How To Handle This Trope: Big Lipped Alligator Moment

This is one of those instances where a trope was created without a YKTTW (I think literally hours after the Nostalgia Critic coined it) and the community was forced to desperately try to salvage it into a good trope. The trope has grown so insanely fast that it not only has subpages now but it also has a snowclone in BLAM Episode.

I recognize that BLAM happens, and there are many famous examples in mainstream productions, but any attempt to set some sort of boundaries to the trope are just ignored in favor of the "No one speaks of it again" criteria. Among other problems:

• The original defintion given by the Nostalgia Critic was "has nothing to do with the main plot, comes out of nowhere, and no one speaks of it again." The Critic himself hasn't really been faithful to that definition, and any further examples he gives are immediately deemed to be actual examples regardless of qualifying or not (the trope naming alligator itself does have plot relevance after that song).
• Many examples are not actually weird, surreal or wacky but merely fit the "no direct bearing on the plot" element. This means that scenes meant to help with characterization and character development are listed as BLAM because it isn't vitally plot important. Conversely a show or movie that is surreal from the get-go (ie Monty Python) have scenes listed as being "more surreal than everything else." A BLAM should be a red paint splash on a white wall, not maroon on crimson.
• Worldbuilding items are listed as a BLAM when they are there to set the mood. A hypothetical example is where the heroes go to a Bad Guy Bar and in the background a Bar Brawl starts up. I've seen examples similar to that listed just because of the irrelevance, when its there to avoid an Informed Ability that it is a Bad Guy Bar.

There are really about two ways to deal with this. Either we overhaul the description and then have a group of editors comb the pages to trim the thousands of wicks across the wiki (which I don't think anyone really wants to do) or we overhaul the description and label it as a subjective trope, as people are going to argue how much navy blue and mauve clash. That doesn't mean we ignore the page entirely, as individual examples should still be discussed, but making it subjective will shuffle it to the YMMV tab where it is acknowledged as being a debatable trope.

edited 14th Jan '11 1:38:06 PM by KJMackley

I prefer the first option. It really is overapplied.

Actually the Nostalgia Chick was the one who came up with it and defined it. [/nitpicking]

And I put my vote in for the first option. It needs to be tightened up a lot.

If a job is worth doing, it's worth doing well. First option, despite the sheer scale of the task at hand.

Honestly, I've been thinking it'd be better to just trash the whole thing in the first place. The trope is ill-defined as it is, the crowning example actually does have relevance to the plot, meaning the Trope Namer doesn't actually fit the trope, and I'm really tired of pulling the most random crap out of trope pages because it is so horribly misapplied.

So, Take a Third Option is my vote.

Option 1 seems the most reasonable.

I say nuke everything and start from scratch. BLAM is too well known to effectively repair, and at this point it's not worth trying to salvage a few good examples amidst thousands of bad ones.

Big-Lipped Alligator Moment found in: 1517 articles, excluding discussions.

This title has brought 26,153 people to the wiki from non-search engine links since 20th FEB '09.

Yeahh..... cutting it is kind of unwise at this point.

Overhaul. Possibly cut and re YKTTW it. Or better yet, given the inbounds, lock it, YKTTW a better version, then replace it with the new, tighter version.

Huh — just a side note on the OP suggestion of making it a subjective trope. This page was a subject trope for quite a while then it was pulled of the list without discussion. Seems subjective me: an audience might agree on what is "weird". But there is just no way people will reliably agree on what is "out of place".

(For example, the opening sequence of Trainspotting is cited. I find someone else finding it out of place quite understandable but my personal reaction was that it fits just as well as the pivotal baby sequence — thematically it sets the tone perfectly, and sets us up for the later hallucination.)

EDIT Big-Lipped Alligator Moment has it's subjective banner back — but still isn't on the Subjective Tropes index. Go figure.

edited 14th Jan '11 10:16:26 PM by Camacan

I was going to make a topic for this eventually. It really just seems people seem to think it means "something crazy happens," even if it makes sense within the plot, is actually set up, or is actually important somehow.

It's one of the only tropes on this site that I've seen more misuses for than actually legit examples.

^^^^ I didn't say kill it dead. I said start over. As in "cut the article and YKTTW under a better name".

And how is that different? Cutting it, and launching another page under a new name, still means pulling the rug from under 1 500 wiki pages, and 26 000 off-wiki pages.

Could we get a misuse check, please? I can imagine how it can be possibly misused in certain cases, but I'm not convinced that reports of "more incorrect than correct examples" are true.

Okay, sure, let's go. Even setting aside the sheer size of the wick count this'll be an incomplete job because I can only make any reasonable assessment of the BLAM-ness of a scene if I've seen the movie/show/whatever. Which is a pretty good reason the trope should be in YMMV.

• Aladdin: "A couple of the songs." I can't think of one that fits. "Friend Like Me" and "Prince Ali" are heavy on the wackiness, but they serve a distinct purpose. Wrong.
• Alice in Wonderland: The Hatter, having spent the entire movie saying he'll dance the "futterwacken" after they beat the Red Queen, dances the futterwacken after they beat the Red Queen. Absolutely wrong.
• American Gods: "The cutaway chapters. Did we really need to know about the Man-eating hooker goddess and the Ifrit and the taxi driver?" Uh....YMMVV on this one. It's a repeating device that builds the setting through vignettes, but uses one-scene characters to do it.
• Revolutionary Girl Utena the movie: A home video of one of the TV show characters in cow form walking around and then inhaling a mouse. No plot relevance. Okay yes this one qualifies.
• Ghost In The Shell manga: A lesbian porn scene out of nowhere. Again, fair.
• Ghost In The Shell Stand Alone Complex: A chase scene briefly shows "two people dressed as teddy bears being led along on a leash by a man holding a sign with a heart on it." This is Funny Background Event.
• Dragon Ball Z manga: Krillin breaks the fourth wall to complain about Akira Toriyama re-using his own stock art. Wrong, unless you want to call all isolated incidents of fourth-wall breaking BLAM examples.
• Avenue Q: A major character in the play performs a terrible comedy routine to open a plot-relevant scene set in the club where he is employed as a comedian. Wrong.
• Azumanga Daioh: Shockingly, a character's daydream is not deeply tied to the main plot.
• Bend It Like Beckham: The main character of the movie sees the goalie of the opposing soccer team represented as her family - basically a visual metaphor for her plotline. So very wrong.
• Bubblegum Crisis: A visual gag that's somewhat more cartoonish than the rest of the series.
• Calvin And Hobbes: Calvin has a fantasy where he grows to godzilla-size, then planet-size, etc, before snapping back to real life. A daydream in a comic full of them.
• Coraline: The audiobook includes a single song, at the opening of chapter five. Admitted in the entry to be plot-relevant; it's just a sudden genre switch.
• Dead Leaves: "The whole movie." Uh, no.
• Disgaea: In the Visual Novel, you can mind-control some characters into acting wildly out of character. I guess it could be....maybe?
• Doctor Who S31 E02 "The Beast Below": "Poem Girl, anyone?" I have no idea what this is talking about and I've seen the episode three times. It opens and closes with plot-relevant poems spoken by an unseen female narrator, so if that's it, then wrong.
• Dragon Quest VIII: A Side Quest.
• Earthworm Jim: The level where Jim turns into a blind cave salamander for no reason. Fair.
• Elite Beat Agents: One correct - a level that takes place in the fifteenth century, when even EBA's very loose continuity includes no time travel. One bad - the chief agent wears a Hawaiian shirt for three seconds of stock footage in the tropical-island level.
• Eureka: As part of an ongoing plot thread, the normally staid character Henry participates in an over-the-top dance party.

I'm running out of time and patience, but while there is a trope here, legitimate uses are being overwhelmed by examples of scenes that are noticably sillier than the rest of the work, whether or not they fit the definition.

edited 15th Jan '11 8:21:19 AM by Shale

DQVIII is correct the side quest is where you have to enter a painting and rescue a guy from a bunch of Paint trolls it comes out of nowhere and once you get the guy out he never talks about it again (having gone back to his old stock lines).

You're actually confusing it with a similar scene from Oblivion, Raso. That one was paint trolls in a painting. DQVIII was normal trolls in a mirror.

Shit... its been a while since I played both games.

I've never played Oblivion, so could you explain why that's not something like Giant Space Flea from Nowhere instead of BLAM?

It's not just a boss that's out of place. It's the whole event. It's like having a small level that's completely out of place, and then the game going back to normal and no one ever mentions it again. Except Oblivion isn't a level game. It's a game of scattered quests. Giant Space Flea from Nowhere is just the boss.

edited 15th Jan '11 9:34:56 AM by shimaspawn

^ They can be both. If the Giant Space Flea from Nowhere is never mentioned again, then it counts.

There is no boss in the area just a few random spawn paint trolls in a painted forest maze. Hell the whole game only has 1 boss.

Although those Paint trolls are never seen again once you complete the quest normal trolls are still everywhere.

edited 15th Jan '11 9:47:03 AM by Raso

And even he's optional. You could play for months and never fight him.

Okay, then. Should GSFFN be considered a subtrope of BLAM then? They're both basically X comes in from nowhere/happens and makes no sense and is never mentioned again.

^ ONLY if the Space Flea is NEVER MENTIONED AGAIN. A Giant Space Flea from Nowhere just comes out of nowhere.. However, it's very appearance could be reflected upon later on in the story.. Like a malevolent alien suddenly shows up and starts attacking. The heroes defeat it and carry on with their journey, but later on start coming under attack by many more aliens, realizing that the Giant Space Flea from Nowhere was merely a scout for the invasion party.

They're related Sister Tropes, but they aren't super sub tropes.