History Literature / SmallerAndSmallerCircles

** Fr. Saenz listening to deafening rock music. Often while doing autopsies. The novel even indicates his favourite bands—"Crush with Eyeliner", by {{Music/REM}}, is the first song he's depicted listening to. (In the film this was replaced with a song from {{Music/Wolfgang}}, Pinoy metal band.)

** Fr. Saenz listening to deafening rock music. Often while doing autopsies. The novel even indicates his favourite bands—"Crush with Eyeliner", by {{Music/REM}}, is the first song he's depicted listening to. (In the film this was replaced with a Pinoy metal band.)

** Fr. Saenz listening to deafening rock music. Often while doing autopsies. The novel even indicates his favourite bands—"Crush with Eyeliner", by {{Music/REM}}, is the first song he's depicted listening to.

* IntrepidReporter: Joanna Bonifacio, who (with good reason) seems to delight in exposing Atty. Arcinas' gaffes. This being the Philippines, however, working in media is an especially dangerous job—her father ended up becoming a RedShirtReporter when he went out investigating one night. She never saw him alive again.

* InfantImmortality: The whole novella revolves around the shocking and coldly premeditated aversion of this.

* FiveManBand: A looser configuration, as they don't strictly work in a team, and several characters can fit into multiple roles, but:
** TheLeader / TheMentor: Saenz
** TheLancer: Jerome
** TheSmartGuy: [[IntrepidReporter Joanna Bonifacio]], who has ways of coming by information that government officials don't know about (or care to act on). (The priests, both very well-educated, have shades of this too.)
** TheBigGuy: Atty. Arcinas and the NBI in general, as they have the [[InspectorLestrade official authority]] to investigate and make arrests.
** TheChick: Also Joanna, who is adept at "mediating" between the priests and the government, in the sense that she can talk civil servants into digging up information relevant to the investigation.
** SixthRanger: Additional help from people like Councillor Mariano, Fr. Emil, and Joanna's camera crew

* GoOutWithASmile: [[spoiler:Alex Carlos manages this as the police mow him down, perhaps the only time in his sad life he could afford one.]]
--> '''Jerome''': He smiled, Gus. Smiled before he died.

* GratuitousEnglish: Long stretches of conversations throughout the film are in unbroken English, in part to accommodate the technical terms inherently used in fields like criminology, law enforcement, and the forensic sciences, partly because many of the characters are erudite or at least well-educated types from the middle classes upward, likely conditioned to speak English as often as possible except in the most informal of situations. It's little surprise that what Tagalog or Taglish is used, is often used most by slum-dwellers themselves and any professionals who need to talk to them directly.

In 2015, an expanded international edition of the novel came out, adding considerable backstories and several new characters, and a [[http://lifestyle.inquirer.net/231207/filipino-crime-novel-smaller-and-smaller-circles-now-a-movie/ film adaptation]] [[TheFilmOfTheBook debuted on 6 December 2017]]. The film has a significant transmedia component, including a sort of social media game where users can pretend to chat with the SerialKiller on Facebook and get various answers. The producers also released a Website/YouTube miniseries purporting to be a compilation of segments from Joanna Bonifacio's show, ''First Person'', complete with era-appropriate scan lines.

In 2015, an expanded international edition of the novel came out, adding considerable backstories and several new characters, and a [[http://lifestyle.inquirer.net/231207/filipino-crime-novel-smaller-and-smaller-circles-now-a-movie/ film adaptation]] [[TheFilmOfTheBook debuted on 6 December 2017]]. The film has a significant transmedia component, including a sort of social media game where users can pretend to chat with the SerialKiller on Facebook and get various answers. The producers also released a {{YouTube}} miniseries purporting to be a compilation of segments from Joanna Bonifacio's show, ''First Person'', complete with era-appropriate scan lines.

In 2015, an expanded international edition of the novel came out, adding considerable backstories and several new characters, and a [[http://lifestyle.inquirer.net/231207/filipino-crime-novel-smaller-and-smaller-circles-now-a-movie/ film adaptation]] debuted on 6 December 2017. The film has a significant transmedia component, including a sort of social media game where users can pretend to chat with the SerialKiller on Facebook and get various answers. The producers also released a {{YouTube}} miniseries purporting to be a compilation of segments from Joanna Bonifacio's show, ''First Person'', complete with era-appropriate scan lines.

* FreshClue: In the climactic manhunt for the SerialKiller, he leaves one final victim—No. 8—butchering him more hurriedly and only cutting out the heart to send a message to the priests and the NBI.

** Tess Mariano's campaign video urges would-be voters to find her name at "No. 46 on the ballot". This was not a common practice in TheNineties. [[note]]Up to the late 2000s, election ballots listed the names of candidates and party-lists (basically small political parties) in alphabetical order, leading to a huge rash of new, ridiculous-sounding party-lists using the letter A or the number 1 as initials (e.g. Akbayan, Ako Bicol, [=1Pacman=], 1-UTAK, etc.), all jockeying for the top slots on each ballot. The 2013 general election changed the rules by randomising the order of party-list and candidate names. In response, party-list candidates started directing their constituents to find their names by indicating where they appeared on the ballot.[[/note]] [[note]]The campaign ad misses other details though: Mariano is running as a city councillor for her district, ''not'' as a national party-list representative. District candidates are ''still'' listed alphabetically, and even in the 2010s, all told, Quezon City (where Mariano is implied to be running) had a total of 36 councillors, and likely less in the 1990s. Higher assigned numbers tend to appear when electing party-lists, since there's a large number of them competing on the national level, and all of them have to be listed on the ballot.[[/note]]

** Dr Santa Romana. In the book, a woman named Jeannie; in the movie, a young man named Gino. (This might actually help pin him as a possible suspect, since he resembles the priests' profile of the killer—youngish adult, rather small and thin, and often works in the health centre and mobile dental clinic. Interestingly, Jeannie in the book also asks point blank if she is being suspected.)

** Tess Mariano's campaign video urges would-be voters to find her name at "No. 46 on the ballot". This was not a common practice in TheNineties. [[note]]Up to the late 2000s, election ballots listed the names of candidates and party-lists (basically small political parties) in alphabetical order, leading to a huge rash of new party-lists using the letter A or the number 1 as initials (e.g. Akbayan, Ako Bicol, [=1Pacman=], 1-UTAK, etc.), all jockeying for the top slots on each ballot. The 2013 general election changed the rules by randomising the order of party-list and candidate names. In response, party-list candidates started directing their constituents to find their names by indicating where they appeared on the ballot.[[/note]] [[note]]The campaign ad misses other details though: Mariano is running as a city councillor for her district, ''not'' as a national party-list representative. District candidates are ''still'' listed alphabetically, and even in the 2010s, all told, Quezon City (where Mariano is implied to be running) had a total of 36 councillors, and likely less in the 1990s. Higher assigned numbers tend to appear when electing party-lists, since there's a large number of them competing on the national level, and all of them have to be listed on the ballot.[[/note]]

** A bit of an ExaggeratedTrope: while most instances of the trope take place while the performance plays in the background, in this case the performance isn't even needed except as a pretext to get several characters together; all the relevant scenes happen in the lobby before it even begins. [[JustifiedTrope Justified]] for very good reason—saves the production crew the whole expense of awaiting or staging an entire performance just for the sake of the movie.

** A bit of an ExaggeratedTrope: while most instances of the trope take place while the performance plays in the background, in this case the performance isn't even needed except as a pretext to get several characters together; all the relevant scenes happen in the lobby before it even begins.

** Tess Mariano's campaign video urges would-be voters to find her name at "No. 46 on the ballot". 1990s election ballots did not assign a number to each candidate's name. [[note]]Up to the late 2000s, election ballots listed the names of candidates and party-lists (basically small political parties) in alphabetical order, leading to a huge rash of new party-lists using the letter A or the number 1 as initials (e.g. Akbayan, Ako Bicol, [=1Pacman=], 1-UTAK, etc.), all jockeying for the top slots on each ballot. The 2013 general election changed the rules by randomising the order of party-list and candidate names. In response, party-list candidates started directing their constituents to find their names by indicating where they appeared on the ballot.[[/note]] [[note]]The campaign ad misses other details though: Mariano is running as a city councillor for her district, ''not'' as a national party-list representative. District candidates are ''still'' listed alphabetically, and even in the 2010s, all told, Quezon City (where Mariano is implied to be running) had a total of 36 councillors, and likely less in the 1990s. Higher assigned numbers tend to appear when electing party-lists, since there's a large number of them competing on the national level, and all of them have to be listed on the ballot.[[/note]]

In 2015, an expanded international edition of the novel came out, adding considerable backstories and several new characters.

A [[http://lifestyle.inquirer.net/231207/filipino-crime-novel-smaller-and-smaller-circles-now-a-movie/ film adaptation]] debuted on 6 December 2017, and is currently showing in selected theatres. The film has a significant transmedia component, including a sort of social media game where users can pretend to chat with the SerialKiller on Facebook and get various answers. The producers also released a {{YouTube}} miniseries purporting to be a compilation of segments from Joanna Bonifacio's show, ''First Person'', complete with era-appropriate scan lines.

* AdaptedOut: NBI official Ading Rustia.

[[quoteright:200:http://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/15966108_1258591684225589_2264714750556818602_n.jpg]]
[[caption-width-right:200:"Look closer …"]]

* ReasonableAuthorityFigure: NBI Deputy Director Jake Valdes, who like Director Lastimosa and Ading Rustia actually considers the Payatas murders a serious concern.

* FatBastard: CardinalMeneses is noticeably rotund and has a physically large presence compared to either Fr. Gus or Jerome.

* CreepySouvenir: [[spoiler:[[SerialKiller Alex Carlos]] keeps his victims' organs in a freezer at home.]]

* IntrepidReporter: Joanna Bonifacio, who (with good reason) seems to delight in exposing Atty. Arcinas' gaffes. This being the Philippines, however, working in media is an especially dangerous job—her father ended up becoming a RedShirtReporter when he went out investigating one night and never came back alive.