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.
Find a Trope:
openMoral
Let's say this character is both selfish AND selfless, selfless in a sense that they will go any length, even sacrificing their own life to save someone they care about, but selfish in that they won't bat an eye when someone they don't care about is suffering.
They may help if they happen to come across anyone who is bleeding out, drowning, hanging off a cliff, but they refuse to help when a fight is involved, for example: A group of raiders pillaging a village.
Because to them, this is not a group of bad guys taking from a helpless settlement, it's a battle that the villagers happen to be losing.
Which area of morality does they belong to?
openHandwriting as an indicator of personality
People with different personalities have different styles of handwriting. A girly girl might have loopy cursive, whereas a slob would be The Illegible, or someone very smart might write very small and neatly... Often used by detectives to infer something about the psychology of a person who wrote a note.
A related, but possibly distinct trope, is handwriting giving someone's identity away, as with a forged suicide note or the like. Usually plot critical in a murder mystery.
openEscaping character discovers he's in an aircraft
The character is being held in some kind of base or headquarters. He gets loose, runs or sneaks around until he reaches a door, then discovers he's not going anywhere because he's on an aircraft in flight.
This happened in Hardcore Henry and the Sensational She-Hulk graphic novel, and I think the James Bond movie A View to a Kill.
Similarly, Batgirl in Batman & Mr. Freeze: SubZero discovers she's being held on an oil platform.
Is there a trope for this?
Edited by shawnvwopenA TWin Advantage
EXAMPLE:
- This character is being chased around her house by an adversary shooting at her. Then, said character's identical twin sibling shows up, unbeknownst of what's going on. Said adversary spots the twin, confusing them for the character because she happened to be wearing the same shirt as said character. So, the twins decide to confuse the living hell out of the adversary until she runs out of bullets.
openA Heroic Villain/ A Villainous Hero Literature
The spartans had this guy who killed sixty athenians in battle. What a hero/what a villain. Depends on the point of view, no? So what would you call the thing where comments are made on it from a neutral point of view? He's neither a hero nor a villain. He's simply the guy who killed sixty athenians in battle.
openA trope when someone resigns
I'm looking for a good trope that describes when someone is forced to resign in disgrace.
openBusting through a wall KoolAid Man style Western Animation
A character who's very strong casually bursts through a (usually interior) wall to ambush someone, take a shortcut, or just show off how strong they are. May or may not include a reference to the Kool Aid Man [1]◊
openExaggerating to make a story more exciting
Here's the context. A guy in World War II gets on a plane that is on a routine flight to obtain fresh vegetables for his Pacific island base. He gets stuck on a life boat when the pilot has to ditch in the ocean due to engine failure. They're adrift for four days before they're rescued, and returned to base safely.
But when the guy writes home to his wife, he makes up a melodramatic story about how the plane was on a dangerous combat mission, they were attacked by Japanese fighter planes, which shot them down, leaving them adrift for fifteen days, not four.
What trope is this? I don't think I can call it Miles Gloriosus because the guy on the plane doesn't claim that he was performing any feats of martial glory, even as he wildly exaggerates the story to make it more exciting.
openAgrees with the complainer
Alice complains about something to Bob (who is partly responsible for it). To her surprise, he wholeheartedly agrees with her, but for whatever reason is forced to do it/powerless to fight it.
For example, Bob is a comic artist, and one day his female characters are dressed in much more revealing outfits, causing outrage from fans and Moral Guardians alike. He very much agrees that they shouldn't be showing that much skin, but Executive Meddling has decided that Sex Sells.
Edited by Chabal2openCollectible cards that aren't games
Is there a trope for cards that are collectible but aren't games per se, like movie tie-in trading cards?
openMoral Defeat, Practical Victory
A character's moral beliefs are blatantly ignored or subverted, leading to victory. Something like a Moral Guardian's reaction to a Family-Unfriendly Aesop, in-universe.
For example:
- The heroes are confronting the toughest enemy yet (Alice is a Warrior Therapist, Bob is The Cynic, Charlie has daddy issues). The Power of Love doesn't work, The Power of Friendship doesn't work either... so Bob uses The Power of Hate instead (he tells Charlie to imagine that the monster is his father, triggering a one-sided No-Holds-Barred Beatdown that causes wincing in bystanders). Alice is understandably miffed that Charlie's issues are now even harder to resolve (even if she recognizes that it worked), especially the message that The Power of Hate is an awesome thing to have.
- Bob the knight believes gunpowder weapons are fit only for cowards and that skill and experience leads to victory. His country massively invests in guns and cannon, giving them victory after victory without the enemy being able to retaliate, but Bob is disgusted that his beliefs are basically being proven wrong by the universe itself.
openPolice Jazz
There's a tendency for police-themed media and jazz to be synonymous with each other. Do we have a trope for this yet?
openOverly inconsiderate relative of a recently deceased son? Western Animation
Where the well intentioned hero inadvertently kills or fails to save Alice and Bob blames him for it. Conversation usually goes something like: Well-intentioned hero: "I'm sorry, I tried to save her" Bob: "well you didn't, and now she's dead" Bob: *slams door in well-intentioned hero's face* Well-intentioned hero: *covers face with hands and sobs into hands*
I'm fairly certain it's a subtrope of something where a side-character is needlessly cruel just to elicit an emotional response from the protagonist after the protagonist makes an honest mistake that was out of his hands.
openstring on finger reminder
You know that thing where a character ties string around his/her finger as a self-reminder to do something? This is seen in stories made and/or set in the days before computers. Portable computers are the Trope Breaker.
If you can think of any examples of this Forgotten Trope, I've started a draft for it.
Edited by Miss_Desperado
A "Deepity" is a phrase that can be interpreted two distinct ways, with the more literal interpretation being objectively true but trivial, and the less literal interpretation being relatively profound if true. Common examples of deepities include "There is no I in team", "Blood is thicker than water" and "You can't spell x without y". Is there a page for anything like this yet?