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
On Renamed to Avoid Association (from My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic):
- Coco Pommel's name was shortened to just "Miss. Pommel" to avoid issues with the Chanel estate.
The description says that the parties must be totally unrelated, but Coco Pommel was named after Coco Chanel, though she's not really an expy of her besides that (they're both fashion designers but I don't think their mannerisms are very similar).
I do some cleanup and then I enjoy shows you probably think are cringe.This was added to Malty's section in Characters.The Rising Of The Shield Hero Antagonists.
- Expy: Of Azula from Avatar: The Last Airbender. Both are ambitious young fire-wielding princesses of a kingdom that practices a form of supremacy (Firebenders in the Fire Nation, Humans in Melromarc), and are the favorites to their fathers, distant to their mothers, antagonistic to their siblings, and sworn enemies to The Hero. Both are also all but explicitly described in-universe as The Sociopath, but while Azula is the high-functioning kind that is capable of both expert fighting and extensive planning, Malty is the exact opposite with her inability to plan in the long term, lack of self-restraint, laziness to even train or even put any effort into fighting that isn't cheerleading, and a refusal to learn from her actions no matter how much it bites her. When both are eventually brought down, Azula ultimately comes off as a Tragic Villain who became the way she was partly because of her father's cold manipulations, while Malty's toxic influence is responsible for the downfall of multiple people, her father included, and ultimately dies (twice in the web-novel) as an unmissed Hate Sink in-universe and out.
As far as I recall, the Expy trope is not meant for superficial similarities by fans or audiences alike. It has to be made explicit by the creators.
If it's invalid, should we remove it?
Edited by gjjones on May 13th 2021 at 12:07:03 PM
He/His/Him. No matter who you are, always Be Yourself.![]()
If she was intentionally named for the designer then it doesn't count.
Yes. We also have an expy cleanup thread
to ask.
Does Real Song Theme Tune include examples where a Licensed Game uses music from the property it's based on? There's a lot of pinball examples on the page that fall under that category (i.e. "The Addams Family, unsurprisingly, uses the original theme"), and I don't think they quite fit the intent of the trope.
There's some other examples that use songs that were used in the source material but were not made specifically for it (like The Big Lebowski using Bob Dylan, Santana, and Kenny Rogers songs that were featured in the original film). Would these also fall into the category of "Licensed Game using music from the property it's based on"?
Pinball cleanup threadIm wondering if Trans Audience Interpretation can be use for a character who is transgender in a work but fans interpreted them as non-binary? I read the description and it said you can include non-binary and genderfluid but im wondering it cancel each other out if they are canonical transgender.
Edited by WhirlRX on May 13th 2021 at 4:49:25 AM
Animals in a game are sorted into areas based on themes. The Jurassic, which is full of dinosaurs, also contains dragons. Is this an example of Dinosaurs Are Dragons, and if so is it straight or inverted?
Suddenly I'm... still rotating Fallen London in my mind even though I've stopped actively playing it.From TheLegendOfZeldaBreathOfTheWild.Tropes H To M, this has been added:
- Innocent Fanservice Girl: Despite her large buttocks, Hartman Hips, Painted-On Pants, and Male Gaze from both the camera and Link, Zelda never seems to notice her shapely posterior.
I don't think IFG applies in this case, first because the game doesn't really aim to have that kind of fanservice (just the nostalgia kind), and secondly because I feel this is way too tame by sexual standards. Do I have permission to cut it?
135 -> 180 -> 273 -> 191 -> 188 -> 230 -> 300 -> 311Innocent Fanservice Girl is for characters who don't have a nudity taboo. This is just... weird gushing.
I do some cleanup and then I enjoy shows you probably think are cringe.An example on Gimme a Break!:
- Gilligan Cut: When Addie tells her African-American friend that Black women have finally evolved past the "Aunt Jemima" image, Nell walks in (having done the household chores) exhausted... and wearing a do rag.
^^ Not an example of a “cut” without an explicit scene change. Instantly Proven Wrong works. It also sounds like a variation of Stereotype Reaction Gag.
No Username@ Just so i can be sure the character in question is Lily from Zombie Land Saga who is a transgender. The show even gives her the transgender color in her limelight episode in the second season. However, some fans think she non-binary since the go to phrase in universe to describe her is Lily is Lily.
I feel like if the character is already trans, then alternate interpretations of her identity would just be Alternate Character Interpretation, or Ambiguous Gender Identity.
I do some cleanup and then I enjoy shows you probably think are cringe.
then yeah with more context that sounds closer to what you're describing. since lily is canonically trans but her gender identity isn't definitively stated beyond that, and "lily is lily" makes it sound more like she doesn't ascribe a gender identity to herself, Ambiguous Gender Identity could fit, but Alternative Character Interpretation would probably be safer since AGI seems to be for characters where it's unclear whether they're trans or not.
For Persona 5, would this really be within the threshold for Absurdly High Level Cap? It seems relatively close and while I haven't played the original P5 in some time, I don't think the grind was really that bad.
- Despite the level cap of 99 and the (completely overkill) few Personas that require Joker to be all the way to the 90s to fuse, all party members learn their final skills at only level 75 and the Final Boss can be managed by that point, with grinding past that to the actual level cap requiring quite a bit of extra investment. Averted in Royal for the first time in the Persona series — while the party still stops learning skills at 75 (except for Kasumi, who learns a single skill at 80), the extended final act will continue to push up the party's levels and the new final boss will likely be fought in the 90s, with reaching the level cap of 99 fairly easy to achieve in regular gameplay. The second round of the DLC challenge battles against the P3 and P4 heroes are also meant to be fought with a level 99 party.
Musical Episode has many examples for shows where every episode has a song in it of some kind:
- Of course, some shows fall into this trope every week:
- Every episode of Cop Rock; justified what with it being, you know, a musical.
- Eli Stone has musical numbers in most of its episodes.
- Every episode of The Fresh Beat Band. Justified because it is about a band.
- The entirety of Galavant, given that it was a musical TV show. While the first season had (primarily) original songs, the second season went full-blown parody, with homages to Les Misérables, Grease, West Side Story, Anything Goes, The Little Mermaid, Cinderella, and Hamilton.
- Every episode of Glee. Justified because it IS show choir.
- Smash; see above, plus it's set in the world of musical theatre.
- Every episode of The Wiggles. Justified because it's a kids' show starring a group of four Australian musicians.
- Every episode of Julie's Greenroom, but especially the final episode since the kids finally get to perform the musical they've been writing for the whole series.
- Almost every episode of Big Mouth, with only a few exceptions.
- Every episode of The Noddy Shop has at least one song. In season 2, it was common for an episode to have at least two musical numbers.
- Every episode of Daniel Tiger's Neighborhood and its' sister series Donkey Hodie has a musical number about the episode's moral.
Do these count? The description seems to strictly be for musical episodes of otherwise non-musical media.
Troper RWBYraikou888 described Yoshi as an Advertised Extra in Mario + Rabbids Kingdom Battle. I have to ask: is this accurate? An extra is someone who ultimately plays a minor role in the larger story and Yoshi is a playable character and, by definition, he can't be an extra.
So, what do you think?
Has WTH, Casting Agency? gotten a cleanup yet? Because this was just added to YMMV.Veggie Tales.
- WTH, Casting Agency?: While fans prefer Lisa Vischer as the voice of Junior instead of Tress Mac Neille, it should be noted that Lisa Vischer's voice for him is more of a girlish voice than a boyish voice.
EDIT: It was removed by the same user who added it.
Edited by MrMediaGuy2 on May 14th 2021 at 7:54:38 AM
I'm curious about something. Can The Man Behind the Man qualify as a Complete Monster if they use their servant to do potentially heinous things, and outright give them a Cruel and Unusual Death if the servant finds out and/or disobeys?
You'd probably need to ask the Complete Monster thread.
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you only get yoshi at the very end of the game so he does suffer from Late Character Syndrome, and i would argue that causes him to count as an Advertised Extra because he's more prominent in the game's advertising than you'd expect from his incredibly late role, even though he is still a playable character.
~harryhenry, yeah, I'd say that if every episode of a show is a musical one, then it's The Musical in series form, not a Musical Episode.
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Cut is fine by me.