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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openmistaken for someone and attacked
Someone is attacked because they're mistaken for someone else.
openChickens 1 2 and 4
Is there a trope where there someone unleashes 3 animals with signs 1, 2 and 4 so the prankee thinks there is another one somewhere?
openDefeat trope for this? Live Action TV
Is there a trope for this:
- Alice defeats the Arc Villain by engineering a situation where he has to come into the sunlight; the Arc Villain is weakened/dead due to sunlight.
Would The Power of the Sun fit?
opendumb person thinks anyone accused of a crime is guilty
Is there a trope for when this happens? Even when there's some extremely obvious reason for the accuser to want revenge or want the accused out the picture? (sadly, this is very much Truth in Television.)
openRetroactive overshadowing
When a TV series was first released, all the actors had a standard level of fame. Later on, Bob became incredibly famous. And now, when people look back the series in reruns, it's as if Bob's character overshadows everybody else, even if that wasn't the case in the first release.
May be an audience reaction.
openCharacter is short for their age
Looking for a trope to fit Jewel and Mimic from Sonic the Hedgehog (IDW). Jewel is a 16 year old a little more than the height of Charmy and Mimic is a 32 year old the height of Sonic.
EDIT: Could this be a species-related thing?
Edited by PrincessPandaTropeopenAm I understanding a trope correctly?
Does This Count? as an example of All a Part of the Job, or is there a better-fitting trope?
- In How to Train Your Dragon, when Chief Stoick is putting together a task force to look for the dragon nest, he dismisses a complaint of "Those ships never come back" with "We're Vikings. It's an occupational hazard."
openOnce someone gets/invents some new technology, they can't see how they ever lived without it.
Is there a trope for this? For a personal example, I didn't have a real internet connection (i.e one good enough for anything but downloading stuff), until I was 15 (in 1999). Now it's hard to imagine life with no internet.
openFair On Paper
A situation that looks fair on paper, but in reality turns out to be anything but.
For example:
- A sword duel is "fair" if both participants have the same-length weapons. But if one duellist is much larger than the other, the larger one can stab the smaller one in the chest without risking getting wounded anywhere closer than his elbow.
- A sports match requires the same number of people on both teams, but if one team ends up with the unskilled, disabled or otherwise unfit players, it obviously isn't a fair matchup (even if it is according to the rules).
- Two countries warring over a territory finally make peace by splitting it exactly in half. Except one side is almost entirely desert, with no useful resources above or below the ground.
openusing "slugs" in vending machines
Is there a trope on using "slugs" aka counterfeit coins and washers? Slugs are often used to make illegal purchases from coin-op devices like vending machines, parking meters, and arcade gaming machines.
Edited by NjeinopenNot So Demonic
A character raised on propaganda depicting group X as something they're not meets them and realizes he's been lied to his whole life.
For example, a man from a Communist country has been taught all his life that the Western world is full of decadent millionaires gleefully exploiting the poor. He's sent the the West as a spy, and quickly realizes that if people are being oppressed, they sure don't look like it. Combined with Mundane Object Amazement at the utter lack of shortages of... anything, really, he starts having second thoughts about returning to his homeland.
openDifferent choices alter the in-game world? Videogame
Imagine that you have a choice while playing a videogame, for example, whether to go to city A or city B to discover the identity of the mysterious nasty assassin that tried to kill you from the shadows during your adventures.
If you go to A, it is revealed that Bob is the nasty culprit and a fight ensues, while Aerileth is innocent and will aid you. If you go to B, the opposite is revealed, thus you will have to fight Aerileth with the assistance of Bob. There is no logical reason why this happens. Your choice doesn't have any impact on the world that ultimately leads to different character development for the two (like, leading one to become evil). Nor going to A or B means siding with or against another entity tied to Bob and Aerileth. It's simply a revelation, that officially is independent from your choices, but mechanically depends on them.
The change here is retroactive: what happens is simply that the previously unrevealed plot and the subsequent story are completely altered according to what you do. Perhaps it isn't even required that going to A or B has the purpose of discovering who the assassin is: the choice could be not directly related to the consequence.
Another example which is not retroactive: you have to send one of your scientists to C to acquire something. In any case they get the same train at the same time with the same ticket and bags. If you send Bob, he will arrive in time and get the item. If you send Aerileth, you are told that the train stopped midway because a tree fell on the railroad, and the delay causes your opponent to anticipate you. There is no direct reason why this happens (Aerileth is not victim to magic, curses or anything that affect the world) nor off-screen events that trigger because you choose Aerileth (no enemy provokes the train delay because Aerileth is controlled by spies that know when she's moving while Bob is clean). Simply your choices develop into story branches with different in-game realities.
Is there a trope that covers those scenarios? The most similar trope I can think is Schrödinger's Question, where no matter your answer to a question, it will be the right one (e.g. toss a coin, your bet is the result). But it's not the same thing.
openThe Munchies
Do we have a trope about getting hungry when you're stoned, or is that too much of People Sitting On Chairs?
openTemptation reducing activity
Is there a trope for when characters do things in order to block out the temptation to other things they don't want to do, or do want to do but know they shouldn't?
Like someone who takes up knitting to avoid murderous impulses.
openRemoving Mind Control by beating people up
You know, there is a good guy that was brainwashed by the evil forces. How do we fix him? Of course, by beating him up!
This trope is prevalent in videogames (for example, a lot of boss fights in Wo W go like this - players come to the boss, fight him, and on one HP he stops fighting, comes to his senses and thanks heroes for saving him from corruption), but it is also found in other media (for example, in first part of Jo Jo's Bizzare Adventure Bruford, risen as zombie by Dio, made a heel-face turn when Jonathan hit him with the Hamon energy, and in the third part you Kakyoin and Polnareff needed to be beaten before Jotaro could remove the flesh buds from their brain).
Is there any trope like this? If not, I would like to try to launch it as my first trope =-)
Edited by StragaSeveraopenConspicuous Non-Consumption
Is there a trope for when a character deliberately avoids using resources they have, as a way of showing off how much of it they possess? Massive feasts of food left to rot and be eaten by flies, two garages full of super-cars collecting dust, that sort of thing.
openIt's going to kill me from within!
Something is growing inside you and is bound to eventually kill you, cue the Nightmare Fuel.
To be specific, it's not The Plague, and it's not a bomb.
Edited by Devan2002openThe Journey Through Death
Do we have a trope that covers a plot in which the protagonist is journeying towards the afterlife? (This would, I think, not uncommonly involve going through various strange environs, or having various strange encounters, along the way.)
(Note that this isn't quite the same as "Dead All Along": That covers, I believe, all cases in which character was, well, dead but still acting in the story, regardless of whether they're passing on or not. Furthermore, that's a character trope, while this is/would be a plot trope.)
When a living, sapient character is thrown around like a ball or used in a similar game. Usually the character being thrown is much smaller than the players. May overlap with Losing Your Head.