldn't be included there too. Edit to Clarify: A paragraph added to hat shop, not tinfoil hat. Rereading my post made it apparent that it was ambiguous what I meant.
Edited by Daefaroth This signature says something else when you aren't looking at it.
My problm with those answers is that according to the examples given, this trope NEVER existed. in The Extraction of the Stone of Madness, the one wearing the funnel is not mad, he is a midevil brain surgeon. A common depiction of the tin man has him with a funnel on his head, and he's not mad, just heartless. My examination leads to the conclusion that the trope as is described does not nor ever has existed.
Edited by sailing101 Ye who would Tope Meaninglessness. Ye who ignore All We Have. I say to you You Shall Not Pass!
^ You should tell Wikipedia, someone appears to have pulled the wool over their eyes.
Edited by Daefaroth This signature says something else when you aren't looking at it.
^ But does that make it a trope? There are no depictions of this in Media.
Ye who would Tope Meaninglessness. Ye who ignore All We Have. I say to you You Shall Not Pass!
Beg your pardon, Sailing, People Sit On Chairs and Too Rare To Trope both specifically mention cases like this in their text.
PSOC specifically doesn't convey any meaning (which as the OP points out, it does), and TRTT specifies it doesn't apply to cases when a trope is only in a very specific segment of media (even if the trope would only be recognisable to those familiar with it). Finding obscure and dead tropes is what this wiki's meant to live for.
Shoehorning only applies to an existing trope (you can't shoehorn examples into a page that doesn't exist, surely?).
Edited by Bisected8 TV Tropes's No. 1 bread themed lesbian. she/her, fae/faer
^But you can shoehorn a trope with no examples onto the wiki, which is what the TLP aims to prevent. You can also shoehorn meaning onto something meaningless, which as I stated earlier, the examples given don't align to what the OP wants the trope to be.
Edited by sailing101 Ye who would Tope Meaninglessness. Ye who ignore All We Have. I say to you You Shall Not Pass!
^^^ Modern media are only one part of what the site covers. Paintings and illustrations are a medium. Books are a medium. Folktales are a medium. Tapestries are a medium. Old political cartoons are a medium. Its a forgotten trope, but a trope nonetheless. The fact that you haven't heard of it only serves to demonstrate that it's been forgotten.
Edited by Scorpion451
^And for the third time, the trope as is described does not exist as per his own 'evidence.'
Ye who would Tope Meaninglessness. Ye who ignore All We Have. I say to you You Shall Not Pass!
^ Are you serious or just trolling? This is a thing. Look it up.
I think "funnel hat as a symbol of madness" is mainly used in France — I've seen it in the comics of Gotlib, as well as in the aforementioned The Twelve Tasks of Asterix. In Italy (where I'm from) we often use spaghetti drainers as "hats of madness". I imagine this imagery is subjected to regional variations.
^^ What I am saying is that Retmma's first example does not align with their description of the trope. The man wearing the funnel in that painting is the doctor, not the madman. The tin man of the wizard of oz is commonly depicted with a funnel on his head, and he's not mad. You can keep saying it's a thing, but if no accurate examples are forthcoming, then I have to say this is not a trope. We've got one example outnumbered by two aversions. This is less than a Dead Unicorn Trope.
Allow me to extend an olive branch here. This suffers from an overly narrow definition. The proper trope would be a madman wearing any item from a wide array of strange implements as headgear. Pots, birdcages, gesha wigs (and that's just tf2). If there's a trope here, it's far broader than just funnels.
Ye who would Tope Meaninglessness. Ye who ignore All We Have. I say to you You Shall Not Pass!
^ I think you've got it turned about, and are seeing the trope as too narrow in a different way. The trope isn't "mad characters wear silly headgear." As pointed out in Daefaroth's links, it's actually "The inverted funnel is a symbol of madness." It doesn't have to be on the madman's head, just present as a visual indicator that says "insanity here."
(Daefaroth's quote also makes the argument that Bosch is implying that the doctor is more insane than his patient, so the madman might be wearing the funnel after all.)
^Must I quote directly? " someone wearing or playing with small kitchen funnels to show he is mad..."
Also, if one must 'make the argument,' that's quite the obvious shoehorn.
Edited by sailing101 Ye who would Tope Meaninglessness. Ye who ignore All We Have. I say to you You Shall Not Pass!
Yes, this is clearly a good example of the Forgotten Trope. We probably don't have enough examples to justify a trope page, but it can be listed on the Forgotten Trope page (probably in the medieval section).
Speaking words of fandom: let it squee, let it squee.
Do we have a trope for someone wearing or playing with small kitchen funnels to show he is mad? This is almost a forgotten trope (see The Extraction of the Stone of Madness
) but it shows up in old cartoons like The Twelve Tasks of Asterix.