This is a favorite of mine and I think it ought to be in the list. I can't find it and it seems to be dropped. So I am sending it back for further discussion. The Intrepid Merchant is a common character in computer games. He is also found in a number of books. He is a favorite of the Traveller RPG series. An Intrepid Merchant is a merchant that goes to the end of the Earth bravely seeking profit. He is a treasure-hunter but the Treasure is not hidden, but is in the bazaar waiting for him when he crosses the deserts, mountains, and seas. Mal on Firefly is an Intrepid Merchant. So are Menedemos and Sostratos in Turtledoves "Over the Wine Dark Sea". Han Solo has some claim to it. And so does Scrooge Mc Duck of Duck Tales though most of his adventures are simply treasure seeking. Sinbad was this too, I believe making it One of the Oldest Ones In The Book. The chief characteristic of an Intrepid Merchant is that he is both a merchant and an adventurer. He buys and sells like any other shopkeeper. The difference is that he goes to far distant markets to find what he is looking for.

Truth in Television: this was arguably the foundation of the worlds economy, before easy transportation and communication made his kind irrelevant. Intrepid Merchants still exist in places like Central Asia in which transportation and communication are not easy.

Saw this in the Title Bin. Usually Title Bin titles give the impression. "Huh, great name. Too bad it can never really mean anything". The rub is, when I saw this one, I thought of a trope right away.

We all know Cerebus Syndrome, yeah? Well, this is what happens when you apply Cerebus Syndrome to a series whose fandom is largely built around how terrible the original show is. The only reason anyone's ever heard of these shows is because they're really funny to watch in a Mystery Science Theater 3000 kind of way.

Then the suits decide to try and make the premise work in such a way that the whole thing isn't a a complete joke, and the Cerebus Syndrome causes major Fan Backlash. Why? Because the whole point was that it was So Bad Its Good! Trying to make something bad into something serious is just sucking all the joy out of it.

Examples:

• Superfriends is notorious for being, at times, aggressively anti-logical. The incoherent plots and ridiculously cookie-cutter nature of the characters is what makes it fun to watch. So when the show was retooled in the mid-eighties, well, it just wasn't as much fun anymore. The show was still bad, but now it was just generically bad like any other eighties cartoon. No more plots about Brainiac trying to steal the world's supply of credit. No more Aquaman accidentally destroying the entire Asian Pacific seaboard and using the same "Oh no!" tone of voice he uses when Gleek makes a stupid joke. No more crazy feminists mind-controlling all the women in the world into turning men into data on microchips. It just wasn't the same.
  • At some point in the nineties the Wonder Twins were re-integrated into the DC Universe and given a Darker And Edgier backstory which made them into oppressed slaves. I mean, come on. Serious Wonder Twins? What's the point?
• Likewise, Space Ghost was given a serious backstory a few years ago in the comics world. Yes, that's right, wrap your head around that for a minute. A character who we're only familiar from thanks to a self-parodying talk show was given a serious story.
• Averted with Batman, mainly because the people who did the Re Tool in that case knew what the heck they were doing.

Certainly subjective to an extent, but hey, that's what YYKTW is for. Discuss!

I did a bit of searching and didn't find this, but let me know if it's up and I'm just incompetent. It's also my first entry, so I sure hope I get it right.

Basically, whenever a [insert medium here] needs a cult or otherwise fanatical religion with a central figure and/or leader, the members tend to display the following characteristics:

- Cloak. This is an absolute must. The leader will usually have a more extravagant and/or differently-colored cloak(most common color for the leader seems to be red). Bonus points if it obscures the person's face. - Synchronized chanting. - Quietude or silence. - No apparent personal relationship between any two people in the cult that goes farther than any other two random people in the cult. Uncharacteristic Mooks, basically. - Unusually slow walking. Bonus points if it's synchronized.

Today, basic formatting issues; tomorrow, the world!

• The Cult of Kefka in Final Fantasy VI. Played straight.
• Taken literally in Resident Evil 4. Interestingly, the most orbvious example is only in a particular level. The rest seem to take a different approach to the cult.
• The Cult of Kira, seen at the end of the Death Note Manga, don't get much screentime, but they fit the bill.
• Dead Rising had one of these. Instead of cloaks, the lesser members wear masks. They also occasionally speak.

An increasingly common joke of taking a social issue and co mmenting on it through a game which is directly based on that subject.

-Ozzy and Millie: Millie, as America, wants to play "International Relations" with Ozzy, threating him with bombing (in this case a water baloon) if he doesn't.

-Family Guy: Everyone agrees to play the "Civil Rights" board game with Cleveland, and following the game, Cleveland explains "You don't ever win, just get a little closer each time" or something to that effect.

Sexy journalists. That's a three-way pun by the way (catch, excluse and scoop-neck top).

Examples:

• Sarah Jane Smith
• Lois Lane
• Inside Man.

Saw it in the Title Bin

Quite simply, a s&$%load of Mooks on the march. There might already be a trope for just hordes of them, but this trope is seeing them on the move, just to show off the waves and waves of them, to tighten the suspense.

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• Saruman's army in The Two Towers.
• I think some of that is described about the imperial order in the Sword Of Truth books.

Do We Have This One? Up For Grabs, as well. Ammo Starvation for an alternate title.

A common form of Fake Difficulty, wherein a game is made harder by slowly cutting off money, ammo, and other supplies as the game progresses. Games that use this tactic tend to flood the player with ammunition and healing items early on, only to cruelly start to cut off these supplies later on, when they're more necessary. This forces the player to make more accurate shots, or find other ways of conserving precious ammo. Keep in mind that usually, at the same time, enemies are also becoming harder to kill and cause more damage.

Note that this is most common in Survival Horror and First Person Shooter games. RPG's tend to suffer the opposite case, where money and items are rare early on, but by the end of the game players tend to have more money than they could possibly spend. Real-time strategy games also sometimes employ the tactic of putting players in an area with few resources, forcing them to find a new area to move to ASAP before the enemy hordes come in *coughStarcraftcough*.

• A prominent offender is the Resident Evil series in general, but Resident Evil 4 more so, ironically because of its combat focus. Early on, if you're smart and skilled you will literally have more ammo and healing items than you know what to do with. By the end of the game though, you will beg for each and every bullet you can get your hands on.
• A rare RPG example: Xenosaga Episode II, which took the incredibly smart step of eliminating the shop system, which meant you were always depending on drops from enemies for necessary healing items. Thankfully, these drops are fairly common, but it still made the already difficult game unnecessarily hard. I mean, the original Legend Of Zelda had shops!

A ship which is based on the amount of manipulation, mind games and sadistic teasing a character does to another (sometimes but not often that they do to each others). A speciality of Manipulative Bastards and of some Magnificent Bastards. Colloquially referred as Mind Fuck by the fans, not to be confused with when the author of a show fucks with the mind of the audience. Most often a variety of Foe Yay.

• Seishirou/Subaru, of Tokyo Babylon and X is the epitome of this trope.
• Angelus was apparently fond of it, and did do it to Buffy during S2

Probably Needs A Better Name.

In a world that has a Dark Side, one may find a character that taps into the Dark Side but works for good. He or she needs an iron will, and has to be very careful with it to avoid becoming the Dark Side's pawn. The trick is for the character to use the Dark Side, not the other way around.

Examples:

Mace Windu from the Star Wars series canonically is a master of Vaapad, a fighting form that uses the Dark Side.

Riku from Kingdom Hearts "walks the road to Dawn", using powers of both Light and Darkness.

Raven from Teen Titans is, well, demonspawn. Her gothlike personality is based on a need to control her emotions. If she lets herself get enraged, she truly becomes demonic.

In most crime shows and movies, if a suspect refuses to cooperate freely with police -- asks for a lawyer, insists on a warrant for a search or to take forensic samples, that is an almost inevitable sign that he or she is Guilty!, Guilty!, Guilty!

In reality, attorneys routinely tell clients to assert all of their rights until they have consulted with counsel. People can make innocent mistakes about what they saw or remember that make them seem to police to be guilty (Link to Eye as Camera/Memory as Videotape) or they may be pressured into making untrue confessions by psychologically coercive police interview and interrogation methods.

The trope exists primarily to make the writer's life easier. The writer wants the audience and the lead character(s) to have certain information. Unrealistically cooperative witnesses make it faster and easier to tell that story. When a witness "lawyers up", and becomes an obstacle to the lead characters, he or she is less sympathetic to the audience and is likely to be perceived as the culprit or at least as having something to hide.

Sources: Kassin, On the psychology of confession: Does innocence put innocents at risk?, 60 AMERICAN PSYCHOLOGIST 215 (2005) Kassin & Fong, “I’m Innocent!: Effects of training on judgments of truth and deception in the interrogation room, 23 LAW & HUMAN BEHAVIOR 499 (1999). Kassin, Goldstein, & Savitsky, Behavioral confirmation in the interrogation room: On the dangers of presuming guilt, 27 LAW & HUMAN BEHAVIOR 187 (2003) Kassin & Norwick, Why People Waive their Miranda rights: The power of innocence, 28 LAW & HUMAN BEHAVIOR 211 (2004) Leo, Miranda’s Revenge: Police interrogations as a confidence game, 30 LAW & SOCIETY REVIEW 259 (1996)

See also: Inbau, et als., CRIMINAL INTERROGATION AND CONFESSIONS (4th Ed. 2001) (a leading manual used by police investigators)

A Radio Trope.

When the DJ speaks over the intro or end of a song, often both. I assume this is from the days when people used to tape record songs off the radio far more frequently and this was a tactic used to put us off so we'd buy the single instead.

It still persists today though. It's more common with some D Js than others, or with some stations than others. It's also really annoying when it happens to one of your favourites songs (WHY do they always talk over the coolest bit of ELO's "Mr Blue Sky" (the ending)).

Needs A Better Title

Do We Have This One?

yes, I did look on the list of Hair Tropes. It's that variant of The Reveal where someone in a motorcycle outfit, or a spacesuit, or a fencing uniform takes off their helmet and it turns out it's a woman! because hair pours out of the headgear like she's in a dammed shampoo commercial. Naturally, her hair isn't tied up, or sweaty and matted like anyone else's hair would be after being in a full head-covering device.

You know you've seen it before, help me out with where? The only one that comes to mind is from Spuckler's story in the Story Tree episode of Akiko.

Yet another gambit suggestion. It's simple: you trick your enemies into fighting each other, weakening them. Kerrigan from StarCraft is the Trope Namer.

Worth splitting from Let's You And Him Fight?

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Examples:

• Kerrigan does this to everyone in Starcraft Brood War.
• Devil May Cry 3: Jester/Arkham.

Should We Have This? While I'm waiting for a hopeful title consesus on my other YKTTW, I'll go ahead and propose this'un. It's one of those things I got to thinking about when doing a puzzle in an adventure game, and it occured to me that I'd Seen It A Million Times.

Lots of video game makers want to incorporate puzzles into their games. They give you time to relax your fingers and stretch your brain. However, certain puzzles are far more common than others. This is not to say they're bad; far from it. But if you've been playing video games for a while, they're not going to hold you up for long.

Tropes that are also Stock Video Game Puzzles include:

• Block Puzzle
• Light And Mirrors Puzzle
• One Of These Doors Is Not Like The Other

Other types of Stock Video Game Puzzles:

• Weighted Switch Puzzle. Switch A opens Door B. However, Switch A will only keep Door B open if weight is continuously put on it. This sometimes involves pushing a block or other convenient heavy object on top of the switch. Sometimes you need to use an item--for example, an ice-based power to freeze a local puddle of water or enemy; then you push the resulting ice block over to the switch.
• Water Level Puzzle. You are in Watery Area A. You need to get to Dry Area B and Submerged Area C. You could do that if the level of the water in Watery Area A was a bit higher or lower--luckily, you can manipulate the water level, and must do so to reach where you need to go. Generally rather unpopular.
  • Current Flow Puzzle. Related to the above, this kind of puzzle requires you to redirect the flow of something (frequently water, but it can also be air, electricity, or even wind) to somewhere else. Generally comes in two forms: The "switch" variety, where you can hit a variety of switches to change the flow of water/electricity/whatever, and usually must find the right combination to hit, and the "pipe" version, where you must use a (usually) limited number of pieces to create an unbroken path for the water/electricity/whatever to take.
• Tile Flipping Puzzle. Or a "switch light puzzle," on occasion. Hitting a switch or Ground Pounding a tile causes it and two close (or related) tiles to turn over. You must flip them all over, sometimes within a time limit. Also covers all variations where you must set all members of object X to state Y, when action Z causes nearby members of object X to switch states.
• Timed Switch Puzzle. Switch A causes Thing B to happen; usually causing a door to open or a Plot Coupon to materialize. However, you only have a limited amount of time to get it. The puzzle usually comes from finding the quickest route to the item, generally trying to get around a Space Filling Path.
  • Insta-Off Switch Puzzle. Related to above, you must find away to trigger a number of quickly-deactivated switches within a time limit. The solution can involve everything from an attack that hits multiple targets at once, moving faster than usual, or getting an NPC ally to trigger switches at the same time you do.
• Robinson Goldberg Contraption Delivery Service. You need to get Object A to Point B to fulfill some purpose. However, lots of things stand in your way--things that can harm what you're carrying, take it away, et cetra. You have to find a way to get Object A to point B, frequently involving a long, convoluted device or series of actions. Kind of an object-oriented Escort Mission.

I know there are more out there. Can anybody else think of some? And, again--Should We Have This?

Do We Have This One?

The hero has, in his past, a terrible tragedy, an on-the-job moment in which he made the wrong decision or otherwise failed to save someone he loved. Usually this is shown in a flashback or a prelude sequence. My Greatest Failure, in otherwords, but in the Back Story. If he had to be brought out of retirement at the beginning of the story, this is probably what drove him there.

So...

It's a sure bet that sometime, probably in the last 15 minutes or so, the exact same crisis situation in which the hero failed will be duplicated in almost every detail, with (obviously) a new loved one in the role of victim. The villain involved may be the same, or a duplicate, and the ending will almost always be happier.

Seen It A Million Times, in just about every 80s-90s action movie ever made, including

• Cliffhanger
• The Last Action Hero, in which this was one of the few tropes played completely, 100% straight.
• And how many times has Mary Jane Watson-Parker been dangled over the Gwen Stacy Memorial Bridge, anyhow?

Do We Have This One? When a character is wrongly blamed and/or tried because someone wanted to incriminate them on purpose. Could either be opportunistic meanness or part of a more elaborate framing plot. Can be part of the Wounded Gazelle Gambit. Can lead to a Clear My Name plot.

Needs A Better Title

So, The Hero and The Lancer have decided that they both have Unresolved Sexual Tension (No, not with each other) with the Staff Chick or the Action Girl. But of course, they Can Not Spit It Out when it comes to discussing their feelings with the Romantic Interest. Since it would take too much time to work it out on their own, they decide to talk through their problems.

Over a few beers, of course. Or...a lot of beers.

What ensues is basically a Stock Gag where the two guys get hammered and slovenly unpack their Wangst for the audience. Expect slurred speech, stumbling, a few Prat Falls, someone knocks something over, and probably a recital of I Love You Man and You Can Say That Again, followed by a Comedy Belch.

Certainly not A Double Standard or even Always Male. Ladies can do this too, but they're usually drinking wine.

Most recent example I can think of is probably in Hellboy II, between HB and Abe Sapien. Don't ask me how the Beast of The Apocalpyse gets drunk on [[Wallbanger light beer]], but they do. Seen It A Million Times, but I can't find it on here.

I figure it's related to Bechdels Law, but some sort of inversion. Need some help with the write up, and I think all of the Red Links either need to be matched with their actual articles or need to be suggested on YKTTW individually.

I don't think this is a trope in stories but it is a race trope . Prussians which are supposedly almost synonamous with Those Whacky Nazis have several distasteful characteristics, one of which is having robatic deference. In fact it is dubious whether Prussians were more robatic then any other kind of German or for that matter any other European, or anyone else in the world. Eichmann, the most obvious representative of this stereotype was a Rhinelander. And while it is fashionable to say that the Holocaust came from obeying orders uncriticly it might be remembered that in the thirties the Nazis were a petty band of terrorists and street brawlers, who were obviously NOT obeying orders. And few of the first Nazis were Prussians. The early Prussian army, might be accussed of this. However besides the fact that King Frederick was a bit of a control freak, the strict discipline came largely from the fact that a good part of the army was shanghaied foreigners. In other words they were robatic precisely because they were not Prussians. In any case even in Fredericks army Jaegers and Cavalry didn't show these characteristics, and their are more complexities about the line infantry. The later Prussian(and Imperial German) army was arguably less robatic then many of it's enemies which is why they won so often. This stereotype in fact came from World War propaganda, and really should fade into history.

The undiscovered country from whose bourn

No traveller returns...

Hamlet

You love her. You always have. Maybe you didn't know it at first, maybe the two of you have been on again, off again for years. Perhaps outside forces have kept you apart. But you realise it now, just as for some strange reason, she's heading to a new life in one of the million stylish apartments with a balcony view of the Eiffel Tower. She's boarding the plane right now. Well, you'll have to phone her when she lands or drop her an email, or...

Good God, what are you thinking, man? It's now or never! Don't let her get on that plane! The declaration of your love must take place on American soil!

This is because Paris is death. Or rather, it's Heaven. It's a good, beautiful place, a reward for a character's innate goodness. But if you love someone who's heading to Paris, you must stop it happening if you can, or languish in heartbreak forever. It's very sad when people go to Paris. Because apparently they can never be contacted there, let alone come back.

Oh, all right, sometimes you can head over there into the jaws of death like Orpheus himself and get your lover back, sometimes she even comes back by herself. But for some reason, Paris is the destination of choice for women who have somehow become detached from their principal love interest and generally serves both as a way to reward and glamorise the woman, while simultaneously raising a barrier between the lovers that can, for some reason, be treated as very nearly insurmountable.

Examples:

• Friends - Ross gets into a state of utter hysteria trying to tell Rachel he loves her before her plane departs for Paris, and Rachel herself catches the panic when she realises she feels the same, even though she quickly succeeds in leaving a message telling him so and it couldn't be that hard to just turn round and come back. Why "Please come back from Paris" is so much harder than "Please junk all your arrangements about moving to Paris and stay here," is not addressed.
• Carrie goes to Paris with the wrong man, and has to be rescued by Big. Neither he nor her friends seem able to achieve this just by phoning her.
• Smallville - Lana is lost to Clark for a while when she inexplicably heads off to a Parisian art school. Clark even rushes to the airport with a rose for her and drops it Wangstily when he sees her with Lex.
• Joey, newly unattached from the love triangle (I think) nearly does this at the end of one season finale, but rather anticlimactically reveals in the opener of the next that she didn't go after all.

I'm sure there are more...

Do We Have This One?

The villain has many goals, but one is absolute: his nemesis bowing before him. That would mean his certain and total victory. Doesn't always work, but if the villain is