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 the Trope Launch Pad.
Find a Trope:
openNo Title Live Action TV
Is there a trope like this?
An activist commits a crime and goes on the run. They change their name, settle down in a new place, get married to someone who may or may not know their past. Years later the past comes back to haunt them.
Examples: Bones "Soccer Mom in the Mini-Van" Fairly Legal "Shattered"
openNo Title Live Action TV
Is there a trope for when an anachronism accidentally is included in the background? Anachronism Stew seems to only cover anachronisms that are intentionally filmed. I am thinking of the Twilight Zone "Mr. Denton on Doomsday", which takes place in the Old West, but you can see a telephone pole in the background in the first few seconds.
Why isn't there an Anachronism Index? It seems broad enough to have enough subtropes. Failing to find a specific "Anachronism in the Background" trope, is the there a trope for simply something unfortunate that was accidentally filmed in the background?
openNo Title Live Action TV
How do you call it when a character asks a question, and all the others characters around make the same reply? For example, if Mayor Quimby from The Simpsons asks to the city "Do you think I'm a good mayor?" and the whole city replies "No!". By name, Big "NO!" or Big "YES!" may seem the answers, but they do not seem to be for collective answers, but for cries in important key plot events.
openNo Title Live Action TV
Is there a trope in either TV or Film for when there is a short scene in a mirror but the viewer doesn't know it is a reflection until a minute later? The reveal comes when the camera pans out to reveal the edges of the mirror, a character walks in front of the mirror, or (rarely) a character breaks the mirror. I've looked in mirror tropes and camera tropes but haven't found anything.
openNo Title Live Action TV
Where a character is undergoing some kind of psychological trauma, and the words in the book they are reading change to reflect their mental state?
- Dean in the Supernatural episode Yellow Fever
- Scott in Teen Wolf 1x08
openNo Title Live Action TV
Is there a general trope for giving someone a "mad on?" Which is to say, Bob needs to hit a home run for his team, but he's not confident in his abilities, so Alice intentionally chews him out, makes fun of him, calls him names, etc. before he goes up to bat. This makes Bob very angry, and that anger gives him the adrenaline boost he needs to hit the big home run and save the Rec Center from the evil banker. Note that Alice and Bob are on the same team here, and this is a conscious strategy by Alice. Bob may or (ideally) may not be aware of what she's planning.
Edited by ShrikesnestopenNo Title Live Action TV
A state where: a series crosses from radio to TV, or from British TV to American TV. The premis of the show is altered or revised so that a character from the original radio show, or the original British TV show, is replaced by an American or dropped completely. Is there a trope or trope name for the lost character/actor in these circs? I'm thinking Flight of the Conchords, where their manager in the original BBC Radio show was Welsh character actor Rob Brydon. He played an optimistic innocent who just knew crossing to the big time was a matter of time and the right breaks...
A similar case is singer Elaine Paige, who played Eva Peron in the London runs of Evita as well as a Broadway version. She felt justified in thinking she'd get the film role too. But this Madonna person had other ideas...
openNo Title Live Action TV
Do we have a trope about how all flashbacks or invocations of the past are black and white or sepia tone, even if they don't go back far enough for that to really make sense? I'm thinking of shows that flash back to the 1990s, but show the action occurring in black and white because it's the past.
openNo Title Live Action TV
What's the one where a character's full name consists of its actor's first name and a made-up last name, such as Patty Lane (Patty Duke), Lucy Ricardo (Lucille Ball), Valerie Hogan and later Sandy Hogan (Valerie Harper and Sandy Duncan), Donna Stone (Donna Reed), etc. Seems to be mainy in sitcoms and especially in older sitcoms, though I think there are some recent examples I'm forgetting.
openNo Title Live Action TV
The heroes/villains are looking for someone in a crowd, when they see someone from the back with similar same hair/clothing, run up and grab them, sometimes while shouting an angry accusation...only to find they're a complete stranger. Sometimes the fugitive in question has given them their clothes as a deliberate distraction.
openNo Title Live Action TV
I just watched Sherlock S 2 E 3 last night. Is there a trope for what Moriarty does to Sherlock? Not the specific actions he takes, but the general idea of "I'm not just going to kill you; I'm going to destroy you in every way possible."
openNo Title Live Action TV
Do we have a trope for when our heroes need to download something off of a computer? Typically accompanied by an Exact Progress Bar as they watch nervously for the baddie to come back to their computer.
Edited by awelter84openNo Title Live Action TV
There are a lot of shows where the characters are in constant danger—whether from serial killers, the government, or actual monsters—but they continue to live their normal lives and only deal with the stuff when it is completely overt. They don't carry guns or run away to Mexico. They don't even look through peep holes before opening the door.
Buffy the Vampire Slayer is a major example of this. The main characters walk around during the day like they're perfectly safe, and keep their parents in the dark about an extremely dangerous situation. If I were the Big Bad, the first thing I would do is to hire a sniper, or even just common thugs, to take them out during the day. This is overted a few times in the series, like when they run away in a Winnebago in season 5.
Thanks for the help!
openNo Title Live Action TV
Is there a trope that covers the ever-increasing amount of commercial time in American TV? For instance, back in the 1960s, Star Trek ran about 51 min per episode. Most modern shows run 42 min each with some as low as 40.
openNo Title Live Action TV
According to the Occam's Razor, the simplest explanation to a given doubt is the most likely to be the correct one. But characters from comedies and other works made for laughs do not follow it, and follow the polar opposite of it: for them, the weirdest and most twisted explanation is the most likely to be correct, specially when they find evidence that would uncover the big secret of the telenovela. It's made for the laughs of the explanation itself, the ramifications, when they face that they were wrong all along and try to put the pieces toguether...
For example: the big secret (that secret that the spectators know, but most of the characters do not) is that the sweet girl and the boy from the other street are lovers. Mom saw the boy running naked in the street, and dad had heard some noises in the girl's room, so he came in and saw her naked in her bed, the window open, and men clothing all around the room. For any sane man, the explanation would be evident. But in a comedy, they may figure that some thief took everything from the boy in the street, even his clothes, and then the imaginary thief may had tried to sneak into the girl's room... etc, etc, and laughs follow
openNo Title Live Action TV
I have been browsing TV-tropes for DAYS now trying to find the definition of this ubiquitous trope in TV and film.
What is the name of the trope when a grown-up, trying to win the trust of a troubled child, appeals to the child by hinting that they have knowledge of the child' favourite rock band/sports team/other stuff the kid fanatically loves. I first saw this trope in The Client, where Reggie Love (played by Susan Sarandon) reveals she likes/knows a lot about Led Zeppelin when she's talking to Mark Sway (Brad Renfro), who is being angsty and doesn't trust adults. This clearly raises Reggie's points in Marks eyes, and eventually he begins to trust her to help him. Also, used in pretty much exactly the same way in an episode of ER (season 4) when Jeannie tries to convince a boy to have one more operation on his tumor. He doesn't trust doctors, when they always say it's gonna be his last operation, and it never is. Jeannie convinces the boy to have the life-saving operation by saying she has ring-side tickets to his favorite hockey-league's game and he can come with her if he has the operation. The kid is sceptical of her enthusiasm ("What do YOU know about *insert hockey team/rock band here*) for said hockey team, and she (exactly like Reggie Love in The Client) reveals that she's a fan too, proving it by knowing names of the players. The boy then chooses the operation. I KNOW this has to be a trope, because I know I've seen this many a time in TV and film. Please, help me find the trope so I can rest in peace...
openNo Title Live Action TV
Usually in a Very Special Episode, the television show is trying to drive a point home. I'm thinking of the Family Ties episode where a black family moved into the neighborhood. Their home was vandalized, and spray painted with the words "whits only". Every actor in the cast, when walking into the room and seeing the spray painted words for the first time, remarked in feigned ignorance, "What does 'whits only' mean?" I'm not thinking of Anvilicious, although this certainly was that. They were trying to demonstrate that racists are stupid by portraying them as so dumb they would misspell a simple word like "whites." Then, just in case the viewer didn't catch it, they made sure EVERY ACTOR pointed out the misspelling. So what is the trope when the same line is pointedly repeated by different actors? It wouldn't be a Catchphrase, since it is only the one episode.
Edited by BradyLadyopenNo Title Live Action TV
A person visits a foreign country and accidentally gives someone a very large tip because they don't understand the exchange rate. I don't see anything in Money Tropes which would apply. I've seen this in Cheers and in Mad About You, and I'll bet it's pretty common.
openNo Title Live Action TV
How do you call it when a same actor plays two different characters in the same series? For example, two twin brothers, a man and his clone, two characters who are completely identical by some strange coincidence, or (usually played for laughs) an important character and his weird relative that pays a visit for a couple of episodes (who is the same actor with a different clothing, hairstyle, way of speaking, etc.)

Is there a trope for when the crime solving sleuth knows that a murder has taken place, but cannot find the body? Examples: Monk — "Mr Monk Gets Drunk", Psych — "Murder? Anyone? Anyone? Bueller?" (Shawn is told "No body, no crime).