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!
Find a Show:
A Retraux PC game I haven't played in almost a decade... (SOLVED!) Videogame
This is a very obscure game. I remember a surprising amount of it. It's a 2D platformer/Metroidvania with a world map, it stars a character who looks more or less like this[1]◊. He's a chancellor, I think. He can only do basic platforming initially, gaining the ability to wall jump/wall climb (I don't remember which) halfway through the game, and gaining the ability to double jump during the final level (and only the final level. You can't double jump outside of it).
The game features an 8-bit aesthetic during levels, 8-bit music with a side of MIDI stank (the music reminds me a lot of Castlevania: Harmony of Dissonance, actually, at least in terms of sound), and a main map with an oil painting look.
The first few levels happen at night, while the last few levels take place in space. The final level is called Far Far Star. The game has like 3 boss fights, one of which takes place in a stone bridge, the second one takes place in a tunnel, and has you go against a giant wooden contraption with wheels. I assume that there's a third boss fight against the big bad, but I was never able to finish the final level. Speaking of big bad, the big bad is a magician.
One of the optional levels has you use more than one character. It's an escort mission with a female character. You use her to do some jumps you wouldn't be able to normally, I think.
I bet a lot of these details are wrong, but then again, it's been almost a decade since I last played it, back when I still had a Windows XP PC. This has been bugging me for a long time. I really want to go back and finish that game! I'll be very disappointed if this game's been somehow lost to time.
Edited by LucasRCDKid plays baseball very well, but actually [RoboticReveal] Live Action TV
I remember:
- Kid is named Arthur, plays baseball, is too good at it
- At some point gets sick
- Mom comes into the hospital room after doctors think he's done for ( he's not dead, just very sick, definitely still alive when healed ), whips out a laptop, and that's what heals him
- *He was a robot all along*. "Arthur" is the name of the ( Government program? Might even have been an acronym ) place he was built.
- This felt filmed after 1990, but could be wrong. Definitely felt made for TV, not Cinema. Low budget. Definitely kids-aimed, not adult at all.
I saw this in France in the mid-90s on TV, but it was clearly a US thing ( baseball was a core theme which is a dead giveaway even for tiny me ). Was a TV movie or a self-contained episode of a sci-fi show/anthology.
I'm sure I'm missing a lot but I have been obsessed with finding this thing over the years, it's literally the only time ever that Google has failed me ( also browsed all relevant TV Tropes pages without luck ).
As it's been so long it's possible I might have made some element up along the way, but I'm pretty sure about those I wrote here.
If you know the name, it'd help me so much!
EDIT: If you read this and also remember/want to know about this movie, please please say so in the comments, so we can get you to describe what you remember, and maybe find some extra info we don't have yet.
EDIT: Thanks to a kind commenter, I was reminded of the D.A.R.Y.L movie, which is very close in terms of plot, but is definitely not the same movie.
Edited by ArthurWolfFlash game with burning vampire Videogame
I found this game on one of those sites that collect flash games, Kongregate or Newgrounds or one of them. It's a sidescrolling platform game where you play as a vampire trying to get somewhere. If you go into a sunny area you catch fire, but there are fountains where you can douse yourself again.
What cartoon is this?
Does anybody know what artist/strip the comic below is from? We want to use it for a trope on the launch pad, but I haven't been able to find the source, even with a reverse image search.

Crude Mario Sunshine parody on Newgrounds Web Original
It involved badly drawn art, bad grammar, Mario going to get Shine Sprites to have sex with a Toad (represented as a picture of a naked woman with a Toad head crudely pasted on) that at the end was some kind of monster in disguise and a flying Bowser pooping on everyone's head (with the narrator box saying "BOWSER GO SHIT" every time). Also at a certain point the video stops until the user doesn't click on a Shine Sprite Mario is unable to see for some reason.
Bunch of kids, ghost mentor. Literature
A supernatural story from the 80's with a bunch of teens.
What I remember is - One boy is a feral child due to parental abuse, one girl is a Tsundere toward the main character and at the end the other girl (who's a Mysterious Waif type) turns out to be a ghost.
Each of the teens has some sort of symbol, with the Main Character's being a circle (or a ring?), which he's underwhelmed by, but the mentor girl explains that the circle is vital because it keeps the team together.
When all seems lost because of a traitor, the Main Character manages to make the others see sense and wonder why they were betrayed, the bad guys are beaten, and the mentor girl turns out to have been a ghost and the previous Circle, who failed to keep her team together.
So I remember all that, but I don't remember the name! Or the author! It's been driving me nuts for years!
Ha Ha... Plop
Back in the 90s there was this kids' show I watched a couple of times. The show is most likely fully animated, though it could possibly be a live action show with animated segments.
I only really remember one thing about it. One episode had a character ask the "What goes "ha ha plop?" riddle. After the answer is given ("Someone laughing their head off"), it cuts away to a scene of someone's (a kings'?) head popping of while robotically saying "ha ha plop."
I can't tell you much else about it. It probably used a very cartoony and simplistic art style style, similar to 2 Stupid Dogs, at least for the scene I described above. I also remember it having an educational show sort of vibe, but I might be wrong about that. I traveled a lot in the 90s so I can't even tell you the country it's from, but it was definitely in English.
PINK haired girl with brain? Western Animation
I vaguely remember an animated show with a pink haired girl who had a ‘pet’ brain, not certain on air time, probably 2005-2009 period, on cbbc or citv. in most episodes the villager people would come after the brain claiming it did something. I keep trying to remember it but all i can think of is ‘Pinky and the brain’, which i know it is not as i searched it and have never seen an episode, however i know the theme song off by heart. Meaning what im describing may be a remade/spin off version. Possibly not.
The animation style is difficult to remember but is most likely western and flat layered. Not anime or 3D animation.
Any idea about this show is VERY APPRECIATED! Thanks in advance ^-^ (Any questions just ask)
Edited by SpuriousRangiferineWhere did this quote came from? Anime
I am pretty sure it is either an anime or a manga, but which one? All I remember was this quote, it is a bit paraphrased, but the point still stands.
"We are nothing but minds trapped inside a game called life."
That, and it was said by an antagonist. But I really forget the rest, not even the villain's appearance.
Calculate days remaining in a normal life, then live life to the fullest Film
Hi Tropers! You all are freaking awesome! Happy I found such a cool thing!
Know this MOVIE?
A young man adds up (for his girlfriend) the days remaining in a normal lifetime... Then they go on to live a more free lifestyle.
The movie centers around a sort of underground gang of children, all controlled by an older man. Drugs, homelessness, sewers, petty theft..
In the end the pair are snow-sledding with kayaks in Iceland or someplace like that.
May be European or American... Probably later than 1999, and earlier than 2008.
It wasnt a Countdown or Deathwatch or grim trope at all... More of a "Snap out of my own apathy, stop hanging around losers wsting my time" kind of trope.
It always stuck with me.
Thanks for your help!
PS... If I'm 35, and I can fully enjoy life until im 75, then I only have less than 15000 days to GET ON WITH IT. Merry Christmas. Peace be with us all.
Edited by blarvinGiant Transmedia Game Videogame
I can't recall the name but it was a game in a website (kinda indie) and as you would play you would go through "pages" each of these pages was a mini-game in of itself or had some comic pages or other transmedia interactions and each one would lead you to the next one but not in a linear way (like you could skip from page 20 to like 84 and come back to 21 depending on where you'd click); I'm pretty sure I found it through Youtube in 2011 and I think it already had like 900 pages or something like that.
STILL UNSOLVED Man jumps, son ceases to exist, short horror/sci fi story from a collection Literature
This is all I know:
1. Someone here said that they remember reading something like this. They cannot remember basically anything, except that the cover had a monochrome appearance, largely white with some design in the middle in darker color, covered about a quarter to a third of the cover, and was centered.
2. Someone on Yahoo answers said that Joe Hill (author of Dark Carousel) writes these type of stories.
3. I read this on a horror collection I downloaded in 2015-2017, it was fairly new then. I have tried searching on my Kindle and found nothing.
4. This occurs in the story. A man jumps off a building or balcony (quite possibly suicide), I think a father. The mother and son (how old he was I am not entirely sure) were watching news. Suddenly, the son's body slowly disappears, first I think his legs, then his arms, as this happens, his mother screams, "Eli (I think that was his name), look down at yourself ..." He was ceasing to exist. I cannot remember the ending, but knowing how these stories turn out, I think it was not a happy one.
5. I thought it was the collection, "the Seer of Possibilities - And Other Disturbing Tales" by Thomas O or "Choose Your Doom: Collected Short Stories - Picking Stories for the Apocalypse." Apocalypse seems quite familiar for some reason. Something is telling me that this is from one of the Twisted Endings books by author Timothy D Mclendon, but unfortunately, though I downloaded the entire volumes from Amazon, they were returned, for some reason, they are currently unavailable. I will check E-bay.
6. I asked this (of course here), Reedit, Booksleuth, Yahoo Answers, Do You Remember.co.uk, three horror forums, and I sent this in to my local library. The librarian who was probably the most helpful of anyone, asked this approximately to 500 librarians and not one knew.
Now, I know this is very vague, but I know this must seem familiar to at least someone here, I know tons read horror, and searching several of the queries, people here are quite helpful and have made tons of guesses, and half even led to correct answers, and the queries are even vague. Now, only TWO people have helped, and I wish more would, the majority of the responses are bumps. This is discouraging and I do not know who else to ask. I will find this out by myself if I have to, but as I said, I know several of you read horror, and this must ring bells for someone here. PLEASE HELP.
Edited by thestormtrooperEpisode of Arthur, "It's a made-up word"? Western Animation
I'm looking for an episode of Arthur with this conversation:
Kids parents turn into monsters late at night Live Action TV
I think it was an ( anthology) TV show from the 1980s. All I remember is a boy whose parents make him go to bed every night and stay asleep all night and make sure not to get up. Then one night he stays up really late and watches his parents turn into grotesque monsters and finds out that all adults turn into monsters late at night and then turn back into regular people in the morning
Anthology of stories about fairies (Finally resolved!) Literature
I read this as a child - probably in the early 2000s, but it was probably published (way?) earlier. I'm assuming the stories were written by various authors, since they didn't use a consistent mythology about fairies.
One story involved a fairy and a young blind girl. In this story, humans could hear fairies, but were unable to see them. Since the girl was blind though, the fairy was able to to befriend and play games with her, without her realizing that he wasn't just another child.
Another involved a fairy who kept playing pranks on a girl, and making her late for school. I know one thing he did, was transform himself into a baby in a baby carriage, and roll out into the road so that she would save the "baby".
Edited by rachiebirdA game described as weird Videogame
I saw a stream of a game where the player character apparently is having the worst day of his life.
Several of the levels have him being chased by a giant metal globe, another level had him strapped to a cot where he gets electrocuted if he answers wrong, and the following level has him haphazardly tossed out of it and onto the road where he has to steer around oncoming traffic and barricades.
It as described as a weird game by the person streaming it.
sci-fi shooter type flash game with furries? Videogame
This game has been driving me crazy for at least a week. I found it around 2010 and it was one of those platformer-shooter games, like Armor Mayhem or Raze, but it was purely singleplayer and the two main characters were furries. It had a lot of comedic fourth wall breaking moments, like one character telling the other character the controls and neither of them knowing what they mean. The character you played was a male grey cat I think, and I think the second character was a female with red hair, and the second character would talk to the player character through a computer and give advice and maybe hack things?
Trippy Anachronism Stew Fantasy Movie [Solved!]
I saw about fifteen minutes of this bizarre movie while on lunch break at work. It was running on a television screen some distance across the canteen, so I didn't get any audio, but I got plenty of weird visuals. It was apparently running on Comet.
It looked like it might have been made in the 80s or 90s and possibly took inspiration from Lewis Carroll, or maybe just whatever drugs the creators took while working on it. It started out in a forest, where a guy in a suit ambushed a guy wearing what looked like a tutu and tights by the former jumping onto the latter's head from a tree. Three or four other people quickly showed up, one of which was a woodsy-dressed woman with an axe, who were apparently on Suit Guy's side, because they all dogpiled Tutu Guy. But then some kind of gas started pouring out onto the set, and the dogpiling group tried to flee. Tutu Guy pulled out a gas mask, and most of his opponents eventually fell unconscious, although I think one of them got away.
Suit Guy, Axe Lady, and another woman then woke up in Tutu Guy's Secret Lab. Tutu Guy was apparently some kind of Mad Scientist and had imprisoned them all in little plastic tents hanging from the ceiling. There was a bunch of lab equipment around, and at one point Tutu Guy appeared to be performing surgery on a cadaver or maybe a living body — looked like he might have been trying to remove organs? His prisoners freaked out, but were no match for the might of the plastic tents they were in, and after they spent a minute or two pointlessly slapping the tent walls and yelling, Mad Scientist Tutu knocked them unconscious with some kind of yellow foam he vented into their tents. Then Scientist Tutu took a nap, his prisoners woke up while he was sleeping, and were able to swing around in their tents enough to use a fire that was going in a corner of the room to burn the plastic. The whole lab went up, and Suit Guy and one of the women escaped — I don't recall seeing the other one after that, so I don't know if they just got separated or if they left her for dead. No word on the Tutu Mad Scientist.
The freed captives wandered through the woods for a short bit, then ran into a crazy dancing guy who seemed to be a gatekeeper of some kind. He annoyed them, so Suit Guy killed him, but then his body lit up green and he respawned double, so there were now two annoying guys. Suit Guy and the only guy to escape the gas (who had shown back up at that point) threw the two guys off a bridge. That was about the point I had to go back to work.
There was also some kind of wooden sign in the woods that the characters kept going past, but I don't recall what it said. I don't know if I actually want to watch this movie, but it was one of the most whacked out things I've seen in a while, and I'm quite curious to know what the hell it was I was watching. Has anyone seen this? Is it supposed to take place in a medieval fantasy land? Why was the Mad Scientist wearing a tutu? Who were his victims and why were they incompetent sociopaths? What's the deal with the dancing gatekeeper who's secretly a hydra?
Edited by SpocktorWhoGuy in Haunted House Confronted by Two Ghosts Live Action TV
I am desperately trying to identify something I saw as a kid. This is everything I remember. This would have aired on local TV (not cable/satellite) in either the late 80s, or early 90s (not after fall of 1992). A man is near or at a railroad. He's offered a place to stay for the night and is taken to a house. In front of the house are three crosses, one smaller than the other two, I believe it is said a family was killed there. While the man is staying there overnight (I think I remember a deck of playing cards for some reason?), two ghosts, possibly one white and one red, appear and fly towards the screen. This is all I remember. Scared the shit out of me, and I would kill to find out what this is. Major thanks in advance. I listed it as "live action TV" but I can't rule out it was a movie. I know it was on at least twice.
Edited by RyanClark85A wild customer appears? Web Original
I'm trying to find a site I swore I got to from TV tropes a few years ago. It was basically just a log of a few rpg sessions where the guy was playing an IT consultant who had to deal with customers like enemy encounters.
Children's animated 2D cartoon series with blueish color scheme Western Animation
I can't remember any names of the characters, however I do vaguely remember what some of the characters looked like. Most of them were clearly not human, but some did closely resemble one. (Not human, as in, having body features such as clean white faces, bean-like fingers and toes and strange but cute ears and noses.)
One of the characters, which I remember the clearest, was this white-faced kid with monkey ears, wearing a woolly hat. He wandered around dragging a red cart to which he collected invisible stones every now and then.
One was a small flying mixture of a cloud and a showman. This creature's name I think was like "Pom" or "Pou" or something like that and I remember the show's name being very close to the name of one of the characters. Not at all sure though.
Another was this large and tall, eggplant-shaped blueish "thing" with four feet and a cute face and large eyes who could reform their body at will. They also might have had some red and orange polygonal spots scattered around their body if I remember correctly. I also remember a small child who was obsessed with his wooden building blocks which I think there were 13 of them.
The color scheme I think was overall mostly blueish gray and orange.
I was pretty small when I first saw this so that might have affected my perception of everything but I remember the events of the show being very random, as well as the characters. Everyone did lots of weird things and no-one ever really questioned anything.
This aired in Finland and I watched it somewhere around 2004-2009 and I have absolutely no idea whether it was an originally Finnish cartoon or just dubbed.
Horror anthology book for kids Literature
I remember checking this out from the school library probably in the late 90s. It was a horror anthology book like Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark. The main story I remember from it was about a dog that attacked a girl in her bedroom. The townsfolk shot it and followed it to a mausoleum where they found the dogs decayed corpse. Scared the hell out of me as a kid, would love to find it again. I think the cover may have been yellow, but I could be thinking of a different book.
Trained dog points to detective who the murderer is
Me and my friend recall American TV series we used to watch when we were kids. It was probably in middle 90s but we both lived in Poland so show could be few years old already. What we know for sure is that there was an episode in which someone was murdered at some kind of hotel or maybe country club and the only witness was trained dog. Detective(s?) knew about it so he was talking to the suspects with dog by his side (it was supposed to bark when sees the killer). At the end of the episode detective accused a women who showed up few times earlier in the episode. Dog wasn't barking when it saw her because she used trick that it was trained - everytime she was in the same room with the dog she was holding something in her hand (like a tennis ball) - the clamped fist was a signal to stay calm and don't bark for the dog. Can anyone help me please? We tried to look it up but we can't recall any names...
Animated TV Show in Late 90s/early 2000s Western Animation
I cannot find a trace of this show online and it's driving me insane. Basically it was this animated TV show that I think might have been either animated over live action or like a 2D CGI. (It was kind of a unique style. Like if you took A Scanner Darkly, made it ghetto and mixed it with Reboot, but then made everything 2D with static textures and patterns on clothing, for example.) It was some time in the late 90s/early 2000s, either Canadian or American. I thought it would have been on YTV or Teletoon, but I've searched both of their show lists and nothing is twigging my memory. It was something about this group of friends (2 guys, 2 girls, I think), and they had some sort of ability to leave their bodies and project themselves into ... I want to say dreams or alternate realities? I think they had some sort of memory loss that was a big part of the plot. And there was some sort of shady organization after them. I hope that's enough to go on. It was kind of for teens and adults, I'd say, rather than younger kids. Please help!
Aviation anime? Anime
I remember a few things about the anime ; It aired on the Anime Network on demand service in about 2011-2012, it involved aviation, two of the main locations in the show was an (aviation?) academy, and an old aviation museum. It took place during WWII, I think. Another thing I remember was one scene where a character who was thought to be dead by his two siblings is sitting by his mothers grave, putting down flowers, whilst his siblings plot to kill him for inheritance. Somebody on Yahoo Answers suggested 'Pumpkin Scissors', but I vaguely remember the opening for this show, and it didn't match. Any ideas as to what it could be?
Edited by Torterrafan5676