When you find yourself trying to remember a show (or any works) that's on the tip of your tongue but just out of reach, come here - the collective brain of the TVTropes community can probably help. Post all the details you can remember (examples help). If you're looking for a trope, head over to Trope Finder. Have general questions about tropes? Visit Ask The Tropers!
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openNo Title
I've got a plot and a few mental images to run off of. Kids book, would have been published prior to 1985 because that's the earliest I remember reading it. Started with a family buying a huge Christmas tree to put in their foyer except it was too big (the illustration showed it bent over against the ceiling) so they had someone go up and cut the last few feet off. Someone else (a gardener, I think?) takes that piece home but it doesn't fit in his apartment (he may have had it up on a table) so he chops a bit off. Someone else takes that and chops off a bit and so on. The last character is a mouse who sets the tree in a stand made out of a carrot slice.
I want to say there were illustrations for every page and there couldn't have been too many pages because there's a limit on how many slices you can take off the tree before it gets absurd.
openNo Title
A video game, probably made in the late 90's/early 2000's:
You're an alien, and you're on earth (this is not destroy all humans, my brother owns the game so I know) and I think you have to collect little crests to have weapons, sort of like in spore. I remember that one of the weapons was an Uzi and the little alien would get excited and say something like "it's an Uzi!" when you would get it.
I don't know much more than that so a little help would be appreciated.
openNo Title
ive asked all sorts of people over the years who cant seem to help me
problem is i can only remember fragments as I watched it whilst on a coach journey as a child. I think the film is likely early 90s era.
all I remember is the location looks like it is set in a place like alaska - woodlands, ice.
I can recall a small group of people - could be a family of 4 - mum,dad, definately a teenage girl, and possibly a boy too, cant quite recall.
who for some reason are being stalked by a group of what seem like professional soldiers. They have machine guns, grenades etc and are stalking them. I recall the young teenage girl had a walkman radio, and for some strange reason managed to tap into their frequency - this helps the group to somewhat avoid them.
So thats all I can give and whilst I cant remember being overly excited about the film - I probably was near asleep as a child watching it. Yet for some reason its always irritated me that whilst I can remember these fragments - ive never solved the puzzle of what the film was actually called. would be very happy/grateful if anyone knows.ta
openNo Title Western Animation
Looking for a series of cartoon shorts probably from the late-90s/early-00s. The basic premise was a cowboy western/comedy with a blonde-haired character and his smelly sidekick (there was one scene around telling the smelly guy to sleep downwind) fight a black guy (when I say black, I mean pure black), who was absolutely insane. Generic cowboy setting, deserts, etc. The art style was really skinny. I think it ended on a cliffhanger - it had something to do with an actual cliff about chasing the bad guy, but I might have just not seen the end. I believe it was played on Cartoon Network (UK) for a couple of minutes before shows started.
The main character sounded exactly like Johnny Bravo but I couldn't find anything similar to this series on Jeff Benett's various pages. The character might have had a guitar he couldn't play very well but perhaps not.
I'll be grateful for any help.
openNo Title Film
So I have this movie stuck in my head... It's about this hospice nurse in New Orleans taking care of this old guy in this giant house. The old man's wife is crazy or something... I think the nurse is played by Kate Hudson... I can't remember... but the old woman traps the nurse and swaps their bodies or something. The old person is associated with this lawyer that shows up during the film. It's some-what a horror film. It's been bugging me for weeks and I can't remember it... Please help me! Thanks!
openNo Title Live Action TV
A year or so ago I was testing myself by channel flipping at top speed, at one point it was on Nickelodeon just long enough for me to see the logo bug and I saw a man on a little row boat in the water, with a canvas and using a pencil on it. Any possibilities? This was late afternoon I think.
openNo Title Literature
There was a book that I loved when I was little. It had a talking parrot who got a couple of kids to help him save an underground kingdom where all the magical creatures moved after people began to forget about them. The parrot was the caretaker of a talking Dictionary, a talking Thesaurus (I think) and a book of magic as well.
There was also a sea serpent who thought the boat the characters were using at one point was a blue crumpet. Anyone remember this?
openNo Title Anime
In early 2005 my dad turned on the tv which had recorded Fosters Home For Imaginary Friends for me so it was on Cartoon Network, it was probably Adult Swim by this point, but it's possible it wasn't because CN had a non Pokemonesque Anime outside of AS at that time if I'm correct. Anyway, all we saw was a woman with purple hair and a van or camper of some kind, there might have been two women that looked just like this. What could it have been?
openNo Title
I know this is a long shot, but I'm trying to remember a movie that I watched as a kid (late 80's). Now, I don't know much about it, and this is my first time posting here, so please be kind. It was in, like, 80's anime-style. It may have been about dolls or something. I only really remember one scene: this sort of dystopian assembly line these automatons were being cranked off of. They looked like children (or dolls?) but whatever sinister entity was doing it had maybe removed the souls from dolls or something. I'm really sorry that this is so vague, but I'm just hoping that this may spark some glimmer in some troper's mind and they can finally lay this to rest for me.
openNo Title Literature
It was a short story either written by Bruce Coville or in an anthology compiled by him, I don't remember which... It was about a pair of kids who build a forward-only time machine that they test with a teddy bear, and one kid realizes that it didn't account for Earth's motion through space just after the other kid decides to personally test it. Anybody remember what it was called, or the name of the anthology it was published in?
openNo Title Western Animation
I'm trying to remember a shows name, but apparently, it's not showing up on wikipedia so i think i got the name wrong. I thought it was called balthazar and it had this family of elephants, and another family of rhinos.
also, it had an awesome opening song.
openNo Title Film
It was a riff on this So Bad, It's Good fanfilm by these kids who combined Star Trek, Doctor Who, and other sci-fi stuff and one kid had a cardboard box for a costume. i think it was on blip or viddler. Searching for retsupurae didn't help.
openNo Title Western Animation
The show that I am trying to remember had a main villain who was green, had sort of a Frankensteinish look, with a purple cape. There were three kids trying to stop him from doing something to do with computer viruses. One of these kids was a black girl.
openNo Title Literature
Looking for a collection of sci-fi stories The book was required reading for me in middle school and featured a story about a man who turns to metal after entering a strange valley. A story about a woman reprogramming her home AI to be more motherly. And, of course "There Will Come Soft Rains".
openNo Title Music
I'm looking for a song from an ad.
It was a Target
ad, probably aired somewhere between 2005-07.
The ad itself was really surreal and had nice subdued music. The singer was female, and I think the only line I can remember from the song was "When you reach your destination".
Although like I said it was surreal, so the words weren't all that clear over the music (even though the music was sedate and soft).
I'm almost positive it was Target, although I think the ad involved a car. If not Target, then some ad that aired on Australian TV, Win or Seven most likely.
I did try searching for the lyrics, but didn't turn up anything. I may have the lyrics slightly wrong, or it might have been created for the ad. There are no prominent instruments, and certainly not a strong beat.
openNo Title Live Action TV
I remember one episode of a show. It was a crime drama, like CSI or Law & Order. The episode focused around a normal guy who was actually a serial killer of women. He wore glasses. At the end of the episode one of he kills one of his coworkers who dug too deeply. She had stated her intention to do something, he said it was impossible, and when she asked why, he replied, "Because you're dead" (or something along those lines). So, anyone know the episode/show?
openNo Title Literature
Couple of series of kids/teenage literature.
The first one was about a group of kids who start bleeding silver blood. Turns out that's because they're actually aliens, only they don't want to be aliens and then other stuff happens. It's not on the Alien Blood page, unless it's the Mindwarp series, but that seems to be about mutants from the future and I swear these were aliens. The first book has the protagonist cut himself and then get shiny silver blood all over a payphone. May also contain a crazy homeless guy in a tinfoil hat, and I think maybe a lake made by a meteor?
The second series was ostensibly horror, I think, but one specific book was more fantasy in tone. Had a girl buy or inherit a pedant with a huge ruby in it, then start dreaming about a rather ugly squat demon. Turns out he's the bastard half-demon son of King Solomon, who betrayed his father's court to the demons and then got stuck in the pendant as a punishment. Or something like that.
openNo Title Anime
In 2006 I rented a Spongebob assorted episode DVD and there was a preview for a Pokemonesque anime with this tween/teen boy who might have had purple hair, and his friend was a short nerdy boy with glasses, and there was a girl who cheered the main boy on, and another girl who said to the short nerdy boy "I think you're cute" and it embarrassed him. The voice over mentioned the main boy having to master all four elements, two of the elements were dark and light, and the other two elements were either fire and water or earth and air. The Spongebob DVD this preview was on was either Fear Of A Krabby Patty(Spring 2005) or Karate Island(Summer 2006).
Edited by GazBevMooopenNo Title Literature
This was a children's book about an Asian woman (I think she was Chinese) and an American guy, and their first couple dates. She calls up her British friend to teach her how to eat Western style with a knife and fork, while the American guy gets someone to teach him how to eat with chopsticks. At the Western style date he comments about the British way she holds her utensils, which is where I learned it was apparently different in Europe. I remember the illustration of how the woman speared several peas on one tine of her fork before she ate them. At the Asian style date, he isn't very good at using the chopsticks but gets through and she's proud.
The British friend had glasses, the Asian woman wore her hair in a bun and may have worn a green dress at some point, and the American man had fair hair and I think he wore a blue shirt on one of the dates.
I got this from the library some time in the mid '90s, but I think it was written least 15 years before. The illustrations were rather stylized line drawings, I think drawn with a brush- there was some influence of Asian art- and colored with watercolors. Minimal backgrounds I think, just the basic idea of the setting, or washes of color. It may have been set in San Francisco.

I think it was a TV show, but I'm not sure. Some live action comedy, anyway. The only thing I remember is a guy being hauled into a police car screaming, "No, I said kit-ty porn! With kittens!" I remember finding this hilarious, which probably means the rest was good enough to prime me for it. I avoid any show with a laugh track, if that helps.