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
Er, no. Smash Bros is not in continuity with Pokemon.
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"Also, Leaf was never Put on a Bus.
Put on a Bus is not and never was "character hasn't appeared for a while." It's "character gets a farewell in a manner that theoretically allows them to return." Which means that The Bus Came Back isn't "character reappears after a while," it's "character reappears after being written out of the work."
Found a Youtube Channel with political stances you want to share? Hop on over to this page and add them.Ok, I honestly disagree with some of the Ensemble Dark Horse entries in the Green Lantern YMMV page. The examples are:
- In the 80s, it was Kilowog, who's still a fun character and a foil to the four Earth Lanterns. Recently, it's Mogo the living planet, who was introduced in the 80s and then rarely used until Green Lantern: Rebirth. He's had a lot to do since then, including being a key being in Infinite Crisis and the Sinestro Corps War storylines.
- And of the four Earth Lanterns, Guy Gardner is himself the darkhorse; originally a one-shot character who was brought back just so that he could be injured and John Stewart could take his place, writers just kept using him. He eventually became a sort of tragic-comic Anti-Hero, and his popularity and thus notability increased dramatically. He even got his own solo series for a while in the 90s and another in 2010.
- In an odd example, the Sinestro Corps War storyline was originally meant as a minor storyline, the big stories of the DCU were supposed to be Countdown to Final Crisis and Amazons Attack. However, Sinestro Corps War was a massive hit, and both Countdown and Amazons Attack were massive failures. In fact, Sinestro Corps War was such a great success, that its sequel, Blackest Night, became THE next major Crisis Crossover, and DC's way of repairing the damage Countdown has done to their reputation. Fan outlook on the books is positive.
- Larfleeze.
The fanbase is MINE!
- Hell, the Red Lantern Corps as a whole (especially the leader Atrocius, the Team Pet Dex-Starr and the Ms. Fanservice Bleez). They got their own series.
- Ganthet. The only non-Lawful Stupid Guardian on all of Oa. Had the Fridge Brilliance moment of realizing that when a Lantern's hopeful, their will exponentially increases. Hence why he's the man.
- Arkillo has fast become one as well thanks in no small part to the massive amount of character development he received.
- Alan Scott is strikingly popular, despite having essentially nothing to do with the modern mythos and often not even existing in the same universe. Every comic he shows up in gets wide praise, and he seems to have little to no hatedom relative to the other human Lanterns.
The Green Lantern mythos feature one of the largest casts in comic book history, and some of these characters have starred in their own stories. Ensemble Dark Horse is "character that becomes unexpectedly popular despite their small role in the main narrative", not "any popular character that isn't the protagonist." We might need a Green Lantern expert to sort these examples out.
Did this to stop a Main wick to UsefulNotes.Depression. Not sure it's right.
Or that "Has Depression" is trope?
- Ambiguous Disorder: Averted, Depression. Word of God is that he has it.
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Multiple problems with that one.
1)Aversions are only listed for Omnipresent tropes. Ambiguous Disorder isn't Omnipresent.
2)As already mentioned, that 'example' is pure ZCE.
3)Word of God really should have a pointer of some sort to where the WOG came from.
Edited by Zyffyr on Oct 30th 2018 at 9:28:47 AM
- Well, the point of my edit was to not remove info, while also fixing that Depression wick.
So I had to put it as a trope.
But if it isn't a trope, then it must be removed...
So, is "This character has Depression", a trope? The Eeyore?
And would "Has Depression" be enough context if it were?
Edited by Malady on Oct 31st 2018 at 7:13:49 AM
Disambig Needed: Help with those issues! tvtropes.org/pmwiki/posts.php?discussion=13324299140A37493800&page=24#comment-576I'm pretty sure we don't have "character has depression" as a trope, because that's less a plot or thematic element than a description of them. "Character is tall", "character has blonde hair", "character is Jewish". What matters is the role that the depression plays in their characterization or in the story.
A character with depression can be The Eeyore, or they could be Driven to Suicide, or they could be The Shut-In. You could have a No Medication for Me subplot in which they discover that they are cured via Epiphany Therapy, or Reality Ensues and their disease comes back full strength and causes severe problems.
Concentrate on the role the disease plays in the story, not the disease itself.
Of course, this rule isn't followed strictly: we still have tropes like Transgender and The Alcoholic when those are descriptive elements rather than narrative ones. The important part for writing actual examples is describing the narrative role that those facts play, something often lost on tropers.
Edited by Fighteer on Oct 31st 2018 at 10:23:21 AM
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"
- Makes sense. Removed.
There are a few entries on that page that have Hidden Depths entries with: "Word of God says they have depression"...
But, since that has no plot relevance, I guess they should be removed too?
Edited by Malady on Oct 31st 2018 at 7:56:47 AM
Disambig Needed: Help with those issues! tvtropes.org/pmwiki/posts.php?discussion=13324299140A37493800&page=24#comment-576Yeah, those should be removed. It doesn't even make sense, really: if the depression has no effect on the characters' behavior or the story, then it's not a trope. It reminds me of Word of Gay. It could go in Trivia, I guess, since that's where you generally put tidbits like Word of God that add external context to a story without being visible within it.
Edited by Fighteer on Oct 31st 2018 at 11:13:12 AM
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"For those Ensemble Dark Horse examples a bit previously, we have a thread for those examples
. Please bring it up there.
I can just say that a character "being popular" and "not being a main character" is not enough to qualify. They have to be more popular than their position would imply. So a side character would be at least as popular as the main character. Not just more popular than other side characters.
Check out my fanfiction!Ok, changing the subject, I added SpongeBob SquarePants to the Classical Anti-Hero page with the argument that he started to fit the mold in the post-movie seasons, which removed the everyman aspect of his character and gave more focused to his negative traits, such as his childishness, addiction to work and emotional dependence on his friends. Someone deleted him from the page, saying that even if SpongeBob has flaws, he doesn't really suffer because of them. Is that a valid argument?
I'm not really sure that Spongebob was ever intended to be seen as a heroic character to begin with. He's a protagonist, certainly, but the nature of the show seems to intentionally eschew your traditional hero-villain narrative structure.
Generally, Spongebob occurs as less of an antihero and more of an Idiot Hero: someone who solves problems more by accident than by design.
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"Are any of the examples on DevelopersForesight.Deltarune actual examples?
Edited by lalalei2001 on Oct 31st 2018 at 8:13:12 AM
The Protomen enhanced my life.Someone added Incineroar to UnexpectedCharacter.Super Smash Bros. The example boils down to "some people didn't think there'd be a Gen VII Pokémon in the game" even though a lot of people did expect just that — in particular after a credible leaker revealed it. It feels pretty shoehorned to me. Should I nuke it?
Edited by MathsAngelicVersion on Nov 1st 2018 at 8:30:09 PM
Yeah, that entry is shoehorning because a lot of people expected a Gen VII Pokemon, most likely Incineroar or Decidueye, to make it into Super Smash Bros. Ultimate. Cut.
I just saw this example on Slut-Shaming, and I believe it to be speculative and non-objective. I think examples of the trope should be obvious in-universe, not vaguely implied:
- In Disney's The Little Mermaid, Ursula's wedding to Prince Eric in disguise as the overtly sexy Vanessa, despite falling primarily under Slapstick Knows no Gender could also be interpreted as Slut-Shaming. The animal-based slapstick is played mostly for laughs as Vanessa's just comeuppance, but most of it happens in very fetishized ways: Birds dive bomb under her skirt between her legs while she rocks her hips back and forth for balance looking embarrassed, pelicans and later dolphins douse her in seawater leaving her wedding dress increasingly plastered to her figure, starfish forcibly cup her breasts and cover her mouth, seals bounce her up and down on her butt before tossing her on top the wedding cake, legs spread apart, skirt fluttering open, on her butt, and a dog bites her in the butt.
Does Superman: Truth feature Darkness-Induced Audience Apathy? I added this argument years ago: "Truth works on the principle that all the heroism and goodwill Superman has established don't stand for much when his secret identity gets out. His powers have decreased, he has very few allies, public opinion has turned against him and he has become angsty and cynical. On top of things, he is no closer at stopping the Arc Villains than he was at the start. All of this makes it very hard for readers to get emotionally invested in this arc. Clark's astonishing take on Took a Level in Jerkass and its subtext (look below on "Unintentionally Unsympathetic") doesn't helps any." Last time I looked, Darkness-Induced Audience Apathy applies when both sides in the conflict are equally unlikable or the heroes' efforts amount to nothing and the universe still sucks.
I also disagree with the portrayals of Superman and Lois Lane in the story but I'm not sure whether or not they qualify for Character Derailment. Could anyone please help me with this?
For a possible Creator Killer example:
- While Production IMS' works were mostly successful, their shut down came as the price of rising debts due to them not paying its animators and its sales becoming stagnant. The company closed its Hikarigaoka Studio in December 2017 and filed for bankruptcy in September 2018, eventually shutting down altogether in October 2018.

Can The Bus Came Back refer to cross-series works? I keep on seeing Leaf from Pokemon under that because she's in Super Smash Bros Ultimate, but she's still missing in the actual Pokemon games.