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:
openSociety Built Around Replaceable Workforce
I'm reading Early Riser by Jasper Fforde and collecting a list of tropes to build a page for the work, but I'm having trouble finding a trope that covers an odd situation in the book.
In the story, characters have about a 1/3,000 chance (or greater) of dying every year due to the dangers associated with hibernating through the winter. In order to combat the loss of skills in the general workforce, most facets of society are designed to accommodate for the regular introduction of untrained workers. All vehicles have identical control panels (tanks, cars, boats, snowmobiles, etc...), education is pretty standardized, and most jobs are designated "skill zero" positions that come with an instruction manual intended to teach any new employee the ins and outs of their job with just a few hours of reading. Theoretically, an unskilled worker with a basic education could be taught to do any job (from garbageman to farmer to manager of a fast food restaurant) in the space of a day. (Obviously there are doctors and physicists and other skilled positions, but they receive special privileges that make them more likely to survive hibernation.)
Do we have a trope that covers this? A society that prioritizes continuity and replaceable workers over advancement and specialization?
openNo Title
Do we already has something akin to how fiction typically ignores conflict of interest as a trope? I checked Hollywood Law and Conflicting Loyalty and neither are what I'm looking for.
I'm thinking of something more along the lines like a therapist having a family member as a client, or in a crime procedural a previous attempted murder victim involved in investigating the potential murderer and nobody involved treats this as wrong in either case, or they do care when they've been known not to.
Edited by immortalfriezaopenGiant Scrap Robot
Is there a trope for mechas or at least robots that are explicitly made out of cheap metals and not like the good stuff that comprise of most Humongous Mecha like Mobile Suits and Cybertronians.
So far, the only example I can think of is Boss Borot from Mazinger Z. It's made from scrap metal from the junkyard, has no weapon systems, and gets wrecked easily, though it does have surprisingly good strength. In the Super Robot Wars games, he's even cheap to rebuild (a meager 10 credits compared to the thousands for other robots).
I guess Tobor from The Adventures of Sharkboy and Lavagirl technically counts, but only in Planet Drool.
Update: Trope is now in the Launch Pad.
Edited by nightelf37openCircular trope / shoehorning trope? Live Action TV
Do we have a trope about recursion for these two:
Original work > Overtook the Series as Fan Fic > Fan Verse created and uses Fan Fic that Overtook the Series as source material > New Fan Verse Overtook the Series
Also, this for an In-Universe example:
- Alice's home city in Canada is the most important in the local area. But, it's also the most important in the region, and then the Canadian equivalent of the Tri-State area!
and this one:
- Although Alice should have Absentee Actor moments due to her actress having other commitments, they still find ways to shoehorn her into the plot, either via archive footage, a Flashback, pre-recorded message or simply a photo on a whiteboard with other people, so she isn't technically an Absentee Actor.
openDisappointing Older Sibling
The Disappointing Older Sibling trope makes it clear that the trope is about younger siblings holding a negative opinion on their older siblings regardless of why or how justified it is. In that case, if this trope were used as an example on character folders, would it go on the younger sibling's folder in regard to their negative opinion on their older sibling, or the older sibling's folder to reflect how the trope applies to them?
openDouble Standard: Protagonist in a Screwball Comedy
I recall some years ago hearing a female comedian do a bit on how, if a man behaved like a heroine in a Scewball Comedy (i.e. Katherine Hepburn in Bringing Up Baby) he be tossed in jail as a stalker. Do we have a already existing trope about this?
openBoth Big Good and Big Bad
A Big.... something, but whether good or bad really depends on how you look at it. I see it a lot in works where the protagonists are working directly for a conspiracy that's Ambiguously Evil (SCP Foundation, MIB, X-Files ect.), and you could just as easily say the head honcho is the Big Good for being the boss of the main characters and arguably heads a Benevolent Conspiracy, but you could also say he's the Big Bad since the organization is essentially Necessarily Evil (and also since it IS a conspiracy).
openQuestion joke
Is there a trope for when a joke is said in the form of a question, rather than the traditional setup and punchline? Such as: "If one synchronized swimmer drowns, do they all drown?" or "if a person with multiple personalities threatens to commit suicide, is it considered a hostage situation?"
openSeemingly hostile greeting turns friendly
Two people, usually old acquaintances, are greeting each other with a cold or hostile demeanor, a Beat occurs while the audience or other characters watch on in anticipation and then the two suddenly start laughing and hugging each other, showing the two were still on good terms all along.
Seen It a Million Times but I can't find if we have a trope for it. A famous example would be Han and Lando's greeting in Star Wars, and Robert and Ned in Game of Thrones.
Edited by BlackMage43openOnce you spot something, it seems super obvious
Is there a trope for this? An example would be how in ''Where's Waldo", or similar "spot the hidden creature/object" games, once you find the thing in question, it seems really obvious and you can't "unsee" it (i.e see it the way you did before you found the thing.)
open"That's just what an X would say!"
Someone thinks that something weird applies to someone else. The second person says they're not, perhaps even trying to be rational and say the whole situation is unlikely, only for that to make the first person even more suspicious. EG:
openUnfortunate Acronym
For when an acronym for something spells out something silly/inappropriate/whatnot (think the Super Hydraulic Instantaneous Transporter from the Cat in the Hat movie). Is there a trope for this?
openConsecutive Daily Reward
A bonus variant of Play Every Day: if you log on daily for a certain amount of days in a row, or complete a daily challenge consecutively enough times, you get a bonus reward. I've seen this in Plants vs. Zombies 2: It's About Time, Plants vs. Zombies: Heroes, and more.
openOcean of emotion
The tendency of the ocean to be associated with intense feelings. Not Ocean Awe or Ocean Madness.
openin-universe draco in leather pants
Is this it's own trope (i.e the people in universe whitewash some really bad person)? Or would it just be Draco in Leather Pants?
Instances where someone building something leaves out a piece and it causes problems later on. Like Phineas and Ferb has an episode where the titular characters leave out a screw for a big tower they built, causing it to topple over and destroy their house.