Generally, people who engage in BDSM in fiction are bad people.

The good guys are on their way to whatever their goal is, such as to save the Distressed Damsel, but then one of the bad guys pops up, often saying "You Shall Not Pass." One of the good guys says, "You guys go on ahead, I'll take care of this guy." Then he stays behind to fight the baddie while the rest of the group moves on. The process can repeat until only one party member is left and he has to face the last (and usually most powerful) villain.

Naruto uses this trope during the Sasuke Retrieval Arc and in the third movie.

How do you make links to other tropes, btw?

Trying to satirize / turn Darker And Edgier / more absurd an existing work / reality, without really paying attention to the source material... because if you would, you'd note that it's dark and edgy / absurd aplenty already.

The example that made me think of this - a comic show host read some news about min-skirts and other "sexy teen" wear being marketed to 8 year olds, and did a skit about the same thing with 4 year olds... which really isn't any more absurd that the actual real situation he was trying to satyrise.

Or all the people that try to make Alice in the Wonderland scarier, weirder or edgier when it's freaking weird enough as it is. http://www.oldmanmurray.com/longreviews/58.html On reason why it's nearly impossible to satyrize current American government - all you can do is point to what they're doing and saying - not satire can top that

A close up shot of a woman doing you-know-what and enjoying it.

Examples:

• Hedy Lamarr back in the thirties, which involved her being poked with a pin by the director repeatedly.
• An advert for a vibrator this troper saw on Tarrant on TV.
• That shower gel ad in Sex For Product?

Do we have this one?

A hero who is so brave they do crazy, dangerous things just for the hell of it, not just because they're needed for the sake of the adventure/plot.

For example, a kids' book I was reading recently had a part where an 11 year old girl jumps from one balcony to another over a possible thirty foot drop, just because she wants to head to the room next door, when all she had to do was walk around and come in through the door. When her suicidal behavior is pointed out to her, along with the fact that she had to jump several feet to make it across, she says "it's not that far, I've jumped farther in hopscotch."

Anyway, I'm sure there are other examples of this in fiction, never mind the messed up real life examples (i.e. mattress surfing). Do we have this trope, or should it be added?

This refers to episodic stories in which a small group of travellers (often just one or two) visit a different place or situation with each episode, and witness the events before moving on. Rarely do they actually fix or solve the situation, though their arrival may events. They may even be so insubstantial as to be incapable of affecting events. Many of the episodes will have some sort of Aesop; very few will have a happy ending, though the traveller will always escape unharmed.

What separates this trope from Adventure Towns is that the travellers are not the focus in any of the episodes. Instead, each episode will focus on the situation and characters being visited, with the central characters and their premise as the lens through which the audience watches. So for example, Trigun would not fit because each place Vash visits reveals something about Vash.

Examples from anime: Kino's Journey, Hell Girl, Shigofumi.

The virtual guarantee that any sex scene will be no more relevant to the plot than simply being informed that the two characters in question are sexually involved. Audiences are so used to this trope that the one exception that comes to mind, in A Song Of Ice And Fire, forms the basis for a plot twist that wouldn't be at all surprising if the reader thought for a moment that sex scenes could be about more than titillation.

I just added a page for Go Lem and it occurs to me we need a trope page for types of fantasy creature. We do have Our Monsters Are Different, but adding "Our...Are Different" to every different kind of monster just so it can fit there seems silly. We'd probably be better off renaming it to "Fantasy Creatures" and putting all monsters in there whether they're different or not.

Casualty of The Great Crash I forgot about until now.

Throwaway references in fiction are often going to be important later, or sops to verisimilitude. But there are times when they are clearly thrown in for no other reason than that the fanbase can now say, "Ah yes, that's how the Usurper takes his coffee."

The more accessible the fanbase, the more widespread this trope, so Webcomics are especially prone.

- Order Of The Stick does this constantly - a recent example being the housecat being referred to as "the TRUE power in Azure City", a nod to a common joking Epileptic Tree on the fan forums. - Harry Potter gave some aside time to stress the pronunciation of Hermione's name, and might well have thrown a slight wrench into an inheritance issue solely to clear up the birth order of three of the characters. - In volumes ten and eleven of Death Note, the interstitial factoids, reserving the remaining important details for the final stretch, addressed such vital questions as whether Death Notes could have non-black covers and whether shinigami could have sex.

When characters memories are rewritten like in tonights Torchwood episode "Adam".

They might accept a spy into their team, forget loved ones, be made to think they've done something they didn't.

Also shows in in Buffy The Vampire Slayer "Superstar".

A variant of the Record Needle Scratch, is the music being interrupted without a scratch. Instead, the record slows until it stops rotating. As much of a Comedy Trope as the Record Needle Scratch, it's best-suited to interrupt a fanfare or a Subverted Victory Theme.

Mostly an anime trope.

If the anime has a pink-haired girl, she's a 2:1 favorite (or better) to be a dingbat.

Examples include Milfuelle Sakuraba from Galaxy Angels, Yume from They Are My Noble Masters and Miharu from Girls Bravo.

...rather than midgets. Trope were a group of people take offense of being called a specific term and instead use another term that's really funny

• The Simpsons subverted this: "Don't call us mutants, we are flesh-eating zombies"

Something of an inversion of the typical Death By Sex, and sometimes bordering on Rape Is Ok When It Is Female On Male (when an anti-hero tries this at least). A guy, unattractive by Hollywood standards, typically chubby with a slightly unpleasant (or at least brash and crass) personality and usually working a low-paid blue collar working class job, manages to get an attractive woman - indeed, the woman is usually the one who starts things off. From the moment he makes eye-contact however, his death is set in stone. Typically, the assumption this trope makes is that anyone who is anything less than a supermodel will not think twice about the opportunity to have sex, no matter how obviously evil the ploy is. The opposite, with an attractive man and a desperate woman, is much rarer, since the sexism involved is more obvious.

Stuck in a story which hands him both the Idiot Ball and the wrong end of the Double Standard stick, there's only four ways this can pan out:

• The Femme Fatale is a vampire or similar monster looking for an easy meal, and bites him on the neck at the first opportunity they get (making it so the vampire is a Lesbian Vampire often adds a sort of perverse wish-fulfillment subtext to it).
• The Femme Fatale is a spy, and the guy is a security guard/soldier/police officer. At best, he'll wake up and find himself chained to the bed with all his ID cards and keys missing - at worst, he's a goner.
• The Femme Fatale is a shapeshifter or master of disguise (or works for one) and needs an easy way to remove their intended doppleganger from the scene. This has the advantage of allowing the character to turn into an attractive woman, then turn back once the job is done.
• The Femme Fatale is a serial killer (often one who "Does Not Like Men") whose modus operandi involves killing them during sex.

Examples:

• Torchwood episode "Something Borrowed": the woman is actually a carnivorous shapeshifter who eats a wedding guest after flirting with him and taking him to her hotel room. The man is Genre Blind enough to not only not care that she bleeds black blood and offers to take him to her room "for a bite" in the most threatening voice ever.
• X-Men 2: Mystique injects a prison guard with metal (allowing Magneto to escape his plastic prison cell) while kissing him in the toilets of sleazy bar while disguised as an attractive woman. Attempt at justification by having Mystique effectively date-raping the guy.
• Golden Eye: The evil Bond girl seduces an elderly Navy Admiral in charge of a top-secret high-tech helicopter. What could possibly happen next?

There is a malevolent entity, fully aware of how powerful it is. It shrugs off any attempt to kill it with only a scratch, or most likely none at all. It could be a Cosmic Horror villian, or a hero who can change the rotation of the Earth. They are often arrogant or simply confident because of this power that it wields, and no one dares to challenge them.

Until someone steps forward...

Then it grows into a battle of Juggernauts where the Earth trembles and property damage skyrockets. Mere mortals are simply collateral damage and any decent allies are shrugged off like tissue paper.

This is about the set-up and portrayal. One thinks they can't be touched and there is nothing shown to the contrary. Everyone else believes him until someone actually puts up a real surprise challenge. There is something fun about a god being knocked off their throne.

Examples-

• Dragonball Z, of course. But really only Frieza counts, because Vegeta was never depicted as being god-like, only much stronger, instigating the Training From Hell. Goku was handily overwhelmed by Frieza and knew he was beaten, but didn't expect the Super Saiyan to win the day. By the Cell and Buu sagas they actually were beating the Big Bad in stages. Goku even expected Super Saiyan 2 from Gohan to beat Cell.
• The Death of Superman against Doomsday. Simple enough. Superman versus Darkseid in "Legacy" and "Twilight," would also count, because in Legacy Superman didn't know Darkseids strength and in Twilight Darkseid underestimated Supermans rage. By the third encounter both had some cautious respect for each other.
• 300. Despite the lack of Earth shattering-ness going on, the Persian army is described as an unstoppable force.
• In one of the best episodes of Star Trek Voyager, the Borg versus Species 8472.

Do We Have This One? Hollywood Science at its best, any liquid described as "acid" will eat away at and completely dissolve skin, and muscle, leaving only bone. (Or sometimes nothing at all.) While something with an extreme enough pH number can, in fact, do this, the problem is that bases (high pH) corode flesh. Acids (low pH) burn. May be justifed if the word "flourine" comes up, but it never does. Even if it did, flourine is a ridiculously reactive element (it corrodes glass), not an acid. This would make it the elemental equivalent of the Virus Misnomer.

Seen It A Million Times

Brought this up before the crash, but it doesn't seem to have made it.

Like the Animation Age Ghetto for cartoons, video games have long labored under a 'kids-only' stigma, particularly in the western world. This may be due in part to Nintendo's policy of releasing kid-friendly games in the 80s and early 90s, when it was most dominant in the gaming market.

Nowadays this trope seems to have faded in significance. The controversy over Mortal Kombat and the formation of the ESRB paved the way for more games to be directed toward teens and adults(Grand Theft Auto, for instance). However, the existence of Moral Guardians like Jack Thompson, who rail against games for 'promoting violence', proves that the attitude hasn't entirely gone away.

Anyone ever noticed that (at least in modern fiction) any dead or undead character (Usually a Vampire, but in some cases just a Zombie or Mostly Dead character), when placed in a situation where a living, breathing human has respiratory difficulties, are given to comment that they can't resuscitate because they 'don't breath' It seems to me that, if these characters can verbally pontificate for long periods bemoaning their sorry state, they have the capacity to give a little oxygen to some poor soul that could actually USE it.

Characters I've noted using this have been:

• Angel in the Buffy season 1 finale couldn't revive Buffy for this reason.
• The Mostly Dead Owen in a recent episode of Torchwood couldn't save a guy for the same reason.

And I'm positive many others.

There are several examples around: A series written especially for the chicks (sorry... females women) - and the author/s is/are gay. Gay men. And if you look closer (and know what to look for), some things will puzzle you. Why are the characters so obsessed with sex? Why don't they just want to be pretty, but fabulous? Why is the drama so... overly dramatic?

Examples:

• Golden Girls
• Sex and the city
• Desperate Housewives
• Lampshaded in the Simpsons, with "Nookie in New York" - as Marge's sister says, it's about four women who act like gay males.

We have various sub-tropes of this, but not the actual trope. See also Lightning Can Do Anything, Magical Defibrillator, Electric Torture. It is also discussed in High Voltage, but more as a Viewers Are Morons/ Did Not Do The Research kind of way.

Electricity is regarded as an almost beautiful sight. Ribbons of energy arcing back and forth, its a primal image. Something very difficult to contain. Villians use it as a weapon, heroes use it as a tool, and sometimes it is used as a Hand Wave as to how Applied Phlebotinum may actually work. Actual lightning will do absolutely anything.

Electricity requires a complete circuit to be effective, otherwise it will just be a gathering of electrons and protons. Various items can either conduct or insulate the electrical flow. Rubber, wood and PVC piping are very good insulators. Water is one of the best conductors. The human body can truthfully absorb a remarkable amount of electricity fairly well. That is why you may know or hear of lightning victims who survived. But there are other factors then just power. As a quick lesson in electrical science, volts relate to the speed in which the current flows, like the PSI of a water hose. Amps is the measure of the actual amount of power going through, like the size of the water hose. If the current goes across the heart, it takes relatively few amps to be fatal.

In fiction, electricity is often regarded as a safe way of incapacitating someone. But it is unlikely to kill the person. Stun guns and tasers are designed to use the electric current to give a person a severe muscle cramp, but also try to contain the shock within a specific area. Even still, people can have bad side-effects to being tasered like partial paralysis and deafness. Sometimes it can still be fatal, depending on the personal health.

Examples-

• The Tale Spin pilot episode had the air pirates building a powerful lightning gun to overpower the defenses of St. Canard. To counter the gun, the heroes surrounded the Sea Duck plane with all the rubber they could find.
• Comics in general but also used heavily with Batman The Animated Series, Superman The Animated Series, Batman Beyond, and Justice League. The Batman Beyond super suit even had a built in shock feature to face down difficult enemies like Inque.
• Kyle XY had the title character capable of manipulating electrical current with his mind.
• Avatar has been praised for the realistic depiction of lightning. They possess the capability to redirect lightning, but specifically mention that it can't go across the heart.
• Back To The Future used knowledge of a lightning strike as a method to gain the obscene amount of power they needed.

The Distressed Damsel has just been rescued from the Big Bad by the hero. How can she show her gratitude? Have sex with him, that's how. If she's ended up in a Go Go Enslavement outfit, so much the better for all parties.

Examples:

• Referenced in CSI Miami (the episode mentioned in Rescue Romance), where it is stated "rescue sex is the best sex"
• James Bond. Specifically The Man With The Golden Gun, The Spy Who Loved Me and Tomorrow Never Dies (those are just some of the plainest examples).

The complete opposite of Always Chaotic Evil, shows exhibiting this throw off the idea of an "evil race," and make sure to note that darkness and evil, just like in real life, can come from anywhere: there is no racial or geographical prerequisite towards goodness and evil.

---

Examples:

• Avatar The Last Airbender was falling into Always Chaotic Evil in the first season with the Fire Nation, which has very, very few characters with redeeming qualities, while there was only non-Fire Nation villain, and he was a Well Intentioned Extremist besides. The writers probably realized this, and are vigilantly showing that each of the nations has it's good and it's bad characters. Lex Luth-, i mean, Long Feng of the Earth Kingdom was the first major villain not to be Fire Nation (how do you do that thing where you cross out words), and actually uprooted the plot of the show to completely center around him for a few episodes. After that, you have many varying character, Hama, a Water Tribe character who maliciously uses her powers to control blood (which is just as terrifying as it sounds), and on the opposite sides, you have the ancient followers of Firebending (Sunbenders, I think) and Zuko's Heel Face Turn. When travelling around the Fire Nation, the villagers and citizens are explicitly shown to be just as good natured (if not a bit repressed) and normal as the other nations' citizens. In fact, this was the Aesop of one episode.
• X Men does a good job in all mediums that it appears of having a good balance of heroic and villainous mutant and non-mutant characters.

Needs a better title.

This is related to Celebrity Paradox, and occurs in crossovers involving characters in different universes played by the same actor.

Examples:

• In the Star Wars Elseworld comic story "Into the Great Unknown", the Millennium Falcon crashes on 18th century Earth. Later, Indiana Jones stumbles upon Han Solo's remains and finds them strangely familiar. Both characters were originally played by Harrison Ford.
• Here's a challenge for Fan Fic readers: find a Stargate SG-1 crossover with MacGyver (before the Re Tool) or Farscape (after) that doesn't hang a lampshade on the leads looking alike.

I'm not talking about pedophiles. But many kinds of monsters tend to prey on newborns or small children, making them sick. That among the fairy changelings used to be an explanation for the children mortality being so high... do we have something like that?

An aesop that was pretty common in the 90s when homosexuals started becoming more and more prominent in the media. Basically, a character will be introduced that is soon revealed to be a homosexual (or if they were gutsy enough, a previously known character would be outed). Then the rest of the episode would be spent on one of the main characters being bigoted and discriminating against him or fearing that he'll turn him gay or something.

Obviously by the end, the main character learns his lesson that "homosexuals are people, too" and should be treated equally just like everyone else.

Pretty much a Discredited Trope now as gays are now so prevalent that it's no longer a big deal. They can even be major characters now.

The only example I can think of is that one Simpsons episode where Homer befriended a guy and found out he was gay, then spent the rest of the episode fearing Bart was gay. My memory of this episode is very fuzzy, though, so a Simpsons buff will have to correct me if I'm wrong.

...Is more deadly than the male.

Have we had this? I was looking for it and couldn't find anything.

Real life example: A variety of species where the female is either stronger, does the hunting or kills the male after having her way with him.

Anything else?

First defined by Roger Ebert. This is a movie consisting on several apparently unrelated storylines that gradually interconnect. An action by a character in one story will unexpectedly affect someone in another story, or all the characters will discover they are all affected by the same overarching conspiracy.

Examples:

Heroes, especially the first season Anything by Robert Altman Crash

Sometimes music wants to make you laugh, or cry, or just rock out to it. Sometimes it just wants to bring down the system.

This is a band, an album or even just a song which suddenly starts deriding various governments. Tends to be effective at getting the message across, but not really accomplishing much. If you're not sure if it's political music, read the lyrics. If it reads like a rally, it definitely is.

Examples:

• Rage Against The Machine are the most famous band that does this. Almost all of their albums are targeted at the American government, and during live performances they've been known to give actual rallies.
• Nine Inch Nails made a political album in the form of Year Zero, a concept album set in a dystopian future of America.
• Some songs on Minutes to Midnight by Linkin Park go into this; No More Sorrow is about the broken promises of Bush, while The Little Things Give You Away is about Hurricane Katrina.
• Somebody who knows more about them could tell you more, but the Prison Song by System of a Down is one of these minus any vestige of subtlety.

Seen It A Million Times.

Somewhat Self Explanatory, but some characters are so Bad Ass that they are capable of furthering their goals and plans even when tied to a chair or behind bars. The Chessmaster and Manipulative Bastard can often use this to their advantage and may have even planned this to begin with.

On another side, maybe it wasn't a part of their plan, but have such good improvisational skills that they turn it into an advantage, make a desperate (but effective) escape or reveal that they could have escaped the entire time. Another trope can be made from this part in that they fight their way out with an extreme disadvantage like being handcuffed. Maybe call it Handcuff Fu? Not to be confused with Chained Heat.

Examples-

• The Dark Knight- And I'll just leave it at that.
• Justice League- Batman does this frequently, being an escape artist. One episode had him feigning helplessness to manipulate one of the Injustice Gang members. He revealed at the end he could have escaped, but then he didn't have an advantage on the outside. In the second season finale Starcrossed, half of the League did this to escape the Thangarian jail. Wonder Woman took a guard down while tied to a pole, Green Lantern used his handcuffs that covered his hands as a blunt weapon.
• True Lies- Arnold revealed his escape plan while under a truth serum, and then enacted it with perfect precision.
• Star Wars Episode III invokes this idea several times. Palpatine said to Anakin that killing Dooku was the only way because he was just as dangerous when...uh...disarmed. Mace Windu said this later on to Anakin about Palpatine.

The following sets of traits are often seen together:

• a character who is associated with fire in some way (or associated with something else that's associated with fire)
• a character with an impetuous and/or driven and/or aggressive personality, sometimes portrayed as overconfident or overdoing it (occasionally to disastrous results)
• the character is associated with the color red--be it in clothing, hair color, armor, etc.

I discussed this in chat, and the following articles were suggested: Hot Blooded, Hair Colors, Colour Coded For Your Convenience, and Red Headed Hero. None of them seem to quite fit this--the first is merely about heroic force of will, the second doesn't name cases where it's not a redhead, the third is practically not this topic, and the fourth misses the personality traits.

Does this already exist? I thought it would, as I thought this was a really obvious trope. But then again, I only really started thinking about it since I've been trying to create one such character.

Examples:

• Asuka Langley Soryu from Neon Genesis Evangelion: red clothing, red mecha, personality traits of aggression and impetuousness, although not associated directly with fire (and she has red hair, but only in the animé)
• Nola Falacci from Law & Order: Criminal Intent: red hair, and a forceful, confrontational, aggressive personality (though of course her clothing is realistic)
• Jenna from Golden Sun: associated with fire, more driven, outgoing, and sometimes emotional than other members of the cast, has red-purplish hair and red/purple clothes
• Hikaru from Magic Knight Rayearth: associated with fire, wears red and has red hair, is the most tomboyish of the three Magic Knights, has the highest attack power in the RPG version of the plot
• Lance from Voltron (Voltron 3D, in particular): associated with Red Lion (which is associated with fire), wears red (in V3D, but possibly only because that's his Lion's color), and has somewhat of a more rule-defying and aggressive personality that would sometimes clash with his commander (Keith) and high command which led to his getting arrested and jailed during a pretty dramatic story arc

(Note: Lance from cartoon Lion Voltron has a different personality and appearance, despite still piloting Red Lion. First, he wears blue. Second, more importantly, he instead has the calm sarcastic/snarky commentator personality.)

Edit:

Other examples given by commenters and one of my real-life friends:

• Mega Man Battle Network: Hino Ken, Fireman, Heatman (courtesy of Caphi)
• Golden Sun: Garet (courtesy of Some Guy)
• Lord of the Rings: Gandalf? based on "I am a servant of the secret fire, wielder of the Flame of Anor" and on his carrying the ring of fire Narya. (courtesy of unknown troper) However, another troper has noted that he is careful and controlled in his actions. (courtesy of Coriander)
• Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha: Vita. Badly-tempered, agressive, red-headed Wolkenritter with a very red Elegant Gothic Lolita outfit. (courtesy of Servbot)
• Shakugan no Shana: Shana. Heck it's her freaking name! "Flame-Haired Burning-Eyed Hunter" She got the red hair, the fire, and the temper (Tsundere). (courtesy of Sackett, who nominates this to be the trope picture)
• Avatar: the Last Airbender: Azula, the Fire Lord, Zuko (courtesy of Sackett)
• Pokemon: Ash's Charmeleon, Ash's Charizard? These seem to be pretty much stock-characters that were drawn out of the warehouse in order to serve as personality for these minor characters. (courtesy of my friend M.J.S.)

Other tropes considered: Personality Powers, {{Red Oni Blue Oni}

My comments: This might possibly be considered a subtrope of Personality Powers, but I haven't thought this one through yet. However, it seems that Red Oni Blue Oni applies to the contrast between two characters, and I'm inclined to agree with Sackett that this trope could apply for when the point is the character himself/herself, as opposed to the comparison.

So, you have some lameo power, like, say, bio-luminescence. In a world full of Superheroes, it gets pointed out that you have a crappy power. What Kind Of Lame Power Is Heart?, they say. But, then the lights go out, and nobody can see where the circuit breaker is to replace the fuse. Well, guess who the man of the hour is?

• In WITCH before the Power Upgrade, Will's power consisted of giving all the other girls their powers, talks to microwaves, and closes the portal whatevers.
• Heart is the Lynchpin to Captain Planet, and along with Earth, are the two elements necessary to summon the guy.
• Every once in a while, Jai from Queer Eye For the Straight Guy actually got to do something worthwhile with his "media?" skills.
• Dr Horribles Sing Along Blog: Moist was pretty much there just to be a good friend to him, rather than a henchman. He doesn't save the day, but he provides the protagonist with a loyal friend who tries to look out for him.

Space. The final frontier. To travel it, you have to have one thing: The right stuff.

Basically, if space travel ever come sup in fiction, so will the phrase "the right stuff", unfailingly.

Or, naturally, "the wrong stuff", as a common subversion.

• The Right Stuff: The movie itself, definately the Trope Namer in this case
• On Ben 10, Max reveals he was once an astronaut in the Apollo program, and at one point comments that he's "still got the right stuff"
• Stephen Colbert comments that an astronaut who happens to be a fan of his "clearly has the right stuff, as shown by his right wrist-- That's a Wrist Strong bracelet!"
• In Armageddon, the Slow Walk is accompanied by a NASA technician commenting "Talk about the Wrong Stuff." He ain't just whistlin' Dixie.
• An episode of Quantum Leap where Sam leaps into a chimpanzee going into space is titled, you guessed it, "The Wrong Stuff"

Tropable? It's pretty much everywhere.

Sadly, Just Shoot Me is already used.

Dunno if we have a trope for this. It's the common scenario where one character dares another character to shoot/kill them. It's generally calling a bluff, with the character in question usually already being held at gunpoint.

The usual subversion is for the bluff to fail, causing the gun-wielder to shoot anyway.

Examples:

• The inevitable Firefly reference: in the Serenity, when River has sealed herself in the cockpit, Mal comes in and tells her that, if she doesn't want to be a danger to them, she should just shoot him and be done with it. It then somewhat subverts the trope in that she seems about to to just that, causing him to back down from his "just shoot me" bluff. "...Or, we could talk about it some more."

• In Black Snake Moan, Samuel L. Jackson's character dares Justin Timberlake's character to just shoot him.

• Michael Madsen's character in Reservoir Dogs could be said to be doing this with his "Are you gonna bark all day, little doggie?" line.

• Tom Cruise's character does this to Jamie Foxx's character at the end of Collateral, and fails.

Now, we all know that Humans are Special. In no small number of stories, after all, we're the ones who end up running the place. Now, why is this? After all, we're just Puny Earthlings. In most fantasy settings, we're at best the baseline. We're not as fast-breeding or strong as orcs, we're not as wise or long-lived as... Damn near anything, what with that whole mayflies thing... Yet humans are often the dominant power on the world. The human cities are the grand ones.

Why? Because Humans are Bastards. But damn, we're magnificent.

One of the things that's emphasized in any 4x game you might care to play involving alien races is the idea that Humans are diplomatic. It started back with Master of Orion, and one could argue the general idea is that our constant history of war and backbiting led us to become very good at being persuasive. This might simply be a subtrope of Humans are Special or Humans are Bastards, but I leave that to the tender mercies of the harpies here.

Examples: Master of Orion and Galactic Civilizations, both games I can think of off the top of my head with aliens that have humans who tend to be considered cunning

Doctor Who, one might argue- Humanity, despite being demonstratably inferior to a lot of the nasties out there, sure shows a great ability to convince people that we're worth calling Emperor.

The Uplift series, where we're mainly surviving in the galaxy through keeping our heads down and staying very smart about how we work things.

That short story I saw referenced, Kingdom of Heaven or something, with the crusaders who take over a starship and turn all civilizations against the rulers of the galaxy.

Pretty much anything that involves humans being in charge, I'd figure.

Any thoughts?

A specific version of the Church Militant, which invokes equal parts Rule Of Cool and Rule Of Funny by depicting recognizeable, real-world religious people - or at least, someone who LOOKS like them - as gun-tooting/sword-swinging badasses. Nuns works particularly well, since Nuns Are Spooky. Note that it's the UNIFORM that's really important, but bonus points are awarded for also keeping the behavior. Saying a brief prayer for the guy you just ventilated is a classic example. Still, this trope CAN be invoked by an entirely areligious person who just happens to be DISGUISED as a priest, nun, mormon minister, amish, ect.

I offer just two examples, and hope for more, but these examples are VISUAL: Which do you prefer, a whole platoon dedicated to saint Winchester, or just one, facing down an attack fighter with Guns Akimbo?

Whenever there's a sexy vampire or other immortal being in fiction, often enough they will either be just-turned into their immortal form, with years and years of unimaginable longevity ahead of them, (e.g. Harmony from Buffy, who was in the same year at school as the regular characters) or much, much older than they look. There's a reason that the trope for this is called Really Seven Hundred Years Old. Because they always are at least a hundred years old. You never never never seem to encounter dudes who LOOK twenty-odd but are actually fifty or seventy or basically, just older ages that a human being could realistically reach. Funny that, isn't it?

This probably has something to do with the potential Squick of the vampires being actually as old as their love interest's fathers, if there's a Mayfly December Romance going on. Alternatively, it makes them seem more mysterious, because their childhood and teenage years - an age of development, innocence and vulnaribility - is so far back that no living person can remember it. So they get bonus mystery points.

Examples include:

• On Buffy The Vampire Slayer they had Spike - who was originally from Victorian London, and Angel, who wasa from before even then (someone with better knowledge of Buffy can probably give me a more accurate date) There may well have been an aversion in the show somewhere, but again, hey there Buffy fans, lend a hand!
• Isn't Edward from Twilight either a hundred or two hundred years old?
• Averted with Claudia from Interview With The Vampire, who complains about remaining a child. I'm not sure how old she actually is -although still a child - when it first dawns on her that she will never grow up and become an adult, but I would assume around... forty-ish?

Um... yeah. Thoughts?

A murderer or supernatural force constantly kills people the same way, but no one picks up on the pattern because he/she only kills a few people in spurts every so many decades...until our intrepid hero comes along.

• Supernatural has done this more than once.

• Eugene Victor Tooms from X-Files.

I ran a search and it didn't turn up anything, so I'm proposing this.

Self-injury is defined as deliberately inflicting pain on oneself as a coping mechanism. It is not suicidal behavior- a suicide is trying to feel nothing, while a self-injurer is trying to feel better.

In media, cutting is generally the only kind. No one ever scratches, burns, pulls hair, tears cuticles, or does anything else painful yet unobtrusive. It's also heavily associated with emo teenagers, usually female, who are sometimes "just looking for attention" or trying to be "cool". It can also be invoked to show that someone is (or was, if it's something they used to do as, yes, a teenager) particularly neurotic. It may also be conflated with attempted suicide.

I looked through the Call to Adventure index, and I can't find this one. A hero is Ignorant of the Call when everybody BUT him knows he's the hero, Chosen One, etc. This isn't Missed The Call, for he still does good things. He just does good stuff because that's his nature; they don't seem heroic to him. May overlap with Designated Protagonist. Up For Grabs.

• Arthur Dent in Hitchhiker's Guide. Usually he just reacts to events around him, but every so often he does cool stuff. Trying to sweettalk his way out of being killed by Vogons, hitting the Improbability Drive button in a bout of panic when missiles are aimed at him, and so on. The epitomy is when he becomes the most revered man on an alternate Earth simply by making a sandwich (I Am Not Making This Up).
• Ash Ketchum of Pokemon, at least in the movies. He likes to think of himself simply as a Pokemon Trainer, but time after time he stumbles into situations where it's clear only he could save the day. Whether jumping right into the crossfire between Mew and Mewtwo, dodging Legendary Birds to get mystic orbs, or penentrating a crystal palace to rescue his mom, he always manages to come out on top.
• Emelius Brown in Bedknobs and Broomsticks. He's a con artist, a flim-flam man only interested in making a fast buck, and yet he penetrates Nazi-occupied territory to turn himself into a rabbit to save the day.
• There are many Real Life examples of teachers like this. Mr. Holland's Opus depicts a film example.

Needs A Better Title. The tendency of characters in detailed sex scenes to announce when they are about to orgasm. Seen It A Million Times. Up For Grabs.

In some video games, you don't start finding a lot of ammo for a particular weapon until you've acquired the weapon yourself. But once you've equipped that fancy new gun, all or most of the ammo crates you run across begin to *ahem* coincidentally contain the new rounds. In some games, this is taken to such a degree that even equipping a weapon (doesn't even have to be new!) will cause most of the ammo sources around you to start conveniently spitting out bullets for your equipped weapon. It's as if all the ammunition in the Universe exists in a state of quantum uncertainty, and only by opening the supply closet with a particular gun in hand does the player collapse the ammo into a discrete caliber.

This trope only applies to games where the order in which the player acquires equipment is not controlled by the level design, but by the player (buying them in shops, for instance). If the developers control when you acquire a weapon, then it's no big surprise that you don't find shotgun shells before you get the shotgun, but are able to find them subsequently.

Examples:

Dead Space Seen It A Million Times

Do We Have This One? It is a staple of cop shows. The PI comes in ask for information. Whereupon Da Chief very obviously lays the report on the desk leaves the PI alone beside it. And says,"I am going to get my coffee. You are not going to touch this secret police report, do you hear?"

Surprisingly enough, we don't seem to have this exceedingly common anime trope.

The only example I can think of offhand is the scene in CLANNAD (?) where Ryou thought Nagisa was confessing to her...

Another Improbable Weapon, like the Frying Pan Of Doom. And, like Frying Pan Of Doom, can do some actual damage.

Why is there no manatee jokes entry?

There are plenty of other places out there that use Manatee Jokes, I definitely think it deserves an article.

Another YKTTW sparked by I Thought It Meant.

This is about the stock (no pun intended) representation of a company's financial history: a zigzagging graph, usually red, which is either rising or falling depending on the point the creators want to make. Usually clipped to a wall near the manager's desk.

So I'm reading No Mister Bond I Expect You To Dine, and I notice another possible trope that overlaps with that one. This is where the villain shows how clever he is by predicting to the second when the hero will come barging in. This usually affords said villain a chance to toss off a witty retort. I know that there are examples, but I can't think of them. Up For Grabs.

"Ordinary goggles only cover the eyes. Ordinary goggles are for chumps."

Description for Full Body Goggles in Wario Land: Shake It.

When characters, usually warmongering types, are shown getting ready for battle, nine times out of ten there will be at least one fighter, probably the big strong type, who dons his war armor: a suit of armor so powerful that no enemy can hurt them, but probably so large and convoluted that there can't be any way that it's all necessary.

Basically, the big suits of armor, the expensive security systems, or the hi tech robots are all to complex for their own good; they simply can't need all that gear, and using it should probably not be as effective as it seems.

This often shows up as multiple redundant defenses, equipment that seems to serve no purpose but to be aesthetic, or simply wearing too much armor than should be necessary. This may be as slight as abnormally large shoulder plates, or as blatant as multiple levels of gigantic steel armor that is seemingly only wearable because the character's design involves wearing it.

Is either a Sub Trope or Sister Trope to Awesome But Impractical. Probably both; after all, Unnecessary and Impractical overlap all the time.

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• In Spiderman: The Movie game, Oscorp's security system involves beat security guards, radars, complex security systems, lasers, hovering robots with lasers, hovering robots with bombs, and a several story high robot with a BFG and smaller hovering robots with lasers and bombs as guards. It's an uphill battle, but, if your clearing the area is any proof, the system is actually not ridiculous enough.

We have The Nothing After Death but why not absolute nothingness? Everything, simply, ends and nothing lies beyond.

• Rama Revealed
• Franz Kafka's works, for examples, Give It Up and The Guardian.

title was borked: OP was concatenated He decided that the title was unclear and Bowdlerized, thus, he changed it back.

Okay, so the name is terrible, it's based on the Hidden Elf Village trope, but I still think I used it wrong.

Basically, there are some tv shows, for example, like Star Trek or Buffy The Vampire Slayer where you expect fans who are obsessive in their geekiness. How can you begrudge someone being really, really, really into Doctor Who, for example, when the show's been running as long as it has, with rules and characters as intricately structured (err, as far as I know?) as they are in that particular show. Also, not to make any sweeping generalisations, but it is about space. It's something you'd expect, you know?

But then there are... other things? TV shows that you maybe watched as a kid but then figured that they were lost to everyone but that small slice of your own generation, or the film that you watched once and thought "huh, yeah, that was neat" and then promptly forgot about. And these things actually have really hardcore fanbases but you'd never have suspected it. Then one day, you go on a website like this one and there's loads of stuff on the cartoon/tv show/film/whatever and people seem to think about it at a much deeper level than you'd realised. There's nothing wrong with really liking such a show, but... really?

I'm afraid this is something of a Subjective Trope, but in general, the subject of an Elf Village Fandom is so surprising because:

• It's dated. It's not on tv anymore, more than likely, or the film came out ages ago. But the fans are still passionate about it as ever, indicating obvious staying power.
• It probably wasn't that popular to begin with. With a really popular tv show, you expect there to be casual fans and a core of really keen ones. Buffy, for example, was so popular that loads of people remember it fondly, it's not much of a surprise to hear that there are still people writing fanfiction about it or whatever.
• If it's a kids show. Obviously there's nothing wrong with watching tv that's not technically aimed specifically at your age group, and obviously we all have fond memories of books/tv shows/other that we enjoyed as children. But then, for some reason, I guess you just don't expect children to take tv as seriously as adults? You have adults who follow soap operas like, religiously, but when I was a child, at least, I don't remember getting all wound up over the prospect of missing an episode of The Queen's Nose the way I get these days about Frasier or Americas Next Top Model or whatever.
• Genre makes a difference too. Obviously a soap opera will pick up very loyal fans, and science fiction tends to do the same. Some reality television does. Um... I'm not sure where I'm going with this.

Those were just some general musings and suggestions on behalf of myself. I think the ideal example of a show that for me, turned out to have an Elf Village Fandom is Gargoyles. I'm nineteen, so I'm part of the age group who was a child when this cartoon was first shown, and I remember it being on, but not very well, because I didn't watch it. I watched a cartoon called Roswell and another called Mummies Alive (remember those, TV Tropes Wiki? Weren't the nineties great?) which were of about the same profile as Gargoyles, but I've not seen any hint at their obsessive fanbases (correct me if I'm wrong) and although at first I suspected that perhaps we just had one Entry Pimp here who really loves Gargoyles, there's mention of the cartoon being continued in comic book form, so I guess there's really an audience for it. This just surprised me because I didn't realise anyone remembered Gargoyles. If there's some huge internet message board for fans of Mummies Alive or something, I'd be similarly surprised (and a little scared?).

Related to Periphery Demographic, Fun For Some, Ensemble Darkhorse, Rule34

A straight guy who for one reason or another seems to have mostly (or even only) close female friends.

Examples:

• Xander from Buffy The Vampire Slayer
• Miles from Sabrina The Teenage Witch
• Harrison from Popular

Might need a better title, but I'd like to keep the Worf reference.

Basically, a Characterization Trope, where a particular person or thing is shown to be REALLY dangerous/horrifying/whatever by a hardened character (often the Big Guy or The Stoic) is shown to be shocked out of their wits by it. When this is done to Villains, it is often in the form of Even Evil Has Standards. Related to Not So Above It All.

I searched for this one but couldn't find it. Has anyone else seen it?

Though many societies are becoming more tolerant of [[transsexual trans]] people, some people still have trouble accepting that trans women are women. Thus trans women who are in some way not genuine can be found in the media.

There are two variations of this trope. In the first the trans woman does not pass as belonging to her or his gender; the character's (limited) transgression of gender norms is therefore played for laughs. In the second the woman passes incredibly well (and is usually played by a female actor), but she does this to trick a man into being with her or for some other nefarious purpose, implying that she is "really" a man. Whichever variation is used, the viewer has little reason to sympathize with the character. Note that the people who employ this trope often did not do the research, so it often involves characters who are not strictly speaking transsexual.

Examples:

• In Ace Ventura Pet Detective it turns out that Lois Einhorn has had a sex change to hide her criminal past.
• In Little Britain Emily's inability to pass as female is played for laughs.

(Readded because it was launched as something very different. Currently in discussion for a rewrite, but in the mean time here we go again)

Needs A Better Title

Often a staple of ongoing series that use Adults Are Useless, the Kid Hero, or really anything where kids are the main characters but the series is targeted towards all ages. Essentially, this is when children are the main characters of a series but are still treated as adults in most situations (except for when plot calls attention to it), usually in terms of personality, how they react to situations, and the situations that they get into in the first place.

This usually involves UST, Love Triangles, and other Love Tropes, but can also involves other tropes generally associated with more mature series (sitcom or drama alike), and this is especially common in more Arc Centric series.

Often, this can require more writers to fight to get the more mature plots in.

This trope that is getting more and more common, and, if done right, you don't even notice until you think about it for a second.

Needs A Better Description too.

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Examples:

• As time went on, Jimmy Neutron slowly started to treat their main characters more like young adults than eleven year old kids, except for when they needed to either for plot reasons or to set up a gag. This is most obvious in the episode "Stranded," which uses every UST Trope in the book for Jimmy and Cindy.
• All over the place in Avatar The Last Airbender. With all the Love Tropes, Drama Tropes, War Tropes, etc, it's not hard to forget that none of the main characters (bar the Big Bad and a few mentors) are older than 15, and neither characters nor the plot are held back by their lack of age; the series mixes adult tropes and Coming Of Age tropes, and mixes them very well.

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Previous Replies To Be Sorted Later (minus bumps, etc)

• Every single JRPG, ever.
• A Song Of Ice And Fire.
• Overlaps with Wise Beyond Their Years.
• Spy Kids, particularly the last two movies.
• We have the inverse as Adult Child, so yes, needs a better title. Kid Adult just doesn't have the right ring.
• Those who don't have children, when asked to write children characters, will generally just write tiny adults. It's very rare I've ever seen a character under the age of 15 written as they would act in real life.
  • Generally, the rule of thumb I follow is this: If the character is in fiction and under the age of 18, than to get their actual mental age, take their physical age and add 5 years at the least. So IE - your two-year olds will act like seven year olds, your 10 year olds will act like fifteen year olds, and your 18 year olds will act like 20-somethings (and usually be played by them to boot).
• Off the top of my head: Peanuts, Hey Arnold, The OC, Rugrats, any shounen anime (Digimon and Pokemon are big offenders - the kids are supposed to be 10 but act like they're sixteen year olds with no sex drives), Bleach (they even look like 20-somethings), Harry Potter, Young Wizards, all JRP Gs (who always have a gaggle of 14 and 15 year olds who look and act like 21 year olds).
  • Avatar The Last Airbender is the biggest offender I've seen in years. 12 year old and two fourteen year olds who act more like a 16-year old and two 18-year olds, respectively. Also, any show that has a Toy Ship that is confirmed. In fact, it might be easier to add aversions than list every work of fiction where children are written as miniature adults, because that would be a LOT. Like 90% of child characters ever made.
• Home Movies, played to great effect though. Calvin And Hobbes too, with him sometimes wise beyond his years, and sometimes just being hyper-articulate about his various selfish whims. And * * * The Babysitters Club, full stop. It seems that any time they actually ACT like typical 11 or 13 year olds Stacey would find them quite immature. Of course thinking you're SO much more mature than everyone else is also typical 13 year old behavior as well.
• Psychonauts, sort of. The characters are all probably between 8 and 12, and they still have relationships, unrequited love, etc. But at the same time, they still have the songwriting skills of young kids, think friendship bracelets are awfully important, and have the general maturity of that age group, such as one camper assuming that his father hates him and wants him to die just because the father is very strict.
• As was mentioned, this is effectively covered by Wise Beyond Their Years already.
  • The two are distinct. Wise Beyond Their Years involves a character who is more mature than most kids should be, and wiser than most of the adults they meet. Huey Freeman comes to mind.

This is about when kids are in plots and situations that would usually be used with adults. This often implies Wise Beyond Their Years, but it doesn't necessarily has to do with wisdom, just being essentially substitute adults. It's common in plots where the entire cast is mostly kids.

• The kids of Peanuts occasionally take on amazingly adult responsibilities, such as the time Charlie Brown checked himself into the hospital.
• The South Park kids have gotten more and more adult as time has gone by, for definitions of "adult" that fit within South Park.
• A good example is Lord Of The Flies, which uses both straight examples and variations of this to send a moral message, but only has a couple characters who are Wise Beyond Their Years
• Hey Arnold, where the characters are supposed to be in fourth grade, yet no one finds it odd that Arnold's coach asks him to be the best man at his wedding.

I think we need this, both as a concept and as a potholeable phrase. Basically, it's the show an average person is most likely to think of upon hearing a particular trope description.

It's not necessarily the Trope Maker, the Trope Codifier, or the Trope Namer (though it could be). It doesn't necessarily contain any Crowning Moments, though it probably does. It is almost certainly not the Ur Example, but it is what many tropers actually mean when they say Ur Example — and it ought to replace the misuses of that term.

Obviously, determining the Poster Child for any particular trope will involve, if not subjectivity, then at least a certain amount of cooperation and debate. Nor will every trope have one, since to be a Poster Child a work must a) contain an unusually prominent or memorable use of the trope and b) be widely known.

But this is an important concept, one that we don't seem to have and that people are obviously grasping for (hence much of the flinging-about of Ur Example). I think we should have a go at pinning it down.

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

Examples:

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

Can't find it and Lost And Found hasn't turned up anything, so: the one where the bad guy is hiding behind a newspaper somewhere near the hero, usually lowering it briefly to glare at the hero in a manner which clearly marks them as a villain to the audience. Used to be quite common, but probably a Dead Horse Trope now. (Although the broader idea of a villain being present but unnoticed is probably alive - for example, the heroes leave a restaurant and the camera pans to the shifty-looking guy who was watching them from a table in the corner. Do we have that?) An example: the Nazi agent following Indiana Jones in Raiders of the Lost Ark is behind a newspaper (well, a big magazine, anyway) on the plane.

Is it just me or are there a lot of commercials these days that reference how crappy our economy currently is and why you should buy their stuff anyway?

So is there a trope where commercials take advantage of real life events to hawk their products?

Imagine an unholy fusion of Beyond The Impossible, Hot Blooded, and Large Ham. Now turn it into a character. This character type is the one where the entirety of his motivation can be boiled down to "Why? Because I Can!". What differentiates this from a Hot Blooded Idiot Hero is that not only is this his motivation, but his ability to do things stems from it.

When most characters say "We have to break the laws of physics!", these guy will just go "Physics? Eh." and start flying or generating energy beams or whatever. These people will quite literally do the impossible on a regular basis because they are either unaware that it's impossible, or because they just don't acknowledge it.

Any attempt to explain exactly how they do what they do will inevitably end with saying "I don't know. They just...did it."

It's kind of hard to explain without examples, so here we go:

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• Jack Rakan of Mahou Sensei Negima is probably the most over the top example. He repeatedly does stuff that everyone admits is entirely impossible. Most notable is his escaped from an inescapable dimension: Apparently, he just decided he was going to escape from the inescapable dimension. So he did. Then there's his "RAKAN FOR-THE-HELL-OF-IT PUNCH!!" tells you all you need to know about what he's like. Evangeline sums it up best:
  Evangeline: That lunkhead has broken every rule in the book so often the book might as well not exist.
• Kamina and Simon from Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann. "Hey, let's blow up those enemy Ganmen with the sheer force of our awesomeness!" *BOOM*
  • Kittan's Heroic Sacrifice also counts. Especially the part where he supersized his drill with sheer willpower.
• Ichigo from Bleach sometimes acts like this. "It takes at least 10 years to attain Bankai!" "Screw that. I'll do it in three days." Three days later...
• Real Life example: Sir Edmund Hilary. His reason for climbing Mount Everest? "Because it's there."

note: I am aware this the description of this character type is kind of vague; I have a good idea of what these characters are like, but it's really hard to explain adequately.

Counterpart to Only Stupid People May Pass.

The game isn't about you being evil. No, you're supposed to be a hero. Nowhere does the game give you that "good or evil" choice.

But there's a point you can't get past without doing something that, it is very clear from the get-go, is very, very wrong. And there's no good alternative, no gentle alternative, no peaceful alternative....

E.g., in Travians, you once have to commit insurance fraud so one guy can get a lot of money to help out his farm - in exchange for taking money from a guy whose only "crime" so far is to play up his wares a little too highly (hey look, a slinky dog! wait a minute, I don't need this, and it cost way more than a useless item should).

Later in the game, you're told to get a large amount of money, and your three options are: cheat someone out of their retirement money, rob a bank, or steal a vase from your rich king friend. (Okay, it's possible the guide might not be telling me the possible good alternative, but, given the game, it's just as likely that there is no such alternative.) And to pour salt in the wound, you get punished for having done such an evil thing... by being fined some 30-50 OP (the points used to play the game). Hence the game sets you back about a day's worth of play for being so "stupid". (And if you read the guide, you obviously choose the lesser of two evils to you, hence robbing this couple of their retirement money suddenly seems like the best move.)

Even later, you meet a swindler, and instead of finding a way to get by him peacefully, you have to destroy his main source of income by poisoning his lake with salt.

I seem to recall a scene like this in Breath Of Fire 2, where your friend Bo persuades you to steal something early on... but I forget. I always got annoyed by that part.

Anyway, Up For Grabs.

Your hero might be the smartest, most inventive genius on the planet. He may have dealt with tons of different situations, a veritable plethora of challenges, and can take on anything that comes their way.

But, guess what. When the chips are down, he can't deal with one tense moral situation.

Someone's on the brink between good and evil, two steps from a Freak Out, and the hero, not entirely prepared, will accidentally push them in entirely the wrong direction. This may be due to not knowing what to do, can't emphasize with the person, otherwise not being able to say what they feel, or merely through saying the wrong thing entirely.

Note, when the hero does not actually screw up the situation and might have a chance to fix things, and the other character rejects it anyway, it's not an example of this.

The examples will probably explain this better.

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• Batman is the king of this. He's stern, harsh, and, at times, cold, which often overshadows his compassion and understanding. Depending on the writer, this can result in him handling a morally challenged character much harsher then he should, pushing them into a corner and making them think that they have no choice but to fight, even and especially when he's actually trying to get the character to chance themselves before it's too late. This happens less often in the comics, but has some very memorable examples in adaptations:
  • In Batman The Animated Series, Batman is generally understanding and even handed; most of his attempts to turn people were, unfortunately, made to people who were too far gone. However, in the semi Re Boot The New Batman Adventures, Bats was more cold than before. In an interesting turn of this, his harsh and overly violent treatment of a Punch Clock Villain (in front of his family, no less), makes his sidekick quit.
  • In The Batman, Bats gets one of these when trying to prevent Ethan Bennet, now Clayface (but forbidden to use his powers), from trying to get vengeance on the Joker (for turning him into a Clayface), who was robbing the building Ethan was working security for. Batman, imposing and stern as he is, doesn't make it clear that he was trying to help him and get him to go back to his normal life, and instead makes Ethan think that Batman was going to arrest him for using his powers, and, thus, that he had no options left. He attacks Batman, eventually listens to The Joker instead, and becomes a full time Career Criminal.
  • In Teen Titans, Robin channels his inner Batman in the episode "The Beast Within," where, after being doused with chemicals, Beast Boy turns into a Were Wolf-esque monster when he gets angry, and apparently attacks and abducts his teammate Raven. After he was stopped, Robin has to interrogate him, but Beast Boy can't remember anything. Robin, never wavering from his stern tone, notes that he has to remember something, because if not, with Raven in a semi-coma, he has not choice but to assume the worst and arrest him. Unfortunately, he makes it sound like an ultimatum and a threat, and, feeling as though he's being treated like any other criminal instead of a friend, Beast Boy becomes angry again. He turns into the monster again, and they have to chase him across the city before the situation gets resolved.

Do we have this one already?

When something that has been completely obvious to the audience is revealed and the characters in the show act incredulous. Played intentionally for comedy. Trope Namer is Frogfucius' shocking revelation to Mallow in Super Mario RPG.

All the lights go out save for a mysterious rectangle of light around the characters eyes. Meant to suggest hypnosis or a merely mesmerizing effect.

• Dracula was given this close up in the film adaptation with Bela Legosi, and is likely the Trope Maker
• Gomez and Mortica Addams display this in the film adaptations of The Addams Family. Likely as homage.
• La Chieffe , played by none other than Orson Wells in the 1967 version of Casino Royale
• P'Gell was once drawn this way in The Spirit

Archetypical tough guys, loners, and anti-heroes often give off an aura of authority around them, a countenance that gives even the most courageous individuals at least a tiny bit of fear and caution. As a result, these characters are apt at intimidating anyone they meet into doing what they want, whether it be doing their bidding or merely just leaving them alone. But for every intimidating loner, there's one person for whom their gruff exterior will have no effect. It could because they know who they're dealing with personally, and, thus, don't really take their glares and threats seriously, or maybe it could be because they're so innocent and upbeat that they don't even consider their threats.

In any case, you have the one character who absolutely refuses to be intimidated. Usually, this characters is one of the loner's closest friends, since he or she's the only one who is unafraid enough to tell them like it is, correct them when they're wrong, and speak freely to them. Usually, this is the one character that our tough guy really respects, because they're the only one who they can trust to be honest, frank, and the only ones who truly know them.

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Example:

• Trope Namer Alfred Pennyworth is a quintessential example of this; as the man who practically raised Bruce Wayne, he is absolutely immune to Batman's intimidation, one of the few who can unflinchingly confront him to his face if need be, and is the first to deflate him when he gets too obsessive. Alfred is one of the few people Batman has complete faith in, and, in fact, doesn't exactly try or desire to to control Alfred (beyond the whole butler/employer relationship they have, which is... complicated) the way he controls the rest of his world.
• Keiko Yukimura is one of the few people who knows Yusuke Urameshi and isn't scared of him, and she doesn't even allow his attitude to effect her. As a result, she often acts as his conscience, and isn't afraid to knock him on his ass if he crosses the line.

Seen It A Million Times, whenever a character is bailed out for something that's the end of it. They never worry about a trial, or being forced into jail or do community service. Once they're bailed out that's the end of it. This is in cases when characters aren't on the run in the first place: then charges from skipping town don't really mean anyway if they plan on spending their life on the run.

Lois: "I hear he's nothing but Gotham trash: rich, spoiled, and... (Bruce Wayne steps off the plane)... absolutely gorgeous!"

The Batman / Superman Movie

That's a horrible, horrible title, but it gets the point across, I guess.

A character makes fun of or complains about another character about their looks or something similar, and is awestruck mid-sentence once they walk through the door. Most often done in the case of a formal event, with friends joking that a friend of the opposite sex would be completely out of place, only to find out that She Cleans Up Nicely.

Related to Love At First Sight, but only when the character haven't met before. See also Distracted By The Sexy. This often happens to the Deadpan Snarker, the cynic, a Jerk Ass, or someone similar; who you wouldn't expect to act that way. This also often happens between friends, especially if the two characters are long term Just Friends.

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Examples:

• The page quote comes from The Batman Superman Movie, where Lois Lane criticizes Bruce Wayne while waiting for him to arrive in Metropolis, and is lovestruck the moment she sees him.
• Happens to Cindy in Jimmy Neutron when Jimmy shows up in a tux for a wedding. Libby has to snap her out of it.

Differentiated from an ordinary Hostage Situation in that the hostage taker and the hostage are one and the same. Double points if the person in question is pointing a gun at their own head. Do we have this one? Would be made exceptionally hilarious with the application of Kill Us Both

Blazing Saddles- When the town reacts violently to the idea of a black sheriff, the memorable "Back off or this nigger gets it!" sequence ensues.

The Eighth Doctor, in the TV Movie

Zaphod Beeblebrox- "As my first act as president, I hereby kidnap the president."

John Q- A borderline case, in that his death would actually accomplish something.

Characters getting off -literally, from violence.

• Ikki Tousen comments on how the fighters find fighting erotic. Their battles will overlap with foreplay .
• The Invisibles has an issue starting with a woman getting shot and cumming as she dies.
• An Orson Scott Card short story has teenagers projecting temporary bodies into the past to get hit by cars. One girl, returning, says dying is sex.
• Hidan from Naruto is implied to have an orgasm every time he finishes his opponent off during his sadomasochistic stabbing ritual.
• Genkaku from Deadman Wonderland is shown getting really turned on when he watches Nagi crush some poor sap's skull.
• In the Black Cat anime, let's just say that Creed... really likes being hurt and beat up by Train (especially while they're fighting). One fighting scene between them quickly turns creepy when Train ends up in a compromising position on top of Creed, who breathlessly cries out that Train is "the best". Pretty sure he got off from that.
• Fasalina from Gun X Sword had an armor with a staff; its main fighting style looked more like pole dancing than martial arts. It has a attack that involved spraying the enemy with something she called sweet nectar
• Egyptian stories say that Set in his final battle with Horus sometimes said things that... may have a few meanings...
• Meaning of Life by Disturbed is often confused for battle music. Listen to the lyrics. You'll hear it.
• Tsukuyomi of Mahou Sensei Negima. If you know the series, you'll see...
• In Full Metal Panic, apparently Gauron's idea of consummating his love for Sousuke is to have a bloody double suicide - namely, in the form of their Huge Mechas beating each other up and grappling each other and having his self destruct. Not to mention that in the novels, it's made pretty clear that, during Gauron's fight with Sousuke in Khanka, Gauron was getting off on the idea of violently killing Sousuke and then raping his dead body. Yeah, the man doesn't have normal fetishes or tastes.
• Xenia Onatopp from Goldeneye.
• Truth In Television for some, at least. I know I've read some semi-fictional Vietnam book that mentioned going into battle aroused, and judging by the shape and orientation of some codpieces in suits of armor, I'd say they were prepared for the possibility back then, too.

Definitely Needs A Better Title to the extreme.

In Real Life, elephants have no particular problem with mice, rats, or any other sorts of rodents. In story-world, one glimpse of a rat will cause it to panic and turn into a literal Rogue Elephant.

Seen It A Million Times, but examples:

• Eunice the elephant in The Incredible Toon Machine freaks out if she sees Sid Mouse and turns around.
• Ellie the elephant in Donkey Kong Country 3 freaks out if she runs into one of the rat enemies.

Do We Have This One?

Either the stock phrase or the more general trope of using "doing it for the kids" as an excuse for things?

Obviously used heavily by Helen Lovejoy on The Simpsons

The villain has just shown us just how evil he can be, spelling out his plan and chuckling with malicious glee at the prospect of being able to wreak his evil will on unsuspecting victims. As he stares evilly at (or around) the camera, it zooms into his face, and then everything fades out. Everything, that is, except his eyes, which remain for a few seconds, large and evilly glowing as ever, until they too fade out as the scene ends. A common alternative is not necessarily to have everything fade, but to zoom in one the eyes and have them glow much brighter than everything else.

Seen It A Million Times

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Examples:

• This was possibly most common in 90's Animation. Disney animated shows in particular did this often.
  • Darkwing Duck did this several times, at least once with nearly every villain.
• Non villain example. Daffy Duck did this in "Daffy Duck Hunt", with the normal iris out stopping at one of his eyes, until he blinks to end the cartoon.

The right side of the tracks, she was born and raised

In a great big old house, full of butlers and maids.

She says no one is better than I, I know I'm just an average guy,

No football hero or smooth Don Juan,

Got empty pockets, you see I'm a poor man's son.

I can't give her the things that money can buy

But I'll never, never, never make my baby cry.

"Uptight (Everything Is All Right)", Stevie Wonder

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

You know the story, of True Love (why isn't that a trope name?) that transcends little things like money and caste. The tale of the poor Unlucky Everydude falling for the daughter of the wealthy family. This can start in a few ways. Maybe it was Love At First Sight. Maybe she's sneaking out for a night on the town and they run into each other. Maybe they've been friends their whole lives, and the wealth divide this never really mattered.

In any case, this usually ends up in one of three plots:

• Poor guy and rich girl are in love, and neither one cares about their differences in wealth. People around them, however, do. Usually, one of the other ways this can go bubbles under the surface as the plot goes on.
• Poor guy falls for a girl even though she's rich and/or from a powerful family. Undaunted, our hero goes on some Zany Scheme to get her to notice and/or be impressed by him. This usually ends with the girl revealing that she doesn't care about wealth, and that she loves him for who he is.
• Rich girl and poor guy fall for each other, but the guy is either intimidated by her wealth once he finds out or doesn't think he's good enough for her. As before, she usually doesn't care about such things, and she usually convinces him to go out with her anyway.

Of course, there's the case where the rich girl wants nothing to do with the poor guy, but slowly warms up to him, which is a different case entirely. Often leads to a Guess Whos Coming To Dinner situation.

Note that the roles are rarely ever reversed; the rich one in the relationship is almost always the girl, while the guy is the Unlucky Everydude.

Also often leads to cases of I Cant Believe A Guy Like You Would Notice Me, either with severe case of insecurity (like the third type above), or simply the poor guy being constantly feeling lucky and appreciative that someone so rich could fall for him.

This is an essentially a blanket/Super Trope for love between a poor-low to middle class person and an extremely rich person (just like how Cake Eater is a large trope about relationships between a teenager/younger person and an adult/older person). That is to say, it isn't meant to be particularly specific.

The Trope Namer is the song "The Woman's Got Soul," by The Impressions, which is actually, in some ways, about the opposite of this, though also can be the reasoning behind this as well.

Seen It Less Than A Million Times But Still Relatively Often. Can't think of many examples off the top of my head though.

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Examples:

• The tale of Aladdin is possibly the Ur Example, though what kind it is depends on the adaptation. The original was solely of the second, "zany scheme to get the rich princess," variety, before that kind of thing generally ended in failure. The Disney version is a mixture of the second and third, "insecure about his poverty," variety, as well as having the Princess desire to leave the palace and live on her own.
• Danny and Sam (though it's less poor/rich than middle class/incredibly rich) in Danny Phantom, though Sam doesn't really care much about her family's comically vast fortune, rarely tells anyone, and the series itself only occasionally draws attention to it. Despite that, it's pretty clear that Sam's parents don't exactly like her friends, and the various unexplainable ghost related hijinks that happen over the course of the series don't help much.
• Every example of an nerdish, unpopular guy/girl dating a cheerleader/jock, that doesn't involve The Libby, a Secret Romance, Defrosting Ice Queen (unless it's after the defrosting bit), or the unpopular one suddenly joining the popular crowd and has to decide between his new popularity and his old friends (what a mouthful). These are actually rarer than they seem (I can only think of one right now).
  • Peter Parker and Liz Allan are played this way in The Spectacular Spiderman, though Peter eventually becomes something of a Cool Nerd; only a couple characters actually cared about the popular/unpopular distinction, and that number has actually dwindled to one (or one and a half) over the series.
• Lois and Peter in Family Guy, as shown by an early episode where Peter is at odds with her tyrannical father in order to gain his approval, which he never does. She marries him despite her fathers insistence that she doesn't or his covert attempts to kill Peter.

Since the early 90's and the shenanigans of Media Watchdogs over more violent games such as Doom and Mortal Kombat, we've seen a trend of an increasing volume of games with lots of violence. The best sellers went from being Super Mario Bros, Sonic The Hedgehog, and the like to Halo, Grand Theft Auto, Gears Of War, among others.

Additionally, the average age of a gamer has been increasing. With most gamers being at least 18 years old these days, developers need to cater to their demographics and produce more games with mature content.

The side effect of this trend? Less violent, more all-ages friendly games start to get crap for being "kiddy." Even games that are more mature get in trouble with gamers if they don't have enough blood and guts or, God forbid, there's no blood or guts at all, because no violence is more disgusting than lots of violence. Simply put, It's Not Violent Enough, So It Sucks.

The idea that violence = quality is wrong for a number of reasons. Take the aforementioned Super Mario series for example. Would a new Mario game still sell lots if Goombas exploded into blood upon being stomped on? Maybe some people would find it hilarious, but at the same time it would, besides being Nightmare Fuel-y, be a perversion of the classic game series we all know and love, and it would get horrible reactions from a type of group that starts with "M" and ends with "edia Watchdogs."

Of course, the opposite holds true. Would Mortal Kombat still be its old self if you made it Lighter And Softer with no or severely-toned-down Fatalities and whatnot? Probably not. Balance is the key here.

And of course, just because a game is violent doesn't mean it's good. You can have barrels of blood and human organs flying everywhere, but what good is your game if it's unplayable? Regardless of how violent a game is, its most important aspect is the gameplay. Kid-friendly games can be just as fun as violent ones, as long as their gameplay holds water.

See also Avoid The Dreaded G Rating and Rated M For Money, which are about the entertainment industry being afraid to crank out non-violent works, and Bloodless Carnage, which is a good target for this reaction. Compare Animation Age Ghetto, where animated works are shunned as automatically crap and for kids.

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Examples:

• WE NEED MOAR

• There was an example on the Video Games section of So Bad Its Good complaining that GHOST Squad's Bloodless Carnage ruined the game. Actually, most Light Gun Games for that matter get this reaction for being bloodless.
• Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe had a ton of Internet Backdraft when the first footage of the fatalities were leaked, and fans discovered that it was all merely Bloodless Carnage.
  • Funnily enough, the whole "hatred of the game due to lack of gore" for MK vs DC was eventually overtaken by "the gameplay is great even if the fatalities are horrible," even on the game's forum, which is usually full of Internet Backdraft. And, evetually, the dislike for the fatalities came down to them being largely uncreative and uninspired rather than lacking gore.
  • The Sega Genesis version of Mortal Kombat was much more popular than the Super NES version, even though it had worse graphics and sound. The reason? Blood.

Do We Have This?

This is a metatrope for when two characters or plots that definitely aren't Expies of one another, or even borrowing from the same archetypes, manage to align uncannily well.

For example, let's say you have a quiet loner type of a guy, who's already involved in what many people would consider morally shady dealings. His main motivation behind this, though, is to impress a beautiful young redhead that considers him a friend, but he would like to be closer to. He decides he wants to join a group of very bad people in order to become powerful enough to win the girl's affections, but instead she takes up with his archrival- a spotlight-stealing jock who bullies him every chance he gets. He decides he wants to kill the jock, still dead-set on impressing the girl. Instead, as a result of what he does, the girl ends up dead, and he becomes hard and bitter.

This is a synopsis of Dr. Horrible's Sing Along Blog. It is also Severus Snape's backstory.

I'm sure there are more examples of this.

This might fall under Names To Run Away From Really Fast, but there's no category for it so I decided to stick it here.

Basically, these names don't denote an evil or violent person or creature, but rather an object (or on rare occasions, a person) that's just dangerous to itself or others. Frequently taken from historical events. It's why nobody wants to ride on a ship (or spaceship) called the Titanic or the Hindenberg, and why anything bearing the name Icarus is begging for a wing-clipping. It's probably not a good idea to name your vehicle the Doom Buggy, either, if you plan on driving your friends around in it.

Examples: Futurama had an entire Titanic (the movie) pastiche on a space cruiser named Titanic, which looked like the original Titanic with added scifi bits, and was sucked into a black hole.

Needs A Better Title. Alternate Titles: Big Red Target Name

Just For Fun. We come up with examples of fictional characters we think are the Second Coming of Christ and why. Not to be confused with Trope Pantheons.

Examples:

• Dean Winchester: He has a wacky martyr complex, he's been resurrected from the dead, he now has frequent contact with angels, and he's trying to stop the apocalypse.
• The Doctor (Which Doctor? That's your choice.): He has saved the world numerous times, has recently been caught in Christ-like poses), and he must make sacrifices for the greater good.

These are just stock examples, but you can get really creative and think of ways that characters like Sauron, Sylar, and Ichigo are the next Jesus.

When a character, any character, suddenly unsheathes or otherwise unleashes some form of weapon...almost certainly very sharp and potentially a literal part of their body, especially around the hands or knuckles area...very suddenly and while in a position directly analagous to that of a seemingly-rabid wild predator. Might or might not include the distinctive sound of metal sliding against metal in some fashion during said unsheathing.

Gee, I dunno, should we have this trope as seperate page? (Plus, there's a red link in Standard Sci Fi Fleet page)

Space fighters, staples in non-literature science fiction - fighter aircraft in space.

Well...I'll probably think of better writeup...but, in any case, I think it's better if we can list non-literature media that does not feature this, or provide some sort of subversion. Or...at least a sensible design one that does not need for aerodynamic design just because it was fighter aircraft IN SPACE!

Any exceptions? (sorry...I write it in the wrong way)

Original author:Unknown Troper @ 76.227.148.203 (edit by Master Knight: removing Naruto spoiler hint)

"Mockingbirds don't do one thing but make music for us to enjoy. They don't eat up people's gardens, don't nest in corncribs, they don't do one thing but sing their hearts out for us. That's why it's a sin to kill a mockingbird."

Up For Grabs

There's one thing that a villan can do that will end up with them permanently hated inside and possibly outside the universe of a work as well. Doing something heinous to or killing a pure hearted individual (usually female) or at the least someone with a solid good alignment. In universe, this typically triggers an Unstoppable Rage in those who witness the act or worse, trigger said person's Start Of Darkness, usually connected to Roaring Rampage Of Revenge. Out of universe, the fan base depending on the work in question, may consider the act a Moral Event Horizon, judging said villan to be a Complete Monster. The effect is worse if said victim was an Ensemble Dark Horse.

Typically a major Player Punch to the fans if in a video game. Related to Kill The Cutie and sometimes Break The Cutie as this trope deals with the reaction. A sub-trope of Moral Event Horizon.

Examples:

• Named for a speech in To Kill A Mockingbird, quoted above.
• Maria's death in the Sonic The Hedgehog series is Shadow's Start Of Darkness and caused him to begin a Roaring Rampage Of Revenge.
• Martel's death had a similar effect on Mithos in Tales Of Symphonia.
• Soma underwent all three reactions in the Castlevania series after a cult "killed" his child hood friend. Subverted as it was a fake. Played straight in the worst ending.
• An example under the solid good alignment group is when Mao FULLY goes over the edge after Super Hero Aurum kills Raspberyl in the third Disgaea, destroying the entire planet and himself.
• Chapter 437, need I say more? Caused an Unstoppable Rage, nearly caused Naruto to release the fox, and caused a massive fire storm/collective mass freakout in the fan base. Subverted as the victim lived.
• Subverted in Persona4 with Nanako's Disney Death as the target of the party's rage in the worst ending was an idiot who didn't know the TV world was dangerous. In the normal and true ending, its revealed that this particular act was actually Adachi's Moral Event Horizon.
• The main reason Sephiroth is known as a big time villan (besides from FF 7 fanboys) is because of this trope.
• In Revenge Of The Sith, Anakin truly crosses the Moral Event Horizon when he kills younglings in the Temple.
• Cave Story, of course, sets up its first major Player Punch by presenting Toroko as the game's mockingbird.

This is mentioned briefly on the Ho Yay page, and while it is a subtrope of Ho Yay, I think it's becoming popular enough to have its own page.

This is when fans start shipping two brothers together in Fan Fic and fan communities, mainly because of the chemistry the characters have onscreen. The brothers may hug a lot or they may not be touchy-feely at all, but still rely on each other for emotional support. Even if the rest of the fanbase thinks this is completely Squicky, the pairing usually has a devoted fanbase (and those who don't ship it will usually recognize that canon subtext can support it).

Basically, this trope is Ho Yay Meets Brother Sister Incest.

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Examples:

• Sam and Dean Winchester, who are possibly the ur-example of this trope. Fans of this pairing love it to death and call it Wincest.
• Peter and Nathan Petrelli, with all of their hugs and and kisses (to the head/cheek) in Season 1. Now that there's so much angst between Peter and Nathan, the pairing has only gotten juicier. This is called Petrellicest.
• The Elric Brothers.
• Fred and George Weasley. This is an example of Twincest (not to be confused with Wincest above).
• Connor and Murphy McManus. Also an example of Twincest.
• [[Inuyasha]]. Inuyasha and Sesshomaru are sometimes shipped. They're technically half brothers but I think this still qualifies.

Exactly What It Says On The Tin

Examples

• The Dark•Matter setting for d20 modern has the world end on 2012
• In Persona 4 December 2011 has the protagonists attempt stop the destruction of Inaba and it acctually happens if you wait till 2012 without finishing the dungeon.

Do We Have This? I guess everyone thought someone else would do it.

We all know Procrastination is the putting off of an unpleasant task until the last minute. Hell, if your reading this, you probably are procrastinating right now. The Ridiculous Procrastinator is someone who does this to such ridiculous extremes that it is almost funny. They will put off writing a 10,000 word paper until the night before it is due, and once they sit down to start it, they will find half a million petty tasks that do not need to be done to avoid writing that paper. Often, they will find that We Could Have Avoided This in the fact that the assignment practically writes itself once you get going.

Some common tactics:

• Sharpening Pencils
• Checking E-mail
• Cleaning Room
• Feeding Pets
• Asking friends what they are doing (often finding out they are hard at work or done.).
• Doing something nice for an annoying Sibling (the first person to notice what is going on).
• Lather Rinse and Repeat.

-Examples-

• Probably the Trope Codifier is an episode of Spongebob Squarepants, where the title character goes to ridiculous lengths to avoid writing a paper for his homework.

• Probably more, but I'll add them later.

This is where a network or a studio uses their own catalog of past shows/movies/whatever for when characters are watching television/films/whatever, but not in a manner that suggests Product Placement. Can be related to rights issues.

• Garibaldi from Babylon 5 was a big fan of Looney Tunes, and could occasionally be seen watching the cartoons in his quarters. Babylon 5 was made by Warner Bros.

Named for the scene in Arachnophobia when the exterminator ventures into the spooky barn to kill spiders only to find that the so-called spider expert has been killed (bested, if you will) by the very creatures he's spent his life studying.

Or to put it simply, when the ubermaster has been mastered by his creation/obsession.

Think Dr. Frankenstein. Think Muldoon in Jurassic Park. Think The Green Goblin in Spiderman 1 when he's stabbed to death by his own blade.

Quick Question: Which has a larger killing potential: a hand grenade, or an artillery shell? Why, the hand grenade, of course. You could stay in a field of artillery shells all day and emerge unscathed. But if someone lobs a frag within 15 meters, you're doomed. It's as simple as that.

Probably an Acceptable Break From Reality - After all, it's very hard to run away from an artillery shell you can't see. Trope also applies to Mortars, Howitzers, and anything that can lob a projectile farther than you can see.

Examples: Video Games:

• In Call Of Duty 4 and 5, the artillery strikes in multiplayer are simply pathetic.
  • The Artillery Strikes in Battlefield 2 and 2142 are only marginally better.
• In Battalion Wars II, artillery units can not kill infantry. Period. Battleships can, but they fire more shells and bigger shells.
• The Combine in Half Life 2, either genre-savvy, creative, or just plain dumb, have taken all the explosives out of their artillery shells, replacing it with headcrabs.
• On-And-Off-Again-Trope in Command And Conquer. In Tiberian Dawn, the MRLS is extremely powerful, while the artillery has high-explosive, paper-thin shells mounted with air-brakes. In Red Alert, the same artillery is outranged by normal Tesla Coils. In Tiberian Sun, the Nod Artillery is a Game Breaker and the Hover MLRS an quite effective assault unit.

TV:

• Happens at least twice in Star Trek: In the Original Series, during the begginning of the episode "Arena", mortar shells explode within mere feet of Captain Kirk, but he is unaffected. Worse, it is implied that the enemy is firing advanced projectiles. Happens again in the DS 9 episode "Nor the battle to the strong".

Real Life:

• In the week preceding The Battle of the Somme, the British bombarded German positions 24/7. This bombardment did almost nothing.

Alternate titles are Annoying Artillery and Artillery Strikes Out; Up For Grabs.

A Did Not Do The Research subtrope often found in cartoons, comics and advertising. When musical notes are shown on screen, they very rarely resemble actual written music: notes will have stems and flags pointing the wrong way, and if they're shown on a staff, expect there to be some very jarring intervals and an arbitrary number of beats per bar.

An example of wrong-shaped notes can be found in xkcd, although an earlier one averted it.

This is what I expected the Ghost In The Machine page to be about. It's when some kind of being (ghost, demon, whatever) gets into a machine and controls it (actually, usually a whole bunch of machines). Examples:

• Technus from Danny Phantom
• Rotom from Pokemon
• one of the demons in Buffy the Vampire Slayer (can't remember his name, but he was a Sealed Evil In A Can who got scanned into a computer and then was on the internet and became Willow's internet boyfriend).

"Seek counsel of him who makes you weep, and not of him who makes you laugh."

Arabic Proverb

"You're the same way you were the day we met. A pain who speaks the truth."

Hiei to Kurama, Yu Yu Hakusho

Yeah, bad name, I know. The right word for this is right on the tip of my tongue (finger, mind, whatever), but I can't think of it. So I went with a thesaurus example instead. Meh. Anyway:

You've got to pick yourself an advisor, but, you have a problem. Everyone around you is a Yes Man: spineless, coddling, and/or too concerned with sucking up or their own aims to give the truth. Luckily, there's at least one person who isn't afraid to tell it like it is.

This kind of advisor isn't actually cruel, just blunt and outspoken. They'll never let their charge take the easy way out, and never sugar coat the truth, and never afraid to criticize. As a result, their wisdom is either completely appreciated by their students, or violently rejected if said student is the egotistical type.

If they aren't a mentor, but a regular part of the group instead, then they're usually the Deadpan Snarker, the constant criticizer, and more or less the one that annoys everyone but still gets their complete respect. All in all, this is who you want when it comes to finding a most trusted ally, and it's probably better to find people like this than rather than your average minion.

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• Alfred is like this to Bruce Wayne, and, as a result, he's one of the people Batman respects the most.
• Genkai in Yu Yu Hakusho, whose favorite pastime is to call her student a dumbass/moron/dimwit/etc and outline just how stupidly he's dealing with the current situation. All in all, she isn't afraid trick, insult or nearly kill Yusuke if it means he'll finally stop fooling around and see things clearly. Also Kurama, who is both kind and brutally honest, due to both hundreds of years of experience being a bandit and experiencing the redeeming Power Of Love firsthand.
• Baron Wulfenbach in Girl Genius states early on that he prefers his men criticize him when possible, rather than see flaws but be too afraid to voice them.

Something happened between Alice and Bob and they broke up, and Bob is long gone. Alice loves Bob more than anything in the world, but she isn't upset - because she's committed to the belief that sooner or later he's going to return. If there are other characters around, they are likely to perceive this as denial and encourage her to start seeing other people, but she won't hear of it, because she has to be available when he returns.

A popular topic for songs - the Trope Namer is Taylor Dayne's "Love Will Lead You Back" - but applies to fiction as well. This is Truth In Television, and can be particularly tragic when Bob is not merely gone, but actually dead. Done well, this can evoke a sense of sadness and an admiration of the character's dedication. Done poorly, the pining character may leave the audience saying "get over it!"

Other examples:

• Tim Mc Graw's "She Can't Be Really Gone" (I don't know when she'll come back / She must intend to come back)
• Jewel's "You Were Meant for Me":
  Dreams last for so long
  Even after you're gone
  I know you love me, and soon you will see
  You were meant for me
  And I was meant for you
• Need some examples from fiction

The classic way for a salesman to put one over on their gullible buyer. Simply act like someone else is clamoring to buy the exact same thing you're about to sell. Either hire some actors to pose as fake prospective buyers, act like a random phone call you're getting is a buyer calling in, or be really convincing when you say that you've got a lot of offers already. That way, your buyer will think that they have to make a decision right away. Chances are, they'll bite out of sheer indecisiveness rather than stop and make a well thought out decision.

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Seen It A Million Times, but not so many examples come to mind:

• In The Haunted Mansion, the "Fake Phone Call" version is used by the Jim Evers when he sells a house in the beginning of the movie.

When a series' backstory is, upon further reflection, surprisingly grim and depressing, but you're not likely to notice it due to the series' comparatively light tone.

The example that comes to mind is Mewtwo's backstory in Pokemon - when you stop and think about it, it goes above and beyond Cloning Blues into flat-out Deus Angst Machina for all involved.

A stock line to reveal something is a really, really big deal is for the Master of Ceremonies to imply some very important personage is in attendance, ie. the Pope and must be addressed personally ("Your Holiness"). Other possiblities include a royal ("Your Majesty") or politician ("Mr President").

There is no particular need to actually show the important personage in the audience, the line itself is usually enough.

Seen It A Million Times but can't think of any particular examples.

Sometimes creators of a show will put in references or jokes that only they understand, usually inside jokes from their childhoods or workplaces. The explanations for them may be given later on in commentaries or interviews.

• On The Venture Bros, Dean calls Orpheus's pendant a "Dracula trophy". I forget the exact details, but it was phrase from one of the creator's childhood.
• Tim and Eric use the word "chippy" a lot, which they got from some weird foreign porn they once saw.
• In Homestar Runner, "Kick it out, Behan" from mile was something the creators' mom said at track meets.

Are there other examples?

There are three forms of angst. There is Wangst, the angst of whiners and children, there is Angst What Angst which is angst that is barely even felt by heroes, and then there is Mangst, the manly angst of the Badass and the real man. A man who feels Mangst is the kind of guy who carries around a picture of the wife and child that were murdered by the Big Bad, and just looks at it maybe once every three or four days when no one is looking, and never talks about it. When a Badass has Mangst, he may have an inner monologue, but his source of Mangst gets a regular mention, but not the excessive kind of wangst you get from a wangsty character. Real men angst without being wussies about it.

Examples Sin City - A fine example of Mangst, two of the characters are filled to the brim with it.

The regular medical caretaker who treats the heroes and insists they stay in bed rather than leave for more adventuring. This is typically Played For Laughs.

Usually a woman. Can easily overlap with The Mc Coy.

• Madam Pomfrey of the Harry Potter series
• Most Star Trek doctors
• Occasionally, Dr. Janet Frasier on Stargate SG-1

He dresses neatly, smokes a pipe, and is a mix of dorkishness and authority. He may not actually be a father, but at least outwardly resembles this archetype. Examples of this include Bob from Enzyte commercials, Bob from the Church of the Subgenius, Father from Kids Next Door, and Smokey from Ghastly's Ghastly webcomic.

A simple trope. A character, race or species whose means of survival inevitably leads to the death of other sentient beings. Sometimes the actual occurrence of death is required as a form of Metaphysical Fuel. Needless to say, beings with this trait aren't very welcome anywhere they go and humanizing them is a ready source of conflict due to the implications of What Measure Is A Non Human. For these characters, simply discarding their 'habit' is a Heroic Sacrifice as they will die if someone else doesn't, barring a miracle of some sort. The best they can hope for after a Heel Face Turn is a quiet death except in the most idealistic of settings.

Traditional depictions of beings that live on death have them being mindless creatures driven by their animal instincts, which must be destroyed for the sake of preserving protagonist species. More intelligent varieties devote their entire brainpower to elaborate plots and traps with the sole goal of finding victims (and yes, their extermination is also treated as necessary). The rightness of exterminating a species that is simply trying to survive is usually not given much thought. On the other hand, changing them into a species that doesn't live on death or removing their need to kill is also not given as much weight as the removal of any other inherent aspect of their character.

In some ways, this is a fact of Real Life for all living beings that need to eat, meaning that only green plants are exempt. Most literature only makes a big deal out of it if the 'food' is sentient, however, so examples should be limited to those cases.

Needs A Better Title. Also, we may have this one, but I haven't a clue how to search for it ("rope" unfortunately turns up half the site, since it's in the word "trope").

Was just watching a vid on That Guy With The Glasses of Masterpiece Fanfic Theatre in which The Sage ties up Linkara and reads Linkara's old fanfic. But, sadly, as much as Linkara is sitting there struggling as though he'd really love to get free and snatch the work in question out of The Sage's hands... the ropes utterly break any Willing Suspension Of Disbelief.

Is it really that hard (or perhaps alarming?) for amateur filmmakers to put some time and effort into making the ropes look halfway decent - like they'd actually hold someone down? I mean, with a willing subject and a wooden chair I could make ropes that look very good, and I could probably, with a little practice, figure out how to make them look utterly secure yet be easy to take off in a heartbeat (y'know, in case there's a fire, or if the tied-up cast member gets nervous or panicky). But to have the lazy, half-hearted "loosely around the chest a few times" approach is just... sad, really.

So anyway, if we don't have this trope, then here's the proposal for it. Find some searchable name to pin it on. Also: Up For Grabs.

Do we have this? where in a fighting game, a combo is initiated by launching them into the air, then following up with a Combo or MeteorMove. This is the integral part of Juggle Combos, which we also don't seem to have.

Examples:

• in the DCAU Superman does this to Doomsday Following his World Of Cardboard Speech, and preceeding his Meteor Move
• The Flash does this in comics against a White Martian with an Infinite Mass Punch
• in X-Men: Next Dimension, a fighting game, these are called "Air Seek" 's
• launchers are present in Capcom Vs Whatever
• Henry of No More Heroes does this twice to start of his Meteor Move

Wherein a character thinks so little (or so much) of a person, species, etc etc that they don't feel any modesty around them. Contrast Innocent Fanservice Girl, who is like this around everyone.

Examples:

• Haruhi. In a plot point, once she starts feeling things for Kyon she starts being more modest around him.
• Medaka to Zenkichi.

A) A Shout Out disguised as a Take That. Pretty light, compared to a real Take That. B) A Take That, but not very serious at all.

Both examples:

• L 4 D's "Zombie Genocidest" achievement.

A-Version)

• "Why can't you get Sam or Gabe to do the job?" The job is catching monkeys, by the way.

B-Version:

• Grand Theft Auto's billboards that make lazy/lame puns off other sandbox games (example: True Grime: Garbage Removals, Squid Row, and so on. The first was a response to True Crime: Streets of LA having a billboard parodying the Rockstar logo (as "Jockstrap").

A special kind of hero who doesn't care about their great power, or the fact that they're a world famous adventurer, or anything like that. Despite the great power they posses, they always defer to their friends or allies, and rarely want to take the spotlight, even when their friends encourage them to do so. It isn't low self esteem or a guilt, they just don't care about that sort of thing, or think of themselves as any better than anyone else. In fact, you might find them a bit embarrassed if someone comes up to them in awe of them.

This is often a main characteristic of The Cape.

---

• Superman's humility about being the world's most powerful hero is one of his major and most endearing character traits. As Batman notes in one of the Batman/Superman comics, the temptation to use his powers to force his will on others isn't something he battles with: the thought doesn't even occur to him, and that, not his great power, is what makes him such a great hero.
• In The Sandlot, the fact that Benny "The Jet" Rodriguez is the best baseball player in the neighborhood isn't something he particularly cares about; he just loves playing the game with his friends. In fact, the first thing he does when he knocks the cover off a baseball is berate himself for ruining their last one.

(Part of an effort to clean up The Computer Is A Cheating Bastard).

This trope describes cases in video games where the AI is supposed to be on equal footing to the human, but has access to information they shouldn't or which is denied to the human.

Note that it is often difficult to tell when this is happening, and when the AI is simply playing well; hence, all examples should be taken with a grain of salt.

---

Examples:

• A memorable example was the Boss Battle against Psycho Mantis in Metal Gear Solid. He read the player's controller input, allowing him to react to moves as soon as the buttons were pressed. The key to victory was to plug the controller into the other port.
• Pokemon Colosseum has one particularly annoying thing that the opponent gets to decide his moves after you use any items or send out any Pokemon. It leads to the very annoying thing of not being able to cure a pokemon of confusion as, when you do, the opponent uses Confuse Ray on him again, despite that there's no way he'd use it normally!
• The AI in Super Smash Bros also notices when items have appeared off screen, resulting in it running off in the middle of a heated duel to grab an item that it shouldn't have even noticed until it came on-screen. On no stage is this act of cheating more obvious than on the Temple stage, where the AI will happily abandon the fight all of a sudden to run all the way to the other side of the stage to grab a Pokeball that only appeared just a second ago.
  • If stereo sound is enabled, one should quite easily hear the tell-tale *plink-plink* of a Pokeball hitting the ground off-screen. This only applies to Brawl (where, ironically, the Pokemon are nowhere as good as they were Melee); in Melee the Pokeball makes no special sound, and you don't know that it dropped somewhere until they use it. This now applies to the Dragoon pieces, and they make no distinct sound upon impact.
• Guilty Gear is very... well... guilty of this. All AI characters on high enough difficulty settings or close enough to the final match of Arcade mode gain the ability to psychically read controller input. Many characters rely on having a good mix-up game, placing continuous pressure on an opponent until they finally make a mistake in their blocking, and going from there. It works pretty well against humans so long as the attacker doesn't get too predictable. Against the CPU, though, mix-up characters are almost completely useless, as every attack is more or less a polite request for the computer to please consider allowing this next one to actually connect for once. Which is usually denied.
• In the NES game Anticipation, computer controlled opponents can guess the string's length of letters and can screw up as many times as there are letters in the word(s) while humans only get two chances to guess a letter before their turn is over. On the hardest difficulty, the opponents buzz in the instant the die shows the number of spaces they want to move and can guess the answer correctly without even knowing what the category is, how long the word is, or even before anything is actually drawn.
• In all of the handheld Yu-Gi-Oh games, enemy AI can clearly be seen using strategies specifically to counter your own face-down cards or cards still in your hand which it could not possibly know you have. This is understandable when facing Pegasus, as he is shown in the anime and manga to be a mind reader, or Espa Roba, who is supposed to be cheating; but when other characters do this, it is simply sloppy AI which was not programmed to tell the difference between face-up and face-down cards.
• In Sonic Shuffle, you can steal cards from opponents' hands, though you can't see what cards they are until you take them. Evidently, the computer players can see them, as they always take the exact card they need. (Though they apparently can't tell when you've gotten the penalty that turns all your cards into Eggman cards.)

Exactly what it says on the tin. Compare Mean Character Nice Actor and Nice Character Mean Actor.

• Broke Your Arm Punching Out Cthulhu
• ~Did We Just Have Tea With Cthulhu?~
• Did You Just Punch Out Cthulhu
• Did You Just Flip Off Cthulhu
• Did You Just Scam Cthulhu

Should It just have those, or should it also include ones like Too Spicy For Yog Sathoth? Also, I notice only one of the titles has a question mark, even though all but one is a question.

Okay, I know there can be a better title, but this refers to a battle where you run into someone who you initially think (and/or hope) is someone you are just going to talk to or pass by, but they end up engaging you in a battle. Commonly (this may be a different trope), if the hero know that it's a bad guy, the baddie will give the player a glimmer of hope (usually via a speech extolling a peaceful resolution) that maybe, just maybe, the player will get away with not having to fight this guy. However, the baddie will then shatter this illusion by attacking the player. The first solid example that I can think of:

• In the beginning of Golden Sun, young Isaac and Garet were racing to find help during the storm hitting Vale, when they overheard Saturos and Menardi talking about their escape from Sol Sanctum. When the villains discovered the young eavesdroppers, it initially seemed that they were simply going to scare the kids away. However, they spontaneously decided to attack the youngsters and leave them for dead. (Inverted three years later on the way to Kraden's house when the kids run into the villains, but the pair decides to let the kids pass instead battling them because the kids have no memory of them. Do We Have This inversion as a trope?)

A character is walking/biking/etc. past a picket fence and using a stick to make one of those strumming washboard sounds. Commonly happens whenever you see bored children in the suburbs during summer vacation. Up For Grabs.

I'm pretty sure we have this, but I can't figure out what to search for. I tried searching for the one quote I feel sure would be on that page, and that turns up nothing (even in the Google search thing), so here I am to get help, or, if indeed we don't have this trope, to propose it.

Here's a rough paraphrase of the quote I'm too tired to look up again right now:

When the Nazis took away the Jews, I did not speak up because I was not a Jew.

When they took away the Gipsies, I did not speak up because I was not a Gipsy.

When they took me away, there was no one left to speak up.

So, I was just adding an example to Pay Evil Unto Evil that uses the idea "We're stealing from the rich, and you shouldn't be protesting that, because they're rich and not like you!" And I would very much like to link that to the trope that deals with logical fallacies like that one. You know, how this could be easily paraphrased "We're hanging black people, and you shouldn't protest that because you're not black!" or "We're only stealing yachts, and since you could never afford your own yacht, why aren't you cheering us on?"

So... anyone know where this trope is? On the off chance that we don't have it yet, it's Up For Grabs and Needs A Better Title.

A prevalent theme in fictional militaries is that they are an excellent last resort to "straighten out" a brat you couldn't properly raise yourself. Some times this is accomplished in boot camp. Other times the problem child is already an active member of a military service, but has to be taken under the wing of some maverick officer or NCO to be shown the folly of his ways. Sometimes this is even done by "reality" and talk TV shows where clueless parents entrust the administration of "tough love" to some person or people who can yell very loudly and may or may not actually be in the military.

Sadly, the reality of the situation is that although some may indeed find discipline they sorely lacked in basic training, the common perception that boot camp forces the recruit or trainee to simply "straighten up and fly right" has led to many people joining real military services at the behest of their parents in the mistaken belief that it will "fix" whatever is wrong with them, whether it is a real lack of discipline, or just being too "different." When they actually go through basic training, their slowness to conform and adjust can earn them the ire of the rest of their platoon or flight as they are punished as a whole for their individual failings.

• The Simpsons has an episode that, naturally, was a pastiche of this.
• Down Periscope and Major Payne are the "under the wing of some maverick officer" variants and played for laughs. Down Periscope also played it straight with Kelsey Grammar and the Admiral's son.

(Some played-straight examples would be swell if anyone knows any off the top of their heads, since I can't think of any. Maybe a "usually played for laughs" note belongs in the description and I can't think of any because I haven't actually seen it nearly as much as I thought?)

A subtrope of Cosmic Keystone. This trope's about personality traits being in a character because of his position in reality. That's vague I know so hopefully the example's will clarify.

The ultimate example would be God in metaphysical conceptions which require he think about existence constantly to sustain it. So he must be loving, doting over his work. The example which most starkly illustrates this trope in my mind is Eris in Cybermancy. There's a scene where the main character asks her if she's always like that^ and she says yes w/a flicker of sadness in her chaos-stuff eyes.

A way you may determine a character fits this trope (other than wishing to act differently but being inexorably kept in a certain niche) is if he's reconstituted if killed. The heroes defeat the incarnation of evil or death but evil continues and death lives. The character killed was just the personified aspect of the concept and evil will remake him. Shades of this trope exist if the embodiment of an idea has progeny. Maybe a story's main character hates animals but they follow him around b/c he's the Lord of Nature's son. This trope's about beings who've certain characteristic b/c the cosmological niche they fill requires it.

^stirring up trouble. She froze the other dinner guests and came on to him while his girlfriend bore immobile witness.

• The Endless in Sandman. If one of them dies, a new Anthropomorphic Personification will automatically spawn.
• In the Suicide Squad comic, when Deadshot slew the Incubus, the Incubus' entire dimension collapsed, his will apparently being the only thing making it real.
• Satan in The Brothers Karamazov. He wants to love God but reality cannot function unless he continues to maintain his role as God's antagonist.

Help me out w/examples here...

Should We Have This?

In a Double Subversion, the writers subvert a trope, but then add another change that causes the original effect to happen anyhow. In a Double Aversion, the writers avert a trope - usually one that really doesn't make sense in reality - but then actively treat this aversion as being highly unusual or for a very specific reason, making it clear that the original trope played straight is what is considered sensible in the vast majority of cases.

This is more clear with examples, so here we are:

• Star Trek VI The Undiscovered Country, by coincidence, Double Averts Spock Did It:
  • A Klingon ambassador is murdered, and Scotty says that he thinks the ambassador's daughter did it because she didn't shed any tears for his death. Spock dismisses this "proof", but he only does so on the grounds that Klingons do not have tear ducts, implying that the accusation would have been perfectly valid had this not been a factor.
• CSI New York Double Averts Instant Death Bullet:
  • A boy, after being shot, manages to bicycle away before dying from his wound. However, the investigators consider surviving more than a few seconds after being shot to be atypical, and specifically comment on how unusual this is - in their universe, apparently, every bullet causes instant death.

Formerly "Cruder And Mouthier"

Perhaps Needs A Better Title (as long as it's still in the "X'er And Y'er" format to go with the other tropes).

Completing the trilogy of tropes that Darker And Edgier ends up being instead (the others being Hotter And Sexier and Bloodier And Gorier), this is when a work has more swearing and/or crude humor than a work the current work is remaking/adapted from/following.

Naturally a Sister Trope to Refuge In Vulgarity.

I don't see a trope for this. A sort of weird mashup of I Have You Now My Pretty, Near Rape Experience, and Getting Crap Past The Radar. Occurs when it's implied that a character attempted rape on another character, but this fact is not explicitly stated, and the situation may even show up in "children's fare". I can think of examples in Bedtime Stories, and in Swiss Family Robinson.

(Name may be changed) Basically, this is to describe the female roles in Media. A girl can be a complete (battle-wise useless) Damsel In Distress, but might as well be an Action Girl, or anything inbetween. Do we have something like that already?

An interesting example would be Princess Peach from the Super Mario series. If Mario is the main character, she will most times be the Damsel In Distress, but in other games (Mario Kart, Super Smash Brothers, Mario Party, etc.) she is well capable of holding her own.

Surely we must have this and I am searching wrong. I thought Closer To Earth was it - it seems to be used that way on a number of pages, but the page doesn't say anything about nature at all - I see it's yet another Double Standard / The Unfair Sex sort of thing, whereas this has nothing to do with gender.

This, simply, is a character or a society who, either by training or by intuition, understands the resources and rhythms of nature exceptionally well, and lives accordingly. They may be able survive in, or travel through, an apparently forbidding wilderness with ease. If they're not an actual Nature Hero they'll probably be a virtually self-sufficient farmer or gardener, able to coax glorious harvests out of the ground with a single trowel and love (and certainly never with pesticides) and will pontificate about the ancient wisdom of the soil. At the very least, they'll be able to experience a simple jaunt through the countryside on a deeper level to any more urban-minded people around them. This MAY overlap with Friend To All Living Things, but not necessarily - quite often living In Harmony With Nature requires you to kill stuff, and even if you never take more than you need and have immense respect for the little critters you're roasting over the campfire, this does tends to deter them from gathering around you adoringly while you sing.

When confined to cities, characters who are In Harmony With Nature will often become distressed and wonder how the other characters can bear to live in such choking sterile surroundings.

Characters Raised By Wolves will almost inevitably be like this. Often a characteristic of a Mary Suetopia.

Examples

• Lord Of The Rings - partly by virtue of the quasi-mediaeval setting, many of the societies and individuals are depicted In Harmony With Nature one way or another - the hobbits, especially Sam, in that farmerly-wisdom, son-of-the-soil sort of way, the elves in the spiritual "oh, the trees are talking to me" way, and Aragorn in the "I can tell you the entire life story of who walked through that hedge and bent that twig" way.
• Following Tolkien, elves in general are always like this, to the point of pompous veganism in The Inheritance Trilogy.
• American Indians are about as certain to be portrayed this way as Elves -- it's almost the entire point of Pocahontas.
• I was looking for this because I wanted to add it to the How I Live Now page - nine-year-old Piper is like this.
• Real Life example, Ray Mears.

The main character has had a really tough day; maybe his/her evil plans failed miserably at the hands of the hero and he/she had to endure a long and painful Humiliation Conga, or if he/she's the protagonist, he/she failed to help that old lady cross the street before that damned boy scout did. Or it could be that the main character is just an ordinary person who Cant Get Away With Nuthin, Did Not Get The Girl, or got harassed by the Jerk Jock / The Libby / Insufferable Genius that day and couldn't get a decent comeback out. Whatever happened, he/she could really use a good ol' Shower of Wangst or a freaking drink. Unfortunately, before he/she can get that shower or drink or what have you, he/she comes home to something that serves as the last straw. Maybe the Mooks broke something of value, or perhaps the dog really did eat their homework. Whatever it is, it's pretty damn bad and one would automatically expect the person to plunge into an Unstoppable Rage or at the very least scream and curse the person/thing out.

But no.

He/she is seems rather calm about the whole thing, as if it never even happened. He/she slowly leaves the room. But just as everything is about to go back to normal and everyone thinks they've gotten off scot free, the person launches into a huge scream fest, usually capable of breaking windows or anything of value in a twenty-mile radius. This is the Exit Offscreen Scream.

Do We Have This One?

Examples:

• In Cyberchase, when Buzz and Delete accidentally break a mirror that is essential to The Hacker's plan, they plead for his mercy. He simply leaves the room...before releasing one of these.

Do We Have This? Also, Needs A Better Title.

Okay, so our protagonist is minding his/her own business, usually walking around the town of his/her birth and/or recalling memories of a fonder time. Then, he/she sees the Worthy Opponent / The Rival / the Anti Hero /etc. doing the same. Naturally, upon seeing each other, they decide to duke it out, more for the sake of recalling old times or bonding than actual fighting over good and evil. After exhausting themselves (because they're so evenly matched that neither can defeat the other), the two rest on the ground and just talk and bond, temporarily forgetting that they're supposed to be enemies or on different sides.

This is related to Go Karting With Bowser; however, it is an exact moment that occurs several times in a similar fashion in different shows/videogames/novels, rather than the act of bonding with an enemy. Usually occurs with Vitriolic Best Buds.

Examples:

• Yuri and Flynn do this after fighting in Tales Of Vesperia.
• Naruto and Sasuke do this in Naruto; however, the two are on top of separate trees rather than laying on the ground.

Sometimes, because gamers these days expect higher amounts of realism, video game designers try to justify standard game mechanics. This is easier with some functions that others; materia and combat game mechanics may be explained by story easily, but save points, not so much.

Many gamers have a snark fit when their video games attempt to justify or explain the concept of saving your game without disrupting the story or implying that your characters are immortal. Phrases like, "Record your daily progess here or it will be like everything you did the day before never happened!" and "If you gaze upon this mirror, it preserves your memories forever."

Doesn't count when a video game explains to you straight, and usually outside of the story in a tutorial, that you need to save your game or you'll lose all progress.

Examples:

• Okami, the celestial mirror.
• Animal Crossing, that... thingy outside your door that resembles a mail box.

The inverse of Monumental Damage. A major city has been completely leveled, by a nuclear attack or similar overwhelming force... it's nothing but smoldering rubble. But wait! A couple of buildings are still standing! Could it be those two or three skyscrapers that were lucky enough to stand directly below the nuclear blast, thus getting burned out instead of toppled?

Nope, it's the White House, the Goddess of Liberty, the Arc d'Triomph, Big Ben and the Parliment Building... they're a bit worse for wear, and probably have bits broken off them, but they're still there, and easily recognizable.

Why? Because otherwise, how the heck are we supposed to know what city it used to be!

Basically, this is when monuments are left remarkably whole in an otherwise devastated city since it's the only way to signify what city it is.

• Highly present in the intro-movie of Star Ocean: The Last Hope, where we see earth being consumed in the nuclear fires of World War III... the President is still sitting around in a mostly-intact White House while Washington lies in ruins around him, and in Paris, the Arc d'Triomph stands tall, with just a corner knocked off, on what is otherwise a completely flat field of rubble.
• Generally present in the Fallout series, but particularly noticeable in Fallout 3. Despite the general devastation of the DC area, most of the landmarks are left remarkably intact - The Washington Monument, the White House, the Museum of History and Museum of Natural History... heck, even the statue of ol' Abe is mostly intact, with his missing head being the heart of a fairly major subquest.

Get your back off the wall! You've got to get up to get down! Everybody get out on the dance floor! If you've heard any of these phrases way too many times, you know what this trope is all about. This song wants you to dance, and it's not going to take no for an answer.

A staple of any kind of dance music, ranging from disco to modern pop dance. Generally accompanied by upbeat, rhythmic music. On the darker side, if you interpret dancing as a metaphor for sex, this can come across as a bit too insistent.

Examples:

• KC and the Sunshine Band - "(Shake, Shake, Shake) Shake Your Booty"
• Bee Gees - "You Should Be Dancing"
• Kool & the Gang - "Get Down on It"
• Take 5 - "Get Down"
• Michael Jackson - "Get On the Floor"
• Missy Elliot f/ Ciara, Fatman Scoop - "Lose Control"
• "Let's Get Retarded" and its bowdlerized version "Let's Get It Started", originally by M.C. Hammer and redone by the Black Eyed Peas.
• Chromeo - "Fancy Footwork"

Seen It A Million Times. Basically, it's the idea that standard Hollywood pretty boys are not enough...they have to be actors who take "interesting roles" or have causes outside of acting. Another version could be the types of fictional characters that nerdy or otherwise educated women gravitate towards.

For real life: Johnny Depp? Fiction: Mr. Darcy is the quintessential example. Just ask any college girl bookworm in the US (and probably the UK).

A Sub Trope of Humans Are Bastards.

Do We Have This One? Needs A Better Description.

Frequently, characters both human and non-human will claim that it is in the nature of humans to kill themselves.

• The Terminator 2: Judgement Day. Arnie says this to John Connor.
• In Watchmen, The Comedian says that mankind have been trying to kill each other off since the beginning of time, but it's only now that they have the firepower to finish the job.
• In The Day The Earth Stood Still, original version, I believe this is one of the reasons why Klaatu / GORT were on Earth, but I haven't seen it so I might be wrong.
• There's a song by Papa Roach about this.
• Seen it five hundred trillion times.

Bump edit muhuhaha

One of the Common Fan Fallacies. Also might need a better title if too many are likely to not get the Irony.

There is this widespread idea among gamers that porting a game to another system, no matter how different, is easy and simple. Making it run well or look good is the hard part. So if there is a Porting Disaster, gamers accuse the developer of being lazy or doing a rushed job. Those can be the reasons, but because of this trope, that is assumed to be the reason by default.

This is just wrong. Porting is not easy. You can't just take all the assets and code and slap it onto another system, save for very effective cross platform engines and/or similar game systems. Without those, a port amounts to building a house identical to another one. You know what it's going to be like, but you still have to put it together.

And putting it on less powerful systems makes the "identical" part impossible. Those are barely ports at all. It's more like trying to make a tall building with a wooden frame instead of a steel one. You can't make it as tall, so you need to copy whatever parts of the first building can reasonably fit.

Experience can be a big factor in this. Many times a system will get ports that don't work as well, but later ports work fine. Gamers of course also don't take this into account and bash the early ports and claim they should be just like the later ports, when in all likelihood it was the lessons learned from the early ports that made the later ones work so well.

But this is pretty general, and I'm just beginning to study game design. If any of you know in more detail how game development and porting works, please help add to this description.

Note this isn't when the port actually has poor performance and design choices. Those go in Porting Disaster. This is a combination of two factors:

• There are clear reasons for a port not to turn out well.
• Gamers largely are not aware of them, and may even ignore those when told so.

This could also be just about the fallacy or about porting games in general. Which would you all like?

Examples are moved to the first reply to save space here.

I added this before, but ended up deleting it due to my failure at making a Wiki page. Anyway.

Especially in fantasy, there often seems to be an all female organization, usually with immense magical or destructive powers. People usually live in fear of these women, unless they want something from them. Remarkably, though, there are never any male members of the order, ever. Although traditionally situated in a patriarchal universe, these women are feared by all and respected by many for their incredible powers.

One would think, then, that it would be a statement of feminism or even female superiority that these powerful women pretty much have everyone in Your Daddy's Medieval Society bowing before them!

Think again.

The actual reason that the group is only female is because males are SO powerful that if endowed with the powers that the women have, they will inevitably and invariably go on a rampage and kill everyone. Women, however, are generally weaker and easier to control, and therefore are the only ones capable of joining this secret society.

Examples:

Anime and Manga

• The Claymores in Claymore

Literature:

• The Aes Sedai in The Wheel of Time
• The Confessors in The Sword of Truth

Or Zefram Cochrane was a drunk.

The idea is this: there's this historical figure or other famous person, and they're a legend. They are considered the paragon of virtue, the epitome of righteousness, the standard by which all others are judged. Cities, states, and countries may be named after these people, statues built in their honor, and children named after them. The whole world strives to follow the example of these people who are beyond reproach. One problem: they aren't.

In reality, these people may be merely mistaken for heroic at best, and wanton rapscallions at worst. Far from being superheroic perfectionists, when the truth about these people is discovered, it is discovered that in truth, they are at most only human.

Trope name comes from both The Simpsons, where Lisa finds a letter discovering that Jebidiah Springfield, beloved town founder, was in fact a pirate/bandit who fought with George Washington, and Zefram Cochrane, who was idolized by the Federation for having invented warp drive and ushering in the era of the utopian Federation, endlessly quoted and idolized, only for the crew of the Enterprise E to discover that he was a drunkard, a womanizer, and he only invented warp drive for the money.

A Spoiled Tyrant is a leader who combines self-righteousness, incompetence, and ruthlessness. Usually both a narcissist and a hedonist who spends their time enjoying their power and riches, until someone pisses them off or challenges their authority, at which point they order their loyal servants to have them summarily jailed or killed. You'll rarely see them managing their land's affairs, a tedious exercise they tend to delegate to more capable people, but when they do their every decision will be disastrous (and don't you dare question them). In an aversion of Authority Equals Asskicking, when stripped of their loyal followers, the Spoiled Tyrant is no credible threat to anyone, having no useful skills. Due to The Law Of Bruce, such a character is more likely to be a Fake Boss than the Big Bad, and inevitably leaves a trail of Heel Face Turns in their wake.

Examples:

• In Utawarerumono, the emperor of Kenashikourupe is depicted as a lazy coward with a short temper - he never does anything but lie around in his throne room smoking, ordering ill-conceived preemptive attacks, and alienating his best soldiers. His brother is just as bad.
• Need more examples

Needs A Better Title.

Basically when events conspire for a fight between two people using special weapons or vehicles to lead to the fight being brought down to the lowest scale possible, most frequently a flat-out brawl. Despite the working title, doesn't require it to be a boxing match.

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Examples:

• The air duel in Porco Rosso between Curtis and Porco leads to Curtis running out of ammo and Porco's gun breaking. They both then duke it out on the shore of the island they took off of and the people betting on the duel officially make it a boxing match.
• s-Cry-ed has the final battle between Kazuma and Ryuho has them escalating the level they're using their Alter powers on, until then end when they're so exhausted both can only manage a small part to use on their arms for one final punch each.
• Done humorously in the second episode of Desert Punk, when a match between the titular character and Rain Spider over a girl who's father was deep in debt has both sides so worried about tricks from the other that they end up using all their weaponry (machine guns, handguns, throwing knives, grenades, and rocks) and having to just beat the crap out of each other, leading to the inevitable Cross Counter. After which the girl smacks both of them upside the head with a pipe and steals the I.O.U.'s when they were unconscious.

Probably Needs A Better Description.

A subtrope of Our Angels Are Different, Our Demons Are Different, and (in some cases) Our Man Their Woman.

Exactly What It Says On The Tin. If a work of fiction features an Angel and a Demon (sometimes, it's Satan himself) interacting, most of the times the Angel would be female and the Demon would be male. It may be caused by various reasons: that Angels are often portrayed as feminine in appearance (forgetting that this portrayal stems from the Renaissance when everyone was portrayed as feminine; and actually Angels are supposed to be either male or androgynous); that Demons are mostly remembered for being Affably Evil MagnificentBastards who seduced women (forgetting that the same demons seduced men, too; and originally were the same angels anyway, just fallen); that some think that typical men are bastards, and typical women aren't; etc. Often the Female Angel Male Demon pairing will inevitably lead to se... romance.

Examples:

Anime/Manga

• In Wish, the angels and demons are specifically androgynous, but since Tokyopop decided that would be too hard to do in English, angels were all referred to with feminine pronouns and demons male ones. (And yes, the romance does indeed occur.)
• Aversions generally seem to occur when heaven is represented as some kind of beaurocracy (Its A Wonderful Life, Descendants Of Darkness).
• The cosmology of Mnemosyne is similar to this: although men infected by time spores are referred to as "angels", they are much closer to the mindless, savage demon image, while immortal women tend to be refined and benevolent. Moreover, when Rin becomes the Yggdrasil Guardian and sprouts wings of her own, hers are much closer in appearance to classical pure-white angelic wings than the blood-red stubbled ones of the "angels" (though they are still pinkish-white, not pure white).

Comic Books

• Angela in Spawn.
• Subverted in Preacher, where Genesis is the offspring of a male angel and female demon. His semi-expy in PS238, Malphast, has the same set of parents...

Live Action TV

• Inverted in the Tales From The Darkside episode "Let the Games Begin". A male angel and a female devil have a contest over a man's soul. They end getting together at the end of the episode.
• Averted/Inverted in Supernatural: most the angels we've seen have taken male humans as their hosts, and demons' hosts are more-or-less split 50/50. (We haven't seen the angels in their true form.)

Video Games

• Angel and Devil in Tekken.
• Diablo does this for the health and mana orbs. It doesn't apply to actual angels and demons.
• Disgaea, with Flonne and Laharl.