Courtesy link: Hidden Badass. Would be worth a usage check (to see if any examples don't fit the subtropes) and trip to TRS (to either rename to make clear it's an index and not a trope, convert to a supertrope, both, or something else).
Edited by MorganWick on Dec 7th 2024 at 4:03:59 AM
Thanks for adding the link. That's what I get for "One more post before bed."
I'll put this on my To Do for future consideration.
I think it's a supertrope, so it can apply? Often a more specific subtrope would be appropriate, but it seems like a trope in its own right, too, so linking it isn't necessarily misuse.
Although with so many subtropes you'd expect any valid example to fit one of them.
Edited by Aquillion on Dec 11th 2024 at 11:03:43 AM
Problem is that it doesn't seem to have ever had on-page examples, and if you look at the archive link on the OP, not only was it explicitly called an index it didn't have much of a description at all and was almost treated like a JFF game where everyone gave a description of why someone might not initially consider someone a badass followed by the applicable trope. Not the first time an index had a name that made it sound like a trope (indeed I engaged in discussion of one earlier this year
).
The old page also had a pothole to Underestimating Badassery that seemingly implied that that was the supertrope, but that refers to a situation that might be more specific than the name Hidden Badass implies.
Edited by MorganWick on Dec 12th 2024 at 3:28:06 AM

I can't quite figure out what this page is. It's structured like an index, and (apparently) always has been... Wayback Machine Jan of 2010
calls itself "Sub-index to More Than Meets The Eye."
However, it's got wicks from nearly 400 pages, and of the few I've randomly sampled so far most are using it as a trope.