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
@Orbiting
: We were asking about Fridge Brilliance with the Ecco one, not Genius Bonus. (It's obviously not Genius Bonus
)
And thanks for the answers on the other ones!
I recently rewrote the entry for Mini-Game on the Excite page, but now I'm wondering if I broadened the definition too much.
I think the question amounts to what exactly distinguishes a mini-game from an extra mode or a challenge mode. Does it have to be significantly shorter than a "level" of the main game? Is it enough to merely be distinct from said levels? Does the gameplay have to be fundamentally different from the rest of the game? Does it count if it reprises a gameplay feature that is part of the main game but almost exclusively focuses on it? Or if it reprises the gameplay of the main game but with an extra twist? Can an embedded precursor be considered a mini-game? Can the same "extra" menu lead to games that are mini-games and others that are not?
Here are the concrete examples I'm trying to sort out, and I'd appreciate opinions on which do or do not count as minigames.
- Excitebots features various action commands during races, which seem to be the most unambiguously referable to as "mini-games": thowing darts, scoring goals, throwing pies, collecting items, etc. They only last a few seconds each, and are even available to play outside of races in a menu called, well "Minigames".
- However, there is also a mode called "Poker Race", which is played exactly like a normal race, except instead of trying to get first or perform stunts, you collect card along the track to assemble poker hands. Is this different enough from a normal race to be considered a "mini-game", or is that just a different play mode without specifically being a minigame?
- Excitebike 64 has a whole menu dedicated to extra play modes, which vary in how similar they are to the main game.
- One mode listed there, "Soccer" is basically soccer on motorcycles. It seems fair to call it a mini-game, because it's very distinct from the races in terms of both atmosphere and objectives.
- Then there's "Desert Track", in which you must extinguish ten campfires spread around a randomly generated desert, "Stunt Course", in which you must perform as many stunts as possible inside a small arena in a limited time, and "Hill Climb", that has you climb up an extremely steep hillnote . All three are much closer in feel to the actual races, but at the same time are treated in the same way as the "Soccer" mode. If "Soccer" is a mini-game, it should stand to reason that those three are as well, but might that actually be a stretch?
- Finally there's "Original Excitebike", which is an emulated version of the original NES game, and "3D Excite", a 3D remake of it. It feels weird to qualify the actual NES game as a "mini-game", but maybe compared to the N64 game, it is? And the 3D remake plays more like a secret track than an actual distinct game mode, but if all five other extra modes are mini-games, should this one be considered done too?
- Excite Truck has a challenge mode with three distinct challenge modes. "Rings" has you race along a circuit jumping through rings, "Slalom" has you race along a circuit going through increasingly narrow doorways, and "Crush" has you completely ignore the circuit to chase down and slam into five roaming opponents. All three play very similarly to the actual main game races, but have you focus on one single aspect of the gameplay. I wouldn't consider them "mini-games" per say, but if the N64 extra modes are mini-games, maybe those could be considered so as well? And if not, what would be the criteria to distinguish a "mini-game" and a "challenge"?
I mean, I’m not sure if an entire game, even if it’s within another game (If it’s only one level but not the entire game, that’s definitely a minigame imo) could be considered “mini”, but I think the rest count.
R-r-repost: Should the Meta subpage for Red Oni, Blue Oni even exist? Most if not all entries are zero-context examples and I feel like most of these are just based on opinion.
Edited by antenna_ears on Oct 27th 2021 at 3:20:32 AM
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Lot of those examples are zero context. So that's a problem just to start with.
Maybe the page should exist, maybe it shouldn't, but definitely not in its current form.
Suddenly I'm... still rotating Fallen London in my mind even though I've stopped actively playing it.
Ok, momentarily disregarding the ZCEs and whether this is objective or opinion, can Red Oni, Blue Oni (a character trope, unless I’m mistaken) even be applied to things that aren’t people or characters?
If the answer is no, then the entire Meta subpage is plain misuse and should be cutlisted.
Edited by antenna_ears on Oct 27th 2021 at 3:43:24 AM
At a glance, it appears to be listing Dueling Works but putting them in red and blue categories as if they're characters. Without context of course.
If it can be given context and salvaged, maybe it could be a JFF page? I dunno though.
Does statutory rape count for Rape as Backstory? I wanted to add an example from Parks and Recreation as Ron Swanson's anti-authority, loner behavior is implied to be a result of his abusive relationship with his first wife, who was his teacher throughout his life and had sex with him when he was 15. It's mostly Played for Laughs but it's still there.
I do some cleanup and then I enjoy shows you probably think are cringe.
I feel like being on the receiving end of pedophilia counts. It reminds me of a similar Played For Laughs example on comedy series It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia with 14 yr-old Dennis and his high school librarian, though the word “rape” is actually used here. Rape as Backstory (troping this situation) is even on Dennis’ character page.
Edited by antenna_ears on Oct 27th 2021 at 4:38:09 AM
I was editing Friendly Fandoms to fix a flawed example (it was misindented and also had word cruft), and found a recently-added entry that reads like this:
- Most strangely; the action-game fandom with The Last of Us Part II, despite a vehement Fandom Rivalry with the first. It's apparent the lack of reverence for the original numbs them to the Broken Base elements of the sequel. That and more importantly the gameplay takes a much larger focus and creates a much more dynamic action sandbox for those undistracted by the story. It could also be them trying to spite fans of the original for allegedly "ruining" gaming by turning the tides in favor of so called videogame Oscar Bait.
On top of not having TLOU's page italicized and trying to link to Broken Base with an invalid namespace, I'm doubtful over the validity of the example as a whole. It's less about describing two fandoms wholesomely sharing a common liking, and more about describing a condescending factionalism from people who disliked a prior game (the first TLOU, in this case). Do you think it should be deleted?
135 -> 180 -> 273 -> 191 -> 188 -> 230 -> 300 -> 311Thanks to the new movie I've been looking around the Dune pages, and found this again on Trivia.Dune:
- Why Fandom Can't Have Nice Things: An inversion in a meta-way, since it's the authors and their close ones, not the fans, who mind on this one: due of the controversial nature of the sequels written by Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson, and, while not outright spelled as such, some authors, George R. R. Martin and Terry Pratchett being most visible examples, had wrote post-mortem clauses to prevent either their families, their publishers or anyone else by the matter from continuing their works after their deaths, in an attempt to avoid a similar situation to befall on them.note
While Tropes Are Flexible, this doesn't really seem to apply to the trope? Feels like a way to shoehorn some speculation, since it's not even clear if the extra Dune prequels actually influenced these authors to make "no posthumous continuations" policies, something the example even admits.
Edited by harryhenry on Oct 28th 2021 at 5:07:56 AM
I think there's another item for this, but it has nothing to do with that item, which is about fandom ruining stuff.
I do some cleanup and then I enjoy shows you probably think are cringe.You can't play with trivia items, so that's a big no.
Suddenly I'm... still rotating Fallen London in my mind even though I've stopped actively playing it.(Not sure if index entries count as examples)
I've found that Designated Girl Fight is not in Gender Dynamics Index, should it be? Also at Gender Dynamics Index, "Gorn: Disproportionately targeted at male characters." feels pegged, Men Are the Expendable Gender right below it is already conveying the same idea.
TroperWall / WikiMagic CleanupYeah, DGF relies on Women Are Delicate so it can be put on there.
Does Race Lift apply when the source character was ethnically ambiguous? The entry on Cowboy Bebop (2021) essentially says "well, we don't exactly know WHAT he is, but this guy didn't fit our perception of him"...
- Race Lift: All three main characters run into this in some way. Spike's ethnicity was seen as ambiguous, with signs indicating either Asian (Japanese actor Yusaku Matsuda was a partial inspiration) or Jewish (the frizzy hair and last name Spiegel), and settled on John Cho, who is of Korean descent. Jet had light skin (general appearance could suggest Russian) but was cast with black actor Mustafa Shakir. Faye was heavily implied to be Filipino in the show but is played by Hispanic actress Daniella Pineda.
I don't know what to think of this recent Wall of Text on Avengers: Endgame. Besides the length, numerous spelling errors and bad indentation, I feel this is just mostly backdoor complaining.
- Flanderization: Despite Banner's claims that in his new form he now has "the best of both words", aka Bruce's intelligence and Hulk's strenght, he displays neither of them. When he works on time travel he immeidately tells them that Tony is better suited for that kind of work (while Tony is a genius, we should remember that he is an engeneer while Bruce is the one who works with theoretical phisics, and nothing Tony ever worked on remotely approaches time travel in a way that justifies this claim), and he only provides some comical failures to underline how necessary Tony is to the plot. As for the Hulk, the Ancient One quickly punches Bruce's astral body out, making his strenght useless to retrieve the time stone, and in the final fight he is out of commission due to the un-snap wrecking his body. His skills are also entirely useless to retrieve the time stone, since what ends up convincing the Ancient One is mentioning Strange's sacrifice. The Ancient One then is convinced that there must be a plan, but only because she trusts Strange, not Banners, whose argument she promptly rejected one by one. And it wasn't even that Bruce had a unique perspective on the whole matter, since he wasn't there. Hulk's only role in the plot seems to be being able to soak enough radiation to safely use the gems, which in turn is a retcon, since the previous movie showed the snap wrecking the gauntlet but not Thanos, who used it as he was on death's door and seemed to actually get better after the snap.
- Tony's intelligence gets this treatment as well. He was always a genious and a great engeneer, but his area of expertise was consistently shown to be mechanics and robotics, he had limits (the first Iron Man shows him needing several attempts to get the armor right and figure out all the bugs, both the second and the third movie involved a villain who actually had better tech than Tony, and Age of Ultron is kicked off by his failure to do proper testing and have security measures), and while he was able to adapt to other fields he needed to read the work of other, more competent scientists and work with them. Here, all the limits are removed, he is just as clever as the plots needs him to be in any field, to the point he is able to invent a way to time travel safely in a matter of days (if not hours), without even actually working on the problem, and getting the solution right on the first try. He also manages to create two different devices able to harness the infinity stones entirely off-screen and with no comments, while the previous movies showed the gauntlet as the creation as the best mythical blacksmiths (although, in all fairness, this is at least plausible, since it falls in Tony's area of expertise, it's just weird seing him replicate the work of the people who forged Mjolnir and Stormbreaker without any comments).
From YMMV.Beauty And The Beast.
- Periphery Demographic: Despite being a romantic fantasy that mainly appeals to females, BatB attracts a ton of male animation fans who appreciate the film as one of the finest modern examples of the medium. The fact that the Beast is one of the most complex male Disney characters (who are usually a Satellite Love Interest) probably helps. There's also the largely-male demographic that cares more about the Gaston memes than the movie as a whole.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm pretty sure an animated film is designed to appeal to animation fans by default unless something goes horrible wrong.
Does Foreshadowing still count if it's possible for the foreshadowed event to not happen, like in an interactive medium like a video game.
In Grand Theft Auto V, Michael and Lester talk about Trevor while casing the jewelry store for the heist. Lester says he's been keeping tabs on him, but lost contact. Michael comments that he thinks Trevor might have died and speculates how, one of which is a fiery car crash. If the player chooses the ending where Michael and Franklin betray Trevor, he's killed in a car crash and set on fire.
Not sure where else to ask, the Mazinger Z example on Supervillain Lair includes an overly long list that breaks the indentation, what can be done with it?
Edited by Amonimus on Oct 29th 2021 at 11:01:38 AM
TroperWall / WikiMagic Cleanup

I've seen plenty of disparaging comments about it being yet another Batman project, not just on Twitter but also on entertainment websites like io9/AV Club. It's basically the opposite of the Gotham Knights game.