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.
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Do we have a casting trope where an actor or even someone without prior acting experience is given a part based upon their non acting expertise, such as prior jobs or hobbies? For example, Full Metal Jacket had a former Real Life marine DI play a drill instructor, lots of movies use soldiers to play military characters. Music stories might have a real choir or musician play the role of a musician character or supporting musicians. Also, some actors might have prior expertise with things like horseback riding, or might be subject matter experts on the book the movie is based on.
Backed by the Pentagon might include the military providing extras, but I want something that is not military exclusive and includes both extras and speaking parts.
openNo Title Film
Is there a trope for scenes where an existing photograph or portrait of a character seemingly reacts to current events? In other words, the subject's expression changes between shots, as an in-joke to the audience. Example: Myerson's picture in Hopscotch changes from a smile to a stoic pose, then to a frown, and then to a glare.
openNo Title Film
What's the trope where someone has... Actually; what's the device name where someone in a Western is playing poker and has that spring-loaded mechanism in their sleeve with a card on it, or maybe even a small Derringer attached to it?
After that's answered, is there a trope for someone in Westerns with that device?
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Is there a trope, or should it be a subtrope, describing a big bad who is not an omnicidal maniac or thief, but was just out to raise hell and screw peoples lives??? Baby Face Nelson in the movie "Oh Brother, Where Art Thou" literally said: "I'm George Nelson, born to raise hell!!!"
Edited by mudstep5956openNo Title Film
So the protagonist is captured by the psycho and is going to be killed horribly, when a bad-ass secondary character finally works out where s/he is and is offed by the villain literally seconds after arriving on the scene. Happened in Psycho and The Loved Ones, with a possible variation in Wolf Creek whereby the would-be rescuer is a complete stranger with no previous screen time.
Maybe an inversion of Cat Scare plus Anyone Can Die?
Edited by BluApplesopenNo Title Film
I am wondering if there is an identified trope that always follows "outside ride" https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/OutsideRide
This is where the driver begins firing his handgun through the roof at the person on their roof. First off, this has never ever worked in any film, and if it has then i would love to hear about it. I just heard recently on a podcast [film sack] that firing a handgun in an small space (the inside of a car for instance) would be so loud it might bust your eardrums, or atleast distract you from the high speed pursuit.
openNo Title Film
Looking for a trope, I've basically got it boiled down to: character is saved by their own subconscious.
I can't think of a specific example (although I know it's there somewhere in my head), but it'd be something along the lines: Character is in a seemingly hopeless situation about to die, their on a sinking ship and can't escape say. They lapse in and out of subconsciousness, at the last moment when all seems lost a hand reaches out and pulls them to safety. When they awake their saviour is nowhere to be seen. That's because their saviour was actually them, their subconsciousness taken over to do what they could not. They interpret and see this (through stress, oxygen deprivation or something) as being rescued by a stranger. A subconscious projection may be the term.
I'd imagine in the film medium the viewer would actually see this as if real, but subtle clue would lead you to believe or deduce that the rescuer was not in fact real.
I haven't been able o find it after a few hours of searching, so I believe it's a pretty rare occurrence in that specific an instance. Maybe there's a more all-encompassing trope I'm missing though.
openNo Title Film
Do we have a trope for where a fire extinguisher is used as an improvised weapon, often suddenly and to great effect? Usually against a bad guy, not sure if always against one though. Examples: Flightplan: Jodie Foster hits the (actual) bad guy in the face with one. Taken: Liam Neeson knocks a guy out in the course of rescuing his daughter grabbing it off the wall to smack still another henchman. I swear I've seen it more than that though.
openNo Title Film
A corrupt government official or corporate exec comes back to his office, usually late at night when the building is deserted. His office is empty and his high-backed chair faces away from him. He reaches to spin it and is scared out of his WITS by someone else sitting at his desk, smirking, who has come to deliver a warning.
This is possibly a subset of Lex Luthor Security but what I'm after is more specific than that. It's a "deliver a warning" trope and the trespasser could be more powerful than the official. The key elements are
1. The startling visual image of the exec's own high-backed chair spinning around with a person sitting in it 2. That whoever got into his office is proving a point - that he can get into his office.
This is directly threatening but doesn't usually result in a murder.
Whatever exchange of dialogue takes place serves to reinforce the invasion of the official/exec's space as the trespasser messes with the stuff on his desk. If the trespasser is on the antihero or villain spectrum he may play with a photo of the exec's family. Usually this exchange will occur:
Official: How the hell did you get in here!? Trespasser: [Words to the effect of "your security sucks, you suck, I am a badass"]
openNo Title Film
Is there a trope for "unintentional autobiography" or "writers never actually make anything up"? Often a film about a writer will have that writer working on a book that changes to incorporate everything that happens in their life. I'm thinking of the moment in Midnight in Paris when Gertrude Stein points out to Gil that Hemingway has read his novel, and "couldn't believe the main character doesn't realize that" the professor is sleeping with his wife, which is exactly what's happening to him. There are other variations on it, of course. I looked through Roman à Clef and Play Within a Play but couldn't find the right trope.
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Is there a name for when a fantasy or sci-fi comic or cartoon gets a live-action adaption, in film or television, but the setting gets changed to "present time, present day", rather than Oz or Wonderland or whatever? The Masters Of The Universe movie is an excellent example of this.
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I'm working on a story right now, and I think I've implemented a trope but I'm not sure which one:
Hero is a military leader during the last phases of a war. In his impatience and desperation, he issues an executive order pulling all available forces from a region for a grand all-or-nothing push at the enemy's last stronghold. He destroys it (in the process also compromising his morals) and ends the war but finds out after that his wife was staying at one of the bases he pulled forces from. It was attacked and she was killed. Between the loss of his wife and the lapse in his faith he renounces his beliefs and turns evil.
The specific trope I need is for the tragic irony of his wife's death. By pulling the forces away he ended the war but unintentionally doomed her. What would that be?
Edited by ThrawnlivesopenNo Title Film
Nothing Exists Off-Camera, or The Implausible Surprise.
This one happens in virtually every movie with some sort of suspense, where we the camera is close in on a character (doesn't have to be an extreme close-up) and they are surprised by someone coming up from their side, or even from IN FRONT OF THEM, just because we, the audience couldn't see them yet because they were off-camera.
This one drives me nuts.
A variation on this is when the camera is showing us a protagonist's POV, and panning over a number of items, then the last item we pan to is a BIG SCARE, as if the character had no peripheral vision whatsoever.
These two are actually part of the same thing, I think: the mistaken notion by a Director that no one in the world of the movie can actually see anything that isn't on-camera.
Thanks! If this trope doesn't exist, I'd write it up in YKTTW. But I looked around quite a bit and couldn't find it.
openNo Title Film
This could happen anywhere, but the one that brought this to mind for me was the film Stranger Than Fiction. Is there a trope for a necktie being used as a symbol of repression and neuroses? One of the prominent signs of the change in Harold's character is that he no longer wore a necktie.
There have to be other examples of this. Anybody?

Seeking: sci-fi drama trope wherein the top tier of an army of variously-shaped mooks are frequently humanoid. More specifically, the fact that the most dangerous aliens/robots are always the bipedal ones with 2-4 arms, one head with an or several eyes, etc, whether or not that configuration makes sense (probably an appeal to human egos).
I'm thinking specifically of things like Evolution, which features an entire ecosystem of deadly alien life including carnivorous plants, giant bugs, griffons, but the epitome of its evolution is primates. Or Eyeborgs, with camera bots ranging from inch-tall webcams to 4-ft spiders, but culminating in human-size bipedal assassin droids.