Misused: Agony Of The Feet

The description and image of Agony of the Feet are quite clear about what the trope entails but it gets heavily misused around the wiki.

• The trope definition: Character gets their foot hurt so they start comedically hopping around on the other foot.
• The trope being misused as: Character gets their foot hurt/mutilated. Full stop. No mentioning what happens next which actually forms the core part of the trope (as written).

Results:

• 3 examples mentioned the hopping (6%)
• 17 example were unclear about the hopping (34%)
• 30 examples are non-amusing without any hopping (60%)

The unclear examples talk about the pain the character experiences and possibly some wailing but leave out the mandatory stock pose.

The reason seems to be a Missing Supertrope. We do have a number of "body parts get injured" tropes listed under Anatomy Agony but none for feet in general. So all examples are currently crammed in with Agony of the Feet.

Possible solutions:

1. Cut all unclear and misused examples. We may end up with only a fraction (<10%?) of current examples
2. Expand Agony of the Feet into a catch-all "plot-relevant" feet injury trope. In other words, the trope is not a Slap Stick trope anymore
3. Create a new feet injury trope and migrate all unclear/misused examples from Agony of the Feet
4. Make Agony of the Feet the supertrope for relevant feet injuries and move the "hopping in pain" examples to a new subtrope

Edited by eroock on Dec 20th 2018 at 7:04:18 PM

Looks pretty good. Opening.

I'm leaning towards expanding, though won't mind a split into a supertrope.

Make current trope for all non-comedic relevant (IE, not People Sit On Chairs) foot injuries.

Make a new trope for the "hopping in pain" trope.

I think part of the confusion may come from An Arm and a Leg mentioning " Compare Knee-capping and Agony of the Feet", which makes it seem like the latter is about major feet injuries.

^^ Added as #4.

Edited by eroock on Dec 16th 2018 at 4:35:13 PM

I vote #2.

Made a crowner for the page action.

Bump for crowner action

Voted. Forgot to earlier. Thanks for adding my suggestion as an option.

Option 4 looks a winner. Let's start discussing next steps.

1. A new trope name for the Slap Stick / Amusing Injury variant. Something like Dance Of Pain.
2. Since the description will, for the most part, move to the new trope, we need a write up regarding dramatic foot injuries. Anybody wants to take a stab at it?

Another question: Some examples mention feet being blown off by bombs or chopped off without mentioning any pain involved in the process, [1], [2], [3].

Would these remain as examples of Agony of the Feet or better move to An Arm and a Leg?

Edited by eroock on Dec 21st 2018 at 12:00:37 PM

I think An Arm and a Leg would fit better for limbs entirely lost.

I like the alliteration of "Hurt-Foot Hop" for a new name for the comedic hopping examples.

I'd like to reach out to TV Trope's creative department to write up a description for the new trope page for dramatic foot injuries. Where would I find them?

I'll look into it. I'll check the related tropes like Fingore and An Arm and a Leg and I'll try to create something similar. I'll post it here to get peer review. :-)

BTW, good catch and great work on this TRS discussion. All these years that I've been a troper, and it has never occurred to me that all examples of this trope I saw were actually misuse.

First draft, feedback encouraged. Inspired by similar tropes, some parts directly copied (from this wiki).

Agony of the Feet

Eyes, teeth, tongues, genitalia and fingers are all extremely sensitive and fragile body parts. So are our feet and toes.

This trope occurs if something painful happens to your characters' toe, toes, foot or feet and the situation is used as a dramatic device or a plot point. This trope is usually played for drama and/or for horror. Audience instantly sympathize with any characters that fall victim to this trope.

Can come about in two ways:

1. Accident: The character accidentally steps on something or into something or somebody accidentally drops something on their feet or toes. Or the character has no choice and must walk barefoot for a long time in extreme conditions.
2. Deliberate: Another person/entity deliberately causes pain on somebody's toes or feet as cruel discipline or torture.

What can happen:

• Toes broken one by one;
• Toes cut off, shot off, bitten off, ripped out or eaten;
• Toenails torn off; pulled out or spiked with long sharp objects;
• Toes or feet injured by broken glass;
• Toes or feet exposed to frost, extreme heat or dangerous chemicals;
• Toes or feet crushed between heavy objects or machine parts (bones get crushed and flesh gets mangled)
• Foot whipping (hitting bare feet as torture or punishment);
• All Women Love Shoes but damn, they hurt badly if they're too small or too tight;
• Stepping on a lego brick!

Makes you wince, doesn't it?

Most people in real life can relate to foot and toe injuries, since they tend to be very common in every day life. This makes toenail, toe or feet severing very hard to watch or read about because it effectively makes viewers feel the character's pain. Also — loss of toes is nastier than people might generally assume, as losing even minor toes can cause serious damage to people's ability to balance and walk.

Compare An Arm and a Leg, where an entire limb is lost; and Impaled Palm, where the handpalm is pierced by some object. See also Cold-Blooded Torture, Mutilation Interrogation and A Taste of the Lash.

Awesome. Can you paste this into Sandbox.Agony Of The Feet? I don't have access to the source of your content.

Looks good to me.

Will do. :-)

When I was writing the description, I realized we might perhaps broaden the comedic version of the trope — you might notice the shoes/boots and lego bricks in the list, and those usually appear in comedies and sitcoms. But characters don't have to do the dance.

Then again, even toes getting cut off were played for comedy (and not that dark comedy, it was on Friends), so perhaps it can stay on the list in the horror/drama use.

Edited by XFllo on Jan 17th 2019 at 12:37:02 PM

Now we need to find a trope name for the slapstick variant. I proposed Dance Of Pain. Other thoughts?

• Dance Of Pain — hm, could be, could be, but is it * sufficiently indicative?

• Hurt Foot Hop — I like.

• Hurt Foot Hopping?

• Or perhaps if we include all kinds of comedy in the new trope, it could have more general name, like Slapstick Foot Injury or something similar.

Hurt Foot Hop is the best name I've heard, but the opening description will bear a heavy load to clarify things anyway.

Crowner for the new name?

And any input on expanding the comedy use of trope (all comedic use, all slapstick use)?

le bump

Crowner