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
I have a question: In My Hero Academia, after the first war arc, the manga showed how it impacted hero society and Midoriya's mental state, but never showed how the war impacted the mental states' of the rest of his class. So would a possible storyline showing the psychological effects of the first war arc on the UA students be an example of They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot?
Naïve Newcomer is an apprentice in English.
This sounds like a fanfic material. They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot requires the "plot" starting or led to but never being shown in full, and not about possible plots. What's described is a potential Angst? What Angst?, but I'd rather see the example to tell.
Edited by Amonimus on Dec 4th 2022 at 9:19:40 PM
TroperWall / WikiMagic CleanupIs is The All-Seeing A.I., if Mah-Dry-Bread is right that Pokemon Platinum Trainer AI
knows if an attack is gonna hit or not?
And could I then extrapolate that TheComputerIsACheatingBastard.Pokemon entry is inaccurate on the cause, and instead it's accuracy prediction instead of skewing chances, and move this example to The All-Seeing A.I. accordingly?
- Pokémon Stadium: Chance is very strongly stacked in the AI's favor; for example, should their Pokémon use evasion-increasing moves like Minimize or Double Team, it becomes almost impossible to land a hit, and low-accuracy moves almost always connect when launched by them, but rarely when used by the player.
Edited by Malady on Dec 4th 2022 at 2:23:41 AM
Disambig Needed: Help with those issues! tvtropes.org/pmwiki/posts.php?discussion=13324299140A37493800&page=24#comment-576Eh? Stadium and Platinum are two totally different games. What does one have to do with another?
Working on: Author Appeal | Sandbox | Troper Wall
- I'm assuming they don't rewrite the AI every game or anything, so any move accuracy weirdness probably has the same cause no matter which generation?
I mean, you'd be surprised, especially for games that launched on separate, unrelated consoles. For example, compare the trainer AI in Red and Blue to the AI in a modern game, and you'll see a world of difference.
So yes, the game does matter.
Working on: Author Appeal | Sandbox | Troper WallAlso it's not the All Seeing AI because accuracy doesnt mean the Computer sees something the player doesnt and its more like giving the computer controlled pokemon an unfair advantage the player doesnt have.
As long as this flower is in my heart. My Strength will flow without end.Given that actress T. Lynn Mikeska's only anime role was Scarlet O'Hara/Angel Daisy in Wedding Peach, does she count as a true One-Book Author?
Edited by gjjones on Dec 4th 2022 at 6:29:44 AM
He/His/Him. No matter who you are, always Be Yourself.I'm not sure if this is the right place for this, but it seems like a good place to start.
Some of the recent examples added to Remade and Improved are not valid examples because they go against the description, which clearly states that a second work based on the same source material does not count as a remake.
I can't fix this myself because I'm currently banned from editing. I have messaged the Troper responsible and gotten no response.
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This is a bit confusing, because IMO "only anime role" wouldn't count - only if it was literally her only role. That's how this sort of thing has been addressed in the past. But the description makes it sound like it includes cases of, say, a musician writing a single book and then going back to music, which seems a lot harder to trope in general because there's less certainty involved that they won't do it again.
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Could you show us what Remade and Improved examples you are referring to?
Edited by SoyValdo7 on Dec 4th 2022 at 8:43:14 AM
ValdoHey-o, so I added an example to Raise that's being disputed, so we figured we should take it here to see what people think. It's this:
- Secret-Keeper: Weiss's assassination by Adam is kept as much of a secret as it can be. Jaune, Ironwood, the Arc-Ops, the Atlas and Vale Councils, and the Schnee family are all aware; it's also revealed that the Kuo Kuana Express found out about it and published it, but it's not revealed if they're believed. Jaune later angrily tells Kali and Ghira about it, though Ironwood makes it clear they are not to tell anyone.
The reason why I put it at that trope is because as far as I can tell, Secret-Keeper doesn't necessarily have a limit to how many people can keep the secret until it just becomes public knowledge - for instance, I look at the first examples for Arrowverse and Buffy the Vampire Slayer, which talk about groups that are in on a secret. As for the newspaper that publishes it, two characters who should be reading that newspaper (Kali and Ghira, Blake's parents) are surprised when they hear the information in question, so even though it is published publicly, it's not clear how widespread the information is or if they're believed on a wide level. What do people think - does something else cover this information better, or is it just nothing?
Edited by STARCRUSHER99 on Dec 4th 2022 at 11:36:05 AM
Does this fit The Dreaded that's Played for Laughs?
- Played for Laughs. The Hildibrand quests quickly establish that Godbert is a nigh-unstoppable One-Man Army who can kill enormous beasts with a single blow. Everyone aware of his power knows to clear out as soon as he takes his clothes off while the poor saps who don't are quickly buried in the pavement as a side effect of his rampage. Hildibrand himself is terrified of his father's displays of "fatherly love" and Akebono believes a brainwashed Godbert alone would be enough for him to take over Hingaeshi.
Is the following quote an example of Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking or Bread, Eggs, Milk, Squick?
- "Faster than a speeding sparrow! Leaps small buildings in a single hop! Eyes like a hawk! Wings like a dove! Heart like a chicken! I am... Superbird!"— Big Bird's description of Superbird, Sesame Street
Good evening, tropers. Can selfishness and sadism be a motive for Complete Monster?
From Raven's section in Characters.RWBY Anima:
- Manipulative Bitch: Subverted, Raven often tries to manipulate others for her own benefits but the results are mixed. She tried to manipulate Yang into staying with her, first attempting to use Yang's long desire to find her in a theatrical way and then trying to scare Yang from going after Ruby and Qrow by revealing troubling knowledge about Ozpin and Salem, but her attempts largely fail as an unimpressed Yang immediatly sees through her attempt to recruit her and as she greatly underestimates Yang's love for her uncle and sister and bravery, with her attempts to scare her daughter only reinforcing Yang's determination to reunite with them. She has better success with the less rational and vengeful Cinder, successfully appealing to Cinder's thirst for vengeance against Ruby by saying she wants her brother dead, to obtain a more favorable deal from her and putting her plan to obtain the relic in action.
Also, from Aramaki's section in Characters.One Piece Marine Admirals:
- Not So Different: Strangely enough, his ideology isn't too different from some of Wano's attitudes. When he fights the samurai at the end of the Wano arc, he goes on a rant about how humanity thrives by creating and defining an inferior for everyone else to look down on. Given that Wano is a closed-off country stuck hundreds of years in the past, its population is repeatedly shown to do exactly that to the Kurozumi clannote . When a failed coup by the Kurozumi family comes to light, almost every member of the Kurozumi bloodline is hunted down, even those who had no involvement in the coup. Because of this persecution, the surviving members of the clan do everything they can to take revenge on Wano, leading to the tyrannical regime of Kurozumi Orochi (Who in turn does the exact same thing to the Kozukis). In the end, neither side learns anything. The last scene of the Wano arc shows a government-sponsored play that depicts the events of the Onigashima raid. At the play's conclusion when Orochi is about to die, the audience in unison curse all members of the Kurozumi clan.
Are these valid examples?
Edited by gjjones on Dec 5th 2022 at 2:25:23 PM
He/His/Him. No matter who you are, always Be Yourself.YMMV.Mega Man Dr Wilys Revenge has entries for Sequel Difficulty Drop and Sequel Difficulty Spike that compare two of the game's stages to their counterparts in the original Mega Man 1. I have two questions.
1. Do those two YMMV items need to reflect the entire game to count, rather than just specific portions?
2. Can Dr. Wily's Revenge be considered a "sequel" in this case? It's moreso a handheld companion to the original console game than a direct followup.
Your melody still remains in this room and it ringsIs this just connecting any snowy screen and death? Or that someone's camera dies means that they die?
- Poltergeist: The little girl communicating with a Snowy Screen of Death lets us know that All Is Not Well. "They're heee-ere..."
- The Ring. Even the Dreamworks logo before the film starts suffers from it.
- Used as part of Beck's Pre-Asskicking One-Liner in The Rundown. He demands through a security camera that Hatcher and his entire army surrender, which all makes them simply point and laugh (with Hatcher holding down the intercom so Beck can hear their laughter). Beck just coldly says "Wrong answer" and the footage goes to static.
This post is going to be a bit unusual in that this IS an example but I want to add some further info in a sub bullet
- In Final Fantasy Tactics, you get experience and skill points every time you successfully execute an action. Because of this, it can be very beneficial to prolong a fight by casting Sleep or Frog on the last remaining enemy and then take turns beating on your own guys with Throw Rock or a weak physical attack (if you're a caster). Other effective and non-damaging ways to up experience include the squire job Accumulate and Ramza's Yell skill. Completing the battles quickly and efficiently nets you far less points.
I want to add this to it
- Also, the player should beware of getting too many level ups too early as the random encounters with monsters will become almost imposible to win due to their level's scaling with the player's.
That would be a violation of Example Indentation in Trope Lists as is. The page I linked should help with proper formatting.
I know this is going to sound silly but are the pinballs in pinball machines a technical example of a Pinball Projectile, and if so, how do you describe that without it becoming an example of People Sit on Chairs? (After all whether digital or physical it's called a pinball machine so obviously a pinball is going to be involved. That doesn't have plot relevance when it comes to the machine itself or even background information)
Edited by NKgamer on Dec 5th 2022 at 6:13:26 AM

Edited by Amonimus on Dec 4th 2022 at 9:11:13 PM
TroperWall / WikiMagic Cleanup