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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openNatural Continuity Lapse
Unlike Revealing Continuity Lapse, where a continuity error is explained with a fantastic and surreal meaning, a continuity error is explained with a more natural, and normal reason.
- Battle for BFDI: In "SOS: (Save Our Show)", the Announcer Speaker Box calls out how Gelatin has never been eliminated in BFDI history, but later in BFDIA's continuation, "Taste the Sweetness", Gelatin actually does get eliminated, so before his departure, he asks for the Puffball Speaker Box to keep his elimination a secret from the Announcer, as he finds him scary.
- SpongeBob SquarePants, In "Krusty Love", Mr. Krabs falls in love with Mrs. Puff and learns she's single despite her prefix.
- Mr. Krabs: Then what happened to Mr. Puff?
(cut to a live-action shot of a hand turning on a blowfish lamp)
SpongeBob: She doesn't like to talk about it.
- In Bob's Burgers, when Tammy first debuted in "Bad Tina," her hair was brown, but in later episodes, her hair is blonde. This is then explained in "Sit Me Baby One More Time" that it reveals that she dyes her hair and that blonde isn't her natural color. As she had to wear a purple headband to hide her "dirty roots" in that episode.
resolved Non-Descript City-World
Is there a trope on the phenomenon where the entirety or most of a story takes place within a generic city landscape that is either unnamed or has a very generic name?
openWisecracker can't speak
A character who snarks a lot or makes jokes can't speak for an episode.
openSupernatural Retribution Protection
A character is protected from direct harm on their life by something supernatural.
- In Wulfrik, the simple solution of killing the World's Best Warrior with magic won't work because his curse (to Walk the Earth looking for challenging fights, be tortured for eternity by demons if he loses) will then transfer to the killer, who prefer to be tortured to death than risk that.
- In Baskets Of Guts, the lich doesn't kill Anna because he knows that nature spirits Come Back Strong when killed, and get stronger with every defeat (as in needing armies to put down) until their killer is finally dead.
open"Dude, Not Funny" as an Audience Reaction Trope.
When a joke is meant to elicit laughter, but at least a few other people in Real Life find it offensive. It's just like the in-universe trope but as a YMMV trope.
openOddly modern worldview
Do we have a trope for instances where a character in a distant past that has wildly different values expresses oddly tolerant and progressive views on things like sexuality, gender, or race? Think Captain America being plucked out of the 1940's and apparently being totally cool with gay people and having not a hint of racism or sexism about him. Or a protagonist in the 19th century who the work takes great pains to show is a total racial egalitarian.
I figure it might be YMMV, but I can't quite find this.
openCasual Alien Intermingling
Im trying to find a trope that captures a certain specific slice of extraterrestrial scifi. The type of scifi where alien intermixing is so common that the clerk at the convenience store is as likely to be a Xu'ruto with 3 heads as they are to be a human
Examples of what is this trope Star Wars Star Trek The Ascent Mass Effect Futurama High on Life
Examples that are not this trope: Stellaris/Twilight Imperium - these setting have many alien races but they for the most part keep to themselves and their own worlds
Space Invaders/Destroy All Humans/Mars Attacks: The most common type of alien media I see, these aliens are normally just atogonists
Ive been able to use the trope pages of the media I listed to find more examples but I haven't found a single specific trope that links them
Tropes like many many races, galactic civilization, and even space opera are similar but they arent specific to the type of casual alien intermingling Im talking about.
Im really passionate about this genre (I even tried to start a blog about it at one point) and tvtropes has been the only really helpful site in finding more. If this trope doesnt exist I really think it should.
openI can't think of that many examples for this, but...
A character is given a new name by a different culture, either because they're directly joining that culture or as a show of gratitude, renown, becoming The Dreaded, etc.. See Rusty being renamed to Firepaw in Warriors for an example of the first type. Might also include a person given themselves a new cultural name, such as the real life Muhammad Ali.
I was originally trying to find whether any historical examples of this existed, so real-life terminology would also be helpful.
openThis feels trope-y, but I can't place it
So, there's a scene in a movie I was watching where a character (a teen boy who's been captured by the villain) regrets that he never had a chance to apologize to his uncle (whom he had a spat with at the movie's beginning, before the plot kicked into gear)- and then the scene cuts to the uncle, who is worried about his missing nephew and lamenting that he was too hard on him.
It feels like a trope is in play here, but I can't seem to find anything specific...
resolved Everybody Followed Fashion in the Past Live Action TV
A flashback scene will feature characters wearing stereotypical fashion items of the era, to an exaggerated level, even if in the series' present time they just dress in clothes that might be common in different settings, such as suits, white shirts, and so on.
For instance, in The Simpsons, Dr. Hibbert has a short hairdo that doesn't really stand out, but in flashbacks he'll have jheri curls, braids or dreadlocks depending on the era.
Even Homer wears a nondescript white shirt and jeans, but is fashion-focused on flashbacks, like in That '90s Show, he wore an 8-Ball jacket over a hoodie... even though when the show actually aired in the 90ies, he had the same white shirt.
Might be a Justified Trope in that characters might care more about fashion when they're young, but still...
openA story references its adaptation and the author's less known works
Not sure if this is the same trope or different ones.
- An adaptation changes some of the original's designs. Then later the original references those designs as easter eggs.
- A story includes characters from the author's other works. One Recurring Extra is the protagonist of another, much more obscure story, and a few more are from an abandoned and unpublished story concept.
openReversed Reversal
A situation that can be played for drama or humor: something with a binary state (an on-off switch, a MacGuffin and an identical-looking decoy, etc.) keeps getting switched from one state to the other.
- A Jame Bond movie has Bond switch the Big Bad's computer tape with an audio one. Unfortunately, he disposed of the real one by putting it down the Bond Girl's bikini, who interpreted this as her needing to switch the tapes, which she did.
- In Asterix, two hostile Gaul chieftains (both Too Important to Walk and are carried on shields) are negotiating, with one turning his back on the other. His shieldbearers believe they're supposed to do the same, ruining the chieftain's attempt at drama.
- In Good Omens, three babies are present in the maternity ward, an American politician's son, the Antichrist and a third one. There's a Satanic plot to switch the first two babies out, but because two of the cultists do so separately, the Antichrist ends up raised by a perfectly normal couple instead of being in a position to start Armageddon.
- Often seen when playing Uno, when a player uses a reverse card but the next also uses one.
openDescribe this power set
Taromancy: Gaining insight into the future by using tarot cards.
Astrology
Cold reading
openLet's all agree that it happened like this.
To hide the truth and/or escape potential pursuit by law enforcement a group of people agrees on a fake made-up testimony.
Edited by sohibilopenDescribing an observant character
What is the difference between “Sherlock Scan” , “Eagle-Eye Detection”, and “Hyper-Awareness” ?
((Trying to describe a doctor/nurse character who can accurately diagnose a patient’s illness even without tests/equipment))
openPets realize someone isn't to be trusted before their owner.
Is there a trope where a pet or animal senses that someone they just met is evil? And they growl or go on the attack before their owner or friendly human finds out the same thing?
openWhen a door is closing from the top to the bottom and someone slides underneath it at the last secon
And if they run towards the closing door and it actually does close on them before they get through, is it subverting, inverting or averting?
The evidence against a person's apparent identity is that he makes a claim, using a year which is too early for this claim to make sense.