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.
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openWork creates a word/slang?
Pretty straightforward: do we have a trope for when a work coins a word (which gets used in contexts outside of the work itself) or leads to the creation of a piece of slang?
openDisposable Early-Warning System
Something (or more often someone for Comedic Sociopathy) is used to warn of upcoming danger and is not expected to survive the encounter, and is easily replaceable (the Butt-Monkey is often used for this purpose).
e.g. Bob the Non-Action Guy who Screams Like a Little Girl is assigned to the rear guard of a dungeon-exploring team, the reasoning being that he's useless in a fight anyway, so the party has a better chance of engaging the monster while its jaws are busy with Bob. When the threat is dealt with, the party retreats and hires a new rearguard from the I Just Want to Be Badass types haunting the taverns (and then it turns out the party is made of survivors of such encounters, so they see no reason to stop).
openScouring of the Shire
The protagonist returns from The Quest to find that his hometown has been taken over by bad guys, which he has to deal with before he can enjoy his happy ending.
resolved Pet thinks human is a pet?
What is the trope for when a pet thinks they are the one in charge and the human is the one who is the pet? Examples would include 101 Dalmatians, where Pongo considers Roger to be the pet.
Edited by BigBadShadow25resolved Competent villains
I know we have a lot of tropes for villains that are harmless and incompetent. But do we have tropes for villains which are the opposite (very competent)?
I require it for a Big Bad from a work for which I'm currently in the process of creating a page. The character in question single-handedly (as in: they alone without any help or Mooks) took over Earth while the heroes were offworld, a feat no other villain in that work had managed before (which include the previous Big Bad, a technologically and physically superior alien species which has been conquering and destroying planets for thousands of years and which also invaded when the heroes were offworld). And the character did it in just 10 hours. Taking over the Earth wasn't their goal, however, so it's not a case of The Bad Guy Wins. Rather, the villain just wanted to use Earth as leverage against the protagonist to surrender themself as the villain has a Villainous Crush on said protagonist.
openPersonal Loyalty
I see that personal loyalty is a rather common flaw what tropes focuses on the loyalty bit.
openPhoto Album
A book containing photographs, typically of other characters or past memories, often owned by a character for sentimentality sake. Is there any such trope? Closest thing I found was Precious Photo.
openAdmitting the lesser part of the accusation Live Action TV
A person is suspected of throwing a brick into a recruitment center, followed byba firebomb which burned the place and killed a baby. He admits, repeatedly, that he threw in "a brick and nothing but a brick".
openSurprisingly Cynical Moment
Alice and Bob live in a Sugar Bowl of happiness and healing. The sun is always shining, there's never a bad word, all the villains can be reformed, and with effort, hope and friendship can overcome all. Bob says life is just fine!
Alice stops smiling and turns to the camera. Life's not fine at all, she intones. There's several wars going on with no end in sight, powered by a tribalistic human desire to cause suffering to the other tribe. Political divisions are at an all-time high because greedy Mega Corps drive extremist viewpoints for profit. Your ability to focus has been shattered by consumable, forgettable pop culture. And for the kids in the audience, Growing Up Sucks. You're going to watch your parents die when you get old. Kids are going to bully you just because. You're going to be stuck working a job you hate just to keep a roof over your head, wishing desperately to be anywhere else as your dreams of being an astronaut or a movie start disappear completely. And even if you somehow find happiness, you're probably going to get cancer and die out of the blue someday.
Bob is sobbing. Suddenly, Alice is all smiles. She's just kidding! Back to your regularly scheduled happiness!
TL;DR: A really cynical moment in an otherwise very lighthearted work, especially one that goes against the show's themes — Humans Are Bastards in a work where the only bad guys were simply trying to save their family, how no one will miss you when you're dead in a work that emphasises The Power of Friendship, romantic love always being doomed to fail in a work that preaches being kind.
Examples include the Spongebob joke about "life on the outside" being no different from prison or The Powerpuff Girls episode where they move to a crime-ridden Urban Hellscape where everything they do either hurts someone or invites vicious mockery from asshole kids.
Related: Black Comedy Burst, Author Tract, Out-of-Character Moment, Hard Truth Aesop, Parental Bonus, Deconstruction
Edited by MsOranjeDiscoDancerresolved Refreshingly Imperfect
Do we have a trope for when a character is relieved that another seemingly perfect character is not as perfect as everyone thought they were?
- My Driver Academia: In the spinoff Decimo Either Way, Tsuna finds it comforting that his perfect older sister Tenka, who always got great grades, has a powerful quirk, and always popular and cool, is acting like a lovestruck maiden for Yuuki and ruined a lot of her dignity in the process.
Basically an inversion of Broken Pedestal but I didn't find it there.
openTightly-interconnected version of Synchronous Episodes
Synchronous Episodes is mostly about when two (or more) episodes are about different aspects of/perspectives on the same driving events. Is there a version where each episode tells part of the story, and only by seeing them all does the audience understand the full sequence of events? It may be things like Episode A, from Alice's perspective, shows certain things whose causes are never explained, and then Episode B, from Bob's perspective, shows things whose consequences never come up but the audience now recognises as having caused things in Alice's episode. This may be parts of one episode rather than two seperate actual episodes.
open"What Could Possibly Go Wrong?" As a character trait
"What Could Possibly Go Wrong?" is their attitude in life/fatal flaw, but the stock phrase doesn't need to be said.
These characters always neglect to consider contingencies. It's not out of confidence in their own ability to improvise if something goes wrong, they're simply bad at anticipating life's blows. The root of the problem may be, for example, excessive optimism or an overinflated ego.
Edited by LinfiaopenDNA-like structure
Massive, double helix-shaped structures (size could vary from several meters to skyscraper-sized, but always larger than real DNA strands) meant to evoke DNA imagery and its connotations. Examples: In "Manga/Berserk", the Idea of Evil's lower body is a dark braid of double strands implied to be connected to all of humanity; also in "Literature/Worm", the way the two Entities intertwine with each other when they fly through space strongly resembles a double helix, hinting at their ultimate purpose of siring young.
Edited by kyoukokakuresolved Can't hear you conversation
Gag with charcters trying to have a dramatic conversation but because they too far apart/it's too noisy so they end up shouting at each other about how they can't hear them. Examples:
- Kung Fu Panda 2 when Po confronts Shen from the rooftop in the finale
- The first episode of The Wizards Of Aus when a warrior tried to banter
- South Park: Snow Day! Stan and Cartman have trash talk before the fight but cause they on opposite sides of a field in the middle of a blowing snow storm ends just yelling about how they can't hear each other
- Family Guy The Janes Bond parody "Take This Job and Love It" has the heroes confronting the villain near his helicopter which drowns the big speech out
openAnnoying Music Torture
When a character is tortured by being forced to listen to music they ABSOLUTELY hate. It’s can be a silly, annoying or just plain bad.
openThe trope about "Science History In Joke"
- Honkai: Star Rail: There's a synthesis material called "Phlogiston", whose Flavor Text describes how several different genius figures tried to either prove or disprove its existence. In Real Life, phlogiston used to be a theory that described the composition of fire, before it's disproven with the discovery of oxygen and oxidation. The game, meanwhile, takes place in an Alternate Universe with different advancements in science.
open<YMMV> Why did you have to turn out a villain?
Is there an Audience Reaction to a sympathetic character, who turns out to be a villain and the viewers lament this fact.
openThe cold and cutting villain that deconstructs who you are digs into your personal secrets.
Hello.
Is there a trope for the kind of villain that constantly deliver subtle The Reason You Suck Speeches to the heroes, constantly prodding and picking apart who they are and what they like and is the kind that is difficult to argue against. EDIT: Ignore this first one. Brainfart. It was Break Them by Talking. I would still need help with the second part though.
Additionally, is there something from when they go "You say you love that thing, but secretly you hate it" or some variation thereof. After all, "I hate it and there is no reason it would be different for anyone else". But if everyone say they like it, then that means I can't be the one who is mad, everyone else is. (I'm simplifying a lot here what the villain is trying to say, but hopefully I get it across)
Edited by mattesteresolved Puffed up in the Published Version
A (male) politician decides to publish copies of some of the speeches he's made, but they significantly deviate from what he actually said. He's edited some lines to make him sound more confident than he actually was, and he even adds entirely new passages, some of which approach Purple Prose.
tormented by music