Sorcerer in training
"In Die Hard With a Vengeance, a bunch of German mercenaries impersonate cops. Although the leader speaks English with a flawless American accent, he slips up on a few word choices, such as calling an elevator a "lift" and saying that it's raining "dogs and cats", instead of the usual "cats and dogs". When Mc Clane recognizes that one of them is wearing a friend's badge, and mentions the lottery to figure out if anyone on the elevator is real. None of the fake cops know last night's numbers, though in the beginning it's established that every NYPD cop plays the lottery with their badge number."
Only one guy was established to play with the badge number, the one who was killed and his badge stolen by the terrorist. But, when Mc Clane asks for the numbers when he's hauled off by the cops that morning, the cops he talks to do know the numbers, or most of them. (The attention to the cop's badge number also doubles as a Chekov's Gun.) The main reason Mc Clane was asking the terrorists for the numbers was it gave him an excellent reason to reach into his coat pocket -ostensibly for the lottery tickets, but really for his gun. (And extra badassery for firing the thing thru his coat without sight-aiming.)
Should the last part of this example (the badge part) be fixed, or should it just be removed?
Edited by Candi Coming back to where you started is not the same as never leaving. -Terry Pratchett
Skulls are Awesome
Current content says that "Steganography is the art of writing hidden messages that only the intended recipient would recognize." That's inaccurate, though: as the linked-to Wikipedia page explains, steganography is a method of hiding content within other content, and the hidden content is completely invisible to anyone who doesn't know it's there. This technique is often used to hide coded messages within .jpg files, for instance. However, this concept really has nothing to do with the topic of issuing an out-of-character alert, where a character says or does something incongruous with the character. It's arguably tangentially related, but it doesn't seem to me to fit, so I'm striking it from the overview. If someone wants to replace it with an example of when an out-of-character alert happens in writing (whether intentional or unintentional), go ahead and include that, but encryption methods imho are an unrelated topic. -m
Edited by memetics What the hell is an aluminum falcon?
Previous Trope Repair Shop thread: Needs broadening
, started by OmegaKross on Mar 15th 2011 at 7:33:16 PM
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman