Do We Have This One? If not How Did We Miss This One?

Fat (or should I say large? chubby? fluffy?) people tend to come up with any excuse they can to avoid the stigma of being labeled as what they are: Fat. The most common excuse heard is that they are just big-boned.

This would be Truth In Fiction, defintely.

A form of Insistent Terminology. See also Does This Make Me Look Fat and Hollywood Pudgy.

• Choji from Naruto.
• Eric Cartman.
• Homer Simpson:

• In the Scare Tactics comic, Grossout's mother kept insisting that he was just "big for his age".
• Dudley Dursley's parents insisted he was big-boned and still had baby fat. Of course, the school nurse didn't believe them, so Harry had to spend the summer eating fruit and leftover cakes from his birthday.
• Manfred in Ice Age. "I'm not fat. It's all this hair. It makes me look poofy."
• Obelix from the Asterix comics. Calling him fat is almost a Berserk Button with him.reply:
• In Harry Potter, Hagrid (half-giant) asks Olympe Maxime (also half-giant, but reluctant to admit it), which of her parents was a giant. She replies "I am merely big-boned!"
• Gilligans Island.

• For Doug he had a crisis when he had gained weight and worked out hard to get back to his normal weight, only to realize he was always a little chubby. Talking with some chunky friends they each gave some alternate terminology like "big boned" and "stout" and when Doug asked what he was they said "husky?"
• Homer Simpson also averted this one time when he told Marge (paraphrase from memory) "Nobody puts on 20 pounds of bone!"

A character is in a very nature oriented setting, with all kinds of wild plants surrounding them. They're doing whatever it is they planned to do, and at some point pick up or walk into an ordinary looking plant. After a small amount of contact with it, someone who is more knowledgeable about nature will casually inform them "That's poison ivy" (or poison oak, the plants have the same toxin).

Examples:

• The early camping episode on Hey Arnold ended with Big Bob Pataki rushing through a small bush to get back to his campsite after a disastrous hike. This bush, of course, was poison ivy, causing him more misery.
• Early in the movie Coraline, the title character brushes some leaves off a stick and uses it as a water rod. She meets Wybie, and has a fairly long conversation with him, and at the end he throws in that the stick she's holding is poison oak.
• After a huge fight and emotional breakdown with an unrequited love interest in a forest, the title character of Malcolm in the Middle dries his tears with some leaves he found. The girl he is with tells him he's using poison oak. We see a rather disturbing shot of his face a little later, which resembles the character No-Face in Twisted Metal Black.

Note: There's a fair amount of examples contained below, so i'm thinking of launching this in the next few days. If anyone has anything more to add, jump in.

This trope refers to the tendency for electricity (most especially in Video Games) to serve as a stunning device. If a magician can summon lightning, chances are someone hit with it with be stunned, with arcs flowing across their body. Water is basically a giant taser trap waiting to be sprung by the proper application of an electric shock. Also, don't forget the obligatory rhythmic cry one must always shout out while being stunned, before falling in a heap.

Examples:

Anime and Manga

• Hei in Darker Than Black uses his electricity power like this at times. In one case he actually pretended to have a taser, because he wasn't disguised at the time.

Film

• "Dynamo" in The Running Man

Literature

• "Tom Swift And His Ultrasonic Cycloplane" (1957). The villain had a weapon that generated electromagnetic waves which shocked the target into stunned submission.

Tabletop Games

• The Dark Conspiracy supplement Darktek had the "E.T. Stun Gun". It fired a laser to ionize the air, then discharged an electric current that followed the ionization path.
• GURPS has electrolasers. However these are merely stunguns that don't need a wire.

Video Games

• Eddie Riggs can stun the various animals in Brutal Legend, and then ride them, by calling down lightning with his guitar.
• Most Electric Pokemon's lightning attacks come with a paralysis side-effect. It doesn't pop up often, though.

  • Thunder Wave, is a move designed specifically to paralyse the enemy.

• The infamous "One-Two Punch" in Bioshock involves first stunning an enemy with one's FISTFULLALOIGHTNIN' and then whackin' 'em upside the head with your wrench.
• Custom Robo has the Stun and Thunderbolt guns, electrical weapons that stagger the opponent for an extended time if they hit.
• Metroid Prime's electricity-based Wave Beam may disable the target if charged.
• Players could control Mumbo Jumbo as a playable character in the sequel to Banjo Kazooie. His weapon, the Zap Stick, shot a continuous stream of sparks that would immobilize the victim and cause them to babble incoherently until they die. It was wonderful.
• The Thunder branch of spells in Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles may inflict the "Stunned" status condition, preventing the victim from moving until it wears off.
• Zero Suit Samus' pistol in Super Smash Bros Brawl fires a bolt of what is presumably electricity which stops foes in their tracks, complete with the coursing arcs.
• In Borderlands, electric elemental damage can stun enemies.
• Golden Sun represents stunning as two bolts of lightning alongside the afflicted character.
• Warcraft 3 has Purge (hits target with lightning), which removes buffs but slows the target a great deal, as well as Storm Bolt, an electrically-charged hammer that stuns the target. Used by name without involving electricity, Thunder Clap also slows enemies by slamming the ground.
• XCOM has stun rods, which are basically electric cattle prods used to stun aliens for capture (and stun your own soldiers when they get mind-controlled).

Real Life

• Tasers obviously actually do use electricity to incapacitate people by delivering a powerful electric charge into a person's nervous system, inciting muscle spasms as well as an extremely painful sensation.

Our Aliens Are Different ... The link already exits so should we add it to Our Monsters Are Different? Or make it it's own page?

hopefully this is the right place to ask

This is a kind of wordplay joke you find characters using, on themselves or others, about how a Y expression is very appropriate... but not for them, since they no longer X.

For example:

• A vampire could say the trope name (open to suggestions, btw) in the form of "The city is so beautiful it takes my breath away... if I still breathed, anyway."
• Or an atheist might exclaim "Oh my god, what have you done?! Well, not anymore, anyway."
• Going with a bit of dark humor "This is an outrage, I won't stand for this!" and then "Of course you won't, you're in a wheelchair."

Many thanks to Ryusui for the writeup.

Matter. It's the stuff things are made of. You're made of matter. Your computer is made of matter. This very wiki is made of matter (well, the servers it's stored on are, anyway).

Matter also operates under certain rules that say that things (barring certain radioactive elements) don't spontaneously transform from one thing to another. If you've ever worried about spontaneously transforming into a giant pile of cherry ice cream while sitting at your keyboard, relax: the odds of such an event happening are vanishingly slim, as are the odds of your keyboard transforming into a nest of live pythons or the ceiling over your head turning into cheddar cheese and falling on you.

Those of us who like to sleep at night find security in those rules. Those of us who want to build things faster find them a nuisance. Turning an ore-rich mountainside into next year's model of automobile or a tree farm into enough copies of Time magazine to fill everyone's subscriptions takes a lot of time and energy; wouldn't it be better if you could just take a big pile of stuff, break it down into the very building blocks of matter and reconstruct it into all those wonderful big complex things?

Works of Speculative Fiction like to take that "if" and make it a reality. Enter the Matter Replicator, a form of Applied Phlebotinum that gleefully ignores the laws of thermodynamics as it reassembles matter to do everything from fixing a radio to fixing a nice cup of Earl Grey.

Note that the name "Matter Replicator" is itself somewhat misleading; it's rare to find one that can actually make something out of nothing (the one law of thermodynamics that usually can't be broken without breaking Willing Suspension Of Disbelief as well). A Matter Replicator uses pre-existing matter to replicate something else, or perhaps even construct something entirely new. Creations made of Hard Light need not apply here.

Examples:

Anime & Manga

• In Fullmetal Alchemist, Alchemists are basically walking Matter Replicators. While most Alchemists specialize in a particular kind of transformation, it's implied that with the right transmutation circle, an Alchemist can do practically anything...except, of course, resurrect the dead. Seriously, it's a bad idea to even try it.

Comics

• Transmetropolitan has these and they seem to also come with an AI.

Film

• Tesla's attempt to create a teleporter in The Prestige creates one of these instead; there is no explanation given for where the matter it uses to create its duplicates comes from, but in a rare event, the device is capable of copying an entire human being perfectly to the point that Angier, who kills his duplicates as part of his magic act, isn't entirely sure if he's not a duplicate himself.

Literature

• Robert Heinlein's Future History timeline included a "Universal Pantograph" which could duplicate objects. It's mentioned in Time Enough For Love.
• In the Vorkosigan Saga there are replicators for organic material, but it's implied that traditional manufacturing is easier for metals.
• William Gibson's All Tomorrow's Parties has the Nanofax machine, which transmits copies of anything.
• Diamond Age by Neal Stephenson pretty much revolves around this trope.

Live Action TV

• Star Trek The Next Generation has food replicators as a staple of shipboard life. There are also medical replicators that can produce replacement body parts and organs (including an entire replacement spine).
• In the Twilight Zone episode "Valley of the Shadow", the inhabitants of the titular valley have advanced technology including a machine that can create any solid object based on its molecular pattern.
• The more advanced races of the Stargate verse have them, but they don't show up very often.
• Farscape had an episode where a villain used a wrist mounted version to "twin" people.

Real Life

• The advent of 3D printing has brought this trope incredibly close to reality. There are even 3D printers that are designed to be built by other 3D printers.

Tabletop Games

• Shadowrun features these, what with it being a melting pot of cyberpunk tropes and all.

Web Comics

• The fabber in Schlock Mercenary is an odd case of a Matter Replicator that uses mechanical labor.

Do We Have This? A general trope in which Alice, who is going out with Bob, meets Claire, Bob's close friend or perhaps former lover. Claire will say 'Oh, Bob's told me all about you!' and Alice will say something along the lines of 'Funny, he never mentioned you.' Bob, of course, will simply sit there uncomfortably.

Examples:

• The second Bridjet Jones' Diary film uses it when Bridget meets Colin Firth's female colleague.
• Doctor Who, when Rose meets Sarah Jane Smith.

I know that we already have a lot of Nazi-themed science fiction tropes, but thought that this could perhaps be its own page, and split off from Stupid Jetpack Hitler (on which some of these examples are mentioned). One specific example of the Captain Ethnic is what I would term the "Captain Nazi".

As far as I understand it, the original comic book heroes were created close to the second world war, and because they were very "All American", it is not surprise that their Rogues Gallery included a Nazi-themed supervillain. Despite the name, this trope is also applicable to Communist themed villains who emerged during the Cold War.

This character is likely to play off of at least one of the stereotypes of Those Wacky Nazis (often the Nazi Aristocrat). I'd note that this has become a Discredited Trope, as while there are still loathsome Politically Incorrect Villain characters, anyone who dresses up as a Nazi-in-spandex is likely to be a ridiculous poseur.

Examples:

• There actually is a Captain Nazi, an antagonist of Captain Marvel in the DC Universe
• The Marvel Universe has the Red Skull and Baron Zemo
• Parodied in the series The Sinister Spider-Man, in which the second Venom impersonates the hero. He encounters a werewolf/Nazi villain calling himself General Wolfram. Wolfram turns out to be faking his German accent and gets his arm eaten by Venom (who calls him "Castle Wolfenstein")
• I unfortunately forget the name, by I know that Watchmen referenced one of these as being an antagonist of the first generation of costumed adventurers.
• There's Swarm, the "Nazi bee creature"
• This wikipedia page includes these examples and others and indicates how most of these characters have the most stereotypical names imaginable.

Exactly What It Says On The Tin. When Bob's story is about being who you are, embracing your geeky side, and not losing your diversity to blend in with the crowd and be "normal".

Examples:

Cloudy With A Chance Of Meatballs: the entire premise.

7th Period Is A Secret

Needs A Better Name, more examples, better description, and Do We Have This?

Sub-trope of Making Love In All The Wrong Places.

So, things are hotting up in the office between Alice and Bob and for want of a bed upon which to do the deed, they go for the nearest available flat surface - a desk. Often overlaps with Destructo Nookie.

Examples.

• Conviction - the time that this occurs between Alex and Jim was used in one of the promos.
• Casualty: The "deskness" still induces a high amount of Squee in Muffy Shippers.

A common Establishing Character Moment, where a man walks into a room with a lady on each arm to show what a stud he is. Seen It A Million Times. Up For Grabs.

A Stock Phrase often directed towards a Big Bad or other particularly evil character. If a character is saying this, its a good indication that whoever the statement is directed towards has crossed the Moral Event Horizon, at least in the characters eyes. Variations exist (Such as "You're a monster" or "You're rotten to the core!"

See Youre Insane! for when a character is calling another crazy rather than evil. This can also lead to an Insult Backfire if a particularly wicked villain takes pride in this label. In dramatic situations, carries the same weight as the Japanese This Is Unforgivable!

Examples:

• In Shrek, I distinctly remember the one of the characters calling the Big Bad this in the form of "You're a monster!" I think it was the Gingerbread man. A half-comedic example, the Big Bad is still doing something pretty horrific at the time.
• Aeris of VG Cats has this reaction to Leo's sadistic treatment of his Sims in one of the comic strips.

• An amusing variation in 4 Swords Misadventures, when the heroes encounter Dark Link:

• MGS3 example: EVA says this to Volgin during his torture of Sokolov.

I've Seen It A Million Times, and I'm a little surprised we don't have this in our stock phrases. Is there a variant I missed? I've gone through Stock Phrases.

Aside from Stock Phrases of course, are there any indexes this should be put under?

Rolling Updates is in effect.

Do We Have This? A videogame trope, and a subtrope of Rule Of Three, involving a Boss Battle in which the boss must be defeated in three different stages, which may or may not be accompanied by a change of physical form.

Examples:

• I Wanna Be The Guy does this with almost every boss. The Guy himself could be argued to have two sets of three forms.
• Parodied in Kingdom Of Loathing with the Naughty Sorceress.
• Can't think of any examples from the 8- or 16-bit eras, having never been much of a console gamer, but the existence of the above two examples leads me to believe that there must have been several.

Suggested alternative title: Drink You Under The Table.

"I shall win. You haven't the liver or the stomach of a first-rate winebibber!"

Do We Seriously Not Have This?

Basically, a competition to see who can hold his liquor better. In its simplest form, participants drink equal amounts simultaneously and whoever quits or passes out first, loses. Variants may involve periodic tests of skill, often with the loser obliged to perform some humiliating forfeit.

(Needs A Better Description, and particularly perspectives on how this is used to establish character and setting.)

Distinct from Drinking Game, in two ways. One, many Drinking Games are like closet dramas, never meant to be performed; a Drinking Contest exists only in performance. Two, a Drinking Game has as its object getting drunk, and is noncompetitive or only nominally competitive; a Drinking Contest has as its object not getting (as) drunk (as the other guy) and always has a winner and a loser.

A Drinking Contest may lead to the revelation that a particular character Cant Hold His Liquor or Never Gets Drunk.

Examples:

Film

• In Raiders of the Lost Ark, Marian's introduction comes as she is winning a drinking contest.
• Tower of London interprets Clarence's legendary drowning (in a pipe of wine) as being inflicted on him during a drinking contest he had, indeed, been winning.
• The Frat contest in Revenge Of The Nerds had drinking as a part of it.
• In Lord Of The Rings: Return of the King, Legolas and Gimli have a last-man-standing-wins drinking contest. By the end of the night, Gimli passes out on the floor while Leglolas is left perfectly sober except for a "slight tingling" in his fingers.
  • A classic case of Did Not Do The Research, since Dwarves almost never get drunk; meanwhile in The Hobbit, Legolas's butler and chief guard both passed out from a single flagon of strong wine, and there's no indication that Legolas would fare any better.

Literature

• I don't have the book to hand, but I seem to recall that Ol' Janx Spirit was used for one of the "periodic test of skill" variety, the skill in question being psychokinesis.

Video Games

• In Monkey Island 2, one of the things Guybrush has to do is to win one of these, and he does it by switching grog for near-grog, which doesn't have any alcohol.
• Usually in any fantasy RPG Game featuring Dwarves.
  • Neverwinter Nights
  • Baldurs Gate
  • The Witcher
• Chrono Trigger has two of these. One is a side game in the Millenial Fair, where he simply has to drink as much as he can in an effort to win some Silver Points. The other is plot-related, and he has to out-drink Ayla to win the Dreamstone. In the original SNES release, the drinks were censored to soda and soup, respectively.
• In Sly 3, one of the missions in the Outback involves a lemonade-drinking contest between Sly, Murray and Bentley and the miners they're battling, After you win, it leads to a bar fight because "that turtle spilled more than he drank!"
• Temple Of Elemental Evil has one in the Homlet Tavern, winning allows you to loot the KOed losers for some starting equipment. Any party member (even if they aren't the Paladin) participating when a Paladin is in the party makes them fall.
• One of the adventures in Kingdom Of Loathing is a drinking game. You can win by out-drinking your contestants, cheating, or teleporting your drinks into your opponents' stomachs.

Live Action TV

• Star Trek The Original Series episode "By Any Other Name". Scotty has a Drinking Contest with one of the alien Kelvans who have taken over the Enterprise (though the Kelvan doesn't realize what's going on). When the Kelvan passes out Scotty gets his device and tries to take it to Captain Kirk, but passes out himself before he can do so.
• In Heroes Nathan and Claire were trapped in Mexico. Nathan tried to use a Drinking Contest to win some cash with which to get home, but lost. Claire stepped up and won however, due to her Healing Factor making it impossible for her to get drunk.
• Blackadder, second series, episode "Beer", features Edmund Blackadder trying to simultaneously have a quiet dinner with his fanatically religious relatives in one room, and have a bawdy drinking contest with some friends in the next room down the hall.

Anime and Manga

• In Maison Ikkoku, Mrs. Ichinose intentionally threw a drinking contest in her youth to get her husband to marry her (or something like that. I don't have the manga here for reference).
• One Piece: In Whiskey Peak, Zorro and Nami give up after consecutively beating 13, or 15, respectively, opponents. And even then they're faking.
• I think Revy and Rock have a drinking contest in Black Lagoon at some point.

Western Animation

• Family Guy does this. It's how Peter convinces his real Irish father that he's his son.

Comics

• Wolverine often takes advantage of his healing factor to coax money out of suckers this way.

Tabletop Games (?)

• Space Wolves Primarch Leman Russ challenged the God Emperor to this. Surprisingly, Leman Russ won.

Real Life

• At one time a Russian agent was ordered to challenge a Turkish official to a Drinking contest in order to get information out of him when drunk. Despite the fact that the Russian knew his employers were unforgiving it was the Turk that won and got information out of him. This was kind of an alchoholic Duel To The Death.

Rolling Updates.

Latin for "great work". a writer, artist, what have you, produces many works in their life time, the most immportant, well known, and influentail of which is called the "Magnum Opus", when said creator dies, this will be the work they're remembered by.

Examples:

• Herman Melville wrote many books besides Moby Dick, ever hear of any of them?
• Alan Moore will forever be known as the writer of Watchmen, the book that, for better or worse, changed the medium forever.

If you don't like it, change it yourself.

• I'll take that sugestion at face value:

The Hero is a woobie. He is All Of The Other Raindeer. A constant subject of Dude Wheres My Respect and Dude Wheres My Reward, of Bullying A Dragon and Mugging The Monster, of Metahuman Registration Act and many other sorts of shit. He is given the opportunity to exact revenge on that society that has treated him so brutally and become a Woobie Destroyer Of Worlds, or even just allow it to be destroyed.

He has absolutely no moral obligations towards it: he would actually be well justified in taking the "evil" option. However, he shows Messiah amounts of altruism by refusing that opportunity, and becoming or remaining a hero in the process. Easily a Crowning Moment Of Awesome and a Crowning Moment Of Heartwarming at the same time, given the humongous amounts of The Power Of Love, The Power Of Friendship, and The Power Of Trust that must he used to pull this. Realted to Save The Villain on the scale of a society or even an entire planet.

Examples:

• The Trope Namer (for now): Uzumaki Naruto.
• Superman: unfrequent, since he's rather popular as a norm, but not unheard of.
• The X Men, who protect a populace that fears and hates them.
• Spider Man, to New York.
• Cable, but they wouldn't let him.
• Gandhi to Great Britain during WWII. He waited it out before making the final run towards India's independence.

A supertrope to School Is For Losers. And probably several others I can't think of. This is the general portrayal in fiction that any character who displays any sort of aloofness or indifference to an authority figure, for any reason, must be incredibly cool. A very common trait of the Mary Sue. Quite often the person being "rebelled" against is an Obstructive Bureaucrat or some variant.

Expect "authority" to be heavily tainted in The War On Straw in some way or another, when the audience inevitably asks "what's so bad about the authority figure, anyway?".

We either have this already, or this has never gone anywhere because it's very much Seen It A Million Times territory.

To put it simply, The One Good Man is basically a group's (organization, race, nation, species, whatever)dog petter. In the case of extreme examples, you have a group who seem to be Always Chaotic Evil a character is introduced who is more Neutral Good. The function of the One Good Man varies, although the two most common variations seem to be a) convincing another character that the group in question isn't all bad and/or is worth sparing/helping, and b) making the audience think.

Seen It A Million Times but specific examples escape me.

Voluntary Shapeshifting is a really powerful and useful ability for a character to have. But occasionally they run into a problem of logistics(besides this one); how do they get the information to change shape? Sometimes it is just enough to look or touch whatever the character wants to change into.

Other times, nastier things have to be done. For whatever reason a face stealer often has to physically harm, usually fatally, their target in order to take their form. While sometimes almost any body part will do, bonus points for actually skinning of the other character's face. As you can expect, this sub-trope of voluntary shapeshifting is nearly exclusive to villains. This does have the added benefit of making it easier to pretend to be somebody else when they are no longer running around.

See Kill And Replace, which is what this trope often leads to.

Examples(Rolling Updates in effect):

• The Trope Namer here is Koh, The Face Stealer in Avatar The Last Airbender. He would kill people by taking their faces, whilst keeping the appearances around to use as masks.
• The Chameleon from Spider-man comics. Usually he uses a special gas to make a mask out of his target's sking, but some continuities have him actually eat the target.
• Alex Mercer from Prototype eats people and uses this so often he starts body surfing.
• Chriopterans in Blood Plus can take on the form of anybody whose blood they have drunk. Used for extra squick points when Diva walked around as Riku, the protagonists little brother who she had previously raped and killed
• There also was a monster from Mighty Morphin Power Rangers with this name. Needless to say, the scene in which some of the Rangers had their faces stolen is Nightmare Fuel.
• In Inu Yasha, one of Naraku's henchmen was a faceless man who wore the faces of people he'd killed.
• The Agents in The Matrix have absorb people's data in order to mimic their forms.
• Accidental usage. Their was a character in Heroes who had the ability to mimic people with just a small physical sample for their DNA. Then Sylar met him, stole his ability and became a Face Stealer in his own right.

The tendency of Alternate History novels to include either an alternate version of a famous movie or novel, or an alternate history novel within the novel.

• Red Dwarf. When the crew encounter a Red Dwarf from a female-dominated parallel universe, Rimmer is releaved to discover that Will Shakespeare is their most famous author. Until he's told it's Wilma Shakespeare, author of "Rachael the Third," "The Taming of the Shrimp." Also mentioned are "The Male Eunuch" by Jeremy Greer.

• The Man in the High Castle by Philip K Dick, in which Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan dominate the world has The Grasshopper Lies Heavy which has the Axis losing World War II, and the world eventually dominated by the United Kingdom after the US and UK fight for supremacy.

• Moon of Ice by Brad Linaweaver, based on the same premise, has Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels investigating a surprise international hit by a young director called Stefan Schellenberg called Fulfillment of Duty in the Light of the Holy Grail, an obvious Raiders Of The Lost Ark expy with a Nazi professor battling British soldiers seeking the Grail in Iceland. Goebbels approves the movie's use of ethnic stereotypes to demonise the villains, but is annoyed by "plotholes you could drive a panzer through" and unsubtle audience manipulation. Stefan is unimpressed by his arguments, as he's simply trying to make an exciting action movie rather than a propaganda piece.

• Resurrection Day is set in a United States where the Cuban Missile Crisis turned hot. President Kennedy is dead, and is blamed for the war which has turned the US into an impoverished military dictatorship. A British journalist mentions an alternate history novel based on the premise that the war was averted -- of course, it doesn't have Kennedy shot in Dallas a few months later. However she refuses to reveal how it ends.

• In the Courts of the Crimson Kings. The Adventurer Archaeologist wryly compares his job with the whip-wielding movie heroine Oklahoma Jones, whose adventures take place on Venus.

Is this tropeable?

Where someone is shown doing the deed with another person... only it's made obvious that they're thinking about someone else while they're doing it. Occassionally, a glimpse into the character's mind will be shown, where they're daydreaming that they're doing it with the other person they like. Reasons for this vary. Some of them include: The character has needs, and is unable to fulfill them with the person they like (maybe because the person they like doesn't even know they exist, or doesn't even like them back), or the character is having sex with the purpose of executing a plan or manipulating the other party (and decides to tune out the "unpleasant task" by imagining that they're doing it with the one they love).

Examples:

• Ryan O'Reily from Oz does this while he's having sex with Claire Howell. His reasons include placating his "needs" and staying on Claire's good side. Numerous times while he's doing it with her, he's shown to get into the mood by imagining that he's doing it with Dr. Nathan (including a dream sequence). For extra measure, Dr. Nathan dislikes him and keeps fending off any aggressive advances he makes on her for most of the series.
• Spike from Buffy The Vampire Slayer. This is pretty much how his feelings toward Buffy are first unveiled: while he was having sex with Harmony, he started imagining she was Buffy. And later, Harmony is shown to be forced into dressing up as Buffy and pretending that she's come to stake him in order for him to be eager to get it on.
• Although not explicitly stated, it's heavily implied with Griffith from Berserk. Noticeably during the time after Guts left (during which time he showed his Yandere tendencies towards Guts), where he immediately goes to Princess Charlotte's room and has sex with her. It's obvious his mind is... elsewhere. And immediately after, he is shown regretting it. She on the other hand didn't seem to notice, and she liked it.
• Rupert Avery from The Riftwar Cycle has been shown doing this in regard to sleeping with his wife Carli (who was described as plain and rather homely), daydreaming that he's doing it with the gorgeous (but manipulative) Sylvia instead.

When just being an Evil Sorceror or a sourcerous Magnificent Bastard is not enough, when you just have to use your magical and spiritual powers to further your aims of being a complete dick to all those around you, you are a Magical Arsehole!

The very opposite to Magical Negro and Magical Queer, in that they very rarely enrich anyone's lives, and any moral message they give (and they do tend to dole them out) will either be a manipulative lie, or completely twisted.

May overlap with Magnificent Bastard. Could be related to I Did What I Had To plus For The Evulz. See also Great Gazoo, which can be someone like this who is REALLY powerful, to Reality Warper levels, and Jerkass Gods.

Examples:

• Bayaz, the Trope Namer, from The First Law trilogy, the First of the Magi, a lying, manipulative, power-crazy, murderous, conscienceless, total and utter arsehole. NEVER owe him money.

• John Constantine - uses magic to cheat at Bingo, what a douche

• Nale from Orderofthe Stick ... nice example of magical arseholeness here...

• Dr Doom

• Skeletor

Rolling Updates

The idea in fiction that a male character, when wearing pink, actively manages to lose a great deal of their more masculine qualities. This results not just in other people making snarky and rude remarks to them, but may actually result in distinct changes in their character.

Examples:

• One episode of The Simpsons has Homer freaking out because his work shirts have all turned pink, due to Bart throwing his lucky red cap in the washer while Marge wasn't looking. Marge insists that it won't be a big deal. Cut to the morning grind, where Burns and Doctor Monroe have singled Homer out for "freakish tendencies" and begin plotting for his sanity evaluation.
  • Bear in mind that most of the bad things that happen to Homer in this episode are clearly his own fault- upon being given a take-home psychiatric evaluation Homer loafs around trying to get other people to fill it out for him. Eventually, Bart fills out and Homer is predictably thrown into a mental institution when he turns it in without even looking at it.
• In Red Versus Blue when Donut gets his own colored armor- and it turns out to be pink, however much he insists it's really lightish red. This becomes the impetus for his Flanderization as the series goes on.

A situation where a female character supposedly has to "break the rules that men made to oppress women," in which a heroine does something underhanded or "cheating" in order to overcome social "rules" of a male-dominated society.

Example:

• In Working Girl, secetary Melanie Griffith concocts an elaborate, underhanded scheme to break into the male-dominated business-world, and in the end says "you have to get ahead to follow the rules, but you have to break the rules to get ahead." Similarly, her female boss Sigourney Weaver tries to cheat her out of credit for the plan, while likewise ruthlessly manipulating men, including their mutual love-interest, Harrison Ford, saying "it's never a good idea to burn bridges." However in the end, Weaver is punished while Griffith is rewarded, simply because Weaver's character is rich and pretentious.

Similar to Not Even Bothering With The Accent, except that the actor doesn't have the accent, either - there's simply no good reason for it. Sometimes done for humor, sometimes for Reality Writes The Plot reasons, and sometimes for no good reason at all.

Examples:

• Wakko from Animaniacs.
• Dexter.
• The Joker in Batman The Animated Series. If memory serves, they were hoping to get an English voice actor (can't remember who), but he turned them down.

You're sitting around the Table Top RPG. You've got your real man, your role player, your loon and you've got your munchkin sitting around the table.

But then one of the players introduces a new guy. You introduce him to the party, but then he asks the DM about where the story is now. He tells him...so he comes up with a greeting based upon the circumstances of the party being where is was, instead of going with the stereo typical 'hey guys, I'm dudeman and I'm sure we'll have a lot of fun together'.

So you're all thinking we've got another roleplayer. Okay then. You guys enter your first combat situation...and you find out that the new guy has munchkined himself out Beyond The Impossible. Insanely. He's the most useful player there and he kills almost everything.

He cares about the story, but he also cares about the efficiency of the character. He's like the Magnificent Bastard of Player Characters.

Naturally this is a Tropers Tales trope, and the only reason I'm putting this here is because I met one myself. He scared me. How about you? You ever meet one?

This is simply a catch-all trope for when two people who used to be close friends now absolutely loathe one anothers' guts. I cannot believe we don't have this yet.

(Alternate title: My Trope)

Much like the iProduct, a recent fad in marketing is to prefix the name of your product and/or its features with "my". This may have originated from Windows 95, with uses like "My Documents" and "My Computer", but it's everywhere now to the point of being a cliche.

As one linguistics professor has said, this is probably used in an attempt to make the product feel more personal, although it tends to come off as rather childish, as in "It's mine! Mine, mine, mine!"

Compare iProduct, a similar product naming fad. See also Xtreme Kool Letterz, and Super Title 64 Advance for video games.

My Examples:

• Windows 95 is probably the Trope Maker. My Computer, My Documents, My Network Places, My Music, My Pictures, etc. They have since been renamed to simply remove the "My", starting in Windows Vista.
• MySpace
• My Yahoo!
• My eBay
• "My Search History" on Google, since renamed to "Web History".
• MyNetworkTV
• Pearson has a classroom tool named "MyCommunicationLab".

Do We Have This One? In a multiple camera drama or comedy show where the action is shot continuously all of the dialogue has to be recorded using overhead boom microphones. No matter how skilled the boom operators, this is almost certain to result in the shadow of the microphone falling across the scenery or actors at some point. Just occasionally the microphone itself may stray into shot, but this is a much rarer occurrence.

Less common on single-camera shows and movies, but not unheard of.

Much more scarce today because drama shows don't use multi-camera any more, and any stray shadows can be CGI'd out.

Title based on the Cat Stevens song Moon Shadow.

Examples:

• Pick a videotaped British drama show or Sit Com from the 60s or 70s. Any one.
• The information text on Doctor Who DVDs helpfully points out the more prominent boom shadows as well as other technical flaws.
• The directors' commentaries on the Fawlty Towers DVD set also point out some of the worst boom shadows.
• In the first episode of St Elsewhere there's a long dialogue scene where the characters are walking through the corridors, and the mike is visible for a few moments. I believe they post-synced dialogue in later episodes specifically to avoid this.

Does anyone else have specific examples?

Do We Have This One, or is it part of Bunny Ears Lawyer? It seems in fiction that detectives have the tendency to be rather eccentric, maybe because they are geniuses.

I can't think of a lot of examples but

• Sherlock Holmes
  • By extension, L from Death Note
• Hercule Poirot
• Zard from Chaos Wars

Friends, there comes a time in everyone's life when they can no longer sit quietly and say nothing. Sometimes, a man's got to take a moral stand, even though it may not be popular and even though it might get him into trouble. Today, my friends, is that day. I won't stay silent any longer. I believe that cancer is bad.

This is a trope for when characters are treated as brave revolutionaries for stating that someone nigh-universally derided as evil is, well... evil. Can also apply to situations or things instead of people. For example, your photojournalist who made a name for himself going after a war or leader with a Zero Percent Approval Rating being treated like Edward R. Murrow. Bonus points if whoever is interviewing them on live television points out how brave they are.

Obviously there's Truth In Television here.

Also, I can't think of any examples right off the top of my head, but I know I've seen this before. Can anyone help me out here?

A sister trope to Beast And Beauty and Touch Of The Monster. Needs a better title.

Media featuring a romance between a severely disfigured person and a beautiful person will tend to feature a prominent moment in which they kiss, and the kiss is framed for as much visual contrast as possible between the beauty and ugliness. Due to Double Standards and the fact that Beauty Is Never Tarnished, it tends to show up mostly in heterosexual couples, with the man as the disfigured one and the woman as pristinely beautiful. Even so, it's far more common for the ugly member of the pair to still be human, or at least roughly human-shaped, to take away the possible bestiality element that would come with a literal Beast And Beauty.

Examples:

• One of the most famous comes from The Phantom Of The Opera, when Christine kisses the unmasked Erik.
• Genderswapped example: Lucifer and Mazikeen in The Sandman.
• The trope title comes from this poster◊ for The Abominable Dr Phibes. Interestingly, this pose never appears in the film, nor is there even much romantic tension between the two characters.
• Very common in Fan Art.
• Laurie's last kiss with Dr. Manhattan in the film version of Watchmen, though it's less that Dr. Manhattan is ugly (he's actually rather blandly attractive)- it's that he's a glowing being of pure Eldritch Abomination energy and she's a normal human woman. The contrast is still set up very strongly.

A bent arm (usually, the right one) is raised to chest level, then expanded rapidly to the side in a wide arc. Usually done by Large Hams while giving an epic order or otherwise enjoying themselves.

Is This Tropeable? If yes, it Needs A Better Title.

• Lelouch Lamperouge does this all the time.
• The Stellvia's captain does this while ordering to fire the last remaining laser shot that can save Earth from imminent destruction in the final episode.

Actually, I've Seen It A Million Times, but as it often happens with basic things like gestures, I can't think of any more real examples...

We all know about Rule Of Cool/Funny/Fun. Most of these are Awesome But Impractical so they aren't done very often. Or when it's not necessary. Except some one does it anyway. Then it's pointed out that this is not practical. This is the response to that. The person invoking this may be using the trope straight or simply not understanding why everyone doesn't do this to begin with.

Examples

• Richard from Looking For Group torches a guys head after he's been killed and explains that he didn't understand why most people wouldn't have done that.

Actually, you could probably look through Rule Of Cool and There Is No Kill Like Overkill and find dozens. I just want to know if this is tropable before I start getting attached to the trope.

Ninja'd for Pot Hole, blast I wish we had a preview, and I hate the color red, unless it's hair.

In academia, adding the prefix "post" to a movement, theory, genre, etc is quite common. The best way to describe the meaning of "post" in this context is to see that "post" is a synonym for "beyond", building on the innovations, theories, style, etc of the original in such a way as to take it beyond what the original was, creating a new theory, genre, whatever, in the process.

Examples:

• Post Modernism, (which refers to a large number of loosely connected movements, including, but not limited to the trope used here) gets it's name because it's goal was/is to move beyond the movement of modernism.
• Bands such as the Foo Fighters have been called "post-grunge" because the borrow various elements of classic grunge, while at the same time experimenting with new elements
• The Other Wiki once had a humorous example in an article named "Post Gangsta Rap", sadly, said article no longer exists, so we don't get an explanation.
• Post Cyber Punk tries to move beyond the cynicism and hopelessness of Cyber Punk in various ways, such as giving hope for the future (The Matrix Trilogy does this with a messiah figure), showing the upside of technological progress, as well as the down side (works that focus entirely on the bright side of cyber-punk technologies are called "cyber prep") or by parodying or deconstructing Cyber punk tropes (Snow Crash comes to mind)
• Reconstruction could be said to be "Post-Deconstruction, in that it tries to move the genre beyond the criticism of the deconstruction, while at the same time accepting said criticism.

In Fantasy and Space Opera settings, an otherwise humanoid creature with a snout on its face, resulting in porcine appearance, is likely to be of low intelligence.

• The Gamorrean Guards in Star Wars are nasty, brutish... and short-lived.
• Crunch the Ogre in Dumnestor's Heroes.

...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.

Do We Have This?

Inspired by a recent YKTTW, this trope refers to the aspect of human nature where one person makes a judgment about another person's intelligence based on the other person not knowing something they think is "obvious." Most annoying in fandom, but also apparent in many stories.

Examples:

• In the movie I Am Legend, fans made a huge outcry when Anna did not know who Bob Marley was, to the point they thought she was retarded or otherwise mentally incompetent.
• Regularly lampshaded on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno in his bit called "Jaywalking," where average people on the street not knowing obvious "facts" is a source of comedy. Jay has said in interviews that he is often accused of planting people for the bit, but he said the only thing that surprises him is that he usually finishes interviews within an hour.
• A regular bit for Bill Maher, where he explains studies that show 50-80% of average Americans don't know basic geography, like which side of the US the Pacific Ocean is on, or whether Canada is the northern or southern neighbor of the US.

In a setting where humanity is being decimated by The Plague, there will sometimes be one person who is mysteriously immune to the disease. This could be due to some inborn genetic resistance to the disease, or it could be that they are unknowingly exposing themself to the cure in the course of their daily life (particularly if the disease has an Improbable Antidote). Discovering this character very often is the key to finding a cure to the disease, with the main difficulty being either getting them safely to the scientists who can develop a cure or figuring out what factor in their environment protected them.

The heroes will want to protect and study this character in order to find a cure and save mankind. A Corrupt Corporate Executive may want to kidnap them in order to monopolize the cure. If the disease was deliberately engineered by a villain, they may want to hunt down and kill them to prevent a cure from being developed. In darker works, this character's immunity might not be able to be turned into a cure for others, in which case they can become The Aloner in an empty world After The End.

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Examples:

Anime

• In Higurashi No Naku Koro Ni, Rika is immune to Hinamizawa Syndrome and medicine is derived from her blood

Comics

• The reason everybody was looking for Ray Palmer in Countdown To Final Crisis
• Also a plot point in Maximum Clonage arc of Spider Man, where one person survived the test run of the Jackal's virus
• The Batman: Contagion story had a series of these, each typically revealing that there was one other person just before dying (and rendering the antibodies in their blood immediately useless).
• Yorick and Ampersand, the only males to survive the Gendercide in Y The Last Man.

Literature

• The Perfect Dark: Initial Vector novel.
• A big focus of The Andromeda Strain was finding out why two people were immune to the disease when everyone else died
• In The Changeling Plague, IdahoBlue was one of these for a previous disease epidemic (though not the titular one)
• In Chasm City of Alastair Reynolds' Revelation Space universe, the cure for the Melding Plague, called Dream Fuel, turns out to be blood harvested from an alien with natural immunity
• Dr. Robert Neville in virtually every adaptation of I Am Legend.

Live Action Television

• There was a Star Trek Voyager episode where B'Elanna's unborn baby provided the cure to a Klingon disease
  • And come to think of it, she was also the source of the cure for the Vidiian Phage
• Heroes: Mohinder's blood carries the cure for the Shanti virus
• A big plot point in the second season of Dark Angel and the three follow-up novels. The Breeding Cult plan to unleash a disease that only they will survive, but Max turns out to possess total immunity
• An episode of The X Files dealt with an oil rig worker who was immune to the alien black oil.
• An episode of Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles revolved around them having to save a woman who will be naturally immune to a disease Skynet engineers to wipe out the Resistance.
• In the BBC series Survivors (the 2008 remake/"reimagining"), the last remnants of humanity are those who never caught the "European Flu" or who are naturally immune to it. Abby is the only person to ever develop symptoms but then recover, which causes her to get abducted in the season one finale.

Video Games

• In Infected (2005), the main character is not only immune against the zombies, but his/her blood is only thing (short of a nuke) that can kill the zombies.

Western Animation

• A The Simpsons Halloween special had Bart immune to the zombifying effects of the Krusty Burger. The survivors of the outbreak wanted to eat Bart, but they compromised by having Bart taking a bath with their food.
• The lice episode of Invader Zim. Zim (and Ms. Bitters, actually) are immune to the lice infestation. This leads to Zim being studied, and guess what? His skin, it destroys the lice!
• In the televsion version of the X-Men "Legacy Virus" storyline, Cable came back in time to ensure that Wolverine would be infected with the titular virus, because his healing factor would both render him immune and lead to the development of a cure.

This would fall under the indices Characterization Tropes and Characters As Device.

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 live in new york. Without telling you much, would you assume New York City?
• Or name another city then Chicago in Illinois?

The basic premise of this trope is this:

1. Take a socigeographic, and/or political division.
2. Ask the natives about there 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).

(Thanks Troper Madrugada for help)

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Examples:

• The best example i know of is New York State.
  • 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, your 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 my whose home is 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,
• LA is the only place in California
• Miami is the only place in Florida

Sort of a villainous version of I Know Youre In There Somewhere Fight... basically, a character's done a Heel Face Turn, and joined the Nakama. Now, together with his new friends, he's facing one of the real villains. Seeing one of his former partners on the side of the heroes, will the villain lash out in anger at the betrayal? Will he start to question his own motives as well? No, of course not - he'll laugh in the face of the heroes and tell them that there's NO WAY that guy ACTUALLY turned. He's just acting as The Mole, infiltrating them and waiting for the right moment to steal the Mac Guffin, or murder them in their sleep. After all, he's known the guy MUCH longer than the heroes have. he's SEEN some of the things he used to do while on the side of the villains. He knows exactly how good a liar he is. Clearly, the heroes are naive fools to have taken him in...

Despite the villain obviously having a vested interest in dividing the heroes, this works remarkably well, remarkably often. Sometimes, the villain will offer a good explanation for why he'd want to 'expose' his spy, such as an Enemy Civil War, or just claiming that he won't let the 'spy' take all the credit for stopping the heroes - but other times, there's really no reason to trust him. If any of the party-members weren't aware, previously, that their new friend used to be a villain, this will be REALLY effective against them.

Several things can result. Maybe the hero simply brushes off the allegation, silences his suspicious partners, and clearly declares that he trust his new friend, no matter WHAT the villain says. Quite often, however, the party-members will start to treat the converted villain coldly and suspiciously, leading him to feel unwelcome. They might also misinterpret some innocent detail as a sign of treason, or even actively attack him - which, in a tragedy, can lead to his backslide into villainy, thus 'proving them right'. (I know we've already got a trope for this specific event, but I can't remember what it's called.) However, in a more positively-charged story, particularly if some of the party-members - mainly The Hero - is standing up for him, the villain will simply decide to leave the group, afraid that his presence will cause internal strife and make the others lose their faith in their leader. If so, there's a very good chance that he'll return later, just when things seem desperate, in a Big Damn Heroes moment to save them. Usually concluding in the previously-suspicious members of the team apologizing for not trusting him, and welcoming him back into the group.

...after writing this much, however, I'm ashamed to admit that I cannot remember any actual examples of this. >.< Well, I do have ONE, but it's very minor - a small character-quest in Dragon Age Origins has you track down the Evil Mentor of one of your crew, who - when confronted - claims that her student is just manipulating you for her own gain - she should know, since she taught her the art of manipulation herself. You can choose how to respond to that yourself... but considering what a motley crew you're running in the first place, she'll never really wind up being a serious target of suspicion.

Basically when you can tell sides in a conflict by what they wear.

This is actually quite common in fiction. One example is wearing a uniform for any military (since you need to tell who to stab/shoot at), either in fiction or Real Life. This also means this trope can be enforced by an actual Dress Code.

Other times it can be cultural dress, or the personal styles of the heroes and villains.

This can also apply even with Gray And Gray Morality. Just because you don't know which side is really the bad guys doesn't mean you still can't tell one side from the other.

Sub Tropes include Sensible Heroes Skimpy Villains, Color Coded For Your Convenience (since those colors are worn), Spikes Of Villainy.

Compare Good Eyes Evil Eyes, Obviously Evil.

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Rolling Examples:

• As in the picture, Agents in The Matrix dressed like government agents, while the good guys wore mostly black, stylish clothing.
• In the original Star Wars trilogy, the rebels had a variety of uniforms, and so did The Empire. It's just the styles of them were easy to tell apart.

Stock phrase.

Something goes wrong on camera or the presenter doesn't like the way he's coming across he'll look into camera and say "We'll edit that bit out". Naturally it doesn't get edited out because it's funny/degrading.

Come about due to the fact people have become particularly savvy on the way shows are cut to portray what the producers want to show.

Comes in two flavours; Type 1: used for comedic value usually at the expense of the presenter/s. Type 2: used to make people look foolish and to undermine them.

Examples: Type 1:

• Done all the time on Top Gear
  • Happens a lot in James May TV shows who is a presenter on Top Gear.

Type 2:

• Sorta, John Prescott (politician) was doing an interview but managed to slur his speech and then asked for a re-take after swearing. He was then informed it was a live broadcast and which point you could see his toes screwing into the ground.

One of the Japanese Stock Phrases. Typical of the egotic, who use it an a "are you aware of how important I am" sense, but not limited to them. Hot-blooded, street-wise characters use it a lot too, in a "Don't underestimate me" or "I'll be fine" sense.

Needs A Better Description, Up For Grabs

Examples

• Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann: The catchphrase of The Party.
• Bleach: baldie used at leas one variation.
• Soul Eater: Black Star is SO full of this...
• Akumetsu: the egotic politicians, especially once the break.

Generalized recommendation trope. Considering that so many come here to find new works to experience, I was thinking perhaps that pages that describe a work could contain suggestions from other people on similar things that might appeal. I don't know if it's strong enough to create a "Reccomendation Wiki", but we already have Fanfic recs... why not other media?

A form of Meet Cute, where two characters who inevitably end up becoming friends / comrades / boyfriend and girlfriend first meet in this very uncordial way. One of the characters, normally through a misunderstanding, ends up taking the other character hostage / kidnapping them. Their interactions are normally played for comedy, with plenty of snarking and arguing. If they're together for a while, it's expected that somewhere along the line, the hostage ends up developing feelings for and grows attached to their kidnapper, seeing signs that the kidnapper is not all bad. Whether or not initially they are on opposing sides depends, but it normally ends with either one of them defecting to the "correct" side.

If it's more on the side of romance instead of plain friendship, expect a point where the kidnapper lets the victim go, only for the victim to decide to stay with the kidnapper. This can occasionally seem forced, especially if, even though the viewers are informed that the kidnapper is actually a good person at heart, they don't really treat the victim all that nicely to justify the sudden loyalty.

Examples:

• In the manhwa The Kidnapping of Minja Jo's Boyfriend, Park Jun-Sook is the rival female gang leader of Minja Jo. To get even with her, Park Jun-Sook decides to kidnap Minja Jo's boyfriend. However, due to a misunderstanding, she accidentally ends up kidnapping a beautiful, smart boy from school, Junghoon Son (who has absolutely nothing to do with the entire thing). Of course, they end up having a bunch of hilarious interactions and misunderstandings, but end up falling in love (even before the misunderstanding is cleared up).
• Something of this sort happens in National Treasure with Abigail Chase ending up tagging along with Nicholas Cage.
• Empowered starts out this way.
• The Chase: Charlie Sheen kidnaps Kristy Swanson
• Cannonball Run: Burt Reynolds kidnaps Farrah Fawcett
• Doctor Who begins with The Doctor basically kidnapping Barbara and Ian.
• Excess Baggage: Alicia Silverstone and Benicio Del Toro, though the kidnapping is accidental.
• A friendship version of this is found in the film Ruthless People, where the poor, young couple Sandy and Ken kidnap millionaire Danny De Vito's wife (Bette Midler), hoping to hold her hostage for ransom (since De Vito had conned them out of their savings and stole Sandy's fashion ideas). Of course, it turns out that De Vito wants his wife dead, since he has a new flame that he's having an affair with. It turns out that Sandy and Ken are actually insanely nice people, and have the hardest time pretending to be villainous kidnappers. Bette Midler, being the loud-mouthed, violent and bossy woman, ends up being more aggressive and scarier than them. Later, she ends up seeing what gentle and kind people they are, and they end up becoming friends, joining together to bring down her evil husband.
• It's not a romantic example, but this kind of situation going horribly wrong is the basic plot of the korean movie Sympathy For Mr Vengeance. Deaf guy and his communist girlfriend tries to kidnap boss' daughter to get money to buy his sister a new kidney. The kid is extremely cute and everything seems to go fine... until the kid drowns accidentally, which sets the boss off on a Roaring Rampage Of Revenge. In the end, it's a Kill Em All ending.
• A Life Less Ordinary, with Ewan Mac Gregor kidnapping Cameron Diaz.
• HOSTAGE: A love story
• In Fullmetal Alchemist, Al first meets with Greed and his chimera underlings by being kidnapped by them. Granted, he never really becomes friends with Greed, but... Greed (and especially his underlings) are portrayed as being pretty sympathetic and not actually all that evil. And their interactions were hilarious. All in all, they actually treated Al pretty decent for a hostage captive. And in the end, Al definitely bonded with and liked the two underlings Dorochet and Martel. Which made their death all the more tragic.
• Hayate The Combat Butler: At least kidnapping was Hayate's original plan. Having always been a Messiah-esque, wonderful little boy, he ends up getting taken advantage of to the point where he gets fed up with optimistic ideas. He decides to finally "become a devil" and do something evil to get money. So he sets his sights on kidnapping Nagi, the rich little oujo. Only... at every opportunity to do something evil, he ends up going back to his selfless, old habits, and treats her very nicely. To the point where his declaration that he wants to "run away with her (by kidnapping her)" causes her to misunderstand that he's confessing that he wants to elope with her. And she liked it...
• Out Of Sight: Jennifer Lopez is a cop who gets abducted trying to prevent the escape of a jail inmate played by George Clooney. They get to spend quality time stuck together in the trunk of a car, and mutual attraction ensues.
• Non-romantic example: in A Perfect World, Kevin Costner plays a jail inmate who escapes and takes a little boy hostage. Gradually they develop a father-child relationship, to the point where the boy voluntarily stays with him.
• In Gankutsuou, the series is pretty much jump-started by Albert getting kidnapped by Peppo and the gang she's a part of and held hostage for ransom. They later develop a mutual crush on each other while he's in captivity, although Albert's crush ceases when he finds out that "she" is a he. They still stay friends, though.
• Berserk: Guts and Farnese first meet in this sort of fashion, and their interactions are highly amusing. When they first meet, Farnese was a section leader of the Holy Iron Chain Knights, and she was assigned to capture and kill the Black Swordsman (Guts). Guts ends up temporarily taking her hostage (only to get shot and then captured by Farnese's group). Later, in order to escape, he ends up kidnapping and holding her hostage again, this time with more funny and amusing interactions between the two of them than the previous time. (Including a moment where he threatens to "burn her ass" if the soldiers don't make way.) During this time period, her future infatuation and admiration of him is foreshadowed and hinted at.
• Black Lagoon: How Rock joined the Lagoon Company.
• Pedro Almodavar's Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down! could be described as being MADE of this trope. Antonio Banderas kidnaps a depressed and 'uptight' actress and refuses to let her go until she 'loosens up' and 'joyfully' falls in love with him. It's all for her own good, of course. The disturbing thinking behind this concept is what differentiates this trope from the psychological phenomenon of Stockholm Syndrome.
• This is much of the plot of Stardust: the hero sees a falling a star with the girl he loves, and vows to bring it back for her. However, the star turns out to be a real person...
• In the movie Running Man (starring Arnold Schwarzenegger), right in the beginning, while Richard is a fugitive who escaped from labor camp, he goes to his brother's apartment. There, he finds Amber Mendez, who is the current tenant there. Richard ends up kidnapping her, and was planning to go to Hawaii. Their interactions are played for laughs, though she ends up managing to alert airport security before his plan works. Later, however, she ends up getting captured and forced to participate in the "Running Man" show, where she ends up realizing that Richard isn't a bad guy, and becomes his official love interest.

A very common naming style, especially in videogames. In fact, it's so overused that NecroVisioN is called like that just to do an aversion.

Seen It A Million Times.

Examples:

Video Games

• Tales Series.
• Knights Of The Old Republic.
• Dawn Of War.
• World Of Warcraft.
• Heroes Of Might And Magic.
• Rise Of Nations.
  • And its sequel is called Rise Of Nations:Rise Of Legends.
• Company Of Heroes.
• Sins Of A Solar Empire.
• End Of Eternity, though it was renamed for American markets.
• Shadow Of The Colossus
• Illusion Of Gaia / Illusion Of Time
• World Of Mana (all of them)
• Secret Of Evermore
• Shadow Of Destiny
• Threads Of Fate
• Breath Of Fire
• Dirge Of Cerberus: Final Fantasy VII
• Legend Of Dragoon
• Legend Of Zelda
• Legend Of Legaia
• Master Of The Wind
• Secret Of The Stars
• Skies Of Arcadia
• Class Of Heroes
• Kingdom Hearts: Chain Of Memories
• Fire Emblem
  • Fire Emblem: Genealogy of the Holy War; Fire Emblem: Sword of Seals; Fire Emblem: Goddess of Dawn; Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance
• Pool Of Radiance
• Age Of Empires
• Rise Of The Argonauts
• Pretty much every Castlevania after Rondo of Blood.

Films

• Pirates Of The Caribbean.

Rolling Updates. Needs A Better Description.

Laconic Definition: Out-of-Character justified in-story.

No protagonist is perfect. Every man or woman brings their own unique flaws and difficulties to their role in a story. Often stories will be about a protagonist's struggles to overcome these flaws. However, whether they succeed or fail, many of them will experience at least one Moment of Weakness. That instant in which their emotions or the stress of a situation goes past critical and causes a thoughtless reaction that they would never have if they were thinking clearly.

A Moment of Weakness can come and go, but will usually be recognized very quickly by the perpertrating protagonist. The typical response is usually one of two extremes. Either they'll wonder with horror "My God What Have I Done?" or it will be the first step in a running jump off the slippery slope. On occasion you can even get someone who realizes the horror of their action but not have that be enough to stop the leap.

To mitigate the potentially subjective nature of this trope: A Moment of Weakness is a single moment in which a character's emotions or stress levels run so high that they act contrary to their usual nature. This action almost always causes damage of some kind, most commonly to someone the protagonist cares about.

See My God What Have I Done for more long-term examples and Start Of Darkness when the Moment of Weakness sends them the other way.

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Examples

Anime & Manga

• Saki's Kunihiro Hajime gave in to the urge to use sleight of hand to win a Mahjong tournament in grade school. Even into high school this act haunts her, undermining her confidence to play without doing so. This is the reason she's Chained By Fashion.
• Daisuke Suwa found himself falling for the Bitter Virgin Hinako Aikawa. But when she obliviously gives him a Just Friends line, he angrily blurts out that he knows her dark secrets. He gets lucky that Hinako wasn't actually listening to him at that moment but is horribly ashamed of himself afterward.

Film

• In Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones, Anakin Skywalker was perfectly content to sneak around the Sand Peoples' camp and not start a fight up until his mother died in his arms. His rage at that moment prompted him to murder every Sand Person there. He felt guilt over it afterward, but it didn't stop his fall to the Dark Side. It only got worse from there.

Literature

• In The Dresden Files book White Night Harry is forced to acknowledge the steadily growing influence of Lash after he loses his cool and destroys part of a building with his magic. Something the nature of Dresden-verse magic would make impossible unless Harry really believed in what he was doing. One of the book's villains, the Skavis, specialized in provoking and manipulating Moments of Weakness to make his victims commit suicide.
• In the Pendragon series Bobby pushes a bad guy out of a helicopter. The Big Bad had wanted him to do it and told him to and he knew it would end up making things worse but he was really mad and wanted to hurt the bad guy.

Rolling Updates will be in effect.

Similarly to Nature's Wrath and Light The Way (my other two YKTTWs), there is yet another Elemental Power that needs its own trope. This time, it's metal/steel. If the name I suggested isn't satisfactory, how about Cheat Metal (a pun on "sheet metal") or Iron Will? Aminatep has also suggested Metal Messiah.

Again, there'll be Rolling Updates if I remember that this YKTTW exists.

Is this even tropable? If it is I suspect we may have it already, and definately Needs A Better Title and Needs A Better Description. Rolling Updates.

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Normally, The Woobie is a sufficiently Moe character that:

• You want to witness The Woobie getting hurt by the villain just so you'll feel even more sympathetic toward them.
• You'd like to get to hug or otherwise care for or help the character.
• You want any villain who hurt The Woobie to get Laser Guided Karma for hurting them.

This character produces a slightly different visceral reaction:

• You'd like to punch them in the face yourself AND you also want to hug them and say, "I'm so sorry your life is such a mess".

Typically this character is something of a Jerk With A Heart Of Gold, but they take it to an extreme. They delight in hurting others, whether literally or figuratively, and often has little patience for anyone who disagrees with them, and in turn, the author seems to delight in placing them in unpleasant situations. Behind closed doors the character has a gentle side that ranges from Troubled But Cute to downright friendly, couteous, and kind. This isn't a case of a Defrosting Ice Queen or Flanderization, however. The character is just that complex. They likely think of themselves as a Butt Monkey, Cosmic Plaything, etc.

From both the fans and the other characters' point of view, the character often comes across as sort of in-universe Wall Banger, an Anti Hero of the worst sort, or just plain nuts, and there may even be a Broken Base over whether they are a marginally sympathetic Complete Monster or a morally ambiguous woobie. In the end it's often difficult for fans to agree whether they are a Karma Houdini, got what they had coming, or were more victim than villain.

Related to Anti Villain, Tragic Hero, Anti Hero, and occasionally Designated Monkey, Hero With An F In Good, Nun Too Holy, etc. Woobie Destroyer Of Worlds is certainly related, but this character just wants to destroy some of the world. Typically including anyone that's ever hurt them in their opinion, whether anyone else agrees or not.

Can be:

• A symptom of a Grey And Gray Morality, Crapsack World, Fantastic Racism, etc.
• subverted if it turns out their nice side was just an act as part of an Evil Plan, or their cruel side turns out to be a fascade and they are really The Boo Radley, a Noble Demon, or Good Is Not Nice.

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Examples:

Anime

• Many, if not most of Naruto's opponents over the course of the series:
  • Gara of the sand before Naruto beat the snot out of him.
  • Sasuke, Neji, and to a lesser extent, Haku.
  • Pain tried to be this, to the dislike of the fans.
• Elfen Lied: Lucy.
• Akito from Fruits Basket. You hate "him" because he's a total ass and abuses the whole family, but the back story makes some feel for him.
  • Akito is a woman. She's far more of a Woobie in the manga.
• A large portion of the cast of Code Geass: Lelouch, Suzaku, Kallen, The Emperor, Marianne, Guilford....
• Arguably, Misa Amane from Death Note. If she weren't so damn amoral, she'd be a very sympathetic character.

Comic Books

• Rorschach from Watchmen. He's a disgusting psychopath who falls somewhere in between Anti Hero and Anti Villain, but his backstory combined with the awfulness of his entire existence just make you feel immense pity for the guy.

Film

• Joe Dick in Hard Core Logo. He can be amazingly self-centered, he's an unrepentant liar, and he gets his closest friends caught up in his self-sabotaging antics, but he obviously cares so much in his screwed-up way that you wind up feeling sorry for him. Especially considering that he shoots himself.

Literature

• Harry Potter:
  • Snape Just.. Snape. Let's see. He takes out a lifelong grudge against James Potter by being as completely nasty as posisble to Harry at all times. Starting with berating and belittling him in class the first time they meet, taking advantage of the fact that Harry, given his Muggle upbringing, has no previous knowledge of the magical world to humiliate him in front of his Slytherin classmates. And that was really only the beginning. But when you find out just why he's such a stunted, maladjusted man, and why the sight of Harry (and Neville) rises in him such passionate anger - not to mention when you see the types of machinations he's had to deal with to ensure the defeat of Voldemort, including what was thought to be his Moral Event Horizon in murdering Dumbledore - it's hard not to understand why he's so bitter and feel sorry for him. It's also hard not to still want him to grow the fuck up and deal with his issues already.
  • Occasionally Harry himself comes dangerously close to falling into this category, what with the unfair accusations, turning his aunt into a balloon, etc.

Live Action TV

• Ben from Lost. Definately a villain, an unrepentant liar and murderer, yet his Freudian Excuse and the fact that the writers seem to enjoy having him constantly get the pulp beat out of him (even though most of the time he deserves it) have the side effect of making him somewhat sympathetic.
• Topher from Dollhouse?
• Basil Fawlty of Fawlty Towers seems to have been designed around this trope?
• Londo Mollari of Babylon Five, who, seeking merely glory, conquest, wine, women, and song, finds himself drawn into a web of torture, anchient evils, enslavement of an entire alien civilization, and an Axe Crazy Bad Boss.
• House

Music

• Bowling for Soup's The Bitch Song.

Video Games

• Silent Hill 4: Walter. As mentioned in the Anti Villain page, it's hard to decide whether or not you want to kill him because of what he did or because he needs to be put out of his misery.

Web Comics

• Drowtales seems to like this one, half the cast seems to suffer symptoms of this, perhaps most notably:
  • Syphile, Ariel's abusive older sister.
  • Sil'lice, who suffers from acute Fantastic Racism.
• Order Of The Stick has some, including Token Evil Teammate Belkar and The Scrappy Miko Miyazaki. Varsuvius goes there too.

Web Original

• Both Zaboo and Bladezz from The Guild. The first is a Stalker With A Crush who's just so naive and well-meaning that Codex can't figure out whether she wants to ignominiously boot him out of her life or hug him. Bladezz is a troll and a bit of a Jerkass, but he spends much of season 3 getting incredibly nasty stuff happen to him.

Do We Have This, Should We Have This, and Rolling Updates.

A common form of Utopia for works set in the future is the Perfect Pacifist Future. Exactly What It Says On The Tin, this is a world that has ascended so far beyond divisiveness that everyone is an Actual Pacifist. Don't be surprised to see lots of Crystal Spires And Togas everywhere.

This is generally a starting point for the story; either someone's bored of the Sugar Bowl life and wants to overturn it, or invaders think it's ripe for conquest, or the protagonist discovers that it's a facade, with the masses stuck in a Dystopia Beneath The Earth. Needless to say, such a setting is easy pickings for Author Tracts and Strawman Political characters.

Because the residents of the Perfect Pacifist Future are genuine pacifists, oftentimes a major plot point will involve a character re-learning the ways of war, or the leaders finding outsiders to do their fighting for them.

Also see Rousseau Was Right, which is a belief that such future is inevitable.

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Examples:

• The musically-inspired future in Bill And Teds Excellent Adventure is a textbook example of this trope.
• In The Last Starfighter, the Star League is so devoted to pacifism that they need to search barbarian worlds outside of the league (such as Earth) to find Gunstar pilots willing to fight. This was particularly evident in the Novelization.
• The Federation in Star Trek claims to be one of these, though they're not above keeping their "exploration vessels" well-armed... just in case they encounter any unenlightened races, of course.
• Stellvia Of The Universe is set in such a world.

...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.

Needs A Better Description, Seen It A Million Times, Needs A Better Title?

Ever wondered why it is that guys like Cobra Commander, Spider-Man, and others with masks that use lenses, can see out of them but no one can see in? Well, this is why.

Well, alright, not exactly; according to The Other Wiki, "The glass is coated with (or in some cases encases) a very thin almost transparent layer of metal (generally aluminium). The result is what appears to be a mirror from one side, and tinted glass from the other. A viewer in the brightly lit area has difficulty seeing into the darkened room, through what appears to be a mirror." So in real life this probably wouldn't work, but hey, Rule of Cool and all that allow it for fictional characters. This enables them to establish a creepy, The Faceless-esque vibe while hiding their identity.

In an inversion of Death By Sex, two star-cross'd lovers will have sex ONCE, often in desperate circumstances, and a messianic male child naturally results-- because they do it out of love. Normally in real life, this rarely happens from such an impromptu coupling-- done out of love, or not-- particulary if the people are under great stress, as is the case in these stories; but this is handwaved by the author in order to conceive the desired "messiah."

Examples:

• In Tristan and Isolde, Rivalin is near-death when Blanchflor "received his child from him--" as unlikely as it is for a man who's both a virgin and dying from loss of blood, to conceive a child on his first time with an equally-distraught woman. But the plot requires it, otherwise Isolde would have no Tristan.
• In The Terminator, Kyle Reese likewise conceives John Connor from his first and only sexual experience, despite being holed up in a cheap motel while on the lam from a killer robot-- again, because the plot requires it. In reality, neither one would likely be in any fertile condition after being chased by a Terminator for several days.
• Inverted in Excalibur, where "Sex Plus Hate Equals Anti-christ;" Arthur is conceived by a rape; in consequence, his wife cheats on him with his best friend, and he loses the throne when his sister Morwen deceptively rapes him and conceives an evil son to supplant him.

Do We Have This, Should We Have This, Needs A Better Title, and Rolling Updates.

Alice is being introduced to Bob, a recent arrival from the land of Tropestan. She tries to shake his hand in greeting, but instead of reciprocating, he gives her a puzzled look. When Alice asks him how people in Tropestan greet each other, Bob demonstrates... by spitting in her hair.

Crazy Cultural Comparison is the trope when characters from a foreign culture compare (and contrast) their everyday habits and social rituals with the corresponding behavior of the host society. Unlike Culture Clash, this usually occurs in friendly situations and is mostly played for laughs. Errors in etiquette often occur by accident, since the outsiders are just acting "normally".

The outsider tends to be either a Funny Foreigner from Cloud Cuckooland or a Friendly Alien, as the setting requires. In speculative fiction, odd mating or courtship customs may come up, due to Bizarre Alien Biology.

Note that the "comparison" doesn't have to be between two characters in the work. It is enough for the outsider to simply do something "strange" and have the audience make the comparison against themselves.

Also see Culture Clash and Rite Of Passage.

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Examples:

• In the Danny Phantom episode "Double Cross My Heart", Gregor the Hungarian greets everyone with a kiss, claiming it was a common greeting where he's from. It turns out he's actually Elliot from Michigan, pretending to be a foreigner.
• Even though Orkans are physically identical to humans, they sit on their faces while pointing their buttocks at visitors.
• Nickelodeon's All That had several sketches with Ishboo, a Funny Foreigner with various odd customs:
  • When someone sneezes, one must shout "Walla Walla Woo!" and hide behind furniture in a panic.
  • One should bark like a dog while proposing a toast.
  • It was customary to give your psychiatrist a live lobster on your first visit.
• Much of Yakov Smirnoff's comedy is based on this trope.
• Balki from Perfect Strangers does the Mypos "Dance of Joy" upon hearing good news.
• Latka and Simka have displayed various customs from their unnamed foreign country:
  • Failure to share your possessions is punishable by shooting.
  • A woman accepts a marriage proposal by grabbing the suitor's nose.
  • Weddings require the bride and groom to wear each other's clothes, and to answer three questions to be married. The last question is a trick question to test the couple's devotion.
    Latka: As they say in my country, the only thing that separates us from the animals are mindless superstition and pointless ritual.
• One episode of Northern Exposure had the Eskimo Indians celebrating Thanksgiving as "The Day of the Dead." In addition to more conventional parades and costumes, there was also the custom of throwing tomatoes at white people.
• On Seinfeld, George's dad gets fed up with the commercialization of Christmas that he invents a new holiday called "Festivus". It includes a father-son wrestling match and an exchange of insults with other family members.
• Played seriously in Frank Herbert's Dune. When Stilgar the Fremen meets with Duke Leto, he spits on the table. As the Duke's men are about to carve Stilgar into lunchmeat, Duncan Idaho tells them to "Hold!". He then thanks Stilgar for the gift of his moisture, spits on the table himself, and explains that doing so was a Fremen gesture of respect.
• In The Last Starfighter, as Alex and Grig fly through the tunnels of an asteroid, Grig mentions that it reminds him of home. That leads to a chat comparing their species' differences in families, dwellings, and games... which inspires Alex on how to get past the Ko-Dan Armada undetected.
  Grig: "I live below ground with my wife-oid... and six thousand little griglets."
  (shows Alex a photograph that rapidly flashes through several hundred photos of aliens)

Do We Have This One? Taking an ugly dress and turning it into a nice-looking one by ripping it or cutting it apart. It's usually a trope used in children's films or a Chick Flick. I'm pretty sure I've Seen It A Million Times, but these are the only examples I can think of at the moment. Needs A Better Title.

• What A Girl Wants has Daphne cutting the top layer of an ugly dress off to reveal a nice dress underneath.
• Sleepover has Julie's friends cutting up her mom's old tacky dress to make it look cooler.
• 6teen has Nikki ripping apart two boring dresses and sewing them into two "cool" dresses.

Also known as the three unities, these are the rules that govern classical drama. They were first outlined in Aristotle's Poetics in his section on tragedy, though later writers would alter the definitions. They are as follows:

• Unity of Story: a story can only have one main plot with few or (preferably) no subplots.
• Unity of Place: a story will be set in only one location (ie no set changes).
• Unity of Time: a story will take place within a 24 hour time period (unlike the epic narratives, which covered decades).

As you can tell, this is a very strict formula and even in its heyday, it was not used by all Greek tragedians. For a while it fell out of fashion, until the 16th century, when new writers began grounding their plays in the classical unities. Their use of the three unities was a lot more forgiving, and generally they flubbed one or two of the regulations-- most often the decree there be "no subplots" (which, if we want to get pedantic, wasn't mentioned by Aristotle anyway).

It seems to have gone out of fashion again, though occasionally you'll see the formula used in a Bottle Episode.

Since this is Aristotle we're talking about, that makes this...

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Ancient Greek Theatre:

• The Theben Plays (Sophocles)
  • Oedipus The King
  • Oedipus at Colonus
  • Antigone
• The Bacchae

"Modern" Uses

• The Comedy Of Errors is probably the closest Shakespeare got to this, though he flubbed two of three-- subplots (though they do relate to the main action), and space (it's all set in one city, but different areas).
• Most plays by Moliere, including Le Bourgeois gentilhomme (The Bourgeois Gentleman), though again, this one flubs "unity of action."

Needs A Better Title, possibly. (This one refers to "what happens when an unstoppable cannonball hits an immovable post," which kind of but not completely gets at what I'm talking about, but I don't have any better suggestions.)

So there's a Tsundere. And there's a guy who she constantly gets worked up over. She'll vehemently deny that there's anything between them, of course, but everyone can tell that she's suppressing her true feelings. Meanwhile, the level of Unresolved Sexual Tension is palpable.

What, we have this one already? Um, not really...

See, in this case the woman might be a tsundere, but the man is certainly not a Jerk With A Heart Of Gold. Or any kind of jerk, for that matter. Instead, he's shy, unassertive, often looked down upon, socially awkward, and either sexually inexperienced or sexually incompetent. On the other hand, he can be truly kind, thoughtful, compassionate, perceptive, and, when push comes to shove, a bit of a determinator. More likely than not, he has a strong intellectual or spiritual side to him. This leads his potential love interest to destraction; how can he completely ignore all the things she's strived so hard to be?

In other words, if When A Jerk Loves A Tsundere is built on the principle of like meets like (two strong, confident, egotistical types playing off against each other), this sort of romance gains its appeal from the idea of Opposites Attract. Ideally, the woman will get the man to move outside of his own world and stand up for himself, whereas he can help her to gain some perspective and be more at peace with herself and the world. Of course, things can go wrong; he'll remain too much of a wimp, and she'll persist in being a bitch, and they'll end up hating themselves and each other. However, if all goes well, there will be two halves of a strong couple at the end of the story, both of whom have each other's back.

Examples

Anime and Manga

• Shinji and Asuka in Neon Genesis Evangelion is pretty much the poster child for when this trope turns bad.
• Vash and Meryl from Trigun had some aspects of this dynamic.

Film

• Mr. Smith and his secretary Clarissa Saunders from Mr Smith Goes To Washington, making this one Older Than Television.
• Wall-E and Eve from Wall-E.

Literature

• Perrin and Faile from The Wheel Of Time
• Luke Skywalker and Mara Jade from the Star Wars Expanded Universe
• A rare (for this trope) Love Triangle in the Fyodor Dostoevsky novel The Idiot: Prince Myshkin plays the guy role perfectly, and has relationship possibilities with both the type A Nastasya Filippovna and the type B Aglaia Yepanchin. As you might expect, things don't go so well.
• Shasta and Aravis in The Horse and His Boy. Speaking of which...

Real Life

• The real-life relationship between C.S. Lewis and Joy Gresham was a glorious case of this trope. See the play or film Shadowlands for more details.

Web Comics

• Dave and Margaret in College Roomies From Hell, especially in the early-to-mid part of the series.
• Martin and Faye from Questionable Content had some aspects of this trope initally.

Not sure if this is common enough to become a trope, but we'll see if it gets enough examples.

You have an episodic series, one where plot points are frequently introduced in an episode, then never mentioned again. One episode focuses on something, it dominates that one episode, but doesn't seem all that important, and seems to disappear by the next episode. Then a really important episode (usually a movie or series finale) comes out, and that plot device is the driving force of it. Similar to Chekhov's Gun, but for an entire plot in a series without a continuous story.

Examples:

• Fry playing the holophoner is a major part of one Futurama episode, it sets off a recurring plot point, but the holophoner itself isn't mentioned again. Then the (before the revival) series finale focuses on the holophoner, even more than its original episode did.
• Hey Arnold had one episode mentioning the Pig War, a battle in Arnold's city during the Revolutionary War. A reenactment is the plot of the episode, it seems like a mere trigger for the reenactment plot. Then, years later, the Hey Arnold movie has the villain's motivation entirely based on the Pig War.
• One episode of Back at the Barnyard had Otis try to be a superhero called Cowman. The super hero persona came back as the main focus of the TV movie.

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

Like Recurring Riff, but a place.

Put more examples in the comments.

Examples:

• The Mario Kart games always have Mario Circuit, Luigi Circuit, Wario Stadium, and Bowser's Castle. 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.
• 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.

This one will receive Rolling Updates.

A character arrives at a security checkpoint where he have to verify his identity in order to gain entrance. He takes out his ID-card, runs it trough the scanner and is surprised to find that it is being denied. The receptionist then tells him that he is already checked in. This can only mean one thing: An impostor is on the loose!

If the hero is the impostor, it means that his cover is blown, and he must prepare to fight the local security team. If the villain is the impostor, chances are that he have already fulfilled his objectives and destroyed the evidence/killed the witness/sabotaged the equipment etc.

A variation of this is when the security check is especially high-tech and demands a finger/hand/iris scan. In these cases, expect cloning or time travel to be involved.

Examples:

Film

• The 6th Day were Adam Gibson uses the finger from a dead clone to gain entrance. He is discovered when a new clone with the same fingerprint tries to check in.
• Multiple people in The Fifth Element tries to check in with Korben Dallas's identity. It becomes something of a Running Gag.
• Subverted in Sneakers. Werner Brandes (who has a genius-level 180 I.Q.) knows that someone has stolen his ID card with the intent of breaking into the place where he works, and there's a (repeatedly shown) paper printout of who has entered and left the building. However, when he gets there he doesn't ask the security guards to check the entry/exit register and see if "he" is listed as still being inside the building, which would prove he's right about the break-in.
• Ultraviolet. After Violet pretends to be a courier in order to sneak into the Arch-Ministry building, the real courier shows up and her ID is rejected, thus alerting the guards.
• Sort of happens in Last Action Hero. The fictional villain "The Ripper" shows up to a movie premiere (of a later movie in the same series) and is briefly interviewed by a reporter, who thinks it's Tom Noonan (the real-life actor) dressed up as the villain. Then, the real Tom Noonan appears, dressed as himself, confusing the heck out of the reporter.

Live Action TV

• Used in Supernatural - the brothers check into an evidence warehouse using Homeland Security IDs, only to be forced to flee once some very serious suits from Homeland Security arrive at the desk.
• A comedy variant: On Mad About You Jaimie was going back to school, but Paul had forgotten to send in her registration forms. So he, Ira, and Jaimie's friend Fran stealth sign her up for all the classes she wanted on the last day of registration, getting signatures from the teachers of the classes in question, and all had to get photo I Ds taken claiming they were Jaimie Buckman.

Western Animation

• In the League Of Super Evil this went along with the Totem Pole Trench gag.

Video Games

• A variant is used in The Legend Of Zelda Majora's Mask. Link is shocked to discover that a room at the Stock Pot Inn has already been reserved for him. Turns out there's a Goron also named Link who made the reservation. You just happened to arrive before he did. Steal his room at your peril, 'cause you can find him outside shivering in the cold later if do. Remember that this is the festival season, and all the hotels were booked solid a long time ago.

A computer, worn on the wrist.

• Leela has one on Futurama. She has at one point wondered what it was for.
• Almost everyone in Megaman Star Force wears one
• Part of the Demonica Suit in Shin Megami Tensei Strange Journey.

A kind of Germans Love David Hasselhoff where the character with an unexpected following in another country was originally created as a Funny Foreigner stereotype of that country.

Just read about this on Wikipedia's article about Speedy Gonzales. If this is in fact true, it's gotta be a trope.

Seems like there would be more examples. Do the French love Pepe le Pew? Do Scots love Groundskeeper Willie?

An offshoot of Award Snub, meaning the section on this phenomenon in that page would have to be taken out if this became an actual page. Also, this might need a better title.

What may happen as a result of someone getting one too many Award Snubs. Basically, someone in the entertainment industry has gone too long without winning a particular award, despite their work being considered some of the best in their field. Eventually, they do end up winning said award...but for something considered pretty inferior to the rest of their work.

Ironically, this ends up continuing the cycle of snubs, since, well, someone better has to lose.

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Examples:

• Martin Scorsese's The Departed is not widely considered to be one of his best. So, one can't help but wonder if this trope was in effect when it won Best Picture and he won Best Director, after decades of Scorsese's work never getting the honor. Arguably, though, it might also because it was the most successful movie out of that year's Best Picture nominees.
• Cecil B. DeMille's 1952 film The Greatest Show On Earth is considered by many to be one of the worst films to ever win Best Picture. Some suspect the only reason it got the award was because DeMille's films had never won one yet, despite the man's career dating all the way back to the silent era.
• John Wayne's Best Actor win in 1969 for True Grit is seen as a consolation for him not winning the award for his work in films like The Quiet Man or The Sands of Iwo Jima.
• Al Pacino got Best Actor in 1992 for Scent of a Woman, despite him deserving the award back in 1972 for The Godfather.
• An example of the cycle continuing: in 2001, Nicole Kidman was nominated for Moulin Rouge, but lost to Halle Berry. The next year, she won for The Hours, a film that has been all but forgotten. She beat Renee Zellwegger in Chicago, who ended up winning Best Supporting Actress in 2003 for Cold Mountain. A lot of the reviews of Cold Mountain actually contain comments along the lines of "just give Renee the Oscar already".
• One of the more infamous of these was Paul Newman winning for his work in a sequel to The Hustler called The Color Of Money because he'd been snubbed decades earlier for his work in the original.
• Possibly the most famous (or infamous) is that Alfred Hitchcock never won an Oscar as a director or anything else, nor ever won best picture. The Academy gave him a life achievement award, which he deserved anyway, but mostly as an apology for never giving him an award for Vertigo, Psycho, North By Northwest, The Birds, Rope, Strangers On A Train, The Man Who Knew Too Much, To Catch A Thief, Dial M For Murder, Rear Window, Marnie...
• Arguably, the entire Lord Of The Rings trilogy deserved Oscars for each and every film. Instead they gave nothing but technical awards to the first two chapters, and then every Oscar to the last one in the series. It was either this trope or a Crowning Moment Of Awesome for the series.
• Denzel Washington's work in Training Day, after losing for The Hurricane. Your Milage May Vary on this one though.
• There's a possible analogue in Professional Wrestling - some performers can work for years, often in a jobber role, but just by ill fortune, injuries or other reasons can go largely unrecognised in terms of championships, so they get a token reign later on. Hugh Morrus in WCW stands out as one - he was a classic "jobber" for years, making other people look good on the way up, and eventually got a "feel good" US title reign in 2000. It should be noted it's rarely the top belt that gets used, typically a secondary singles title is the consolation award.
• Metallica won a Consolation Grammy after losing Best Heavy Metal Performance to (shockingly) Jethro Tull years earlier. The Grammys finally realized how much Metallica had contributed to heavy metal and decided to give the award for Metallica.

Because Everythings Better With Pineapples will most liekly be cutlisted, but the article does hit on something. Certain fruits are just really funny.

Pineapples, Kumquats, Kiwis, and obiously, Bananas, which has its own tropes.

When a character is carrying a piece of fruit for no reason, it's Fruit Of The Loon.

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Pineapples:

• Characters with "Pineapple" hairstyles (ex: Shikamaru or Kazumi Asakura) tend to receive this word as a Fan Nickname.
  • Sasuke Uchiha's hair is either this or looks like a duck butt.
  • Older example: Folken Fanel.
  • Sousuke Sagara's hair. Especially when he was younger.
  • Sebastian from Kuroshitsuji has a bit of this going on.
  • Tetsunosuke from Peacemaker Kurogane has a bigger example of pineapple shaped hair.
  • Much older example: Goemon Ishikawa.
  • Newer example: Mikan.
  • Cure Bloom.
  • Makino Ruki
  • In one Naruto chat video, Temari (who has four separate "pineapples" in her hair), has "Pineapple Head" as her handle.
  • Abarai Renji, who at one point in a possible Lampshade Hanging, wears a shirt with 'Red Pinapple' written on it.
  • What about Mukuro? I can't believe no one's mentioned him yet.
• Super Dimension Fortress Macross resulted in the term "pineapple" (especially "pineapple salad" becoming fan-speak for A character's death, after the incident where Roy Fokker dies.
  • "Macross Plus" averts this in the OVA version; when Isamu crashes his VF-11 he clambers out next to a pineapple tree.
  • Macross Frontier lampshades this with Ozma and pineapple cake: Ozma has a tragic scene but manages to survive, and Michael comments on how tragic it would've been if he actually died. Maybe the pineapple's less potent in cake form?
• Inverted on Ranma 1/2 where school is definitely worse with pineapples due to the Ax Crazy principal's obsession with Hawaii.
• If you're into hentai, there's Pink Pineapple Studio... Or So I Heard.
• Fresh Pretty Cure has one of the main protagonists transform into Cure Pine... Pine being short for pineapple.
• PineXNapple
• Piney apples!
• Digimon Adventure - On the back of Koushirou "Izzy" Izumi's very iBook-like laptop is a Pineapple emblem. This carries over into Season 2, where the pseudo-OSX looking terminal display has a pineapple icon. And for some reason this troper never fully understood, Impmon has a habit of calling Guilmon Pineapple Head in the dub version of Digimon Tamers. His head looks like a pineapple to him I guess...
• The Marx Brothers' movie Animal Crackers includes Chico and Harpo trying to steal a painting.
  Chico: "You got everything? The shovel, the axe, the dynamite, the pineapples?"
• A pineapple was used in Little Nicky; see Rape As Comedy.
• Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs has this memorable line:
  Manny: "Buck, when exactly did you go insane?"
  Buck: "Hmm, three months ago. I woke up one morning, married to a pineapple. An ugly pineapple! Ah, but I loved her"
• Xanth uses pineapples as grenades.
  • Of course, this is a nod to the famous MK II Grenades, commonly referred to as "Pineapple Grenades"
• In the Discworld, Vetinari famously comments on a pie tasting like pineapple in Making Money.
  • In The Last Continent, the Senior Wrangler is suspicious of a deserted island because it may have pineapples on it; this is because he had an aunt that choked on one: "You're not supposed to eat them that way, we said, but did she listen?".
• Inverted in Jonathan Strange And Mr Norrell: everything is worse with pineapples as Strange discovers when he goes mad and sees pineapples everywhere.

Whereas the women go to the Wondrous Ladies Room, the men look in horror, when they realize that to fullfill their nneeds, they will have to go to the Disgusting Public Toilet.

Littered with Bathroom Stall Graffiti, spare bits of toilet paper and paper towels, liguids and solids of undetermined origin, and a toilet bowl that was possibly installed discoloured, clogged and smelling.

And yes, everyone who has had the displeassure on having to stop at a gasstation or a seedy bar can attest that this is largely Truth In Television.

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Examples:

• "The Worst Toilet In Scotland" in Trainspotting.
• The subway station bathroom in Nick And Norahs Infinite Playlist.
• San Antonio Rock City "Autobiography II"

A New Media trope. While Social Networking sites like My Space and Facbook are mostly about people getting together, using their real names and talking about what they like, Anti-Social Networking Sites are people getting together behind usernames, or anonymously to mostly talk about what they don't like.

4chan is generally regarded as the Most Glorious Example, mostly for its forced Anonymity, and large effect outside the site.

This was basically how internet was percieved before Social Networking became trendy.

Not Complaining About Sites You Don't Like, but an observation of the general trend of sites like them.

Do We Have This One? Probably Needs A Better Title. I'm sorta partial to this, so No Launching Please.

In some stories, the good guys are squeaky embodiments of shiny goodness and fight bearded stage magicians who cackle a lot. Other stories might have the pragmatic freedom fighters against a government who alternately sing orphans to sleep or murder their kittens. Still other stories have the world's mightiest, most murderous, most-pants-wettingest "heroes" you've ever seen against a guy who made entire worlds into slave-states for profit and laughs.

Then you have stories like this.

There are clear good guys. There are clear bad guys. But there might be a guy who's good and a little bad, or who's bad and a little good. In the end, the good guys usually win, the bad guys usually lose, and the "gray guys" can really surprise you one way, or another.

Examples

• Brandon Sanderson's Elantris. Good guys: Sarene, Raoden. Bad Guys: Wryn, Dilaf. Gray guys: Sarene's uncle (ultimately), Hrathen.
• KotoR 2. Good guys: the player's group (if you choose Light Side). Gray guys: (arguably) the Jedi Council, Kreia. Bad Guys: Darth Sion, Darth Nihilus, the player's group (if you choose Dark Side).
• Girl Genius: Good guys: Agatha and most of her troupe. Gray guys: the Wulfenbachs, Othar Trygvasson. Bad guys: the Other.
• The Dresden Files: Good guys: Murphy, Susan, Molly, Michael, Thomas (though some might argue he veers closer to gray after Turn Coat), Harry (though he doubts this himself after he has to do some nasty things). Gray guys: Kincaid, Marcone, Morgan, the Council (though they come veeery close to crossing the line to becoming the bad guys). Bad guys: Lea ( or is she?), Mab, Nicodemus, Mavra. Arguably the series runs a gamut of good, gray, and bad guys that sit on various ends of the scale.

Ninja'd to say that there will be Rolling Updates; also, added the examples section.

Do We Have This One?

The character is doing something akin to saying grace, but instead of addressing a deity, they are talking to their food. They might thank an animal they killed for its meat, or apologising to it for the kill, justifying it with the kill's necessety for their own survival.

This is usually a sign that the hunter in question is in tune with nature, possibly a Noble Savage. Expect them to make use of all parts of the animal, too.

It's something an Egomaniac Hunter is not likely to do.

Examples

Comic Books

• ElfQuest: In Kings of the Broken Wheel 5 there's a bit of gentle ribbing of Pike, because he always thanks his prey for the meat, even though it can't hear him anymore.