Do you have trouble remembering the difference between Deathbringer the Adorable and Fluffy the Terrible?
Do you have trouble recognizing when you've written a Zero-Context Example?
Not sure if you really have a Badass Bookworm or just a guy who likes to read?
Well, this is the thread for you. We're here to help you will all the finer points of example writing. If you have any questions, we can answer them. Don't be afraid. We don't bite. We all just want to make the wiki a better place for everyone.
Useful Tips:
- Make sure that the example makes sense to both people who don't know the work AND don't know the trope.
- Wrong: The Mentor: Kevin is this to Bob in the first episode.
- Right: The Mentor: Kevin takes Bob under his wing in the first episode and teaches him the ropes of being a were-chinchilla.
- Never just put the trope title and leave it at that.
- Wrong: Badass Adorable
- Right: Badass Adorable: Xavier, the group's cute little mascot, defeats three raging elephants with both hands tied behind his back using only an uncooked spaghetti noodle.
- When is normally far less important than How.
- A character name is not an explanation.
- Wrong: Full Moon Silhouette: Diana
- Right: Full Moon Silhouette: At the end of her transformation sequence into Moon Princess Misty, Diana is shown flying across the full moon riding a rutabaga.
Other Resources:
For best results, please include why you think an example is iffy in your first post.
Also, many oft-misused tropes/topics have their own threads, such as Surprisingly Realistic Outcome (here
) and Fan-Preferred Couple (here
). Tropers are better able to give feedback on examples you bring up to specific threads. We don't discuss Complete Monster or Magnificent Bastard examples; please don't bring them up.
Edited by SeptimusHeap on Jul 17th 2025 at 8:59:01 PM
Thoughts on this Does This Remind You of Anything? entry under VideoGame.Final Fantasy XVI?
- Clive's ability to take in the power of the Eikon from their Dominant shows signs of sexual intercourse more than once. Benedikta reacts like he had taken her virginity, Jill acts like she is giving her virginity to Clive and Clive reacts like Barnabas assaulted him and Ultima's words afterward do not help.
I didn't really get the impression when playing the game that stealing powers was reminiscent of sex, especially if you consider the other Dominants like Cid, Hugo, and Dion where it didn't have that connotation at all. Benedikta definitely didn't feel like her virginity was taken as well, considering she's either being flirty or seen in bed with at least two men prior to the scene where her Dominant was taken, and her breakdown clearly stems from other issues she had going on.
Characters.Ghost Trick, Rockin' Jailbird
- Boring, but Practical: Literally. Sure, he is in prison and he gets to have his musical instruments, playing to his heart's content and no one stops him from doing so. However, as time went on, he became so bored in prison that his musical instruments won't keep him entertained or busy in the long run, something which he lampshade himself.
Not seeing what's practical.
TroperWall / WikiMagic CleanupThat doesn't make any sense at all, no.
Suddenly I'm... still rotating Fallen London in my mind even though I've stopped actively playing it.Look at this example from Recap.Sponge Bob Square Pants S 9 E 6 Jailbreak Evil Spatula.
- Excited Episode Title!: "Jailbreak!"
Apparently Excited Episode Title! redirects to Excited Title! Two-Part Episode Name!, which is supposed to look like this:
- Part of this title!
Another part of this title!!
Yes, this sort of thing is exactly why it got renamed.
Suddenly I'm... still rotating Fallen London in my mind even though I've stopped actively playing it.I noticed in Characters.Bang Dream Pastel Palettes had an entry that mentions Cute Clumsy Girl that Aya does have this but not to the extent of Kanon, but the latter is not mention in the character page containing her (Characters.Bang Dream Hello Happy World).
Oddly enough, I think I have found several text from both the Bang Dream wiki and also official information actually call her as clumsy indeed.
Even the official Bang Dream twitter account and the official website in EN pokes on this trait:
There's no doubting it, Kanon is really a Cute Clumsy Girl just like Aya, is she?
Edited by JustNormalMusicLover on Jul 6th 2023 at 11:42:14 PM
Nothing solves a day of depression better than a warm smile.Does Speaks Fluent Animal apply if they can only speak to a specific type of animal, like they can only speak to birds?
"We'll meet again" | 🏳️⚧️bumping my thing from a couple days ago, and did slight modifications to the paragraph
Is this But Not Too Evil?
* The Imperium of Man from Warhammer 40,000 is supposed to be one of the "most cruel regime imagineable" according to the setting's Opening Crawl that shows up in every book and a satire of fascism that
no one should really root for according to Games Workshop themselves. An insane theocracy, bastion of religious fanaticism and xenophobia that has brought pain and misery to the galaxy for thousands of years... and yet compared to the theocracies of real history, is remarkably tolerant of differing religions (as long as the God-Emperor is worshipped as the Top God in some form, the Ecclesiarchy does not really care how specifically), egalitarian when it comes to gender and sexes (women holding positions of power are treated as a perfectoy normal, if uncommon, thing, and trans characters are likewise not singled out as such) and race-blind (characters' ethnicities are only described for flavour rather than as an important thing), and only engages in Fantastic Racism (since "the mutant" it despises as part of its credo are genuinly mutated people rather than simply ones more mundane physical oddities). Presumably because the Imperium is one of the playable factions (and the one recieving most focus from the creators themselves), so making them horrible and evil to the point real-life people would stop playing them is not something Games Workshop wants.
Should this scene
from The Righteous Gemstones count as the Everyone Is Armed trope? Several characters in that scene conspicuously don’t have guns, to humorous effect. How literally am I supposed to use the trope?
Edited by CSS1 on Jul 6th 2023 at 9:49:20 AM
mooIt sounds more like Equal-Opportunity Evil but it doesn't sound like But Not Too Evil - if I understand the latter right the result needs to actually downplay the evil in the process, but the Imperium doesn't get any less evil for not going out of their way to be prejudiced all the time
Found on WebAnimation.asdfmovie. I don't understand the relation.
Does Breaking the Cycle of Bad Parenting apply if the character's parents weren't willingly bad people, but they were forced to put their child in a traumatic or neglectful upbringing (i.e. Daddy Had a Good Reason for Abandoning You) and now their child refuses to let the same happen to their own child? Does Parental Abandonment in general count or does it only have to be trauma from direct abuse?
I do some cleanup and then I enjoy shows you probably think are cringe.Does this count as Adaptational Species Change?
- In The Nostalgia Critic's review of the The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie, PhantomStrider appears as a guest star. While Strider is a regular human on his main channel, in the NC's review, he's a literal phantom with abilities of possesion.
Edited by AudioSpeaks2 on Jul 6th 2023 at 7:45:43 PM
Found this on Characters.Trails Series Crossbell Special Support Section
- Took a Level in Badass: She's far more viable in Reverie where her orbment lines allow players to actually deal more status debuffs and physical attacks no longer being terrible compared to her Azure self.
Took a Level in Badass is about a character becoming action oriented, thanks to either training or the circumstances they are. Noel is very action oriented from the get go, so this feels like misuse and likely complaining about her Azure self.
She/Her | Currently cleaning: N/A
That looks like complainy misuse.
I guess Has a Type doesn't explicitly require a certain number of people-of-that-type, but comparing several similarities between only two characters is too few.
Sure.
Edited by Tabs on Jul 7th 2023 at 4:41:28 AM
Safe to delete the Has a Type example?
Edited by Ayumi-chan on Jul 7th 2023 at 1:59:05 AM
She/Her | Currently cleaning: N/ADoes Ascended Fanon require creators/work to openly acknowledge fanon, or can it include fanon that become canon later out of pure coincidence?
I was trying to move these entries from Legend of Link onto a YMMV page since they were incorrectly labeled under I Knew It!, but it turns out they didn't fit the tropes I thought they were in either (Hilarious in Hindsight or Harsher in Hindsight) and found Ascended Fanon instead.
- Natasha's method of entering the Sacred Realm, stabbing a sword into a special spot on the ground and their spirit traveling there, would appear a few years later in Skyward Sword, when Link entered Silent Realms by stabbing his sword into the ground at certain spots, and obtaining all three Triforce pieces by doing this in the Sky Keep.
- Link infiltrates Hyrule Castle at the end of his journey, and faces Ganon(dorf) at the top.
- Hyrule's skies, and the lighting of the ground, turn red because of Ganondorf at the end, only to return to normal when the final blow is dealt.
- The final blow itself is a familiar final blow. Half example as the technique itself was also in The Wind Waker as a Parry Move.
Regardless, they're cut from the trivia page for not fitting I Knew It! but I'm not sure where to put them now.
Edited by INever on Jul 7th 2023 at 1:16:11 AM

We're disputing this example of Artificial Stupidity on Tales of Symphonia:
We had no difficulty getting Kratos to the requisite 50 casts in our current playthrough by setting his strategy to focus on long-range magic, and while there was some stupid placement happening in the process, this is an issue every caster has in this game rather than being specific to Kratos.
Suddenly I'm... still rotating Fallen London in my mind even though I've stopped actively playing it.