There are some pages whose images really don't portray their trope. Sometimes the image is a Visual Pun or other joke. Sometimes it's a literal restatement of the title. Other times the trope is too NSFW to portray normally. Other times it's a trope involving plot or characterization that's hard to portray in a picture.
This doesn't refer to images that are poor quality, or which barely represent the trope. If the image is completely inaccurate, you should go to the Image Pickin' forum
. All the images here are deliberate examples.
Don't confuse this with The Treachery of Images. In many ways, this is the opposite of Just a Face and a Caption.
See also, This Index Is Not an Example, for Trope Namers.
Examples
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Visual Puns
- Accentuate the Negative: A diacritic above a film negative. The caption complaining about the Visual Pun is an example, however.
- Bigger Is Better in Bed: It's a picture of a large cock. "Cock" being the other word for roosters, mind you.
- Black Is Bigger in Bed: A straight example is blacklisted thanks to the Content Policy, so we have a black obelisk being bigger instead.
- Blind Date: A blind woman with a service dog, not a date between two people who don't know each other.
- Canon: A giant cannonnote , not something that counts in a work's continuity.
- Complete Monster: A complete pack of Monster energy drink, not a heinous villain with no redeeming qualities.
- Dethroning Moment of Suck: Has a picture of a castle on fire, not the worst moment of a work.note
- Dead Horse Trope: Literally beating a dead horse is not a trope at all, just a punny illustration of the phrase from which this form of playing with a trope derives its name.
- Dead Unicorn Trope: Actual dead unicorns aren't tropes at all, much less ones that got widely parodied despite never having been played straight.
- Ear Trumpet: Nothing to do with real trumpets. They are a type of archaic hearing aids.
- Flying Brick: A real flying brick is a Superhero that combines Flight with Super Strength, not an actual brick with wings.
- Going Cold Turkey: An image of a turkey in the snow, not an attempt at avoiding an addiction.
- Hardcore: Instead of something extreme or intense, it's a picture of an avocado core that is impossible to cut.
- Hentai: As actual pictures of hentai are a no-no, the image is a picture of a hen wearing a necktie.
- Hurricane of Puns: A single pun doesn't qualify as a hurricane, and the Visual Pun of a literal hurricane made of "pun"s is the only one in the image.
- It Tastes Like Feet: Depicts someone eating a literal foot, instead of comparing a food's unpalatability with something no sane person would have eaten/tasted.
- Kangaroo Court: A kangaroo as a judge presiding over a courtroom. As the trope refers to unfair judicial processes, there is no way to show it literally that would not just look like a courtroom.
- Knight In Sour Armor: The trope is about a cynical hero. The picture is a knight figure crafted from lemons (thus wearing actual sour armor).
- Kudzu Plot: It's an actual picture of the Kudzu plant, not a plot that doesn't resolve its questions.
- LEGO Genetics: The trope is about the simplified nature of genetics in media, while the image is a LEGO replica of a DNA strand.
- Magnificent Bastard: There is an image of a bastard sword on the page. The trope is actually about a charming schemer who thinks on their feet.
- Mauve Shirt: Just a mauve shirt with nobody wearing it, not a Red Shirt with enough characterization to make them stand out.
- The Mole: The trope is about the villain joining the hero's team to stab them in the back in the future. The image is a group of actual molehills.
- Necessary Weasel: Shows an actual weasel, not an illogical trope considered vital to a genre.
- Paper Tiger: Shows a game card with an actual tiger made of paper, not someone who is proven to be weaker than first looks would hint at.
- Permanent Red Link Club: A picture of Link in red clothes, not a page this wiki has purged forever (besides, that would kind of defeat the purpose of the club).
- Power: Usually does not involve a button that turns something on or off.
- Put on a Bus: Being written out of the show without being killed off usually does not involve an actual bus.
- The Bus Came Back: Likewise, returning to a show doesn't typically involve departing from an actual bus.
- Bus Crash: Offscreen deaths do not normally involve a literal bus crash.
- Long Bus Trip: It's about characters who depart the show for long stretches of time, not lengthy buses.
- Put on a Bus to Hell: It's about being written out of the show in an especially mean-spirited way, not about taking an actual bus to Hell.
- "Seinfeld" Is Unfunny: It's literally "(an) old hat", not something that was once considered trendsetting before it loses that appeal after being imitated so often.
- Sinkhole: Shows cars collapsing into a hole on a street, rather than a misused Pot Hole.
- Sock Puppet: Sockpuppet accounts on forums and wikis are usually not controlled by actual sockpuppets.
- Sour Grapes Tropes: The index is about tropes demonstrating that what you desire doesn't always turn out well. The image is a literal picture of grapes.
- Spoiler: A Visual Pun showing an Army Major named Spoiler, not a plot point that viewers don't want revealed.
- Square Peg, Round Trope: Since it's impossible to actually illustrate trope misuse without using a lot of text, the image just shows a square peg being pushed into a round hole.
- Straw Fan: A hand fan made of straw instead of how the makers of a work view the Unpleasable Fanbase.
- Teeny Weenie: Since a straight example would be NSFW, the image is of some miniature hot dogs instead.
- Übermensch: A joke based on Friedrich Nietzsche's memetic appearance and Superman's transhuman nature. The canonical Superman follows a conventional good/evil morality, he does not transcend societal norms to create his own.
- Undead Horse Trope: A skeletal horse isn't really a trope, much less one that's seen as clichéd to the point of frequent parody but somehow without the death of straight examples. Though it might fall under Horse of a Different Color.
- Walking Spoiler: Jason Fox's costume will spoil the heck out of the other characters, sure, but FoxTrot is too light on plot to have any characters that would spoil it.
- The War on Straw: It's a picture of a literal strawman. The Strawmen referred to in the trope are fallacious arguments or stereotypes made to make the Author Tract look better in comparison.
- What Happened to the Mouse?: It's a picture of a mouse, not a plot point that isn't resolved.
- Writer's Block: It's a block that you put on your desk and you can't write anymore! Well, it's not as though the abstract concept of "having difficulty writing" could be depicted directly.
Not Really an Example
They might look like an example at first glance, but they really don't fit.
- Allegedly Free Game: The image refers to League of Legends, which is generally agreed to give free players a worthwhile experience, despite how much money it's possible to spend on it.
- All Girls Want Bad Boys: Jim Stark is portrayed as violent and menacing, if not downright villainous, in promotional posters for Rebel Without a Cause, but in the film, he's actually a sensitive, kindhearted boy; Judy becomes attracted to him because he's kind to her.
- Ambiguously Gay: As of the last chapter of the comic, Mitch unambiguously confirms in-universe that he's attracted to women, implying he's at least Ambiguously Bi.
- Assimilation Academy: The sequence shown is actually a fantasy of the main character in The Wall. While he doesn't have many fond memories of his school years, it was not outright totalitarian.
- Big Brother Is Watching: The image is a real public safety poster that unintentionally looks very sinister.
- Bully Turned Buddy: The image is from Phineas and Ferb. Buford antagonizes other members of the group, but is firmly cemented as The Big Guy of the Five-Man Band right out of the gate. At worst, he's The Friend No One Likes.
- Chaotic Stupid: Elan is both chaotic and stupid, and he can be silly sometimes (like in the pictured panel), but he's not chaotic stupid.
- Crying Wolf: The boy always lied about there being a wolf, and the townspeople kept coming in case it was true.
- Deployable Cover: In Heroes of the Storm, Tassadar's Force Wall stops enemies from walking past, but they can shoot through it just fine. It's used to trap enemies rather than hide behind.
- Evil Costume Switch: The second Mary Marvel in the evil costume is from a Mirror Universe, not Mary herself after she performed a Face–Heel Turn, making it closer to Sensible Heroes, Skimpy Villains.
- Foreshadowing: Young Anakin Skywalker's shadow appearing as Darth Vader is a good Visual Pun for the trope, but as The Phantom Menace was made after The Empire Strikes Back, this is actually an example of a Call-Forward.
- God of Evil: There is no single god in Warhammer 40,000 who embodies evil, although all but one of them (Isha) are Jerkass Gods. Khorne is a Chaos War God who also embodies positive traits such as strength, victory, and courage.
- Gun Nut: Frank Castle (aka The Punisher) isn't really a gun fanatic — his true passion is killing criminals, a task for which guns are, obviously, very useful tools. As a former Marine with no superpowers, they show up more often in his stories than most Marvel heroes (although he's also killed people with knives, his fists, a bear, explosives, big rocks, cars, a fat man...).
- Inappropriately Close Comrades: There is Unresolved Sexual Tension between them, but Jack O'Neill and Sam Carter never actually dated during the course of Stargate SG-1 (aside from alternate universes and the like).
- Injured Limb Episode: While it certainly looks like an example, Angelica from Rugrats was only faking her broken leg.
- Lava is Boiling Kool-Aid: The image depicts the "Lava Lagoon" stage in Donkey Kong Country 2: Diddy's Kong Quest. The catch is that, despite the level's name, the "lava" is actually implied to be super-hot water instead, since it can be turned into normal water with Clapper's help. Other levels in Crocodile Cauldron have actual lava which isn't depicted this way.
- Lipstick Lesbian: In Mulholland Dr., Rita (the woman on the left) dumps her girlfriend for a male director, which implies that she's more likely bisexual.
- Lotus-Eater Machine: Minority Report does contain an actual Lotus-Eater Machine in the Cryo-Prison for pre-crime arrestees, but the image actually shows a different virtual reality machine that paying customers enter voluntarily for a brief period.
- Louis Cypher: The image is photoshopped. Patrick Bateman uses a normal business card in American Psycho, and while he is a very wicked character, he is not the literal Devil.
- Media Watchdog: The cartoon used to illustrate the article depicts the PTC (Parents' Television Council), which is not an official media regulator, but an extremist pro-censorship conservative pressure group, i.e. Moral Guardians.
- Must Have Caffeine: Fry isn't usually a huge coffee drinker. He just was doing a stupid Self-Imposed Challenge to drink one hundred cups of coffee in a day, and was too jittery to react to the fire by that point.
- My Future Self and Me: The future Stan Marsh turns out to be an actor hired by his parents to keep him off of drugs.
- Napoleon Delusion: Bender didn't really think he was Napoléon Bonaparte, he was merely pretending to be so he could get away with a crime on grounds of insanity.
- Not Screened for Critics: Penny Arcade was making fun of Kevin Smith's quote that Jersey Girl was "not for critics", which was a case of It's Not Supposed to Win Oscars and not this trope.
- One-Scene Wonder: The image is a poster highlighting Christopher Walken's tendency for that kind of scene-stealing small part. However, the picture of Walken is taken from The Rundown, where he has a large role as the main villain.
- Otaku: The image is a sight gag from an episode of Magical Shopping Arcade Abenobashi, illustrating what the character in the image imagines an otaku looks like. Sasshi, the aforementioned character, is not actually an otaku, nor does he look anywhere near that disgusting in any other scene.
- Paper-Thin Disguise: In a straight example, the flimsy disguise would fool Calvin's mother. She looks anything but fooled, so the image is an aversion.
- The Pennyfarthing Effect: It's a picture of a pennyfarthing bicycle, which isn't truly an example of the trope — until technology marched on a bit, this awkward design really was the best option available.
- Quicksand Box: Mass Effect, despite its scope, has well-defined goals and quests.
- Salt Solution: The Bakemons are a complete inversion. Although salt is never used as a weapon against them, they would logically have to be immune if they're using it to make their victims more appetizing.
- Sinister Minister: While he is a minister, Jesse Custer isn't evil, but rather an Anti-Hero.
- Spoiler Title: John doesn't actually die at the end of John Dies at the End.
- So Bad, It's Horrible: The Star Wars Holiday Special isn't usually considered horrible, and is on none of the subpages, but rather So Bad, It's Good.
- Unending End Card: The end card was unending in Panel de Pon, but the screenshot is from the localized version, Tetris Attack, which removed the trope while leaving in all the text referring to it.
Parodies
These images aren't played seriously. Instead, they come from parodies.
- Adapted Out: Monty Python and the Holy Grail is not actually adapted from a book featuring a baby knight named Sir Not-Appearing-in-This-Film.
- Animation Bump: Show Within a Show Dedede: Comin' At Ya is Stylistic Suck because the townsfolk who made it don't have any animation experience, and the bottom image comes from a frame of said show where the animation suddenly becomes realistic and detailed.
- Black Hole Sue: Ensign Sue Must Die mocks the entire Mary Sue phenomenon, and Ensign Sue herself actually receives Character Development that turns her into a compelling character rather than having the plot bend sideways just to show how awesome she is.
- The Butler Did It: The maid accuses the butler to get out of trouble for breaking a vase, not because the butler committed a murder.
- By-the-Book Cop: More a parody of the Cowboy Cop than the typical By-the-Book Cop.
- Common Mary Sue Traits: Not a serious character, but rather a Parody Sue.
- Creepy Gas Station Attendant: Mordecai is certainly scary to the college students, but in-universe he's actually an actor who's playing the role. He's also not taken even remotely seriously by his handlers, who treat him as a joke.
- Darker and Edgier: The Smurfs have always been family friendly. This is a satire of The Dark Age of Comic Books.
- DarkerAndEdgier.Comic Books: Asterix is also parodying the Dark age.
- The Dog Was the Mastermind: Comes from a non-canon joke ending of Silent Hill 2, in which a Shiba Inu is revealed to have masterminded the game's events.
- Ethnic Scrappy: Chin-Kee in American Born Chinese is an intentional parody of every negative Asian stereotype ever. It Makes Sense in Context as he turns out to be the Monkey King, who deliberately put on this act to convince Jin Wang, who transformed himself into a white boy named Danny, to re-embrace his heritage.
- The Game Plays You: The pictured board game comes from a Fake-Out Opening in the Gravity Falls episode "The Last Mabelcorn". Dipper and Mabel are about to play it before getting interrupted, and the box is never even opened.
- God-Mode Sue: God-Man is more of a Parody Sue.
- Incestuous Casting: Not a real movie poster starting Maggie Gyllenhaal and Jake Gyllenhaal as lovers, but a Cracked photoplasty.
- Inspirationally Disadvantaged: Tropic Thunder is mocking glurgy Inspirationally Disadvantaged works with its Film Within a Film Simple Jack, not a straight example (even if it still garnered protests among release for this).
- Invincible Hero: God-Man is a parody of overpowered heroes, not a straight example.
- It Can Think: The Critic is parodying the example from Jurassic Park. The Velociraptors did possess unusual problem-solving skills, but they weren't Wicked Cultured Evil Geniuses.
- Lighter and Softer: The real Diablo III is a fairly dark game. The logo was created by Blizzard Entertainment to troll their fans who thought initial screenshots "weren't dark enough". However, the game does include the hidden Lighter and Softer Joke Level Whimsyshire.
- Like Parent, Like Spouse: Subnormality parodies the stereotype as part of a larger lampooning of marriage archetypes.
- Mary Sue: Comes from a comic discussing the phenomenon, rather than being an actual Sue.
- Mary Sue Classic: Head Trip making fun of Bella Swan.
- Mascot Fighter: Comes from Deviant Art; there isn't an actual game pitting fast food mascots against each other.
- Mask of Sanity: Patrick Bateman is ultimately a parody. His mask of sanity is not convincing at all, but everyone around him is so self-absorbed that they never notice all his weird tangents about torture and murder.
- Meaningless Meaningful Words: Hiimdaisy is mocking Metal Gear Solid.
- Minus World: Despite its odd appearance, Level -0 in Stinkoman 20X6 is a Secret Level that was deliberately programmed and accessible without glitches.
- Playing the Victim Card: The image is parodying the chance cards from Monopoly. The actual game doesn't have a card that allows players to pretend to be a victim.
- The Philosopher King: Existential Comics parodies the idea of a Philosopher-King, since Plato turns out not to be a particularly wise ruler.
- Puny Earthlings: Kang and Kodos in The Simpsons "Treehouse of Horror II" only invade Earth after humanity has voluntarily dissolved its militaries and destroyed all its weapons, leaving them helpless against the aliens' arsenal of wooden clubs and slingshots. They flee the planet when one human thinks to attack them with a wooden board that has a nail sticking out of it.
- RPG Elements: Comes from a boss in Kirby Super Star that parodies the RPG genre - there are no actual elements of it present in the game, and immediately after the screenshot the game states that the Experience Points don't actually matter.
- Self-Fanservice: An image mocking the phenomenon, not a straight example.
- Stalking Is Love: The comic panel comes from a parody of Twilight; the book plays this straight.
- Too Dumb to Live: The image comes from Scary Movie, which mocks the cliches of horror movies, such as idiotic victims.
- What Do You Mean Its Not Political: The MAD writers are obviously spoofing this phenomenon, they do not genuinely think that Attack of the Clones is an allegory for the Second Gulf War.
Zig-Zaggers
These images might have qualified at one point, but not another. It might be a case of Subverted Trope, Depending on the Writer, or Zig-Zagging Trope.
- AlphaBitch.Webcomics: While Pyper in Magical Boy started out as a bitch, she has a change of heart after being saved by the heroes relatively early in the story, and eventually joins them and becomes a target of bullying herself.
- Anti-Hero: Whether Batman counts as an anti-hero varies depending on the writer and portrayal, with him being a more traditional hero in many incarnations.
- Author Tract: The Godless Communism does qualify as an Author Tract, but it is in fact an anti-communist message.
- Behind the Black: Questionable Content depicts a subversion of the concept, since a straight use would be non-illustrative.
- Brown Note Being: Within Pokémon canon, looking under Mimikyu's disguise is said to cause immense terror and even painful death to those who view its true form. Due to the short being a Homage to The Golden Age of Animation, the entire scene is Played for Laughs, with the worst happening to Scraggy being him turning blue with fear after looking inside and having Mimikyu "lick" him.
- Celeb Crush: The first two characters are straight examples (Bruce Willis and Britney Spears being real people), but the third character has a crush on the God-Emperor from Warhammer 40,000, who's entirely fictional.
- Crapsaccharine World: While the Sunnyside Daycare Center starts off played straight, the ending makes it an actually happy place.
- Hot-Blooded: Fate/stay night's Shirou Emiya isn't normally hot-blooded, but is very passionate about his cooking in the gag manga.
- Hot Sauce Drinking: The "hot sauce" in question is actually ketchup with a swapped label, done so Jackie and her son Tobias could win a competition without going through the immense pain of downing an actual bottle.
- Kid Detective: Conan Edogawa is actually a 17-year-old de-aged down to seven.
- Lawful Evil: While he plays this straight throughout most of the plot, Darth Vader eventually ditches the "evil" part after he performs a Heel–Face Turn.
- Lawful Good: While the mainstream Superman usually fits this alignment, there are other versions that are more chaotic, and some that are downright evil.
- Loves Only Gold: Scrooge McDuck is indeed in love with gold and obsessed with being and remaining the Richest Duck in the World, but he also has a rigid moral compass and loyalty to his family and staff/friends. His Evil Counterpart Flintheart Glomgold is a straighter example.
- Omnicidal Maniac: Darkseid has varying motivations. While he is omnicidal in Final Crisis, most of the time he just wants to remove free will or take over the universe.
- "Scooby-Doo" Hoax: Fanart of both a straight example from Scooby-Doo and an inversion from Doctor Who.
- Sickbed Slaying: Elle Driver wants to kill the Bride in Kill Bill while she's bedridden and in a coma, but Bill calls Elle up to stop her because he considers such a method to be beneath them.
- Southern Gentleman: Big Daddy is a deconstruction; he may look like an archetypical southern gentleman, but it's just a superficial veneer that does little to mask his deplorable racism and elitism.
- Spare a Messenger: Kronar does initially let the guy in question get away, but it later becomes a subversion when he gets so pissed off at being mocked for being a "wimp" that he chooses to Leave No Survivors instead.
- Super Supremacist: The image shows Overman, an Evil Counterpart of Superman from The Multiversity. Mainstream Superman is, of course, a squeaky clean superhero who wouldn't dream of siding with the Nazis or subjugating Muggles.
- Tagalong Kid: The page image is taken moments before Steven breaks into a sprint to get in front of the group, foreshadowing his growth over the series from a kid that needs to be saved to a formidable and valued member of the Crystal Gems.
- Twofer Token Minority: Conway Stern was a Double Agent, and given that Archer said he wasn't circumcised, probably wasn't really Jewish. Later played straight when he loses both of his hands.
- Vanilla Edition: Blade Runner was the second DVD release ever after Twister, so being bare-bones was to be expected.
- Villain: Exit, Stage Left: Subversion; Red Skull attempts to flee from Magneto, but the latter captures him before he can get away.
