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openMeta Resource
A game with resources that are used outside of normal gameplay but still influence it.
- In Starcraft II, the normal resources are minerals and vespene gas (used to make units on missions). Completing bonus objectives and missions gives you resources that are used in between missions to empower units and abilities during missions (credits and Protoss / Zerg research ; Kerrigan levels ; solarite).
- Most idle games have a secondary resource only obtainable by resetting the game, which removes all progress and regular resources but gives bonuses to getting those resources/can be spent on upgrades.
openSatire Displaces Genre Literature
Is there a trope for when a work satirizing a genre becomes more famous than the thing its satirizing, to the point where many people’s only knowledge of the genre comes from the satirical work? (Sometimes to the point where the satire is no longer noticed.) Examples are usually historic works.
Examples: - Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey was satirizing melodramatic Gothic novels like The Mysteries of Udolpho, but Austen is far more famous now than any of those novels.
- Don Quixote was satirizing a genre of chivalric romance, but nothing from the genre it was satirizing is remotely as well-known as it.
- Romeo and Juliet was apparently satirizing a genre of romance plays but has displaced them in fame so greatly that it’s far from obvious these days that it even was a satire.
Edited by GaladrielopenNatural 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.
openSame Skills as the character they play
A person plays a character with specific skills or habits, and it's assumed by viewers and fans that they have those same characteristics in real life. I'm specifically looking at two things that occurred with the cast of commodoreHUSTLE. Following the episode "It's Magic!", which featured Alex using sleight of hand to cheat at Magic the Gathering, one of the crew's real-life friends who works at their local game store (Nelson) pulled them aside and asked if he had to keep an eye on Alex when he came in for game nights. Later on, when Nelson became a recurring character on the series, many people assumed he was the manager for the game store when he was actually just a worker who was available to film more often.
Maybe we do have this, but the ones I thought would I apply don't quite fit. …But I Play One on TV is apparently specifically about people being referred to by the name of the character they play. I thought that was I Am Not Spock, but apparently that's about people only being cast as a single character. Role Association is when seeing an actor play one character makes you think of another character they played, Cannot Tell Fiction from Reality is about people who genuinely don't know someone isn't their character, and Actor/Role Confusion is just that but in-universe. Or am I missing something and one of these is the one to use?
openWisecracker can't speak
A character who snarks a lot or makes jokes can't speak for an episode.
open'Yes Day' Plot
A plot, often appeared in a school setting, where a character is challenged to only say a certain word(usually the word 'yes') for a day. Hilarity ensues. One of the solutions to overcome this challenge is to not say anything or using non-verbal communication.
Another variant is where everyone in school has to speak a foreign language for a week (eg. English week in non-English media). Level of restriction may vary. The solution is the same as above.
Is there a trope that has a similar description?
openChimera Transformation
When a character, villain or otherwise, aborbs other beings (or at least their powers) and that person gains a new form with all their victims' features at once, turning them into a sort of chimera.
Pretty much like Ultimate Kevin or Ultimate Aggregor from Ben 10.
Edited by TheSuperShinyMegaGengaropenSupernatural 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.
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.
openBlack is the New Orange
A character who was white and red-headed in the source material is portrayed as black in an adaptation. (Starfire in Titans, Jimmy Olsen in Supergirl, Ariel in The Little Mermaid-)
openThe B(etter)-Team
In a work where the main cast are entertainingly dysfunctional assholes (Team A), there's a similar team on the same side made up of far more competent, successful, intelligent etc. people (team B), who are occasionally seen at work, outclassing the main team by a mile (and the main reason the work isn't about the better B-team is that it's funnier to see the assholes screw up or get bitten by karma). If they meet there's potential for overlap with The Resenter / Unknown Rival.
- Exterminatus Now has an Inquisitorial team that mirrors the main characters in terms of appearance and abilities, except they're all highly competent (instead of middlingly skilled and lucky) and actually enjoy each other's company.
- Eight Bit Theater has the real Light Warriors, who have similar classes to the main party but are actually good at their jobs, managing to find epic weapons by raiding dungeons (although they also serve as Butt Monkeys who repeatedly get their stuff stolen by the main cast).
- Any Macho Disaster Expedition plot that shows the men as bungling idiots and the women as competent.◊
openWork didn't predict the USSF/other services
Is there a trope (or trivia item), akin to Technology Marches On, where an older work set in the future, for example attributes a spacefaring enterprise to the US Air Force, whereas we now have the US Space Force and it is a much more apt fit for such a mission (and yes I'm aware it is still kind of under the purview of the USAF, but likely as time goes on it will be seen as more distinct and specialised)? I guess an alternative which the trope could encompass would be if works made during the early days of aviation presumed that planes would always be associated only with air forces but, quite soon after it became apparent that navies could also field them (and then helicopters too) via aircraft carriers. Or, going further back, at first planes were largely operated as a corps under armies, but these nascent organisations soon rose to become their own service branches.
Edited by FlashStepsopenCopy the enemy's idea
For example, in Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, Malfoy uses his enemy Harry's idea from the previous book of the Room of Requirement for illicit business, and Hermione's idea of the enchanted coins for secret communication.
I don't think this is Stealing the Credit, because Malfoy brazely says he stole the idea, rather than the credit for it.
openAirport runway attendant gag
Is there one about a flying character being directed to land by somebody on the ground with flags, like in an airport? Two examples of this are Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, where Hagrid directs the flying carriage to land, and Shrek, where somebody directs the good witches from Sleeping Beauty to land on their broomsticks.
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.
openEvidence is a too-early claimed year
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.
- Live action TV
- In Monk episode "Mr. Monk Meets Dale the Whale", Dale's doctor, Christiaan Vezza, claims to be named after Dr. Christiaan Barnard. However, he claims to have been conceived in 1965, and Dr. Barnard wasn't famous until 1967.
- Theater
- In ''The Music Man, Marion was certainly suspicious about "Professor" Harold Hill, but she knew he was lying when he said he's "Gary Conservatory of Music, Gold-Medal Class of Aught-Five" since the Gary Conservatory of Music was only founded in 1906.
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.
It's the end of the story and the MacGuffin still hasn't been found.