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openEach character has their own story? Videogame
Is there a trope for when you get completely separate campaigns depending on which character you choose to play as? I don't mean the same story told from different perspectives, or different stories playing out at the same time, I mean choosing who to play as changes what all the characters do.
For example,
- Choosing Character A has everyone travel to Africa to battle poachers. - Choosing Character B has everyone run into bad guys trying to steal tech from a lab. - Choosing Character C has the group attacked by their enemies. - Choosing Character D has everyone battling a monster outbreak.
openCategory Cop-Out
Is there a trope for when a character who belongs to a minority group tries to use the fact that they are a part of that minority group as an excuse to get out of punishment for a crime? Like, they think that being a part of that minority group makes them immune to scrutiny for their horrible actions, and anyone who tries to call them out is labeled a categorist? I've seen stuff like this happen in real life, but I have no idea if it's happened enough in fiction to warrant a trope.
openWaiting montage
A visual montage related to Boredom Montage and Time-Passes Montage. A character waits a really long time for something, starting excited then progressively more bored with each cut (often three cuts). The montage may end with the character asleep before being startled awake by an interruption.
Edited by pieartyopenMurderer reveals themselves by failing to keep up appearances
After committing the crime, the perpetrator changes their behaviour in a way that only makes sense if they knew about the crime, even though they shouldn't have known about it yet unless they were the perpetrator, which is what tips off investigators.
A fictional example, used in riddles and the like, is a victim discovered by the mailman on a Thursday. The police find various pieces of mail, some bottles of warm milk, and a daily newspaper from Monday. The newspaper carrier is immediately suspicious, because unless they knew the victim had died, they had no reason to stop delivering the daily paper after Monday.
A real life example, which I saw on Forensic Files, is one where the murderer had been obsessively calling the victim multiple times a day for several days, but then suddenly stopped calling her after he killed her. He knew she was dead, so he didn't bother to keep calling; but her death hadn't been discovered by anyone else yet, so the fact that he knew she was dead indicated he was the murderer. He either didn't know or it didn't occur to him that the police would be able to review his phone records.
In my own mind I call this phenomenon "My Work Here Is Done" (the murderer knows they can stop doing something that was for the victim's benefit, and it doesn't occur to them that they still need to keep up appearances), but I don't know what it's called on TV Tropes, or if it even has a page at all. It feels related to I Never Said It Was Poison, but it's not quite the same thing.
Edited by NoriMoriopenCrime Unveils Societal Racism
I was looking on amazon for various books that were recommended on Facebook and I noticed this trope cropping up a lot on said books, usually of the literary/historical fiction type. The story centers around a crime being committed, usually a murder, and the society in which it happens turns against a non-white person who they blame for it, leading to the story exploring themes of racism and how it is pervasive in that society.
open literary allusion name
Is there an equivalent of Literary Allusion Title for character names? Like e.g. the Marvel supervillains Mr. Hyde and Sauron, who are named after characters in The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and The Lord of the Rings respectively?
openJust some guy
The secretive villain of the week has been caught, the reveal is about to happen... and the villain is just some guy none of the main cast know.
I know this happens in Scooby Doo at least once (I think it's someone related to a museum curator?), and I'm pretty sure it has a trope page.
openI thought I was the only one (or the last one)/ I thought I was insane
It's 1970 and Alice is a Star Trek fan, watching it in syndication on her local tv station. She's written a few fanfiction stories or original scripts but is convinced that it is more or less insane to do such a thing. She knows no one else who does this and is ashamed to show them to other local fans. Then she gets hold of Joan Winston and Jacqueline Lichtenberg's "Star Trek Lives" and finds out that lots of people write fanfiction. She says "I thought I was the only one."
A little alien girl arrives from outer space with her family, but they are murdered and she is adopted by earth people. She has psychic abilities but conceals them since she thinks she is the very last one.
openA character writes a letter to a deceased loved one
A character describes events in their life in a letter/voiceover addressed to a close person who is either dead or otherwise unable to ever receive the message, with an understanding that this is done because the character still has an emotional connection to them/can't let go.
openKindly caretaker of children
A kind, caring adult at an orphanage who looks out for the children. Possibly the one good person at the Orphanage of Fear
openIt begins on the climax and the rest explains it
When a piece begins at the climax with no explanation at all and the rest of the series explains how everything got to where it started. Most of the time, when the series finally gets back to the climax, the scene continues, and the driving question/motivation gets answered/achieved.
openSwear Word Name Punishment Videogame
Very unsure of what this is called. Basically, in some video games where you are asked for a name, if you put in a curse word or something raunchy, the game will not only not allow it, but also have one of the characters of the game scold the Player for trying to put in a dirty name.
I definitely know this is the case with a Gameshow game on CD-ROM & I feel like at least one Edutainment game does this, too, but even though the name of the Trope should be easy, I struggle more with finding the right name than I'm supposed to.
openA character who become very dangerous and invincible in rage?
Evules, after the failure of his plan, falls into such a murderously psychotic, uncontrollable rampage that he single-handedly demolishes left and right special forces squad that came to arrest him, and then catches and attaches the Cruel and Unusual Death of Bob and Charlie.
Edited by FidoropenHorror movie dogs always die Film
Is there a trope for when dogs (and other animals sometimes) die in horror films? It's a really common occurrence in horror movies.
openBelieved The White Lie
Bob invites Alice to his violin recital. She doesn't want to go but doesn't want to say "Bob, your violin skills suck", so she tells him she's babysitting a kid that night.
The next time Bob invites Alice, he mentions she can bring the kid along as it's completely child-safe, evidently believing the problem was the kid and not his being a Dreadful Musician.
Edited by Chabal2openGibberish Newspaper
In movies, tv, or games, some documents or newspapers are actually be made up of nonsense gibberish, like sample text in documents that are preformatted. This is likely due to the paper/document just being a prop and not meant to be inspected closely.
It's not Left It In or Permanent Placeholder because those tropes require the sample text be intended to be replaced with real text. This is just using sample text as a shortcut or because producers/prop artists didn't have time or budget to make the real thing.
openCharacters complaining about your greedy behavior Videogame
In Warhammer 40,000: Darktide, if one of the players greedily grabs any ammo that can be found or uses a medicae station's limited uses to heal minor injuries, one of the other Player Characters will complain about your selfish behavior.
openWrongfully accused of murder.
Someone is arrested due to a murder that someone else committed. Nearly every trope I thought it would be is different enough from what I have in mind:
- Miscarriage of Justice seems to be when someone is found guilty in court.
- Frame-Up, The Scapegoat, and Fall Guy are when there’s intentional deception going on.
- Misblamed is a meta-trope.
- Mistaken for Murderer seems to be for cases where there wasn’t even a murder in the first place.
The trope is when the main characters are gathering / reassembling thier old team.
Like they do in Endgame before time travel, in Space Jam 2 when they go get the toons for their baskeball team, in Muppets 2011 when they want to do their show and in the Rick and Morty episode where they steal something.