Have a question about how the TVTropes wiki works? No one knows this community better than the people in it, so ask away! Ask the Tropers is the page you come to when you have a question burning in your brain and the support pages didn't help.
It's not for everything, though. For a list of all the resources for your questions, click here. You can also go to this Directory thread
for ongoing cleanup projects.
Ask the Tropers is for:
- General questions about the wiki, how it works, and how to do things.
- Reports of problems with wiki articles, or requests for help with wiki articles.
- Reports of misbehavior or abuse by other tropers.
Ask the Tropers is not for:
- Help identifying a trope. See TropeFinder.
- Help identifying a work. See MediaFinder.
- Asking if a trope example is valid. See the Trope Talk forum.
- Proposing new tropes. See TropeLaunchPad.
- Making bug reports. See QueryBugs.
- Asking for new wiki features. See QueryWishlist.
- Chatting with other tropers. See our forums.
- Reporting problems with advertisements. See this forum topic.
- Reporting issues on the forums. Send a Holler instead.
Ask the Tropers:
open Is there a trope for anachronically uniformized armies? Film
Almost all movies displaying vast armies have their mooks wearing absolute identical gear, even when the time period or the social structure should not allow standardized mass production (look the Trojan army in Troy for example).
Of course it is perfectly understandable to do so (help the viewer to identify the sides in battle, make the faceless mooks even more indiscernable from each other and naturally reduce production costs) but it is still an artifact. So shouldn't it be a trope in its own right? Anachronism Stew doesn't mention it (I agree it's a pretty minor anachronism, especially when the gear is at least correct in itself for the time period, but it's also extremely common)
That's mainly a concern when the time depicted is pre-modern. Stormtroopers or British redcoats naturally have the level of industrialization required to field their soldiers a standardized uniform, but medieval (including medieval fantasy) or ancient troops shouldn't be able to (it doesn't mean that they must be completely disparate: the Rohirrim in the LOTR trilogy avert the standardized aspect and still look coherent. On the other side the soldiers of Gondor play the uniformized part straight, with even the archers wearing the exact same plate armor as everyone else. Finally Saruman's Uruk would be a justified example since we see them mass produce their gear, and industrialization is a big part of Saruman's characterization in the books).
Edited by scarpeopenHow should we note familiar voices? Film
It used to be there was a trope called "Hey, It's That Voice," which was listed on the trivia section and was a nice way of calling out why a particular actor might sound familiar. Subsequently, the trope was changed to "Role Association."
But now I see "Role Association" is a "Just For Fun" trope, which apparently doesn't merit inclusion on any of a work's pages at all anymore. (Unless there's some way to make a "[Work]/Just For Fun" page, which I don't see anywhere in the page-creation interface.) And furthermore, going to the "Role Association" page, it's apparently all about imagining a given work had another of an actor's characters swapped in, which is not the sense in which "Hey, It's That Voice" was used.
I used to like to be able to see listings of actors from a given work who were better known for other roles, and to add such myself. But now those listings are apparently all gone. Granted that these listings are more about the particular actors than the work they starred in, it was still nice to be able to see a list of all the other well-known roles the actors had right there together.
Is there an appropriate trivia category to use, since "Role Association" apparently isn't it?
Edited by Robotech_MasteropenWhat Next? Film
Is there an option on the T Vtropes site where you can view progressive tropes? Say I'm looking at the trope of "You said you'd let her go!" Trope, and I wanted to see possible trope outcomes that can come about to resolve the trope.
I'm plotting a scene similar to the "You Said you'd let her go!" trope, but I wrote myself in a corner on how to get out of it. I don't know the names of the tropes that would be good outcomes. Is there a section of the trope's page of trope outcomes to select and look up?
open Troper behavior in The Hateful Eight pages Film
I would like to ask how to proceed about the behavior of BebeJumeau on several pages relating to The Hateful Eight, were he or she seem determined to impose the view that the character of Daisy Domergue is a victim completely undeserving of the treatment she receives in the movie. To wit:
1) Asshole Victim entry
On 31st Dec '15 5:48:19 PM wdfan added the Asshole Victim to Daisy’s section of the The Hateful Eight page.
On 26th Feb '16 9:46:57 AM BebeJumeau removed Asshole Victim from Daisy’s section claiming the trope was based on personal opinion.
On 27th Feb '16 11:08:57 AM GKG put the trope back, rightfully pointing out that Asshole Victim is not a YMMV trope so it is perfectly valid to put it in the characters’ page.
On 5th Mar '16 5:42:46 AM BebeJumeau once again removed the trope from the Daisy’s section without explanation.
On 8th Mar '16 7:28:16 PM plcthecd put the trope back, requesting that BebeJumeau stop removing it without explanation.
On 9th Mar '16 11:34:48 AM BebeJumeau once again deleted the trope, claiming that because her death was cruel and her crimes never explained then her death wasn’t justified. You will notice this has nothing to do with the meaning of the trope.
On 9th Mar '16 2:36:17 PM I entered the picture and put the trope back, arguing that as a criminal and member of a and of criminals who is victimized by the other characters Daisy qualifies as Asshole Victim.
On 9th Mar '16 8:18:23 PM BebeJumeau once again deleted the trope claiming that YMMV was being presented as fact.
On 9th Mar '16 9:09:45 PM I put the trope back, with a more detailed explanation for why the character qualifies for it.
On 10th Mar '16 1:10:28 PM BebeJumeau once again removed the trope, arguing that the word asshole itself was “crass” and replacing it with Anti-Villain, a trope that does not fit the character as she displays no “heroic goals, personality traits, and/or virtues” whatsoever.
At this point I decided not to add the trope back so as to avoid getting into an Edit War, but I would like to ask how to proceed about this issue.
2) Fandom Heresy & Fetish Fuel entries
On 19th Feb '16 1:21:26 PM BebeJumeau added the Fandom Heresy trope to the The Hateful Eight page
On 19th Feb '16 10:15:48 PM GKG deleted this trope from the page.
On 20th Feb '16 10:53:40 AM BebeJumeau put it back.
On 10th Mar '16 12:47:09 PM BebeJumeau added the Fetish Fuel trope to the The Hateful Eight page along with a quite extensive explanation about why Daisy’s treatment in the movie was gratuitously exploitative for fetish’s sake, which she constantly expanded on 10th Mar '16 12:52:28 PM, 10th Mar '16 12:54:44 PM, 10th Mar '16 12:56:57 PM
On 10th Mar '16 1:01:08 PM Discar deleted both tropes because: “Fetish Fuel doesn't get examples, and not an example of Fandom Heresy.”
On 10th Mar '16 9:09:04 PM BebeJumeau put back Fandom Heresy and at 9:26:04 PM put back the large text that was previously under Fetish Fuel under the Alternative Character Interpretation entry, without using any spoiler tagging for the spoilers contained in it. Then further expanded the text at 9:31:14 PM.
On 11th Mar '16 2:30:37 AM Discar once again had to delete the Fandom Heresy entry.
3) Demonization
On 9th Mar '16 12:05:30 PM BebeJumeau added the Demonization trope to the main The Hateful Eight while at 12:26:29 PM adding it to Daisy’s section of the The Hateful Eight page.
On 9th Mar '16 2:41:14 PM I removed it from The Hateful Eight page and at 2:49:52 PM from the main The Hateful Eight page, as it is my understanding that this trope only applies when a character or concept is purposely made to look as evil, when in fact they’re not, and there’s not evidence that Daisy is being presented by the movie as more evil than she is.
On 9th Mar '16 8:18:23 PM BebeJumeau added back the entry in the in the The Hateful Eight page claiming that Daisy was “demonised way disproportionally”
On 9th Mar '16 9:01:45 PM I removed it once again with a more detailed explanation as to why.
On 10th Mar '16 11:17:17 AM BebeJumeau added it again to the in the The Hateful Eight page, and at 12:23:38 PM to the main page, arguing that the amount of punishment the character receives compared to the other characters warranted that trope.
I disagree with this interpretation but at this point I decided not to delete it again on either page so as to avoid getting into an Edit War, but I would like to ask how to proceed about this issue.
Overall, I would like to ask the mods how to proceed from this point forward, as I believe that any further attempts on my part to correct the improper use of the tropes in the The Hateful Eight pages will inevitably result in an Edit War, as shown by BebeJumeau’s behavior over the course of several months and involving several tropers, one of them a P5.
Thank you for your time.
Edited by SeptimusHeapopenWill This Film Have It's Own Page? Film
Will Nature Unleashed: Volcano (The Volcano Disaster 2005) have it's own page like most films? I've always wondered and originally I wanted to make the page myself, but I'm not that great with tropes and have only have done small additions and edits to a few films so far (even though I come to Tvtropes almost everyday to view tropes, pages, and films that I like so I can have some good laughs and make some stories and novels of my own with those tropes).
openDoes this qualify as a TropeBreaker Film
Upon rewatching The Mist, I've realised something. The entire premise of the evil cult that forms through the story and preaching of their leader hinge almost entirely on the fact the story is set in place with Protestant majority and the concept of predestination is not only a tenant, but actively used, both for the story itself and the in-story cult. If the story was set in any other background, the entire premise of the cult as "God will only save a handful of chosen ones, and everyone not worthy will go straight to hell, so prove your worth" falls flat on its face, because it just won't work out if you don't, say, have the story set in Maine.
But does it qualify if the location or social background of the story was changed as a Trope Breaker? I was thinking about this exact same story playing out in my own country, which is Catholic, and the type of person that's best described as a local equivalent of a fundie. And they would preach completely different things - assuming they wouldn't just blame it on Jews, then simply pray in the corner to pass time, which would be far more likely than anything else.
openSneakers & Getting Crap Past The Radar Film
So in the Sneakers, there is an %-ed entry for GCPTR, citing the works on the trope itself. I dig out the original entry and it says the following:
Dr. Rhyzkov calls Janek "what a dick" in a truly vulgar manner. But does so in Czech, so no sweat. It also leads to a dissonance with the overall Avoid the Dreaded G Rating strategy undertook in late stages of production.
Not an expert on Czech, but traced the line and the swear works in other Slav languages, too. This is really damn vulgar.
So my question is: can the original entry be re-instated, given it clearly has:
- Radar in form of MPA and their rating system
- Crap in form of severe swearing
- Getting past in form of Hiding Behind the Language Barrier
And on top of that, the last sentence is correct - this is so severe, the film wouldn't have to go through all the additional hurdles mentioned under Avoid the Dreaded G Rating if that line was simply in English (and to be frank, I'm not sure you could augment the vulgar manner of calling someone a dick in English to properly portray the severity of it).
tl;dr can the original entry go back?
Edited by StaniszopenMadea Film
In the Characters/Madea characters page, the main characters only consist of Madea, Joe, and Cora. No one else. With others like Brian, Mr Brown, Hattie appearing in the other pages, what can I do?
Can moment pages start as Sandbox pages? For example, what if I do a Funny page for I Can Do Bad All By Myself, Madea’s Big Happy Family, A Madea Homecoming, etc and I mention something about Madea and Joe, I’m not sure how many examples are needed?
Edited by LarrytheKingopenClockwork Orange Animated Short (18+) Film
Hey, does anyone remember an erotic animated short film from the '70s that was supposedly shown before A Clockwork Orange? I read about it on TV Tropes once but can't find it again—might’ve had a name like Love in the Afternoon or something similar.
If it helps, I vaguely recall it saying something about how Kubrick himself handpicked it as the perfect "cartoon before the main show" for his movie when showing in select cinemas.
It had a real Yellow Submarine meets Fritz the Cat sorta feel to it, psychedelic colours, and of course, graphic sex scenes.
It's really been bothering me that I cant find it anywhere. It was a really wacky deep cut, almost like lost media.
openOf crosswicking for The Movie of a series Film
So, I recently made individual pages for both BoBoiBoy movies, BoBoiBoy: The Movie and BoBoiBoy Movie 2, and am gradually crosswicking them.
Let's say there's occurrences of the same trope both in the original series and in a movie. Should the latter's example be a sub-bullet of the former on the trope page? Or should the movie's examples go in the appropriate Film folder?
Example: Height Insult has 3 examples from BBB, 2 of which are from movies, but I was hesitant to move the two movie examples to the "Films - Animated" folder, which I now think would be appropriate since I moved those sub-bullets for that trope example to the respective movie pages
from the BoBoiBoy page itself.
A different example: Mourning a Dead Robot has two BBB examples, one from the series and one from the movie. I haven't edited it recently yet to correct the wick, but I'm uncertain if I should leave the movie example in its current position or move it to the "Films - Animated" folder.
I lean towards separating show examples from movie examples in crosswicking unless they have information that cross-references each other. But I'd like to get more feedback please. Thank you.
openRemoving Instances of Fan Nickname to Refer to a Character Film
Looks like Film.Warrior Of The Lost World and its sub-pages are littered with references to the title character played by Robert Ginty who has No Name Given in the movie and credited as "The Rider" as "The Paper Chase Guy" as he's called in the MST3K episode that covers the film.
Should the instances of "Paper Chase Guy" be changed to "The Rider" to keep the movie page itself self-contained and consistent while adding a Fan Nickname to its YMMV?
openAdult Swim's Yule Log Knight of Cerebus Film
So, I just recently watched Adult Swim Yule Log and I was wondering if I should add that the Yule Log itself became the Knight of Cerebus for the film, since even though the film started off with Pleatherface and his mother murdering a woman and hiding in the log cabin, the film took a darker turn when the Yule Log comes to life and starts murdering people.
open Slow-motion grocery items dropping Film
What do you call this trope: The unsuspecting character, ofttimes a mafioso, is innocently carrying his groceries out of the store, or into his home, etc and is then ambushed by a gun-wielding assailant. The assault itself is typically off-screen while the camera instead goes into slow-motion, focuses on the groceries (fruit, produce, raw pasta, etc) slowly tumbling and rolling away on the ground, and which might be followed up by a puddle of blood then pooling near the spilled groceries. The music accompanying the slow-motion trope is operatic or classical music coming to a crescendo as this little scene plays out.
Edited by icebergopenTitanic video for Crowd Panic Film
Hi. I noticed that the video example for Crowd Panic, which is from Titanic (1997), has a mouse cursor embedded in the video itself. I was wondering if someone could upload a new, cleaner version, as the final plunge is an excellent example of this trope.

I added Magical Mystery Tour to the Television Movie Index as it ran on the BBC. Noticed that it's listed on the Film index as well. Thoughts? Don't really have an opinion myself.
Edited by jamespolk