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 You Know That Show and try your luck there. Want to propose a new trope? You should be over at You Know, That Thing Where.
thesaurus failure
A writer looks up a "fancier" synonym for a "normal" word in a thesaurus but ends up using it wrong, since, despite technically being a synonym, the word has a very different connotation, or is being used in the wrong context.
Men are Jerks
When the race of humanity in a Fantasy work is seen as sleazy or greedy at best (perhaps hungry for power or gold) and Always Chaotic Evil at worst, compared or from the perspective of Elves, Dwarves, etc
Despair trope
Is there a trope for screaming in despair?
Accused each other
Is there a trope where two suspects in a case accuse the other one of a crime.
- Smallville: In one episode, Lionel Luthor is shot. Lex suggests that the shooter is Lionel's assistant, while the assistant suggests that Lex did it.
Hallucination Sequence Aftermath of Bodies In Video Games Videogame
A video game character goes through an interactive hallucinatory sequence that requires beating up hallucinatory monsters, illusions of mooks, or whatever. And by the time the hallucination sequence is cleared, the bodies of the mooks and/or bosses in reality (unconscious/wounded and/or killed) are revealed. What's this video game trope (or trope in general if applicable to other categories) called?
Trope contrasting "The Millstone" Anime
Sinc the description of The Millstone is: "A useless member of The Team that actually makes things worse than if they weren't there." I'm looking for the exact opposite: "A useful member of The Team whose departure makes things worse." Since it's been appearing in several manga adapted from Light Novels (like Banished from the Hero's Party and Beast Tamer and the Cat Girl), I think we have this trope somehow.
Edited by VelvetPierrot
Villain is always one step ahead
The villain is always one step ahead of the heroes. They keep going to someplace to stop them, only to find out it's too late and the villain already came and went.
Is misinterpretation tropeworthy?
Reading through reviews and comments on Vietnamese (this will be pertinent) social media about Devotion, I repeatedly came across the opinion that Gong Li Fang is an irresponsible person for abandoning her husband and child to rekindle her showbiz career.
This is a branch of the same mentality that the game criticizes. Li Fang was a successful singer/actress, who was forced to quit by societal pressure once she gets married. However, her husband is an emotionally abusive, superstitious spendthrift and has-been scriptwriter. The game explicitly shows Li Fang as agonizing over the decision to return to work even as other people (her mother and an interviewer) question whether she is right to do so, or to tell the truth ("speak so harshly") about her husband's behavior to the public.
East Asian cultures hold that saving face and public dignity of a family is extremely important, and that a family should stay together at all costs, no matter how much abuse might be going on. Therefore, the aforementioned reviewers and commenters blamed her for not doing more, and for leaving, even when the game itself shows that she did everything she could, and wanted to return to her family once the situation has been sorted out.
Perhaps, if anything, she can be blamed for the death of her daughter, because she left her in the hands of her superstitious husband who ultimately killed the girl as part of a mystical ritual.
tl;dr: Can an incorrect interpretation of a character's motivation and actions be mentioned on the page? If so, which trope is this? I don't think it's Values Dissonance because the game was made by Taiwanese developers for a Sinosphere audience (to the point where players freaked out upon noticing things in their own houses that the Du family also have in-game).
Edited by annieholmes
Species As Class
Something mostly found in older games and RPG Mechanics 'Verse works where the standard adventurer classes are filled out by humans and other races (elves/dwarves/goblins etc.) are a class by themselves, although usually very close to one of said classes.
For instance, goblins are thieves, dwarves are frontline fighters, elves are archers, etc.
Mutual Death Assumption Webcomic
Alice and Bob were in a situation where they both barely managed to survive. They were separated and for some reason, each of them assumed the other died.
Genetic Intelligence[=/=]Inherited Genius
Character(s) display very high levels of intelligence, and in work this is treated as a dominant hereditary trait, possibly even a "Locked" trait.
No Title
Do we have "baseball cap/ sunglasses/hoodie" as the modern counterpart to Conspicuous Trenchcoat?
Edited by Tremmor19
Lying For Your Own Good
Character A just discovered everything Character B has taught them their entire life has been a lie. When confronted, Character B explains why they chose to lie, and the reasoning was completely justifiable.
Example: In the Heart of Kunoichi Tsubaki follows a female-only clan of ninja called Akane Class, who are taught men are dangerous. Tsubaki accidentally learns from one of her teachers this is a lie. When confronted, the teacher explains that when male and female ninja used to mingle as one clan, too many of them began to abandon their ninja heritage and couple off, putting the shinobi lifestyle at risk of extinction.
This has to exist as a trope, right?
Evolutionary throwback
A member of one species inexplicably bears offspring that closely resembles the species' distant ancestors. Like in The Enormous Egg, where a hen lays a triceratops egg.
Impossible to kill someone
A form of Gameplay and Story Segregation in which it's impossible to kill someone with an attack that would logically be able to kill them.
For example, it's possible to kill enemies in a video game unless the plot demands otherwise. For example, in The Hobbit (2003), you can kill enemies unless it's a Stealth-Based Mission.
A more broad example is when you can't kill someone who's on your own side or is otherwise not treated as an enemy by the narrative or game mechanics.
Mr. Holland's Opus Film
In Mr. Holland's Opus, Glenn Holland first appears as a 30-year-old and at the end of the film, he's 60 years old. His actor, Richard Dreyfuss, was 48 years old when the film came out.
Given that, I wonder if there's a trope for this?
"Feel my heartbeat" grab
A woman takes someone's hand, usually a guy's, and puts it on her chest so that person can feel her heartbeat. The other person acknowledges her but is also freaking out to some degree because they're touching her breasts. Do we have this?
Optional Enemy/(Mid)boss Videogame
I'm looking to see if there's a trope applying to a video game (mid)boss/enemy that's optional to kill.
Nerds Love Opera, or: Smart Equals Classy Western Animation
When a character shows off how intelligent they're meant to be by taking an interest in or knowing a lot about a "classy" interests such as fine dressing, opera, or ballet. Notable examples include Artemis Fowl the second, from the Artemis Fowl series, and Niles and Frasier Crane from Frasier.
Real news cast a different light on a scripted show Live Action TV
I know we have this trope, but for the life of me I can't remember what it's called. On Young Sheldon S 5 E 22 A Clogged Pore A Little Spanish And The Future, which first aired tonight, Sheldon worries he might have monkeypox. The doctor asks him if he's had direct contact with monkeys; he hasn't, so he stops worrying about that.
But then on Colbert's show, there was the news that new cases of monkeypox are cropping up and it seems you don't have to have direct contact with monkeys to get it...