The TVTropes Trope Finder is where you can come to ask questions like "Do we have this one?" and "What's the trope about...?" Trying to rediscover a long lost show or other medium but need a little help? Head to Media Finder and try your luck there. Want to propose a new trope? You should be over at You Know, That Thing Where.
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openJapanese flag-print fan Anime
A character breaks out a pair of paper fans with the Japanese flag on them. Mostly appears in older anime.
openStock MMO Currencies
Is there a trope that provides a general outline of MMO/mobile game currencies? Things like stamina/fatigue bars, "coins" versus premium cash, et cetera?
openBreakfast Aesop
That thing in kid shows where a character skips breakfast and gets all fuzzy and is told that breakfast is the most important meal of the day or whatever.
openSmoking stinks trope
I'm pretty certain there's a trope for people coughing and hacking when exposed to smoking (or trying it for the first time), but is there a trope for characters reacting negatively to the smell of tobacco or cannabis smoke, or trying to get rid of the smell? One example is an early episode of Gotham where a character is smoking weed, a police officer friend drops by unexpectedly and she hides the joint and then fans the air to make the smoke go away, which works about as well as you'd expect as she is immediately called out for smoking pot in the ensuing conversation. I know I've seen a similar scenario involving tobacco and a kid smoking but I can't call the title immediately to mind.
openThe skeptic gets the worst luck?
Hypothetical example: In an episode of a TV series, Alice and Bob are sleuthing around a building which is thought to be haunted. Alice believes in ghosts, but Bob doesn't. Throughout the episode, Bob seems to have a lot of bad luck. If it turns out that Alice is right, ghosts do exist, and the building is in fact haunted, the ghosts will always target him more than Alice. If ghosts don't exist or it's left open to interpretation, Bob will often still get bad luck, for example, tripping over something because he's too distracted telling Alice that ghosts don't exist.
openDied too early
A trope where a character's death is considered particularly poignant because of the timing, such as dying in the middle of a Despair Spot right before things got better (for instance, a poor man dying the day before it's announced he's won the lottery). Conversely, a dead character died happy during a Hope Spot and so will never know things got worse (a character looking for his Disappeared Dad is finally reunited with him, but dies before he can learn the dad is a Retired Monster).
openAfterlife as your true self
Is there a trope where a character reaches the afterlife looking like his/her true self or idealized self rather than the eventually scared or much older real body?
openWhat you thought wasn’t real is.
A trope for which someone reads or hears stories about something (usually fairy tales or mythology, and thinks they are just that... until they actually encounter it.
Example 1: In The Borrowers (1997), Exterminator Jeff lampshades it when he says he only heard stories of Borrowers, and thought they were just stories
Example 2: An inversion. In Fern Gully The Last Rainforest, for many years, humans only existed in Fern Gully’s “human tales”, until Zack appeared.
openUnremarkable Villain Death
When a major villain is offed in a quick or anticlimactic way. This works especially well for villains who think very highly of themselves, as a way of showing that they're not so great as they think. Do we have this?
Edited by DrNoPumaopenA single person does the work that would required multiple people
Is there a trope that has a person who does a lot of work by himself with Zero help.
openAdaptation Trooe
Is there a trope for when a character is a composite of two different incarnations of the character? Composite Character but they're a composite of themself.
openTwo tropes
I've got a pair of tropes that need finding:
Aggressive Affection
- A catgirl, or other Half-Human Hybrid with similar ears, meets up with a group of friends, and the youngest one of the groupnote or the character's girlfriend, for those occasional male examples greets them by leaping onto their back like a Jockey and nibbling on their ear.
- A strong character gives a weaker character a hearty slap on the back, which usually winds up with the latter performing an impromptu faceplant if the strength ratio is wide enough.
Close-Quarters Stare
- Two characters either hate each other, or just want to get right up in each other's face for some reason, so they bring their heads so close together that they run the risk of head-butting each other (in some cases they actually do butt heads like mad goats, but rarely do so hard enough to do harm), sometimes pairing it with an impromptu handshake so they physically pull each other together.
openNo Opportunity For Good Deeds
Do we have a trope for the comedy set-up where a character, like a boy scout or a superhero, wants to help people but no matter where they look they can't find anybody who needs help?
Edited by PaulAopenHero is so inspiring, even the antagonist roots for them
Only one really good example I can think of, but there’s gotta be others. In the novella Call of the Wild, this guy bets that his dog Buck (the protagonist) can haul a thousand pounds a hundred yards. Jerk Guy in the bar takes the bet, as do a number of others. They load up a sled and harness Buck and the sight of the massive weight attached to the dog convinces everyone the task is impossible. Buck struggles to get any traction at first and only moves it a few inches, but he soon begins to build momentum and is moving at a steady clip. He’s moving so fast that the on-lookers realize he’s going to sail past the hundred-yard mark and the sight of Buck accomplishing this Herculean task is so inspiring that everyone from the bar is cheering for him—including Jerk Guy and everyone else who bet against him.
openBribery
Trope for when a character bribes someone to do something with money? Every Man Has His Price is close, but that says repeated instances and I'm only talking about once. Unless I'm just reading into it too much?
openCharacter there, but only via archive footage? Live Action TV
According to a discussion about Series/Mr.Robot there was speculation that Darlene (main cast) would be absent from some episodes of the upcoming Season 4, but also in the episodes she's absent from via archive footage so that she's still got some role. Basically, they wanted her to be in every episode in the season, even if not physically there.
Is there a trope for this scenario where a character is an Absentee Actor but appears only via archive footage? Is this Loophole Abuse or Fake Shemp?
openVideo game boss can't kill you, but you can kill it? Videogame
Is there a trope for where a video game boss can't kill you, but you can kill it with some effort, for example the cymbals that whizzed around in the air on music-themed levels of 1990s Amiga game Zool?
I want to check before I do any major edits to video game pages.
Is there a trope for a character/unit/civilization that can travel quickly and can take a lot of hits, but is largely unable to do much damage? That is, this is a Stone Wall with good speed (and possibly even worse offenses than a regular Stone Wall).
An example is Mandibuzz in Pokémon: Nice speed (and can be boosted further with Tailwind), pretty high defenses, but miserable attack stats.
A number of combat robots, in competitions like Robot Wars and BattleBots, take this approach too: They have either very downplayed weapons or none at all and focus instead on engine power and armor. Against robots with mighty, fearsome weapons, their approach is to use their armor to break those weapons to render them helpless, then push them around to win matches.