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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openPretty and/or popular kid has nerdy interests
Is there a trope for this? I remember reading a long time ago on a DND forum somebody saying that his daughter and her friends really liked DND, and they were all the pretty and popular type, which I thought was pretty cool (assuming it's true.)
openBoss penalty box Videogame
Is there a trope for when a boss has an attack that banishes you to a "penalty" area that you have to escape from? For example:
- In Half-Life the Nihilanth has an attack where he shoots a portal at you (which moves slowly but still homes in on you, making it really hard to avoid unless you duck behind something or shoot it down). If it hits, you get sent to one of three "penalty rooms" and have to make your way to the portal leading back to the Nihilanth (if you get banished more than three times, it just sends you to the third area again.)
- In Sonic Mania the Phantom Egg has an attack where he has two giant holographic hands grab you (unlike the Nihilanth, there's no way to avoid this). After they do, you get sent to a side area where one of the hard-boiled heavies attacks you. Unlike the first example, you just have to survive long enough and you are automatically teleported back.
openSink the ships early
A variation of Ship Sinking where the author/creator of a work does something early on in a story to make it clear to the readers/audience that there will be no romance involved between two or more characters (sometimes, this can even extend to the entire story as a whole).
Here’s an example: The author/creator anticipates the possibility of their audience/viewers/readers shipping two characters together, but they don’t want us to do that. So, in order to stop us from shipping people together, they do something to prevent us from doing so. This can take many forms, such as a direct author statement saying that we shouldn’t be shipping anyone, to them purposely putting in a moment in their story where two characters openly express disgust at ending up together or deciding to be better off as friends, and so on.
Basically, just think of it as sinking a ship before it even sails and leaves the port.
openRevenge bad trope
Y'know those stories where the Villain wrongs the Hero, the Hero goes on a revenge quest, killing dozens if not hundreds of mooks, but then during the Hero and Villain's final confrontation, the Hero goes "actually, killing you is wrong" and spares the Villain? Does anyone know of a trope like that?
openRepackaged episodes Western Animation
Is there such a trope other than Stock Footage where a new episode is effectively made from old ones but redubbed in part with new dialogue and spliced together and it's sometimes seamless?
Not talking about a Clip Show but old episodes presented as new.
openWorks popular everywhere except in their target audience
What the title says. Basically works that have achieved some degree of popularity in different demographics except where you'd think their Target Audience would be. Like Never Accepted in His Hometown only applied to works as a whole rather than just characters.
This is mostly something I've noticed about Virtual Youtubers: they are actually kind of unpopular among both gamers and anime fans, despite those groups being the ones this concept should appeal to.
openCelebratory boost
This is mostly seen in team sport stories. I have most often seen it in movies and on TV.
Basically, when a player wins his team the game and single-handedly saves them from the jaws of defeat, his team swarms him and lifts him up. From there, they either parade him around the area or toss him up and down repeatedly.
openThe same line used repeatedly by different characters in the same situation Western Animation
In the Justice League series I noticed a particular pattern where when one character makes a seemingly-innocuous remark that touches on another character's superhuman backstory without them actually knowing the details, the person in question will respond with specific phrase "You have no idea". It happens several times throughout the show with different characters. For example, when J'onn J'onzz says Vanda Savage 'ages gracefully' without knowing that he's immortal, and when Princess Audrey says Wonder Woman has 'feet of clay' without knowing that she was literally sculpted from clay.
But I was about to add it to the series page and I realized I don't what trope this actually is. I was going to add it as a Running Gag, but I realized it's not actually a joke or used as a joke (Unless the fact that the characters smirk when saying it counts enough?). The phrase also doesn't have particular story relevance so it's not Arc Words, and it's not used by the same character so it's not a Catchphrase. And it's not so often to qualify as Once an Episode.
So what is it?
Edited by JBK405openAnachronistically Quick Drying Ink
Is there a trope where in fantasy/historical works, anyone is writing down using quick-drying ink? I remember the final episode of Game of Thrones where Brienne starts writing down Jaime's part, then turns the page before the ink runs dry. Memes started popping where she should have waited for the ink to dry before she turns the page.
open"Don't tell them your name, [character name]!" [solved]
Character and a ditzy friend of theirs are being interrogated and the captors are trying to get them to spit out their name. Ditzy friend tells the character not to tell the captors their name, while addressing them by their name, and while the captors can hear.
I think this was used as a page quote for one page. Closest trope I can think of I'll Never Tell You What I'm Telling You!, though in this case it's "My Friend Will Never Tell You What I'm Telling You!"
Edited by iwantedtoaddsomethingopenSudden Appearance
Definition: A character and all records they ever existed appear in existence, as if they existed in the first place. This isn't a Remember the New Guy? situation.
Example: Bob is targeted by a species of extradimensional man-eating aliens. After being eaten by said aliens, he wakes up in an altered version of a world where he has a little sister that he never remembers existing in the unaltered world, as if she always been there accompanied with comprehensive records.
openImprovised alarm
Do we have a trope for when someone improvises some "alarm" by propping noisy objects against a door or window?
openRelationship changed forever
Typically a relationship of 2 where both play major roles in a overarching conflict, but come together, usually unaware that its right before the catastrophy of the story, trying to act like nothing happened. That come together involves ticking superficial checkpoints and reminiscing over old jokes and moments, while a gloomy atmosphere prevents both from fully believing that "farce".
Example Honkai Impact 3rd chapter 17, Heavens Feel part 1 end.
Edited by BrowseitallopenNo Title
Is there a trope that would cover when a show doesn't get aired entirely in a specific country? Not that it's cancelled completely, because it aired in its entirety somewhere but just not in a certain country. Would it still count as Screwed by the Network or something else?
openNot-So-Random Bystanders Film
Picture if you will: Dan Hero, square-jawed good guy, is invited or tricked into a confrontation with Victor von Evil, the villain of the piece. They meet in a public place, say a street cafe or a park. In the course of the conversation, von Evil threatens Hero with instant and painful death. Hero says "I hardly think you're going to risk your reputation and freedom by committing murder in front of all these random bystanders!" In response, von Evil snaps his fingers, and every one of the nearby crowd stops what they're doing, gets up and silently walks away, leaving Hero and von Evil alone.
It's been sighted in John Wick 2 (in Central Park), in one of the Sherlock Holmes movies, possible in Daredevil (with the Kingpin) and maybe even in Doctor Who.
Note, it doesn't involve mind control. Those bystanders are all paid flunkies or henchpersons of von Evil, not actual random people who have been coerced into leaving. The message is that the villain is much more powerful than the hero (or the audience) suspected, and the hero is now in way deeper trouble than he thought.
I can't seem to find this in the site, so is it an omission, a failure of my search or just not noteworthy?
Edited by EricTFBatopenAdaptational Voice Change
We don't seem to have anything on Adaptation Deviation that covers characters having different voices in different adaptations, with the exception of dubs. Not just because of actors, as that's a given, but just different sounds to their voices altogether.
The example I have in mind is how the Whammy in Press Your Luck originally had a very high-pitched "chipmunk" voice (and has it in the 2019 version as well), but Whammy changed it to a different gravelly voice.
Edited by mightymewtronopenSolving the wrong problem
Is there a trope for when a person misunderstands a problem, and on being told of the misunderstanding, takes that as a statement that the (non-existent) problem was real but is now fixed? Kind of a friendly version of a Loaded question.
For example, in the Mean Girls musical, Karen decides “I can cure sex cancer!” And when told “Sex cancer doesn't exist.”: “I did it.”
Or in The Book of Mormon (the musical, not the Religious Text), Elder Price is given advice on dealing with “gay thoughts”, and when he corrects the other Elders “I’m not having gay thoughts”: “Hooray, it worked!”
openBlack And Orange Morality
A character whose moral values are mostly in line with society's (i.e. murder is bad) but there are some that are completely alien to normal people (sometimes equating them with the socially-acceptable ones).
Bob is a middle-class suburbanite who has Views on the proper way of planting geraniums. He's called to testify to his neighbor Alice's character (who stands accused of murder), and agrees that she probably is a murderer, because what else can you expect from someone who plants their geraniums one point five inches apart instead of two. The court session quickly degenerates into Bob lecturing everyone on the moral threat of people planting their geraniums wrong. Bob gets hit with contempt of court, and says he certainly has nothing but contempt for a court that protects and shields one-point-fivers from their well-deserved punishment. When he's finally dragged away by security, his last action is to venomously call the judge a "one-incher", which is clearly the worst insult to his mind.
A character is made to contradict their own words, but to reflect an actual change/a different understanding of the situation, not to show them as liars as in Immediate Self-Contradiction. Sometimes in tandem with Hard Truth Aesop.
For instance: