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
From Lacus's section in Characters.Mobile Suit Gundam Seed ZAFT:
- Smarter Than You Look: Whether it's Obfuscating Stupidity or not is somewhat debatable, but Lacus being a pretty teenage Idol Singer with a sweet, quirky and seemingly extremely naive personality then baffles everyone who discovers just how effective and intelligent she really is. It works a little too well on Patrick Zala, who keeps insisting her father Siegel must be to blame for her deeds.
True example?
He/His/Him. No matter who you are, always Be Yourself.Is this a Psychic Nosebleed in a mundane world, since the description allows eyes or ears to bleed instead? Or not the right trope?
- Ravirn: Cybermancy:
She wasn’t going to be happy, but then, with her thesis defense scheduled in seven weeks, how would that be any different from her base state? Lately she’d been so stressed, I half expected her to start bleeding from the ears.
Edited by Malady on Jul 2nd 2022 at 11:59:42 AM
Disambig Needed: Help with those issues! tvtropes.org/pmwiki/posts.php?discussion=13324299140A37493800&page=24#comment-576Does The Haunting of Hill House count as an example of Paranormal Investigation. The premise is that a group of people are spending time in a haunted house to look for signs of the paranormal.
Sounds like it to me, especially since the description says they were specifically recruited for the job.
Does this look like a Aladdin Shout-Out to anyone else?
- Ravirn: Cybermancy: To Genie's "PHENOMENAL COSMIC POWER! Itty-bitty living space!":
But hey, that’s [Zeus] to a tee, astronomical energy harnessed to teensy-weensy processing capacity.
On Hollywood Law, there's this Sponge Bob example:
- There is also the episode where Plankton accidentally steals a modern art piece (don't ask). First, the Police chase Plankton well out of their jurisdiction, even up to the International Space Station, which is mainly Rule of Funny. But that excuse can't be given for what happens next. Plankton tries to evade the authorities by breaking into Spongebob's house and claims he would be arrested too since he is harboring a criminal. Except he wouldn't, as Plankton broke in and proceeded to use this threat to get him to cooperate, which is the exact opposite.
On the Anime & Manga subpage for Surprisingly Realistic Outcome, there's an entry for the infamous "Japan's SDF invades a magical world and conquers it" series Gate which declares the SDF's curbstomping the fantasy world's natives is an example of this trope. I've copied the exact entry below, but I have to ask if this is actually an example? You can't say "technology dominating magic is realistic", in my opinion, because magic isn't real in our world. We can't throw fireballs at people just by chanting the right words, but how does that automatically translate to "grenades are better in a world where you can throw fireballs"?
- Gate might as well be renamed Surprisingly Realistic Outcome: The Animation. So many times in fiction, there's something of a "Technology is inferior to magic," theme — look at how many anime have super-advanced technology fall to "Spirits," or people with guns falling to a single man with a sword. Here? Modern technology — even that which is upwards of half a century out of date in our world — reigns supreme on the battlefield.
You are correct; there's nothing realistic about how technology interacts with magic, no matter how any given work chooses to portray that interaction.
Suddenly I'm... still rotating Fallen London in my mind even though I've stopped actively playing it.For the purposes of Trailer Joke Decay, would the opening credit sequence of a television series count as a trailer?
In the third season of Reno 911!, Travis Junior appears in the opening credits getting electrocuted while grabbing a microphone and tumbling off of a stage at a school assembly. This doesn't happen until well into the season.
From Mega Man ZX:
- Happy Ending Override: Downplayed to the Zero series. Zero 4 ends with Zero's Heroic Sacrifice to kill Dr. Weil, which brings humans and Reploids together at long last after centuries of fighting. ZX shows that Mavericks and world-destroying threats are still around, but the 200 years of relative peace between the series is all but stated to be some of the best times for humans and Reploids to live in, and things never get as dark in ZX as they did in Zero.
"Conflict appears in sequel" seems too trivial of grounds to list under this trope.
Edited by Albert3105 on Jul 4th 2022 at 3:15:26 PM
- Downplayed in the Maria-sama Ga Miteru fic Fake (Vega62a). Sei asks during a car trip if anyone needs to go to the bathroom. More precisely, she asks "Whose bladder is full?". Her ojou-esque friends are embarrassed but in the end, they all, as it's stated, admitted they owned a bladder.
So I'm wonder if this count for Reality Subtext for V Shojo for Kson origin story.
In it, she created a gang of close friends that over time left the group as they grew and that she had to find a new path.
The subtext is that the person behind Kson was once part of another VTuber company that she graduated from, but not before some controversy. And that she had to leave the close friends she made over there.
Edited by WhirlRX on Jul 4th 2022 at 12:18:47 PM
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maybe OP confused it with Nobody Poops? either way yeah cut it as misuse
This is on Monochrome Casting:
- Wizards of Waverly Place: Aside from Theresa and her family, everyone is at least half-white. Considering they live in New York, this is a little strange.
My understanding of this trope is that it's for when the cast is entirely or overwhelmingly of one race. If you breakdown the races of the main cast of Wizards of Waverly Place you have two white characters, one hispanic, and three mixed race (half-white and half-hispanic). Now this doesn't match the demographics of New York, but I don't think you can say that the cast is entirely of one race.
- Through a Face Full of Fur: In the episode, "Secret Weapon", Senda gets blue-faced in reaction to eating a meal that Aoba prepared for him.
https://cross-game.fandom.com/wiki/Keiichirou_Senda
Does this
fit Reading the Stage Directions Out Loud, That Makes Me Feel Angry, both of them, or neither of them?
This is currently commented out on the Recap.RWBYV 8 E 14 The Final Word page, but it's misusing the trope (the audience knows exactly what Neo's motive is, Ruby doesn't). Neo isn't keeping her agenda secret, Ruby just hasn't had a chance to learn what's driving Neo yet. Can I remove it?
- Hidden Agenda Villain: In-universe. It's finally brought up this Volume that Ruby has no idea why Neo wants to kill her so badly, though she doesn't particularly care. The audience of course knows the reason is that Cinder lied that Ruby murdered Roman to get Neo to cooperate with her.
Also, this was added to Characters.RWBY Ice Queendom, but it seems like shoehorning. The original show introduces Semblances (personal super-powers) a couple of episodes after the pilot episode fight, whereas the anime spin-off introduces the Semblance immediately in the pilot fight. The entry seems to be trying to turn styalistic differences between the two shows into this trope, the example of "defending against" versus "dodging" seems like nitpicking to me.
- Adaptational Wimp: Downplayed, but her initial fight with Torchwick and his goons is altered so that she is forced to use her Semblance to fight them off, also being forced to defend against Torchwick’s feint instead of hopping over it.
Edited by Wyldchyld on Jul 4th 2022 at 6:25:43 AM
If my post doesn't mention a giant flying sperm whale with oversized teeth and lionfish fins for flippers, it just isn't worth reading.The Lawful Stupid page, in the Western Animation folder, lists an entry for Beast Wars, proclaiming that Silverbolt is an example of Lawful Stupid. But there is no evidence as to why this is the case, the entry instead talking about how he gets away with being Lawful Stupid because he's also stupidly lucky. The thing is, I can't remember any examples of Silverbolt being obsessed with rules; his gag was that he was a Knight in Shining Armor stereotype, which the other bots around him found campy. Whilst he could maybe be a little Stupid Good, most of Silverbolt's more foolish actions were seen in his interactions with Blackarachnia, and even those are called out as being because he was infatuated with her (is Love Makes You Dumb a trope?) and not because he was normally stupid.
So, yeah, is this an example?
How old does something need to be to count for Ancient Evil?
The King of crows from The Diviners (2012) was "born when America first sinned" so he's a couple centuries old at least, he was at the Salem witch trials, is he old enough?
"We'll meet again" | 🏳️⚧️

Reposting my question and examples for Kick The Son Of A Bitch: