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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resolved Transforming into lots of animals
Do we have a trope for when a character departs by turning into a swarm of small animals — a flock of bats, say, or a swarm of insects?
We have Animorphism, for when a single person turns into a single animals, and Super Smoke, for when a person turns into a cloud of vapor, but neither quite fits.
openAmerican Films index?
Do we have an index for films originating from The United States? American Films and American Movies don't exist, but it might exist under a different title.
openSofa King Western Animation
I can't find this one, so I'm guessing there's been some discussion about it and it ended up being watered down in between Insane Proprietor and Kitschy Local Commercial. This is when the owner of a store calls himself "(Product) King". Usually furniture or appliances, but never burgers. The wackier ones will wear a crown and purple cape, even when they're not working the store, or force their employees to wear appropriate clothing too.
openI don't know whether some characters fit or not
Glamorous Single Mother vs a character who Is just a single mom?
When is a character a Glamorous Single Mother?
openSought after item that does something
This might've been asked before, but what's the trope for something that important characters in the work seek (like a MacGuffin) but actually does something important or is irreplacable (unlike a MacGuffin)?
openUnrelated Businesses
A business specializing in two very different areas, giving the impression they're not very good at either (and sometimes hints of dubious legality).
For example, a business card reading 'Accounting & Light Masonry', Mrs Golightly's Happy Travelling University and Dry Cleaners, etc.
openGeography is ambiguous? Live Action TV
Is there a setting where, for when a work is set in a Fictional Country (maybe a 20 Minutes into the Future Post-Cyberpunk), viewers can't work out who the culture is supposed to represent?
For example, say you have Westoria, which takes elements of London, England, Cape Town, South Africa, and Buenos Aires, Argentina, but treats it as one country, and the culture seems like a mixture of English, Argentine and South African (as if the author can't decide which, so he makes a sort of amalgam of them) and viewers of the show in those three countries claim Where the hell is this TV show meant to be set in?" or "What's the country's culture meant to be analogous to?"
Are there geography tropes or Audience Reactions tropes for this?
Edited by Merseyuser1openStress of Childhood
Is there a trope or index for when childhood is portrayed as non-idyllic and hellish for normal reasons? Where things like bullying, going to a Sucky School, and your Sadist Teacher or unreasonable parents make being a kid pretty awful?
Is there a trope for the inverse, where childhood is a carefree and idyllic time full of fun and magic?
openMemory-sharing mind-meld used to build empathy? Live Action TV
The main plot from Star Trek: The Next Generation S5E25 "The Inner Light": Picard gets zapped by an alien probe that allows him to live a 40-year span on a long-dead planet.
I was surprised to come across the same plot device in the comic Thor #228, from 1974. Ego the Living Planet shares his origin story with Thor in pretty much the same way: Zapping him and allowing him to live it.
So, is this device a trope? If it's not, do you think it should be? Can you think of any more examples in other stories?
openHiding from the monster in a closet or a locker
I found that there is Closet Shuffle, but that is mostly used for comedy, I wonder if there is a trope for horror movies where the protagonists hides from a closet to escape the monster. Some examples would be from Halloween (1978) where the protagonist hides from the killer. Or Alien: Isolation where you must hide from the Xenomorph by hiding in a locker
openVillainous character incites conflict between two or more groups or individuals
What is it when a character (usually a villain) will deliberately incite conflict or fighting between two or more people or groups? Best example I can give is in Fullmetal Alchemist where the Homunculi start the Ishvalan war by killing an Ishvalan child while disguised as an Amestrian soldier.
openTime travel invalidates everything
Is there a trope for when time travel is not just successfully used to fix a problem, but ALL the problems, thus invalidating everything that came before it? Like, to absurdly levels. Like, "Why did you even bother writing any of this in the first place?"
openTime running backwards
Is there something for something were time is reversed around the characters causing things to un-break, people to de-age/go backwards, etc, etc
Like the "Backwards" episode of Red Dwarf or the "Yug Ylimaf" episode of Family Guy or the climatic battle in Doctor Strange
Edited by jormis29openIs this CharacterNameAndTheNounPhrase, even as the latter phrase has no explicit noun?
Is this Character Name and the Noun Phrase, even as the latter phrase has no explicit noun? Or are there other tropes that work better?
"The Ruby Princess Runs Away", both the Jewel Princesses book, and the movie, since they share the title.
openMake a wish/wish being granted a specific mcguffin
is there a sub-trope about the mcguffin is a wish being granted? aka the holy great war from fate/stay night? or shenron and the dragon balls?
openWhat would God know about it
Bob is informed by the highest possible authority that he's in the wrong. He concudes that no, they're wrong. Applies to both Word of God and actual divine intervention.
openThe hereo doesn't know that his heroics were engineered.
Does this fall under Engineered Heroics or could it be a separate trope?
So Bob has a crush on Alice, but she doesn't reciprocate. Charlie helps out by staging an attack on her so that Bob can save her, thus starting a Rescue Romance. The thing is, Bob doesn't know that it's a setup; he thinks that what's going on is genuine. So how would this be classified?
openPeople's Republic of Chorea
Do we have a name for North Korea acting as a stand-in for China in western media?
Essentially when a character through time travel meets their [great, great, great...] grandson, and they exclaim "Grandson? I'm not even married yet!"