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:
openPutting Two and Two Together
EXAMPLE:
- The main character is having dinner with his love interest and her mother. They talk until the mother asks what's his father's name. The main character says the name, resulting in her having an freakout and ending the dinner. The main character leaves and walks around town. He's trying to figure why the mentioning of his father's name caused such an uproar. He then has a flashback of his father recalling about this woman he dated before marrying his mother. Said woman broke his heart and she shares the same name with the love interest's mother. Then main character then realizes that the woman is his love interest's mother.
openPanicked Wake-Up Response
A character is sleeping. Instead of a small nudge or something along those lines to wake them up gently, they do something that wakes them up instantly, followed by the person that was sleeping spouting off a panicked phrase/sentence/string of words, usually Motor Mouth style. Is there a trope for this or does this fall under Motor Mouth? I usually see it when someone's dozed off, rather than full-on sleeping/resting.
Edited by luigiman2201openRace to the weapon/s Film
Couldn't find this one in the search. Combat scene. A 3-person confrontation where the one with the upper hand (probably holding the other two at gunpoint) suddenly leaves. The other two must then race for the nearest weapon/s to battle each other. I noticed it in the recent Star Wars film 'Solo' where it's used to great effect. It also felt very familiar but I can't place it anywhere else.
openBeneficial Betrayal
Bob betrays Alice in some way (for example, leaving her to die during a cave-in), but it turns out to be a good thing as otherwise she'd have never found the Forgotten Superweapon / long-lost tribe of people who ally with her / enormous treasure that comes in so handy at the climax of the story, and for this reason she forgives him. Kind of like Stolen Good, Returned Better.
Edited by Chabal2openoblivious to your own feelings of love
Like Oblivious to Love, except instead of being oblivious to others' feelings, you're oblivious to your own. Do we have this?
openHoming Instinct
Is there a trope for someone being drawn someplace via some kind of homing instinct?
openCatatonic Person is Left Catatonicking
Bob has gone unresponsive. Alice and Charlie, who were previously interacting with him, continue the scene as nothing happened, and the story leaves Bob. A few minutes later we see Bob is still zoning out and Charlie and Alice have forgotten all about him (And probably didn't even realize he was in that state in the first place)
openThe setting is a character all its own
What is the name for when the setting is so integral to the conflict and plot that it is considered a character?
openDiabetes trope
Is there a trope regarding how Diabetes is portrayed in the media? I want to be sure so I can make the trope on TLP.
openMust fulfill my purpose
A trope where a character or entity was created and imbued with a single purpose, but as time goes by and it can't fulfill that purpose, it grows unhinged and takes increasingly drastic steps to deal with it (or may even set up the situation it was created to counter, for example, a bodyguard golem who orders a hit on his boss so he can actually have something to defend against). Can involve a Death Seeker.
For example:
- The Meeseeks in Rick And Morty are supposed to appear, resolve their summoner's problem, and disappear, and grow increasingly stressed when they can't solve the problem (improving their summoner's golf skills) fast enough, eventually settling for killing their summoner instead.
- In Overlord 2012, the guardians of Nazarick (originally player-customized NP Cs with identical AI) were created solely to serve their creators, so they don't see why they should have things like days off or salaries and are frustrated that they can't fulfill their programming to their fullest (such as being programmed to love someone who doesn't love them back, or preparing food for someone who can't eat it).
openAnimals raised by other animals and taking on traits of their adopted family
Can Raised by Wolves refer to animals raised by other animals or is that just Interspecies Adoption?
openWhat Type Of Joke Would This Example Be?
- EXAMPLE:
- Bartender: "I'm surprised you're not drinking off your woes."
- Main Character: "Well, if I do that, not only I'll be drunken mad, but I'll make MADD (Mother Against Drunk Driving) mad.
openDisposable smartphones
This Awkward Zombie comic pokes fun at the fact that in Horizon Zero Dawn, there's seemingly a hundred communicators used up solely for the purpose of recording only one message each despite the futuristic setting implying that they should have the same capabilities, if not more of a regular smartphone but they need to all be separated solely so the main character can find them later on. So I was wondering if there was a specific trope this could refer to.
Another case is with Star Trek: The Next Generation and how tablets are seemingly treated the same as paper with some shots of characters holding several PADDs at a time but that could just be chalked up to Technology Marches On.
openOld Item Gaze
EXAMPLE:
- The main character, who now runs a successful and has a family, spots an old hoodie and gazes at it, internally remembering the last seven years of him being an middle-class worker who was an heroic yet pragmatic vigilante. He then smiles at it before his wife calls for him and he puts away the hoodie.
openHero dances with villain
Do we have a trope where a hero and a villain dance with each other?
openThree Tropes
If these don't exist, I'll probably take it to the launchpad eventually.
1. Ghostly Final Farewell: a recently-deceased character appears as a spirit, apparition, or in the dreams of a friend or beloved to bid them a final goodbye. Would/should be a subtrope of Dead Person Conversation.
2. Conscience-Induced Breakup: a character breaks off a relationship because they feel it's the right thing to do. Usually occurs in context of an affair, but can appear in other contexts as well.
3. "Sour Grapes" Rationalization: things don't turn out the way a character hoped, so they deceive themselves and others that they never felt that way in the first place, or that it's better off this way.
openCommon enemy does the dirty work.
Countries A and B are at war, but have a common enemy in C (who won't ally with either country, e.g. demons, zombies, aliens). While A and B agree to a truce until C is gone and neither plansor even wants to engage in a False Flag Operation, they're willing to let C forces run amok damaging the rival country, only intervening after C has been sufficiently weakened. Often used to make a Humans Are Bastards point.
Edited by Chabal2openReboot Episodes
I have a show that's a reboot of an older TV show but the plots of each episode are either entirely unique and new or they borrow elements from episodes of the older series. Trope for episodes of a reboot that take cue from episodes of an older series??
Trope for when a character catches something being hurled at them full speed w/o any effort? For example, a character catching a bow, a knife, bottle, etc.