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105 Cards in this Set
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Hollywood Nerd
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In real life, most nerds don't particularly live up to society's standard of Beauty(tm) (there are exceptions, they're just not very common). In the wonderful world of television, where it's vitally important that every member of the recurring cast rates at least a 7.5 on the Hot or Not scale, even those characters whose primary role is to spout technobabble while tapping on their Magical Computer have to be easy on the eye.
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Lampshade Hanging
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Lampshade Hanging is the writers' trick of dealing with any element of the story that threatens the audience's Willing Suspension Of Disbelief—whether a very implausible plot development, or a particularly egregious use of a trope—by calling attention to it... and then moving on.
The reason for this counter-intuitive strategy is two-fold. First, it assures the audience that the author is aware of the implausible plot development that just happened, and that he isn't trying to slip something past the audience. Second, it assures the audience that the world of the story is like Real Life: what's implausible for you or me is just as implausible for these characters, and just as likely to provoke an incredulous response. |
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Wrench Wench
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Girls interested in machines seem like an ideal fantasy for guys into motor-powered things. By default, Wrench Wenches manage to combine the fact Nerds Are Sexy and tomboys are Moe Moe. This can sometimes extend to pure electronic devices, but a Wrench Wench is more likely to be found with a blowtorch and ratchet set. She will always be confident about her own work, but because she's technically an otaku she sometimes has trouble with other things.
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Special Effect Failure
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When a special effect looks really cheap and dodgy, to the point of pulling the audience out of the narrative, you have a Special Effect Failure. All-too-common prior to 1980, and still with us today despite relatively inexpensive digital effects that look realistic.
To be a true Special Effect Failure, it has to have looked bad by the standards of the time it was made — and have been remarked on at the time. Is the complete opposite of Visual Effects Of Awesome. |
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Cousin Oliver
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Cousin Oliver is that inexplicable kid added to the show's roster, probably in an attempt to liven up an aging cast.
Sometimes Cousin Olivers are then afflicted with SORAS. This doesn't always make it better. Compare it to The Bumblebee, who is generally less annoying. Very susceptible to becoming The Scrappy. |
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Brother Chuck
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Usually if the writers want to remove a character from the show, they will either kill that character or put him or her on a bus to explain their absence.
A Brother Chuck simply disappears and is never mentioned again — often because the writers simply gradually lose interest in the character, without ever making a conscious decision to remove them from the storyline, and then eventually forget about them entirely. The name comes from Chuck, Richie Cunningham's older brother on Happy Days. Also known as Chuck Cunningham Syndrome. |
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The Other Darrin
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A new actor is brought onto a show to play the same character as an actor who's leaving. Often not explained to the audience at all. Named for arguably the most famous case: the Darrin swap — Dick York to Dick Sargent — on Bewitched. Somewhat easier to get away with when dealing with voice actors.
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Invisible Darrin
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Every once in a while, you want to bring back a guest star or former recurring character, and you want this so much that the fact that the appropriate actor isn't available (i.e., unwilling, busy, or dead) doesn't stop you.
Pulling off The Other Darrin is tricky under the best of circumstances. Trying to do it for a one-shot appearance is pretty much impossible. So you pull off something dicey: use a stand-in, and don't show their face. You can combine this with a little Stock Footage to improve the effect. Not bad, as long as the audience doesn't get wise. In more recent years, creating Serkis Folk that can pass for the real deal has been tried, but it's rarely passable. This is somewhat easier to do with animation, as you can just redraw the character. Just...be careful of which voice actor sound-alike you hire. |
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My Species Doth Protest Too Much
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When you're on the Planet Of Hats for too long, someone's hat is going to fall off. The probability of this happening seems to be inversely proportional to the flamboyance of the hat. That is, if Bob's planet is filled to the brim with Blood Knights, who proclaim "The greatest glory is to die in battle!" and "Only the strong survive!" over dinner, expect Bob to be a Pacifist.
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No Sex Allowed
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One of the most obvious ways to create a Dystopian setting is to remove those things which are most pleasurable to us in Real Life. In the same vein, one of the most obvious ways to create a Utopian setting is to remove those things which cause us the most pain and suffering. How do you really Mind Screw the audience? By removing that which is both our greatest pleasure and our greatest pain and suffering. In the design plans for both Dystopias and Deconstructed Utopias, sex is the first thing to go.
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Arbitrary Skepticism
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Arbitrary Skepticism is the tendency of characters who deal with the bizarre on a daily basis to be unreasonably closed-minded. Sometimes this makes sense — just because aliens exist, it doesn't mean that unicorns do — but often the viewer is left wondering how the characters can still be skeptical after everything they've seen. It could also be argued that this is a case of Truth In Television — after getting acquainted with quantum physics many supernatural phenomena do seem quite reasonable in comparison but it doesn't automatically make them true.
Sometimes this is used to define the extent of the fantasy of the world: for example, letting the viewer know that in this Fantasy Kitchen Sink, there are no vampires or ghosts, even if there are unicorns. Sometimes characters will discuss this, comparing someone's cynicism about talking bats to their fighting dragons last week. Can cause Fridge Logic; if dragons are a regular and accepted occurrence in the characters' world, then why would they use it as an example to compare with something that doesn't? That would be equivalent to saying "If elephants exist, why not unicorns?" Of course, this can be Truth In Television too: many cryptozoologists will point to certain animals that do exist in extreme environments and ask why Bigfoot or a huge monster in Loch Ness is considered so ridiculous. The Agent Scully is fond of this. |
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No Such Thing As Wizard Jesus
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OK, so you have a setting where various people in the modern day have all these amazing powers. Whether they're born as mutants, mages, wizards, or something else, they're able to perform miraculous feats that warp reality itself.
Hrm, weren't there some other historical people who performed miraculous feats? People who ended up being worshiped? I mean, if you have these wizards running around turning lead into gold, who is to say that in this universe, Jesus wasn't just a cultist wizard conning people over by turning water into wine? Nope, Jesus Was Never A Wizard. This will NEVER be brought up. You might get some talk about how, oh, the Greek Gods were really aliens or something, but if a character ever brings up a modern faith that people still practice widely - Christianity, Judaism, Buddhism, or Islam, nobody will ever go "Say, these people we're fighting can resurrect themselves. I wonder if that means Jesus was . . ." Beethoven Was An Alien Spy, Jesus never was. |
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Downer Ending
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1. A finale to a movie, a TV series, a video game, or some other form of media that ends things on a low note, or in some other way that isn't quite happy. These tend to be rare, as there is overwhelming pressure to tie loose ends up in a "happy" way. Sometimes done as a way to assure that the show, once canceled, cannot be revived later (similar to the Grand Finale), but sometimes leaves the show on a cliffhanger.
2. A similarly low-key or unhappy ending to an episode of a normally "happy" series. Also rare, due to the same reasons as above. Sometimes used in an attempt to get Emmy nominations, or to at least surprise the viewer. Sometimes, a Downer Ending can still conclude the character arcs in a very satisfying way, despite being dark. Sometimes, it can be overused to the point it's practically a Mandatory Twist Ending. If it comes out of nowhere or is the result of an Ass Pull then it may be the result of the writers summoning Diabolus Ex Machina. If enough people consider it fundamentally unjust, it may acquire the Dis Continuity and Snicket Warning labels. Kill Em All and The Bad Guy Wins are particularly cruel variations of this. A Prequel may require one, or both; the Happy Ending was Doomed By Canon. |
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Status Quo Is God
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A more extreme version of Failure Is The Only Option, in which almost nothing changes. This usually happens in a series with no overarching conflict. The reasoning is probably that they want the audience to instantly know everything about the characters and situation, without having to bother with such things as "what happened last episode". For example, they may use a title sequence that tells us everything we need to know. Much like Failure Is The Only Option, any changes at all are resolved with a Snap Back or Reset Button. And God forbid anyone change the status quo of the surrounding world.
This trope is especially true for cartoons, where networks want to be free to broadcast reruns in any convenient order or lack thereof. Cartoons with Story Arcs have slowly started becoming more popular over the past decade or so, perhaps influenced by the popularity of the many, many anime series which have an ongoing continuity. Or, perhaps, simply as a result of a generation of Americans and other Western audiences (implied by the previous statement) growing up with more complex media as the Eastern audience had the generation before along with the increasing availability of personal creative display via the Internet. It's still especially common in sitcoms, though — and as a result, there are plenty of Broken Aesops created by the fact that, although characters have learned their lessons or attempted to improve their predicaments, nothing ever really changes. It can be very difficult to juggle an unchanging status quo without gradually turning off your audience; characters and situations which never change tend to get stale after a while, and audiences can get a bit tired of seeing the Reset Button being pushed every time it looks like something might happen to change things — especially if the thwarted change was potentially more interesting than the current status quo. |
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Emotionless Girl
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The enigmatic emotionless character. Sometimes the anchor in the midst of chaos; other times just quietly mysterious. Draws attention to herself simply by her non-reaction. Can be seen as purposeful, cool in a crisis, i.e., "she's all business." May also have some sort of secret special power.
Sometimes used by animators as the comic foil, especially in noisy, chaotic situations. Not necessarily a fan of pure logic and reason like The Spock, as compassionate under the skin as the Tin Man, as wise and profound as Silent Bob, or as strong and badass as The Stoic. In certain instances, may be an actual Robot Girl. See also The Quiet One, Strange Girl, and The Daria. Often contrasted with a more Hot Blooded partner to form a Red Oni Blue Oni pair. An interesting twist on the Emotionless Girl is the Emotionally Repressed Girl. This girl feels the emotions but doesn't express them openly or vividly. These girls can draw the viewers into the scene by forcing one to pick up on her subtle cues - so that when the seemingly Emotionless Girl finally does smile, there's a tremendous amount of satisfaction. They may suffer from Bad Dreams. Contrast Kuudere, who may initially appear emotionless but in fact has a cute inner side. Will often be the subject of Must Make Her Laugh. |
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Uncanny Valley Girl
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She's cute. Beautiful, in fact. Friendly and popular. She's the head of the class in terms of looks, money and everything that counts for her approval rating, but she's not The Libby, even if she has a Girl Posse or the entire grade on her side. One of Those Two Guys might have a crush on her, even though he never gets anywhere. She's the perfect girl...
...except there's something not quite human about her, and she's secretly out for your blood. The Uncanny Valley Girl is smarter than she lets on, and puts on a very convincing persona that's made the class adore her. It's the high school girl version of Villain With Good Publicity, except the publicity is good enough that nobody, not even The Hero, knows she's the villain — or anything other than normal. Not until she comes at you with a sharp object, that is. |
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Beethoven Was An Alien Spy
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The "revelation" that a famous historical figure actually had a secret life far more fantastic and magical than history records. A historical Ret Con, if you will. Artists and writers tend to be the most common examples, followed by American Presidents.
This is sometimes a way for a show to capitalize on sudden popular interest in some historical figure, or just to exercise a writer's pet interest. In such a story, Plausible Deniability is almost always the order of the day; we have to be given this fantastic secret history in such a way that we can believe that the fantastic elements were kept out of public record. In Time Travel stories, this often involves Retroactive Precognition. |
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Loners Are Freaks
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Friends are great. Which is why having friends is often what separates the hero from the villain. An inevitable side-effect of The Power Of Friendship is if you don't have friends, there's something wrong with you. Similarly, if a writer is going to create a sympathetic Anti Hero, they almost always do it by making the character a brooding loner. It must not occur to them that there are many other ways to make a flawed character—pride, addiction, and lust are all sympathetic, epic flaws. No, no, instead, we make them just plain asocial.
Introversion usually goes along with a raft of other problems: arrogance, selfishness, mental instability, inhumanity, or plain old evil. They're the weird one, or the suspicious one, or the untrustworthy one. Withdrawing from the company of others is automatically equated with that worst of all human vices — Pride; loners insult others by by saying, through their refusal to socialize, that others are not worthy to be in their presence. Right? This stems from the belief that being a loner is not a natural thing, but a problem to be solved. (What healthy, well-adjusted man doesn't want his lady to ask him "What are you thinking?" on regular occasions...) |
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The Stoic
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He can be in the middle of a gunfight, his best friend's bachelor party, or a helpless witness to the death of everyone and everything he holds dear... and he'll show all the emotional reaction of a victim of a Botox overdose. Though the silent warrior has roots stretching back to The Drifter in Westerns and farther back, The Stoic differentiates himself in that he's not quiet out of contemplation or introversion, but because he's so tough that he doesn't need to emote (or so the writer would like you to think).
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Planet Of Hats
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On their Wagon Train To The Stars, our intrepid heroes come across a planet with a single defining characteristic. Everybody is a robot, or a coward, or a gangster, or a Proud Warrior Race Guy, or a Corrupt Corporate Executive, or wearing a hat.
Earth itself is sometimes portrayed as a Planet Of Hats. The defining human characteristic is often "pluck" or "sheer cussedness" and sometimes even "diversity", though "bastardom" is common in more misanthropic works. Writers love to use the hat planet to represent controversial issues in society whenever they can. This way the show's characters can take a thinly disguised public stand on an issue that the network execs would otherwise consider too taboo to openly discuss. We can't have our heroes discussing euthanasia, but should they stumble across a Planet Of Hats where everyone who gets sick is put to death, then it's okay. Eventually the plots will run out with an entire race of identical people so one or more of the species will have their hat fall off, declaring My Species Doth Protest Too Much. For maximum typing, the characters can also be physically uniform, as in People Of Hair Color. |
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Alien Scrappy
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A Plucky Comic Relief character in a sci-fi, fantasy or Super Hero story, with a supposedly "cute" appearance and actions, who comes from another planet or dimension, or is a member of some kind of magical race. Such characters are often the Non Human Sidekick, Small Annoying Creature and/or The Scrappy of the story. Occasionally one of them is a villain, but it's hard to take such a stupid-looking villain seriously. In fact, it's hard to take any story seriously once one of these little buggers is introduced. Really, the trope is sort of a handwave to allow for bloody ridiculous characters. The viewer asks, "Why the hell is that character so stupid and unrealistic, don't they realize he spoils the show?" and the unsatisfactory answer comes back, "Ah, but he's an alien, you see. Everyone's like him where he comes from."
How can you tell if it's an Alien Scrappy? Well, if you're not one of those people that despises all things cute and chirpy, in fact, you'll even squeal at a baby animal once in a while... and you still think the annoying little character should die? That's a pretty good hint. |
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Aliens Of London
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Alien beings will typically have the dominant accent of the area from which the show is cast. People who are also from that region won't notice at all, but to foreigners, it'll always seem a little odd that everyone in the universe has a British (or American, or whatever) accent.
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Are You My Mummy
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Many secrets are kept both in Real Life and fictionland. One very popular trope is orphans, especially ones which turn out not to be orphans; the most famous example of this is the Luke I Am Your Father situation wherein a thought-to-be unrelated character (often a villain, usually the Big Bad or The Dragon) turns out to be The Hero's parent. But sometimes these parents are hidden closer to home, sometimes, for some reason or other they pose as a different relative - aunt, uncle, etc. and play a part in bringing up the child.
"Older sisters" who are actually mothers may actually do so when her parents are alive and let her kid believe that they are their parents too, rather than their grandparents. This was something that was not too uncommon at one time, before premarital sex was accepted. In fiction set in the past this may still be the reason, modern settings sometimes may have this occur if the mother was really young, raped or both. It should be pointed out that sometimes the focus of the story is the "older sister" and not the child, or the focus is on both equally. What effect this has on the child varies from story to story, and how The Reveal happens. |
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Arthur Dent
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Arthur Dent is an ordinary human with no special powers, who happens to hang around with aliens, time travellers, or espers wizards, and assorted other weirdos. Unlike most of their kind for whom such oddbods are invisible, Arthur Dents have a great capacity to cope with and accept the incomprehensible wackiness that surrounds them; in many cases with a wise and rational demeanor.
Generally, they are in there so that the audience has somebody to relate to. Commonly the main character, and may be a Fish Out Of Water or/and an Unlucky Everydude. May or may not suck. They've probably been dragged into this by a Magnetic Plot Device, and usually end up so blasé that everything they see only causes a Dull Surprise at most. Heck they might even rise to the ranks of Genre Savvy if they've experienced enough (see below). Compare Badass Normal, a person whose lack of superpowers doesn't get in the way of kicking evil ass; Ordinary High School Student, who may look like this in the beginning, but eventually is revealed to be another thing; and The Everyman, who is like this trope but with less personality. Contrast Only Sane Man, who loudly insists that none of this can possibly be happening. Compare Heroic Bystander, who despite his powerlessness actually manages to help, and the Action Survivor. The ever so rare evolved Arthur Dent is one who has become Genre Savvy and is one of the most formidable forces ever. No, really. They're not "bound" by the rules of being in any of the other groups and can follow or break the rules of genre to their benefit. In many ways, this is better than just being a Bad Ass Normal (unless you are in a Crapsack World where knowing the rules doesn't mean you can change anything.) If they are a protagonist, they tend to be a Muggle Weight. See also Weirdness Magnet. |
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Arc Words
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An enigmatic word or phrase that appears, unexplained and without context, here and there throughout an Arc, and (with luck) is finally explained at or near the climax. A way of building up tension and mystery, as well as an indicator that anyone using the words knows more than they're telling. Can also be used as a memetic way of advertising the show. A typical element of a Mind Screw.
Arc Words can also be a way to hint at the Aesop or one of the themes of a show, often in the form of a question the characters must find an answer to. Alternately, they can be used for Foreshadowing. But they are not the same thing as a Running Gag, a Catch Phrase, or even just a phrase that ends up popping up a lot due to being used a lot in the plot. Note that the Arc Words often do not have attention drawn explicitly to them; eagle-eyed/sharp eared viewers are left to notice for themselves. In the "Bad Wolf" example below, the words appeared as, among other things, a helicopter's callsign, a reference in dialogue to "The Big Bad Wolf", a graffito, and even in other languages (the Welsh Blaidd Drwg, the French Mal Loup, and the German Böser Wolf). Often shows up on the Internet Movie Database "memorable quotes" page for the show, with the label "repeated line". Compare with Arc Number, Dream Melody. Not to be confused with Arc Reactor Words, which generally have to do with caves and boxes of scraps. |
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Always Save The Girl
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The hero makes it uncomfortably plain that they value the life of their love interest over those of everyone else: friends, family, Nakama, or even all other life in the universe. Can come about as the result of a Sadistic Choice, only having enough time to rescue one person out of several, or whatever other requirements the plot puts in their way and well, plainly making a decision.
As long as the hero takes a third option or at least shows a decent amount of angst over the decision, the audience sympathizes. But Moral Dissonance can result if the hero seems to make the choice a little too easily, or if the exchange of life is ridiculously high. It can go full-on Wall Banger if the couple in question were Strangled By The Red String or if they've only known each other for a short time. See also Hostage For Mac Guffin. |
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Asshole Victim
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You watch enough mystery shows or read enough mystery stories, and you notice a certain trend: Sometimes, the murder victim (as these stories usually center around a murder) is an asshole.
For example, the victim will have been someone who enjoyed crushing people for the fun of it, or who ripped off at least a dozen people, and possibly more, or who was a criminal himself, etc. The frequent impression left is that "the victim had it coming". There are three reasons for having an Asshole Victim: 1. It's not as depressing; given that, for these shows to work, Tonight Someone Dies is a given, an Asshole Victim brings up less of the "Tonight, someone will be killed for your entertainment" Fridge Logic. 2. It's one of the only ways to have a Sympathetic Murderer. Writers may make the victim an asshole in this case either just to have a sympathetic murderer, or, if the show is a Law And Order-type show, to make it harder to convict the killer as the jury sympathizes. 3. Third, and most important in a mystery show, it maximizes the possible suspects, as just about everyone involved would have a potential motive to kill this guy. Usually the line, "Sure, I hated X, but I didn't kill him" will be used repeatedly, and perhaps the extreme variation "I wanted to kill X, but someone beat me to it". Also shows up in Horror and Suspense films, for much the same reasons (Everyone Is A Suspect frequently gets replaced by a Clear My Name). However, it will generally not apply to victims of The Scourge Of God, except sometimes when said scourge is a Poetic Serial Killer. Subtrope of Karmic Death. At a minimum, they will have kicked the dog and may be well beyond the Moral Event Horizon, especially in less subtle productions. Pay Evil Unto Evil is when the perpetrator gets away with it because the Asshole Victim deserved it. Sometimes the memorial services for these victims will be... interesting to watch. For dog kickers who kick an Asshole Victim, it's Kick The Son Of A Bitch. |
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Author Existence Failure
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A Fandom's worst nightmare.
Sometimes editors go bankrupt, and sometimes authors die. Even more worrisome is when they do so before completing a series, leaving it orphaned. If readers are lucky, the author had enough warning or foresight to keep notes on his plans for the rest of the series or at least fill someone else in on the most relevant plot points, so that their work can be continued by someone else. This may result in the series Jumping The Shark if the replacement isn't very good, but at least you have closure. Worse would be if the series just isn't popular enough to justify a continuation... In that case, you end up with Continuation fanfic. |
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Batter Up
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Baseball bats are popular weapons. They're commonly considered as such in Real Life in any country where baseball isn't that big. Hell, it's sort of like that even in the ones where baseball is a big deal. Anglophiles or Aussies can substitute a cricket bat.
Overlaps with instances of Improbable Weapon User, Weapon Of Choice and Improvised Weapon. Not to be confused with the aggressive use of little nocturnal flying mammals, or the use of a pancake mixture as a weapon. |
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BBC Quarry
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"Oh look! Rocks!"
— The Doctor, "Destiny of the Daleks" The ISO Standard alien planet set, as used endlessly in Blakes Seven, Doctor Who and even The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy series. It was a disused or rented quarry, full of interestingly dull rocks and fascinatingly monotonous scenery, the perfect alien-landscape-on-a-budget — the British equivalent of Kirks Rock. According to Gareth Thomas, who played Blake in Blake's Seven, there was one occasion when they heard noises at the other side of the quarry, and discovered Doctor Who was filming there at the same time! The quarries were usually not owned by the BBC, but rented for filming from businesses like Lime Works. Many of the quarries are no longer quarries. Its legacy lives on, however, in Smallville, Battlestar Galactica and other shows, except now it is bigger, full of trees, and British Columbia. The direct American equivalent is Bronson Canyon. See also Kirks Rock. |
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Bizarre Alien Biology
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Let's face it: Building a truly elaborate alien costume costs money, more than the budget will safely allow. However, Rubber Forehead Aliens, cheap as they are, just won't cut it forever.
One safe way to get around the latter problem is to suggest that while on the outside they're exactly the same, on the inside of your alien, anything goes. If you were to dissect the average TV alien, it would look like someone had torn a squid apart and stapled it to the remnants of a rump roast. Once this is done, the alien sounds suitably... alien-y. Of course, now the producers have to make sure the creatures are gutted only off-camera. This not only applies to physical organs, but biochemistry as well. Funny colors of blood, odd allergies, complicated mating rituals, Bizarre Sexual Dimorphism, and funky dietary requirements are all common. Sometimes even their minds are totally different, making communication with them problematic. Naturally, this trope can be used with pretty much any kind of alien short of Energy Beings. Generally, though, the less human-looking the alien is outside, the less likely this trope will be resorted to. This can lead to the ironic trap of Serkis Folk and other more elaborate aliens falling on the other side of the Uncanny Valley and thus seeming, on some level, more human than the Human Aliens or Rubber Forehead Aliens if they appear in the same series. Aliens may also be shown to have immunity from things that are plenty lethal to your average person. Being able to survive heat and cold extremes unprotected, tolerate massive doses of radiation, or be unaffected by poisonous materials. Interestingly, this isn’t inverted very often. Humans, even when they’re the “aliens” of a story, almost never have flashy biological differences that make them anything but weaker than the rest of the cast. |
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Bloodless Carnage
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It doesn't matter how many bullets were fired or how large their calibre, you won't see entrance wounds, exit wounds or any blood at all anywhere on or near their targets. Shooting victims simply fall down, leaving neat and clean crime scenes. The only way you can tell a shooting victim from a poisoning victim is that the latter will usually be grimacing. It's almost as if they were made of sawdust instead of flesh.
A subvariety of this trope allows for a small amount of blood, looking more like a ketchup stain from a particularly sloppy lunch, to mark the location of a wound. This was a common trope in Action Series, Adventure Series, and Crime And Punishment series until recently; for various reasons of "taste" and censorship, blood was never shown no matter how thoroughly perforated the victim was. Of late, though, shows like CSI and Law And Order have begun to be more explicit/realistic about just how messy most violent deaths are. |
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Britain Is Only London
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Ah, Great Britain. Mother of America. Land of the... Double Decker Buses.
In Hollywood, any characters visiting Britain will stop in one place: Greater London. They'll catch a ride on those cool red buses, try to make the Guards at the palace laugh, get into a debate about whether it's fries or chips, and at some point meet the Royal Family. The Establishing Shot will show Big Ben, Tower Bridge or both to a brief Standard Snippet of "Rule Britannia", just in case you weren't clear on the location. This, despite the real-life London being just one city in England, which is itself just one of four nations that make up the United Kingdom. If Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland cross their fingers and hope really hard, they might just make an appearance in the form of Scotireland. Of course Hollywood England has only two accents; the "What-Ho, Old Bean" chinless twit one and the "Gorblimey Guvnah" Dick Van Dyke one. Unless it's a pirate movie set about two hundred years ago, in which case there's only the Bristol accent of Robert Newton; "Ahrr, Jim Lad!" But unless they come into play, the only other place in Britain is basically just a giant field outside London that is home to some sheep, a few cows, some supernatural monsters, a village, a couple of English manors, a castle or two and Stonehenge. Most British towns and cities are also handicapped by not having photogenic skylines and by lending their names to some more famous American cousins. So Joe American not only doesn't recognize Bristol, Birmingham, Newark, Darlington, Cleveland, Richmond, Boston, Plymouth, Scarborough, Lancaster or Dover in the same way that Joe English recognizes, say, Seattle from Frasier, but doesn't know they are the original owners of those names. This one is fairly understandable when you consider that the vast majority of UK film and television is made in or around London (not to mention the fact that some 15% of the UK's population lives there). The Beeb (and various film councils and whathaveyou) are making a serious effort to change this, handing Doctor Who duties to the capable BBC Wales and bringing BBC Scotland's locally-popular sitcom Still Game to the rest of the country. ITV got recently told off by Ofcom for not producing 50% of their shows outside London. Which is not to mention that the world is only Britain. For Doctor Who (in particular) not only do a disproportionate number of events happen in London, but a minute number happen outside the UK. Compare Big Applesauce, Tokyo Is The Center Of The Universe, Freestate Amsterdam |
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Brainy Specs
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The Tenth Doctor: "Oh, and out they come, the Brainy Specs! You don't even need them. You just think they make you look a bit clever."
Usually, only people with vision problems go to the trouble of getting a pair of glasses. But sometimes, we have a character who dons a pair of spectacles even though they have perfect eyesight. The Brainy Specs are just there to make the character look smart, sophisticated, and/or cute. However, whether they really do make the wearer smart, sophisticated, and cute is variable. |
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Changed My Jumper
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Oh, should've known, the way you guys are blending in with the local color. I mean, Flag Girl was bad enough, but U-Boat Captain?
— Captain Jack Harkness, Doctor Who, "The Empty Child" When people are engaged in Time Travel, they will very frequently be wearing clothing that is inappropriate or out of fashion for the time period. After the obligatory initial comments about the time traveler being dressed "very strangely", the locals will all, in effect, shrug and move on, and however bizarre or inappropriate the clothing may be by their standards, they will rarely mention it again. An Improbable Hairstyle doesn't faze the peasants, either. Occasionally caused by Limited Wardrobe. Of course, in some cases, it's not a problem because Fashions Never Change. Necessarily averted if you Can't Take Anything With You — which just makes the time traveler stand out more. |
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Continuity Nod
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A continuity nod is a reference to some aspect in a series' past or an occurrence within the universe. The nod is not necessarily a major plot point, but more of a tilt of the hat to the fans that may know these little details. It is a sort of Shout Out.
Distinct from a Call Back, as it does not actually drive any plot development. In remakes of older TV shows or movies, this may often manifest itself as a form of Stunt Casting. If characters reference something outside the universe itself but has special meaning some other way (such as an Alternate Continuity or adaptation), it's a Mythology Gag. If it's a joke about the actors of the parts it's Actor Allusion or Casting Gag. |
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Creepy Child
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They look sweet, innocent, even angelic, but there's something not quite right about them. They're too calm, too knowing. They aren't really children any longer, not at heart.
Children should be innocent, in need of adult protection. By inverting this, the trope arouses deep-rooted fears. The Creepy Child might not be physically dangerous, but their profound unnaturalness is just as chilling. Creepy children are frequently female, and often Emotionless Girls. They can be, among other things, a Robot Girl, an Oracular Urchin, a changeling, a Waif Prophet, a Strange Girl or a villain. The Enfante Terrible may fall into this category. As prophets they emanate otherworldliness; as villains they remain cute even while the bodies pile up around them. They usually have an Ironic Nursery Tune theme. Marge: (looking out the window to the front lawn) There's just something about flying a kite at night that's so unwholesome. Bart: (turns head to the window. In monotone:) Hello, mother dear. —The Simpsons "Five, six, seven, eight" "It's a Doctor at the gate." —The little girl in Remembrance of the Daleks |
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Undead Child
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Perhaps one of the squickiest things to come out of horror movies is the descending age bracket for The Undead. It used to be only adults could be/were made into undead, and while children were presumably killed off screen during the Zombie Apocalypse, they weren't turned into the living dead. Well, now it seems these infants have found immortality of a decidedly unwholesome sort.
Whether it's zombie babies, vampire children, or the unsettling ghost child, audiences will feel revulsion on several levels. Let's count! On the one hand, these are children, the idea that an undead horror (especially a thinking one) would not just kill but transform an innocent into another one of itself is so wrong it's hard to quantify. That a child would stay on in this world as a ghost is no less cruel, since it implies the child is somehow being held against their will or has become a creature out for revenge. On the other, the body is still that of a child, and most people will instinctively try to help mistakenly thinking it's Not A Zombie. Third, even if the child still has their own mind and morality (slim chance, but present) you've now essentially got a bloodthirsty immortal Pinocchio. And last but not least, when one is attacking you you have to work past all of the above and a natural instinct not to harm the former child. This can be made much easier if the little monster isn't just creepy, but deformed and scary. Lastly, if the form of undead is sentient, this may result in significant angst on the part of the child who can never grow up, never physically mature. Let's hope no parents brought their kids to see this movie. |
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Conservation Of Ninjitsu
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In any martial arts fight, there is only a finite amount of ninjutsu available to each side in a given encounter. As a result, one Ninja is a deadly threat, but an army of them are cannon fodder.
This is also known as The Law of Inverse Ninja Strength: Threat = 1/N, where N = number of Ninjas or other "Elite Adversaries". The reason for this is pretty simple: Twenty-plus Ninjas are ultimately Mooks, and narratively speaking will be treated as such. A single Ninja, more often than not, is a main character or The Dragon, and as such is much more important to the story. (Put another way, there's no Dramatic Tension in seeing a lot of guys beat up one hero or a much smaller number of them, so if there are many antagonists, they have to be weak, but a "fair" fight against equal numbers of opponents can seriously test the characters. It's much the same reason why boxing matches are one-on-one; saying you punched out Mike Tyson wouldn't be very impressive if you were one of eight other boxers beating on him.) This can apply to Elite Mooks other than ninjas; vampires, for example, are particularly susceptible to Conservation Of Ninjutsu, as are werewolves, alien monsters, Special Forces commandos, and Super Powered Robot Meter Maids. Zombies seem to be exempt from this. This is because they are not considered elite fighters: without the element of surprise, they're mainly dangerous because they travel in packs, and with each victim they overtake, their ranks swell. The effects of this trope are more severe on less individualized groups of ninjas, such that 3 of essentially the same guy has an adjusted ninjutsu of about 4.1. Extra points if, when presented with their multiple adversaries, one character makes note that, "We barely were able to handle one, how on earth are we going to handle this many?", right before proceeding to successfully do just that. "Anyway, fighting off a dozen ninjas is easy. It's when you run into one ninja that you know you're in trouble." - Diana Peacock, Star Harbor Nights ''"You wanna fight? There's only one ninja left, so that means I'm death incarnate." —Order Of The Stick, 453 |
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Critical Research Failure
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The most glaring incarnation of Did Not Do The Research. A particular instance where — frequently during a discovery of great scientific or historical significance — the resident Mr Exposition, whose Techno Babble has been extremely convincing (and perhaps even accurate) thus far, suddenly makes some comment that is so totally off-the-scale of inaccuracy that anyone with a cursory knowledge of the subject realizes the writers made the whole thing up.
See also Gretzky Has The Ball and Cowboy Bebop At His Computer. Dan Browned is a more subtle version of this trope, where the research looks plausible but is in fact inaccurate. If you have to explain why something is an error, then it is not a Critical Research Failure. To put it bluntly: this trope is Did Not Do The Research evident to anyone with even elementary knowledge, or common sense. Many of these will be Disaster Movies and use state of the art computer effects to keep your interest. |
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Development Gag
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In the development of a show, movie, game, TV series, etc, everything, from characters, settings, stages (more etc.), changes rapidly. Characters become other characters, different plots fuse and split or are destroyed. Eventually, you get the finished product, but the developers aren't going to forget the past. Usually, developers (who are known for their senses of humor, except when they aren't...) will put in a little thing or two that alludes back to something that happened in development, so they can all have a good laugh about it.
An inside joke to the greatest measure, unless the viewer/player has been given a Beta that includes what the joke is about, it's probably never going to know what the joke is about, or even if it's supposed to be funny. See Call Back for references to things that actually appear in the plot, and Mythology Gag for references to things that happen in alternate adaptations. |
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Ear Worm
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This is the song that never ends. Yes, it goes on and on, my friends... in your head.
Ear Worms (from the German phrase Ohrwurm) are those songs that weasel their way into your head like uninvited guests and then proceed to stink up the inside of your cranium by playing themselves there over. And over. And over. And over. They're those songs that just get stuck in your head, and no amount of screaming, pounding, protesting, and banging your head into your desk will get them out. Someone infected with an Ear Worm may find themselves prone to bursting out into the song in inappropriate places, tugging at their ears in fury, and can end up distracted in the middle of conversation (or other important activities) by the continuous snatches of song wavering between their ears. And it's only a matter of time before, like Darryl Revok, they drill a hole in their forehead to let the voices out. |
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Not A Zombie
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This is Real Life. Everyone knows zombies are make-believe creatures, they're only "real" in the movies. If you see a "zombie", odds are it's one of your friends with poor taste who insist on scaring you, or someone who has been in an accident of some kind. So when a zombie outbreak starts, it's unsurprising that most people will chafe when confronted with something that should not be. Still, most have the presence of mind to back away from a smelly, shambling man who is missing limbs and moaning for brainssss!
That is rarely the case. There will always be one person who misidentifies the living-impaired with a regular, if badly hurt, human. There's two variants of this, with differing levels of idiocy involved. 1. Someone is walking through the deserted area, when they see a moaning, pale-looking body lying face down on the floor. Said body may already be bleeding or even missing large, fairly visible chunks of flesh, and may already be ghost white or putrefying green, but the character in question will never notice (or ignore it). Instead, they will run right up to the body, put aside whatever weapon they're carrying, and promptly try to hoist up the apparently distressed individual (often accompanied by dialogue like, "Are you alright?" or "Don't worry, I'll get you out of here."). Hilarity Ensues when the putrefying face of the obviously-a-zombie is revealed, and promptly tries to eat the character's head. This is generally the first zombie that the character encounters, so they tend to survive. 2. Someone (usually a law enforcement official), points a gun at a zombie and orders them to freeze, or threatens them with pepper spray or arrest or something if they come towards them. They usually fail to notice the fairly obvious fact that the shambling mess of entrails in front of them doesn't have anything like a rational mind left to respond to commands, and assume they're not threatened by the gun (technically true). In general, this is a situation somewhat peculiar to zombie movies involving both Genre Blindness and a lack of common sense, when a character simply doesn't notice extremely obvious signs of something being deeply amiss with the people they are dealing with, up to and including, shambling, moaning, cannibalism and rotten flesh. * Depending on the officer/character's learning curve, he might fire a warning shot, notice no effect, shoot the zombie, notice no effect, then get suitably freaked out and do one of three things: hightail it out of there, use "lethal" force, or get eaten by refusing to believe it's a zombie. In real life, officers are rather constrained in this scenario by being trained to use “escalating force” when facing an “unarmed civilian.” o Note that there is, however, no such thing as a “warning shot” used by law enforcement officers. Police are only supposed to say “stop, or I'll shoot” when they mean it. Generally, any character who thinks a zombie is Not a Zombie is also prone to having Zombie Infectee behaviour or becoming one. If he doesn't accept that the creatures outside are zombies, he can't very well become one after being bitten, now, can he? |
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Zombie Apocalypse
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Within the past couple days or hours, something very strange has happened. Maybe The Virus the government was working on got unleashed. Maybe a voodoo priest's spell went awry. Maybe an alien space probe broadcast a weird signal at the Earth; or fell to Earth bringing space radiation with it. Maybe there's just no more room in Hell.
Whatever the cause, the result is the same; the recently dead have risen, en masse, to feed on the living. With each victim they claim, their numbers swell, and no force on Earth can contain them. As society collapses, it's up to the Big Damn Heroes to fight their way to safety or keep shooting until things blow over. The Zombie Apocalypse has arrived. Common to virtually all Zombie Apocalypse tales is that, regardless of the reason zombies attack living/non-infected people, they never attack other zombies. This makes some sense in stories where the zombies are manipulated by some force intent on attacking humanity, or where they need fresh human meat to survive, but it occurs even in films like 28 Days Later where The Virus is just supposed to make the infected vastly more angry and homicidal than before. Why they never turn on their own is rarely, if ever, addressed, although sometimes they can be seen fighting for food, but this never goes beyond pushing each other out of the way. This can be subverted if ordinary humans can avoid being attacked by pretending to be zombies. The word "zombie" originated in the Voudon beliefs of the Caribbean, referring to a body "revived" and enslaved by a sorcerer. (Some of the oldest aspects of zombie appearance are actually symptoms of tetrodotoxin poisoning, a neuron toxin used in certain voudon rituals.) In this form, it has been known in America since the late 19th century. However, it wasn't until the 1960s that George Romero's Night of the Living Dead attached the word to the modern imagery described above. As Night was accidentally entered into the public domain due to an error in the end credits, it quickly became the object of imitation and emulation by many other directors. Most zombie invasion stories, even those not explicitly based on Romero's films, follow the same conventions, though there are major points of contention. While Romero is responsible for most of the "general" zombie conventions, the more specific and visible zombie tropes are more often inspired by the later works of John Russo, Night's co-writer. Most zombie movies mix-and-match conventions from the Romero and Russo canons. |
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Stepford Smiler
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Everyone loves Purity Sue. They can't help it! She's practically perfect in every way. The Stepford Smiler is much like Purity Sue: she's bright, chipper, and an all-around pleasant person to be with.
It's all a lie, of course. Usually female (though there are more and more males playing the role now), the Stepford Smiler is obsessed with projecting an image of wholesome happiness in order to be accepted by her peers. Tragically enough, they'd probably accept her for who she is regardless of her self-imposed Masquerade. Their flawlessly crafted façade hides a real person that's usually breaking like so much fine china in order to keep up the deception. Heroines or show co-stars that are Stepford Smilers can either be played straight (they really are that shallow) or to gain viewer sympathy as they struggle to live up to their own impossible ideals. Villainesses like the Evil Matriarch who are Stepford Smilers are usually played one of two ways: it can either humanize them, much like the heroine, or it can accentuate their evil by contrasting it with their soullessness. Feminine pronouns are used throughout this trope because the Stepford Smiler is a traditionally female role, though there are many male examples too. Sometimes, they're even a couple. These are the three main types of Stepford Smiler: Type A: The character seems to be happy, cheerful, is always smiling and seems to live a perfect life, but inside she feels very sad and depressed. Type B: The character seems to be kind and cheerful, but her true self is futile and hollow. Type C: The smile hides a very unstable and crazy person. The mask itself can also hide a terrible secret... there is nothing behind it. The void is either a result of using up so much energy pretending to be normal that nothing is left over, or because there was nothing there to begin with. Scared yet? It gets worse. If a Stepford Smiler smiles long enough without cracking, she can become the mask. Some Stepford Smilers buy into the dead Barbie smiles to such a degree that they care for nothing other than maintaining appearances, having money, making sure their hair is just right, and improving their social standing, all of which are pursued with equally Darwinian means. Essentially, they become the materialist opposite of the Nietzsche Wannabe. Not every Housewife is a Stepford Smiler, obviously. They often encounter one as a nemesis instead, in a post-High School example of The Libby. Still, some readers describe any Housewife raising her own children as a Stepford Smiler on little if any evidence, bringing in the Unfortunate Implications about "staying at home = women being slaves of those evil men." The Stepford Smiler gets its name from the book and later movies The Stepford Wives, about a village whose men conspire to create the Barbie perfect wife, all with similar eerie smiles. |
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Stepford Smiler type a
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The character seems to be happy, cheerful, is always smiling and seems to live a perfect life, but inside she feels very sad and depressed.
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Stepford Smiler type b
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The character seems to be kind and cheerful, but her true self is futile and hollow.
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Stepford Smiler type c
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The smile hides a very unstable and crazy person.
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Stepford Smiler type d
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The mask itself can also hide a terrible secret... there is nothing behind it. The void is either a result of using up so much energy pretending to be normal that nothing is left over, or because there was nothing there to begin with.
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Development Gag
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In the development of a show, movie, game, TV series, etc, everything, from characters, settings, stages (more etc.), changes rapidly. Characters become other characters, different plots fuse and split or are destroyed. Eventually, you get the finished product, but the developers aren't going to forget the past. Usually, developers (who are known for their senses of humor, except when they aren't...) will put in a little thing or two that alludes back to something that happened in development, so they can all have a good laugh about it.
An inside joke to the greatest measure, unless the viewer/player has been given a Beta that includes what the joke is about, it's probably never going to know what the joke is about, or even if it's supposed to be funny. See Call Back for references to things that actually appear in the plot, and Mythology Gag for references to things that happen in alternate adaptations. |
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Evil Counterpart
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A character who chose to do evil, having had abilities and obstacles similar to the protagonist's. Sometimes, but not always, a Big Bad.
Frequently, the Evil Counterpart is the character equivalent of For Want Of A Nail: he represents what our hero could have become as a result of a very small change in his backstory. They also save creators the trouble of thinking up new abilities to give their villains, especially for comic book heroes and video games (where new abilities have to be implemented) Often leads to a Not So Different moment. Often a Dark Magical Girl; contrast with the Worthy Opponent. An Evil Counterpart is a type of Evil Twin, one that doesn't require the two to look alike. Applied to an entire team, they are The Psycho Rangers. Because The Hero and the Evil Counterpart are such great foils for each other, the counterpart has an excellent chance of being the hero's Arch Enemy, although this is not always the case. If created, is usually an Evil Knockoff. |
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Distaff Counterpart
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One common method used in creating a Spinoff is taking the main character of the show, creating an equivalent that's mostly the same except for being the opposite sex, and then packing the new character off to her own series. This allows the station or network to fill up extra space on the schedule with a known quantity, while (in theory) stretching its demographic to include more female viewers. This method is very popular among action-adventure series, which mostly appeal to young males.
They're also the third kind of Spinoff, with a long-lost sister showing up or a new girlfriend brought in, only to repeat whatever circumstances gave the main character his powers/duties/what-have-you. A male character who goes through the Gender Bender will find himself turned into his own Distaff Counterpart. The implications for the character, writers, and audience are left as an exercise for the reader. NOTE: "Distaff" means "female". (Sure it does.) Therefore, the inverse of this (a male counterpart to an existing female character or Always Female trope) is technically and traditionally a Spear Counterpart. Compare Gender Flip, which reverses roles based on gender, rather than cloning them. Who's going to be interested in a female character who is pretty shamelessly a knock-off of her already popular male counterpart? -The Nostalgia Chick |
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Doesn't Like Guns
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There are lots of reasons that some people hate guns, but in the real world, these are most often linked to hating the thing that people with guns do, which is turning living people into non-living people. But in fiction, the Gun Hater's reasons are often different. He just specifically dislikes guns. He has no problem whatsoever with other, less efficient means of turning living people into non-living people.
Sometimes there's a specific reason that their distaste is limited to the gun, such as a particular incident from his past or a sense that guns are "unsportsmanlike". But most of the time, there's just a Writer On Board who wants to show that the character is moral enough to hate guns without actually dealing with the fact that this is the kind of show where a lot of hurt has to be unloaded on people. Most superpowered beings don't use guns, because frankly they don't need them. Why use a gun when you have energy blasts? This can also be an excuse for the hero to MacGyver up some Bamboo Technology rather than just shooting the bad guy. Common in the Blood Knight, who will often think guns make things over too quickly. See Technical Pacifist as well, where, even if a Technical Pacifist still beats the crap out of people on a heartbeat, he will generally not use a gun. Sometimes brought on by Executive Meddling or by the Media Watchdogs stooping over the cartoons, and may forego replacing guns by removing them altogether. Con Men Hate Guns is a specific subtrope. "A gun is a coward's weapon. It lets us kill too easily, saving us the mess and the work." — The Dark Knight Returns "They have guns and I don't. They may shoot me dead, but the moral high ground is mine." — The Doctor, Doctor Who |
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Executive Meddling
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What network executives do to justify their jobs: Interfere in the creative process that produces television shows.
Creating a successful work of fiction, television shows in particular, is — whether the execs want to admit it or not — a crapshoot. They don't really understand what makes a hit. Nobody does! You can never predict what the audience will like until they actually see it. As a result, executives tend to be both conservative and imitative, trying to make every new show like one or more previous shows that were successful (see X Meets Y). One way in which these traits manifest themselves is for the executive to force changes on a show which he feels is too different or edgy, in order to make it "less risky" or "more appealing to the audience" — in other words, garner higher ratings. "More appealing" often translates into "more action-oriented" or "sexier" or, in the immortal words of Woody Harrelson as Steve Martin's producer in L. A. Story, "more wacky, less egghead." Usually this guts the chosen show of whatever was unique and interesting about it just as it was hitting its stride and gathering an audience who appreciated its differences and direction. Sometimes it can even sink a show. In the absolute worst cases, Executive Meddling can lead to severe Adaptation Decay, involuntary Character Derailment or even Writer On Board. It can even result in Too Good To Last (or Screwed By The Network) if an executive somewhere in the chain of command takes a particular dislike to a series. Writers and directors may strike back in the form of Writer Revolt. Sometimes this is the result of executives' apparent belief that television audiences consist entirely of superstitious low-grade morons who will flee from anything the least bit unusual or depressing. When the results are not what they expect, it results in rounds of finger-pointing and denial. Network executives also meddle in shows for ego gratification and for the delight in exercising power. If a show they "improved" becomes (or stays) a hit, they will then take all credit for the program's success. If the show itself escaped executive meddling okay, but its time slot is changed around and has zero promotion, then it's Screwed By The Network. Executives aren't always wrong. (But, well, since when does someone doing their job right get any attention?) The prevalence of this trope leads people to think any retools or "Jump The Shark" ordeals are a result of outside influences. When it isn't, it may be a result of problems from within like Creator Breakdown, Protection From Editors, Writer On Board or Author Filibuster—things that a responsibly meddlesome executive can prevent from ever coming to pass. (Quite often whoever you think is responsible is merely Misblamed.) See also Viewers Are Morons, Creative Differences, Executive Veto, Obvious Beta, Media Watchdog, and Moral Guardians. Compare What Could Have Been and Development Hell / Vaporware. Contrast with Getting Crap Past The Radar. Examples |
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Extra Strength Masquerade
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This is when a story has a Masquerade in place that, based on the events of the plot, should have been broken, but somehow isn't. Maybe a dragon terrorized the populace of Manhattan. Maybe aliens landed in London and started probing the Queen.Or maybe the Sphinx came to life and led a mummy army against Cairo. Whatever the specifics may be, it seems like the world of the story should have become unmasqued, yet the general public seems as ignorant as ever.
Normally this sort of thing gets a Hand Wave about the Ancient Conspiracy or some other entity erasing everyone's memories of the event, passing the whole thing off as a hoax, or at least claiming people's Weirdness Censors take care of the Masquerade for them. Sometimes, though, we don't even get that. The Masquerade just seems to repair itself of its own accord. This has the additional benefit of lifting responsibility off the shoulders of the heroes; who now don't have to actively suppress anyone who knows the secret via methods above or passively promote ignorance by not warning Muggles about the supernatural beasties who want to control or kill them. (This is really starting to bug people about the normal Masquerade trope.) |
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Fake American
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Fake Americans are usually Canadians, British or Irish (although Aussies, New Zealanders, and even South Africans have been known to fake American). This is usually done for biographical reasons, to allow for a familial relationship with another character with an American accent, or to portray a character as stereotypically American.
According to a documentary, in 2008 one-third of all piloted American TV series had British people in a starring or main supporting role, so this is expanding almost beyond the boundaries of trope. A version of Fake Nationality, along with Fake Brit. If the character is called upon to "fake" the accent that's really theirs, it's a case of Lampshade Hanging, of the sub-type Hows Your British Accent. |
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Fan Of The Past
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Shows set in the future will often have many things we have never imagined, but writers can't resist throwing in contemporary references, or at least references the viewers will understand. How do they accomplish this? Have one of the characters be a self-proclaimed expert of the past, e.g. 20th-century Earth. (Or, for newer shows, 21st-century Earth.)
A common variation (usually played for comedy) is to have the so-called "expert" be completely wrong about some major aspect of his subject-matter. This works particularly well when the subject is contemporary society, something that everybody living today knows about. Contrast with Disco Dan, except these people know they are not actually in the past. It's grass. I read about it in ancient history. —George Jetson |
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Disco Dan
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We can understand having trouble coping with change. The realities of The Vietnam War, for instance, were a very hard change for the veterans of World War II to accept. In fact, there might even be the urge to revert some of those changes, or at least live as though those changes never happened.
Yet to do that with pop culture? It's one thing if you have trouble getting over the Beatles breaking up. This trope would be about people who act as though they are still around, plaster posters all over their homes, compare every other rock song in existence unfavorably to Beatles songs, and may listen to other music as long as it's nothing past 1980 (or by ex-Beatles). These people are basically trying to bend reality back by force of will. And that's with a band who are still relatively popular and influential; those who are besotted by something that is Deader Than Disco can be even worse. Usually, this is played for laughs. We get a funny character, who is a walking anachronism by simple virtue of denial. Bonus points if this character forces other people to act as though this reality is true. Curiously enough, more than a few of these characters have an affection for disco music, hence the title. Compare Born In The Wrong Century, Fish Out Of Temporal Water. Contrast Fan Of The Past. Not to be confused with Disco Dan, an 80s computer game involving fixing nuclear reactors (guarded by large atoms, robots and mutant Pac-Men) by jumping around inside them |
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Fan Service Pack
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When a character, usually a female character, gets made more attractive during the run of a show. Sometimes justified as the actions of puberty, when a younger character starts filling out as they grow up.
Named after what Microsoft calls its Windows upgrades, and, of course, Fan Service. Compare Beautiful All Along. |
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Feudal Future
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Feudalism IN SPACE!!!
Kings and queens, princes and princesses, nobles, courts. . . . A form of Days Of Future Past which can incorporate elements from the High Middle Ages right up to the Victorian Age. The chief characteristic is that social status is legally enacted and hereditary. Occasionally we are told that the king/emperor is elected, but it makes no difference in their authority. Certainly we never see them running for re-election. (A clever writer could make it like the emperor of the Holy Roman Empire, also elected, but such issues as who are the electors and who is eligible to run never come up.) Among the commonest societies in Space Opera, Planetary Romance, and other forms of Science Fiction. Falls into two categories: 1. A planet has such a social structure. Often justified by having technological regression (but why does it never regress further?) but may have futuristic technology. 2. A multi-planet, even interstellar society. Always has futuristic technology, of course. Prone to Medieval Stasis, even the technology is far above medieval level. May also involve anachronistic items from real medieval Technology Levels. Evil nobles may restrict commoners' use of high technology; medical technology is particularly common, but commoners often live lives of drudgery and toil. |
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Future Me Scares Me
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So you're a travelin' in time, as you do, when suddenly! Ooh, it's future you! Only... you're different. And not in a good way. If you were cool, maybe The Hero (or the Jerk Jock/Libby), then you discover you've become really lame. Conversely, if you're the Plucky Comic Relief or someone similar, older you is a badass... a scary badass. Or worse (arguably), your future self could be evil. Milder versions simply result in a persona change which bugs you.
Alternatively, you're the same as ever, and boy, can meeting yourself make you see why others are annoyed by you. Maybe it's not you that bugs you so much as your change in social standing. This may lead to you arguing with yourself. Moral of the story? If you're a time traveller, never meet up with yourself. (And were you always that fat?) |
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Genius Cripple
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In the world of fiction, physical impairment = scientific credibility. Anyone in a wheelchair will possess super intelligence to compensate for his disability. This allows the character to remain a vital part of the cast without being expected to do anything physical.
If you're stupid and in a wheelchair, man are you outta luck! A form of Disability Superpower. Many of these are inspired at least partially by Stephen Hawking, although the trope predates him. See also Evil Cripple for when a Genius Cripple turns out to be evil. The "plus side" of being a Squishy Wizard when Linear Warriors Quadratic Wizards applies. An athlete or a warrior who is crippled is pretty much screwed for life, but a genius or a wizard can keep on truckin'. The Blind Seer is another version of the archetype. |
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Ghost City
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A Ghost City is the larger version of a Ghost Town, and is used in visual media as shorthand for 'something terrible has happened'. A city typically contains millions of people, and the viewer knows that only the hugest of disasters could completely clear it of its inhabitants.
Usually there is one person, or possibly a few people, left to contrast the vast emptiness. Often the first indication that this is, in fact, After The End. May be the first sign of a Ghost Planet. |
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Ghost Planet
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What you get when a Ghost Town is global in scale. Another planet or Another Dimension that, by the time we get to see it, has been left in ruins for a long, long time. There are signs here and there that this world once boasted a civilisation, maybe even a great civilisation, but all that's left now are a few decaying remnants. The world need not be entirely barren of life, but, generally speaking, if there are enough of the original denizens left to form a town or city, it's not a Ghost Planet.
Please keep in mind, a Ghost Planet should not be a future version of our own Earth (or at least not explicitely so). Only alien worlds which have gone through their own Armageddon (somewhere between Class 2 and Class 5 on the Apocalypse How scale) need apply. |
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God Mode Sue
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People like to watch fiction to vicariously live their lives through the characters. Most people in real life have no illusions about ever being able to do the sort of things within the movies. Whether it be the story of an athlete on his way to the top, life as the president, or Stuff Blowing Up, these are stories that the average Joe won't find himself partaking in. Then there are things such as superpowers, magic, and high technology. However, even a story with fantastic (or just merely highly improbable) elements has to make it believable in order to allow Willing Suspension Of Disbelief. God Mode Sue takes that Willing Suspension Of Disbelief and tosses it out the window.
He or she (it's pretty evenly split... which says a ton, considering how most widely accepted Mary Sue characters are female) doesn't so much work within the plot as the plot works for them. God Mode Sue exists purely to show up how pathetically weak the rest of the world is, and how badly they need his or her help. If there's anybody else that is even capable of standing up for themselves, they may lose their abilities for some reason when the character comes into the equation, or become incompetent boobs, or both. They'll probably get captured or find something that they just can't handle. Then the God Mode Sue shows up, saves the day on his or her own at least twice as easily as they usually do when working as a team, and doesn't get his or her ass kicked at all. Then he or she stands around and wallows in their praise a bit. God Mode Sue is so powerful because he or she often gets New Powers As The Plot Demands, and without any explanation or any of the normal limitations that a good writer will insert. In most balanced fiction, we generally know the hero's going to win, Downer Ending aside (Status Quo Is God, after all), but their abilities may fail them (or something like that) and so we watch to find out HOW they do it. God Mode Sue's powers never fail, nor is there any point where you think, "I KNOW the hero's gotta win, but how are they going to get out of this mess?" The plot and the fight is so blatantly biased towards the God Mod Sue that it becomes rather boring (and sometimes insulting). It's worthy to note that there is a correlation between Bad Ass and this trope. A proper Bad Ass will frequently break the Willing Suspension Of Disbelief, but they generally sell it through either Refuge In Audacity or just generally being convincing as something that could naturally come up with the character. However, they are still treated as normal characters by the plot and have to face potential repercussions to their actions like anybody else. God Mode Sue... doesn't. God Mode Sue can overlap with pretty much anything, but generally doesn't overlap with Purity Sue (whose overwhelming specialness is its own superpower) or Sympathetic Sue. It can overlap with a Possession Sue if a writer wants to show what (they feel) a canon character can really do. If it overlaps with Villain Sue, then our heroes had better hope that he or she has a Heel Face Turn coming up, or else face Peril Rollover. The trope name comes from term "God Mode" (or, more specifically, it's use in the context of "godmodding"), which often gets used to denote when a player refuses to allow any random chance to negatively impact their character. In this case, the author is pretty much doing just that. The Ace is frequently as powerful as a God Mode Sue, but is played for comedy due to Refuge In Audacity. Compare and contrast with the Showy Invincible Hero. The Boring Invincible Hero is the first stage of this trope - may the BIH never reach this level. The final stage of this trope, after the Rock Bottom has fallen out from under the story, is an all-devouring Black Hole Sue. Of course, Tropes Are Not Bad, and some creators may Plot A Perfectly Good Waste for the Catharsis Factor. When listing examples, please only put in examples of characters that constantly break the Willing Suspension Of Disbelief due to plot bias in their abilities. One or two over the top moments in a very long period of time does not a God Mode Sue make. Also, only list examples of objectively high levels of skill. If a character is able to influence people through their subjective actions (i.e. getting them to change their beliefs through small talk, getting their opinion articles published with ease, etc.), that's Purity Sue. "If the enemy becomes a devil, then Ryukendo must become a god!" — Kenji/Ryukendo upon receiving his first major Super Mode, God Ryukendo. ~ ] god ] impulse 9 ] impulse 255 "Alright, who wants some of this?!" |
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Ham And Cheese
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Say you're an actor, and a damn good one at that. You're hot stuff in Hollywood, with directors throwing money at your feet to be in their film. So you pick the one that gets you the most cash, or has the most promising blurb, or is based on a book you've read. It'll all be fine right?
Wrong. You arrive on set to cheap Special Effects, bad actors and a worse script. So what do you do? You could storm off and refuse to associate with the film ever again... or you could unleash The Hog, start Chewing The Scenery and make the director keep feeding you juicy bits. If it's going to be a (well remunerated) bad movie, you might as well enjoy it, eh? Compare One Scene Wonder; both roles/actors in these films play over the top enjoyable performances and can make them one of the best parts of a film... which can sadly become the only good parts if the film is bad. Can overlap with WTH Casting Agency. Contrast Took The Bad Film Seriously. |
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Hands Off My Fluffy
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Our heroes face a bloodthirsty-looking monster that is six feet tall with a thousand pointy teeth! Oh, and it is attacking that cute girl. Attack!
Wait, why is the girl throwing rocks at our heroes? It turns out that the girl kept the monster as a pet, and they were playing. Bonus point if the monster is, in fact, harmless. This is what happens when What Measure Is A Non Cute and What The Hell Hero intersect. The title comes from Fluffy The Terrible, the creature whom our protagonists are foolishly trying to get rid of. |
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Hey I Know You
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So, it's the grand finale. The Big Bad's standing off against the heroes, the Distressed Damsel is more distressed than normal, and the whole world is coming to an end.
So what happens next? Isn't it obvious? The hero turns to look at one of his new allies gathered to stop the Evil Plan once and for all... and the first thing he says is, "Hey, I know you." In short, a former character from the series returns, sometimes with little to no reason, for the finale. When done well, this seems a logical thing. When not, it makes you wonder how the monk who left your party to live in the Himalayas got up on the enemy's space station. Note that the character won't always have a major role or even be on the good guys' side. In extreme cases, this character acts just as a cameo during the "people all around the world panicking" montage. Not to be confused with Last Episode New Character, where the episode is used to introduce a future main character, not a former one. If lots of old characters show up to fight the Big Bad, it's Gondor Calls For Aid. |
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Hey, It's That Guy!
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When you see someone you've seen elsewhere in a different role appear on another program, this thought may go through your head:
"Hey! It's That Guy! He played [someone else] in [another show]." Alternately, you might think, "Well, I guess there are Only So Many Equity Members." Same thing. If it's from the same show you're watching, you have You Look Familiar. This trope becomes more intense with certain narrow categories of actors. For instance, if a middle-aged character actor gets a good rep—there is nothing like personal connections in a crowded, cut-throat business like the Hollywood acting pool—he can appear in numerous movies and TV shows each year. Ronny Cox is a good example among actors always available as white male authority figures, Lou Gossett as black male establishment types of any social class, Mako in any middle-aged male role requiring an Asian (er... while he lived, anyway), and Tim Curry as any evil bloke who dies in the end. Another excellent category for this trope is dwarfs: there are only so many good, trained adult actors just over three feet tall and even fewer with the connections to constantly get speaking parts. Most long time movie and television will recognize a half-dozen familiar faces on small bodies: Billy Barty, who played these roles from the 1930s to the 1990s (180 entries just in the IMDB, beginning at age five!), Billy Curtis (High Plains Drifter), Warwick Davis (Willow, the Leprechaun and Harry Potter films, and Prince Caspian), and the great Michael Dunn (Ship of Fools and The Wild, Wild, West.) If you're watching Law And Order or other Clueless Mystery, it might result in Narrowed It Down To The Guy I Recognize. Voice actors in animated shows, Western and Eastern, as well as live action voice dubs for foreign-language shows, have the similar syndrome Hey Its That Voice. American stunt performers, particularly ones that belong to minority groups, tend to keep popping up in a variety of different TV shows and movies. James Lew, Al Leong and Jeff Imada are just three examples that spring quickly to mind. They often play Evil Minions but may sometimes be upgraded to The Dragon or even the Big Bad. If you can't quite remember which show the actor was in, it can result in much time spent on IMDB, trying to narrow down where else the viewer has seen that actor. If you get stuck, try You Know That Guy — someone might help you. Compare You Look Familiar, You Might Remember Me From, Hey Its That Voice. Inverse of Retroactive Recognition. Parent trope of WTH Casting Agency. When you just can't shake off the image of the older roles, it's Role Association. |
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Hey, It's That Voice!
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So, you're sitting down, watching an animated superhero beat the snot out of a villain. The villain reels back and snarls "Is that all you've got?" at the hero. Hey... wait a second! You know that voice! It's [that character] from [that show] you love so much! And the hero, he's sounding a little familiar too...
This is the voice-actor version of Hey, It's That Guy!. While most of this trope is composed of animated examples, a few live-action versions exist. This can be a little harder to spot than the guy on the live action show. You lose all the visual cues, and people don't always use the same "voice" when voice acting. It can also depend on the individual actor, their range, the number of things you've heard them in, and last but not least how much attention you're paying to recognizing them. If you watch enough animation, you will find your ear becoming better attuned to picking people out, even when they change their voice. Often results in fun in the form of a voice-actor version of "Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon", connecting disparate characters via a chain of common voice actors. In the case of anime, this get even more complicated when playing with both Japanese and American actors. Possible result of Pigeon Holed Voice Actor. If it happens within the show itself, it might result in a character Talking To Himself. Taken to an extreme with Actor Allusion. Compare You Look Familiar, You Might Remember Me From. Inverse of The Other Darrin. In an effort to avoid redundancies and give this trope some semblance of order, all voice actors have been alphabetized by their last names. If you know a voice that is not on here please add it in the appropriate place. Check IMDB or The Other Wiki if you don't know the name of the voice. If you want to mention a program that has multiple recognizable voices, mention it on that program or game's page. Also, some of the really big common examples of this have their own pages, to wit Megumi Hayashibara, Takehito Koyasu, Kotono Mitsuishi, Kikuko Inoue, Tomokazu Seki, Megumi Ogata, and so on. And please remember that this is for instances where a voice actor's voice is recognizable, not their resumes. Instances of foreign dubs go to the bottom of the page. |
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Hey You Haymaker
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So we all like punching people in the face, right? But the problem with that is sometimes access to your opponent's face is blocked by the back of their head. The solution: tap your target on the shoulder or otherwise get his attention, causing him to turn around, exposing his precious, punchable face. Ahh, sweet satisfaction!
It may or may not be a knockout blow as it will just as often lead to a Fight Scene as it will to an instant knock out. It is also evenly split between being taken seriously and played straight for laughs. If the target doesn't go down, it usually leads to Punch Punch Punch Uh Oh. See also Attack Hello or Dynamic Entry. |
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Historical In Joke
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Happens when a show references a historical event, and provides additional information about the event, relating it to the show. This either changes the meaning of the event, or shows what really caused it, as opposed to what everyone thinks really happened.
Don Bellisario, the producer/creator of Quantum Leap, called these "kisses with history". Given the painstaking lack of research that most writers perform before writing, it should come as no surprise that many Historical In Jokes are painfully inaccurate anachronisms. Naturally will involve a Historical Domain Character or two. Compare It Will Never Catch On. A character who does a lot of these becomes The Gump. If the protagonists blunder into a famous event instead of interfering deliberately, this can also be evidence that In The Past Everyone Will Be Famous. |
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Humans Are Bastards
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"If there's one thing you can say about mankind
It's that there's nothing kind about man" -Tom Waits, "Misery is the River of the World" You Suck taken to the extreme. When compared to other civilizations, or another species, Humans are a bunch of bastards. They are all greedy, heartless, violent, cruel, selfish, egotistical, and in extreme cases, evil, as opposed to the other species, which will be better if not far superior: they are all peaceful, live in harmony with nature, are naturally good, floss after every meal, etc. Ironically the species in question almost always looks and acts just like humans anyway. In reality, the human race can (and often does) run the entire Character Alignment spectrum. Not so in Fiction Land. In there, the whole human race seems to consist of nothing but Corrupt Corporate Executives who would love to destroy every rainforest on the planet, evil ruthless soldiers, and evil hunters whose favorite pastime is shooting mothers of cute little animals. They don't beat each other up or go to war for ideology or material gain or to protect their country or any of that, they do it purely because they're all ruthless sadists who get off on slaughtering and murdering for its own sake. Oh, and they all pollute everything, too. In especially extreme cases, nature effectively decides it's better off without us. Now, pause and consider the following obvious, yet easily missed, fact: every single one such example below was written by human beings. Most of whom are probably very nice people, and while it's true that even the nicest people can have a misanthropic point of view or write something a bit dark while depressed, it's usually not this ridiculous. Such examples often strike people as a Family Unfriendly Aesop. ("All humans are Bastards? Even your Mom? Even you? What's your defense going to be if the Sufficiently Advanced Aliens decide you're right and we deserve to be punished for our ways?") In many recent works, a blanket assumption that all people suck is given as a point of view held by animals towards humans, and it's a markedly different point of view from animals who simply avoid humans for safety's sake. The view is largely based upon the animals' few encounters with humans, which didn't go well. Sea creatures, in particular, are susceptible to this philosophy (then again, given that we've got a history of treating the oceans as a bottomless sewer and wiping out island animals, they may have a point. It is very hard not to feel ashamed on behalf of the entire species when considering the fate of the Dodo.) Often in such cases, the animals will learn that, in actuality, many humans are good. Increasingly, a more honest approach seems to be gaining in popularity: humans are now often depicted as thoughtless instead of outright malicious. At worst, we're shown as morally ambiguous (and frustratingly so as far as animal characters are concerned). Oftentimes, in order to lighten the blow, a character will point out the Humans Are Bastards criteria, to which another character will respond "Were we any different?" (usually when the characters having the conversation hail from a race that also had a troubled history, and also with the implicating that humans may, like the other race, eventually grow out of their problems as well). There's no doubt that humanity has a history of going to war for stupid reasons, killing groups of people for silly ideals, burning witches, experimenting on still-living people, raping, torturing, and otherwise treating ourselves like crap. Simply pointing out the recorded evils of man in history doesn't invoke this trope. To really reach full Humans Are Bastards territory, you have to present these atrocities as unique to humans above and beyond all other races and that such behavior cannot be explained or excused as the growing pains of a maturing race, but rather as evidence that the whole lot of us are self-evidently irredeemable on face value. It also helps to act as if other, non-Human races are the only ones to truly understand (or the only ones that actually HAVE) art, peace, caring, love, medicine, compassion, mercy, and so on... you know, all those things that humans in the real world also have, else the writer wouldn't have them as reference points for giving to the saintly aliens or whatever. Often crosses over with Humans Are Cthulhu, What Measure Is A Nonhuman and subtropes. Compare Humanity On Trial, Humanity Is Superior, Humans Are Special. Contrast Rousseau Was Right and Patrick Stewart Speech. Note: when a villain holds a Humans Are Bastards viewpoint, it's usually reserved for Nietzsche Wannabes, Well Intentioned Extremists and Knights Templar; it wouldn't really work if the villain in question is already a crazy maniac who just wants to kill people. The Joker notwithstanding. |
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Instant Awesome Just Add Mecha
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Simply put, this is when a work does not need a Humongous Mecha, but throws one in anyway. Why? Because giant robots are cool, duh!
Note that perhaps no work absolutely needs mecha, but some works still center around them, especially a Super Robot show. This is when you can throw out the mecha and still have most of the work intact. But it wouldn't be as awesome, right? Sometimes this comes from adaptations where mecha is not in the original work. This could apply even to classic works. Just put the works in a futuristic setting, and you can throw in the giant robots. A sort of Recycled WITH MECHA! |
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It's All About Me
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Evil Cannot Comprehend Good? Hardly! Villains understand the value of what good deeds they do, and how much they deserve in return for the most trifling sacrifice to do one. People should be grateful to them. No, offsetting their evil by the good they've done is not sufficient; it's just ingratitude, which is an injury.
And they understand that injury is evil — provided that it's done to them. They even understand the evil of breaking bargains that the other person hadn't really committed too, the villain had merely assumed they would. Little equals the rage of a villain whose offer that We Can Rule Together is turned down — or a Femme Fatale turned Woman Scorned. And they know what punishment should be meted out for it. Not even his Nakama is safe; it exists to be loyal to him, not vice versa. Indeed, he may sacrifice them to his own amusement. He may, of course, be angry at their harm or death at the hands of others, but that is because it removes a useful resource from him, or infringes on his authority. (As a consequence, a frequent source of Help Face Turn.) The hero's Nakama, on the other hand, merely provides a good source of Revenge By Proxy. Milder forms may have an elaborate justification for why injuries to them are so serious and their good deeds are more generous than anyone else. Or he may attempt to Buy Them Off. On the other hand, the Complete Monster doesn't even comprehend that someone might judge his own actions by the same standards as he judges everyone else. The Anti Villain, the Worthy Opponent, the Noble Demon, on the other hand, may show their lack of total evil by admitting that their behavior and their enemies' can be judged by the same standard. Can be either totally selfish or, for a Well Intentioned Extremist, totally oblivious to the idea that others do not grant the importance of their cause. May declare themselves Above Good And Evil, with their affairs being more important than morality. The disdain never applies when they have suffered an injury. Moral Myopia, still more distilled. The Moral Myopia character at least acknowledges the rights of other characters in his own group. This character suffers from moral blindness. This does not cover characters who have a case: the Gentleman Thief who only robs those who can afford it, and has saved several lives, can reasonably argue that on the balance he's done more good than evil. Of course, in those cases, the character is aware of what evil he has done, and is merely looking for clemency. Contrast Evil Cannot Comprehend Good, where the character does not understand why the hero does not behave as selfishly as he does, but does expect him to act in his own interest. When the trope is Evil Cannot Comprehend Good, the villain can't understand why the hero saved him from falling; in Its All About Me, the villain can't understand why the hero insists on arresting him after. Compare Moral Dissonance, where the story agrees with the character. |
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Jerk Ass
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A Jerkass is a character who is so offensively obnoxious that it is unbelievable anyone would willingly interact with him; let's face it, much of the character's charm is a sort of schadenfreude. What makes him or her entertaining is the fact that you don't have to deal with them yourself in real life. Usually, the Rule Of Funny enables the people around the person to be able to live under the same roof as them without, y'know, blowing their brains out. Oftentimes, the Jerkass is the Plucky Comic Relief who's stepped off the beam and become irritating rather than funny, in which case the Rule of Funny fades away; they may be okay in the other characters' eyes, but the audience would still love to see them die with sharp objects in their head. Because of this it's hard to feel sorry for them when something bad does happen to them and is often seen as comeuppance.
This is especially disconcerting in any series following a team that needs to be coordinated and would realistically not put up with this kind of behavior. This can also happen with a hardass or grouchy character who becomes an obstacle to others rather than providing pragmatic, but perhaps unpopular, advice. To be clear, the Jerk Ass is nearly always a protagonist/good guy/hero, or a friend of the protagonist, or on the protagonist's team, or in the protagonist's social circle, since an asshole villain is just a villain, and to be expected. The single factor that pushes a merely annoying character over the line into full-time Jerk Ass status is their absolute obliviousness to other people's perceptions of them. Nothing they do ever strikes them as out of proportion; they never realize that anything they are doing might ever be considered inappropriate, excessive or cruel in fact they believe they are actually right and everyone around them is in the wrong. On the off chance that something happens to nice-ify or remove the Jerkass, the other characters will be relieved at first, but will proclaim "We Want Our Jerk Back" by episode's end. Often the result of Flanderization. The Neidermeyer is a military-specific version of this character type. Internet trolls are a real life example, and rely on the internet to get away with what they do. The Jerk With A Heart Of Gold talks the talk but doesn't walk the walk, being a basically nice person underneath despite a rough outside. When a character is intentionally pretending to be a jerkass in order to keep people from getting close to him for whatever reason, he's putting up a Jerkass Facade. A Mary Sue with Jerk Ass traits is a Jerk Sue. |
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Flanderization
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The act of taking a single (often minor) aspect of a character and exaggerating it more and more until it's huge and cartoonish and almost entirely consumes the character. Sitcom characters are particularly susceptible to this, as are peripheral characters in shows with long runs.
This can become very annoying if the character's aspects were originally unique and subtle, only to become more stereotypical as the story progresses, to fit the requirements of more cliche plots. Especially dangerous if executives think doing this will appeal with their demographic better and boost ratings. However, Flanderization is not necessarily a bad thing. In some cases, viewers may find the over the top version of a character more entertaining than their original, subtler version. Named for one of the examples in The Simpsons, Ned Flanders, who was originally just a clean and quiet-living, somewhat religious fellow (contrast to Homer), in otherwords, the archetypical example of the American family-man who went to Church on Sundays, before becoming the meek super-religious guy most people know him as. See also Never Live It Down for when the character is more associated with something than the character actually changing, and Fat Monica, when realistic quirks (usually weight) are mishandled by the writers. When this happens through adaptation, it's Character Exaggeration. Contrast Hidden Depths. For examples specifically involving comedic aspects developing within once-serious villainous characters, see Villain Decay and Goldfish Poop Gang. If it's more of a flanderization of lifestyle than personality, it may be Corrupt The Cutie. When this makes early behavior seem odd in retrospect, that is Characterization Marches On. See also Took A Level In Dumbass, Trope Decay. Not to be confused with Stupid Sexy Flanders. |
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Stupid Sexy Flanders
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You certainly aren't gay. But, y'know, once in a while someone else looks very nice or is outright distracting, and you just say the wrong thing that sounds bad out of context. Indignation (not that) follows.
If writers actually plan to out a character later, this can become foreshadowing. In some of these cases, this may be caused by a Dorian Gray. If it's taken seriously but isn't a set up for a reveal about the character's sexuality, it can sometimes lead to If It's You, It's Okay. Nearly all Wholesome Crossdressers, and many Bifauxnen are subject to this gag at least once. (The "It's a Trap" internet meme is often used to refer to characters who cause this trope in audience members.) Occasionally, the "victim" is given peace of mind by discovering their totally platonic (really!) crush is really Sweet Polly Oliver. This is Truth In Television, with women being much more open about it. Quite frankly, if a guy were to say something like that to another, more often than not, the response would be, "What are you, gay?" The name (and the picture above) comes from one of Homer's lines invoking this trope in The Simpsons. The term "GAR" (always in capitals) is used to describe a male character who induces this through sheer badassery. Examples |
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Large Ham
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"POWERRRRRRRR! UNLIMITED POWERRRRRRRR!"
— Sir Ian McDiarmid as Chancellor Palpatine, Revenge of the Sith, enjoying himself immensely. "You still refuse to ACCEPT...my godhood? KEEP your own God! In fact, this might be a good time to PRAY to Him! For I beheld Satan as he FELL FROM HEAVEN!...LIKE LIGHTNING!!!" —The late Raul Julia as M. Bison, Street Fighter: The Movie, also enjoying himself immensely. Ridiculously larger-than-life character, often a mentor to one of the regulars. Typically played by a guest star with an Internet Movie Database listing longer than the rest of the cast put together. Full of energy, joie de vivre and nothing but line readings and dramatic gestures that can shake a scene to pieces. Often a key redeeming element in shows that are So Bad Its Good. The first line from the Large Ham will be dramatic, portentous, often just before the act break and can almost always be replaced with: "Did somebody order A LARGE HAM?". Try it at home; it's fun. Practically defined by: BRIAN BLESSED in Britain, William Shatner... in America!, and Norio Wakamoto in Japan. Often a character trait of the Boisterous Bruiser, usually with No Indoor Voice, and often cast as a One Scene Wonder. Having an outrageous appearance is helpful but not a requirement. The origin of the term is unclear: is either from the use of hamfat as a cheap make-up remover in the old days of theatre, or because "ham" serves as short for "amateur"; Leslie Charteris stated it derived from "Hamlet" in a The Saint short story. An equivalent term in Japanese is "daikon", meaning a very large white radish. Anime characters frequently order hot blood with their Large Ham. Contrast Bad Bad Acting, where the acting isn't nearly as energetic. A Large Ham may occasionally be Crazy Awesome. They also greatly relish a "This! Is! SPARTA!!!" moment whenever it crops up. Villainous Hams also enjoy getting Drunk On The Dark Side. A Smug Super relishes showing off their power this way. One of the United Kingdom's most active export industries. If a character is depicted as an American in a BBC series, he's likely to be one of these. If there seem to be several large hams on screen at the same time, you may be watching a World Of Ham. When this is Narm, the large hams are likely to have come from Hillshire Narm (Go Keet!) |
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Long Runners
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Shows which have somehow passed the test of time. There is a clue in here for what people want to watch.
Some of these shows survived initial bad ratings or creative slumps thanks to Network To The Rescue (avoiding Screwed By The Network). |
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Mac Guffin Location
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A Mac Guffin doesn't necessarily have to take the form of an object. This is the case where the Mac Guffin is an actual location–A place where everyone's trying to get to (or get there first), but the actual place doesn't have any impact on the plot.
This happens quite often in shows featuring races–It often doesn't matter whether the finish line is in Cairo, New Zealand, or Omaha. |
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Magnificent Bastard
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Rommel, you magnificent bastard, I read your BOOK!
— George S. Patton, Patton The Magnificent Bastard is what happens when you combine the Chessmaster, the Trickster, and the Manipulative Bastard (sometimes throwing in a bit of Large Ham). He is bold, charismatic (though not necessarily lovable), independent, and audacious. This character is usually a villain, but not always (Odysseus sometimes qualifies). He can be at any level of the villainous hierarchy - Big Bad, The Dragon who's a Knight Templar or Puss In Boots, or a wild card trusted by none of the organized entities on either side. He is clever enough and lucky enough that he will do as well as the local morality code allows, regardless. Signs that you have a Magnificent Bastard on your hands: 1. He either has style or looks stylish - before any Draco In Leather Pants factor is added in. It's even better if he has both looks and flair. 2. He thinks up and implements Batman Gambits, Xanatos Gambits, Xanatos Roulettes, and other complicated schemes - and he succeeds more often than not, or more often than any other villain In Universe. He plays Xanatos Speed Chess and wins. 3. He is also a Manipulative Bastard. 4. The characters opposing him and the majority of sane viewers truly admire his style & wit. The term was first used by General Patton in reference to Erwin Rommel in the film Patton. The Trope Codifier is Lionel Luthor of Smallville, who was given this nickname by the Television Without Pity boards. Compare and contrast Smug Snake. Crazy Awesome is a villain with this much style and success is too insane to scheme. Contrast the Complete Monster, whose evil acts fill the audience with hate and revulsion. This is only for villains who plan their actions carefully, emotionally manipulate others, and are villainously charming. For just the villainous charm, see Affably Evil, Evilly Affable, and Wicked Cultured. |
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Mega Neko
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Exactly What It Says On The Tin: really big cats.
Not to be compared with Meganekko (two Ks, one word, with a glottal stop before the Ks), which is something-or-other about how bespectacled girls are cute. However, do compare Everything's Cuter With Kittens. Just the thing for dealing with Rodents Of Unusual Size. |
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Mix-And-Match Man
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This is an Artificial Human, usually a clone, who is created from the combined DNA of multiple individuals. Sometimes the intent was to clone a single individual exactly, but extra genetic samples were added to the mix by accident. Other times, this is done on purpose to give the clone specific traits from each genetic donor.
Can be Half Human Hybrids when at least one genetic donor is human and at least one isn't. Can be Mix And Match Critters when all genetic donors are non-humans, such as Human Aliens. Obviously more likely to occur in settings where Gattaca Babies are common. Lego Genetics are a prerequisite for making these out of vastly different species. |
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The Midlands
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The Midlands is between Oop North and London. Home to Brummies.
It broadly corresponds to the old Kingdom of Mercia (the dialect influenced Tolkien) and is split by the UK government into the West Midlands and East Midlands. Somewhat deprived in places, the area includes Nottingham. This area has a current reputation for gun crime. Areas of the Midlands are notable for having a larger than usual percentage of ethnic minorities. (Particularly Birmingham and Leicester.) Midlanders are often protrayed as being stupid, possibly due to the accent being slow with sloppy vowels. (NB this only applies to parts of the Midlands. The Black Country accent makes people assume 'thickie' whereas a Staffordshire accent is more posh/generic. An East Midlands accent actually sounds much like Oop North to the untrained ear.) |
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Mobile Suit Human
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In sci-fi and anime you have your Humongous Mecha and you have ...this.
The Mobile Suit Human is a suit of Powered Armor designed to look like everybody else (more or less), manned by a tiny pilot who can operate it to blend in with the rest of the population without being noticed; or to make himself seem more impressive than he otherwise would be. Nobody is ever afraid of anything tiny if it's not a Killer Rabbit. Most often employed for comedic purposes, the pilot of the suit is usually revealed at one point or another, to the astonishment and shock or amusement of who or whatever is unfortunate enough to be the one to open it up or see inside it. A potential subtrope of the Monster Suit. For stories that depict ordinary humans as metaphorically controlled by tiny pilots, see Ghost In The Machine. |
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Villain Decay
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"He has defeated us numerous times; what makes him think he can do it again?"
Tom Servo, MST 3 K commentary for "Prince Of Space" The process by which a villain who is extremely scary on first appearance becomes a total joke after a few more appearances. In most shows, Failure Is The Only Option for the Villains, because success would mean that the villains conquer the world, kill all the good guys, and otherwise do things that make future episodes impossible. Inevitably, the viewers start to wonder why the heroes act concerned about an enemy that they've beaten six times already. Note that this does not apply to shows where the villains are supposed to be incompetent jokes from the start. Most writers will try to stop this decline in menace, which sometimes helps and sometimes makes the Villain Decay worse. Standard tricks include: * Softening the villain up in the hopes that this will make the villain interesting even when losing threat value. * Have a Ratings Stunt where the villain kills off a character, and thus becomes scary again. * Give the villain a new weapon or power. This gets old fast unless it becomes the basis of the show. * Bring in a new, stronger villain, and downgrade the old one to a flunky of the new one or a secondary threat. Repeating this leads to the Sorting Algorithm Of Evil. * Bring in a new, stronger villain and then reveal the new villain as a flunky of the previously decayed one. Some of the new villain's cool might have rubbed off on the old one, right? * Turn the villain into a comic-relief pest. o Alternatively, have the villain throw off the Idiot Ball shackles and make them Dangerously Genre Savvy. Even something as simple as Team Rocket Wins can go a long way towards scaling back Villain Decay. * Escalate the villain's crimes. Win or lose, a villain who plants nuclear bombs is scarier than one who robs banks, at least, in theory. They might end up sending the villain past the Moral Event Horizon in the process if they go too far. * Lower the stakes, so that the villain can win occasionally, but it won't end the series right there. * Completely redo a villain's motivations (different from Motive Decay). This worked very well for a certain Mad Scientist-turned-businessman Lex Luthor for a bit, until Villain Decay caught up with a vengeance. * Force hero and villain into an Enemy Mine scenario against a greater threat, then restore the status quo, as this allows the villains to technically win for once and show off their talents. * Show an Alternate Universe where the villain has won. * Make sure the hero's victory is only by the narrowest of margins, with a price paid. Generally a preventive measure rather than a corrective one. * Have the villain do something so awesome that we don't notice the decay, such as delivering a hilarious zinger, a chilling Hannibal Lecture, or suddenly kicking peoples' butts left and right. Much easier to mess up than do correctly. * Put them in a situation where the villains can temporarily be Anti Hero protagonists to show how powerful and skilled they are in a way that the audience will accept. The obvious example is in The DCU, where villains could be secretly recruited by the US government for a mission with the Suicide Squad. Thus, the gang of supervillains will take on other supervillains with the reader comfortably cheering them as he sees how tough they really are. * Trapping the villain in some kind of containment field, forcing him to rely on agents to do his bidding. * Start an Enemy Civil War. * The last-ditch resort: let the villain get more pathetic, and do a Lampshade Hanging about it every episode. But the fastest way to decay a villain is to make him switch sides. Of course, you can prevent this by not having failure be the only option for the villain; let them win battles, but not the war, or let their evil plan come closer and closer to completion while the heroes race to prevent its final success. Or, for the really cunning villain, dupe the heroes into doing what they wanted all along... Note that Villain Decay is almost never caused by a lack of Offscreen Villain Dark Matter, a difficulty in recruiting Mooks, or even injuries from battle with the heroes — which is to say, they don't become worse off because they have lost. Also note that a Villainous Breakdown is not a guarantee of Villain Decay. Decay will only happen quicker if their entire Villain Pedigree is replaced. See also Ineffectual Sympathetic Villain, Harmless Villain, and Lowered Monster Difficulty, Motive Decay. |
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My Name Is Not Durwood
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Nebulous: They used to call me "the one musketeer".
Paula: Really? Nebulous: No... they called me "Nobulous". — Nebulous "Allow me to mispronounce your name in order to show my disrespect for you." - The Nostalgia Critic's review of Ferngully When Bob dislikes Alice, he may call her funny names. Of course sometimes Bob is actually just a Cloud Cuckoolander, and not actually being malicious. There are many different ways to do this and variations on how it's done in fiction: Malicious Variants A) One tactic is to either pretend to forget the person's name and call them by another legitimate name. For example Bob might call Alice "Alicia", which is similar to Alice, or "Alan", which is a masculine name (this seems to have more of a rub if Alice calls Bob "Beccy" for some reason), or "Mirabelle", which is completely unrelated to Alice and conventional wisdom says it has slightly dorky ring to it. If they want to be really rude, they'll use "Hey You!" B) Another tactic is to corrupt Alice's name into something that isn't a name at all like "Malice" or "Callous" or not even a word like "Smalice" ("Smelly Alice"). This tactic is seen as a bit more childish than tactic A. Non-Malicious Variant C) is when Bob is actually a Cloud Cuckoolander, Ralph Wiggum, or The Ditz (or just when Bob doesn't know Alice well) who really has forgotten Alice's name. This implies he genuinely finds Alice forgettable, which does feel a little malicious or at least has a sting to it. D) is when Bob actually likes Alice and just shows it in a really odd way. How Alice deals with this also varies, she may protest and say "My name is Alice, Bob!" she may ignore it especially type B because it is difficult to reason with someone that childish. She may reciprocate "My name is Alice, Dod!". The trope name comes from Endora's frequent using of variant A (and occasionally B) on Darrin. Along with most of the rest of Samantha's family in Bewitched. Durwood being one of the more common names used (and the similar Darwood). When a Type C is actually convinced that the character is someone else, Thoroughly Mistaken Identity Ensues. Someone who makes a habit of this is The Nicknamer. More often than not, it overlaps with the Phrase Catcher. Do not confuse with I Am Not Shazam nor My Name Is Inigo Montoya. |
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Names To Run Away From Really Fast
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It was one of those comic book name coincidences, like how you know a college professor named Dr. Klaus von der Murder isn't going to be getting tenure.
- Lore Sjoberg People make a big deal out of names, and writers are no exception. Even if they eschew Theme Naming and other Naming Conventions they'll still use names they think are cool and dignified, powerful and appropriate, or sinister and fearsome. Which is why there are inevitably certain Names To Run Away From Really Fast. For much the same reason it's unlikely Steve will turn out to be the outrageously stylish villain bent on absorbing the planet's life stream to ascend to godhood, and someone with a name like oh, say, Hannibal, isn't exactly going to be selling cookies for charity. These come in various flavors, and most of them are used by Anti Heroes of the Bad Ass variety from the Dark Age Of Supernames and villains of the fearsomely competent and world destroying kind, for whom the mere mention of their name can bring down Dramatic Thunder. Note that this is different from all those characters who got their names because they are a badass. It's one thing to be codenamed Wolverine because you're a scrappy fighter (no, not that kind of scrappy), or to be called Blade because you use one on vampires; it's another when a deadly fighter has the birth name "Blade" for no in-story reason. See also Meaningful Titles, The Master, Name Of Cain, My Hero Zero, Jack Attack, Go Ask Alice, and The Magnificent. When applied to a country, it frequently falls under Peoples Republic Of Tyranny. Contrast Names To Trust Immediately, Fluffy The Terrible, where the name fails to describe the nastiness, and Deathbringer The Adorable, where the nastiness fails to live up to the name. |
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Nightmare Fuel
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"Remember to believe in magic...Or I'll kill you..."
-MST3K, episode 1003: Merlins Shop Of Mystical Wonders "Rapidly aging and melting away, Buzzsaws for hands and the monsters of clay When videotape logos emerged from the void And the unearthly synthesizers they employed" -Lemon Demon, "Nightmare Fuel" Nightmare Fuel, as we mean it here, are those things that scared the pants off you as a kid, though it wasn't meant to: something that was meant to either amuse, entertain, or be only slightly scary to the audience. In execution, they're so trauma-inducing that they may cause even adults to void themselves in terror. For young children, media can be a minefield of this kind of stuff, as unexpected or over-the-top scary moments can crop up out of nowhere in everything from grade-school plays to beer ads. Things that are supposed to scare the pants off you fall under High Octane Nightmare Fuel. The Usual Suspects of Nightmare Fuel include: * Puppet, animatronic, claymation, or CG characters who were meant to be cute, but who instead look like they crawled from the darkest depths of the Uncanny Valley. * Surreal animation which makes Naked Lunch look like a Care Bears movie. * Over-the-top slapstick violence; such as a character getting run over by a steamroller and turning into a flat photograph. It may seem funny to you, but imagine looking at such an event through the eyes of a literal-minded 6-year old. * Horrifying transformations. Knowing that the character will probably be changed back into his/her original form at the end of the show does nothing to allay the trauma of watching their painful, scary metamorphosis. * Dream sequences that make the freak-out scenes in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas seem like an episode of Mister Rogers Neighborhood. * Many, many Primal Fears like being eaten or worse, being alive after having been eaten, being physically or emotionally hurt, the sudden appearances of frightening creatures and sounds. * Sudden change in medium between live-action, traditional animation, CGI, or Claymation especially if it comes without warning and changes back just as quickly. * Seeing someone we like get beaten to within an inch of his life. * Disturbingly portrayed talking food. * Anything involving damage to eyes or creatures with too many or not enough eyes. * Beating hearts, especially where they shouldn't be. On a related note, being inside a living creature, especially a particularly disturbing or mutated one. * Clowns. This trope is named after the phrase "Good Old-Fashioned Nightmare Fuel", used by Mike and the 'bots at least three times in Mystery Science Theater 3000 to describe trauma-inducing sights and objects in films that appeared by design to be originally intended for children. (For the record, the films in question were the incredibly creepy Santa Claus, Roger Corman's The Undead, and a scene in the otherwise silly film The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living And Became Mixed-Up Zombies!!?. And this was from the former.) It should be noted that Nightmare Fuel doesn't always make sense. Thus, there will be no judgment taken towards any examples - just, for the love of Benji, let us know why the work of fiction in question was so scary. (Editors will cut anything that merely says "Oh, 'Show X' was horrifying!") Also, you may want to consider whether your example is truly scary, or merely too gross. Not all Nightmare Fuel will be scary to all kids; after all, everyone is different and horror is just as subjective as comedy. Indeed, to some kids, these scenes can be the coolest part of the movie! Some people have fond memories of watching the Be Prepared from the Lion King and cackling with childlike glee. Furthermore, some kids may get Nightmare Fuel from things that aren't even on this list; and what one kid takes in stride may scare the pants off of another kid. Complicating matters further is the curious fact that gaining courage with regards to pop culture is not always an upwardly linear process; a kid may be too young to understand a more subtle kind of horror the first time he watches a movie and then be terrified watching the same movie years later! There is an excellent discussion about this phenomenon and its possible psychological origins in this blog post at The Onion A V Club. And check out the website Kinder Trauma - if you dare. Plus, enjoy (or run away screaming from) the "Top 11 Scariest Nostalgic Moments" by the Nostalgia Critic, a complilation of scary-as-hell T.V. and movie clips. *shudder* There is, curiously enough, often some crossover with Tearjerkers and Fetish Fuel (we'll try not to think too hard about that). Contrast with Nightmare Retardant and Narm. If the offending material can make you sick however, you've got Nausea Fuel. Well, go make sure you've got a fresh bulb in your trusty night light. It's time for... |
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Noodle Incident
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Hobbes: What about the noodle incident?
Calvin: No one can prove I did that! — Calvin And Hobbes Airplane Pilot: Have you ever been in a cockpit before, Father? Father Dougal: Ah, no. But this one time I was on the bridge of a Sealink ferry, and it was funny, I was looking at the controls and— Father Noel: (coughcoughcough) Father Dougal: — oh, um, nothing happened at all. — Father Ted The Noodle Incident is something from the past that is sometimes referred to but never explained, with the implication that it's just too ludicrous for words, and the reality that any explanation would fall short of audience expectations. Questions about it are often met with "You Don't Want To Know..." Commonly introduced to the audience through a Wiki Walk. Named for an (unexplained, of course) incident referenced by the characters of Calvin And Hobbes. Compare Take Our Word For It, Noodle Implements, Whats A Secret Four, and What Did I Do Last Night. Compare and contrast Missing Moment Of Awesome, where the off-screen incident would have been better on-screen. See also Cow Tools. Enough such incidents create a character who has Seen It All. |
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The Nth Doctor
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Fifth Doctor: I'm the Doctor, who are you?
Tenth Doctor: Yes, you are! You are the Doctor! Fifth Doctor: Yes I am, I'm the Doctor. Tenth Doctor: Ohh, good for you, Doctor! Good for brilliant ol' you! Fifth Doctor: Is there something wrong with you? Doctor Who, "Time Crash" Some element of a show's Applied Phlebotinum causes a character's appearance and voice to change completely. On Speculative Fiction shows, this can be almost anything. On real-world shows, this is almost always Magic Plastic Surgery - which, on TV, works much better than it does in reality. This is a catch-all for the recasting of a character using an in-continuity explanation. It takes its name from Doctor Who, whose titular Doctor is an alien capable of "regenerating" into a new form whenever the lead role needs re-casting. Compare to: Jonas Quinn (which introduces a totally new character much like the old one), and The Other Darrin, aka Sister Becky (where the actor is replaced without explanation). |
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Ominous Latin Chanting
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"So we've got Benedictine monks living in the floorboards, unfortunately. We have set some traps with fresh bread and brandy, though..."
—Mystery Science Theater 3000, Space Mutiny "Call me old-fashioned, but an evil ascension to power just isn't the same without someone chanting faux Latin in the background." — Nero, Order Of The Stick Somewhere over the past few centuries, Latin became the "ominous" language. Maybe it's the fact that it's the language of a once mighty civilization from well over a thousand years ago. Maybe it's because it's also the traditional language of the Church, and thus associated with spirituality, mystery and death. And from there it's only a hop, skip and a jump to the idea of magic - bad magic. And then there's the music with which Latin is often associated - for example, the unique sounds of the Gregorian chant - which can sound decidedly somber, even spooky to a modern ear. This is apparently universal. Whenever you hear a choir singing in Latin, something seriously bad is in the works. The actual meaning of the words is unimportant—they could be singing a Latin version of Joy to the World for all we know, or even complete gibberish—the language is what matters. Bonus points if the lyrics and/or tune are reminiscent of—or, as in Final Fantasy VII, outright stolen from—Carl Orff's Carmina Burana, especially O Fortuna. Oddly enough, most of the lyrics of "Carmina Burana" are mundane poems from the Middle Ages about life, death, drinking, and sex. But they're in Latin, so that makes them awesome. The sound admittedly helps. Latin is probably the most familiar dead language due to its being the ancestor of modern Romance languages (even though English is a Germanic language, it still has a high proportion of Latin influence, mostly through French), and its prominence and impact on modern culture make it easy to factcheck. But Ancient Greek, Sanskrit and others are sometimes used to similar effect. Eastern style chanting is also having a surge in popularity, possibly due to the increase in stories featuring conflicts between Eastern and Western worlds. If the creators are particularly clever, the chanting will include a Bilingual Bonus. Compare Cherubic Choir and the One Woman Wail. See also Black Speech for the ear shattering version. Often a part of Religious Horror. Plenty of the examples that follow have earned places on the Crowning Music Of Awesome page in case you feel like listening to them. |
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One Steve Limit
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"Jeffrey Lebowski? That's your name, Dude."
Donny, The Big Lebowski In nearly all TV shows, webcomics, etc. no two characters share the same first name. Simple as that. Sometimes this rule goes further - two characters will not share similar-sounding names. (If there's a Laura, there will not be a Linda.) There are good reasons for this, of course. It is generally considered unwise to have your viewer/reader keep wondering, "Okay, which Steve is this?" In addition, it makes things simpler for the writer, as well - no scrambling to remember which Eric did what where. It's probably more feasible to list the exceptions rather than examples. Usually when there are exceptions, there will be a storyline involving the characters being confused for each other. One could only wish this were Truth In Television, but especially teachers have hard times since some names can be very popular at a certain time. In Latin America, this is true to some degree: people who share the same name are usually called by their family names. For example, if you have a classroom where one guy is called Andrés Orta, another is called Andrés Valadez and the other is called Andrés Larios, chances are they will be known as "Orta", "Valadez" and "Larios". In French-speaking countries, names have very strong popularity waves (to the point where you can often guess somebody's age with five to ten years just by their given name), and very popular names have been attributed to as much as one person out of seven or eight at their peak. Of course, more or less silly nicknames are also a solution. The antithesis is Planet Of Steves, wherein everybody is Steve. Compare One Mario Limit, where the "Steve" is too famous for anyone else to use a similar name. Contrast Nurse Jenny, where there is a whole bunch of characters that look the same and mostly have the same name, but they aren't main characters and are interchangeable. Also contrast Name's The Same, where multiple series share one or more characters with the same name. See also We Named The Monkey Jack and Dead Guy Junior, for other ways characters can share names. |
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Our Vampires Are Different
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Subtrope of Our Monsters Are Different. This one deals with everyone's favorite undead bloodsuckers.
The baseline rules for vampires are: 1. They need blood. Mostly. You can also have a critter that sucks out someone's youth, or soul, or "will". It's a whole sucking thing. Usually for a vampire, it is blood. Some are Vegetarian Vampires who get by on animals and blood banks, and sometimes all they require is a quick, easily healed swallow from humans from time to time, sometimes it has to be virgin's blood. These can become Friendly Neighborhood Vampires. The ones who must drink live human blood in fatal amounts aren't so lucky. The ones who enjoy it, well... Kiss Of The Vampire is the option for Friendly Neighborhood Vampires. Otherwise? Vampire Bites Suck. * Sometimes they need certain very specific substances, not always in blood. Certain Discworld vampires are just hemoglobin deficient, while in Blindsight, the vampires needed neurochemicals instead—they had to eat brains. Those vamps weren't that nice 2. Vampires are The Virus. They are capable of changing human beings into other vampires. Traditionally, this is accomplished via a bite; some more modern depictions make it a slightly more involved procedure, to explain why every victim of a vampire doesn't become one and, by extension, their rarity. These offspring are usually beholden as servants to the parent vampire. Very few have the Heroic Willpower needed to resist becoming fully evil. Attempting to change a loved one into an eternal companion this way rarely works. * Recently, the idea has arisen that vampires judge each other by how far removed they are from a "source." The highest social status belongs to someone who somehow became a vampire without being turned by one via bite. * Technically, classical vampires like Dracula did need to go through a more elaborate process to make another vampire, but bowdlerized versions of the Dracula story removed the detail where he made the victims drink his blood to begin the transformation. * Modern versions that don't have such a process often blur the line between vampire and zombie, sometimes leading to a full-on Vampire Apocalypse because of a runaway Viral Transformation. Worse, sometimes Vampires who don't keep fed turn into Zombies, a la Last Resort. 3. They are Bad Ass. Vampires are almost always inhumanly strong and fast, as well as Immune To Bullets and most other mundane weapons. 4. Achilles Heels * Wooden stake through the heart. In most modern depictions, this is fatal; in the original folklore, it merely stops the vampire from leaving his coffin. Recently, it's become oddly easy to do by hand. Remember, the ribs are there to prevent just such an occurrence. * Decapitation. Although, really, this one works on pretty much everyone. So do stakes through the heart, for that matter. Really, the only vampiric weakness unique to vampires is... * Direct sunlight. Originally, they actually had to sleep in their coffin during the day, and sunlight wasn't fatal - they were merely dormant during the day, making it "easy" to sneak up on them. Nowadays, they just hole up inside, and sunlight practically has the power to make them spontaneously combust. Sometimes this is specifically ultraviolet radiation - sunlight is dangerous, but a lightbulb is not. o The original Dracula in Bram Stoker's novel was unharmed by sunlight - he just had no powers. o ...As where other vampires before Stoker's, such as Carmilla and Varney the Vampire. * Some stories claim the only way to permanently kill a vampire is to hammer a stake through its heart, shove garlic in its mouth, cut off its head, dismember it, burn the pieces in a fire, and scatter the ashes across holy ground. This will almost certainly also permanently kill most people, including pale spooky goths who happen to not be vampires o A few old stories suggest that even this only works until a full moon shines on the ash. o Ah, god ''dammit''... o One has to remember that vampires were corpses animated by evil spirits. Doing all these things rendered the corpse unusable by the spirit, and being thorough about it, since even beheading alone didn't completely stop a vampire. * And by contrast, the easiest supposed way to stop a vampire is finding his coffin and turning him face down to make him "bite the dust, not people", a legend which might or might not be the origin of the term 'turn undead'. 5. Harmful but not instantly lethal * Attempting to cross flowing water (e.g., rivers and oceans). o Frequently interpreted to mean vampires can't cross flowing water. * Crosses, but not necessarily other religious symbols. Originally, it had to be a full blown crucifix (that is, a cross with a figure of Jesus on it). In modern renditions, this is usually subject to the power of belief of either the wielder or the vampire. For instance, if a character is a sincere Jew, then they could use the Star of David to ward off a vampire. Then you can have a vampire who carries his own crucifix, as he is a believer too, like Henry Fitzroy in Blood Ties. He also prays and goes to confession (he figures that he is subject to the same sins as humans, and needs to do penance for them). Fortunately he is a Friendly Neighborhood Vampire * Holy water * Fire * Garlic * Silver or otherwise magically augmented weapons and ammunition. 6. Mandatory tell-tale * No reflection (often because the vampire has no soul, but see below). * No heartbeat/breath * Don't bleed * Physical features, such as being exceedingly pale, having unusual eyes (see Glowing Eyes Of Doom), and, of course, fangs. In folklore, there were numerous physical telltales — eyebrows that met over the nose, fingers all the same length, hair in the center of the palms or backward-facing palms — that are mostly overlooked in modern versions. The original novel-version Dracula has practically all of them. If they can hide some or all of them, dropping the disguise constitutes using Game Face. o Sometimes vampires will become more and more human-like in appearance as they consume more blood/live longer. Sometimes... not. * Body temperature: Vampires, being dead, are almost always at room temperature or colder. 7. Immortality * Technically, they are dead. Pretty spry, though, for a dead guy. * Vampires don't age as we mortals do. Sometimes, this is genuine eternal youth. Sometimes, long periods of time undead can result in a pretty inhuman-looking character, but in either case there is no threat of dying of old age. * Relatedly, they usually suffer from Creative Sterility in both the biological and artistic sense. They can not beget any children... unless it's a male vampire and a live woman, in which case a Dhampir is the result. They may however be capable of turning a child into a vampire, which results in an ageless Undead Child. If it's a "living" vampire species, this is usually waived. * Rarely, the vampire is immortal but must restore his/her youth by drinking blood. In abstinence, they "age", and immediately begin to grow young after they've fed. This originated with Dracula and with persistent (and possibly true) stories about one Elizabeth Bathory's bathing habits. * Interestingly, this isn't indestructibility, and sometimes the vampiric condition itself is reversible. What this means is that despite the above, Undeath Always Ends. 8. They are evil. Not just as a consequence of wanting human blood. They are actually incapable of being good. * ...unless they're different. A show will usually address these baseline rules even if they're not enforced. Somewhat-common additional (mostly modern) rules for vampires are: * Cannot be photographed or caught on video (usually considered an extension of the "no reflection" rule; both of those may be related to the silver rule, as both mirrors and film emulsion were exclusively made from silver compounds in the past). o In Moonlight, Mick explains in a voiceover that he could not be photographed when silver was used in film, but digital cameras have changed all that. o In the TV series Ultraviolet (unrelated to the film), the vampire hunters use sights that pretty much amount to video cameras strapped to their guns in order to tell vampire from non-vampire. o In the anime Magical Pokaan, Pachira does not show up on a normal digital camera but is perfectly visible when viewed with an infrared camera. * Cannot be heard over phone lines. * If there are any actual Holy Relics, these things will kill a vampire even if they're just in close proximity. However, these are rarely used. o Some variations have the relics only being effective when the faith of the wielder is strong. In other variations, the relic is only effective if the vampire believes that it can harm them. * Can turn into bats, wolves, or wisps of smoke for travel. (Bats are by far the most common.) A rare transformation featuring prominently in early literature (such as Dracula) was the ability to turn into elemental dust in moonlight. * Can turn into other creatures that drink blood: vampire bats, mosquitoes, ticks. (Sometimes they become a single creature, more rarely a whole flock/swarm.) * Unaided flight in human form. * Wall Crawling. * Have a hierarchy of strength or other powers based on age. * Can pass through locked doors. Can sometimes alter their bodies to slip through impossibly small spaces. * Cannot enter certain locations, especially homes, without invitation. * Can mesmerize mortals into doing their bidding. * If killed, can be restored to unlife with the proper procedure. o One early version of this, appearing in both pre-Dracula stories The Vampyre and Varney the Vampyre, is that a vampire will be revived and healed automatically if its corpse is bathed in moonlight. * Animals react with fear or aggression towards them. * Sometimes, vampires have two options of converting their prey a la The Virus. With some effort and rule-following, they can be changed into full, if younger, vampires. Sometimes, they have the option of just making either zombie-like or less powerful (often carnivorous) vampire slaves. o Killing a vampire also kills any vampires that particular one created by the above means. Occasionally, it just restores them to non-vampiric life. * Must sleep in the soil from their homeland/original grave. * There are two social profiles for vampires. The first is a loner who may keep a cadre of vampire slaves and possibly a mate. Dracula fits this profile. The second is a "vampire society" where houses of vampiric lineages act and compete within a Masquerade. * Level of "deadness" varies. On one side of the spectrum, it's just lack of heartbeat and skin that's cool to the touch. On the other, they're literally a moving, rotten animated corpse. * Modern updates of the vampire legend may completely avoid using the word "vampire" to describe them; see the Curse of Fenric, Ultraviolet, and Preacher examples below. * Level of retained humanity also varies immensely, from being ravenous, soulless monsters incapable of passing for anything but the above, to being soulless monsters who are very good at pretending to be their former selves, to being basically normal folks Blessed With Suck (or Cursed With Awesome, depending on viewpoint) and most likely a desire to be human again. * Occasionally suffer from severe OCD. One folkloric method of dealing with Vampires was to drop thousands of grains of rice in their coffin, the theory being they'd be compelled to count them all when they awake, wasting the whole night instead of getting up and terrorizing people. * Talk like Bela Lugosi. * May or may not be at war with werewolves. * Sparklyyyy! Usually, their preternatural powers include: * Brainwashed: With a side order of Mind Control Eyes. * Femme Fatalons: Of the lethal slicing kind, for both sexes. * Nigh Invulnerable: Varies from human to super tough (except against wood), usually part of the Immortality package. * Super Senses: Particularly smell and taste. * Super Speed * Super Strength * Vein O Vision * Voluntary Shape Shifting: Wolf and Bat are common, sometimes they can mimic other humans. The purpose of vampires in the story varies quite widely. They serve as the Big Bad or as a metaphor for something (communicable diseases like AIDS or STDs; alcoholism, drug addiction, denial of aging). There is some danger of the vampire character being too on-the-nose for the metaphor. The "baseline rules" above are strongly influenced by Hollywood tradition, and not "real" vampire folklore, or even classic vampire fiction. For instance, as (properly) shown in the 1992 Dracula with Gary Oldman and Winona Ryder, and in 2003's League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Dracula and other "folkloric" vampires were at the most inconvenienced by sunlight, not killed instantly. In Stoker's novel and earlier vampire lore, sunlight did not cause vampires to go up like flash paper. Several times in the novel, Dracula appears in broad daylight with no ill effects. He is simply incapable of using his vampiric powers during the daylight. Sunlight causing a vampire to suffer pain and damage, smolder, or go up like a one man pyrotechnic band was pretty much wholly created by Hollywood, and specifically, by F.W. Murnau in Nosferatu, the first film to use this idea and probably its inventor. Note that having a heroic vampire no longer counts as "different". Vampire Refugees are also a frequently used trope. See also Chinese Vampire, Japanese Vampire, Looks Like Orlok. Differences may be reinforced by spelling it "Vampir" or "Vampyre", or using a clever synonym like "nosferatu" "sanguinarian" or "strigoi". If the differences are emphasized by overt mocking of other authors and unused vampire tropes it becomes Your Vampires Suck. |
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Phantom Zone Picture
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Got a prisoner neither bars nor chains can hold? Flatten them down to two dimensions, and stick them in a picture. From such a prison there can be no escaping, theoretically. As an added bonus, these pictures also make great Soul Jars.
Life inside the picture can vary in many ways, starting with how much freedom the prisoner has. * Soul Jars - The soul is trapped in the painting, but the body is free to move around. E.g The Picture Of Dorian Gray * Suspended Animation - The prisoner is not aware of time passing, but is frozen in one moment * A living death - The prisoner is aware of time passing, but can't move inside the picture. Sometimes he can communicate with people in the real world. * Portal Picture - The picture is a gateway to another world, in which the prisoner is now trapped. Generally, in the first two cases the prisoner does not age. With portal pictures they usually do, but in the third case both alternatives are reasonably common. Methods of releasing the prisoner also vary. With cursed pictures, simply looking at them can release the captive, who gets replaced by the viewer. Pictures holding villains are a form of Sealed Evil In A Can, and the prisoners usually can only be freed by sinister rituals. Those holding heroes are more likely to respond to such things as the tears of a true love, or to require epic deeds to be done in the world within the painting. While oil paintings are traditional, any kind of picture can be used. Another common variant is to use a mirror. With these, people looking in the mirror may see the prisoner in place of their reflection, or dimly superimposed on it. If the person is forced to immobility, may become a case of And I Must Scream. This sort of trap has a strong possibility of being the work of a Mad Artist. The Harry Potter-style pictures, which are alive but aren't trapped people, is a borderline case. |
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Parent Service
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It's a show that the kids can enjoy because of the cartoony action, and Dad can enjoy because he's a big ol' pervert!
— Lore Sjoberg, The Book of Ratings, on 'The Super Friends'. So let's say your beautiful baby girl is watching her favorite show on TV. She isn't responding when you ask her if she wants to play outside, so you give up, sit down and start watching it with her. Let's see, kid heroes going around fighting bad guys, nothing too unpredictable... Ho, ho, ho, who's this! Looks like somebody has a new favorite show! Parent Service is the simplest form of Parental Bonus, where sexiness is used a bit to catch the eyes of parents and older siblings. It's also what separates family shows/movies from children's shows/movies: While in both cases kids are the primary target, the former is specifically designed to retain elements that will keep all members of the family entertained. This is distinct from Fetish Fuel, which is about young people finding things sexy for the first time; this trope is all about pleasing the Periphery Demographic. Although there can be some overlap (see left). |
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Pajama Clad Hero
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Not bad for a man in his jim-jams. Very Arthur Dent. Now there's a nice man.
Tenth Doctor, The Christmas Invasion Some heroes spend virtually their entire adventure wearing nothing but their jim-jams. |
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San Dimas Time
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San Dimas Time is used when a writer wants to add some against-the-clock tension to a Time Travel story without thinking too hard about how little sense that makes.
As a result, events in two different time periods are shown to happen concurrently, so that people two years in the past may only have X minutes to stop the villain from committing some terrible act in the present, even though they should technically have X minutes plus two years to sort it all out. This, of course, makes no sense at all, but if the story's fun enough nobody will care. Alternately, characters traveling to some other time can't come back to the moment they left, but are somehow bound to return to a time, for example, eight minutes after they left if they were gone eight minutes. Can be justified, however, if time travel is of the "travel X time foward/backward" variety. Note that this is different from the Portal To The Past, where a time portal links two eras and allows time on both sides to run at an equal rate, giving the impression that events are running concurrently. This is essentially a portal that sends you X amount of time forward/backwards in time. The main difference is that the Portal To The Past means that somehow the two time periods are synchronized (or Hand Waved) by the portal itself the time flow rate on both sides are the same due to both sides being essentially at rest relative to one another (i.e. because of relativity). If you want to be charitable, you can blame this on the Timey Wimey Ball. See also Meanwhile In The Future. |
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Sealed Evil In A Can
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"Seals are meant to be broken."
— Sage Ghido, Final Fantasy V Sealed Evil In A Can, as the title suggests, is a way to introduce a villain suddenly, especially one that is legendary and powerful. It also explains why the villain hasn't done anything up to that point. (It just escaped recently.) A great evil was beaten in the past. However, it was beaten in such a way that meant it was imprisoned as opposed to killed. Said prison usually ends up preserving said evil so well that 100/1000/5000 years later when it escapes, the civilization that imprisoned it, and their abilities to do so, are long gone (unless this evil is meant to be sealed away again). Now it's the current-day good guy's problem. Sometimes they can just kill the Sealed Evil In A Can, making one wonder why the Ancients went to such trouble. Occasionally it is explained that the Sealing weakened the Evil, but not always. Other times the Balance Between Good And Evil demands that Sealing is the only effective way to deal with the matter, as the Big Bad would just resurrect itself anyway. Sometimes, the Big Bad's plan is to unseal the can, gaining them the power of the ancient God Of Evil; if they succeed, it almost always turns out that the Sealed Evil was manipulating them into freeing them, making the Big Bad a Fake Boss and the Sealed Evil the true Big Bad. Sealed Evil almost never rewards those who release it. In fact, they usually kill their releasers. Or use them. Alternately, they may act as the malevolent flavor of Literal Genie, and twist their releasers' wishes back on them. Remember, Evil Is Not A Toy. Some of the more epic instances of sealed evil involve the heroes themselves releasing it, either by curiosity, accident, or trickery, making every evil deed they do "their responsibility" and turning the quest to stop it personal. Or they could just arrive too late. Occasionally, a prequel will be set around the original sealing. Or, a freshly Sealed Evil might be thrown Out Of Sight Out Of Mind to set up a sequel. Since this trope can be traced back to Greek mythology, it's Older Than Dirt. Notice that it is exactly the same, without the mystical magical mumbo-jumbo, as any plot where a horrible criminal escapes from or is released from prison. Polar opposite of Sealed Good In A Can. Sometimes requires Sisyphus Vs Rock. Compare Oubliette, when the current generation makes its own can to (temporarily) imprison evildoers. For a more realistic version, see Boxed Crook. Sometimes heroes themselves can be walking Sealed Cans of Evil. If they aren't aware of it to begin with, this will usually be revealed at the moment when it is most inconvenient. |
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Starfish Language
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Emma: You mean?
The Doctor: Yes. I can communicate with the Master by carefully controlled breaking of wind. Emma: ...Could I be tied to a different chair? - Doctor Who and the Curse of Fatal Death Oh, hey, the aliens wish to communicate with us. They're speaking into the communication apparatus now... ♪♩ ♪♫ ♬ ♪ ♪ ♬♩♫. Much as Starfish Aliens is the polar opposite of Human Aliens, Starfish Language is the diametric of Aliens Speaking English. Whether the Translator Microbes are on the fritz or the aliens in question are communicating with Minovsky Particles, it's unintelligible to the humans, especially to the viewers (lest there be subtitles, often only present when the trope is played for comedic effect). If it's a video game, expect there to be a few branches on the Tech Tree devoted to understanding the language and eventually the aliens' culture and intent, whether it be peace, cable, cattle, women, or just to put a cosmic smear where your Insignificant Little Blue Planet used to be. |
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Shout Out
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"Why must you take everything that is honest, pure, sweet, and wholesome, and turn it into some vague Alan Arkin film reference? Why, why, why?!"
— Joel, MST3K: It Conquered the World A shout out is something subtle (a name or line of dialogue) in a show that refers to fans or family members of the cast or crew, or to another source of inspiration. By nature, these can be obscure for casual fans. You can even talk about them in English class if only you call them "allusions". See also Homage, Stock Shout Outs, Opening Shout Out, Shout Out Theme Naming. Literary Allusion Title is a subtrope. Easily confused with a Mythology Gag and Continuity Nod. Contrast Take That, which is a negative-spirited Shout Out. |
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Unpleasable Fanbase
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Sometimes, fanbases are, or appear to be, perennially complaining not just about minute details of the Canon, but about everything. This sometimes relates to fake fannishness: some people just don't like a piece of fiction, yet insist on consuming it. It's not just Snark Bait, it's just some people who call themselves fans but think, "Well, those new additions aren't very good. But, then again, it wasn't very good in the beginning either."
A possible sign of an Unpleasable Fanbase is a Catch-22: if they complain about one thing, and the people behind the franchise listen and fix it, only to have other parts of the fanbase complain about the change. This is because, in extremely large fandoms, different portions of the fandom complain about distinctly different things, so that any change will inevitably anger someone. Basically, this is about a fanbase which is so varied and divided in opinion that it's impossible to give everyone in it what they want. No individual fan is truly unpleasable (well, ALMOST none,) but when it's impossible to please everyone, you have an Unpleasable Fanbase. While Unpleasable Fanbase has been a problem for any media with a sufficiently large fanbase (you simply cannot please all of the people all of the time), in the Internet Age it takes on a new dimension when even a small minority can make their opinions heard. It's enough to make an author want to give up. See also Accentuate The Negative, Contested Sequel, The Law Of Fan Jackassery, Ruined FOREVER. Oh and They Changed It Now It Sucks and It Is The Same Now It Sucks. When the creators do something that actually gets the fandom in line with them, it's a Cue Cullen. Compare a Broken Base, in which the two sides of the Unpleasable Fanbase are at each other's throats. |
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The Watson
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The Watson is the character whose job it is to ask the same questions the audience must be asking and let other characters explain what's going on. Distinct from Mr Exposition in that The Watson allows another character to become Mr Exposition.
Generally, female variants of The Watson will have a bit more character development and a larger role within the story (but not too much larger). She will be inevitably attractive, serving a dual role — giving the children someone to like and the adult men someone to tune in for. She commonly has something of a Damsel Scrappy about her, although you don't usually end up wishing for her death. She will have a far higher probability of being captured or kidnapped by the opposition than the male variants do. Children have it easier. The Elephants Child is a popular device, and may even force Mr Exposition into that role. Playing The Watson is also referred to as cabbaging, since this role could be played by a head of cabbage. Science fiction fans may know this character as The Sarah Jane, after (arguably) the most popular of the many companions who had things explained to them on Doctor Who. In fact, actress Louise Jameson, who played one of the Doctor's companions, explained her decision to leave after a relatively short tenure as being motivated by the fact that, "There are only so many ways you can say 'What is it, Doctor?'" On occasions, you get The Watson being cleverer than Mr Exposition, which results in some problems, but occasionally works. Often in fantasy settings, The Watson is the character with more "real world" sensibilities (Sometimes because he's been transplanted from the real world: John Crichton (Farscape) often got to act as The Watson in early episodes, for example), prompting Mr Exposition to explain the "rules" of the fantasy world. In parody, it is becoming increasingly common for The Watson to be a character who isn't genre blind to the sillier tropes, often making Mr Exposition look like something of a buffoon (as in Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery, where Scott Evil asks why his father doesn't just shoot Austin, instead preferring to put him in an easily escapable Death Trap). See Genre Savvy. See also The Daria, who makes similar observations but is less inclined to assist afterwards. |
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You Watch Too Much X
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A Fourth Wall-affirming Stock Phrase said to the Genre Savvy after they point out what's about to happen. Advise your comrades against splitting up when the power goes out during a thunderstorm? "You watch too many horror movies." Suggest getting Locked In A Room gives you a great opportunity to resolve your differences? "You watch too much TV." Try to Logic Bomb the evil AI? "You read too many sci-fi novels." X is almost always the genre/medium of the work.
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