Quite widespread trope in video games, especially in platformers. Whenever a player approaches a stalactite or icicle (sometimes a chandelier), they fall down. I wonder do we have a trope for this already?

Tropes about anger:

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

I will show you fear in a handful of dust.

-- TS Eliot

Tropes about fear:

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

Subjective Tropes

• Nightmare Fuel
• High Octane Nightmare Fuel
• Primal Fear

Needs A Better Title. Please go to this crowner to vote on the suggestions.

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

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

Can overlap with Upper Class Twit (if this character doesn't really do much even by upper class standards), and Valley Girl (if this character is fashion conscious and inarticulate), a Rich Bitch (if this character is also malicious), even King Incognito (if the royal is doing a poor job of blending in). Conversely, a Rich Idiot With No Day Job would pretend to be like this, to make his masquerade more convincing.

City Mouse is a Sub Trope.

Compare Fish Out Of Water.

Contrast Country Mouse, Non Idle Rich.

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Examples:

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

This would be a special form of Periphery Demographic, and similar to Germans Love David Hasselhoff.

Essentially, this is a trope where classic works continue to spawn a significant fandom amongst the younger generation.

Classic children's literature and Western Animation series would provide a specifically interesting case where, essentially, the whole current fanbase would be a Periphery Demographic - since there would be the usual Animation Age Ghetto, along with this trope.

Generally, it's works that are not Deader Than Disco that are likely to spawn this trope.

When, for whatever reason, whether accidentally or on purpose, a person in a position of powerful leadership ends up unofficially fighting against whatever authority they're officially the leader of.

The leader in question will end up falling in with a group of rebels who curse their name every day while rattling off a litany of the evil deeds done in their name, not knowing that the object of their hatred is right in their midst, possibly receiving the first honest criticism they've ever gotten. For maximum irony points, this leader figure will usually either become the Rebel Leader's most trusted lieutenant/romantic interest or rise clear to the top of the rebel organization.

Whether or not factions within the leader figure's own authority are aware of the situation, the leader is not intentionally acting as a double agent. In fact, most instances in which they are aware have traitorous factions attempting to use the situation as a convenient ruse to kill them.

With The Reveal typically comes an instant surrender by the leader's ostensible followers, and paralyzing surprise from the rebels.

See also Right In Front Of Me, King Incognito, Right Hand Versus Left Hand, Return Of The King.

Examples:

• The Twelve Kingdoms
• Many versions of Robin Hood
• The Prince and the Pauper
• Code Geass?

Needs A New Title, likely, but here goes:

It's about 5, 10 years After The End. Maybe it's a Zombie Apocalypse, maybe The Virus has killed almost everyone. Does't matter how the world went to hell, but it did. Our heroes discover that the origin of whatever killed the world: a child. The child's parents aren't ignorant of that fact, nor did they cling to the belief that a cure was possible. No, they knew that their child was the source (and still is) of The Virus, and did nothing.

Our heroes point out that the parents, not the kid, are really the cause of the Crapsack World. They should have done something no parent wants to do. The parents, in keeping their child 'safe' and alive, doomed the world. If confronted by this, the parent(s) look at the heroes aghast: "Could you kill your child?"?

Sadly, the heroes are never Genre Savvy enough to say "", so they just stare back, unable to form a response.

A form of Why Dont Ya Just Shoot Him in which there's a reason why someone doesn't - because parents typically don't enjoy killing their children, after all - but that very defense leads to events where everyone wishes someone did it and never caused all of this to happen.

I've seen this in many places, but the one that comes to mind the most:

• In Underworld Evolution, Alexander Corvinus uses this argument to justify why he didn't kill his two sons. Marcus, his son which is the grandfather of all werewolves, is a feral beast that can't stop himself from biting people and creating more feral werewolves. He opts to imprison Marcus instead, although that doesn't end the werewolf race... and sort of pisses off his other son, Marcus, who created a plan to release him because, after all, he's his brother.

A Bad Guy decides to help the Good Guys, because he suddenly remembers he's a member of a group that was once discriminated or persecuted in some way. Happens in the Island, I'm sure there's a ton of examples but I can't think of any right now.

Possible Needs a Better Title

They'll realize that beneath your unfeeling exterior is a heart that's breaking. Silently, and in more pain than any of us can possibly understand, because that's what it is to be Vulcan!

-Star Trek Voyager: "Muse"

A subtrope of Iron Woobie, this character needs a hug. Badly. Don't expect them to admit it, though. Unlike other woobie characters, they won't cry, angst, or outwardly show how much they're sufffering at all. (Internally is another story). They don't want your pity, and in a great number of cases, will deny having emotions at all. Don't be fooled. The plot has heaped complication after complication on them, and silently, internally, they're suffering.

Shell Shocked Seniors tend to be these.

---

Examples

• Firefly's Simon Tam
• As of Star Trek XI, Spock

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Rolling Examples:

• Some of the bob-oms in the Super Mario Bros games could get this large, especially in Super Mario RPG and the second Paper Mario.
• The climax of Tremors II, as in the quote.
• The Powder Keg in The Legend Of Zelda Majoras Mask. It's a friggin' barrel of kerboom that's bigger than Link.
• Bomb Man's super attack in Mega Man Powered Up is producing and throwing a bomb about five times his size.
• The Tzar Bomb, largest nuclear device ever built in Real Life, was so big that even the largest bombers the Soviets had couldn't fly it without special modifications (they had a remove the bomb bay doors to fit it in and remove 2 fuel tanks to decrease the weight of the plane once it was loaded).
• In Butch Cassidy And The Sundance Kid (or maybe it was Butch and Sundance: The Early Years) they tried to blow a safe in a rail car, but used too much dynamite and blew up the entire car.
• Technically any nova or supernova, since they come from the most massive stars.

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Indexes upon launching:

• Bigger Is Better
• For Massive Damage
• Weapons And Wielding Tropes
• Truth In Television

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

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

Put more examples in the comments.

Examples:

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

How Did We Miss This One?

Tropes about feet, shoes, and other things related.

Related indexes: Eye Tropes, Keep Abreast Of This Index.

(The title is not using "trope" as a placeholder. "These Trope" actually does refer to the tropes listed.)

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Rolling Tropes:

• Agony Of The Feet
• All Women Love Shoes
• Broken Heel
• Cement Shoes
• Combat Stilettos
• Dead Foot Leadfoot
• Does Not Like Shoes
• Feet First Introduction
• Fertile Feet
• Foot Focus
• Foot Popping
• Giant Foot Of Stomping
• Grind Boots
• I Kiss Your Foot
• Inside Shoes
• Smoldering Shoes
• Trampled Underfoot
• Twinkle Toes Samurai
• Wheel O Feet

The obvious counter trope to Crowning Moment Of Heartwarming, Dethroning Moment Of Jerkass is the counter trope of feeling good. Tear Jerker? Too much of a stone heart to cry. Moral Event Horizon? Faith in Humanity already reach dastardly low levels. Yet somehow, This moment actually gives you unspeakable rage. How for once someone managed to use these trope all together to make one big bad moment where you really feel like crap every time you remember this scene.

The Dethroning Moment of Jerkass is when through a series of unfortunate events, that moment triggers a thing inside you that makes you feel both sad and angry at the same time at how some writers or actors can just show bad things can get and how they not need tears, only reactions...

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• Keep Moments of Cruelty to the absolute ends, don't use smaller real life examples as an DMOC.
• DMO Cs are usually Tear Jerker, Player Punch, Moral Event Horizon, Darkest Hour. However to mark this as a moment that damages your faith in humanity (or show the damaged faith the writer has, they should have something distinctly depressing or cruel to belong here and should at least have 2 of the mentioned tropes.
• It has got to fit the story's narrative and tone. It can't come out of the blue as something tacked on.
• It has to be original; cliched bad things happening would induce more "yawn" than "damn".
• It has to feel sincere, like the writer and/or director wanted it there to make a real point for the story, not just for a coldblooded audience appeal.

Rolling Updates

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

Do We Have This One? Probably Needs A Better Name, and I'm open to suggestions.

Picture this: the heroes finally have the villain where they want him, our protagonist is holding his gun to the villain's head and demands to know one reason why he shouldn't finish everything here and now.

And then the villain's child/wife/kitten comes bounding down the stairs, innocently wanting to know what all the noise is about and Daddy, who is that scary angry man, and why does he keep shouting at you? Did you make him mad or something?

Similar to Morality Pet, this is a character who is usually young, cute, or in need of protecting who is in some way attached to the villain. While not always acting as a humanizing force for the villian himself, the important thing about this character is that they prevent the heroes from actually killing the villain because the heroes simply aren't that cold-blooded.

Usually the hero will put away his gun and wait for the proper authorities to take the villain to jail. Sometimes the villian will get off with a warning that they haven't seen the last of the heroes, and sometimes the hero just doesn't have the heart and decides to forget the whole thing. What happens may depend on where your protagonists fall on the Sliding Scale Of Anti Heroes, and how gritty the series in question.

Compare Morality Pet, Pet The Dog, and I Have A Family.

Examples:

• During season four of Lost, Locke and the gang have captured Ben, and Sawyer suggests they just shoot him in the head while they have the chance. Locke says that he's not so inhuman that he'll shoot the guy right in front of his sixteen year-old daughter, who is looking on during this whole conversation.

Something i've been thinking about making, and a possible subtrope of Spotlight Stealing Squad. Basically, out of a certain pool of characters/groups/etc., the same person/group is inevitably chosen every single time, for no other reason than coincidence. Trope namer is Bleach wherein every time a captain and/or lieutenant needs to be sent down to the world of the living, Captain Hutsugaya and/or Lieutenant Matsumoto of Squad 10 are always one of them.

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

--Baby Blues

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

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

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

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Anime & Manga

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

Live Action TV

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

Newspaper Comics

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

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

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

We don't have this one?

Up For Grabs

Short Hero Tall Villain, aka David And Goliath is, as the name suggests when the hero is noticably shorter than the villain.

Examples:

• Marty McFly and Biff Tannen in Back To The Future
• Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader in the original Star Wars trilogy

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

You know that thing where you find out during the story that many many people have done this all before you, and you're just following their footsteps? Haven't found a trope for it yet, but I've got a few examples to get started:

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Examples:

• The Matrix: During Reloaded the architect reveals (or maybe he's lying) that The One, is not The Only One, and every time One reaches the architect, he selects a few citizens of Zion to survive the machines' attack and found a new city. Neo chooses to break the cycle.

• In Portal, it's clear from the graffiti that you are nowhere near the first person to run the course, and implied that all previous test subjects were clones of you.

• In the Assassin's Creed series, Desmond is Subject 17 (I think), and spends part of the second game reading clues left to him by his predecessor, subject 16

• Chuck Palahniuk's novel Diary: the protagonist gradually discovers that her life is entirely mapped out for her by her mother, who knows that, like her ancestors, she will cause an incident that drives all the unwelcome tourists away from their island.

• Absolutely years since I've played it, but I think this was broadly the whole point of the game Expendable.

I'm sure there are quite a few films which fit this trope, but they're not springing to mind.

Sorry these examples are all so spoilertastic, but that's kind of the point with this budding trope.

Also, examples of this trope fall into two broad categories: Sometimes Subject 99 manages to break this endless cycle, sometimes he/she does not. Subtrope potential?

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

In comics and animation it may happen that a character resembles a person who actually exists.

Maybe you're looking at an adaptation using the looks of the actors who portrayed the characters in the original closely, or maybe the person responsible for the character designs just would love a particular actor to play that character, if there ever was a movie made. Or, in animation, maybe they actually played that character's voice.

Maybe the character is a parody, or maybe this is the "real world", and it's really supposed to be them.

They could also be based on a real person because the creator

Supertrope of Comic Book Fantasy Casting, No Celebrities Were Harmed and Ink Suit Actor.

Examples

Adaptation using original actors' looks

• The Firefly comics
• The animated Star Trek series

It's actually them

• Biographies in graphic novel format, such as Johnny Cash: I see a darkness

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Might need splitting, but I'd really like a place to put stuff like that when it's not either of the two tropes we have already. I hope I didn't miss one that exists. I'm really not good with names. Drawn Like A Real Person sounds like it's about realistic art style, Drawn Like A Celebrity could just mean they give you a "celebrity vibe", and I'm not sure if it implies that examples of non-famous people would be excluded, but it's the best I can come up with. That Face Looks Familiar seems too general, I Saw That Face In Real Life sounds like it's about Troper Tales. Real People With Ink Outlines? Computer animated stuff should be included, so the "drawn" is already a bit narrow. *wahwah*

Rolling Updates

Subtrope to catch all the pathfinding issues in Artificial Stupidity.

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

Generic examples:

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

Do We Have This One?

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

Also known as Art Nouveau Punk. Discoveryland at Disneyland Paris is probably the Ur-Example of this. Up For Grabs.

*24 Hour Launch Notice.* - will be launched around 2 PM EST if this is alright with everyone.

forum discussion on this

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

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

The basic premise of this trope is this:

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

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

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

(Thanks Troper Madrugada for help)

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Examples:

North America

Eagleland

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

Canada

• Canada is only... um...

Mexico

Middle East

UAE

• Dubai is the only place in the UAE.

Europe

[1] Freestate Amsterdam

• Northern Europe is only Amsterdam.

[2]

• Italy is only Rome.
• Greece is only Athens, which is only the Acropolis.

United Kingom

• supertrope of Britain Is Only London.
• France is only Paris.

Asia

Japan

• Japan is only Tokyo.

Russia

• Russia is only Moscow and Russia is only Siberia

South Armerica

• Brazil is only Rio.

Africa

• Africa is only jungle, with a few small tribal villages tossed in. And aliens.
• The Philippines is only Manila - even to the locals.

• Egypt is only pyramids.
• Germany is only beer, sausages, and quaint little villages. Besides, you know...
• Outside of Brazil, South America is just a big hill of cocaine.
• India is only Sikhs.
• Antarctica is only ice and penguins. This is somewhat valid.

Exceptions

In America

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

*24 Hour Launch Notice.* - will be launched around 2 PM EST if this is alright with everyone.

I tried this once before, but it fell through.

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

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

Signs that you are dealing with this character are:

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

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

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

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

Examples

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Examples:

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

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

---

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

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

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

Subtropes:

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

maybe need to split this?

Examples of Case 1:

Film

• In V For Vendetta (the movie): The government's troops end up joining the revolting populace.

Literature

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

Live Action TV

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

Real Life

• The end of the Cold War, in comparison to the cataclysm many had expected the cold war to end in, was nearly bloodless.
  • The trope namer is Chechoslovakia, where the transition from one communist state in 1989 to two non-communist ones in 1993 was accomplished bloodlessly.
  • The collapse of the Berlin Wall and reunification of Germany.
  • In Romania, the leadership ordered the army and secret police to put down the revolution. The army commanders refused to fire on unarmed civilians.
• South Africa's elimination of the Apartied system.
• The People Power Revolution in the Philippines.
• Subverted in China in Tiananmen Square: students had hoped to stage a Velvet Revolution, but the army didn't back down.

Examples of Case 2:

Anime and Manga

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

Literature

• In War Of The Worlds, the martian invasion failed due to illness.

Live Action TV

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

Real Life

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

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

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

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

Film

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

Needs A Better Title. Sub-trope of Hot Mom

Sometimes when a boy has a Hot Mom, his friends and others will notice. Having them hit on her in his or his mother's prescence is a constant source of irritation or even a Berserk Button for him because to him, she's "Just Mom".

Examples:

• Violette Morhange in Les Choristes. Pierre reacts to his teacher's interest in her by throwing an inkbomb at him.
• Ross in All Fun and Games Until Somebody Loses an Eye, most down to the fact that Jane had his sister at 19.
• Missy from Bill And Teds Excellent Adventure. A step-mom but she still counts.

There's definitely been a few of these, but I'm having trouble thinking of specific examples.

Basically, a team of characters who seem to be thrown together just for the hell of it. In The Verse, they're usually leftover characters who can't carry a title on their own and don't fit in anywhere else at the moment. Mostly seen in comics.

Examples:

• The original Champions, a Marvel team consisting of Hercules, Black Widow, Ghost Rider, Angel and Iceman. Literally thrown together over lunch because Marvel needed three new titles by the close of the day and nobody was using them.
• Next Wave seemed to have been built from whatever characters Warren Ellis wanted to make jokes about (and could get his hands on). One of them was an "original" character who may or may not have been dozens of obscure heroes.
• The Defenders (Marvel again? wow) started out as one of these with Hulk, Namor, the Silver Surfer and Doctor Strange. Over time, though, they've developed an interesting dynamic together even though they're rarely used.

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

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

---

Examples:

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

Needs A Better Title. Should We Have This One?

Specific case of Anime Hair, that happens often in Shonen series. One or more of the characters, usually protagonists, have specific hairstyle - his hair are in mess, bluge on all sides and often looks like some kind of spikes. this hairstyle dosn't have to, but comes in pair with short temper and nature somewhere between rebel, free spirit and Chaotic Good. Somebody coudl assume it's suppose to symbolize hero's dispespect for existing rules. Or his dislike for hairdressers.

Examples:

• Dragon Ball characters are often close to this, especially Goku in his non Super Sayian form.
• Interestinc example in Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann - while Kaimna is this trope played straight, Simon's hairstyle become more and more like this each time he Takes A level In Badass.
• Naruto, and few his friends, like Kiba.
• Ichigo Kurosaki.
• Monkey D. Luffy, who can hide it when he wears his straw hat.
• Jotaro Kujo was revealed to have this when he lost his cap.
• Both Tetsuya Tsurugi and Kouji Kabuto from Mazinger Z and Great Mazinger.
• At last one kid for each Digimon series.
• Loads of characters in Pokemon.
• Iki from Air Gear
• Shobu Kirafuda from Duel Masters

Pretty much the inverse of Fandom Rivalry. Just like with how the belief often held in a Fandom Rivalry consist of if you like Show X, you can't also like Show Y - this one one deals with the belief that if you like Show X, then you also have to like Show Y.

Sometimes, this view may only have a one-sided consensus: i.e., the fandom consensus of Show X may act as if you also have to like Show Y - while the fandom consensus of Show Y may not hold the same view of Show X. In extreme cases, the fandom consensus of Show Y may actually hate Show X. This could result in a major Hype Backlash from fans of Show X who don't also like Show Y - because not only are they being pressured by their fellow Show X fans to also like Show Y, but it turns of that the inverse view is not even shared by fans of Show Y.

An example of the second variant:

• Led Zeppelin fandom vs Pink Floyd fandom

For a character to survive or overcome a problem, they will find that they can't go about it in any sensible manner, maybe they're placed in a Crapsack World full of Black And Gray Morality, or perhaps they're stuck on a battlefield where War Is Hell, or they might even be/are/have victimised by a Complete Monster somehow. Whatever the situation that character finds themselves - be it forced or "voluntary" - going to that "special" place to cope with it all, they're not going to off themselves (though that maybe the course of action that they ironically end up going for in the end in due part because of the insanity) they want to live, better than accepting they will fail.

Though bearing in mind the one, albiet twisted, silver lining for the afflicted character is that if the show is particularly fond of treating mental illness lightly, then the person who willingly became insane can just as easily become Bored With Insanity and cure him or herself.

Not to be confused with moments where the character enters into a Unstoppable Rage and it's variants as that more a loss of self-control. Understandably this is a tricky line when determining examples.

Sister Trope to Happy Place.

Examples:

• Possibly in Pi, where Max gives in to insanity by drilling a hole in his head although it's debatable whether or not that literally happened or was symbolic of simply blowing a fuse (usually taken as literal).
• In Generation Kill, a comment made by "Captain America" observes how the nature of the battlefield makes this the only way to survive in it also suggests this is the explanation for his behaviour making it a possible Alternative Character Interpretation.
• Mal from Firefly suggests this the reason survivors of Reaver attacks end up emulating them.
• A deliberate version in Harry Harrison's The Stainless Steel Rat. Jim diGriz decides that to find Angelina, he must temporarily become as insane as she is. He does it by taking a collection of psychotomimetic drugs combined with post-hypnotic suggestion.
• In the third book of The Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy, while trapped on Prehistoric Earth, Arthur reaches his wits end after about five years. He declares that he'll just go mad! At that moment, Ford pops back up and informs him that he did that for a while himself, it was quite refreshing.
• In the Vorkosigan Saga, Mark Vorkosigan, clone-brother to Miles, during torture developed an unusual psychosis that he later dubbed "The Black Gang", a group of specialist sub-personalities. Later, he allowed himself to subvert back into psychosis in order to survive torture and defeat an enemy.
• The Strange Case Of Jonathan Strange And Mr Norrell: Strange became temporarily insane in order to get in touch with Faerie.
• There was one story where, for some bizarre reason, the Joker woke up to find himself sane (and very much not liking it) in a post-apocalyptic version of Gotham. He naturally chose to return to insanity when he regained enough of his memories.
• This is part of the opening narration for Die Anstalt. Heartbreaking is the word.
  "In a soulless world...its inhabitants spineless...These creatures can't defend themselves. They cannot run away. Insanity...is their only way of escape."

Rolling Updates but that's granted isn't it?

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

Probably a subtrope of Defective Detective.

How Did We Miss This One?

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

Film

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

WesternAnimation

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

Do We Have This, Seen It A Million Times, Needs A Better Description.

Essentially this trope describes someone who having to explain their behavior to an employer claims as mitigating circumstances "It's my first day" or something similar. Often also used by empathetic co-workers to defend the new guy.

This is Up For Grabs

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Examples:

Anime and Manga:

• The protagonist in Darker Than Black does this on occasion.

Western Animation

• The opening quote is from The Simpsons, an excuse used by Homer on more than one occasion.

Live Action TV

• In the first episode of Scrubs Karla defends J.D. in this way (If memory serves...)

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

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

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

Examples:

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

Do We Have This One?

Let's face it, ladies, there is something about a good old-fashioned suit that ups a man's sex appeal by like 20 points. Whether intended or not, there is something about a basic three piece (nevermindthe other, older suits) that really turn heads. Perhaps because it implies power and wealth. Perhaps he is able to wear it like no one else can. Whatever the reason, girls love the basic, every day, suit, and that is not reduced to fictional girls. These characters are some of the more likely guys to attract the Perverse Sexual Lust of fans. If he's a villain, expect fangirls to put him in something a little more form fitting for fanfiction. If he's a good guy, expect him to attract any sort of female attention imaginable.

Examples:

• Light Yagami from Death Note
• Death the Kid as a dressing staple and Soul when in the Black Room from Soul Eater
• The 10th Doctor of Doctor Who
• James Bond
• William Spears from Kuroshitsuji
• Sanji from One Piece
• Real Life (most guys I've known wear suits to get their mates' attention like girls wear miniskirts/low cut shirts)
• An episode of iCarly plays with this when Spensor can only get the attention of a girl when he is wearing a Tux.
• What do all incarnations of the Joker have in common? They are slaves to fashion as much as their color scheme permits. What does he have that fanboys want? Harley Quinn.
• Tuxedo Mask from Sailor Moon.

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

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

Example off the top of my head: Ashita no Ousama

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

I know I have seen this quite a bit. The "alien pest" on four legs that leaps at it's foes to attack them.

• Kinrath in the Star Wars Expanded Universe
• Antlions in Half Life 2
• I think the 3rd chapter of The Witcher (game) had these, forget the name.

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

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

Compare to Killer Rabbit.

Examples:

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

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

Examples-

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

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

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

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Examples:

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

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

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

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

-Oscar Wilde hasn't played many RPGS lately.

Do We Have This One?

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

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

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

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

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

Examples:

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

Some authors plan meticulously. Before they even start to write, they have a detailed plot synopsis, character biographies, pages on setting, and a detailed backstory to the main tale... at the least.

Others just sit down at their word processor and type whatever comes into their head. This trope is dedicated to them.

This is not necessarily a trope about authors who simply write without a speck of planning at all (although it can be), but rather those who, overall, are improvising as they write. They may already have invented their characters, perhaps they have a vague plot bubbling in their head, even a few notes on backstory or setting. What separates Indy Authorship from planned writing is that these authors are prepared to throw those notes in the trash the moment they come up with an idea that they prefer. Writing a hardboiled crime fiction novel? Remember that takeaway place you thought up on the spot to give your sleuth somewhere to eat his lunch? That would be perfect as a front for the Big Bad's drug-dealing business! Making a movie? That actor's take on that character is way better than what you originally had in mind. Why not rewrite half his part to take advantage of that vision?

Like most things, this can be done well, or badly. The Chris Carter Effect is what happens when Indy Authorship leaves too many loose plot threads.

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Examples:

• The Battlestar Galactica revival. A lot of things were admitted to not be planned to not shoehorn the work.
• This is how Douglas Adams wrote the original radio scripts for The Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy. Apparently, he'd often still be rewriting the ends of episodes as the cast were recording the beginning. In this case, of course, it worked.
• According to the DVD Bonus Content, Freakazoid was written with very little planning because of time constraints.
• Casablanca was being written as it was filmed.
• Yellow Submarine began production without an ending. Which is why it doesn't have one.

Rolling Updates

Note: This is the mutated/evolved descendant of a trope originally proposed by Zero0.

A subtrope of The Ditz. May overlap with Genius Ditz.

There has been some tendencies that in anime/manga, girls with big boobs act very ditzy or clueless. There's no explanation why, but fans have taken this to a joke level of this: "All the nutritions she ate go to her boobs, not her brains."

Examples of this trope:

• Inoue Orihime from Bleach. This is subverted that she's actually a top scorer in her class, she just had weird imaginations.
• Both incarnations of Ryuubi Gentoku (Ikki Tousen and Koihime Musou), both with tendencies of trusting the wrong people and being the Distressed Damsel.
• In Super Robot Wars, this is greatly subverted by Lamia Loveless. She displays herself as calm, composed and analytical, anything a Boobie Ditz isn't. However, considering she's just created recently, thus having the mentality of a 1-3 years old girl when it comes to anything not about strategy and war, she has shades of a Boobie Ditz when it comes to daily human life activities (as seen in the early parts of OG Gaiden).
• On the other hand, Kaguya Nanbu from Endless Frontier plays this completely straight.

Exactly What It Says On The Tin

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Examples:

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

Exactly What It Says On The Tin

In Speculative Fiction sometimes The Little Shop That Wasn't There Yesterday has a very good reason for disappearing and reappearing at will, it has a motor!

A Mobile Kiosk would be any device where the owner sells something with the additional benefit of when business dries up he can pick up and move. perhaps a conman with a collapsible table, a bazaar merchant with his store on a cart, or a hoverskift selling fresh alien fish

Examples:

• Vending carts/trucks especially the one in The Fifth Element
• Bookmobiles: kind of as they are essentially libraries
• Shadowrun: often has mobile medical care facilities and repair shops for the "don't ask questions" type
• there are companies out there that will wash your car and/or repair windshields on the spot (well in the parking lot anyway)

Is This Tropable?

Do We Have This? Should We Have This?

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

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

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

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

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

---

Show me yo' examples:

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

Needs More Examples, Do We Have This One, Rolling Updates. Formerly named Character Fluctuation.

A character whose personality changes frequently to better match the plot, or to set the plot in motion. In one episode, they might fit the description of The Daria, while by the next episode they're a great example of the Shrinking Violet. In other words, it's a character who seemingly has nothing but Out Of Character Moments. This can have many causes, but it's usually caused by bad writing or multiple writers with different ideas.

How the character is perceived depends on how the character is written. If done well, the character will seem complex in a believable way, and it will appear that the shift in personality is a result of the plot. Some form of justification, like a personality disorder, may be given. If done poorly, the character will seem like he or she was created specifically to be a wild card, the inconsistency itself will be annoying.

Contrast Flanderization. Compare Rounded Character, Hidden Depths, Out Of Character Moment. See also Ping Pong Naivete, Compressed Vice. Related to the "dere" family.

Examples:

Anime and Manga

• Lady Une from Gundam Wing, which depended on if she wore glasses.
• Omamori Himari has several examples: the Unwanted Harem tends to be all over Yuuto, but often berate him when he's all over them.
• Akira Kogami switches personality in the blink of an eye. Kawaiiko meets The Krusty.

Theatre

• Eliza from Pygmalion (and to a lesser extent My Fair Lady) would seem to fit this trope, as she's alternatingly hysterically weepy, boldly spirited, obediently demure, etc, whenever it seems opportune for her to act in such a way.

Western Animation

• Lisa Simpson from The Simpsons is occasionally portrayed as being above her family's habits of eating candy and watching TV. At other times, she'll gladly participate in the exact same situation.
• Vidia in the Disney Fairies chapter books is this in spades. Her underlying motivation is usually It's All About My Talent, but she's been characterized as a Jerkass ("Rani and the Mermaid Lagoon"), a Jerk With A Heart Of Gold ("Prilla and the Butterfly Lie"), a Deadpan Snarker ("Vidia and the Fairy Crown," "A Masterpiece for Beck"), and in a most frustrating example, Stupid Evil ("Beck Beyond the Sea").

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

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

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

Needs A Better Description.

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

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

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

Sometimes the classic version of a story isn't the first one. This can sometimes occur when a film is remade with a larger budget or different direction that makes it resonate more with an audience. Sometimes problems with the original work can be ironed out with The Remake. Related to both Even Better Sequel and Adaptation Displacement.

Examples

• While the silent versions of The Ten Commandments and Ben Hur are considered classics of the medium, their remakes in the 1950s are best remembered today. Both took advantage of larger budgets and the benefits of sound and color to improve on the originals.
• The most famous version of The Maltese Falcon with Humphrey Bogart was not the original.
• Film adaptations of The Wizard Of Oz had been produced for decades before the classic 1939 version.
• The Sound Of Music was done as a straight dramatic film before the more-famous musical version.
• The original Star Fox pales in comparison to its remake for the Nintendo64.
• The Dark Knight Saga appears to be this for the Batman film series.

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

Seen It A Million Times.

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

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

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

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

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

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

And so on.

Examples:

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

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

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.

...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.

Rolling Updates

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

Really Needs A Better Description

Examples

Comics

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

Literature

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

Live Action TV

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

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

Webcomics

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