(Needs A Better Description but I'll work on it in the morning)

A very old trope, originating at least in the Greek classics. Weaving is seen as a sign of great intelligence, and whenever you see a character weaving, it is a shorthand way of demonstrating that person is very clever. This extends to spiders, because of their cleverly constructed webs. Since weaving is also largely the woman's domain (think the origin of Distaff Counterpart), is it also generally specific to the intelligence of women.

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Examples:

• Penelope in The Odyssey, whose cleverness matches that of her Trickster Archetype husband. Her most famous act in the epic is the way she delays her suitors' pursuit of her: she says she will choose one after she has finished weaving a funeral shroud for her husband. Everyday she works on it, and every night she unravels what she did in the day, thus delaying her choice indefinitely. By the way, she tricks the suitors this way for forty years!
• Arachne in Greco-Roman myth, who was so great at weaving that she beat Athena, goddess of wisdom and also a weaver, in a contest. That didn't sit too well with ol'grey eyes, though, and she turned (predictably) Arachne into a spider.
• Anansi, the African Trickster, is a spider, although he's male.
• Charlotte of Charlotte's Web

(Thoughts on the trope? Should it be broadened to weaving in fiction in general?)

Needs More Examples, Needs A Better Title, Needs A Better Description, Rolling Updates

Conservation of momentum means that a moving object will tend to stay moving unless a force stops it... And such a force can cause a lot of damage to fragile things like, say, human bodies. When fictional works ignore this fact, it's No Conservation Of Momentum.

Tropes include :

• Not The Fall That Kills You
  • Giant Robot Hands Save Lives
  • Catch A Falling Star -- sometimes.
• Space Friction
• The Mystery Trope This YKTTW Was About

The Mystery Trope This YKTTW Was About :

It is something you learn in basic physics that objects in a moving system move at the same rate as the system... Hence if you drop a ball in a train it will seem to go straight down, because it's moving with the train. And if you drop a bomb from a plane it will continue going forward with the plane. And if you jump from a train you will continue going at the same speed as the train... Wait, what ?

In fiction characters will often jump out of moving cars or trains with not much more than scratches for their trouble, very much as if the car or train wasn't moving at all. Bonus points if they fall straight out (relative to the landscape) when they should retain the the horizontal velocity they had in the vehicle. Even more egregious, jumping onto the top of a moving train seems to them like the perfect way to escape pursuers, even though one would think the smooth and above all narrow top of a train is not the best place to withstand a sudden acceleration from Zero to Quite Fast.

I looked for this trope because I've just watched episode 32 of Fullmetal Alchemist : Brotherhood, which has a straight example and an aversion in the same episode. Namely, Scar isn't on the train Kimblee thought he was on, so Kimblee looks for a curve where the train would have been slow enough to jump off of. Fine, except that Scar jumped on that train earlier in the episode in the middle of a flat plain where it was going pretty fast !

It reminded me of a Tintin episode (probably during Prisoners of the Sun) where he has to jump off a train. He worries about it some, appropriately implying it's dangerous, but once he does it (while it's going over a bridge, thank goodness for Soft Water) I'm pretty sure he falls straight down, when he should have continued moving with the train. I might be wrong, it's been a long time. I do know he jumps onto trains at least once though.

• Lovely Tintin example in the very first second of this video.

Should We Have This? Do We Have This? Rolling Updates possible. Maybe Just For Fun?

Warning: self demonstrating YKTTW. Apologies to the late Billy Mays.

Now taking votes on whether to merge with Awesome Mc Cool Name

Update: Merge is winning overwhelmingly, so barring objections I will discard shortly.

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Here's my latest idea: What if you could have a trope that was not only a Subtrope of Naming Conventions and the Rule Of Cool, it was a also Supertrope of the Trope O Matic, Name Tron, and even the Trope2000? What if it told you when to Call A Smeerp A Rabbit? What if it made your writing more cliched AND more popular at the same time?

Let's say you've got a product. Or maybe a character. Or a fantasy land. It doesn't matter! And that's the best part! No matter the noun, Rule Of Cool Naming names them all!

Here's the secret: it's as simple as 1-2-3:

• First, if it does something that people can understand on a deep down level, brainstorm words that have something to do with what the thing does. If it's not something that does something, just try common words at random until you find one you like. Search through vaugue recollections of anecdotes, anchient myth, legend, and previous works for interesting or memorable word combinations. It doesn't have to be the most appropriate word, just similar enough that people will get the similarity. Choose something that's at least slightly cool.
• So now you've got a name that makes some sense, but its still not cool enough. You've got to sell this to the reader, not just come up with a description. Don't panic! All you have to do try different combinations of words until you get something that sounds right. If its something unfamiliar that you want people to develop a familiarity with, use a phrase that reinforces the idea that this wierd thing you've got is just like stuff you're familiar with, only better. Not cool enough? Add a cool prefix or suffix that reinforces the selling point the reader is looking for. Got a gadget? Use a prefix or suffix to show how modern or convenient it is! Got something dangerous? Add "death" to the name! Why, because death is edgy, and edgy is cool! If it's In Space, just add "space" to the name!
• Optionally, look at alternative spellings. You can use exotic letter combinations, Umlauts, or combine parts of two or more words to make a cool sounding word.

Here's just some of the millions of amazing words and phrases real people have created with this trope:

• "Space Battleship"
• "DethKlok"
• "Star Destroyer"
• "Agilent"

Needs A Better Title (suggestions so far: Caviar Out Of Water, Rich In Dollars Poor In Sense, Money Makes You Ignorant, Cant Buy Common Sense)

Basically when wealthy people have trouble grasping concepts that people without money take for granted. These people have been spoiled all their lives, so they have had all these things taken care of for them. So when they try to do these things (by choice or not), they just don't get them.

Usually this is Played For Laughs, since it's a form of saying "Money can't buy common sense". Yet it can be Played For Drama.

Can overlap with Upper Class Twit (if this character doesn't really do much even by upper class standards), and Valley Girl (if this character is fashion conscious and inarticulate), Rich Bitch (if this character is also malicious), even King Incognito (if the royal is doing a poor job of blending in).

City Mouse is a Sub Trope.

Compare Fish Out Of Water.

Contrast Country Mouse, Non Idle Rich.

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Rolling Examples:

• Picture comes from Troop Beverly Hills. The main character is leading a troop of ersatz Girl Scounts, and at first treats it like lounging by the pool.
• Mr. Pewterschmidt from Family Guy turns out to be like this when he temporarily loses his fortune. He can't even go to the bathroom properly.
• London Tipton from The Suite Life Of Zack And Cody.
• On the Animaniacs, the Hip Hippos tried to do all their own chores when their maid quit, and failed miserably.
• The boys of the Ouran High School Host Club can't grasp normal 'commoner' things like the supermarket. Haruhi, in the meantime, feels her blood pressure rising.
• That's the topic of the Pulp song Common People: a ditzy rich girl asks a lower-class guy to introduce her to his world.
  Rent a flat above a shop
  Cut your hair and get a job
  Smoke some fags and play some pool
  Pretend you never went to school
  But still you'll never get it right
  'Cause when you're laid in bed at night
  Watching roaches climb the wall
  If you call your Dad he could stop it all
  You'll never live like common people
  You'll never do what common people do
  You'll never fail like common people
  You'll never watch your life slide out of view
  And dance and drink and screw
  Because there's nothing else to do.
• Dethklock had trouble shopping at supermarket, or "food library", as they thought it was called. In fact, most episodes are about them trying to do things outside their comfort zone. This despite the fact that their music isn't exactly the kind clueless rich people would play.
• Largely the point of the movie Arthur.
• Most of the Bluth family in Arrested Development.
• Absolutely Fabulous
• Veronica Lodge of the Archie Comics doesn't know that camping =/= telling your butler to bring you a first class dinner by helicopter to the woods.
• Bianca Dupree of Beverly Hills Teens is forced to drive herself one episode, and she's horrible at it.
• Used in The Parent Trap: the twins and their millionaire rancher dad are used to camping, but his Gold Digger girlfriend isn't.
• Played For Laughs in Overboard - Joanna, the Rich Bitch, finds herself a Princess In Rags.
• In Drowtales, when the drow search party reaches the surface:
  • It's played straight with The Ojou, Ariel, who gets agoraphobia (fear of open spaces), and Liriel, her pampered slave, who doesn't know grass =/= marijuana.
  • Subverted in that Kyo, probably the wealthiest member of the group, has been to the surface before and likes it.
• There was a Reality TV show where millionaires went to live with lower-income folks for a week/month/whatever, that seemed to use this as part of the premise.
• Mr. Burns from The Simpsons was lost in the "real world" when he lost his fortune.

Anyone can become angry - that is easy, but to be angry with the right person at the right time, and for the right purpose and in the right way - that is not within everyone's power and that is not easy.

Aristotle

Tropes about anger:

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• Anger Montage
• Berserk Button
• Beware The Nice Ones
• Defenestrate And Berate
• Fear Leads To Anger
• How Dare You Die On Me
• I Feel Angry
• Madden Into Misanthropy
• Mama Bear
• Minor Insult Meltdown
• Papa Wolf
• Rant Inducing Slight
• Slap Slap Kiss
• Rant Inducing Slight
• Teach Him Anger
• This Is Unforgivable
• This Means War
• Whos Laughing Now
• You Wouldnt Like Me When Im Angry

Tropes about fear:

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• Afraid Of Needles
• Cat Scare
• Circus Of Fear
• Cowardly Lion
• Dirty Coward
• Fear Leads To Anger
• Fearless Fool
• Fear Of Thunder
• Girls Are Really Scared Of Horror Movies
• Lovable Coward
• Orphanage Of Fear
• Scare Chord
• Scare Campaign
• Scare Em Straight
• The So Called Coward
• What Do They Fear Episode
• Why Did It Have To Be Snakes

Subjective Tropes

• Nightmare Fuel
• High Octane Nightmare Fuel
• Primal Fear

Alternate titles: In Experienced, No Experience Necessary, Entry Level Adventuring.

"Experience is one thing you can't get for nothing."

-Oscar Wilde hasn't played many RPGS lately.

Do We Have This One?

In most roleplaying games, gaining experience is an arduous task that represents your character's mastery of previously insurmountable obstacles, concepts and techniques. Typically they involve long hours of mass murder in the great outdoors, fetching granny's dentures from the dungeon next door, or combining the two (by committing mass murder on the way TO the dentures.)

Some games, however, hand you this precious resource on a platter, for doing the most mundane activities imaginable. Travel somewhere new? Have some exp! Talk to an NPC? Have some exp! Talk to someone in your party more than once? Have some exp! Read a book? Have some exp! Look at something interesting (or not)? Have some exp! Pop a pill? Have some exp!

These games never quite make the connection between performing these mundane tasks and getting better at killing things. This connection is tenuous enough even when actually killing things IS the reason for leveling up, but this trope removes even that flimsy justification.

Typically, in a token concession to realism, such activities grant your character less experience than the mass murder and questing that RP Gs usually rely on - implying (rightfully) that risking your life is a bit more educational than glancing at a computer screen or road sign while strolling merrily through the game. However, games that include this form of experience tend to include so many ways to gain it, that you can often gain a few levels simply by running around and doing all of them. This can result in the highly rare RPG phenomenon of "leveling in town."

This may be the videogame justification for Hard Work Hardly Works. Abusing this system can be key to unlocking the Magikarp Power. If this takes the form of a consumable item, it is typically a Rare Candy.

Examples:

• World Of Warcraft's primary sources of experience are slaughter, quests, and quests involving slaughter. However, it is also possible to gain substantial experience simply by walking to a new area and recording it on your world map. This "exploration exp" is available in sufficient quantities to cause well-travelled explorers to gain levels early on even without battling a single monster. Certain high-leveled areas present substantial sums of exp to more advanced characters as well.
  • World of Warcraft also gives you bonus exp for not playing the game at all. Logging off in an inn or major city increases this bonus substantially.
• EVE Online gives you experience for doing nothing - literally. You advance your skills by not playing the game.
• In Mass Effect, the standard ways of gaining exp are killing and questing, as above. However, you can gain substantial amounts by talking to people, repeatedly talking to your party members between missions, and even just looking at things, like the computers on your ship.
• The Elder Scrolls games contain books that boost your skills when read. Finding books that boost your primary skills can cause rapid level gains if the player isn't careful.
  • Since you have total freedom over what your primary skills are in Morrowind and Oblivion, you can set them to activities that you perform regularly, such as running, jumping and swimming. This is ill-advised however, because doing so will usually cause you to gain levels far faster than you like, and enemies' levels scale up with yours.
• Pokemon has the item equivalent (for which it is the trope namer.) Later installments have variations on this.

Just For Fun Do We Have This Already Is This Tropeable

• Knight Templar
• Blood Knight
• Knight In Sour Armour
• Knight In Shining Armour

When a child or sidekick leave their mentor, guardian, or leader they usual want to be remembered as stronger and better than them. That's where this comes in. They end up with the character insulting his mentor and sometimes even hurting them. They'll most likely end up as someone acquainted with (or sometimes even become) the Big Bad. However most of them join back up with the group again after having their heads handed to them.

Congratulations, hero, you've finally done it. You've defeated the Big Bad. After an epic Sword Fight, you've managed to plunge your Cool Sword right through his evil heart. The lights in his eyes dim; he staggers; blood trickles from his mouth. You, being sure of victory, turn to make sure that the nearby Damsel In Distress is unhurt, and to accept her showers of grateful kisses. Looks like everything is settled.

But what's this? The bad guy flinches! Is he trying to take another step? Are his fingers making a grab for the sword that even now rests in his breastplate? Is he such a Determinator that he can endure so much damage and keep fighting?

No. He's dead. His body is just twitching a bit. And yet, he doesn't fall, his muscles so perfectly conditioned they can continue to function without any signals from his brain. So he just stands there like a morbid practice dummy. He's Died Standing Up.

This is a device used when a character is so utterly Bad Ass that even in death they refuse to accept utter defeat. The body continues to strive for victory even when its driving will has been extinguished. This goes hand in hand with a Badass Normal or any other absurdly strong character, especially one with a Charles Atlas Superpower. It may be mixed with Taken For Granite, when a villain's magical body has No Ontological Inertia and turns to stone at the moment of death. Despite the description above, this can happen to both heroic and villainous characters.

In deference to gravity, falling to one's knees also counts, so long as the final plunge into a prone state doesn't follow. Taking another step forward despite being clearly dead also counts.

Examples:

• Ganon in two iterations of the Legend Of Zelda. In Wind Waker, he turns to stone after being stabbed in the head by the Master Sword. In Twilight Princess, he stays in the same position after being stabbed through the chest.
• In an episode of Detective Conan, the victim had just finished an exacting workout and her muscles were tense enough to keep her standing after being murdered. Conan recognizes this after seeing a statue of a legendary Japanese warrior who had died the same way in a battle. (Invisible Kudos to any Troper who can give me his name)
• A variant in Naruto: Rock Lee, after being completely and mercilessly thrashed by Gaara, pushing his body way past its limits, and suffering permanent damage to two limbs, manages to stand back up despite being unconscious at the time, presumably by sheer willpower.

Exactly What It Says On The Tin

As an example, for the most part, the term "Caucasian" describes a smattering of peoples spread throughout the world, such as Europe, North Africa, India, and the Middle East whose origins can be traced to the Caucasus region. The term doesn't necessarily depend on skin color, as dark skinned people located in the Indus Valley region have been classified as Caucasian.

This is usually ignored or not known by people, as you'll find examples of people in both fiction and real life using the term exclusively for people of European descent.

Do We Have This? Should We Have This? Needs A Better Title, Needs A Better Description, Rolling Updates all likely....

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Got this idea for a trope here; see also here. We have The Revolution Will Not Be Civilized and The Revolution Will Not Be Vilified, but what about this:

The revolution is underway, radicals and revolutionaries spill out into the streets. Blocking their path, imperial internal security forces gather. But what's this? They are deploying a gigantic... television? The revolutionary leaders are calling for peaceful resistance? The Emperor is ordering his troops to stand down? Hours ago it looked like only a long and bloody war could end this, and it is over with only minor casualties!

A subtrope of Happy Ending. Can be a Deus Ex Machina.

Subtropes:

1. It's peaceful now, but a standoff is taking place, and violence is expected. It never comes. The conflict just... ends. Perhaps a few were hurt in the confusion, but a bloodbath is averted.
2. A bloody war is underway, but a relatively bloodless internal coup or unexpected surrender ends the war suddenly.

maybe need to split this?

Examples of Case 1:

Literature

• In The Bible, some of Jesus' followers explect a bloody revolution; instead Jesus surrenders peacefully. The whole thing is, of course, all part of God's plan....

Live Action TV

• On Babylon Five, the dockworkers threaten to go on strike, the senior staff has been kicked out of their own quarters due to a legal technicality, and the nightwatch is running amuck. A reallocation of funds solves the legal issues, and life returns to normal... for a few episodes.

Real Life

• The end of the Cold War, in comparison to the cataclysm many had expected the cold war to end in, was nearly bloodless.
  • The trope namer is Chechoslovakia, where the transition from one communist state in 1989 to two non-communist ones in 1993 was accomplished bloodlessly.
  • The collapse of the Berlin Wall and reunification of Germany.
  • In Romania, the leadership ordered the army and secret police to put down the revolution. The army commanders refused to fire on unarmed civilians.
• South Africa's elimination of the Apartied system.

Examples of Case 2:

Anime and Manga

• In Robotech, after years of bloody conflict, the Invid Regis just... left.
• In Code Geass, Lelouch arranges things so that Britannia ends up letting the Black Knights go.
  • Later, The Britanians revolt against now Emperor Lelouch ends successfully with only one death - allowing Britannia, Japan, and China an Earn Your Happy Ending.

Literature

• War Of The Worlds

Live Action TV

• On Babylon Five, the Earth - Minbari War ends when the Minbari, who had been winning, inexplicably surrendered.

Real Life

• The invasion of Japan in WWII, which never happened. The emperor and his staff had to defy their own army to surrender.

When Elemental Rock Paper Scissors go bad. The "web" of type advantages is either too imbalanced, too complex, or too irrelevant that it simply doesn't work.

The three categories are:

• <b>Imbalanced.</b> One or more types are much better than the others, which leads to little use of any of the other elements. Dragon- and Steel-types are an example from more competitively minded Pokemon play.
• <b>Overcomplicated.</b> There are so many types (or the types aren't distinguished clearly) that the player turns a blind eye and uses whatever they want.
• <b>Irrelevant.</b> The type matchups aren't significant enough to warrant the player to actually use the matchups to their advantage. A 10% boost against Fire isn't worth all the effort and focus the player would put into something which would get that boost, for example.

• A fan mod of Warcraft III named Element TD fits this. The high powered-towers don't give a rat's ass about the elemental typing, by virtue of having useful effects, doing more than enough damage to not care about the damage reduction, or simply ignoring the matchups entirely.
• The second type applies to...less skilled Pokemon players. My level 25 Charmeleon will beat Brock, Rock-typing be damned!
  • And in competitive battling, the first applies, with Dragons and Steel-types dominating the metagame and Poison-types doomed to be ineffective against anything which isn't Grass-type.

If this already exists, bite me.

Stock Phrase - Do We Have This One?

Variations include:

• Dramatic, as a Meaningful Echo to something said by the addressee or a respected Mentor. "Wow, who said that?" "You did!"
• Arrogant: "Wow, who said that?" "I did!"
• Newer Than They Think: "Wow, who said that?" "Mick Jagger did!"
  • Misattributed: "I think it was Shakespeare who said, "Do you believe in life after love?"" "No, that was Cher"

When creating the Species Coded For Your Convenience trope, there was some conversation about the depiction of owls. Owls already do have their own trope in Owl Be Damned, but the main description of the post is that owls are creepy. Although many tropers tend to believe (And the examples in that trope seem to back it up), that owls are usually depicted as wise and honorable. They serve more as mentors, teachers, and allies than they do as villains. So here's a trope for that. Up For Grabs

Full Frontal Shielding involves the placement of Deflector Shields or other protection on the front of a given object or entity, making it highly resistant to attacks; however, there is very little protection from behind, where Genre Savvy entities would attack instead.

Not to be confused with slightly weaker armor or defences on the back; that can be dismissed as a reinforced front or a generic weak spot that isn't designed for receiving attacks. To qualify for this trope, the front must be effectively indestructible or hard to overcome compared to a side or rear attack.

Related to: For Massive Damage, Attack Its Weak Point

Examples:

Video games:

• Counter Strike's riot shield
• Descent 2 final boss
• Dogs Of War: Shooting a front of a tank takes forever; attack it from behind to defeat it in one hit.
• Ghost Recon, where machine gun nests put metal-plating on the sides of the machinegun to increase protection.
• La Mulana
• Left 4 Dead 2, zombies wearing security uniforms
• Shadowgrounds
• In the X-Wing series, you could use double shielding in lieu of fully-powered shields; although there's not much reason to. Can also be inverted to backward shields.

Television:

• A Police Squad episode had a scene where baddies try to get various weapons to defeat Leslie Neilson. One of the "weapons" was a Picasso, which prevented a direct punch but not one that went around the painting.

Real Life:

• The Mangiot Line, was an impressive defense by the French, spanning the entire German border. It was defeated by simply by going through Belgium.
• Porcupines invert this trope.

This ones bugged me for years

So or hero has been under some sort of sedation and wakes up in a hospital, almost like clockwork they either: get out of bed on the wrong side, start walking away till the iv pulls the arm it's attached to back, (which brings up the point of how unrealistically secure I Vs are inserted in media)or any other way a character hurts themselves because they totally didn't notice the tube coming out of their arm.

Examples: 28 Days Later: Can't remember exactly but the main character does this. The Men who Stare at Goats: Averted and played straight, Ewan Mcgregor's character notices the IV starts walking while holding it then leaves it and continues to walk till it pulls on his arm. Walking Dead: Averted, the main character removes his IV and only falls because of unrelated reasons.

Do We Have This One?

In many situations, people might use darts are projectiles - due to technological level (blowgun) or it's non-lethal effect (tranquilizers). If the dart is not covered/filled with Instant Sedative, and was inserted into an unwilling, yet not helpless target, the one thing that these targets don't do is pull the dart out. Instead they leave it and let it spread whatever substance it was meant to spread throughout them. This is especially obnoxious when the dart is in easy-to-reach places, such as the shoulder.

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Examples of this trope include:

Live Action TV

• In the opening of the Stargate SG 1 episode "The First Commandment", Franks is hit by a dart fired from a blowgun while fleeing. The dart is left in his shoulder all the way until he gets shot.

Needs A Better Title

Lenses are cool. They are sunglasses combined with a helmet, it's no wonder they're so common in media.

Unfortunately, designers seem to forget that humans use lenses to see. particularly in science fiction, helmets have an unnecessary amount of visors, goggles, eyeholes, etc. just to look cool. (or not so cool). Or the visors are in the right place, but there's an unnecessary amount of visor, and sometimes the visor is just in places where eyes really have no business being.

(Now with Rolling Updates!)

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Examples

Film

• At the beginning of Outlander, the soldiers seem to be wearing helmets with six glowing dots for their eyes. (may be wrong, just thinking from memory)

Videogames

• Isaac has three glowing visors on his helmet. One allows him to see, the other two are only there to make his forehead and mouth glow.
• Sam Fisher is iconic for his three glowing goggle lenses. The three different vision modes are supposed to justify it, but then, why doesn't he wear three pairs of goggles?
• The Krogan armor manufacturers in Mass Effect don't seem to know where the eyes actually belong on the Krogan's face.
• Visor, a playable character of Quake III Arena, has a massive visor that covers his entire face. Weirdly enough he isn't actually wearing a helmet.
  • His alternate skin, Gorre, adds to this by seperating his visor into smaller shapes that are mostly unnecessary.
• The helmets of the Sith troopers in Ko Tor 1 and 2 seem to be designed to remove the wearer's ability to look up while giving them complete sight of their feet.
  • The helmets of the clone troopers likewise give their mouths and noses a great view of the battlefield. (Though the later stormtrooper armor only has eyeholes)
• Godot in Ace Attorney has three panels on his visor, for some reason.

Tabletop Games

• The Tau of Warhammer 40 K invert this by only having one visible lens despite their two eyes.

Comic Books

• Justified in Sillage, most easily seen in book 5. The number of lenses on the commandos' helmets range from one to six, but that's because it's a mixed species squad. Anybody shown with open helmet has the number of eyes to match their helmet.

Live Action TV

• One word: Borg.

Real Life

• It's probably worth mentioning that an "unnecessary amount of visor" might have to be an awful lot of visor. Look at how much they put on NASA space suits.

Formerly "Top Heavy Hero", but changed to avoid confusion.

A type of caricature style of drawing the human male figure, as having really huge torsos and arms, but really small legs.

When it involves Super Heroes, it overlaps with an exaggerated form of Heroic Build.

Compare Super Deformed, Lantern Jaw Of Justice, Most Common Superpower (another kind of heavy top).

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Rolling Examples:

• Captain Qwark of the Ratchet And Clank series
• Mr. Incredible
• Designs by Bruce Timm border on this.
• Team Fortress 2 has a few examples, notably the Heavy and the Demoman.
• Captain Hero of Drawn Together.
• Coach McGurk has the smallest legs of anyone on Home Movies and the largest torso.
• Double H from Beyond Good And Evil.
• Many characters in The Wind Waker.
• Kronk, from The Emperors New Groove.

Needs A Better Title and Do We Have This One Already. I looked for it in the Queer As Tropes page but it wasn't there.

Examples:

• Craig from Sea Change

Sometimes, powers are free. Sometimes, they have a price. There is a kind of price which is not payed immediately on-screen (i.e. Heroic RROD or body damage) Your lifespan. Sure, you can warp reality or heal instantly, but never forget that each time you become closer and closer to your coffin, and there is nothing you could do with that.

So, basically Cast From Lifespan is a type of Cast From HP.

Actual consequences of it may be shown on-screen to do a Downer Ending if the power belongs to a main character, or a Tear Jerker if it's secondary. But they can be not shown at all, and it makes the trope different from casting from HP. In this case the trope can be used as a kind of a limit for using an overpowered ability.

The price can be payed in different ways: a part of Deal With The Devil, a side effect of Healing Factor (speeding cell division, shortening their lifespan), draining Life Energy connected with age in this setting, form of Deadly Upgrade, plain Magic A Is Magic A and so on.

Anyway, if you've got such type of a power, you are either Blessed With Suck or can use it as a Dangerous Forbidden Technique.

Examples:

Anime

• Darker Than Black. There was a contractor whose price was aging each time she used her power. And the other whose price was aging backwards. This can also count.
• Robert from Ueki No Housoku. Each using of his ablilty costed him a year of lifespan.
• Naruto. Tsunade's and Naruto's healing factor makes them age faster.
• One Piece. Body strain from Luffy's Gear Second shortens his lifespan.
• Chrono Crusade. Chrono's powered by Rosette's Life Energy, shortening her lifespan.
• Death Note. You can have Shinigami's eyes for half of your lifespan.

Film

• The Golden Voyage of Sinbad. Each time Prince Koura used his black magic he became older. By the time he confronted Sinbad at the Fountain of Destiny he was an old man.

Tabletop RPG

• Dungeons And Dragons 1st Edition.
  • Several spells caused aging as a side effect of using them, including Gate, Haste and Wish.
  • One possible side effect of using an artifact/relic was aging 3-30 years.

Literature

• Faust.

Rolling Updates.

Do We Have This One?

It may seem related to Finger On Lips, but it is not. Happens usually when someone tries to seductively silence a friend, lover, and so on, so they place a single index finger to the lips of that person. Slightly related to the Shut Up Kiss. An example can be seen at the very end of Evanesence's Call Me When You're Sober http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=izYIO9VtjUs

Do We Have This? Should We Have This?

You know this guy. We all do. Ohhh yes. Even though you haven't even watched the show, even if you have no idea which video game he's from, you know this guy and have every one of their lines memorized. Their every word has a place in lulzy eternity.

This person, nay, this god(ess) of popular culture, can come in many forms, but they all are the same thing. They are the Walking Meme.

Be it due to Narm Charm, Large Ham-ness, or simply due to their own glorious Badassery, every sacred line this being spouts is an instant Memetic Mutation, to be repeated by the Internet-savvy throughout the ages.

For more information regarding these characters' holy exploits, see Memetic Badass, Memetic Sex God, and similar pages. See also Youtube Poop for practical applications of their blessed dictions.

When in doubt about examples, keep in mind the Rule Of Three. There's no specific cutoff point for awesomeness, but three Memetic Mutations is generally a good baseline. One probably won't cut it. It is also recommended, though not required, that you give us a sample of the character's works, so we too may revel in their awesomeness.

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Show me yo' examples:

• Captain Falcon says "YESZ!" to being shown some moves.
• Luigi's lines in the Mario cartoons are hilariously over-the-top, particularly in the "Mama Luigi" episode. "That's Mama Luigi to you, Mario!" *wheeze*
• The CD-i Zelda games are basically Walking Meme: The Game. The cutscene animation is so nightmarishly bad and the lines are so narmful that the cutscenes are basically 20 minutes of prime meme bait scattered throughout both games.
• Mario in the CD-i Hotel Mario game is well known for, among other things, proudly proclaiming that All toastas toast toast and looking about 300 pounds overweight, leading to the nickname "Fat Mario".
• Peppy Hare would like you to do a barrel roll. Additionally, Falco would like to inform Einsteinyou that he's on your side.
• Dr Ivo Robotnik in the Sonic The Hedgehog cartoon is this. He really hates that PINGAS!hedgehog.
• Chuck Norris was an example of this before it even existed.

Not to be confused with Mohs Scale Of Sci Fi Hardness.

Basically, a scale for ranking the "hardness" of music, "hardness" being the quality that separates metal from rock, or hard rock from soft rock, or death metal from other metal.

UPDATED Vague outline (I'd really like to give specific songs for each level eventually):

1. Verges on pop: Need examples.
2. Soft rock:Early songs by The Beatles, a lot of 50's rock.
3. Rock sans intensifier: Most songs by The Beatles.
4. Still rock sans intensifier (punk starts here): The Rolling Stones or occasionally The Beatles
5. Hard rock that is definitely still rock: AC/DC, where Led Zeppelin ends up on average.
6. Difficult to tell if it's rock or metal: Guns And Roses, Avenged Sevenfold
7. Classic metal (punk ends here). Also, most power metal: Black Sabbath, Iron Maiden, Judas Priest
8. Most thrash metal: Metallica, Megadeth
9. Lighter death metal or harder thrash metal: Slayer is a good example, also In Flames.
10. Most death metal: Cannibal Corpse, say.
11. And Beyond: Anal Cunt is here.

Notes:

• Lower hardnesses are not bad. Remember, The Beatles come in at 2-3, and 10 is usually unlistenable.
• As time goes on, those metal bands at the top of this chart go to increasingly silly lengths to top one another, which causes the chart to compress itself to accommodate the new hardness. So a 6 now could be a 4 or 5 ten years from now.
• The reason some of the metal Fan Dumb hates power metal is that it is a rare exception to the above rule that metal bands tend to get harder over time.

Do We Have This One ? Needs A Better Description

So, you need to add an An Aesop, but cant figure how, right? All you need is to add a new character whose sole purpose in the history is to give one! Older Than Print, started in the Greek Drama.

Up For Grabs.

Burt: That's 2.5 tons of high explosives, Earl!
Earl: You mean that's not enough? Oh Burt, don't tell me it's not enough!
-- Tremors II

When you have Stuff Blowing Up, it's often good to have bigger explosions. But that doesn't necessarily mean the actual bomb has to be large... except when it comes to this trope.

This is when you have a bomb that's about as big as a car, at the very minimum. And that's just for smaller blasts.

This was actually done in Real Life. Before high yield explosives, if you wanted a big blast, you needed a large amount of explosives.

Cluster bombing doesn't count, unless they were all dropped in a bundle to go off at once.

Compare BFG, More Dakka, Wave Motion Gun, Kill Sat, There Is No Kill Like Overkill, Awesomeness Is Volatile.

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Rolling Examples:

• Some of the bob-oms in the Super Mario Bros games could get this large, especially in Super Mario RPG and the second Paper Mario.
• The climax of Tremors II, as in the quote.

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Indexes upon launching:

• Bigger Is Better
• Weapons And Wielding Tropes
• Truth In Television

Surely we have this? Should We Have This? Needs A Better Title, Needs A Better Description, Rolling Updates all likely....

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Alternate Titles:

• A Fool And His Money Are Soon Parted
• A Fool And His Money Episode
• Easy Come Easy Go Episode
• Unexpected Windfall Episode

Basically, Exactly What It Says On The Tin, instead of a Broke Episode, an episode where one character suddenly has a lot MORE money than before, but things later return to the way they were because Status Quo Is God. The character will invariably have a huge and very sudden increase in expendible income. This might be for any reason, such as winning a lottery, getting a better job, crime, inventing the latest popular gadget, or even because something was delivered to the wrong address. Simultaneously, however, they are handed the Idiot Ball.

Almost invariably, the character gets it in their head that they must now act like an Upper Class Twit, spend like there's no tomorrow, mindlessly buy "whatever it is that rich people like", blow off their former friends as has - beens, etc. Within a few days, one of the following happens:

• The character somehow manages to completely exhaust their fortune except for just enough to buy themselves back into the life they had before.
• The bank, mafia, CIA, etc., realizes their mistake and sends a collection agent to confiscate the missing funds.
• They get fired from their job for gross neglegence, making the company look bad, insulting the boss, etc.
• They get in trouble for something, and to get out of jail time, a mob hit, etc., they must abandon their fortune.

At that point, expect that the character is sincerely worried about their future and the people they left behind, perhaps for the first time in their life. They are now so low that a life in Perpetual Poverty is starting to look good to them, having insulted their old friends, quit their old job, etc., they are likely on the streets. Expect the character to be Easily Forgiven; their friends blow it off as completely unimportant, their old boss hasn't been able to find anyone willing to apply for their old job, the person they sold their old house to is moving out of the area and sells it back to them, and the collection agents go home. In the end, the charccter's lifestyle is restored EXACTLY to what it had been before.

Examples:

• In Futurama, Fly discovers he'd left some cash in a forgotten bank account, and the accrued intrest has made him fabulously wealthy.
• Happens to Ron in Kim Possible.
• Happens to Peter in Family Guy.
• The P Js

Badguy Junior

Needs a better title

The male offspring(or Nephew of the badguy.

Their personality can vary a lot from sniveling wannabe who pushes his familial connections , a kid who idolizes his dad and is more mischievous then truly evil, a carbon copy of their dad, or a selfish scumbag who would kill his own dad to seize power

Why are they so evil? Is it In The Blood, do badguys just make lousy parents, or are they [My Master Right Or Wrong only loyal to their father]].

Often the one who seeks to avenge the villain and sometimes they’ll come out of nowhere with no prior hint to their existence . Though its not uncommon for them to show no no concern whatsoever for the death of their parent

The Spear Counterpart to Daddys Little Villain

Differs from Mad Dictator's Handsome son in that they never change sides and are often truly evil.

• All of Bowser's kids except Wendy. Bowser Jr is the most notable and falls under the admiring his dad, and more mischievous then truly evil.
• Dr Wily has a son in Megaman battle network that also took up villainy.
• Prince Lotor son of the villlain Zarkon in Voltron goes under the greedy scumbag who hates his dad.
• Several Examples in Fire Emblem.. In Blazing Sword there’s the sniveling Erik son of the greedy Darin. There’s ton in Genealogy of the holy war.

I'm thinking of a particular brand of Romantic movie (I don't say "comedy", because these stories are generally bittersweet) wherein the plot revolves around the relationship between two people who theoretically *could* develop a romantic attachment, but very conspicuously do not.

Generally one of the characters is in an unhappy marriage and the other character makes an advance on them but is turned down.

Hopefully I've done a good enough job of explaining it, but I do have some examples as well: "Once" and "Lost in Translation", both movies.

I think it's hard for this kind of plot to stand completely on its own (as with typical romantic comedy plots) so it often has something else that is interesting in its own right supporting it, as in the music in Once or the crazy Japanese culture in Lost in Translation.

*48 Hour Launch Notice.* - extended due to title debate

forum discussion on this

A given political and geographical division is often misrepresented in the eyes of those who are "close", but not near-by. For example:

• This troper lives in New York. Without telling you much, would you assume New York City?
• Or could you name a city other than Chicago in Illinois?

The basic premise of this trope is this:

1. Take a socigeographic, and/or political division.
2. Ask the natives about their neighboring regions?
3. Now ask the natives of those regions.

Compare And Contrast the results. If the natives go by a Hollywood Atlas, or something similar, the results will be surprising: There's nothing in X except Y (where X is a major political division [like a US State] and Y is a corresponding City within X).

Subtorpe of Small Reference Pools & Hollywood Atlas. Related to Big Applesauce & Tokyo Is The Center Of The Universe, except those are more about "where the action is" instead of "what the neighbors call us". For national tropages, see Freestate Amsterdam & Britain Is Only London. For time related events in that location, see Its Always Mardi Gras In New Orleans.

(Thanks Troper Madrugada for help)

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Examples:

Eagleland

• The best example I know of is New York State (will be a troper tale when launched).
  • Staying with in the State bounds, and going by the natives of New York City, you only have: NYC, everything north ("upstate"), and everything east (Long Island). This is too the annoyance of many natives in those NORTH-OF-NYC regions, whom could careless about the city; rather, they don't like being referred to as "upstate" since, to them, they are in the middle of the state and therefore New York City is down state. I've seen many a debate between two people (one a native, one a New Yorker; both attending a central New York college) in which one would include lines like: "I'm not upstate, you're downstate", "I don't know how it is here, upstate", etc.
  • Flip it around, a lot of People native (although not all) to the central regions of New York will believe that it's just New York City and the ocean. Long Island is either wrapped up into New York City, or none-existent. A friend of mine whose home was closer to Canada than to New York City automatically assumed I lived in Manhattan because I came from the "New York City" area. Another one was surprised to find out there were farms on Long Island.
• Chicago is the only place in Illinois
• Miami is the only place in Florida
• St.Louis is the only place in Missouri.
• New Orleans is the only place in Louisiana.

UAE

• Dubai is the only place in the UAE.

Freestate Amsterdam

United Kingom

• supertrope of Britain Is Only London.

Needs to be sorted?

• Japan is only Tokyo.
• Brazil is only Rio.
• France is only Paris.
• Northern Europe is only Amsterdam.
• Africa is only jungle, with a few small tribal villages tossed in. And aliens.
• The Philippines is only Manila - even to the locals.
• Russia is only Moscow and Russia is only Siberia

Exceptions

In America

• California only has LA, San Fransico, San Diego, etc.

*48 Hour Launch Notice.* - extended due to title debate

Do We Have This, Needs More Examples, and Rolling Updates.

This trope covers instances when a character eats or drinks something that's not intended to be food, usually without being aware of what they're consuming. Once the discovery is made, results in an immediate Spit Take, Vomit Indiscretion Shot, or some other response.

Inevitably produces lots of Squick. Might lead to It Tastes Like Feet when the dust settles. Often played for laughs as a form of Refuge In Audacity.

Differs from Foreign Queasine and Alien Lunch in that the stuff eaten wasn't supposed to be eaten by anyone. Bob drinking Rigelian bloodwine ("a delicacy on my planet!") is not this trope, but Bob drinking Rigelian rocket fuel is.

Contrast with Gargle Blaster, Masochist's Meal, Fire Breathing Diner. Also see Lethal Chef.

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Examples:

• Moral Orel once sold his urine as an energy drink for the school sports teams.
• The South Park episode "Scott Tenorman Must Die" ends with Cartman feeding Scott the ground-up remains of his parents.
• The second Jackass movie has a scene where Chris Pontius drinks horse semen.
• In American Born Chinese, the caricature Chin-Kee urinates into someone's can of Coca-Cola as part of a prank. When the character later discovers this, he throws up.

Refers to improving your situation by your own efforts and diligence. Often in the face of hardship and bad luck.

Commonly advice from an old man to the protagonist- who doesn't care much for it.

We don't have this one?

Up For Grabs

I don't have much to say. How do we not have this? We have one about being killed with fire or fire based things, and one about being cremated, but none specifically about the act of lighting a living being on fire to kill it.

Using a trope not normally used for combat into combat. This does not exclude tropes that are not physical.

• Ape Escape: Monkey Pink weaponizes Tsundere by switching forms with different attacks.
• Ranma One Half: Ryoga weaponizes The Eeyore by using an attack that gets more powerful the more depressed he is.

Needs A Better Description.

So, we have Nightmare Fuel, examples of which are mostly intentionally scary, and mostly hor kids, and high octane variant which causes nightmares intentionally and scares adults.

But we have Fetish Fuel for both intentional and unintentional variants. That's unfair and not right.

Compare any G-Rated show with Bound And Gagged for practical reasons (but it becomes fetish fuel for somebody much later, compare Rule 34) and Empowered which runs on High Octane Fetish Fuel (Bound And Gagged and, to a lesser extent, Spank The Cutie)

This must be here, surely, under a more obscure title...

Someone does something impressive. Someone else takes the credit and the glory for it. A defining trait of the Fake Ultimate Hero and the Glory Hound, but often features as part of The Power Behind The Throne and serves as a What The Hell Hero moment, when a protagonist's ego gets too big and he ends up stealing his friends' minor victories. On a larger scale, it's a big part of the examples under tropes such as America Wins The War.

Often a Pet Peeve Trope - this really gets under the audience's skin.

• Boy Meets Boy - Tybalt takes the credit from Mikhael's romantic gestures for a very specific purpose - he's trying to seduce Harley.
• Debatable villainous case in Other Peoples Business - Leon steals a Mac Guffin for Collin and Creed Corp, but one of Collin's associates ensures that it's stolen from Leon and that he, not Collin, takes the credit for it. Debatable in that he did actually acquire the thing...just that he did so after Leon already had it.
• In the Circle Of Magic books, Frostpine reveals that a shaman stole his (powerful)magic and used it to further his own reputation in the village, a case of actual power being stolen along with the glory.
• Many a Yamato Nadeshiko character is perfectly happy to have her own work passed off as someone else's (particularly her beloved's).
• After Mulan is revealed as a girl, China is all set to honour Shang as their hero. He doesn't look too happy about it, mind.
• In Pet Shop Of Horrors, the owners sometimes take the credit for their pets' achievements (i.e. "Dice")
• Can happen in real life, either deliberately or through "editing" history. That Alexander Graham Bell is supposed to have stolen the credit for the invention of the telephone from Antonio Meucci and Elisha Gray (among others) is an example of the first instance (although that's a very messy debate). That Philo T. Farnsworth is often credited with the invention of the television, when in actual fact John Logie Baird preceded him by over a year (people forget to mention that Farnsworth's was the first electronic - and therefore, modern television - not the first actual TV) is an example of the second.

Ladies'n'gents, please assume this YKTTW as killed. I'm having the page redirect to Old Master now. It was all my fault, I feel terribly sorry, and will Rick Roll myself for 5 minutes as a punishment. :-)

The nature of most economies seem to ensure that wherever someone is dying from lack of a certain necessity, people not too far away will have so much of it that they'll often have no use for the stuff, and will be using it in stupid ways or just throwing it away to keep from drowning in it. This is sometimes used to add more cynicism to Perpetual Poverty plots.

Another variant is the Scavenger World, when it exists alongside more prosperous and modern countries, causing the residents to literally turn the trash from their rich neighbors into useable tools.

This inequality is often a cause of Decade Dissonance.

Examples

Literature

• Discworld: 'Piss Harry' King made his fortune off this. People paid him to take their nightsoil away... and then he turned around and sold it to whomsoever required it.

Western Animation

• The Yum Yum fish in The Simpsons. While the small Dying Town that the episode focuses on is almost abandoned because of a lack of the fish, which were their main tourist draw, it's shown that nearby Japanese fisherman refer to them as "garbage fish," and have been catching them all and throwing them away.
• The Animaniacs short "A Gift of Gold" has Elmira open a present wrapped in gold wrapping paper for her birthday, tearing the wrapping to pieces. One of the pieces flies away and moves about town until it lands in the trash, a man finds it and uses it to wrap up a toy for his daughter.

New Media

• This Cracked article is all about how rich people can waste money that they have little other use for. They make reference to this trope in almost every paragraph.

Real Life

• Zig-zagged with food. People in some of the most fertile countries on Earth starve to death due to bad government and resource management, while morbidly obese people in the western world keel over from... malnutrition. In some places, the rich tend to be the healthiest and most well-fed, but in others, it's subsistence farmers.

Similar to [1] but instead uses explosives and (a) keyword(s). In general, any situation in which you should run if an expert or someone in the know does or says something. The guy in charge of demolitions going pasty and then yelling "TAKE COVER!" is an example. A person who has no idea of what their talking about running when the demo guy drops a stick of dynamite is not (Nitroglycerin however...). This also applies to anything that can go up in an explosive way.

Please refrain form putting theoretical situations, those belong in a forum, not here. Situations in which if you ever see an expert running you probably should be too do go here.

feel free to suggest better titles as this one's pretty lame.

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• Shlock Mercenary has several examples, like this and this.

Seen this a Million times. The Hero has the Villain cornered and call him out on how his actions are evil, etc. if beliefs. But the villain doesn't care if their actions are evil or not, because at least they're aren't a hypocrite when it comes to their beliefs and/or philosophy. May be related to Villain Never Lie.

A fighting game will often have far more instances of The Mario or the Fragile Speedster than a Mighty Glacier. Even in a roster of thirty or so, there will probably only be one or two big heavy guys.

Examples:

• Street Fighter 3: About 20-24 characters and two big guys (Alex and Hugo).
• Guilty Gear XX: Around 30 characters and exactly one big guy (Potemkin).

Several characters get drunk, wasted and frisky over the course of a night, often portrayed in alternating slow and fast motion at wild camera angles, with heavy dance music over the top. Someone free-pouring spirits in/onto themselves/someone else is obligatory.

A trendy modern variation on Drunken Montage. Similarities: Shaky Cam, simulation of Beer Goggles, ambiguous passing of time, disorientation. Differences: Drunken Montage is drinking alone, lonely and depressed, Binge Montage is. if not happy, at least hedonistic and fun.

See Wild Teen Party, a common setting for the technique.

Examples:

• Both Snatch and Lock Stock And Two Smoking Barrels.
• Skins, especially the (in)famous trailers for it.
• Misfits; Nathan and Ruth.

...okay, obviously Needs A Better Title.

There's a particular sort of joke/story/anecdote that fits this pattern:

The Experience of Women:

(details convoluted story of the topic at hand, say A Public Restroom or A Sick Toddler)

The Experience of Men:

(details a very quick-and-easy version of same topic)

Example: A giant and highly detailed story about all the many things a woman has to do to prepare dinner, compared with the man's version: Order pizza.

This is often, but not exclusively, done with Women vs. Men. I've seen ones with Cats vs. Dogs and there are likely others.

(Possibly the same trope, possibly a different one: The Intelligent Version vs. The Dumb Version, as with the contrast of the Cat who's narrating a diary like he's in prison ("tripped one human in the hallway today; must try that at top of stairs") and the Dog who's just going "Food! My favorite thing! Walks! My favorite thing!").

The joke lies in the extreme contrast between the first story and the second. The fact that I can predict the nature of the second story from the first indicates that this is a trope. The way that I can predict it so well as to go "Ah, I don't need to read this whole shaggy dog" probably means that it's becoming an overused trope, at least in forwarded emails. But it still can be riotously funny.

Assuming we don't have this: Up For Grabs.

In a Class And Level System, as characters gain levels, they become more powerful. Some games have enemies (usually of the undead variety) which have the ability to take these levels away from a character, which has the effect of weakening the character, usually described as an attack that drains the character's Life Energy.

If there is no way to easily gain these levels back, enemies that can do this often take on the status of Demonic Spiders, especially if they appear in groups and can drain more than one level per shot. Characters who lose all their levels this way typically die, and often come back as the creature that killed them, or a subordinate creature under the control of their killer, particularly if the creature was undead.

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Examples:

• Dungeons And Dragons, as you might expect, is the Trope Maker and Trope Namer. Under most circumstances, the only way to defend against level drain was by making a saving throw against it, or by using magic items that acted to negate the drain.
  • In the older games, if you lost a level, it was gone for good, and the only way to gain it back was the hard way, since restoration magic was out of the reach of spell casters until the highest levels.
  • Third Edition introduced the concept of negative levels, which was basically temporary level loss that you then had to make a Fortitude save against at the end of the fight for every level that you "lost" this way. If you made it, you got the level back, but if you failed the save, it was gone for good and you had to gain it back the hard way.
  • Fourth Edition did away with level drain entirely, instead having monsters that originally level-drained you (such as wights and wraiths) instead inflicting the Weakened condition on you (which simply halves the damage that you deal in combat until you make your saving throw to end it), immobilizing you (you can't move from your space unless you teleport until you make your save), taking away healing surges, and so on.
• Many Roguelikes, such as Net Hack, have this as just one of the many dangers that your character can face. Yes, they're Nintendo Hard.
• A certain monster in Disciples II (Wight?) did this and also brought the target down one Evolution Level.
• Runescape has many monsters, especially quest monsters, who do the temporary sort of draining, and there's even 'disease' from special undead, which hits a random stat for 10 to 1 levels, and there are potions to restore levels and cure disease, as well as jewelery that takes the disease for you.
• Final Fantasy V had several enemies and powers that cause level drain, though thankfully it's all temporary.

Subtrope to catch all the pathfinding issues in Artificial Stupidity.

Pathfinding sure is handy, it lets the units move away from obstacles and get from A to B in a fast and efficient matter. Well, at least that is the theory. Pathfinding can in some cases be more of a pain than a blessing.

Generic examples:

• Units getting plain stuck behind embarrassing obstacles. A rock in the straight line between me and the enemy? Walk right into it!
• Taking the route trought the rebel filled forest or using the well lit, if slightly longer pawed road? Forest all times, I mean, just because the last 50 units died at the same spot doesn't mean that this one will.
• Moving with inhertia, like racing or even space racing. I am avoiding this rock. No, wait, I am avoiding that rock. No, that rock. *crash*
• Anything requiring coordination of more than one unit at a time.
  • Multiple units in tight corridors. Another unit in the way? Clearly the road is permanently blocked and I need to find another, much longer router to use instead.
  • Carrier units, be it ships or spaceships. If you are lucky, they remember to build them to begin with.
• Not thinking about friendly fire. Hey, stop shooting me!

Come on, we gotta have this one, right? I've just been catching all the pages directly around it this whole time?

One of the most common Aesops out there- we shouldn't judge people based on how they look on the outside but rather how they look on the inside. Looks are a shallow motivator and are almost always wrong.

Admittedly, this trope is most commonly known for how it's skewered unintentionally by the heavy presence of tropes like Hollywood Homely. As a rule, nearly everyone in visual media who purports this trope will either clearly be beautiful themselves or will become beautiful by the end of the movie. So...maybe a good idea to read some books instead and just pretend like they're ugly.

Examples:

• Appears in all the Beauty And The Beast adaptations as it is the crucial lynch-pin of the story- beauty must come to understand that just because beast is a hideous cruel monster doesn't mean he's a bad person.
• Shallow Hal has a character cursed with a very literal example of this trope- he is only capable of seeing a person's "true beauty" which, for most of the movie, seems to be personified by Gwyneth Paltrow.

Pretty self explanatory title. Any examples?

I tried this once before, but it fell through.

You get the Obstructive Bureaucrat, who is just being a bit of a jobsworth and stopping something crucial from happening. And then you get the Beleaguered Bureaucrat.

The Beleaguered Bureaucrat (God I'm going to get sick of spelling that soon.) would love to help you with your problems... if they weren't dealing with a dozen other equally important (in the bureaucrats eyes) matters at the same time, usually while being shouted at for not being able to do five things at once. Basically, this is a character who is swamped with too much work whose performance (and stress level) is clearly suffering for it. If its a main character, expect their stress at this to become a Running Gag. Can become a problem for heroes if they need something done by this character quickly.

Signs that you are dealing with this character are:

• When told "This is serious!" they will snap "Yes, and so are the other dozen things I'm expected to do today."

• They will typically be buried, sometimes literally, under waves of red tape and paper work. Expect every comic bureaucrat related trope to be in full force. If on the phone, they will either be talking very quickly or getting yelled at. Bonus points in animation if they are trying to answer two phones at once.

• They will constantly look frazzled and will usually be short tempered even after work. This is often played quite seriously.

I had examples, but they've slipped my mind. Is This Tropeable?

Examples

When two opposing armies meet on the battlefield, there's always a bit of dramatic tension. Sometimes, the leaders will even exchange a few words of dialogue, or someone in the smaller army realizes that they're hopelessly outnumbered and outclassed. In either case, when the battle proper begins, there's only one thing to do . . .

Scream real loud and run headlong into each other!

That is the Rushing Wall of Screaming in a nutshell. Two sides of an epic battle (usually in an ancient or fantasy setting) run at each other screaming furiously until they meet, whereupon they start hacking at each other mercilessly. One side might try to even the odds a bit by tossing out a few arrows, boulders, dogs, whatever . . . but eventually, that wall of screaming soldiers is going to get there, and all hell is going to break loose.

Examples:

• The Lord of the Rings films do this about a billion times.
• [[Braveheart]] both plays this straight and subverts it.
• Dragon Age: Origins plays this straight near the beginning of the game.

A trope for when one character is shocked and appalled by another character's not being familiar with something that should be required, dammit!

This can be played a number of different ways. Sometimes the person who's shocked is portrayed as an old fogey, trying to enforce their old-timey tastes on a hip new generation. Sometimes, especially with an author of middle-age or older, the person who's shocked is portrayed as being right, and the person who isn't familiar with Shakespeare, The Bible, Sherlock Holmes, etc. is portrayed as woefully lacking. Although the trope is often played for comedy, it can be played for drama or characterization as well.

Of course, the truth is that such a vast amount of material is now regarded as "classic" that it would be physically impossible to meaningfully consume all of it.

I couldn't think of a good title. Do we have this already? Alice Bob and Chris are on a quest or just walking. Each of them has an unique talent or power. They come to a locked door or gate. Alice opens it with her talent/power. They keep going and come to a second locked door/gate this time Bob opens it. Third door/gate and Chris opens it. Example: In Family Guy (Ocean's Three and a Half) when Peter, Quagmire and Cleveland are robbing the vault they come upon three doors. Cleveland passes the voice scanner, Quagmire breaks the penile match, and Peter guesses the name.

Needs A Better Description

Essentially, when a character acknowledges that they cannot accomplish a goal/realize a dream in their present state, whether in terms of strength or (in a more metafictional sense, since only the audience will recognize it) Character Development. Whether it's because they're not strong enough to beat The Rival or Big Bad ("I cannot defeat you as I am now), or maybe they feel they can't start a relationship with the love interest ("I can't be with him/there for him as I am now"), they recognize this and admit it. This is pretty much the equivalent of a giant neon sign saying "ATTENTION: Character Development Imminent!"

A Character from a ( Often Merchandise Driven) show who does not get a toy.

• Averted mostly by Trans Formers.
• Poor, poor Katara.

''"Going to some other dimension to fight a final battle is such a cliche!"

-- Xiaomu, Super Robot Wars OG Saga: Endless Frontier

Seen It A Million Times: You're off to fight the final boss, so you end up having to go to another dimension. A Video Game trope, probably caused because the developers want it to be memorable, impressive, and/or awesome. May very well have an Amazing Technicolor Battlefield (thanks, unknown troper) or be a High Altitude Battle. It might also come with a Surreal Theme Tune. The main thing, however, is that it's in its own dimension, universe, or whatever. May also be applied to Bonus Bosses, even though they're not the final boss. A subtrope of Amazing Technicolor Battlefield, it's a common part of Trippy Finale Syndromes.

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Examples:

[[foldercontrol]]

[[folder:Tabletop RPG]]

• Judges Guild adventure Dark Tower (1979), using Dungeons And Dragons rules. The final battle against the Big Bad Pnessutt the Lich took place in the highest level of the Outer Plane of Hades. The party had to activate a planar portal to reach him.

[[/folder]]

[[folder:Video Games]]

• The Bonus Boss Culex in Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars is fought inside an alternate dimension that appears to be somewhere in the Final Fantasy universe, probably near the Final Fantasy IV reality/world/whatever.
• Super Robot Wars OG Saga: Endless Frontier has its final battle in the Einst dimension. It also has the final battle between the Namco characters Reiji and Xiaomu and their foe, Saya, which, while not the final boss of the game, counts because the game's dimension is an alternate dimension for them. Ironically, the page quote is for the latter, not the former.
• The final Specter fight in Ape Escape is fought in Dimension X, if the stage name in the NTSC version is to be trusted.
• Super Smash Bros Brawl: The Subspace Emissary has the final boss fight with Tabuu in the realm of Subspace.
  • Any of the Super Smash Bros series, actually - the fight with Master Hand (or Crazy Hand) takes place in some sort of other-dimension (this is, of course, before Subspace Emissary came up).
• Boss from original Half-Life.
• In Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann, the final battle with Anti-Spiral happens in His own pocket Universe.
• Final Fantasy IX has a final battle in another dimension. As does Final Fantasy VIII. Square Soft seems fond of this one.
  • Before those newfangled FFIX and FFVIII, Final Fantasy V does it by unleashing the Void and Neo Exdeath along with it.
• And then there's Dynamite Headdy. A battle on an Amazing Technicolor Battlefield, it certainly doesn't seem like any normal stage setting.
• A rather weird example occurs in XenoSaga Episode 1, where the space station you're on inexplicably switches to a cloudy battlefield against the final boss.
• The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask. The final boss battle takes place in an alternate dimension within an alternate dimension. Or something to that effect. Also, inverted in Twilight Princess, when, after going through the second-to-last dungeon in an alternate dimension, during the boss battle Zant actually transports you to places in Hyrule visited previously during the game.

[[/folder]]

Rolling Updates.

For example, it's typical Boke And Tsukkomi Routine. The boke (usually a female) just said or did something stupid, kinky or childish, and the tsukkomi (usually a male) has to correct and punish him. However, instead of doing it with words or with a Dope Slap he suddenly gives her a spanking. Hilarity Ensues. Most of the time Fetish Fuel also ensues. Of course, it's not limited only by Boke And Tsukkomi Routine. Bonus Points earned by different ways, such as:

• The bottom has outgrown such measures;
• The bottom is also Too Kinky To Torture;
• The act is warned by a "If you act like a child, I'll treat you like one" speech;
• The act also becomes or followed by a Crowning Moment Of Heartwarming;

And so on.

Examples:

• Ikkitousen has a couple of this, starring local Hot Shounen Mom and Too Dumb To Live Action Girl.
• Dai Mahou Touge - somewhat justified because Punie's sisters are actually kids.
• Great Teacher Onizuka. With a Badass Teacher, no less.
• Kanokon won some Bonus Points.
• Rosario To Vampire has this as an ending.
• Actually, a lot of Westerns had this.
• I Love Lucy, no less then thrice. Also implications.
• Riviera The Promised Land, though it didn't actually happen, but it became a Crowning Moment Of Funny.
• Empowered. Poor Emp. In real life (one smack, from time to time), in Dream Sequence, in Slash Fics, in bed, in real life (full-time. Bonus points because it was for disrespecting duct tape). Then again, it's within a comics which has a lot of bondage and runs on Fetish Fuel.
• Robert Heinlein has this several times in his works (it was Author Appeal for him, as noted on that page), including Beyond This Horizon, Glory Road, and I Will Fear No Evil.
• One Western where this happened was True Grit. The female protagonist insisted on coming along on a bounty hunt for the murderer of her father, and one of the bounty hunters spanked her to make her give up.
• "This is what you get for fucking around with Yakuzas! Go home to your mother!"
• This showed up in Kamen Rider Kiva with male characters. Otoya is Wataru's father and normally appears in flashback segments to 22 years ago. They met via time travel once, and Otoya ended up spanking Wataru, despite them both being in their 20's. It was utterly bizarre and seemed to have been there solely for the female audience (which modern Kamen Riders are aimed at).
• The Taming Of The Shrew
• Endless Frontier. Several times.

Seen It A Million Times. Do We Have This One / How Did We Miss This One? Needs A Better Description, badly. Rolling Updates.

When a new enemy/monster is introduced in a video game, Bob notices that it looks just like the old one, but with different colors. The newer version usually looks more striking and it's harder to beat.

Examples:

• Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
• Mega Man Battle Network

Needs A Better Title. Rolling Updates. Up For Grabs.

Simply, when rabbits are depicted in such a way as to induce nightmares, or are otherwise used or considered as objects of fear, either by the characters or audience.

Compare to Killer Rabbit.

Examples:

• Frank◊ from Donnie Darko.
• The manga Doubt is about a murder game called 'Rabbit Doubt', and creepy rabbit masks◊ are a common theme throughout.
• Obviously, the Killer Rabbit of Caerbanog from Monty Python And The Holy Grail.
• HBO had a special program once called Bun-Bun, which had possibly the most terrifying plush rabbit ever made, even though it didn't do anything directly; any child that ran into it became obsessed with having it, to the point of near killing themselves.
• General Woundwort of Watership Down.
• In Buffy The Vampire Slayer, Anya has a pathological fear of bunnies.
• Night Of The Lepus attempted this less than successfully, Or So I Heard.
• Pandora Hearts; the Blood-Stained Black Rabbit will mess you up. The White Rabbit is worse.
• Tends to be in a lot of Darker And Edgier incarnations of Alice In Wonderland.
• This image◊ from the Nightmare Fuel page.
• An Easter Egg Hunt themed Warcraft 3 map has seriously horrifying bunnies.
• Robbie the Rabbit from the Silent Hill games.
• Robert Rankin's book The Hollow Chocolate Bunnies of the Apocalypse.
• What about the bunny from The Grim Adventures Of Billy And Mandy? Probably the most nightmarish thing in an entire of episode of wishes made to a Jackass Genie going horribly wrong.
• Played for laughs in Hannah Montana when Jackson eats too much chocolate, and he has nightmares about a Godzilla chocolate bunny.
• Bunnicula.
• There was 70s kids' show in Britain called Pipkins which starred a puppet named Hartley Hare. Not meant to be a scary character, but it was such a freaking ugly thing it was probably Nightmare Fuel for younger kids.
• The Raving Rabbids.
• The first episode of Pet Shop Of Horrors has a rich couple who lost a daughter visiting Count D's shop and taking home a very rare species of rabbit that looks exactly like said daughter. Unfortunately, their love for their daughter leads them to break one of the rules of Count D's contract, and much horrificness with flesh-eating Killer Rabbits ensues.
• The card Vizzerdrix from Magic The Gathering.
• The meat-grinder bunny-monsters in the final stage of Psychonauts.
• Hoodwinked.
• Rabbits, The Sitcom Within A David Lynch Movie.
• The rabbits in some versions of the "Alice Human Sacrifice" song.
• Rabbits and rabbit-mechas in the NES Shmup, Gun-Nac
• Usavich gives us Kirenenko, although he's only dangerous if provoked.
• The actual Vorpal Bunnies in various games, including Wizardry, Final Fantasy XII and Star Ocean.
• In The Simpsons, Homer draws bunny faces on electrical sockets to scare Maggie away from touching them. When Marge points out that Maggie's not scared of rabbits, Homer replies "She will be."

Seen It A Million Times.

So, we have a Disney Villain who is going to inflict a horrible torture on his victims. Cutting off fingers won't work in a G-Rated show, what can be a substitute? Of course, tickling! Sometimes lampshaded. Basically, tickling is a G-Rated Cold Blooded Torture.

Can lead to a Fridge Horror (as does forced marriage when you realise that it's actually G-Rated rape)

Of course, covered in Cool And Unusual Punishment, but tickling is neither cool nor unusual, has its unique characteristics and, therefore, should be a subtrope.

• Paper Mario: Princess Peach suffers from this
• Asterix: Getafix also suffers from this. Complete with "Torture me instead!"
  • It was a powerful source of Fridge Horror for This Troper. Really, think of a potion as a powerful war technology and change rating to R (R stands for Real-life)

According to Lost and Found, we missed this one. I can't imagine we actually missed it--is there some reason it doesn't seem to be around? Needs a better description, Up For Grabs, etc. Rolling Updates are currently in effect.

A megalopolis is an extensive area of heavy urbanization with tight interconnection. Most common in science fiction.

Sometimes a supertrope of Capital City. In extreme cases, it's related to Single Biome Planet.

Sometimes, but not always, related to some of the following: The City, City Noir, Vice City, Wretched Hive, City Of Adventure, New Neo City, Crystal Spires And Togas, Cyber Punk, Egopolis

Examples

Comics

• Superman's Metropolis
• Actually, many superhero cities are like this. ([[Batman Gotham]], Keystone/ Central City, Hub City...)
• The Mega-Cities in Judge Dredd.
• The City in Transmetropolitan.

Film

• Coruscant from Star Wars is one of the Single Biome Planet variety.
• Metropolis, from the Fritz Land film
• The Matrix

Literature

• Isaac Asimov seems to be fond of these:
  • Trantor is another Single Biome Planet megalopolis.
  • Earth cities in Isaac Asimov's The Caves of Steel and The Naked Sun
• After the invention of the transfer booth in Larry Niven's Known Space, the major cities of Earth end up as something along the same lines: though geographically, they're not contiguous, they are in every way that counts.

TabletopRPG

• Megaplexes and metroplexes in Shadowrun: New York, Rhine-Ruhr, Greater Frankfurt, Philadelphia,

Video Games

• Taris in Knights Of The Old Republic.
• Kaineng City in Guild Wars is a rare fantasy example.
• Sonic 2 Metropolis zone. A three-act long mechanized nightmare.

Western Animation

• Cybertron
• Obligatory Avatar example, and another of the relatively rare fantasy type: Ba Sing Se.

Real Life

• The Northeast Megalopolis (Boston, New York City, Philadelphia, and Washington D.C.) was the first to be actually described as one.
• The Taiheiyo Belt has been called a megalopolis too.

Do we have this one?

A staple of platform bosses, but can also be seen in standard Mook's attacks. Usually, but not always involves a boss stomping on the ground sending out a shock wave along the ground, usually arcing out in an increasing circle, or part circle from the point of impact, that the player has to jump over.

Examples.

• N. Tropy in Crash Bandicoot Warped does this with a selection of laser beams that cross the arena.
  • Neo Cortex in the same game does something similar, in the first section anyway, as Aku Aku and Uka Uka create a beam that needs to be jumped over as they stare each other down.
• [1]Sonic Heroes' final boss does this with both horizontal and vertical attacks as you chase him down.
  • Rare 2D example, in Sonic 2, in the Oil Ocean Zone, Robotnik's laser can skim across the platfrom you're stood on leaving a trail similar to a standard Jump Rope Attack.
• Done by the generic spacemen enemies in the Blarg station in Ratchet And Clank.
  • Dr Nefarious does it as well in Ratchet And Clank 3
• lampshaded in Psychonauts during one boss, the boss cries out "Hard to avoid area attack" as he does this.

You know those scenes in the movies where the police cars are surrounding a building? During said scenes you will hear something coming over the police radio, it will always be "Main and central west 48". Even in movies where this doesn't make sense like in The Devils Rejects where the police are swarming a farm house in rural Texas, the radio still says "Main and Central West 48". It's just the generic thing the police say over the radio. It's in EVERY movie that has a scene with the police standing outside their cars.

It's an I Am Song for the whole crew!

If you come across a jolly band of pirates in a musical, and sometimes even in a non-musical, you're almost guaranteed to be treated to a number from them eventually. This song describes the "ideal" life of a pirate crew (as far as they're concerned) and will almost invariably (A) be accompanied by a squeezebox; (B) be set in 6/8 time; and (C) contain the phrase "yo-ho" somewhere. Not always a Villain Song since, in popular media, not all pirates are actually villains.

Examples:

• The most famous example is the theme from the Pirates of the Caribbean ride.
• In Disney's Peter Pan, Hook's crew gets two: Their introduction song "A Pirate's Life Is a Wonderful Life", and the later Villain Song "Captain Hook."
• "When You're a Professional Pirate" from Muppet Treasure Island, which appears late in the film because the pirates have only just revealed themselves to be such.
• An otherwise song-less episode of The New Adventures of Winnie The Pooh in which Tigger, Pooh, and Piglet are playing pirates opens with one of these. Notably, Pooh gets mixed up and sings "Ho-yo" at one point.
• From Lazy Town: "Do what you want 'cause a pirate is free; / You are a pirate!"

This is an index, but its also a handy guide to tropes specifically relating to common player tactics deployed in video games. Taking a read through these tropes may even give you some tips to try during play...

Tactical Tropes include the following:

• Cheating: Exactly What It Says On The Tin.
• Cherry Tapping Less a tactic and more a form of humiliation. Deliberately using a weak attack or deliberately weakened character to defeat the enemy in the most embarrassing way possible.
• Elemental Rock Paper Scissors: Matching up the right element for the job.
  • Infinity Plus One Element: Once you get this, you'll never cast another elemental spell again.
• Fragile Speedster: Specialises in speed, low strength and toughness. The antithesis of the Mighty Glacier.
• Game Breaker: Any weapon, armour or spell that once obtained means that nothing else in the game can reasonably compete with the wielder/wearer/caster.
• Glass Cannon: Specialises in attack. Low defence.
• Good Bad Bugs: When exploited, sometimes even game glitches can be made to go your way.
• Hit And Run Tactics/ Kiting: Shoot, run away, shoot, repeat.
  • Road Runner PC: A character who relies on Hit And Run Tactics for his or her survival.
• Infinity Plus One Sword: Its the most powerful weapon/armour in the game, but the effort spent getting it may reduce it to more of a Bragging Rights Reward. Nonetheless, the best thing you can collect.
  • Infinity Minus One Sword: Though its less powerful than the Infinity Minus One Sword, you'll find saves you more effort in the long run simply because it is easier to get. The games mainstay weapon.
• Lethal Joke Character: Learning to use a Joke Character in such a way that it becomes a Game Breaker.
• Leeroy Jenkins (Though this is more an absence of tactics.) The Berserker in video game form.
• Level Grinding: Committing mass murder of random monsters for experience.
• Mighty Glacier: Specialist in strength and toughness. Low speed. Antithesis of the Fragile Speedster.
  • Stone Wall: Specialises in even greater toughness. Low strength and speed.
• Min Maxing: Balancing equipment, spell casts, armour and any other stat-influencing items for the best possible result.
• Ninja Looting: Refusing to share the best items after a team effort has brought an enemy down. Very frowned upon
• Path Of Most Resistance: Taking the hardest route or doing something the hardest way will bring the best rewards.
• Save Scumming: If in constant danger of death, save often, minimising loss of progress.
• Sequence Breaking: Breaking the pre-determined order of events the game designers have laid out. May shorten the game considerably... or screw up your game file. A risky tactic but valuable for completing Speed Runs.
• Shoot The Medic First: Shooting the healer of the enemy group to prevent him from healing the others/himself.
• Tactical Rock Paper Scissors: Using the right person or unit for the job.
• The Mario: An all-round character who is average at everything.
  • Lightning Bruiser: Like The Mario, only can match the other specialist types at their own game. Something of a Game Breaker.
  • Master Of None: Like The Mario, but the all-round nature of the character makes them less useful than specialists.
• Whoring: Using only one narrow tactical option to devastating effect, often to the chagrin of other gamers.

Adding these as I go

A subtrope of All Animals Are Domesticated and related to Horse Of A Different Color, this would be when any four-legged animal, wild or not, can be, and is used as a mount, despite the fact that this would be stupidly dangerous (Bear/Tiger Cavalry, anyone?) or just plain impractical. Rule Of Cool plays a large part in this trope.

• As mentioned, Bear◊ and Tiger◊ cavalry. While this no doubt looks awesome, it would very soon cease to be as the mounts turn on their riders or collapse under the armored weight.
• Wolf riders (from LOTR, Warcraft, any fantasy you care to name...) and dog riders (Native Americans did use dogs, but for pulling heavy loads, until horses were introduced), though this is usually reserved for persons of smaller size (Chiyo-chan comes to mind).
• Pirlouit from the early Smurfs comics rides a goat.
• Belkar from Order Of The Stick uses a basset hound as a mount at one point.
• Dungeons And Dragons has a lot, I believe you can have a wooly rhinoceros in one setting.
• In some legends, Merlin rides a stag. Used by other druids since, as Malfurion does in Warcraft.
• Bull riders in some fictions, though the only examples I've seen are when the bull is stampeding and the rider wants to get off but can't (Feet Of Clay, Achille Talon).
• Night Elves ride giant panthers.

Up For Grabs

Why go Down The Rabbit Hole when the hole can fall around you? The Hero has the world morph into something else around her. It may be Sealed Evil In A Can that creates a Dark World, or a dimensional traveller that makes the land their Fisher Kingdom, or a Teleporter Accident that changes the past for everyone but the hero. Whatever the case, Dorothy did not land in Oz, Oz landed on Dorothy.

Some Elemental Powers let you control fire, water, air, or earth. Some even let you control lighting; ice; plants; light; darkness; arcane forces, magic, or the mind; and even heart (when not a victim of What Kind Of Lame Power Is Heart Anyway). This, however, is power over METAL. It generally allows one to control metal, although it may even include being made of metal and using one's body to attack.

(Extra Ore Dinary comes from "Dennis Moore", a Monty Python sketch. They sing that he's extraordinary, but make it sound like "Extra Ore..... Dinary".)

So, here are the votes for each suggested name. Don't know when the name's been finalised, so when nobody's voted or suggested another name for a few days, I'll just use the most popular name (which is currently Extra Ore Dinary). I'll probably make the second-most popular name an alternate title, unless there are objections to that.

• Metal Messiah: shot down, I believe.
• Extra Ore Dinary: 7 votes.
• Metal Power: 1 vote
• Man Of Steel: 2 votes, although as Deboss pointed out, it might be confused with Superman and Made Of Iron
  • Conversely, it fits one of the suggestions for naming tropes, in that it's similar to a pre-existing title.
• Puns Of Steel: that's a joke, right?
• Metal Bending: 2 votes, but it might be confused with literally bending metal.
• Warrior Of True Metal: 1 vote
• Steel Elemental, Metal Elemental: 1 vote (don't know which it's for, though)
• Metal Manipulator: 1 vote
• Metal Man: 1 vote (similar to Man Of Steel above, so it might have the same problems... or not, I'm not sure)

Examples: Anime And Manga:

• Digimon Frontier has the legendary warrior of metal, Mercurimon.
  • Also common in ''Digimon' games is to have a "Machine" element.
• One Piece has Mr. 1 who, after eating the Supa Supa (Dice Dice) Fruit, got a body literally Made Of Steel as well as the ability to form bladed weapons on any part of his body.
• Fairy Tail has Gazille, who uses iron dragonslayer magic.

Comic Books:

• Magneto.
• In Ultimate Spiderman, Ultimate Doc Ock has control over metal, whether due to magnetic control or some kind of telekinesis geared for metal, it's not made clear.
  Doc Ock: "It was the metal, Parker! I was controlling the metal!"

Mythology:

• One of the five classic elements according to Chinese mythology, along with Fire, Water, Earth, and Wood.

Video Games:

• Pokemon has the Steel-type.
• In Billy Hatcher And The Giant Egg, orange eggs usually contain metal-themed Mons or power-ups.

Webcomics:

• K'thonya of Earthsong belongs to a race with the soulstone ability of being able to manipulate metal; essentially the only thing she can't do with it is turn one kind into another and create it out of thin air (though she can expand a relatively small piece of metal to many times its original size). Her species' hair has a high enough metal content to be subject to her power, and the use of this ability by other members of her race apparently inspired gorgon myths in Earth culture.

Western Animation:

• Toph in Avatar The Last Airbender becomes the first metalbender in Avatar history because of her unique abilities.

Again, there'll be Rolling Updates.

...I'm not sure when a YKTTW is done, so is it ready to launch?

A Stock Phrase. Originally used in corporate and administrative contexts, it has tended to spill over into other areas of late.

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• Octopus Pie

"I'll never dance with another." - I Saw Her Standing There, The Beatles

The S.A.R. is where an adult couple has a romance, but no sex.

This stems from the days when people wanted desperately to believe that babies came from various animals such as birds, bees, and storks. Old entertainment has many SARs as is evident when a married couple sleeps in separate beds. Sex was symbolically replaced with elaborate singing and dancing numbers (the movie that inspired this post was White Christmas).

This classic tradition is often shown today, especially with adult characters in children's entertainment, natch, but also when the entertainment is aimed at adults who believe that those who are chaste, abstinent, asexual, etcetera, are quaint, charming, pure, and otherwise better than those who have sex (especially rebellious, edgy sex and / or homosexual sex). This theme is aimed at those who secretly or openly appreciate it when sex is only had under strict circumstances.

Gay people still often fall into this category. Many asexual sissy boys and asexual butch girls fit this role. Willow from Buffy was this with Tara, having symbolic rituals instead of actual sex until they finally consummated their relationship and Tara promptly died and Willow became the villain. Heck, Buffy was this with Angel until they finally consummated their relationship and Angel became a big Jerk Ass and it ruined her life and he went to hell.

Narrative reasons for SARs may include...

• They are physically unable to touch each other, for instance if one is an intangible ghost.
• They choose not to, for instance if they are religious or Just Friends.
• The sex is never shown. Sometimes never even hinted at. The audience is left guessing how they ever had kids. Adoption? That bizarre Beebirdstork creature?

Children don't count, for obvious reasons. For instance, Bart and Lisa Simpson, who constantly fall in love and date people despite being pre-pubescent. Though as an interesting fun fact, note that when Bart is thought to be gay during Homer's Phobia, it's because of stereotypical traits and not because he likes a boy too much. Also included in that episode is John Waters, who can only be identified as gay because he says so and is a sissy, but is otherwise not in a relationship, sexless or sexful, with a man.

Do We Have This One ?

Alternate title: Fuckless Adult Romance, as to not confuse fucking with gender.

Rolling Updates

Simply put, a plan that is conceived and put into motion while most (if not all) of the individuals involved are completely hammered. Thhe most common subversion is probably the (sober) Ditz or Cloud Cuckoo Lander coming up with a crazy plan that the drunks would normally never go along with.

Really Needs A Better Description

Examples

Comics

• One strip in Krakow references this, with a panel showing that Japan's decision to bomb Pearl Harbor was initiated as a drunken dare.

Literature

• Bored Of The Rings (a Lord Of The Rings parody). After the defeat of Sorhed's attack on Minas Troney, the victors have a drunken feast. When Arrowroot (AKA Stomper) is challenged to prove that he's worthy of being king, he decides to take an army to fight Sorhed, and the inebriated crowd agrees with him.
• The flying party in Life The Universe And Everything was made to fly because it seemed like a good idea to a bunch of drunk rocket scientists.

Live Action TV

• Of all people, Lois of Malcolm In The Middle tries this with a group of people from a book club. Yes, you read that right. A book club. The plan involved vandalizing the car of a very successful and popular woman whom the rest of the group were jealous of. Hilarity Ensues.

• Many of the plots of That70s Show are set up like this, usually with the "while high" variation.

Webcomics

• Questionable Content uses this on occasion, such as Sven hiring Lydia and not remembering it in the morning.

This is a Boys Love Fanservice trope.

To show what a hottie the Seme is, he will unbutton his shirt or take it off. To show what a cutie the Uke is, he will somehow wind up with just the shirt. He's also more likely to get put into really short shorts. The point of this, of course, is to allow the seme (and the reader) to ogle his adorable little butt.

An implementation so common it almost counts as a subtrope: the uke's clothes get wet or dirty, the seme offers to wash them, and while they're drying the uke hangs around the seme's apartment in a borrowed shirt, or his underwear, or in extreme cases a towel, while the seme slavers discreetly. (The stated explanation will be that none of the semes' pants fit him.)

This shades into Total Uke Exposure: any guy running around in just underwear, a tiny bathing suit, or Censor Steam is likely to be the uke. This trope can in fact be used to sort out the eventual sexual dynamic for a Seme x Seme, Uke x Uke, or otherwise ambiguous couple; the first guy you see naked will be the bottom.

Also applies to sex scenes: the uke usually gets stripped sooner, and even once things are underway the camera will show you more of his body than of the seme. Sometimes leads to Right Through His Pants.

A couple examples (please contribute!):

• Yuuri in Kyou Kara Maou (who is an uke type) is given Special Royal Underwear that he must wear; a tiny black string bikini. Then he has to change in front of everybody to put them on. The sole purpose of this incident is to show him in a tiny black string bikini, and cause all the semes to have Nosebleeds.
• Aversion: the seme in Selfish Mr. Mermaid spends quite a lot of time starkers. Of course, he's a mermaid, and he spends most of his time in the tub, underwater, or simply dripping wet, so clothing is not so practical.

This is where a list or roster is made that takes prominence in a story. The reasons for it may vary, it could just be "Secret Government Papers" or it may involve the characters themselves being on that list.

Examples-

• My Name Is Earl is about Earl making a list of all the bad things he has done in his life and repairing whatever he might have done in order to fix his Karma. Some times he ends up adding things to that list and most of the time it is about trying to get something off that list.
• Schindlers List- The list here is very important, and even a cause for Samaritan Syndrome from Schindler himself that he couldn't save more.
• Kyle XY had an episode "The List Is Life" (referencing Schindlers List) that dealt with an underground social list naming different people in the school as part of different categories: Biggest Brain, Biggest Jock, Biggest Slut, etc.
• South Park has fun with this as Kyle is labeled on the girls list as being the ugliest kid in the third grade (even behind Cartman), which ruins his social standing. Stan goes off with Wendy to get to the bottom of this, only to find that the supposedly infallible girls "list making" committee had been compromised.
• Home Improvement had Tim make a list of all the times he had wronged Jill in a car related issue, which was an effort to make amends with a recent screw up and possibly check in to the "Henry Ford Clinic."
• The Bucket List- Two old men dying of cancer make a list of everything they want to do before they die.
• The first Mission Impossible movie centered around a Mac Guffin list of every IMF agent and their corresponding code names, which in the wrong hands would destroy all of the espionage they do all over the world.

Is This Tropable?

A dramatic, musically fitting song is playing for the event. Except the lyrics don't match up.

Compare Soundtrack Dissonance.

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• Pick any James Bond song. Any.
  • Golden Eye: A woman plots to make an older casanova her uke.
  • Diamonds Are Forever: A woman lists the advantage of diamonds over men.
  • Die Another Day: Madonna sings about... dying another day. (Let's just say the lyrics are abstract.)
• Commercial for Left 4 Dead 1 used Elbow's Grounds for Divorce, about an alcoholic pissing away his time at a local pub.
• Semi-variant: Not sure if it was played in the titular film, but David Bowie's Cat People is about a man longing for someone.

Several people dislike seeing anyone other them their favorite person on top and no wear is this more apparent then Internet Wrestling Community where the mantra can sometimes seem to be Its Popular Now It Sucks. Whoever is the top guy in the company will undoubtedly be called The Wesley and be bashed as a no talent hack that douse not deserve to be there regardless of their skills or how they were thought of by the IWC before (yet strangely for some like Triple H and Cena after almost all their matches the IWC will claim that is the only good match they have ever had).

Sometimes it seems like the only way a champion can escape this fate is if the other major company has a more popular champion or the casual fans go away after they become champion, like in 1994 when WCW was getting a ton of the WWF market when they brought in Hulk Hogan and the WWF given the title to Bret Hart. The IWC will claim that Hogan destroyed WCW while Hart saved the WWF despite the numbers showing the opposite happening

This is especially conman with Wrestlers that have been popular for a long time like Hulk Hogan, The Rock, Triple H, and John Cena. Several people in the IWC Seem to forget that these are real people and call for their deaths and cheer whenever something bad happens to them in real life

For examples I will probably move several things from So Bad Its Horrable The Scrappy and The Wesley that do not belong there

Do we have this sort of thing anywhere? It's rather common in video games where a party member does a Face Heel Turn (or is it Heel Face Turn?) and suddenly he pops up from level five to level forty. It's rather annoying, personally, when you know characters can't exceed 9,999 HP or whatever and there he goes, up at 15 or 18 thousand or something... Also, I most definitely Need A Better Title. Hey, I just thought of one. The last one was 'Double Crossing The Hero Powers You Up.'

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• Happens a lot in Final Fantasy
  • Happens in a lot of RP Gs, come to think of it

As suggested by the Psychotic Smirk Discussion, a heroic version of the Psychotic Smirk (minus the psychosis, obviously). Actually, I would love to merge both because splitting tropes along the villain/hero lines always ends up tricky when an Anti Hero does it, so I came up with a title that qualifies for both villains and heroes: after all, it's always a smirk and it's always used to signify triumph. So Yeah. What do you think?

As for examples...

• Archer from Fate Stay Night (see that discussion page) is a heroic example.
• Lelouch from Code Geass (currently listed on the old page) in an anti-heroic example. Ditto any Anti Hero currently listed.

The obvious counter trope to Crowning Moment Of Heartwarming, Dethroning Moment Of Cruelty is the penultimate counter of feeling good. This trope is moments where it feels bad, not tearjerking bad but just plain bad. Like when a business fails despite the help of professionals or people who just can't be remedied. Unlike a Tear Jerker, you only feel pity for either side. But in the end, all it does is make want to walk away and accept the fact

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• Keep Moments of Cruelty to the absolute ends, don't use smaller real life examples as an DMOC.
• While many DMO Cs are also Tear Jerkers, they should have something distinctly depressing to belong here.
• It has got to fit the story's narrative and tone. It can't come out of the blue as something tacked on.
• It has to be original; clichéd nice things happening would induce more "yawn" than "damn".
• It has to feel sincere, like the writer and/or director wanted it there to make a real point for the story, not just for a coldblooded audience appeal.

Rolling Updates

• Two Live Action TV series came into mind, Nanny911 and Kitchen Nightmares, for the first one. The Longairc Green Family had the first case where the mother was deemed as crossing the Moral Event Horizon and was unaffected. Gordon' first attempt to help save a restaurant goes sour as the business goes under and of all responses, the owner sues Ramsay for it. Some other restaurants will fall upon the same fate as this one
• ISA's struggle in Killzone is one long D Mo C, fighting amongst themselves and a seemingly Implacable Army. The cracks finally poured when you realized what was the effect of treason amongst your ranks in Killzone2.
• Far Cry 2 is designed to make you feel this, little bit by little bit, until hopefully about 4/5ths of the way through the game you hate yourself completely. The ending attempts to give you a teeny bit of hope.
• In Code Geass R2, Zero/Lelouch has finally won the day... and then he turns out to be an utter Jerk Ass of an Emperor. No, that's not the DMoC. In the end, after achieving a Zero Percent Approval Rating, Suzaku dons Zero's attire and kills Emperor Lelouch. (You should know THAT already, too.) Still not the DMoC. The true DMoC comes when you realise that he did all of that, made sure he would be hated worldwide, to bring everyone together in peace. All because he wanted peace on Earth for his little sister. And now that peace is here, he's gone, meaning that not only was he screwed over ENTIRELY in everything he ever did, and his sister has to live with people seeing her brother as the worst villain EVER!, she's left alone in the world. And that really sucks. Also a Tear Jerker, perhaps.
  • Also, in the original Code Geass, it looks as if everything's going well, and Lelouch's goal of peace and freedom for the "Elevens" is going to be achieved. ...Until his Geass permanently activates, resulting in Euphemia going all genocidal on them. Ouch.
• Fable 2 has the player-punching moment when Lucien shoots your dog and tells you that he has killed your partner and children. Many players will have felt their efforts up to that point to have been rendered completely and utterly futile. Its the closest a game can come to pushing the player over the Despair Event Horizon.
• Manfred Von Karma Kills Edgeworth's father. In an elevator, where an incident happened which gave Edgeworth his fear of elevators/earthquakes/airplane turbulance.

A person is marooned on a deserted island. They have several worries: food, shelter, fresh water. The wild life might be trying to kill them.

However, those are by far not their greatest problem.

Their biggest problem is loneliness.

Extended isolation from human contact CAN drive a person crazy, although it will take some time. In most shows, a few hours is often enough for this. It is usually accompanied by delusions of grandeur, hallucinations, neglect of basic grooming and hygiene (a beard grows almost instantly) and unsuccessful attempts to try to mimic tribal lifestyle.

Also, in order to not to go COMPLETELY crazy - or rather, a surefire sign that they ARE - the character elects a Companion Cube to act as a surrogate for a real person. They usually paint a smiley face on or take other measures to make it look more lifelike.

This objects is usually cast away as soon as the character makes human contact again, which surprisingly will cure them almost instantly, although looking at themselves a moment later is often embarassing. However if the character is particularly childlish then they may continue to hold on to their "friend".

Subtrope of The Aloner.

Examples: "Total Drama Island": Owen's Mr Coconut. "Cast Away": Wilson the Volleyball. Variations of "Treasue Island" usually have a character like this.

So, let's say you're an grumpy old man. There's a burglar in your house, and he's armed with a knife. Being the stubborn old curmudgeon you are, you aren't really up for running away. So, what do you do?

You pick up your trusty walking stick and give him a good whipping. That'll teach that rascal to respect his elders!

Tough, hard, and easy to whip around, variants of the cane have actually been made for the purpose of butt-whoopin'. It's mostly the favored weapon of Cool Old Guys and pimps everywhere.

Film

• In Up, Carl Fredricksen starts using his cane for various awesome activities after a very important part in the movie, including using it in a duel with Charles Muntz.

Do We Have This One? Is it part of a larger villain trope, like Bad Boss? Because as the saying goes, How Did We Miss This One?

They say a man's home is his castle. For some, their jobs are their castles. Some of them are not very good rulers. They might turn the other cheek as bad men do terrible things to each other, they may use their position for financial gain, they might utilize the bad men they guard as free labor, or death-match gladiators, or makeshift hitmen, and they will likely make the innocent or at least less-nasty-than-the-rest prisoner protagonist more of a hell than prison already is.

Examples

-The prison warden in Lock-Up -The prison warden in Shawshank Redemption

How Did We Miss This One?

In the library or archive, there are always stacks upon stacks of books, and so many bookcases in so many rows. The fight begins, and a bookcase falls...into its neighbor, which falls onto its neighbor, and causes a Chain Reaction that levels the whole library.

Film

• The Mummy Trilogy: In the first movie, Evy does this by accident because she's a klutz.

WesternAnimation

• El Tigre: causes it in his mother's library because the bad guys duck his Rocket Punch. The falling bookcases end up getting them in the end.

There's a type of time loop that appears in fiction that appears to be a Stable Time Loop, but unlike that kind of loop, creates a Temporal Paradox by having no definite beginning or end. This is called a Recursive Time Loop. In contrast to a Groundhog Day Loop, a recursive loop is explicitly Time Travel, not simply a Snap Back, and there is no escape clause - once you're stuck in it, you're there forever.

Let's take Alice ('A') in the page image as an example.

1. Alice lives her life, moving forward normally in time.
2. An event occurs that sends Alice back in time, but instead of creating a duplicate of her, Alice becomes her past self, losing all memory of her "future".
3. Alice then repeats the sequence of events leading her to be sent back, ad infinitum.

The result is a paradox. At no point in the loop are there ever two Alices. Either the entity that is "future" Alice disappears, or the entity that is "past" Alice disappears. Whichever is the case, nothing comes out the other end. For all intents and purposes, Alice is gone from reality once she enters the loop.

The other version is an object that gets looped back on itself. Consider a common pair of glasses that Bob buys. Later, Bob goes back in time and sells the glasses. Those glasses then become the same ones that Bob bought in the future. Now ask yourself: where did the glasses come from? How old are they? There's no discrete point in time when they were created or destroyed -- thus, a paradox.

This type of time loop, when seen in science fiction, is often a sign that the work is on the softer side, or that the author Did Not Do The Research about Time Travel. Alternatively, it can simply be given a Hand Wave as A Wizard Did It, if the work is not intended to be taken seriously. Either way, it's a guaranteed Mind Screw for anyone who thinks about it too long.

Note that a Groundhog Day Loop can be a type of Recursive Time Loop, but the participant(s) retain some memory of previous iterations, sufficient to eventually alter the outcome.

YKTTW Note: This trope is intended to split off examples from Stable Time Loop. Please examine examples from that trope to see whether they might fit better here.

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Examples:

Film

• In Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, McCoy presents Kirk with a pair of antique glasses as a birthday present in the 24th century. In Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home, Kirk sells the glasses in the 20th century to an antiques dealer...

Literature

• Used in the Discworld novel Pyramids, where a major character, Dios, through a method of semi-immortality, has been trapped in an 8000 year loop for an unknown number of go-rounds.
• Robert A Heinlein's short story By His Bootstraps illustrates elements of both a Stable Time Loop and a Recursive Time Loop. The character who participates in the loop observes a straightforward progression from his point of view. However, in doing so he steals a notebook from his future self containing a full dictionary of a foreign language. During the loop, he finds that the book is wearing out so he copies it to a new one (thus solving the entropy paradox). What is the paradox? The information contained in the notebook -- where did it come from?

Live Action TV

• In the Star Trek The Next Generation episode "Cause and Effect", the Enterprise becomes bound into a time loop with a ship it collided with. For the Enterprise they retain just enough of a sense of DejaVu to eventually break the loop, but the crew of the other vessel apparently lacks even that.

Webcomics

• In The Adventures of Dr. McNinja, this is the ultimate fate of the villainous unicorn-turned-motorcycle Sparklelord, sent back in time to the moment when he first entered the protagonist's world with no memories of what happened, thus being forced to live out the same sequence of events for eternity.

This is a Fanservice trope.

So you have a sweet little innocent (usually a girl, but it also works for the Uke in Boys Love), and you want to have them be sexy but still innocent. Solution: put them into a men's white dress shirt that is ten sizes too large so it slips off their shoulders in a risque fashion, and no pants. Bonus points for implying that there's nothing underneath. Also works on characters who are not so innocent.

Example (mildly NSFW)

Seen It A Million Times.

How Did We Miss This One? Up For Grabs. This title belongs to another article.

So I've noticed we have tropes like Jerk Jock, The Libby, Jerkass, Schoolyard Bully All Grown Up, etc, and related tropes like Kids Are Cruel, but I've failed to find any trope describing simply bullying. Not all bullies or instances of bullying can have these tropes applied, which would make having a broader umbrella category a good idea.

Related character tropes: Schoolyard Bully All Grown Up, The Libby, Jerk Jock, Bully Hunter (contrast)

Related concepts: Kids Are Cruel, Bullying A Dragon

Examples:

• The video game Bully.
• Nelson of The Simpsons.
• Biff of Back To The Future. Also a Jerk Jock.
• Conny of Let The Right One In.
• Dudley and Malfoy of Harry Potter.
• Butch at the beginning of Fallout 3.
• You meet bullies in 1 and 2.
• Bugs of Encyclopedia Brown.
• Buford of Phineas And Ferb.
• Roger of Doug.
• Flash Thompson of Spider Man.
• Bullies fight Goku in the movie version of Dragonball. Also Bullying A Dragon.
• The brother on Strangers With Candy. To be fair, he bullies his sister, who at times can be something of a bully herself.
• Dash and Paulina from Danny Phantom. Paulina is also The Libby.
• Gelman from Recess. Also a Jerkass.
• Bonnie Rockwaller from Kim Possible. Also The Libby.
• Brit and Tiff from My Life As A Teenage Robot. Also Libbies.
• Portia (and her sidekick) from The Mighty B. Also The Libby.
• Francis / F-Stop / Hotstreak from Static Shock.

Needs A Better Title. Rolling Updates. Up For Grabs.

Title suggestions: Invisible Backup Band, Whered This Choir Come From, Not So Solo

Extremely common in anime, but Seen It A Million Times elsewhere. Occurs when a single character begins to sing a capella, and is immediately accompanied by suitable background instrumentals and vocals (bonus points for when spotlights and/or other stage effects) with no conceivable source.

May or may not also be a case of Magic Music.

Examples:

• Virtually every Musical ever.
• Creamy Mami had this power in that anime series, which is how she ended up with a career as an idol singer.
• Wakko's Two Note Song from Animaniacs.
• In an episode of Tiny Snow Fairy Sugar where the musical accompaniment is played by fairies that nobody can see or hear.
• The Mystery Science Theater 3000 guys snark on this several times in the Girl In Gold Boots episode, suggesting that the singer must be playing the harmonica through his butt.
• Azmaria Hendric of Chrono Crusade has a soft church organ playing beneath her songs. She also has Magic Music.
• The titular character of Kobato does this in the first episode. She's accompanied not only by a piano, but synth effects, a spotlight, and flower petals.
• Lampshaded in Ouran Highschool Host Club: Haruhi is seen singing with beautiful music the background, when someone accidentally unplugs the music player.
• Lampshaded in Disney's The Three Musketeers, where, after Pete finishes singing his Villain Song, he wonders why the music stopped.
• In the Granada TV adaptation of The Red-Headed League, Sherlock Holmes is accompanied by an imaginary orchestra as he whistles a theme from the concert he attended the previous night.
• Fancy Lala has this ability.
• Lampshaded: The Music Meister had brass and strings for him during one song, synth for another, and crunchy guitar and piano for yet another, even though he had no visible means of producing that music until his big finale, when he was standing in front of a giant stereo system.
• Once More With Feeling, the Buffy The Vampire Slayer episode. Played straight, lampshaded ("that would explain the huge backing orchestra I couldn't see and the synchronised dancing from the room service chaps") and even a little averted ("she needs backup ! Anya, Tara...")

Glad I Thought Of It is when one character suggests a plan, and the other scoffs, but then claims it as their own. This trope, however, is when a character is trying to guide another character toward an idea or plan while making it seem like that character thought of it themselves.

Seen It A Million Times, but the only example I can think of right now comes from Xanadu On Broadway

The hero is out for revenge, but he's the hero, and killing people is Bad, so he spends a lot of time (or the audience is expected to spend it on his behalf) worrying about whether he'll actually kill the villain in the end, and if so whether that was the right thing to do. It comes to the final show-down, he has the villain at his mercy, he hesitates...

And he decides not to kill the villain.

And then, somehow, the villain dies anyway.

The audience cheers, because the villain got what was coming to him without the hero having to do a bad thing. Except for that spoilsport up the back who insists that this is cheating.

• Seen It A Million Times
• In the Star Trek Deep Space Nine episode "Blood Oath", an old Klingon friend of Dax's asks her to help him track down and kill the man who killed his son, Dax's godson. Dax goes along, but worries about what will happen if it comes down to her to do the vengeance, which of course it does after her friend is struck down. Dax hesitates, and then her friend has a My Name Is Inigo Montoya moment and lets her off the hook.
• If memory serves, this happens at the end of the film version of Patriot Games. (But not in Tom Clancy's novel, where the hero decides not to kill the villain and then the villain doesn't die.)
• According a YKTTW further down the page, this happens in the movie of The Dead Zone

The theme song ends, or the cold open starts, or we return from a commercial break, or we simply change scenes. What do we see but a close-up of a character's eye?

This is an Eye Open, a device sometimes used to show that a character is waking up. Of course, sometimes it's just used to show off an actor's good-looking eyes.

A little help with image formatting would be welcomed.

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Examples:

Anime/Manga

• Canaan: Canaan.
• Shows up a lot in Evangelion.
• Fate / Stay Night: Saber.

Film

• The movie Aeon Flux opens with the title character's eye catching a fly.
• Next does this with Nicholas Cage's eye twice, once before and once after his character's long vision of a possible future.

TV

• Lost. Quite a lot, in fact.
• House.
• A first-season episode of the original Twilight Zone whose name escapes me does this.
• The 2009 pilot of V does a backwards one: instead of opening on Erica's eye and zooming out, we open on Erica and zoom in to her eye.

Video Games

• Half-Life 2 opens on the G-man's eye.

Western Animation

• Highlander: The Animated Series.

Sub-index to More Than Meets The Eye.

Supertrope is Crouching Moron Hidden Badass.

These characters are Badasses but you wouldn't know because they are...

• too weak - Weak But Skilled
• too small - Pintsized Powerhouse
• too stupid - Spanner In The Works
• too cowardly - The So Called Coward
• too emotional - Badass Angster
• too geeky - Badass Bookworm
• too cultured - Cultured Badass
• too normal - Badass Normal
• just a random person - Badass Bystander
• too gentle - Beware The Nice Ones
• opposed to violence - Badass Pacifist
• too cute - Badass Adorable
• too young - Little Miss Badass
• a baby - Goo Goo Godlike
• too old - Badass Grandpa, Never Mess With Granny
• dying - The Last Dance
• female - Action Girl
• pregnant - Pregnant Badass
• with children - Action Mom, Mama Bear, Papa Wolf (DELETE "Badass Mother")
• handicapped - Handicapped Badass
• you met them too early - Future Badass, Dare To Be Badass
• you met them too late - Retired Badass
• a teacher - Badass Teacher
• a doctor - Badass Labcoat
• a priest - Badass Preacher
• Santa himself - Bad Ass Santa
• Jesus himself - Kung Fu Jesus
• have their powers locked away - Sealed Badass In A Can
• or just have some really goofy ones - Heart Is An Awesome Power
• or maybe just need a bit of last-minute Heroic Willpower - Lets Get Dangerous
• a Ragtag Bunch Of Misfits - Misfit Mobilization Moment

Then again, anyone might turn out to be a secret badass.

Do We Have This One?

A character receives a devastating write-up in the newspaper. Another character compliments them on the accompanying picture.

-Season 4, Episode 4 of Dexter. Dexter compliments Lundy on the picture accompanying an article criticizing him for wasting the police department's time.

When sport commentators are told off for being biased.

Examples:

• Used in a Donald Duck comic: he worked as a sport commentator; and was fired when his commentary showed signs of bias.

• In Harry Potter, Lee Jordan was told off by Mrs. Mc Gonagall for showing his support to Gryffindor and his loathing of Slytherin.

Alice: What's the matter? Bob: Nothing... (he must have a problem doesn't want to disclose it for some reason. Can be a case of Can Not Spit It Out, or maybe the character is emotionally shattered and wants to make a Heroic Sacrifice/commit suicide and talking about it will ruin their attempt.

Do We Have This / Is This Tropable? Seen It A Million Times.

Example off the top of my head: Ashita no Ousama

Contrast I Can Fight. Not related to Its Probably Nothing.

...we will, too.

I don't know how I'd go about searching for this one, so I'm not gonna try. If you know it, point it out.

So say there's this newfangled flying machine, the Whirlybird. (I'm borrowing this example from a favorite kids' book, though I don't think that plotline actually falls under this trope.) Anyway, this thing scares the common folk because it's just not right for man to fly. Honestly, if God wanted us to fly, he'd have made gravity a little softer, right?

So when the inventor (from inside or outside the community) tries to get the community to give this a try, everyone seems to be against him.

That is, until Bob Smith, that salt o' the earth miller from the edge of town - never known a more conservative man! - he steps forward and declares that he's willing to take a ride.

Bob rides. Bob lives. The community gets past the hump of "it's newfangled!" and is willing to at least give the thing a try. All because one of the regular Joes was willing to step up and be the first customer (not counting the crazy guy who tried to get people involved in the first place).

I've been aware of some version of this trope for years now, but up till now I've called it "The Second Man principle": To get the people in general to break inertia and do something, it's not enough to have Steven Ulysses Perhero step forward and try to persuade people to follow him; people know he's a little eccentric and not exactly one of the community. But if Bob Smith steps in, people are going to be willing to follow him, because they know he's a little more level-headed and not prone to irrational behavior.

This trope exists in several different variants: accept the outcast; accept the new technology; c'mon we need to go help those guys; and so forth. It also works in any sort of community, not just a small town but say inside a gang or a group of businessmen or whatever.

There may be a darker variant, where it takes the "Bob Smith" character to let a mutiny get really underway; without his support, the initial guy who tried to start the mutiny just gets killed or cast out.

Examples:

• In Twelve Angry Men, when it looks like the whole room is against the main character and he's going to have to just give up, the old man juror decides to throw him a little support; this breaks the tide enough for them to start analyzing the case.

I had thought that this was found in Cats, but looking at the clip on You Tube, I guess I'm mistaken: Once Victoria accepts the outcast Grizabella, everyone else quickly piles on (some more reluctantly than others). Victoria is young and her wishes get overridden by the adults earlier in the story, so she doesn't count as the "Bob Smith" character here. But if she had started trying to advocate for acceptance, and it took Munkustrap or Mr. Mistoffelees to get everyone else moving, that would have been this trope.

Anyway. Assuming we don't have this one: Up For Grabs.

Daryl MacPherson: I still don't like changing diapers, but ever since Hammie came along my reflexes have really improved.

--Baby Blues

Any time Hilarity Ensues because someone without experience is taking care of a baby, you can expect the writers to bring out the horrible and dreaded act of the diaper change for quick and easy Toilet Humour. This is frequently taken one step further when the child in question is a boy, since the infant will frequently "open fire" on his caretaker mid-change.

A Truth In Television trope, as anyone with any significant experience in caring for babies will confirm. Hardly exclusive to boys in real life, but in fiction it's only ever really brought up with them since they're the only ones for whom it's a potential projectile.

See Urine Trouble, which covers a broader range of such incidents.

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Anime & Manga

• An episode of Sailor Moon during the "Eiru & An" arc featured Darien caring for a baby. An got this whens she tried changing the baby's diaper.
• Yui of the ecchi series Koharu Biyori has this happen to her while babysitting. Worse, the accident causes a short in the Robot Girl's system that deletes all the baby care information she had downloaded specifically for the task.

Live Action TV

• In an episode of The Nanny, Fran is changing a baby boy's diaper when Max warns her to stand over to the side rather than in front in case of this trope, commenting that his own son was able to hit the wall clock.
• Spoofed in Dinosaurs. It appears that Baby Sinclair is doing this to Earl, but he's actually shooting him with a water pistol.

Newspaper Comics

• A strip of Baby Blues featured dad Daryl dodging, weaving, and ducking the first three panels, before finally saying the page quote to his wife Wanda as he holds his son.

We have Breakup Song, which kinda overlaps, but we don't seem to have a trope (in my quick skimming of the Music Tropes list) for those songs that are like "Nya nya nya, I made it big and aren't you sad you turned me down back in high school?"

They're kinda childish, but there's certainly enough of them. Just for starters:

• Skaterboi (however you spell the title)
• Toby Keith has How Do You Like Me Now?

Assuming we don't have this one, Up For Grabs. Alt title might be Nya Nya Now Song.

Also, I think this might overlap with meta-referencing songs of the type "Hey, I'm singing on the radio!" - not all these "nya nya" songs are explicitly "I'm on the radio" songs, and many "I'm on the radio" songs are not "nya nya" songs, but still there's overlap.

Do We Have This?

Usually as the result of a Nerf, Executive Meddling, or just plain poor planning, it's quite common for a "high" level skill to be less effective than a lower level skill.

• Diablo 2: LOD has many of these, particularly after the .09 implementation of synergies, which boosted the power of spells (max skill level is 30):
  • For Cold Tree Sorcerers, Level 22 Blizzard became far more powerful than the unsynergized Level 30 Frozen Orb.
  • For Summoning Necromancers, the lowly level 1 Skeleton became the most powerful summoned monster.
  • For Poison/Bone Necromancers, level 12 Bone Wall became more powerful than level 24 Bone Prison, and had more hit points than any other player controlled summon, ~10k with full synergies.
  • For Paladins, level 18 Blessed Hammer became the most powerful skill in the game.

Needs A Better Title. Rolling Updates. Image forthcoming.

For some reason, many Anime cities feature a river with a gently sloped artificial riverbank featuring a sidewalk either at the top or bottom (or both) and stairs to descend to the water's edge. There's probably a bridge, too. Suitable for Lying On A Hillside, Scenery Porn, Watching The Sunset, and significant conversations of all varieties.

See also Ghibli Hills.

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Examples

Anime

• Toradora - Taiga lays on the riverbank exhausted after wheeling a bike around, because she can't ride a bike. A chance encounter with her Love Interest motivates her to get up and try to ride the bike.
• To Aru Kagaku No Railgun - The titular character challenges another character to a duel, which takes place on such a riverbank.
• In the first season finale of Shakugan No Shana, the entire cast is watching an after-festival bonfire on such a riverbank when the enemy's Ominous Floating Castle teleports into place just above them.
• The Protagonist of To Love Ru takes Lala to such a riverbank for some privacy in an effort to break up with her, only to run out of time to do so safely. It's also a Watching The Sunset moment.
• In Full Metal Alchemist - Ed and Al practice fighting on the riverbank
  • Alphonse went there to sit and think when he got mad at Ed.
• Darker Than Black - Chinese Electric Batman is sitting with a police officer on the stairs of such a riverbank in his civilian disguise when he suddenly vanishes, leaving the police officer perplexed.
• The Girl Who Leapt Through Time - It's in such a location that the heroine makes her first time-leap.
• All of Karakura Town is built around a big river, whose banks look...exactly like this. Said river is good for watching fireworks, doing exercize, and being devoured by The Heartless.

Real Life

• The Yarra River in Melbourne.

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Do We Have This?

There is a hero in a Five Man Band. For some reason, the hero becomes separated from the band and is met up with an Evil Sorcerer who casts a terrible curse on the hero, effectively changing him into a Baleful Polymorph. The hero manages to escape but his body is still remarkably altered. He attempts to rejoin his band so that they can come together and figure out a way to undo the curse, but when he does find them, they are unable to recognize him.

Often times, the other characters will realize that their hero has gone missing and will try to find him. When the hero does show up, they don't recognize him, and may even tell the creature to go away and stop bugging them. In most cases, the hero will be unable to speak to his comrades, thus making convincing his friends who he is much more harder. In the rare instances in which the transformed hero is able to speak, expect nobody to listen to him or believe him.

In it's very simplest form, this trope occurs whenever a group of characters go looking for a character, find him, but not recognize him because of some type of altered form, much to the altered hero's distress. This trope does not occur if the hero is purposefully trying to fool his comrades with a Paper Thin Disguise.

Examples:

• Jackie Chan Adventures: In one episode, Jade is changed into a monkey. When she tries to return to Jackie, he believes her to be an actual monkey. Jackie humourously mistakes Jade's attempt to inform him of her identity as directions to finding Jade.
• In the Buffy The Vampire Slayer episode "A New Man", Giles gets turned into a Fyarl demon by Ethan Rayne. Fortunately, Spike speaks Fyarl.
• In Voyage Of The Dawn Treader, Eustace gets transformed into a dragon, and has to convince the others that he's himself (and that he hasn't eaten himself).
• There's an old issue of Superman where Jimmy Olsen gets turned into a sentient blob - just a pig pile of goo - due to drinking an 'Elastiserum' that had been exposed to some strange radiation for a long time. Naturally, nobody can recognize him, and he can't speak anymore - his rescue of falling boy is misinterpreted as trying to attack him, and when Jimmy Olsen's left-behind clothes are discovered by Lois Lane, she assumes that the 'Blob' ate him. (Then again, she was never the sharpest knife in the drawer...)
• In The Black Unicorn, from Terry Brooks' "Magic Kingdom Of Landover" series of novels, the main character has a spell put on him by an evil wizard which changes his appearance and makes him unrecognizable to anyone who knows him, while the wizard assumes the appearance of the hero.
• Disney's The Shaggy Dog (1959) and the 2006 remake.
• in Wizard's First Rule, Richard is cursed to appear and sound as Darken Rahl to people who would never betray him. Especially considering the language barrier, his friends are baffled and pissed at having the evil overlord come to them, babble at them in his language for a few minutes, look upset at their defending themselves, not attacking them and then leaving.

Needs More Examples. Seen It A Million Times. Rolling Updates.

Here's a common fallacy that's right up there with Godwins Law in terms of being used frequently on the internet. It should be given a snappy name.

This is an ad hominem fallacy which manifests as one side claiming the other side is taking something way too seriously, and therefore they are wrong.

• I can't disprove you.
• Therefore, you're trying too hard.
• Therefore, you have no life.
• Therefore, you're wrong.

In other words, "As an internet discussion grows longer, the probability of one user telling another to get a life approaches 1."

It's logically flawed because the person trying to evoke it is almost always the person who started the argument in the first place by challenging the status quo. In doing so, they willingly place themselves in a position to have their points countered. But when they find the counterpoints are too hard to handle, they ridicule their opponents for the very act of coming up with those counterpoints. The lengths at which the opponent goes to produce the counterpoints has no bearing on the validity of those counterpoints.

Example:

• Person A: Yoshi in Super Smash Bros. Brawl is not useless. I use him all the time.
• Person B: No, he is useless. He's low-tier for a reason. He can't jump out of his shield, he has horrible projectile attacks, his shield roll is way too slow, he (... and so on)
• Person A: Wow, you're such a Stop Having Fun Guy who plays way too many video games. Get a life.

Sometimes, especially in manga, some non-human mechanical fighters are mistaken for robots, while it's really important to understand they are NOT robots if you want to really understand the story. But, wait: is it really a mistake? For practical purposes, aren't they robots? Really?

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Anime & Manga

• Neon Genesis Evangelion: Generally considered a Humongous Mecha series, but the Eva are in fact organic life-forms bound with lots of mechanical armor plating (more to control them than protect), and imprison an human soul.

Comics

• Bionicle: a common misconception is that all the characters are robots, while they are supposed to have organic parts
• Marvel Comics: The Vision, who was called a robot event by Spider-Man, while he's a synthezoid.

Do we have this one?/Needs a better name

A tragic character happens to be Scottish and often lives with a guilty conscious because of something that he did in the past.

Examples:

-Evan Mc Culloch, the second Mirror Master from the Flash series. He was an orphan and end up killing his father by accident in his job as a hit-man. As a result, his mother committed suicide. He also has a crack addiction.

-The Demoman from Team Fortress 2. He killed his adoptive parents by accident, becoming an orphan. He is also a drunk.

-Tam Lin from "The House of the Scorpion". (Warning! Contains spoilers.) He killed a bus full of kids by accident and lived with the guilt for the rest of his life. He later committed suicide.

- Rob Roy in the movie, "Rob Roy". (Warning! Contains spoilers.) His wife is raped, his village is burned down and his brother dies because of his duty to uphold his honor

Exactly What It Says On The Tin. Seen it a million times. Do We Have This? Every time a character comes from that particular island, or just has the accent, they will invariably wear the Rasta colors, the beanie, the dreadlocks, they will either listen too of play Reggie music (completely ignoring the various other genres of Jamaican music) and, depending on the age demographic of the work, will smoke copious amounts of Mary Jane. This is the common stereo type of a Jamaican, a Rastafarian, and might even extend to anyone of Afro-Carribean extraction.

Do We Have This?

When a character, usually after a defeat, commands the victor to kill them. Whether because they have despaired due to their defeat, were already a Death Seeker, or just becasue their Pride won't let them rest knowing they were beaten, they figure dying is better than going on living.

...Or do they? Alternatively, their death could be just the beginning, and they are using this oppurtunity to set their Xanatos Gambit in motion (or perhaps as just the latest move in their game of Xanatos Speed Chess), as a Secret Test of Character, or even as the final step in their Batman Gambit.

Either way, it is crucial to them that they be killed, and if the potential killer be reluctant, they may try to provoke them in any way they can, whether through a particularly vicious Hannibal Lecture or perhaps revealing (or lying) that they have his wife.

A Stock Phrase that is typically uttered by the Big Bad after being told that the Protaganist is there to stop them. This almost always leads directly to the Fight Scene. Typically used to show the arrogance of the Big Bad in thinking he can't be stopped by anyone. Expect him to have a Villainous Breakdown if he loses after uttering this that will invariably include This Cannot Be.

Do We Have This? Should We Have This? Seen It A Million Times

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Examples:

Anime

• Inuyasha
  Kagome: You stinking toad.
  Jaken: You stinking human.
  Kagome: Oh yeah? Well, this human's gonna kick your...
  Jaken: We'll see about that.
• Bleach episode 157. While Chad is fighting Arrancar #107, the Arrancar tells him that if he continues fighting he'll die. Chad says "We'll see about that".

Film

• Dillinger says this in Public Enemies, after being taunted that he'll never leave his jail cell until being removed for his execution.
• The Secret Garden: Mary's reply in the 1987 movie when Martha says that Colin is going to "scream and scream until he brings the house down" is... you guessed it... "We'll see about that."
• After Jafar usurps power, Aladdin says this and whips out the lamp...or not.

Video Games

• World Of Warcraft: In the Culling Of Stratholme there is a part of the dungeon where a Boss from the Infinite Dragonflight emerges to say he's there to stop Arthas from purging Stratholme. Arthas replies that nothing can stop him, in response the boss utters this phrase.
• The G-Man says this in Half-life 2: Episode 1 when the vortigaunts free Gordon from his control.

A place which is not the main hub or boss area in a series, but a minor place which appears over and over again within the same series.

Like Recurring Riff, but a place. Different from Nostalgia Level in that it is merely a recycled locale rather than a place meant to invoke memories.

Put more examples in the comments.

Examples:

• The Mario Kart games always have Mario Circuit, Luigi Circuit, Wario Stadium, Bowser's Castle, and Rainbow Road. A Donkey Kong track usually appears too.
• The Legend Of Zelda games often have incarnations of the Lost Woods, even in the games that don't take place in Hyrule. Death Mountain, Lake Hylia, Kakariko Village, and the Gerudo Desert often appear too.
• The main Pokemon games always have a variation of Victory Road.
• The Brookhaven and Alchemilla hospitals in the Silent Hill games.
• In the Sonic The Hedgehog games, Green Hill Zone has appeared many times, in both older games and newer games.
• In the Star Wars Expanded Universe games, Tatooine appears all the time, especially in the MMORP Gs.
• The Clock Tower in the Castlevania games.
• The games in the Gradius series have almost always a level set in a field full of active volcanoes, an organic level, a Moai level and the enemy mechanical base.
• The Tales Series has players go to the tree of Mana, Yggdrasil, in several of its games.
• A non-video game example: The Biers pub is mentioned a lot in Discworld.