Number of YKTTWs in this list: 93
These were created/updated in the last 1 day(s).
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a completely new YKTTW or lend a hand with one of these:
Asking about creating a page for a work; a show, film, anime, comic, what have you?
You don't need to go through YKTTW. Just go ahead and make those.
The WikiMagic works very quickly on that sort of article.
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.
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.
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!
Needs A Better Title
Lenses are cool. They are sunglasses combined with a helmet, it's no wonder they're so common in media.
Unfortunately, designers seem to forget that humans use lenses to see. particularly in science fiction, helmets have an unnecessary amount of visors, goggles, eyeholes, etc. just to look cool. (or not so cool). Or the visors are in the right place, but there's an unnecessary amount of visor, and sometimes the visor is just in places where eyes really have no business being.
(Now with Rolling Updates!)
The Krogan armor manufacturers in Mass Effect don't seem to know where the eyes actually belong on the Krogan's face.
Visor, a playable character of Quake III Arena, has a massive visor that covers his entire face. Weirdly enough he isn't actually wearing a helmet.
His alternate skin, Gorre, adds to this by seperating his visor into smaller shapes that are mostly unnecessary.
The helmets of the Sith troopers in Ko Tor 1 and 2 seem to be designed to remove the wearer's ability to look up while giving them complete sight of their feet.
The helmets of the clone troopers likewise give their mouths and noses a great view of the battlefield. (Though the later stormtrooper armor only has eyeholes)
Godot in Ace Attorney has three panels on his visor, for some reason.
Justified in Sillage, most easily seen in book 5. The number of lenses on the commandos' helmets range from one to six, but that's because it's a mixed species squad. Anybody shown with open helmet has the number of eyes to match their helmet.
It's probably worth mentioning that an "unnecessary amount of visor" might have to be an awful lot of visor. Look at how much they put on NASA space suits.
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.
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Beleaguered Bureaucrat
(permanent link)
added: 2009-11-20 13:47:44 by
Game Chainsaw
(last reply: 2009-11-20 13:47:44)
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
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Rushing Walls of Screaming
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added: 2009-11-20 07:57:45 by
King Zeal
(last reply: 2009-11-20 13:40:12)
When two opposing armies meet on the battlefield, there's always a bit of dramatic tension. Sometimes, the leaders will even exchange a few words of dialogue, or someone in the smaller army realizes that they're hopelessly outnumbered and outclassed. In either case, when the battle proper begins, there's only one thing to do . . .
Scream real loud and run headlong into each other!
That is the Rushing Wall of Screaming in a nutshell. Two sides of an epic battle (usually in an ancient or fantasy setting) run at each other screaming furiously until they meet, whereupon they start hacking at each other mercilessly. One side might try to even the odds a bit by tossing out a few arrows, boulders, dogs, whatever . . . but eventually, that wall of screaming soldiers is going to get there, and all hell is going to break loose.
Examples:
Basically, Exactly What It Says On The Tin, instead of a Broke Episode, an episode where one character suddenly has a lot MORE money than before, but things later return to the way they were because Status Quo Is God. The character will invariably have a huge and very sudden increase in expendible income. This might be for any reason, such as winning a lottery, getting a better job, crime, inventing the latest popular gadget, or even because something was delivered to the wrong address. Simultaneously, however, they are handed the Idiot Ball.
Almost invariably, the character gets it in their head that they must now act like an Upper Class Twit, spend like there's no tomorrow, mindlessly buy "whatever it is that rich people like", blow off their former friends as has - beens, etc. Within a few days, one of the following happens:
The character somehow manages to completely exhaust their fortune except for just enough to buy themselves back into the life they had before.
The bank, mafia, CIA, etc., realizes their mistake and sends a collection agent to confiscate the missing funds.
They get fired from their job for gross neglegence, making the company look bad, insulting the boss, etc.
They get in trouble for something, and to get out of jail time, a mob hit, etc., they must abandon their fortune.
At that point, expect that the character is sincerely worried about their future and the people they left behind, perhaps for the first time in their life. They are now so low that a life in Perpetual Poverty is starting to look good to them, having insulted their old friends, quit their old job, etc., they are likely on the streets. Expect the character to be Easily Forgiven; their friends blow it off as completely unimportant, their old boss hasn't been able to find anyone willing to apply for their old job, the person they sold their old house to is moving out of the area and sells it back to them, and the collection agents go home. In the end, the charccter's lifestyle is restored EXACTLY to what it had been before.
Examples:
In Futurama, Fly discovers he'd left some cash in a forgotten bank account, and the accrued intrest has made him fabulously wealthy.
A trope for when one character is shocked and appalled by another character's not being familiar with something that should be required, dammit!
This can be played a number of different ways. Sometimes the person who's shocked is portrayed as an old fogey, trying to enforce their old-timey tastes on a hip new generation. Sometimes, especially with an author of middle-age or older, the person who's shocked is portrayed as being right, and the person who isn't familiar with Shakespeare, The Bible, Sherlock Holmes, etc. is portrayed as woefully lacking. Although the trope is often played for comedy, it can be played for drama or characterization as well.
Of course, the truth is that such a vast amount of material is now regarded as "classic" that it would be physically impossible to meaningfully consume all of it.
I couldn't think of a good title. Do we have this already? Alice Bob and Chris are on a quest or just walking. Each of them has an unique talent or power. They come to a locked door or gate. Alice opens it with her talent/power. They keep going and come to a second locked door/gate this time Bob opens it. Third door/gate and Chris opens it.
Example: In Family Guy (Ocean's Three and a Half) when Peter, Quagmire and Cleveland are robbing the vault they come upon three doors. Cleveland passes the voice scanner, Quagmire breaks the penile match, and Peter guesses the name.
Similar to [[Names To Run Away From Really Fast]] but instead uses explosives and (a) keyword(s). In general, any situation in which you should run if an expert or someone in the know does or says something. The guy in charge of demolitions going pasty and then yelling "TAKE COVER!" is an example. A person who has no idea of what their talking about running when the demo guy drops a stick of dynamite is not (Nitroglycerin however...). This also applies to anything that can go up in an explosive way.
Please refrain form putting theoretical situations, those belong in a forum, not here.
Situations in which if you ever see an expert running you probably should be too do go here.
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.
In Drowtales, when the drow search party reaches the surface:
It's played straight with The Ojou, Ariel, who gets agoraphobia (fear of open spaces), and Liriel, her pampered slave, who doesn't know grass =/= marijuana.
Subverted in that Kyo, probably the wealthiest member of the group, has been to the surface before and likes it.
There was a Reality TV show where millionaires went to live with lower-income folks for a week/month/whatever, that seemed to use this as part of the premise.
Mr. Burns from The Simpsons was lost in the "real world" when he lost his fortune.
Do We Have This? Should We Have This? Rolling Updates underway.
This appears sufficiently similar to "Random Teleportation" that if there are no objections, I will discard & merge in 12 hours.
"Ships log. UFSS Explorer, preparing to complete hyperspace jump. Returning to Federation supply base in the Epsilon Centauri system. Standby." "Sir, Jump complete. Jump field walls dematerializing nominally. Navigational sensors report ready to redeploy for sublight travel." "Make it so." "Sir, I'm getting some odd readings... We're not getting the usual transponder signal... Radiation readings are 73% higher than expected." "On Screen.... What the... that star doesn't look like Epsilon Centauri...." "Sir, scanners report stellar background constellation patterns do not match any known system!"
"Where the hell are we?!?"Faster Than Light Travel may be one of the most desirable forms of Applied Phlebotinum, but it rarely comes without a risk of running afoul of Finagles Law and Failsafe Failures. There's usually No Warping Zones. Due to the Rule Of Drama, hyperspace may be home to monsters, crosswinds or other dangers, and there may be a risk of entire starships subjected to Tele Frag, Portal Cut, or a Critical Existence Failure. A slightly less lethal danger is the misjump. Quite simply, everything seems completely normal until you arrive at your destination... and that's when you realize... you're lost.
If you're lucky, you're only a few hours, days, weeks, months, or years off course. If not, short of a miracle, you're not coming back. You may find yourself decades or further from Earth at maximum warp, with your engine damaged... or worse, missing. In the worst case scenario, you find yourself wondering if you've somehow wound up travelling thousands of years forward or backword in time, or ended up in a different universe altogether.
A subtrope of Teleporter Accident
Happens to the SDF-1 in Macross; Gloval wanted to retreat out of low earth orbit to draw the enemy away, but the SDF-1 ends up in orbit... around Pluto!
A common result of impatient admirals ordering jumpships to charge their drives too quickly in the Battle Tech 'verse.
In Traveller, a Misjump caused a starship to travel multiple parsecs in a random direction, which could easily result in the death of the crew if the ship ended up in an empty area of space without a source of fuel. It could be caused by using unrefined fuel (hydrogen) or failure to provide annual maintenance for the jump drives.
One Traveller adventure involved exploring a ship that had been trapped in jumpspace as a result of a Misjump.
Needs A Better Description
Essentially, when a character acknowledges that they cannot accomplish a goal/realize a dream in their present state, whether in terms of strength or (in a more metafictional sense, since only the audience will recognize it) Character Development. Whether it's because they're not strong enough to beat The Rival or Big Bad ("I cannot defeat you as I am now), or maybe they feel they can't start a relationship with the love interest ("I can't be with him/there for him as I am now"), they recognize this and admit it. This is pretty much the equivalent of a giant neon sign saying "ATTENTION: Character Development Imminent!"
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
First, if it does something that people can understand on a deep down level, brainstorm words that have something to do with what the thing does. If it's not something that does something, just try common words at random until you find one you like. Search through vaugue recollections of anecdotes, anchient myth, legend, and previous works for interesting or memorable word combinations. It doesn't have to be the most appropriate word, just similar enough that people will get the similarity. Choose something that's at least slightly cool.
So now you've got a name that makes some sense, but its still not cool enough. You've got to sell this to the reader, not just come up with a description. Don't panic! All you have to do try different combinations of words until you get something that sounds right. If its something unfamiliar that you want people to develop a familiarity with, use a phrase that reinforces the idea that this wierd thing you've got is just like stuff you're familiar with, only better. Not cool enough? Add a cool prefix or suffix that reinforces the selling point the reader is looking for. Got a gadget? Use a prefix or suffix to show how modern or convenient it is! Got something dangerous? Add "death" to the name! Why, because death is edgy, and edgy is cool! If it's In Space, just add "space" to the name!
Optionally, look at alternative spellings. You can use exotic letter combinations, Umlauts, or combine parts of two or more words to make a cool sounding word.
Here's just some of the millions of amazing words and phrases real people have created with this trope:
I happened upon the The Yoda entry earlier today - it was completely empty, so I just added an explanation and a few examples, and then I found that I really couldn't find any trope that fits. So... Do We Have This? If not, here's the after-the-fact YKTTW for Wiki Magic:
Rolling Updates as well, folks.
===
He's powerful. He's incredibly skilled in some long forgotten art, or sport, or meditation style. He's Older Than Dirt. He has been around for longer than you can imagine.
And he's grumpy as shit. When you arrive at his castle/hermitage/swamp, you can count on being kept waiting for days in the midst of wind and snow, while getting humiliated, told off and/or simply ignored. He'll be happy to ride on your shoulders while aiming at your head with his wooden stick, yelling "Faster, faster" as you run through the swamps of Dagobah. Or he might almost starve you to death.
Of course, he does all that in the name of Teaching you the Ancient Art. Of Kung Fu fighting. Or of survival. Or The Force. Or whatever else the writers voted as their favourite Phlebotinum.
Oh, and he's also wise, and extremely friendly, once you earned his loyalty, in his own kind of very strange way.
Subtrope of Cool Old Guy.
Related to Badass Grandpa. Zen Survivor is similar, but not quite the same. Ditto Trickster Mentor.
Judges Guild adventure Dark Tower (1979), using Dungeons And Dragons rules. The final battle against the Big Bad Pnessutt the Lich took place in the highest level of the Outer Plane of Hades. The party had to activate a planar portal to reach him.
The Bonus Boss Culex in Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars is fought inside an alternate dimension that appears to be somewhere in the Final Fantasy universe, probably near the Final Fantasy IV reality/world/whatever.
Super Robot Wars OG Saga: Endless Frontier has its final battle in the Einst dimension. It also has the final battle between the Namco characters Reiji and Xiaomu and their foe, Saya, which, while not the final boss of the game, counts because the game's dimension is an alternate dimension for them. Ironically, the page quote is for the latter, not the former.
The final Specter fight in Ape Escape is fought in Dimension X, if the stage name in the NTSC version is to be trusted.
Super Smash Bros Brawl: The Subspace Emissary has the final boss fight with Tabuu in the realm of Subspace.
Any of the Super Smash Bros series, actually - the fight with Master Hand (or Crazy Hand) takes place in some sort of other-dimension (this is, of course, before Subspace Emissary came up).
A rather weird example occurs in XenoSaga Episode 1, where the space station you're on inexplicably switches to a cloudy battlefield against the final boss.
The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask. The final boss battle takes place in an alternate dimension within an alternate dimension. Or something to that effect. Also, inverted in Twilight Princess, when, after going through the second-to-last dungeon in an alternate dimension, during the boss battle Zant actually transports you to places in Hyrule visited previously during the game.
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, if you lost a level, it was gone for good, and the only way to gain it back was the hard way, since restoration magic was out of the reach of spell casters until the highest levels.
Third Edition introduced the concept of negative levels, which was basically temporary level loss that you then had to make a Fortitude save against at the end of the fight for every level that you "lost" this way. If you made it, you got the level back, but if you failed the save, it was gone for good and you had to gain it back the hard way.
Fourth Edition did away with level drain entirely, instead having monsters that originally level-drained you (such as wights and wraiths) instead inflicting the Weakened condition on you (which simply halves the damage that you deal in combat until you make your saving throw to end it), immobilizing you (you can't move from your space unless you teleport until you make your save), taking away healing surges, and so on.
Many Roguelikes, such as Net Hack, have this as just one of the many dangers that your character can face. Yes, they're Nintendo Hard.
A certain monster in Disciples II (Wight?) did this and also brought the target down one Evolution Level.
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:
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 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).
...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.
When a new enemy/monster is introduced in a video game, Bob notices that it looks just like the old one, but with different colors. The newer version usually looks more striking and it's harder to beat.
Examples:
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.
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 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.
In The Simpsons, Homer draws bunny faces on electrical sockets to scare Maggie away from touching them. When Marge points out that Maggie's not scared of rabbits, Homer replies "She will be."
Seen It A Million Times.
So, we have a Disney Villain who is going to inflict a horrible torture on his victims. Cutting off fingers won't work in a G-Rated show, what can be a substitute? Of course, tickling! Sometimes lampshaded.
Basically, tickling is a G-Rated Cold Blooded Torture.
Can lead to a Fridge Horror (as does forced marriage when you realise that it's actually G-Rated rape)
Of course, covered in Cool And Unusual Punishment, but tickling is neither cool nor unusual, has its unique characteristics and, therefore, should be a subtrope.
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)
Do We Have This One?
In many situations, people might use darts are projectiles - due to technological level (blowgun) or it's non-lethal effect (tranquilizers). If the dart is not covered/filled with Instant Sedative, and was inserted into an unwilling, yet not helpless target, the one thing that these targets don't do is pull the dart out. Instead they leave it and let it spread whatever substance it was meant to spread throughout them. This is especially obnoxious when the dart is in easy-to-reach places, such as the shoulder.
Examples of this trope include:Live Action TV
In the opening of the Stargate SG 1 episode "The First Commandment", Franks is hit by a dart fired from a blowgun while fleeing. The dart is left in his shoulder all the way until he gets shot.
Earth cities in Isaac Asimov's The Caves of Steel and The Naked Sun
After the invention of the transfer booth in Larry Niven's Known Space, the major cities of Earth end up as something along the same lines: though geographically, they're not contiguous, they are in every way that counts.
Do we have this one?
A staple of platform bosses, but can also be seen in standard Mook's attacks. Usually, but not always involves a boss stomping on the ground sending out a shock wave along the ground, usually arcing out in an increasing circle, or part circle from the point of impact, that the player has to jump over.
Examples.
N. Tropy in Crash Bandicoot Warped does this with a selection of laser beams that cross the arena.
Neo Cortex in the same game does something similar, in the first section anyway, as Aku Aku and Uka Uka create a beam that needs to be jumped over as they stare each other down.
[1]Sonic Heroes' final boss does this with both horizontal and vertical attacks as you chase him down.
Rare 2D example, in Sonic 2, in the Oil Ocean Zone, Robotnik's laser can skim across the platfrom you're stood on leaving a trail similar to a standard Jump Rope Attack.
Done by the generic spacemen enemies in the Blarg station in Ratchet And Clank.
You know those scenes in the movies where the police cars are surrounding a building? During said scenes you will hear something coming over the police radio, it will always be "Main and central west 48". Even in movies where this doesn't make sense like in The Devils Rejects where the police are swarming a farm house in rural Texas, the radio still says "Main and Central West 48". It's just the generic thing the police say over the radio. It's in EVERY movie that has a scene with the police standing outside their cars.
It's an I Am Song for the whole crew!
If you come across a jolly band of pirates in a musical, and sometimes even in a non-musical, you're almost guaranteed to be treated to a number from them eventually. This song describes the "ideal" life of a pirate crew (as far as they're concerned) and will almost invariably (A) be accompanied by a squeezebox; (B) be set in 6/8 time; and (C) contain the phrase "yo-ho" somewhere. Not always a Villain Song since, in popular media, not all pirates are actually villains.
In Disney's Peter Pan, Hook's crew gets two: Their introduction song "A Pirate's Life Is a Wonderful Life", and the later Villain Song "Captain Hook."
"When You're a Professional Pirate" from Muppet Treasure Island, which appears late in the film because the pirates have only just revealed themselves to be such.
An otherwise song-less episode of The New Adventures of Winnie The Pooh in which Tigger, Pooh, and Piglet are playing pirates opens with one of these. Notably, Pooh gets mixed up and sings "Ho-yo" at one point.
From Lazy Town: "Do what you want 'cause a pirate is free; / You are a pirate!"
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.
Editing this YKTTW entry:
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Video Game Tactical Index.
(permanent link)
added: 2009-11-20 11:40:07 by
Game Chainsaw
(last reply: 2009-11-20 11:40:07)
This is an index, but its also a handy guide to tropes specifically relating to common player tactics deployed in video games. Taking a read through these tropes may even give you some tips to try during play...
Tactical Tropes include the following:
Cherry Tapping Less a tactic and more a form of humiliation. Deliberately using a weak attack or deliberately weakened character to defeat the enemy in the most embarrassing way possible.
Game Breaker: Any weapon, armour or spell that once obtained means that nothing else in the game can reasonably compete with the wielder/wearer/caster.
Infinity Plus One Sword: Its the most powerful weapon/armour in the game, but the effort spent getting it may reduce it to more of a Bragging Rights Reward. Nonetheless, the best thing you can collect.
Infinity Minus One Sword: Though its less powerful than the Infinity Minus One Sword, you'll find saves you more effort in the long run simply because it is easier to get. The games mainstay weapon.
Stone Wall: Specialises in even greater toughness. Low strength and speed.
Min Maxing: Balancing equipment, spell casts, armour and any other stat-influencing items for the best possible result.
Ninja Looting: Refusing to share the best items after a team effort has brought an enemy down. Very frowned upon
Path Of Most Resistance: Taking the hardest route or doing something the hardest way will bring the best rewards.
Save Scumming: If in constant danger of death, save often, minimising loss of progress.
Sequence Breaking: Breaking the pre-determined order of events the game designers have laid out. May shorten the game considerably... or screw up your game file. A risky tactic but valuable for completing Speed Runs.
Shoot The Medic First: Shooting the healer of the enemy group to prevent him from healing the others/himself.
*48 Hour Launch Notice.*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 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.
A subtrope of All Animals Are Domesticated and related to Horse Of A Different Color, this would be when any four-legged animal, wild or not, can be, and is used as a mount, despite the fact that this would be stupidly dangerous (Bear/Tiger Cavalry, anyone?) or just plain impractical. Rule Of Cool plays a large part in this trope.
As mentioned, Bear◊ and Tiger◊ cavalry. While this no doubt looks awesome, it would very soon cease to be as the mounts turn on their riders or collapse under the armored weight.
Wolf riders (from LOTR, Warcraft, any fantasy you care to name...) and dog riders (Native Americans did use dogs, but for pulling heavy loads, until horses were introduced), though this is usually reserved for persons of smaller size (Chiyo-chan comes to mind).
Pirlouit from the early Smurfs comics rides a goat.
Belkar from Order Of The Stick uses a basset hound as a mount at one point.
Dungeons And Dragons has a lot, I believe you can have a wooly rhinoceros in one setting.
In some legends, Merlin rides a stag. Used by other druids since, as Malfurion does in Warcraft.
Bull riders in some fictions, though the only examples I've seen are when the bull is stampeding and the rider wants to get off but can't (Feet Of Clay, Achille Talon).
Why go Down The Rabbit Hole when the hole can fall around you? The Hero has the world morph into something else around her. It may be Sealed Evil In A Can that creates a Dark World, or a dimensional traveller that makes the land their Fisher Kingdom, or a Teleporter Accident that changes the past for everyone but the hero. Whatever the case, Dorothy did not land in Oz, Oz landed on Dorothy.
Some Elemental Powers let you control fire, water, air, or earth. Some even let you control lighting; ice; plants; light; darkness; arcane forces, magic, or themind; and even heart (when not a victim of What Kind Of Lame Power Is Heart Anyway). This, however, is power over METAL. It generally allows one to control metal, although it may even include being made of metal and using one's body to attack.
(Extra Ore Dinary comes from "Dennis Moore", a Monty Python sketch. They sing that he's extraordinary, but make it sound like "Extra Ore..... Dinary".)
So, here are the votes for each suggested name. Don't know when the name's been finalised, so when nobody's voted or suggested another name for a few days, I'll just use the most popular name (which is currently Extra Ore Dinary). I'll probably make the second-most popular name an alternate title, unless there are objections to that.
Digimon Frontier has the legendary warrior of metal, Mercurimon.
Also common in ''Digimon' games is to have a "Machine" element.
One Piece has Mr. 1 who, after eating the Supa Supa (Dice Dice) Fruit, got a body literally Made Of Steel as well as the ability to form bladed weapons on any part of his body.
Fairy Tail has Gazille, who uses iron dragonslayer magic.
In Ultimate Spiderman, Ultimate Doc Ock has control over metal, whether due to magnetic control or some kind of telekinesis geared for metal, it's not made clear.
Doc Ock: "It was the metal, Parker! I was controlling the metal!"
K'thonya of Earthsong belongs to a race with the soulstone ability of being able to manipulate metal; essentially the only thing she can't do with it is turn one kind into another and create it out of thin air (though she can expand a relatively small piece of metal to many times its original size). Her species' hair has a high enough metal content to be subject to her power, and the use of this ability by other members of her race apparently inspired gorgon myths in Earth culture.
"I'll never dance with another." - I Saw Her Standing There, The Beatles
The S.A.R. is where an adult couple has a romance, but no sex.
This stems from the days when people wanted desperately to believe that babies came from various animals such as birds, bees, and storks. Old entertainment has many SARs as is evident when a married couple sleeps in separate beds. Sex was symbolically replaced with elaborate singing and dancing numbers (the movie that inspired this post was White Christmas).
This classic tradition is often shown today, especially with adult characters in children's entertainment, natch, but also when the entertainment is aimed at adults who believe that those who are chaste, abstinent, asexual, etcetera, are quaint, charming, pure, and otherwise better than those who have sex (especially rebellious, edgy sex and / or homosexual sex). This theme is aimed at those who secretly or openly appreciate it when sex is only had under strict circumstances.
Gay people still often fall into this category. Many asexual sissy boys and asexual butch girls fit this role. Willow from Buffy was this with Tara, having symbolic rituals instead of actual sex until they finally consummated their relationship and Tara promptly died and Willow became the villain. Heck, Buffy was this with Angel until they finally consummated their relationship and Angel became a big Jerk Ass and it ruined her life and he went to hell.
Narrative reasons for SARs may include...
They are physically unable to touch each other, for instance if one is an intangible ghost.
They choose not to, for instance if they are religious or Just Friends.
The sex is never shown. Sometimes never even hinted at. The audience is left guessing how they ever had kids. Adoption? That bizarre Beebirdstork creature?
Children don't count, for obvious reasons. For instance, Bart and Lisa Simpson, who constantly fall in love and date people despite being pre-pubescent. Though as an interesting fun fact, note that when Bart is thought to be gay during Homer's Phobia, it's because of stereotypical traits and not because he likes a boy too much. Also included in that episode is John Waters, who can only be identified as gay because he says so and is a sissy, but is otherwise not in a relationship, sexless or sexful, with a man.
Do We Have This One ?
Alternate title: Fuckless Adult Romance, as to not confuse fucking with gender.
Rolling Updates
Simply put, a plan that is conceived and put into motion while most (if not all) of the individuals involved are completely hammered. Thhe most common subversion is probably the (sober) Ditz or Cloud Cuckoo Lander coming up with a crazy plan that the drunks would normally never go along with.
Really Needs A Better DescriptionExamplesComics
One strip in Krakow references this, with a panel showing that Japan's decision to bomb Pearl Harbor was initiated as a drunken dare.
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.
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.
This is a Boys LoveFanservice trope.
To show what a hottie the Seme is, he will unbutton his shirt or take it off. To show what a cutie the Uke is, he will somehow wind up with just the shirt. He's also more likely to get put into really short shorts. The point of this, of course, is to allow the seme (and the reader) to ogle his adorable little butt.
An implementation so common it almost counts as a subtrope: the uke's clothes get wet or dirty, the seme offers to wash them, and while they're drying the uke hangs around the seme's apartment in a borrowed shirt, or his underwear, or in extreme cases a towel, while the seme slavers discreetly. (The stated explanation will be that none of the semes' pants fit him.)
This shades into Total Uke Exposure: any guy running around in just underwear, a tiny bathing suit, or Censor Steam is likely to be the uke. This trope can in fact be used to sort out the eventual sexual dynamic for a Seme x Seme, Uke x Uke, or otherwise ambiguous couple; the first guy you see naked will be the bottom.
Also applies to sex scenes: the uke usually gets stripped sooner, and even once things are underway the camera will show you more of his body than of the seme. Sometimes leads to Right Through His Pants.
A couple examples (please contribute!):
Yuuri in Kyou Kara Maou (who is an uke type) is given Special Royal Underwear that he must wear; a tiny black string bikini. Then he has to change in front of everybody to put them on. The sole purpose of this incident is to show him in a tiny black string bikini, and cause all the semes to have Nosebleeds.
Aversion: the seme in Selfish Mr. Mermaid spends quite a lot of time starkers. Of course, he's a mermaid, and he spends most of his time in the tub, underwater, or simply dripping wet, so clothing is not so practical.
This is where a list or roster is made that takes prominence in a story. The reasons for it may vary, it could just be "Secret Government Papers" or it may involve the characters themselves being on that list.
Examples-
My Name Is Earl is about Earl making a list of all the bad things he has done in his life and repairing whatever he might have done in order to fix his Karma. Some times he ends up adding things to that list and most of the time it is about trying to get something off that list.
Schindlers List- The list here is very important, and even a cause for Samaritan Syndrome from Schindler himself that he couldn't save more.
Kyle XY had an episode "The List Is Life" (referencing Schindlers List) that dealt with an underground social list naming different people in the school as part of different categories: Biggest Brain, Biggest Jock, Biggest Slut, etc.
South Park has fun with this as Kyle is labeled on the girls list as being the ugliest kid in the third grade (even behind Cartman), which ruins his social standing. Stan goes off with Wendy to get to the bottom of this, only to find that the supposedly infallible girls "list making" committee had been compromised.
Home Improvement had Tim make a list of all the times he had wronged Jill in a car related issue, which was an effort to make amends with a recent screw up and possibly check in to the "Henry Ford Clinic."
The Bucket List- Two old men dying of cancer make a list of everything they want to do before they die.
The first Mission Impossible movie centered around a Mac Guffin list of every IMF agent and their corresponding code names, which in the wrong hands would destroy all of the espionage they do all over the world.
He was still Hulk Freaking Hogan. Although now people tend to view the last year and a bit of Hogan's run in the WWF as being an abject failure where he was despised wherever he went, he was still popular, and he was still a draw. More so than Bret, who tanked enough that the plan was to have Yoko walk out of Wrestlemania IX as champ.
Several people dislike seeing anyone other them their favorite person on top and no wear is this more apparent then Internet Wrestling Community where the mantra can sometimes seem to be Its Popular Now It Sucks. Whoever is the top guy in the company will undoubtedly be called The Wesley and be bashed as a no talent hack that douse not deserve to be there regardless of their skills or how they were thought of by the IWC before (yet strangely for some like Triple H and Cena after almost all their matches the IWC will claim that is the only good match they have ever had).
Sometimes it seems like the only way a champion can escape this fate is if the other major company has a more popular champion or the casual fans go away after they become champion, like in 1994 when WCW was getting a ton of the WWF market when they brought in Hulk Hogan and the WWF given the title to Bret Hart. The IWC will claim that Hogan destroyed WCW while Hart saved the WWF despite the numbers showing the opposite happening
This is especially conman with Wrestlers that have been popular for a long time like Hulk Hogan, The Rock, Triple H, and John Cena. Several people in the IWC Seem to forget that these are real people and call for their deaths and cheer whenever something bad happens to them in real life
For examples I will probably move several things from So Bad Its HorrableThe Scrappy and The Wesley that do not belong there
Do we have this sort of thing anywhere? It's rather common in video games where a party member does a Face Heel Turn (or is it Heel Face Turn?) and suddenly he pops up from level five to level forty. It's rather annoying, personally, when you know characters can't exceed 9,999 HP or whatever and there he goes, up at 15 or 18 thousand or something... Also, I most definitely Need A Better Title. Hey, I just thought of one. The last one was 'Double Crossing The Hero Powers You Up.'
The nature of most economies seem to ensure that wherever someone is dying from lack of a certain necessity, people not too far away will have so much of it that they'll often have no use for the stuff, and will be using it in stupid ways or just throwing it away to keep from drowning in it. This is sometimes used to add more cynicism to Perpetual Poverty plots.
Another variant is the Scavenger World, when it exists alongside more prosperous and modern countries, causing the residents to literally turn the trash from their rich neighbors into useable tools.
This inequality is often a cause of Decade Dissonance.
The Yum Yum fish in The Simpsons. While the small Dying Town that the episode focuses on is almost abandoned because of a lack of the fish, which were their main tourist draw, it's shown that nearby Japanese fisherman refer to them as "garbage fish," and have been catching them all and throwing them away.
This Cracked article is all about how rich people can waste money that they have little other use for. They make reference to this trope in almost every paragraph.
Zig-zagged with food. People in some of the most fertile countries on Earth starve to death due to bad government and resource management, while morbidly obese people in the western world keel over from... malnutrition. In some places, the rich tend to be the healthiest and most well-fed, but in others, it's subsistence farmers.
As suggested by the Psychotic Smirk Discussion, a heroic version of the Psychotic Smirk (minus the psychosis, obviously). Actually, I would love to merge both because splitting tropes along the villain/hero lines always ends up tricky when an Anti Hero does it, so I came up with a title that qualifies for both villains and heroes: after all, it's always a smirk and it's always used to signify triumph. So Yeah. What do you think?
As for examples...
Archer from Fate Stay Night (see that discussion page) is a heroic example.
Lelouch from Code Geass (currently listed on the old page) in an anti-heroic example. Ditto any Anti Hero currently listed.
The obvious counter trope to Crowning Moment Of Heartwarming, Dethroning Moment Of Cruelty is the penultimate counter of feeling good. This trope is moments where it feels bad, not tearjerking bad but just plain bad. Like when a business fails despite the help of professionals or people who just can't be remedied. Unlike a Tear Jerker, you only feel pity for either side. But in the end, all it does is make want to walk away and accept the fact
Keep Moments of Cruelty to the absolute ends, don't use smaller real life examples as an DMOC.
While many DMO Cs are also Tear Jerkers, they should have something distinctly depressing to belong here.
It has got to fit the story's narrative and tone. It can't come out of the blue as something tacked on.
It has to 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.
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.
A person is marooned on a deserted island. They have several worries: food, shelter, fresh water. The wild life might be trying to kill them.
However, those are by far not their greatest problem.
Their biggest problem is loneliness.
Extended isolation from human contact CAN drive a person crazy, although it will take some time. In most shows, a few hours is often enough for this. It is usually accompanied by delusions of grandeur, hallucinations, neglect of basic grooming and hygiene (a beard grows almost instantly) and unsuccessful attempts to try to mimic tribal lifestyle.
Also, in order to not to go COMPLETELY crazy - or rather, a surefire sign that they ARE - the character elects a Companion Cube to act as a surrogate for a real person. They usually paint a smiley face on or take other measures to make it look more lifelike.
This objects is usually cast away as soon as the character makes human contact again, which surprisingly will cure them almost instantly, although looking at themselves a moment later is often embarassing. However if the character is particularly childlish then they may continue to hold on to their "friend".
Subtrope of The Aloner.
Examples:
"Total Drama Island": Owen's Mr Coconut.
"Cast Away": Wilson the Volleyball.
Variations of "Treasue Island" usually have a character like this.
So, let's say you're an grumpy old man. There's a burglar in your house, and he's armed with a knife. Being the stubborn old curmudgeon you are, you aren't really up for running away. So, what do you do?
You pick up your trusty walking stick and give him a good whipping. That'll teach that rascal to respect his elders!
Tough, hard, and easy to whip around, variants of the cane have actually been made for the purpose of butt-whoopin'. It's mostly the favored weapon of Cool Old Guys and pimps everywhere.
Film
In Up, Carl Fredricksen starts using his cane for various awesome activities after a very important part in the movie, including using it in a duel with Charles Muntz.
Do We Have This One? Is it part of a larger villain trope, like Bad Boss? Because as the saying goes, How Did We Miss This One?
They say a man's home is his castle. For some, their jobs are their castles. Some of them are not very good rulers. They might turn the other cheek as bad men do terrible things to each other, they may use their position for financial gain, they might utilize the bad men they guard as free labor, or death-match gladiators, or makeshift hitmen, and they will likely make the innocent or at least less-nasty-than-the-rest prisoner protagonist more of a hell than prison already is.
Examples
-The prison warden in Lock-Up
-The prison warden in Shawshank Redemption
How Did We Miss This One?
In the library or archive, there are always stacks upon stacks of books, and so many bookcases in so many rows. The fight begins, and a bookcase falls...into its neighbor, which falls onto its neighbor, and causes a Chain Reaction that levels the whole library.
Film
The Mummy Trilogy: In the first movie, Evy does this by accident because she's a klutz.
There's a type of time loop that appears in fiction that appears to be a Stable Time Loop, but unlike that kind of loop, creates a Temporal Paradox by having no definite beginning or end. This is called a Recursive Time Loop. In contrast to a Groundhog Day Loop, a recursive loop is explicitly Time Travel, not simply a Snap Back, and there is no escape clause - once you're stuck in it, you're there forever.
Let's take Alice ('A') in the page image as an example.
Alice lives her life, moving forward normally in time.
An event occurs that sends Alice back in time, but instead of creating a duplicate of her, Alice becomes her past self, losing all memory of her "future".
Alice then repeats the sequence of events leading her to be sent back, ad infinitum.
The result is a paradox. At no point in the loop are there ever two Alices. Either the entity that is "future" Alice disappears, or the entity that is "past" Alice disappears. Whichever is the case, nothing comes out the other end. For all intents and purposes, Alice is gone from reality once she enters the loop.
The other version is an object that gets looped back on itself. Consider a common pair of glasses that Bob buys. Later, Bob goes back in time and sells the glasses. Those glasses then become the same ones that Bob bought in the future. Now ask yourself: where did the glasses come from? How old are they? There's no discrete point in time when they were created or destroyed -- thus, a paradox.
This type of time loop, when seen in science fiction, is often a sign that the work is on the softer side, or that the author Did Not Do The Research about Time Travel. Alternatively, it can simply be given a Hand Wave as A Wizard Did It, if the work is not intended to be taken seriously. Either way, it's a guaranteed Mind Screw for anyone who thinks about it too long.
Note that a Groundhog Day Loop can be a type of Recursive Time Loop, but the participant(s) retain some memory of previous iterations, sufficient to eventually alter the outcome.
YKTTW Note: This trope is intended to split off examples from Stable Time Loop. Please examine examples from that trope to see whether they might fit better here.
Used in the Discworld novel Pyramids, where a major character, Dios, through a method of semi-immortality, has been trapped in an 8000 year loop for an unknown number of go-rounds.
Robert A Heinlein's short story By His Bootstraps illustrates elements of both a Stable Time Loop and a Recursive Time Loop. The character who participates in the loop observes a straightforward progression from his point of view. However, in doing so he steals a notebook from his future self containing a full dictionary of a foreign language. During the loop, he finds that the book is wearing out so he copies it to a new one (thus solving the entropy paradox). What is the paradox? The information contained in the notebook -- where did it come from?
In The Adventures of Dr. McNinja, this is the ultimate fate of the villainous unicorn-turned-motorcycle Sparklelord, sent back in time to the moment when he first entered the protagonist's world with no memories of what happened, thus being forced to live out the same sequence of events for eternity.
This is a Fanservice trope.
So you have a sweet little innocent (usually a girl, but it also works for the Uke in Boys Love), and you want to have them be sexy but still innocent. Solution: put them into a men's white dress shirt that is ten sizes too large so it slips off their shoulders in a risque fashion, and no pants. Bonus points for implying that there's nothing underneath. Also works on characters who are not so innocent.
Example (mildly NSFW)
Seen It A Million Times.
In an episode of Tiny Snow Fairy Sugar where the musical accompaniment is played by fairies that nobody can see or hear.
The Mystery Science Theater 3000 guys snark on this several times in the Girl In Gold Boots episode, suggesting that the singer must be playing the harmonica through his butt.
Azmaria Hendric of Chrono Crusade has a soft church organ playing beneath her songs. She also has Magic Music.
Lampshaded in Ouran Highschool Host Club: Haruhi is seen singing with beautiful music the background, when someone accidentally unplugs the music player.
Lampshaded in Disney's The Three Musketeers, where, after Pete finishes singing his Villain Song, he wonders why the music stopped.
In the Granada TV adaptation of The Red-Headed League, Sherlock Holmes is accompanied by an imaginary orchestra as he whistles a theme from the concert he attended the previous night.
Fancy Lala has this ability.
Lampshaded: The Music Meister had brass and strings for him during one song, synth for another, and crunchy guitar and piano for yet another, even though he had no visible means of producing that music until his big finale, when he was standing in front of a giant stereo system.
Once More With Feeling, the Buffy The Vampire Slayer episode. Played straight, lampshaded ("that would explain the huge backing orchestra I couldn't see and the synchronised dancing from the room service chaps") and even a little averted ("she needs backup ! Anya, Tara...")
This must be here, surely, under a more obscure title...
Someone does something impressive. Someone else takes the credit and the glory for it. A defining trait of the Fake Ultimate Hero and the Glory Hound, but often features as part of The Power Behind The Throne and serves as a What The Hell Hero moment, when a protagonist's ego gets too big and he ends up stealing his friends' minor victories. On a larger scale, it's a big part of the examples under tropes such as America Wins The War.
Often a Pet Peeve Trope - this really gets under the audience's skin.
Boy Meets Boy - Tybalt takes the credit from Mikhael's romantic gestures for a very specific purpose - he's trying to seduce Harley.
Debatable villainous case in Other Peoples Business - Leon steals a Mac Guffin for Collin and Creed Corp, but one of Collin's associates ensures that it's stolen from Leon and that he, not Collin, takes the credit for it. Debatable in that he did actually acquire the thing...just that he did so after Leon already had it.
In the Circle Of Magic books, Frostpine reveals that a shaman stole his (powerful)magic and used it to further his own reputation in the village, a case of actual power being stolen along with the glory.
Many a Yamato Nadeshiko character is perfectly happy to have her own work passed off as someone else's (particularly her beloved's).
After Mulan is revealed as a girl, China is all set to honour Shang as their hero. He doesn't look too happy about it, mind.
In Pet Shop Of Horrors, the owners sometimes take the credit for their pets' achievements (i.e. "Dice")
Can happen in real life, either deliberately or through "editing" history. That Alexander Graham Bell is supposed to have stolen the credit for the invention of the telephone from Antonio Meucci and Elisha Gray (among others) is an example of the first instance (although that's a very messy debate). That Philo T. Farnsworth is often credited with the invention of the television, when in actual fact John Logie Baird preceded him by over a year (people forget to mention that Farnsworth's was the first electronic - and therefore, modern television - not the first actual TV) is an example of the second.
Glad I Thought Of It is when one character suggests a plan, and the other scoffs, but then claims it as their own. This trope, however, is when a character is trying to guide another character toward an idea or plan while making it seem like that character thought of it themselves.
Seen It A Million Times, but the only example I can think of right now comes from XanaduOn Broadway
Kira: If only there were a book, a magic book, that listed all the locations in Los Angeles, and had their phones numbers next to it.
Sonny: Yeah...
Kira: ...and if the book had pages the color of amber.
Sonny: I know! I'll look it up in the phone book!
Kira: My god, you're brilliant!
Editing this YKTTW entry:
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Guilt-Free Vengeance
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added: 2009-11-19 21:56:49 by
Paul A
(last reply: 2009-11-20 06:35:25)
The hero is out for revenge, but he's the hero, and killing people is Bad, so he spends a lot of time (or the audience is expected to spend it on his behalf) worrying about whether he'll actually kill the villain in the end, and if so whether that was the right thing to do. It comes to the final show-down, he has the villain at his mercy, he hesitates...
And he decides not to kill the villain.
And then, somehow, the villain dies anyway.
The audience cheers, because the villain got what was coming to him without the hero having to do a bad thing. Except for that spoilsport up the back who insists that this is cheating.
In the Star Trek Deep Space Nine episode "Blood Oath", an old Klingon friend of Dax's asks her to help him track down and kill the man who killed his son, Dax's godson. Dax goes along, but worries about what will happen if it comes down to her to do the vengeance, which of course it does after her friend is struck down. Dax hesitates, and then her friend has a My Name Is Inigo Montoya moment and lets her off the hook.
If memory serves, this happens at the end of the film version of Patriot Games. (But not in Tom Clancy's novel, where the hero decides not to kill the villain and then the villain doesn't die.)
According a YKTTW further down the page, this happens in the movie of The Dead Zone
The theme song ends, or the cold open starts, or we return from a commercial break, or we simply change scenes. What do we see but a close-up of a character's eye?
This is an Eye Open, a device sometimes used to show that a character is waking up. Of course, sometimes it's just used to show off an actor's good-looking eyes.
A little help with image formatting would be welcomed.
Do We Have This One?
A character receives a devastating write-up in the newspaper. Another character compliments them on the accompanying picture.
-Season 4, Episode 4 of Dexter. Dexter compliments Lundy on the picture accompanying an article criticizing him for wasting the police department's time.
When Elemental Rock Paper Scissors go bad. The "web" of type advantages is either too imbalanced, too complex, or too irrelevant that it simply doesn't work.
The three categories are:
<b>Imbalanced.</b> One or more types are much better than the others, which leads to little use of any of the other elements. Dragon- and Steel-types are an example from more competitively minded Pokemon play.
<b>Overcomplicated.</b> There are so many types (or the types aren't distinguished clearly) that the player turns a blind eye and uses whatever they want.
<b>Irrelevant.</b> The type matchups aren't significant enough to warrant the player to actually use the matchups to their advantage. A 10% boost against Fire isn't worth all the effort and focus the player would put into something which would get that boost, for example.
A fan mod of Warcraft III named Element TD fits this. The high powered-towers don't give a rat's ass about the elemental typing, by virtue of having useful effects, doing more than enough damage to not care about the damage reduction, or simply ignoring the matchups entirely.
The second type applies to...less skilled Pokemon players. My level 25 Charmeleon will beat Brock, Rock-typing be damned!
And in competitive battling, the first applies, with Dragons and Steel-types dominating the metagame and Poison-types doomed to be ineffective against anything which isn't Grass-type.
...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.
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 easyToilet 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.
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.
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.
A strip of Baby Blues featured dad Daryl dodging, weaving, and ducking the first three panels, before finally saying the page quote to his wife Wanda as he holds his son.
We have Breakup Song, which kinda overlaps, but we don't seem to have a trope (in my quick skimming of the Music Tropes list) for those songs that are like "Nya nya nya, I made it big and aren't you sad you turned me down back in high school?"
They're kinda childish, but there's certainly enough of them. Just for starters:
Skaterboi (however you spell the title)
Toby Keith has How Do You Like Me Now?
Assuming we don't have this one, Up For Grabs. Alt title might be Nya Nya Now Song.
Also, I think this might overlap with meta-referencing songs of the type "Hey, I'm singing on the radio!" - not all these "nya nya" songs are explicitly "I'm on the radio" songs, and many "I'm on the radio" songs are not "nya nya" songs, but still there's overlap.
Do We Have This?
Usually as the result of a Nerf, Executive Meddling, or just plain poor planning, it's quite common for a "high" level skill to be less effective than a lower level skill.
Diablo 2: LOD has many of these, particularly after the .09 implementation of synergies, which boosted the power of spells (max skill level is 30):
For Cold Tree Sorcerers, Level 22 Blizzard became far more powerful than the unsynergized Level 30 Frozen Orb.
For Summoning Necromancers, the lowly level 1 Skeleton became the most powerful summoned monster.
For Poison/Bone Necromancers, level 12 Bone Wall became more powerful than level 24 Bone Prison, and had more hit points than any other player controlled summon, ~10k with full synergies.
For Paladins, level 18 Blessed Hammer became the most powerful skill in the game.
Needs A Better Title. Rolling Updates. Image forthcoming.
For some reason, many Anime cities feature a river with a gently sloped artificial riverbank featuring a sidewalk either at the top or bottom (or both) and stairs to descend to the water's edge. There's probably a bridge, too. Suitable for Lying On A Hillside, Scenery Porn, Watching The Sunset, and significant conversations of all varieties.
See also Ghibli Hills.
Toradora - Taiga lays on the riverbank exhausted after wheeling a bike around, because she can't ride a bike. A chance encounter with her Love Interest motivates her to get up and try to ride the bike.
To Aru Kagaku No Railgun - The titular character challenges another character to a duel, which takes place on such a riverbank.
In the first season finale of Shakugan No Shana, the entire cast is watching an after-festival bonfire on such a riverbank when the enemy's Ominous Floating Castle teleports into place just above them.
The Protagonist of To Love Ru takes Lala to such a riverbank for some privacy in an effort to break up with her, only to run out of time to do so safely. It's also a Watching The Sunset moment.
Alphonse went there to sit and think when he got mad at Ed.
Darker Than Black - Chinese Electric Batman is sitting with a police officer on the stairs of such a riverbank in his civilian disguise when he suddenly vanishes, leaving the police officer perplexed.
All of Karakura Town is built around a big river, whose banks look...exactly like this. Said river is good for watching fireworks, doing exercize, and being devoured byThe Heartless.
Do We Have This?
There is a hero in a Five Man Band. For some reason, the hero becomes separated from the band and is met up with an Evil Sorcerer who casts a terrible curse on the hero, effectively changing him into a Baleful Polymorph. The hero manages to escape but his body is still remarkably altered. He attempts to rejoin his band so that they can come together and figure out a way to undo the curse, but when he does find them, they are unable to recognize him.
Often times, the other characters will realize that their hero has gone missing and will try to find him. When the hero does show up, they don't recognize him, and may even tell the creature to go away and stop bugging them. In most cases, the hero will be unable to speak to his comrades, thus making convincing his friends who he is much more harder. In the rare instances in which the transformed hero is able to speak, expect nobody to listen to him or believe him.
In it's very simplest form, this trope occurs whenever a group of characters go looking for a character, find him, but not recognize him because of some type of altered form, much to the altered hero's distress. This trope does not occur if the hero is purposefully trying to fool his comrades with a Paper Thin Disguise.
Examples:
Jackie Chan Adventures: In one episode, Jade is changed into a monkey. When she tries to return to Jackie, he believes her to be an actual monkey. Jackie humourously mistakes Jade's attempt to inform him of her identity as directions to finding Jade.
In the Buffy The Vampire Slayer episode "A New Man", Giles gets turned into a Fyarl demon by Ethan Rayne. Fortunately, Spike speaks Fyarl.
In Voyage Of The Dawn Treader, Eustace gets transformed into a dragon, and has to convince the others that he's himself (and that he hasn't eaten himself).
There's an old issue of Superman where Jimmy Olsen gets turned into a sentient blob - just a pig pile of goo - due to drinking an 'Elastiserum' that had been exposed to some strange radiation for a long time. Naturally, nobody can recognize him, and he can't speak anymore - his rescue of falling boy is misinterpreted as trying to attack him, and when Jimmy Olsen's left-behind clothes are discovered by Lois Lane, she assumes that the 'Blob' ate him. (Then again, she was never the sharpest knife in the drawer...)
In The Black Unicorn, from Terry Brooks' "Magic Kingdom Of Landover" series of novels, the main character has a spell put on him by an evil wizard which changes his appearance and makes him unrecognizable to anyone who knows him, while the wizard assumes the appearance of the hero.
in Wizard's First Rule, Richard is cursed to appear and sound as Darken Rahl to people who would never betray him. Especially considering the language barrier, his friends are baffled and pissed at having the evil overlord come to them, babble at them in his language for a few minutes, look upset at their defending themselves, not attacking them and then leaving.
Here's a common fallacy that's right up there with Godwins Law in terms of being used frequently on the internet. It should be given a snappy name.
This is an ad hominem fallacy which manifests as one side claiming the other side is taking something way too seriously, and therefore they are wrong.
I can't disprove you.
Therefore, you're trying too hard.
Therefore, you have no life.
Therefore, you're wrong.
In other words, "As an internet discussion grows longer, the probability of one user telling another to get a life approaches 1."
It's logically flawed because the person trying to evoke it is almost always the person who started the argument in the first place by challenging the status quo. In doing so, they willingly place themselves in a position to have their points countered. But when they find the counterpoints are too hard to handle, they ridicule their opponents for the very act of coming up with those counterpoints. The lengths at which the opponent goes to produce the counterpoints has no bearing on the validity of those counterpoints.
Example:
Person A: Yoshi in Super Smash Bros. Brawl is not useless. I use him all the time.
Person B: No, he is useless. He's low-tier for a reason. He can't jump out of his shield, he has horrible projectile attacks, his shield roll is way too slow, he (... and so on)
Person A: Wow, you're such a Stop Having Fun Guy who plays way too many video games. Get a life.
Sometimes, especially in manga, some non-human mechanical fighters are mistaken for robots, while it's really important to understand they are NOT robots if you want to really understand the story. But, wait: is it really a mistake? For practical purposes, aren't they robots? Really?
Anime & Manga
Neon Genesis Evangelion: Generally considered a Humongous Mecha series, but the Eva are in fact organic life-forms bound with lots of mechanical armor plating (more to control them than protect), and imprison an human soul.
Comics
Bionicle: a common misconception is that all the characters are robots, while they are supposed to have organic parts
Marvel Comics: The Vision, who was called a robot event by Spider-Man, while he's a synthezoid.
Do we have this one?/Needs a better name
A tragic character happens to be Scottish and often lives with a guilty conscious because of something that he did in the past.
Examples:
-Evan Mc Culloch, the second Mirror Master from the Flash series. He was an orphan and end up killing his father by accident in his job as a hit-man. As a result, his mother committed suicide. He also has a crack addiction.
-The Demoman from Team Fortress 2. He killed his adoptive parents by accident, becoming an orphan. He is also a drunk.
-Tam Lin from "The House of the Scorpion". (Warning! Contains spoilers.) He killed a bus full of kids by accident and lived with the guilt for the rest of his life. He later committed suicide.
- Rob Roy in the movie, "Rob Roy". (Warning! Contains spoilers.) His wife is raped, his village is burned down and his brother dies because of his duty to uphold his honor
Exactly What It Says On The Tin. Seen it a million times. Do We Have This? Every time a character comes from that particular island, or just has the accent, they will invariably wear the Rasta colors, the beanie, the dreadlocks, they will either listen too of play Reggie music (completely ignoring the various other genres of Jamaican music) and, depending on the age demographic of the work, will smoke copious amounts of Mary Jane. This is the common stereo type of a Jamaican, a Rastafarian, and might even extend to anyone of Afro-Carribean extraction.
Do We Have This?
When a character, usually after a defeat, commands the victor to kill them. Whether because they have despaired due to their defeat, were already a Death Seeker, or just becasue their Pride won't let them rest knowing they were beaten, they figure dying is better than going on living.
...Or do they? Alternatively, their death could be just the beginning, and they are using this oppurtunity to set their Xanatos Gambit in motion (or perhaps as just the latest move in their game of Xanatos Speed Chess), as a Secret Test of Character, or even as the final step in their Batman Gambit.
Either way, it is crucial to them that they be killed, and if the potential killer be reluctant, they may try to provoke them in any way they can, whether through a particularly vicious Hannibal Lecture or perhaps revealing (or lying) that they have his wife.
Kagome: Oh yeah? Well, this human's gonna kick your...
Jaken: We'll see about that.
Bleach episode 157. While Chad is fighting Arrancar #107, the Arrancar tells him that if he continues fighting he'll die. Chad says "We'll see about that".
Film
Dillinger says this in Public Enemies, after being taunted that he'll never leave his jail cell until being removed for his execution.
The Secret Garden: Mary's reply in the 1987 movie when Martha says that Colin is going to "scream and scream until he brings the house down" is... you guessed it... "We'll see about that."
After Jafar usurps power, Aladdin says this and whips out the lamp...or not.
World Of Warcraft: In the Culling Of Stratholme there is a part of the dungeon where a Boss from the Infinite Dragonflight emerges to say he's there to stop Arthas from purging Stratholme. Arthas replies that nothing can stop him, in response the boss utters this phrase.
The G-Man says this in Half-life 2: Episode 1 when the vortigaunts free Gordon from his control.
A place which is not the main hub or boss area in a series, but a minor place which appears over and over again within the same series.
Like Recurring Riff, but a place. Different from Nostalgia Level in that it is merely a recycled locale rather than a place meant to invoke memories.
Put more examples in the comments.
Examples:
The Mario Kart games always have Mario Circuit, Luigi Circuit, Wario Stadium, Bowser's Castle, and Rainbow Road. A Donkey Kong track usually appears too.
The Legend Of Zelda games often have incarnations of the Lost Woods, even in the games that don't take place in Hyrule. Death Mountain, Lake Hylia, Kakariko Village, and the Gerudo Desert often appear too.
The main Pokemon games always have a variation of Victory Road.
The Brookhaven and Alchemilla hospitals in the Silent Hill games.
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.
Updated 11/12/2009- Did some work on the description
So, you've got a speedster... let's call him Steve. There are many ways you can show off a character's powers-- guys with Super Strength can lift buses, guys with Flight can jump off tall buildings and not plummet to their deaths, guys with Heart can... uh... that's not important. But what can good ol' Steve do? Race a bullet train, that's what!
Basically, someone shows off how fast they (or their Pimped Out Car) are by running parallel to, or if he's particularly cocky, in front of a train. It goes without saying that this is a horrible, terrible, no-good, very bad idea in Real Life.
Examples-
In Megaman X 4, Slash Beast shows up to the Traintop Battle by running parallel up to, then jumping onto the train car used as his boss room when X or Zero get to it.
Up For Grabs
Remember when you were taught their names from a picture book?
Woodland Creatures are a group of animals commonly associated with the forest. They are commonly used to symbolize the presence of Mother Nature. Expect to find them on a clearing in The Lost Woods.
Although they are distinctly separate species, they will show great affection for each other and will rarely act or appear separately. Predators will be notably absent from the group, but a human being accepted in is not unheard of. They tend to be very shy and easily startled, but if a character is pure at heart, she will be allowed among them, and they will even come to her aid. If they decide to take matters in their own hands then it will inevitably lead to a Gaias Vengeance.
They usually appear to have to some degree a shared consciousness, or may be a part of the forest's soul itself.
The Egomaniac Hunter and the Corrupt Corporate Executive will constantly be on their tail and try to chase them away from their home. It will be required that a sympathetic human (usually a plucky kid, a female green activist and an initially cynical but ultimately friendly adult male) helps them.
How the Carnivore Confusion is treated depends on the story: sometimes the two groups will make a truce against the common enemy, sometimes the carnivores are shown to be mindlessly aggressive brutes, in which case playing them against the humans will be the best option.
If they are the focus of the story, they might be Talking Animals (with the suggestion that they are using an "animal language" that each of them can understand).
Even if they have no acting role, they will make an appearance in stories with a Green Aesop.
The group will always contain the following animals:
It's the third act and our favorite Badass Hero is sneaking in to the Big Boss' place. Just one more room to go, but Surprise! This room is coincidentally full of armed Mooks just waiting around for a fight. They are subsequently slaughtered, but our hero may lose some red shirt buddies during the fight to build emotional tension.
This happens frequently in samurai films. A perfect example is in The Punisher (1989) when Dolph Lundren steps through a doorway into a room full of armed samurai.
Exactly Whatitsaysonthetin.
The Hero is the almost always the strongest character in any given video game. However, they can be replaced in a sequel. Occasionally, the new guy will have to take on the original hero in a boss fight. Either it's a clone, the actual hero, or something else entirely
Examples:
Several series, especially Animated Adaptations of comic books, will have its core team meet other teams and special guest heroes often. Sometimes these others will form a West Coast Team and drop by now and again. Others have a Heroes Unlimited format, which focuses on a few per episode and occasionally has more for bigger battles.
Long Runners will also have quite a large cast to call upon for special occasions because there have been just that freaking many.
Of course, the comics themselves do this often: any character enough people want to read about will find a place somewhere. The Verse gets bigger and bigger until that cute little series about the five mutants and a handful of Recurrers turns into... X-Men.
So what do you do to put the exclamation point on the series when the end comes at last? Throw them all in.
This is similar to Battle Royale With Cheese, but distinct from it: BRWC describes a specific sequence of events: A whole bunch of folks die. Then they come back. An RBFATE ensues. Any instance of that sequence belongs there.
However, there need not be mass deaths and resurrections - there need not even be a fight! The Wedding Day finale will often put the entire extended family, class/work crew, this season's Wacky Neighbors, the previous set of Wacky Neighbors, and even Brother Chuck, his absence since episode five Handwaved. The same for the graduation in shows with a school setting.
It also needn't be a series finale - Episode 100 or 500, and particularly big season finales, (especially if The Powers That Be didn't know for sure the were coming back) will sometimes throw everyone in. Kitchen Sink Episode, maybe?
In Teen Titans, the final season took on a Heroes Unlimited sort of format, and the last couple of episodes featured pretty much every single teenage hero in the entire DCU throwing down with every villain ever seen over the course of the series (with a few notable exceptions like Slade.) The only character previously thought dead was Red Star, who had a pretty minor role in the proceedings.
Power Rangers SPD: As the main five Rangers fought the Big Bad, the non-Rangers dealt with the invasion of the base by a full-on Mook invasion. Almost every past guest star who was an SPD officer dropped in... and right alongside them, their Super Sentai counterparts!
X-Men Evolution's finale had the battle fought on four fronts, with large teams composed of almost every guest X-Man and X-foe (in an Enemy Mine situation. Apocalypse is enough of a threat to the world that the minions of Big Bads Mystique and Magneto joined in.) Yes, Angel is in an Apocalypse story but does not become Archangel. Anyone they didn't fit into the final battle did show up in the Where Are They Now Epilogue. Mesmero and Mastermind may be the only no-shows. At least, I don't recall them being there.
So the protagonist finally got the guy/girl, the series' UST is finally resolved, and the Official Couple seems to be in the perfect position to life Happily Ever After.
Or Is It. Status Quo Is God, remember, and the Official Couple spent most of the series not dating one another. So fate seems to conspire to break them up. Except in this case replace "fate" with "friends" and "conspire to break them up" with...yeah. Nearly every time, this will take the form of friends temtping the character with the fact that they can hit on other people, while the other person can't. This inevitably makes the person realize that they don't want to go steady with their Love Interest, or "slow it down a little", and end up breaking the relationship off.
The opposite of Strangled By The Red String, since fate seems to be conspiring to keep them away from one another, not together. If this occurs several times, the audience begins to wonder Will They Or Wont They get together. Also oftentimes used to break up any Fan Preferred Couples that mess/work better than the regular one.
Examples:
In the Big Bang Theory, Leonard is tempted by everyone (except, surprisingly, Sheldon), to break off his relationship with his new doctor girlfriend which he seems to have a good relationship with. That is...until his friends bring it up.
Boy Meets World does this when Cory goes steady with a girl named Wendy and Shawn tells him this is a Bad Thing. This also happens with Cory and Topanga a few times later on (Cory telling Topanga he loves her, Shawn and the Matthews family encouraring him to date other girls when Topanga moves (temporarily) to Pittsburgh, their families' reaction to their decision to get married).
On 6teen there was a bit of this when it was revealed that Jonesy and Nikki liked each other. But oddly enough it was subverted, because once they officially started dating nobody had a problem with it.
Happened a lot in Friends when any of the main cast dated outside it, particularly bad with Ross's relationships being broken by Rachel.
Needs A Better Name, Do We Have This One? It's when a show breaks or leans on the fourth wall in reference to incoming commercials. Happened in the Simpsons a few times, but I've seen it elsewhere as well. Up For Grabs!
Sideshow Mel just before a commercial break: "And so Lisa entered the world of show business, and it is indeed a business, as you'll find in 3... 2... 1..."
Abandoned places make good settings for fiction. Normally seen in fiction that evokes horror, the concept of a place just being abandoned makes an unnerving feeling in the viewer. It also creates suspense and increases the surprise when it turns out that the place isn't really abandoned.
Sub-tropes:
High on the list of places urban explorers visit. The legality and safety of such is debateable, as abandoned buildings tend to be still privately owned and covered in syringes.
Pripyat, Ukraine, a worker town for the Chernobyl Power Plant about eighty miles from Kiev, and evacuated after the Chernobyl disaster. It's more or less a perfectly preserved Soviet ghost town. You can actually visit it under supervision, but you wouldn't want to live there.
Several of the levels of Half Life 2, including one in an Abandoned Hospital and one in the abandoned part of a prison. The latter, incidentally, being modelled after Pripyat.
Call of Duty 4 has two levels (a sniping mission and an escape mission) in Pripyat. They're really unnerving.
Plenty of examples, putting on YKTTW to get some more before it gets launched.
Editing this YKTTW entry:
replies: 6
Your reply:
The Anansi
(permanent link)
added: 2009-10-27 21:25:14 by
Known Unknown
(last reply: 2009-11-19 17:47:12)
Alright, this is the third attempt at naming a trope after Anansi (who sorely needs a trope named after him), so... here goes.
Alt Title - The Village Trickster
The trickster who everyone knows. He's always around - maybe at the edge of town, maybe in the next apartment over - and everyone knows you have to be on your toes around him. They knows he's wily, clever, and, no matter how nice he is, he won't hesitate to screw you over if you tick him off.
On the other hand, whenever someone wants help dealing with something in a tricky, devious way, they always know who to go to. Just be careful he's not planning to put one over on you at the same time.
Examples:
Trope Namer is, of course, Anansi, who is usually portrayed as being a member of a community who know how tricky he is, though he alternates between being a wiseman who uses his trickery against villains and a jerk who uses it to con his neighbors. In fact, most of the times he loses are because the people around him know he's probably up to something and thus catch him in the act.
Slappy Squirrel is a retired Screwy Squirrel who now lives in a suburban neighborhood - predictably, she still has to deal with people who seem to think they can mess with her anyway.
In The Grim Adventures Of Billy And Mandy, Jack-O-Lantern is an example of a village trickster whose neighbors decide they'd had enough. End result, he gets killed by the queen's army. Then, he tries to trick death. He gets eternal life, but loses his head.
Essentially, when a character on the receiving end of a Hannibal Lecture concedes all the points made in it against him.
Can be followed by a Shut Up Hannibal or World of Cardboard Speech if they've surpassed/dealt with/just don't care about the points brought up, or a Heroic BSOD if it really hits home; or even another Hannibal Lecture on the part of the character who was just receiving one. The former reaction can be an indicator of an Anti-Hero or Villain Protaganist, or even an outright villain/antagonist depending on who's giving/receiving the Lecture.
Do We Have This One?
A character seemingly talks to himself, but is in fact talking to an invisible being.
-The first time you see Doctor Cid in Final Fantasy XII he is talking to himself. He is in fact talking to Venat.
Alternatively: Timm/Dini Line Cutting
The Moral Event Horizon is the line that a character crosses that causes the audience to no longer sympathize with them. Character X does something so horrible, or unforgivable, that they are firmly established as the villain, and expendable.
However, there are also those instances where Character X does nothing out of the ordinary. Character X is a petty thief, and they do nothing but petty thievery. However, events are such that, they do nothing for so long, that eventually you cease to care about them or their redemption. The character didn't cross the line, the line crossed over them.
The alternative name for this trope comes from the writer and animator of Batman: TAS, a series which was famous for having villains who wanted to come clean one episode, and were villanous without regret the next. Among some of the worst offenders of this YKTTW are Two Face Harvey, Poison Ivy, Mr. Freeze, and Harley Quinn. However, this happens in other media as well.
Update: bringing this back as Sympathy Expiration Moment.
Reason: Upon further thought, I've realized that this doesn't necessarily involve moral lines being crossed. It's more a "sympathetic" line, where the audience can no longer sympathize or identify with the character, regardless of whether they're good or evil. If the character is evil, then as mentioned, this can happen because said character just keeps on being mundane evil, even though multiple opportunities at redemption are offered, and sometimes taken. If the character is good, some of these things can contribute to the Sympathy Expiration Moment:
Continually falling for the same ruse, gambit, or trick.
Continually acquiring the Forgotten Superweapon, tactic, or ability, and then forgetting it (doesn't count if that is how the weapon is designed, to be forgotten after use).
Continually turning on one's teammates.
Continually whining, regardless of how much informed character growth the character is supposed to have gone through.
Examples of good characters hitting the SEM:
Michaelangelo in the 2003 TMNT, season 5 (Ninja Tribunal): Up to that point in the series, Michaelangelo had had to singlehandedly rescue his brothers at least twice, as well as facing near death at the hands to the Utrom Shredder. By this time, you would think that Michaelangelo would be pretty resigned to his lot in life, or at least understand that whining doesn't really get anything done. At the very least you would expect him to show more dignity in the face of danger. However during the NT, he whines and complains as much as always.
Wendy in the Fox adaptation of Peter Pan and The Pirates: Occassionally events would occur that would require the Lost Boys and the pirates to team up. When making their truces, Wendy would ask what guarantee they had that Captain Hook wouldn't backstab them as soon as he got what he wanted. He would always assure her that he was giving her his word as a gentleman, and she would accept this. Ten minutes later, when it came time for him to stab them in the back, he would remind them that although he gave them his word as a gentleman, he was a pirate, and all that entailed. She fell for this so many times, that one just stopped feeling sorry for her after a while.
Wolverine: oh god, Wolverine. How many storylines have we done where Wolverine has suddenly gone berzerk, attacked his teammates, and lost control of himself in general? This despite the over 100 years of martial arts training that he has, and all of the worldly experience that he's gained. Crossed the line for me during one series where he went berserk, held Rachel Summers at claw point, then killed Northstar after knocking around the rest of the X team (don't ask, bad writing all the way around).
Editing this YKTTW entry:
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but it was all just a dream or an elaborate daylight fantasy. Don't feel bad. It happens to us all.
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Needs A Better Title (suggestions so far: Caviar Out Of Water, Rich In Dollars Poor In Sense, Money Makes You Ignorant, Cant Buy Common Sense)
Basically when wealthy people have trouble grasping concepts that people without money take for granted. These people have been spoiled all their lives, so they have had all these things taken care of for them. So when they try to do these things (by choice or not), they just don't get them.
Usually this is Played For Laughs, since it's a form of saying "Money can't buy common sense". Yet it can be Played For Drama.
Can overlap with Upper Class Twit (if this character doesn't really do much even by upper class standards), and Valley Girl (if this character is fashion conscious and inarticulate), Rich Bitch (if this character is also malicious), even King Incognito (if the royal is doing a poor job of blending in).
City Mouse is a Sub Trope.
Compare Fish Out Of Water.
Contrast Country Mouse, Non Idle Rich.
This trope covers instances when a character eats or drinks something that's not intended to be food, usually without being aware of what they're consuming. Once the discovery is made, results in an immediate Spit Take, Vomit Indiscretion Shot, or some other response.
Inevitably produces lots of Squick. Might lead to It Tastes Like Feet when the dust settles. Often played for laughs as a form of Refuge In Audacity.
Differs from Foreign Queasine and Alien Lunch in that the stuff eaten wasn't supposed to be eaten by anyone. Bob drinking Rigelian bloodwine ("a delicacy on my planet!") is not this trope, but Bob drinking Rigelian rocket fuel is.
Contrast with Gargle Blaster, Masochist's Meal, Fire Breathing Diner. Also see Lethal Chef.
