Do We Have This? Should We Have This? Needs A Better Title.

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Possible Laconic Wiki Article: Endless fountain of Memetic Mutation.

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

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

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

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

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

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Show me yo' examples:

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

The phone rings. you pick it up. "Hello! who's there? I can hear you breathing! stop calling this number!!!". usually happenes as part of one of two plots- Either a serial killer is after you and he wants to hear you squirm- or a guy is inlove with you and he doesn't have the guts to talk. It's almost always a woman picking up and a guy calling.

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

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

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

Like most things, this can be done well, or badly. The Chris Carter Effect is what happens when Writing By The Seat Of Your Pants leaves too many loose plot threads.

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Examples:

• The Battlestar Galactica revival. A lot of things were admitted to not be planned to not shoehorn the work.
• This is how Douglas Adams wrote the original radio scripts for The Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy. Apparently, he'd often still be rewriting the ends of episodes as the cast were recording the beginning. In this case, of course, it worked.
• According to the DVD Bonus Content, Freakazoid was written with very little planning because of time constraints.
• Casablanca was being written as it was filmed.
• Yellow Submarine began production without an ending. Which is why it doesn't have one.
• Ray Bradbury wrote Fahrenheit 451 at a pay typewriter in 9 days.
  • To be fair, it was based on his previous short story The Fireman.
• Ren And Stimpy episodes never had real scripts. The creators went straight to storyboards and improvised each next image.
• Garth Nix says this is how he writes - all his worldbuilding is made up on the spot.
• Stephen King falls into this category-- he never plans ahead, he just writes until he has a good idea and runs with it. TV Show, especially soaps, fall prey to this as well. It's essentially the nature of doing a work "live."
• The original writers of Impulse admitted they were writing by the seat of their pants in the first trade.

Rolling Updates, Needs A Better Title?

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

What better way to introduce the protagonist of the story than start at his/her birth?

Examples:

• Bambi in Bambi
• Littlefoot in The Land Before Time

Do We Have This?

In real life, you want the high ground. From the top of a hill you have a better view of your oponent. If you have a gun you can pick of enemies easier. And if you don't have a gun similar weapon, at least running down hill takes less energy.

In fighter games, especially side scrolling ones, this tends not to be the case. Characters are typically given attacks that can strike up, but not down. It's dificult to program the groun to be at the right angle for an attack to work like it would in real life. However, this often doesn't apply in the opposite dirrection. If you strike up while an enemy is on a platform above you it probably will hit. In such a game, the practical thing to do is get in the lowest spot and wait for an enemy to get down to your level or just above you. If not they can get below you and attack you while you have no chances of striking back.

Do We Have This One?

Do We Have This One already?

Unfortunately for you, you're The Chick, and the bad guy has decided to kidnap you. He could just beat the crap out of you, but the Moral Guardians are much scarier than the hero. He could just carry you off unwillingly, but then he'd have to deal with all that kicking and screaming. So what does he do? POW! One shot to the stomach, and you are now limp and unconscious, ready to be carried off to the evil lair...

The GKO is a staple in Kamen Rider and other tokusatsu series, possibly because a blow to the gut is less offensive than beating a helpless woman over the head or choking her into unconsciousness. If the hero does it, it's so he doesn't have to resort to more brutal measures. If the villain does it, however, it's probably either to keep the damsel quiet or to keep them alive.

• Kamen Rider Kiva: Taiga puts one to Maya so that he can pretend he killed her and drive Wataru into a violent rage, all for the sake of a fair fight.

You're standing on the edge of a balcony, you need to get down quickly but don't have time for the stairs. To your right is a long curtain and you happen to have a knife on you, so in classic swashbuckling action hero style you leap to the curtain and jam your knife into the fabric. Doing so slows your descent at least enough to survive the landing. It is likely to be one of the tricks used by a traceur.

There are many different variations to how this works including the impliment used to slow their fall, the material of the "curtain" and of course the exact situation they are in (whether it was on purpose or accidental, whether they slide a long distance or just stop, or it isn't a straight drop but still a steep surface).

As to how believable this is, it would require incredible grip strength to hold on to the knife. And many times the surface they use is not a curtain, but solid rock. Why? Because it's cool.

Examples:

• Aladdin and the King Of Thieves had Aladdin do this when he was thrown off a cliff, using his father's dagger to drag into the rock side.
• A gameplay mechanic of the 3D Prince Of Persia games uses this largely with the traditional curtain slide. The 2008 game gives the Prince a hand gauntlet that allows him to do the same thing but with solid rock again.
• Batman's arm blades are used for this quite often. In Batman Begins Bruce saved himself and Ducard from falling off a cliff by slowing his slide down a steep hill. In some incarnations (at least in the DCAU as far as I know) he has deployable claws that he uses for the same effect, in addition to assisting with a Wall Cling.
• Optimus Prime in the Transformers movie combined this with some Le Parkour moves to drop from a high roof to ground level, digging his feet into the wall and jumping back and forth between two buildings.
• In the pilot episode of the 2002 He Man And The Masters Of The Universe, He-Man's father was thrown off a cliff and He-Man jumped after him. He-Man used his sword to slow their descent and stop, but they were both essentially stuck until someone could come and rescue them.
• Mythbusters tested the variation used with pirates doing it with a sail. Their verdict was that it was busted, sails have little wood strips lining the fabric and that you would need an incredibly sharp knife (which would also increase your rate of falling) and incredible grip strength to hold the knife at a particular angle.

Seen It A Million Times, Needs More Examples. Up For Grabs.

Self-explanatory. In the future, the time system (ESPECIALLY in America, so to best illustrate the fact that it's, you know, THE FUTURE, since the present runs on the base-12 clock) will run on the 2400 hours style clock.

One example: The future (2032 AD) in Demolition Man runs on Military Time.

Kids can be cute, whiny, mouthy, innocent, bratty, heroic, and even magical. But they can also be good businessmen too.

These children are great with money and are always looking for ways to make more. They always seem to be coming up with one Zany Scheme after another and will always try to cheat other children, and occasionally adults, from their cash. If they're good at it, they could also be a Child Prodigy or a Teen Genius. In shows with a particularly lax depiction of realism, these children could even have their own legitimate companies and firms with actual clients who take them seriously.

Examples:

• Cory from "Thats So Raven" and Cory In The House.
• Eddy from "Ed Edd And Eddy".
• Jenny from the comic "Safe Havens".
• Danny from "The Partridge Family". He's the one who got them an agent (among other things).
• Possibly Ur Example: "The Great Brain".
• Artemis Fowl. Teenage billionaire evil genius. Learned everything he knows from his ruthless father, though as time goes by, both Fowl men are less on the evil end of the spectrum.

Needs More Examples. Rolling Updates.

Rolling Updates

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

Really Needs A Better Description

Examples

Comics

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

Literature

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

Live Action TV

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

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

Webcomics

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

Related to Order Versus Chaos, but with a political spin, this is a particular antagonism between villain and hero types. The villain is typically Affably Evil and has a Utopia Justifies The Means / Necessarily Evil type of plan. On the other hand, the hero is an individualist and often a jerk. This relationship gets into the idea of whether greater good should be favored over the individual. With some of these characters, there's a Strawman Political aspect, as people are likely to favor the villain or hero according to their political views (yes, I know you should favor the hero regardless, but this is like favoring the hero especially for philosophical reasons)

Examples:

• Gun X Sword has the Claw and his minions as antagonists, and all are the nicest people you could imagine, and they have an Assimilation Plot in mind. They are opposed by the heroes, who include Vann and Roy both of whom can be real jerkasses.
• Watchmen has affable villain Ozymandius who wants to bring world peace through killing millions and socially inept (and crazy) hero, Rorschach.
• While kind of implied in the Firefly series, Serenity has an arguably well-intentioned Alliance opposed by Jerk With A Heart Of Gold hero, Mal.
• Some interpretations of The Incredibles see this as an example. Because the villain, Syndrome makes a comment about wanting to make everyone super because "if everyone is super, no one is", the result is some viewers praising the film as an Objectivist parable, and others liking Syndrome out of a belief that he is a hero fighting about smug supers.

Tropes about learning stuff.

Compare Truth And Lies; you can learn both true and false information from any of these tropes.

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• Ancient Keeper
• Book Of Shadows
• Bring News Back
• Doomed Appointment -- where it gets forestalled
• Epic Hail
• Exact Eavesdropping
• Feed The Mole
• Figure It Out Yourself
• Knowledge Broker
• Note To Self
• Someday This Will Come In Handy
• Tell Me About My Father
• Tome Of Eldritch Lore

Tropes about characters not getting what they expected.

See also Betrayal Tropes.

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• Big Bad Friend
• Jaw Drop
• My God What Have I Done
• The Mole
• The Reveal
• Reverse Mole
• These Hands Have Killed
• Thunder Shock
• What Have I Become
• Wild Take

A companion trope to Small Annoying Creature, this is where a character will have a pet, often a Ridiculously Cute Critter / borderline Intellectual Animal which will disappear from the story, only to reappear to do something useful. Typically, this is a pet small enough to fit in the character's clothing or cleavage or might even be "disguised" as an inanimate object (e.g. Wendy's turtle at first looks like a piece of jewelery).

Examples:

• Fuu's pet flying squirrel, Momo, in Samurai Champloo
• Wendy's pet turtle in Gun X Sword
• In the new season of Darker Than Black, Suou begins with a pet flying squirrel that definitely fits this it's also a Checkovs Gun of sorts, as it ends up as a new body for Mao
• Aang's pet lemur (or something), Momo in Avatar The Last Airbender.

From the forum.

Anime trope but probably more general. Guy is living uninteresting life, then the Call To Adventure comes in the form of a pretty girl.

Trope, yes, no, etc.

Is This Tropable? One of the basic safety rules we learn as children is "never run with scissors." Thus, references to this rule and instances of characters running with scissors show up in the media all the time.

Examples:

• One Weird Al album was titled "Running With Scissors," and showed this as an Olympic event on the cover art.
• In Cloudy With A Chance Of Meatballs, while fleeing from a giant runaway fishbowl, Brent, carrying ceremonial scissors, comments "I really shouldn't be running with these!"
• The title of one of Augusten Burroughs' memoirs is Running With Scissors.

This character is someone who believes with perfect faith that the universe is governed by an all-powerful and perfectly just supreme being, and that the righteous will be rewarded in heaven, while the wicked will be punished in hell. This character also knows that he has done something so terrible that he is in the latter category. It should be noted that while this character is obviously usually a villain, antiheroes can fall into this category as well. The trope-namer is obviously Mac Beth, as indicated by the quotation.

Is This Tropeable? Do We Have This?

I will show you fear in a handful of dust.

-- TS Eliot

Tropes about fear:

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

Subjective Tropes

• Nightmare Fuel
• High Octane Nightmare Fuel
• Primal Fear

"...Don't blowtorch a badger or gang rape a toad Or fist a gorilla 'till he cries..." Russell Howard on teaching pupils not to kill insects

The result of a character trying to illustrate a point using an example that is hanging on to relevance by a thread. The audience is rarely aware of this until afterwards and it invariably provokes a WTF? reaction when spotted. Usually done for comedic effect or by politicians.

The Crowning Moment Tropes, What It Says On The Tin

CM of Awesome Cm of Funny CM of Heart Warming Cm of Heart Breaking CM of Badass CM of Creepy

Tropes about anger:

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

Close to a launch here. Examples or objections, post 'em if you got 'em.

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

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

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

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

This is technically possible in Real Life (especially with the help of rigor mortis), though absurdly unlikely, and in any case a corpse's lack of balance control will cause it to topple sooner or later. The realms of fiction simply contrive to end the scene before this happens.

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

Examples:

Anime and Manga

• In an episode of Detective Conan, the victim had just finished an exacting workout and her muscles were tense enough to keep her standing after being murdered. Conan recognizes this after seeing a statue of a legendary Japanese warrior who had died the same way in a battle. (See Benkei, below)
• A variant in Naruto: Rock Lee, after being completely and mercilessly thrashed by Gaara, pushing his body way past its limits, and suffering permanent damage to two limbs, manages to stand back up despite being unconscious at the time, presumably by sheer willpower.

Comics

• Punisher MAX had a crazy mobster henchman who after having one of his eyes pulled out, getting cut, beaten, shot, impaled on an iron spiked fence and having Frank blow his head in half with a shotgun still took two more steps making even Frank panic a little.

Film

• Glory. While Denzel Washington's character slumps forward after being shot dead he doesn't let go of the flag.

Mythology and History

• Saito Musashibo Benkei is said to have died this way.
• Rumor claimed that Blackbeard's headless body, after being thrown overboard, swam between 2 and 7 times around the Adventure before sinking.

Video Games

• Ganon in two iterations of the Legend Of Zelda. In Wind Waker, he turns to stone after being stabbed in the head by the Master Sword. In Twilight Princess, he stays in the same position after being stabbed through the chest.
• Possibly parodied in Mother 3 when a pigmask watches you get in a horrible hovercraft accident. If you examine him afterwards, it is revealed that he has passed out, presumably from fright, yet he's still standing up. With his arm raised.

So, Gods Need Prayer Badly to fuel their divine might, but what do the worshippers get out of it? A God Of Evil may promise power and riches... or just not smite them. Crystal Dragon Jesus though will probably work miracles. Both will at times use Super Empowering to give their Clerics, Priests, and prophets the kind of divine mojo that will attract followers and lay the smack down on the servants of their enemies.

Unlike wizards, or mages, there is a duality about the power a cleric of a god wields. On the one hand, the strength of their god will echo in the follower: a strong god will have powerful followers, and a weak, dying or dead deity will have such pitifully weak priests they can't even cure a cold. On the other, how faithful the priest is also makes his or her powers stronger, and possibly even their deity in a weird positively reinforcing loop.

The strange coincidences in having alien/foreign creatures having alternate sexualities. Whether this is to make them”foreign"' or to highlight their differences it has mixed results

Laconic: When Have You Tried Not Being a Monster has two meanings.

Examples:

Quasar and Mondragon from Annihilation: Conquest A vast majority of The Runaways/Young Avengers Including the Gay half Kree half Skrull Hulkling (coincidentally Quasar’s brother) the gay magician Wiccan and the lesbian alien Karolina (not to mention her TG Skrull Girlfriend) Wild storm’s Jenny Sparx, who is some kind of sub consciously created deified planetary immune system And then there’s Torchwood, which is Torchwood. So Yeah

Do We Have This?

Ah-hah. Here's the villain that you've been chasing down all month. He's left a wake of bodies and decimated banks all across the world. He's a terrible monster, a beast of beasts, and now you finally have him cornered. You've got all of his gadgets disabled, his mumbo-jumbo nullified, and his strength is ebbed. Now you just slap the cuffs on him and haul him away, but one question nags at you.

Why, Baron Von McNastyguy? Why did you crumble Fort Knox and haul away with all the gold bars in there? How could you be so heartless?

He answers in four simple words: "I needed the money."

This is a Freudian Excuse dealing specifically with primal needs instead of psychological trauma. The villain was still doing villainous things and villainizing things intentionally, it's just that...well, he kinda had a daughter to feed. Or he wanted to get his boy a bike for his birthday. Or his cherished pet is suffering terribly, and the surgery is expensive. Or he wanted to get his wife that prosthetic leg that could finally let her walk again. Unfortunately, legitimate work was difficult to come by, and sometimes lead to only more problems. So, they pick up a gun and do what comes naturally...

Of course, this doesn't justify his atrocities at all--destruction is still destruction. But in that moment, you understand his motivations, and now you have a little bit of doubt as to what will happen once you put him away.

Compare Good All Along and I Was Young And Needed The Money.

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Examples:

Film

• Sandman in the third Spider Man film needs the money for his daughter.
• In The Love Bug (the original 1968 movie, not the 1997 remake), Jim agrees (temporarily) to sell Herbie to Peter Thorndyke, which shocks Tennessee and Carol. Jim asserts this decision, saying "Don't make a fuss. I need the money."

Live Action TV

• In an episode of 3rd Rock From The Sun where Dick was a Rogue Juror, he tried to define "reasonable doubt" as assuming the culprit stole the money to pay for his daughter's life-threatening operation, prompting the response "It's not reasonable doubt if you just make things up!"
• The Unusuals episode "Boorland Day": the Boorland crime family (try to) pull off a string of robberies to get the father a kidney transplant.

Or Tragic Mistake.

In a formal Tragedy, there is be a specific scene where the Tragic Hero is given a clear choice, and they choose wrongly. Often this wrong choice can be blamed on the hero's Fatal Flaw, but sometimes they just get screwed over by fate. This moment may not be obvious at the time, but looking back, it becomes clear that this moment was crucial to the hero's tragic downfall. The results of this bad choice lead inexorably towards the hero's catastrophic end; this is also the last moment where, had the hero chosen correctly, the catastrophe could have been averted.

EDIT: To clarify, this is not supposed to be an event that gets the plot moving. It's a point after the plot is in motion, which serves at the point of no return for the Tragic Hero.

Structurally, this moment is the climax of the story, and everything afterwards is Denouement, though the emotional climax of the story frequently falls later.

BIG TIME SPOILERS AHOY

How Did We Miss This One?

Tropes about feet, shoes, and other things related.

Related indexes: Eye Tropes, Keep Abreast Of This Index, Troping The Light Fantastic.

No Launching Please.

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

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Rolling Tropes:

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

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

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

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

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

Subtropes:

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

maybe need to split this?

Examples of Case 1:

Film

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

Literature

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

Live Action TV

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

Real Life

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

Examples of Case 2:

Anime and Manga

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

Comic Books

• Marvel Comics' Civil War ends with a type 2.

Literature

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

Live Action TV

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

Real Life

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

Unsorted

Literature

• Night Watch. No more cake?

Rolling Updates

Another sub-index for More Than Meets The Eye, and the Villain index this time.

Those...THINGS over there...No, don't look! They'll see you! OK, can you see them now? Well the thing about them is that they are EVIL. Of course they don't look evil, you think they wanna let everybody find out? But they can't fool me. I know them for what they truly are. But nobody would just believe me because they are...

• a bunny - Killer Rabbit
• the love interest - Yandere
• a loser - From Nobody To Nightmare
• the Harmless Villain - Not So Harmless
• The Woobie - Woobie Destroyer Of Worlds
• an Old Friend - Big Bad Friend
• the sidekick - Psycho Sidekick
• the mentor - Evil Mentor, Sensei For Scoundrels
• on your team - Token Evil Teammate
• on the side of Light - Light Is Not Good
• from the Church - Corrupt Church
• a clown - Monster Clown
• a doctor - Deadly Doctor
• a dentist - Depraved Dentist
• a scientist - Mad Scientist
• a teacher - Evil Teacher
• my dad - Archnemesis Dad
• my mom - Evil Matriarch
• an angel - Fallen Angel
• a toy - Creepy Doll, Demonic Dummy
• me - Evil Twin
• dead - The Undead
• not even born yet - Fetus Terrible
• a child - Enfant Terrible
• Santa - Bad Santa

Fixing This As Time Goes On. Please Help With Changes Of Your Own.

Also See: Big Eater

In a restaurant setting, characters generally in a animated or sitcom, give their orders. Certain events however affect one or several persons to order more than usual. Some examples are:

1. The date in particular (usually the male) asks a stupid question (to the female) and it sours their mood. Thus leading to a bigger bill

2. A long discussion about certain events that have occured

3. The token glutton getting their fill after a long journey

4. Somebody trying out the foreign menu

Specific Situations:

• Chie in Persona 4 always wants steak, so she annoys Yusuke about it whenever at Junes.
• Lina Inverse in Slayers usually for gluttony, but after a battle it takes alot out of her. So restaurants are generally screwed.
• A recent TV commercial for a credit card was POV of a man on a date with a lovely woman, who seemed to have ordered the lobster dinner, a whole fish, a rack of lamb, several side dishes, and then asks the waiter if she can also have the duck.
• An episode of Hey Arnold had Helga continually buying more and more dishes at a restaurant to put off paying the bill, which she couldn't quite pay.

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

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

Put more examples in the comments.

Examples:

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

There was a YKTTW that launched but got no article known as "To be the man, you gotta beat the man ". Fairly sure the launch was in error and can't figure out how to restore, so making a manual note.

Alt Title: Bargain Of Opportunity

A bargain that two or more parties enter for their own benefit, with mainly their own goals in mind, and in which one or all parties plan to double cross the others as soon as they have what they need.

These usually end with all parties benefiting, and all of them plotting when to betray their "allies" and/or waiting for someone to make the first move.

It's generally to be expected that villains will do this to each other, or to the heroes, if given the opportunity. Expect less Genre Savvy individuals to cry "but we had a deal!"

See also Thirty Xanatos Pileup. Between Genre Savvy alliances, expect a lot of I Know You Know I Know stalemates.

---

Examples:

• Predictably happens a lot in Pirates Of The Caribbean, usually centered around Jack, who makes a lot of these in the first movie. A lot fewer of these, but still some prominent ones, happen in "Dead Man's Chest", and pretty much everyone is doing this in "At World's End," even breaking such deals and immediately entering a new one, or having more than one going at the same time with opposing sides.
• In StarCraft: Brood War, the four way alliance against the UED is pretty much this, with both Arcturus Mengsk's Evil Empire and Kerrigan's Zerg swarm both planning on betraying and destroying the others when they succeed, while Zeratul and Raynor are more benevolent and plan to honor their agreements, but fully expect someone to pull a double cross eventually.

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

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

Needs A Better Title?

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

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

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

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

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

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

This does apply in Real Life, but no specific examples will be put here to avoid Natter.

City Mouse is a Sub Trope.

Compare Fish Out Of Water.

Contrast Country Mouse, Non Idle Rich.

---

Examples:

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

I'm not sure if the term was coined in "Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon" but that's the first place I heard it. An Ahab is a character in a Slasher film who will go to any lengths to track down and stop the killer. Obviously based on the relationship between Ahab and Moby Dick.

The most obvious example is Samuel Loomis (Donald Pleasance) in the early Halloween movies.

Sometimes the Ahab is responsible for creating the killer, through negligence or error, a failed psychologist or mentor. Can also be parent of a former victim. Ahab is usually male, in his later years. Ahab will try to stop the killer and warn everyone who will listen about the invincible killing machine that's come back to life again, but they usually peg Ahab as stark raving mad. Ahab will track the killer across towns, states, sacrificing a normal life, career, at personal cost, and will not rest until the killer is gone once-and-for-all. Since killers resurrect themselves quite often, the dedicated Ahab may appear in sequels hunting the killer for years until the character is written out, killed off, or forgotten.

The main difference between a protagonist and Ahab's desire to stop the killer is Ahab will go looking for trouble, whereas trouble usually goes looking for the protagonist.

The Ahab has some control over the killer, and can talk them out of murder or at least slow them down with a good heart-to-heart. The killer almost never attacks or considers Ahab as a potential threat or victim, unless Ahab gets directly in the way of the killer's main target. The Ahab can usually sense where the killer might go or what they are thinking from years of study and close contact.

(I think this term should be specifically for the Slasher genre. Like the Final Girl, or Implacable Man. Because there are tons of Ahab-type characters in movies, like Dr. Frankenstein or Kahn. .. Or maybe it should include them as well? Not sure.)

In certain videogames, units long range weapons have an additional disadvantage in the Tactical Rock Paper Scissors scenario - not only are are they weak to direct assault but they can't even retaliate against hack and slashers. Their weapons have a minimum range and can't be fire at enemies who are right next to the unit.

I need a good description for this. A number of anime examples are sitting in Fundamentally Funny Fruit, as leftovers from the now-cutlisted page Everything's Better With Pineapples.

Duplicating the examples here for good measure:

• Characters with "Pineapple" hairstyles (ex: Shikamaru, Sasuke, and Anko or Kazumi Asakura) tend to receive this word as a Fan Nickname.
  • Older example: Folken Fanel.
  • Sousuke Sagara's hair. Especially when he was younger.
  • Sebastian from Kuroshitsuji has a bit of this going on.
  • Tetsunosuke from Peacemaker Kurogane has a bigger example of pineapple shaped hair.
  • Much older example: Goemon Ishikawa.
  • Newer example: Mikan.
  • Cure Bloom.
  • Makino Ruki
  • In one Naruto chat video, Temari (who has four separate "pineapples" in her hair), has "Pineapple Head" as her handle.
  • Abarai Renji, who at one point in a possible Lampshade Hanging, wears a shirt with 'Red Pinapple' written on it.
  • What about Mukuro? I can't believe no one's mentioned him yet.
    • Don't forget Chrome.

I'm suggesting the opposite Metatrope to Villains Act Heroes React, to restore balance to the Tropes Universe.

The "exceptions" list on that trope already are:

• A Villain Protagonist
• A hero with an inactive villain, Orcus On His Throne
• La Resistance, but that isn't really proactive

Now, there is another one which is so hard to explain that you know that it's the heart of this opposite trope:

When the hero wants to somehow right a wrong or help people, but that interferes or undoes the villain's successful crime business or it just plain bugs them. See, e.g., most of the plots in Lazy Town. (Note that this tends to result in a woobiefied or otherwise sympathetic villain, if said villain appears more than once; and that if the villain has a ongoing scheme going, rather than a fully settled evil order, this doesn't count as a subversion.)

When a hero has an objective in mind already and the only villains are people that hinder him, it is usually isn't Heroic Fantasy or Action Adventure. It's comedy, romance, Slice Of Life, voyages, Rags To Riches....

Examples:

• The Odyssey: Odysseus wants to get home. Every monster and god on the Great Sea is hindering him.
• The Wonderful Wizard Of Oz: Dorothy wants to get home. The Wicked Witch stalking her for her shoes is hindering her.
• Alice In Wonderland: Alice wants to get home. The sheer craziness of the world she's in is hindering her.
• Most Romantic and Tragic Comedies are boy and girl wants each other and their jobs, jealous rivals and social statuses are keeping them apart.
• Most Shojo comics, being a mix of Slice Of Life and Romance are about the heroine finding love while becoming a model/mangaka/gangster/singer/club president/businesswoman and there are a shitload of mean students/coworkers, Libbys, JerkJocks, love rivals and school rivals keeping her from doing it. Really, I get kinda paranoid reading these stories.
• Fairy tales where the child had a goal at the beginning: I'd say Little Red Riding Hood, Mufaro's Beautiful Daughters, Aladdin
• The protagonist of an "escape plot" gets their own ball rolling by trying to escape
• Rags To Riches which specifically invoke Self Made Man
  • The Pursuit Of Happyness

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

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

---

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

Rolling Updates

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

Needs A Better Title. Should We Have This One?

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

Examples:

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

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

Needs A New Title, likely, but here goes:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Examples:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

forum discussion on this

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

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

The basic premise of this trope is this:

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

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

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

(Thanks Troper Madrugada for help)

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Examples:

North America

Eagleland

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

Canada

• Canada is only... um...

Mexico

Middle East

UAE

• Dubai is the only place in the UAE.

Europe

[1] Freestate Amsterdam

• Northern Europe is only Amsterdam.

[2]

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

United Kingom

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

Asia

Japan

• Japan is only Tokyo.

Russia

• Russia is only Moscow and Russia is only Siberia

South Armerica

• Brazil is only Rio.

Africa

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

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

Exceptions

In America

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

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

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

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

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Examples:

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

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

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

Examples:

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

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

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

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

Sister Trope to Happy Place.

Examples:

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

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

Needs A Better Title. Sub-trope of Hot Mom

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

Examples:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Examples:

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

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

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

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

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

This is Up For Grabs

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Examples:

Anime and Manga:

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

Western Animation

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

Live Action TV

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

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

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

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

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

Examples:

Anime and Manga

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

Theatre

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

Western Animation

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

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

Possible Needs a Better Title

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

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

And so on.

Examples:

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

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

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

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

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

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

How to make a bunch of characters visually distinguishable despite costumes of similar design? Dye their costumes wildly different colors! The resulting ensemble possibly resembles a fruit salad and may be perceived as Camp Gay.

Compare Amazing Technicolor Population, Colour Coded For Your Convenience.

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Examples:

• For a good movie musical example, see the brothers' shirts in Seven Brides For Seven Brothers.
• This was also used in Broadway musicals: the costume designer of Oklahoma! had to be told that his "bitch-pink shirts" were not appropriate for cowboys.

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

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

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Examples:

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

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

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

This ones bugged me for years

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

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

Do We Have This One?

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

Do We Have This One ? Needs A Better Description

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

Up For Grabs.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Notes:

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

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

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

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

Related to: For Massive Damage, Attack Its Weak Point

Examples:

Video games:

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

Television:

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

Real Life:

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

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

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

This inequality is often a cause of Decade Dissonance.

Examples

Literature

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

Western Animation

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

New Media

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

Real Life

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

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

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

We don't have this one?

Up For Grabs

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

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Alternate Titles:

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

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

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

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

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

Examples:

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

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

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

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

Examples:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Examples:

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

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

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

-Oscar Wilde hasn't played many RPGS lately.

Do We Have This One?

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

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

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

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

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

Examples:

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

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!)

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Examples

Film

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

Videogames

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

Tabletop Games

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

Comic Books

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

Live Action TV

• One word: Borg.

Real Life

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

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.

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

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.

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.

Needs A Better Description.

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

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

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

Pretty self explanatory title. Any examples?

Seen It A Million Times.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Examples: Anime And Manga:

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

Comic Books:

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

Mythology:

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

Video Games:

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

Webcomics:

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

Western Animation:

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

Again, there'll be Rolling Updates.

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

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

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

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

---

Examples:

[[foldercontrol]]

[[folder:Tabletop RPG]]

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

[[/folder]]

[[folder:Video Games]]

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

[[/folder]]

Rolling Updates.

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

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

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

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

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

Scream real loud and run headlong into each other!

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

Examples:

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

This is a Boys Love Fanservice trope.

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

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

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

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

A couple examples (please contribute!):

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

---

Examples:

Film

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

Literature

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

Live Action TV

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

Webcomics

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

This is a Fanservice trope.

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

Example (mildly NSFW)

Seen It A Million Times.

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

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

Compare to Killer Rabbit.

Examples:

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

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

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

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

Related concepts: Kids Are Cruel, Bullying A Dragon

Examples:

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

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

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

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

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

Examples:

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

Do we have this one?

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

Examples.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

Examples

Comics

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

Film

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

Literature

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

TabletopRPG

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

Video Games

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

Western Animation

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

Real Life

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

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

The three categories are:

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

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

If this already exists, bite me.

Needs A Better Title. Rolling Updates. Image forthcoming.

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

See also Ghibli Hills.

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Examples

Anime

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

Real Life

• The Yarra River in Melbourne.

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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

Do We Have This?

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

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

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

Examples:

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

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