Basic Trope: File photos (usually on the news) being used for comical effect.
- Straight: After Hiro saves the city, he appears on the news. The file photo used to represent him is an Embarrassing Old Photo of him with horrible fashion sense.
- Exaggerated:
- The file photo of Hiro is him naked... or worse, caught with his pants down.
- The news station has horrible file photos of everyone.
- The file photo isn't even a picture of Hiro at all!
- Downplayed: The file photo of Hiro shows him blinking at the wrong time.
- Justified:
- There aren't any better pictures of Hiro in their system.
- Hiro is a Hero with Bad Publicity.
- Hiro hasn't done any notable heroic acts since he had the aforementioned horrible fashion sense.
- Inverted: The news uses an awesome picture of Hiro, such as showing him rescuing people.
- Subverted: ???
- Double Subverted: ???
- Parodied: ???
- Zig-Zagged: ???
- Averted:
- There is no file photo.
- The file photo of Hiro is normal.
- Enforced:
- "Fans made fun of Hiro's bad fashion sense in the first few seasons, let's make fun of it by showing a picture of that as his file photo."
- Hiro is a Butt-Monkey, so there needs to be something to humiliate him.
- To set up a Noodle Incident, if the situation behind the file photo is never revealed.
- Lampshaded: "Oh come on, they had to use that photo!"
- Invoked: Hiro is a Hero with Bad Publicity - the news station is trying to make him look bad, so they use a bad photo of him.
- Exploited: ???
- Defied:
- The news station takes a new, non-embarrassing picture of Hiro to use as their file photo.
- Hiro is always submitting non-embarrassing pictures of himself to use as the news station's file photo.
- Discussed: ???
- Conversed: "Usually when someone shows up on the news in fiction, there's a file photo of them doing something embarrassing or weird."
- Deconstructed: Hiro is very, very upset at the fact that they used a terrible photo of him, and promptly sues the News Station.
- Reconstructed: Problem is, the News Station didn't have any other photo of Hiro, let alone an actually decent one. Hiro loses the case.
- Played for Laughs: The file photo is of Hiro doing something completely absurd. The actual incident is never mentioned, aside from Hiro offhandedly claiming that the picture was taken out of context.
Back to File Photo Gag.
