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* WallOfText: Some of his paragraphs (especially in his unpublished stories) span pages. And that's just the English translations--one imagines they're quite a bit longer in [[UsefulNotes/GermanLanguage German]].
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Not to be confused with Creator/FrankCapra, Music/FrankZappa, or [[VideoGame/FinalFantasyVI Kefka]]. And most certainly not [[Manga/SayonaraZetsubouSensei Kafuka Fuura]].
to:
Not to be confused with Creator/FrankCapra, Music/FrankZappa, or [[VideoGame/FinalFantasyVI Kefka]]. And most certainly not [[Manga/SayonaraZetsubouSensei Kafuka Fuura]]. ''Film/{{Kafka}}'' is based on his works, albeit loosely.
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* ExistentialHorror: A speciality of his, filtered his trademark brand of BlackComedy of course. In most of Kafka's works the world was out to get you, no matter how good you tried to be, and any efforts you would make to clear your name or even understand what the hell was going on would just make things worse.
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Franz Kafka (1883-1924) was one of the major German-language fiction writers of the 20th century. His unique body of writing--much of which is incomplete and was mainly published posthumously--is among the most influential in Western literature. His stories, such as ''Literature/TheMetamorphosis'' (1915), and novels, including ''The Trial'' (1925) and ''The Castle'' (1926), concern troubled individuals in a nightmarishly impersonal, modern, and bureaucratic world.
to:
Franz Kafka (1883-1924) (3 July 1883 – 3 June 1924) was one of the major German-language fiction writers of the 20th century. His unique body of writing--much of which is incomplete and was mainly published posthumously--is among the most influential in Western literature. His stories, such as ''Literature/TheMetamorphosis'' (1915), and novels, including ''The Trial'' (1925) and ''The Castle'' (1926), concern troubled individuals in a nightmarishly impersonal, modern, and bureaucratic world.
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* SlidingScaleOfIdealismVsCynicism: Has its foot right on the cynical end.
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* SlidingScaleOfIdealismVsCynicism: Has Kafka's work has its foot right on the cynical end.
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* GrayAndGreyMorality
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* SlidingScaleOfIdealismVsCynicism: Has its foot right on the cynical end.
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%% * ZeroContextExample
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moderator restored to earlier version
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[[quoteright:239:http://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/Kafkaresize.jpg]]
[[caption-width-right:239:A book must be the axe for the frozen sea inside us.]]
->''"Anyone who cannot come to terms with his life while he is alive, needs one hand to ward off a little his despair over his fate... But with his other hand he can note down what he sees among the ruins."''
Franz Kafka (1883-1924) was one of the major German-language fiction writers of the 20th century. His unique body of writing--much of which is incomplete and was mainly published posthumously--is among the most influential in Western literature. His stories, such as ''Literature/TheMetamorphosis'' (1915), and novels, including ''The Trial'' (1925) and ''The Castle'' (1926), concern troubled individuals in a nightmarishly impersonal, modern, and bureaucratic world.
Not to be confused with Creator/FrankCapra, Music/FrankZappa, or [[VideoGame/FinalFantasyVI Kefka]]. And most certainly not [[Manga/SayonaraZetsubouSensei Kafuka Fuura]].
[[caption-width-right:239:A book must be the axe for the frozen sea inside us.]]
->''"Anyone who cannot come to terms with his life while he is alive, needs one hand to ward off a little his despair over his fate... But with his other hand he can note down what he sees among the ruins."''
Franz Kafka (1883-1924) was one of the major German-language fiction writers of the 20th century. His unique body of writing--much of which is incomplete and was mainly published posthumously--is among the most influential in Western literature. His stories, such as ''Literature/TheMetamorphosis'' (1915), and novels, including ''The Trial'' (1925) and ''The Castle'' (1926), concern troubled individuals in a nightmarishly impersonal, modern, and bureaucratic world.
Not to be confused with Creator/FrankCapra, Music/FrankZappa, or [[VideoGame/FinalFantasyVI Kefka]]. And most certainly not [[Manga/SayonaraZetsubouSensei Kafuka Fuura]].
to:
[[caption-width-right:200:Can you dig it?]]
A {{Mons}} series from Creator/{{Nintendo}} and Creator/RedEntertainment, ''Fossil Fighters'' (''Kaseki Horider'', or "Fossil Hunters", in Japan) is a collection Mon RPG/paleontology sim series for the
->''"Anyone who cannot come to terms with his life while he is alive, needs one hand to ward off a little his despair over his fate... But with his other hand he can note down what he sees among
On the
Franz Kafka (1883-1924) was one
Like most
Not to be confused
Games in the series:
* ''Fossil Fighters'' (''Bokura wa Kaseki Horider'', or
* ''Fossil Fighters: Champions'' (''Super Kaseki Horider'', or "Super Fossil Hunters" in Japan), 2010 JP/2011 US Nintendo DS: This game features improved, [[CelShaded cel-shaded graphics]] (with FMV cutscenes), a female player character, a revamped movement system, new islands, new villains, and the ability to Super Revive certain Vivosaurs into evolved forms.
* ''Fossil Fighters: Frontier'' (''Kaseki Horider Mugengear'', or "Fossil Hunters Infinite Gear" in Japan), 2014 JP/2015 US Nintendo 3DS: The new feature for this title is the ability to fight wild Vivosaurs and to drive around in customizable vehicles. The combat system has also been entirely overhauled.
Changed line(s) 10,62 (click to see context) from:
!!Works by Franz Kafka with their own pages include:
* ''Literature/TheMetamorphosis''
!!Other works by Franz Kafka include examples of:
* AlternateCharacterInterpretation: In-work in ''The Trial'' when the prison chaplain tells Josef the story [[https://records.viu.ca/~Johnstoi/kafka/beforethelaw.htm "Before the Law."]] Is the gatekeeper an ObstructiveBureaucrat who misled the man into keeping him out until he was too old to enter, or is he a [[WhatMeasureIsAMook tragic hero]] beholden to the Law while the man is free to enter, but chooses not to?[[invoked]]
* AmbiguouslyJewish: Kafka's work doesn't directly ever reference his Jewish background, but the Jewish angst somehow seems to seep through anyway.
* AuthorAvatar: A lot of his characters at least share some traits with him, such as a domineering father and a creative desire stifled by the doldrums of everyday life. A couple of them are named “K“.
* AuthorsOfQuote: Kafka's aphorisms are often reprinted, mostly as epigrams at the start of a book.
* BewilderingPunishment: The central point of ''The Trial''.
* BiographyAClef: Creator/StevenSoderbergh's film ''Kafka'' uses the author's fiction as a key to tell his life story.
* BodyHorror: Some of his characters are physically marred by the traumas they undergo.
* CallingTheOldManOut: Almost. ''Letter to His Father'', which was never given to his dad.
* CantGetAwayWithNuthin: He was a Trope Codifier. One of the most revealing exchanges in all his work is towards the end of ''The Trial'', when Josef K goes to the cathedral and talks to a priest:
-->'But I'm not guilty,' said K. 'It's a mistake. How can a person be guilty at all? Surely we are all human beings here, one like the other.'\\
'That is right,' said the priest, 'but that is the way the guilty are wont to talk.'
* ChewToy: The protagonists of his books hardly ever seem able to catch a break.
** Karl Rossman, protagonist of ''Amerika'', unwillingly gets the family maid pregnant, gets sent off to America by his father without any practical skills he could make a decent living with, finds a long-lost uncle, only to be thrown out after he visits an acquaintance against his uncle's will, gets an alright job as a lift boy, is dismissed due to the Head Porter who has it in for Karl because he does't greet the Porter politely and regularly, falls in with rogues (not the lovable kind), etc. [[spoiler: It's averted in the end, when Karl is accepted into the rather utopian Theatre of Oklahoma.]]
* CrapsackWorld: The late 19th-early 20th Century landscape of his stories.
* DeadArtistsAreBetter: The titular character from "The Hunger Artist." Not to mention Kafka himself.
** {{Subverted}} in "Josephine the Singer", though: after she, representing culture in general, dies, nobody will remember her.
** Kafka himself of course died before attaining universal fame.
* {{Determinator}}: K in ''The Castle''. {{Deconstructed}}: all his efforts are seemingly in vain. He might have been happier if he just gave up, although the book ends in mid-sentence and we only have hints as to how it would probably have ended.
* DisproportionateRetribution: "The Judgement" among others.
* DownerEnding: Much of his work.
* FishOutOfWater: Karl Rossman in America.
* HopeSpot: Josef K in ''The Trial'' has one, on the last page of the book, when he sees a window open and a person leans out and stretches out his/her arms.
* IceCreamKoan: Deliberately.
* KafkaKomedy: Franz Kafka is the TropeNamer. When read the right way by a person with a very dark sense of humor, his books can be genuinely funny. According to his friends, Kafka himself would sometimes laugh out loud while reading his own work.
** Similarly, Creator/OrsonWelles always considered his film adaptation of ''The Trial'' to be a black comedy, and considered it wildly funny himself.
* KangarooCourt: ''The Trial'', in which the prisoner, Josef K, is never told what the charge is and cannot defend himself. Therefore, he is convicted and then sentenced to death without evidence of anything.
* {{Koan}}: "Before the Law, there stands a guard..."
* MagicRealism: For example, strange, unexplained transformations.
* MindScrew: What is ''really'' his works' meaning?
** ''The Trial'' contains a sentence in its first page which, in that it represents Kafka's uniquely elusive syntax, is a Mind Screw in itself. Josef K wakes up to find himself under arrest. He says to the man who's arresting him, "Anna is supposed to bring me my breakfast," referring to his landlady's daughter. The man says to somebody just outside the room, "He wants Anna to bring him his breakfast." The next sentence goes like this, in the original German: ''Ein kleines Gelächter im Nebenzimmer folgte, es war nach dem Klang nicht sicher, ob nicht mehrere Personen daran beteiligt waren.'' The most accurate published translation of this sentence's pileup of multiple negatives goes like this: "There was a brief burst of laughter from the next room, but it was not clear from the sound whether there might not be more than one person there." Good luck figuring that out.
* MundaneFantastic: The fantastic is usually seen as completely mundane by almost everyone who is not the protagonist.
* NoEnding: Two out of his three novels have no ending. ''The Trial'' does have an ending, but it's known that Kafka hadn't finished work on it when he died.
* ObstructiveBureaucrat: In "Before the Law" or "Vor dem Gesetz", the doorkeeper acts as the literal and symbolic obstructive bureaucrat, blocking the man from the country from getting admittance to the Law.
* OneLetterName: K. in ''The Castle'' and Josef K in ''The Trial''.
* OntologicalMystery: ''The Trial'' is a cynical, bureaucratic example.
* OurMonstersAreWeird - Several of his vignettes feature rather bizarre and fantastic creatures, the oddest perhaps being the Odradek in his short story "The Cares of a Family Man."
* {{Recut}}: In adapting ''The Trial'', [[http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:Tr9DZP_ahcYJ:tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Creator/OrsonWelles+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=uk Orson Welles]] rearranged the order of Kafka’s chapters. In this version, the chapter line-up read 1, 4, 2, 5, 6, 3, 8, 7, 9, 10. However, the order of Kafka's chapters was arranged by his literary executor, Max Brod, after the writer's death, and this order is not definitive. [[https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=The_Trial_(1962_film)&oldid=639673797#Production Source]]
* SchizoTech: The 1994 film version of ''The Castle'' is set in a ClockPunk setting, with medieval architecture, early automobiles, and phones.
* ShaggyDogStory: [[ShootTheShaggyDog The dark kind.]]
* ShootTheShaggyDog: Almost everything by Kafka falls into this category.
* SliceOfLife: His collected writings contain one-page stories that don't really have a point to them, apart from [[SceneryPorn describing an interesting scene]] and [[SeinfeldianConversation observing things about it.]]
* SurrealHorror: His protagonists are often utterly (and sometimes fatally) bewildered by circumstances that would be funny if the consequences were less hideous.
* TortureTechnician: The Officer from "In the Penal Colony" who uses an execution device with needles to mark the crime the person is being executed for (the person dies eventually after several hours of pain from either shock or blood loss)
* UnreliableNarrator: For example in the short story ''The Judgement'', where at first the narrator seems to be pretty much identical with protagonist Georg Bendemann, bragging what a considerate person he is because he doesn't tell his unfortunate friend abroad what a happy, successful life he has. How nice and understandable, thinks the reader - until Bendemann's father calls him out and accuses him of being a liar, so that we have to start questioning Bendemann's motives and if the friend abroad actually exists.
* UselessProtagonist: Many of his works have protagonists who either willingly or unwillingly have no active role in how the stories progress.
* WeirdnessCensor: Apart from the protagonists, very few people in his stories notice or care when something clearly out of the ordinary has happened.
* WhiteCollarWorker: Kafka himself and his characters provide an [[UnbuiltTrope early]] example of this trope.
* WrongGenreSavvy: Josef K in ''The Trial'' thinks he's a plucky everyman fighting against injustice. He's very, very wrong. However -- and this is the characteristically Kafkaesque twist -- it's never clear ''why'' he's wrong.
* YankTheDogsChain: Things may start to look bright. It never pays off.
* ''Literature/TheMetamorphosis''
!!Other works by Franz Kafka include examples of:
* AlternateCharacterInterpretation: In-work in ''The Trial'' when the prison chaplain tells Josef the story [[https://records.viu.ca/~Johnstoi/kafka/beforethelaw.htm "Before the Law."]] Is the gatekeeper an ObstructiveBureaucrat who misled the man into keeping him out until he was too old to enter, or is he a [[WhatMeasureIsAMook tragic hero]] beholden to the Law while the man is free to enter, but chooses not to?[[invoked]]
* AmbiguouslyJewish: Kafka's work doesn't directly ever reference his Jewish background, but the Jewish angst somehow seems to seep through anyway.
* AuthorAvatar: A lot of his characters at least share some traits with him, such as a domineering father and a creative desire stifled by the doldrums of everyday life. A couple of them are named “K“.
* AuthorsOfQuote: Kafka's aphorisms are often reprinted, mostly as epigrams at the start of a book.
* BewilderingPunishment: The central point of ''The Trial''.
* BiographyAClef: Creator/StevenSoderbergh's film ''Kafka'' uses the author's fiction as a key to tell his life story.
* BodyHorror: Some of his characters are physically marred by the traumas they undergo.
* CallingTheOldManOut: Almost. ''Letter to His Father'', which was never given to his dad.
* CantGetAwayWithNuthin: He was a Trope Codifier. One of the most revealing exchanges in all his work is towards the end of ''The Trial'', when Josef K goes to the cathedral and talks to a priest:
-->'But I'm not guilty,' said K. 'It's a mistake. How can a person be guilty at all? Surely we are all human beings here, one like the other.'\\
'That is right,' said the priest, 'but that is the way the guilty are wont to talk.'
* ChewToy: The protagonists of his books hardly ever seem able to catch a break.
** Karl Rossman, protagonist of ''Amerika'', unwillingly gets the family maid pregnant, gets sent off to America by his father without any practical skills he could make a decent living with, finds a long-lost uncle, only to be thrown out after he visits an acquaintance against his uncle's will, gets an alright job as a lift boy, is dismissed due to the Head Porter who has it in for Karl because he does't greet the Porter politely and regularly, falls in with rogues (not the lovable kind), etc. [[spoiler: It's averted in the end, when Karl is accepted into the rather utopian Theatre of Oklahoma.]]
* CrapsackWorld: The late 19th-early 20th Century landscape of his stories.
* DeadArtistsAreBetter: The titular character from "The Hunger Artist." Not to mention Kafka himself.
** {{Subverted}} in "Josephine the Singer", though: after she, representing culture in general, dies, nobody will remember her.
** Kafka himself of course died before attaining universal fame.
* {{Determinator}}: K in ''The Castle''. {{Deconstructed}}: all his efforts are seemingly in vain. He might have been happier if he just gave up, although the book ends in mid-sentence and we only have hints as to how it would probably have ended.
* DisproportionateRetribution: "The Judgement" among others.
* DownerEnding: Much of his work.
* FishOutOfWater: Karl Rossman in America.
* HopeSpot: Josef K in ''The Trial'' has one, on the last page of the book, when he sees a window open and a person leans out and stretches out his/her arms.
* IceCreamKoan: Deliberately.
* KafkaKomedy: Franz Kafka is the TropeNamer. When read the right way by a person with a very dark sense of humor, his books can be genuinely funny. According to his friends, Kafka himself would sometimes laugh out loud while reading his own work.
** Similarly, Creator/OrsonWelles always considered his film adaptation of ''The Trial'' to be a black comedy, and considered it wildly funny himself.
* KangarooCourt: ''The Trial'', in which the prisoner, Josef K, is never told what the charge is and cannot defend himself. Therefore, he is convicted and then sentenced to death without evidence of anything.
* {{Koan}}: "Before the Law, there stands a guard..."
* MagicRealism: For example, strange, unexplained transformations.
* MindScrew: What is ''really'' his works' meaning?
** ''The Trial'' contains a sentence in its first page which, in that it represents Kafka's uniquely elusive syntax, is a Mind Screw in itself. Josef K wakes up to find himself under arrest. He says to the man who's arresting him, "Anna is supposed to bring me my breakfast," referring to his landlady's daughter. The man says to somebody just outside the room, "He wants Anna to bring him his breakfast." The next sentence goes like this, in the original German: ''Ein kleines Gelächter im Nebenzimmer folgte, es war nach dem Klang nicht sicher, ob nicht mehrere Personen daran beteiligt waren.'' The most accurate published translation of this sentence's pileup of multiple negatives goes like this: "There was a brief burst of laughter from the next room, but it was not clear from the sound whether there might not be more than one person there." Good luck figuring that out.
* MundaneFantastic: The fantastic is usually seen as completely mundane by almost everyone who is not the protagonist.
* NoEnding: Two out of his three novels have no ending. ''The Trial'' does have an ending, but it's known that Kafka hadn't finished work on it when he died.
* ObstructiveBureaucrat: In "Before the Law" or "Vor dem Gesetz", the doorkeeper acts as the literal and symbolic obstructive bureaucrat, blocking the man from the country from getting admittance to the Law.
* OneLetterName: K. in ''The Castle'' and Josef K in ''The Trial''.
* OntologicalMystery: ''The Trial'' is a cynical, bureaucratic example.
* OurMonstersAreWeird - Several of his vignettes feature rather bizarre and fantastic creatures, the oddest perhaps being the Odradek in his short story "The Cares of a Family Man."
* {{Recut}}: In adapting ''The Trial'', [[http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:Tr9DZP_ahcYJ:tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Creator/OrsonWelles+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=uk Orson Welles]] rearranged the order of Kafka’s chapters. In this version, the chapter line-up read 1, 4, 2, 5, 6, 3, 8, 7, 9, 10. However, the order of Kafka's chapters was arranged by his literary executor, Max Brod, after the writer's death, and this order is not definitive. [[https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=The_Trial_(1962_film)&oldid=639673797#Production Source]]
* SchizoTech: The 1994 film version of ''The Castle'' is set in a ClockPunk setting, with medieval architecture, early automobiles, and phones.
* ShaggyDogStory: [[ShootTheShaggyDog The dark kind.]]
* ShootTheShaggyDog: Almost everything by Kafka falls into this category.
* SliceOfLife: His collected writings contain one-page stories that don't really have a point to them, apart from [[SceneryPorn describing an interesting scene]] and [[SeinfeldianConversation observing things about it.]]
* SurrealHorror: His protagonists are often utterly (and sometimes fatally) bewildered by circumstances that would be funny if the consequences were less hideous.
* TortureTechnician: The Officer from "In the Penal Colony" who uses an execution device with needles to mark the crime the person is being executed for (the person dies eventually after several hours of pain from either shock or blood loss)
* UnreliableNarrator: For example in the short story ''The Judgement'', where at first the narrator seems to be pretty much identical with protagonist Georg Bendemann, bragging what a considerate person he is because he doesn't tell his unfortunate friend abroad what a happy, successful life he has. How nice and understandable, thinks the reader - until Bendemann's father calls him out and accuses him of being a liar, so that we have to start questioning Bendemann's motives and if the friend abroad actually exists.
* UselessProtagonist: Many of his works have protagonists who either willingly or unwillingly have no active role in how the stories progress.
* WeirdnessCensor: Apart from the protagonists, very few people in his stories notice or care when something clearly out of the ordinary has happened.
* WhiteCollarWorker: Kafka himself and his characters provide an [[UnbuiltTrope early]] example of this trope.
* WrongGenreSavvy: Josef K in ''The Trial'' thinks he's a plucky everyman fighting against injustice. He's very, very wrong. However -- and this is the characteristically Kafkaesque twist -- it's never clear ''why'' he's wrong.
* YankTheDogsChain: Things may start to look bright. It never pays off.
to:
* ''Literature/TheMetamorphosis''
!!Other works by Franz Kafka include
*
* AbsurdlyLowLevelCap: In the
* AmbiguouslyJewish: Kafka's work doesn't directly ever reference his Jewish background, but the Jewish angst somehow seems to seep through anyway.
* AuthorAvatar: A lot of his characters at least share some traits
* AuthorsOfQuote: Kafka's aphorisms are often reprinted, mostly as epigrams at the start of a book.
* BewilderingPunishment: The central point of ''The Trial''.
* BiographyAClef: Creator/StevenSoderbergh's film ''Kafka'' uses the author's fiction as a key to tell his life story.
*
* CallingTheOldManOut: Almost. ''Letter to His Father'', which was never given to his dad.
* CantGetAwayWithNuthin: He was a Trope Codifier. One
-->'But I'm not guilty,' said K. 'It's a mistake. How can a person be guilty at all? Surely we are all human beings here, one like the other.'\\
'That is right,' said the priest, 'but
* ChewToy: The protagonists
**
* AdventurerArchaeologist: Nevada Montecarlo, who is a DarkSkinnedRedhead version of [[Franchise/TombRaider Lara Croft]] (with Franchise/IndianaJones' whip).
** ''Champions'' has an even more direct CaptainErsatz of Franchise/IndianaJones called Joe Wildwest.
* AllNaturalGemPolish: Everything you find in the
* AncientAstronauts: [[spoiler:The dinaurians.]]
*
* DeadArtistsAreBetter: The titular
* AgentPeacock: Ryne from
** {{Subverted}} in "Josephine
** Kafka
* AmbiguouslyGay: Cole in ''Champions''. It's hard to tell which parts of his campness just come from his obsession with fashion, and which parts come from... somewhere else.
*
* AntiFrustrationFeatures: ''Frontier'' cleans up some of the issues with finding fossils in
* ArtEvolution: ''Champions'' featured a much more detailed, and more {{Animesque}}, art style than the original's more cartoony look.
** ArtShift: [[spoiler: Rosie's icon in ''Champions'' is in the same style as the first game, making her stand out next to the anime-style characters from the second game.]]
** ''Fossil Fighters: Frontier'' seems to have significant change in the design of... just about everything, really.
* ArtisticLicensePaleontology: Fully justified by the fact that vivosaurs are explicitly stated to be dinosaur-''like'' creatures and not actual dinosaurs. Beyond that, it's generally averted since the creators have ShownTheirWork and keep their data as accurate as possible.
* AuthorAvatar: The first game's announcers are the game's two creators, and the idea of putting them in the game started out as a joke.
* AwesomeButImpractical: Many high-level vivosaurs with really high Attack or LP are devastating from the Attack Zone... but if they end up in the Support Zone somehow, they'll turn your attacker into a quivering pile of useless mush. T-Rex is a perfect example--he has the highest attack in the game and can attack all of your enemies at once, but, if he ends up in the support zone, he reduces all your attacker's stats by ''30%!''
** Zino and Centro. Every hit from them will be a critical-but their accuracy is so terrible that the rest of the team needs to be focused around buffing accuracy/evasion stats to get them to even land a hit. In other words: CriticalHitClass meets ATeamFiring.
* AwesomeMcCoolname: Joe Wildwest in ''Champions'' and Captain Stryker in ''Frontier''.
* [[BadJobWorseUniform Bad Sidequest, Worse Costume]]: So... how 'bout that Hare Club? Y'know, the one where you have to wear a bunny mask, then clean 100 fossils to 80 points or higher?
* BagOfHolding: We really have ''no'' idea how a twelve-year-old can lug around up to ''64'' fossils as long as his
* BigOlEyebrows: The samurai, with a BigOlUnibrow chaser.
* BittersweetEnding: Subverted in the first game. [[spoiler:Guhnash]] is defeated, but your partner didn't quite make it out of [[spoiler:stone sleep]]. You've saved the world, at a cost, and that's how it has to be... [[spoiler:and then the Digadig chieftain shows up and tells you to use the hip-shaker dance!!]]
* BlackAndNerdy: Dr. Diggins in the first game is a professional-grade [[Series/{{Scrubs}} blerd]]. Who's dorky enough to wear shorts and a Hawaiian shirt beneath his lab coat, no less.
* BluntMetaphorsTrauma: It's no wonder Nick Nack mangles foreign languages so bad--he barely gets ''English!'' "I can have my snacks and feet them too!"
* BodySurf: This is how [[spoiler:Zongazonga's immortality spell]] works in ''Champions''. His latest victim is actually [[spoiler:the owner of the Fossil Park, Joe Wildwest.]]
* BonusBoss: After you beat the final boss of the first game, almost ''every character you've fought before becomes a BonusBoss.'' Almost all of them have maxed-out teams, some of them you have to fight one right after the other, and the prizes for beating them range from "BraggingRightsReward" to "OlympusMons." You can even take on the FinalBoss again as often as you like! The most difficult BonusBoss fight, however, is probably against [[spoiler: Dynal, Duna, and Raptin]] ''all at once.''
** There's also an {{Early Bird|Boss}} BonusBoss named Petey, who requires you fight him with three very specific vivosaurs. If you take the time to max out said three and wait until you're near the end of the game, he's not so tough... But try him ''without'' copius LevelGrinding, and he proves to be quite the KillerRabbit.
* ABoyAndHisX: Thanks to the player getting a sidekick, ''Frontier'' is a "Boy/Girl and his/her dinosaur" story.
* ButtBiter: A RunningGag in ''Frontier'' involves your little vivosaur sidekick chomping down on Nate's butt. In the little guy's defense, Nate is usually literally asking for it by sticking his butt out and taunting him.
* ButtMonkey: Rosie.
* CallARabbitASmeerp: The names have been
* DisproportionateRetribution: "The Judgement" among others.
* DownerEnding: Much of his work.
* FishOutOfWater: Karl Rossman in America.
* HopeSpot: Josef K in ''The Trial'' has one,
* CanonName: The main character of the
** ''Frontier'' has nameable protagonists "Jura" and "Tria". The puns just don't stop. The canonical name for their little dino sidekick is "Nibbles".
* CardboardPrison: Only in the first game, but it's exaggerated. [[PoliceAreUseless What happens in that police station is anybody's guess.]]
* CelShading: ''Champions'' uses cel-shaded graphics, as well as more detailed graphics in general.
* ChekhovsSkill: [[spoiler:The hip-shaking dance, used to revive Rosie/Duna from tainted stone sleep.]]
* [[TheChiefsDaughter The Chief's Granddaughter]]: [[spoiler:Pauleen.]]
* {{Cloudcuckoolander}}: Trip Cera in the second game. His first name [[WhatDoYouMeanItWasntMadeOnDrugs seems appropriate]].
* ChuckCunninghamSyndrome: The vast majority of Vivosaurs are absent in ''Frontier'', in particular nearly all of the non-dinosaur Vivosaurs are gone, with the exception of a few pterosaurs.
* CollectorOfTheStrange: Since you can't use them to revive vivosaurs, nobody wants dropping fossils. Except Nick Nack...
** John Guano replaces him in the sequel. John's even ''weirder,'' if that's possible. He's standing not three feet away from a lady who offers dropping fossils in exchange for fossil cleaning. The only catch is, he'd have to wear the Hare Mask to join the club to do so. EveryoneHasStandards?
* CombatCommentator: In ''Fossil Fighters'', they're {{Author Avatar}}s. In ''Champions'' we have a two talking Vivosaurs. ''Frontier'' doesn't have any announcers.
* ContinuityNod:
** In ''Champions'', Pauleen is a throwback to the first game's Digadig tribe. [[spoiler:You also get to fight Rosie in the post-game.]] [[spoiler:Duna, Raptin, and Dynal]] also make appearances in some bonus content.
** In ''Frontier'', the Vivosaur Island and Caliosteo Fossil Parks from the first two games get mentioned occasionally. Characters from ''Champions'' (or at least people with the same names) can show up in the in-game tournaments; one such team is Joanie, Pooch, and Tonzilla and another is Todd, Rupert, and Pauline.
* ConvectionSchmonvection: Mt. Lavaflow in the first game, and Mt. Krakanak in the second.
* CowardlyLion: Todd in ''Champions''.
* CrooksAreBetterArmed: Wanted vivosaur thief Blambeau carries around a shotgun. The [[PoliceAreUseless unarmed and largely ineffective police force]] send [[KidHero Hunter]] after him. Thrice.
* DarkSkinnedRedhead: Nevada Montecarlo, who also likes to WhipItGood.
* {{Deconstruction}}: Rosie can be seen as a deconstruction of TheLoad[=/=]DamselInDistress. She is those things, but realizes it, and is sorry for the times when
* DefiedTrope: The final boss of ''Fossil Fighters Champions'':
-->''"Yes, well, [[BondVillainStupidity let's not waste any more time with empty threats]] or [[JustBetweenYouAndMe the revealing of plans]], mmm?"''
* DemBones: The [=BareBones=] Brigade's boneysaurs in ''Champions''.
* DidYouJustPunchOutCthulhu: Averted. When the bad guy pulls out an {{Olympus Mon|s}}, you need to get your own before you can properly challenge him. (Unfortunately, you can't keep it - see NoPlansNoPrototypeNoBackup below)
** However, it's later played straight with [[spoiler:Guhnash--apparently, all you have to do is destroy his brains. Easy-peasy.]]
** In ''Champions'' [[spoiler:The FinalBoss, Zongazonga, is pretty much exactly this. A body-snatching skull that turns into a
* DinosaursAreDragons: The Fire-type Vivosaurs breathe fire, but remember - they're no longer Dinosaurs, they're ''[[CallARabbitASmeerp Vivosaurs]]''.
** In ''Champions'', the Super Revive function in the sequel plays this to the hilt, essentially morphing your Vivosaurs from dinosaur-like creatures into more draconic monsters. Also, [[spoiler:the BigBad Zongazonga literally refers to the dinosaurs as dragons in his magic chant in the penultimate battle.]]
* [[AnimalMotif Dinosaur Motif]]: In ''Champions,'' the male PC has a T-Rex motif, while the female PC has a triceratops motif.
* DiscOneFinalBoss: Frigisaur, and
* DiscOneFinalDungeon: Boy, isn't Mt. Lavaflow climactic! The lava! The HeelFaceTurn! The impending epic battle between the opposing forces of Frigisaur and
*
** In ''Champions'' the starters are powerful enough to last you the entire game, particularly Dimetro.
** The 'Donation Point' dinosaurs also count, particularly Compso in the first game. There's nothing to stop you from grinding all the way to him the moment you get access to your first dig-site, and his support-effects will make you basically unstoppable for the rest of the game. To a lesser degree, Stego - being the cheapest of the DP-dinosaurs, you can, again, fairly easily get all 4 parts of him, in [[RareRandomDrop 'red' quality]], for an instantly high-level 'Tank' who can solo practically anything up to late-mid-game if needs be.
** Giga Raja in Champions, which is created by evolving Raja (available in the first area) with a gold fossil (can be found early with some dedication). Giga Raja's already powerful attacks can be bolstered by his ability to Charge-Up for a turn, causing him to hit like a meteor and deal damage exceeding the highest possible Life Points for anything in the game!
*
* DownloadableContent:
** The original game briefly featured four of the five Mysterious Egg fossils available for download on the Nintendo Channel, but they were taken down eventually. (They're still available in-game, though; it just takes longer.)
** ''Champions'' features [[OlympusMons Frigisaur and Ignosaur]] from the first game, along with sidequests from a... ''strange'' character named Ryne, and downloadable fights with [[spoiler: Duna, Raptin, and Dynal.]]
** ''Frontier'' distributed its bonus content through AR cards rather than actual downloads; including some Bone Buggys, versions of Yutie in all four elements, the villains' dark vivosaurs, and some ''actual'' dinosaurs.
* DudeWheresMyRespect: Averted. The [=NPC=]s' dialogue changes to praise you as you progress through the story and ranks.
* {{Eagleland}}: The Fossil Park America in ''Frontier''. The whole place is lit up like Las Vegas, the Warden in charge is TotallyRadical and [[AmericansAreCowboys dresses like a cowboy]], and the first dig site is in a southwest canyon. To its' credit, the Starry Falls dig site is a South American jungle instead of being a US stereotype. Fossil Parks Asia and Europe aren't all that much better when it comes to cultural stereotypes.
* ElementalPowers: It turns out that the cloning process gives these to animals as a [[CursedWithAwesome side-effect]].
** BlowYouAway
** DishingOutDirt
** MakingASplash
** PlayingWithFire
** NonElemental
** InfinityPlusOneElement: "Legendary" in the first two games, though in practice these vivosaurs are treated as Neutral; they just have better stats. The first game has [[spoiler:Frigisaur, Ignosaur, and all the parts of Guhnash]] and ''Champions'' has [[spoiler:Zombie Tricera, Zombie Ptera, Zombie Rex, Zombie Plesio, and Zongazonga; plust the return of Frigi and Igno]]. ''Frontier'' drops the designation.
* ElementalRockPaperScissors: Fire beats Air, which beats Earth, which beats Water, which beats Fire. Neutral has no advantages or disadvantages.
* ElvisImpersonator: Rockin' Billy from ''Champions.'' Did you catch the PunnyName?
* EverythingsBetterWithDinosaurs: Duh!
* [[EverythingsBetterWithPrincesses Everything's Better With Princessaurs]]: Maia (Maiasaurus) is a pink dinosaur with a
* EvolutionaryLevels: [[spoiler:The Dinaurians have a devolution beam. It turns humans into "triconodonta", a ratlike mammal ancestor.]]
** The three "Transformation-Class" Vivosaurs also transform into later descendants of
** In ''Champions'', some vivosaurs can "Super Evolve" into stronger forms.
* {{Expy}}: Pauleen in ''Champions'' has a lot in common with Rosie from the first game. In addition to
* FeatheredFiend: Aopteryx. It can semi-reliably steal FP with Thieving Talons, recover LP with Life Drain and as mentioned above, transform into any Neutral vivosaur. [[JokeCharacter Unfortunately, it needs significant support to dish out
**
* FetchQuest: AND HOW. The first game is loaded with these. Thankfully, most of them go by quickly enough to keep the story rolling.
* FireWaterJuxtaposition: Frigisaur and Ignosaur in the first game represent the Fire/Ice version.
* FlyingSeafoodSpecial: And [[WaterIsAir inverted]] when fighting in [[UnderTheSea Bottomsup Bay]].
* FossilRevival: ...It's the backbone of the series.
* GeniusSweetTooth: Dr. Diggins has a weakness for Dino Cakes.
* GettingCrapPastTheRadar: Professor Scatterly in the second game manages to slip a [[DidNotDoTheBloodyResearch "Sod it"]] past the radar. Similarly,
* KangarooCourt: ''The Trial'', in which
* GlobalCurrencyException: Redundant fossils are donated to
* {{Koan}}: "Before
* {{Gonk}}: Baron von Blackraven, especially compared to his two PrettyBoy associates.
* GoodAllAlong: [[spoiler:Don Boneyard and the [=BareBones=] Brigade, trying to stop the Caliosteo Cup in order to stop Zongazonga's scheme. Well, the Brigade didn't know Don Boneyard was a
* GottaCatchEmAll
* GreenHillZone: Greenhorn Plains in the first game, Treasure Lake in ''Champions'', and Paradise Beach in ''Frontier''.
* HarmlessFreezing: Frigisaur freezes you and Rosie completely after your first fight with it. But you're still OK.
* HarmlessVillain: The Barebones Brigade aren't exactly what you'd call menacing at first. Their eeeeevil plans involve such plots as "Pampering girls so they forget to participate in a tournament," and "Fill the hot springs up with powdered gelatin so people get stuck and can't participate."
* MindScrew: What
**
* HeelFaceTurn: [[spoiler: The BB Bandits - well, the TerribleTrio team, anyway; the {{Mooks}} don't seem to turn.]]
** [[spoiler: The entire [=BareBones=] Brigade.]]
* HelloInsertNameHere: All games actually allow you to change your main character's name at any time! The first
* HopelessBossFight: [[spoiler: Round one against Frigisaurus.]]
* HotSpringsEpisode: In the second game, there's a hot spring-themed dig site called Hot Spring Heights. Not surprisingly, most of the plot in that
* HumansAreSpecial [[spoiler: Not only do they have the sci-fi standard "pluck," but the dinaurians are impressed by their capacity for both compassion and forgiveness.]]
* HypnotizeThePrincess: Comes into play late in Champions. [[spoiler: It's Todd.]]
* InconsistentDub: ''Frontier'' changes a couple names from previous games. The coin-like items vivosaurs are stored in were "Dino Medals" but are now "Dino Gears", and Becklespinax's vivosaur name goes from "Spinax" to "Beckles" - of course, the first two games identified it as an Altispinax, and its Japanese name was "Altis", which would explain the change.
* InfinityPlusOneSword: T-Rex in the first game, natch. Also, [[KillerRabbit Compso, who debuffs the enemy's attack power by 90%]]. Even moreso are [[spoiler:Duna, Dynal, and Raptin]], with their ridiculous support effects, and crazy abilities.
* InterspeciesRomance: [[spoiler:Before the final battle with Guhnash, you can choose to bring
* ItemGet: Every last fossil is one of these in the first two games. The hero bends over, picks up the rock, faces the camera and thrusts it above his/her head triumphantly. The fanfare plays, and a blurb appears stating the nature of the rock found. It's a thing of beauty.
* JokeCharacter: In the first game, Anato. Its expression can only be described as "derpy," and even the ''game'' goes out of its way to point out how stupid it looks. It's a vivosaur who tries to sell itself based ''solely on'' the fact that it looks ridiculous. From a gameplay perspective, it also tries to lay claim to having a 100% effective [[StandardStatusEffects Confusion skill]], but said skill also does no damage and costs ''240 FP.'' Similar skills on other vivosaurs not only do damage, they also cost ''over 100 FP less.''
** LethalJokeCharacter in ''Champions '' It gets an [[TookALevelInBadass upgrade]] to gold confusion which means that the vivosaur inflicted has a chance of attacking itself or any of its allies. In addition its super evolver form Papygon, is widely accepted as one of the best in the game.[[note]]However, it's worth nothing that Papygon's PaletteSwap brother Teffla is much more the fan favorite of the two, and can deal heavier direct damage.[[/note]]
* JustifiedTrope: The game goes out of their way to emphasize that Dinosaurs didn't really have superpowers, and a great deal of the Vivosaurs aren't even really revived from Dinosaurs, per se, but are rather other forms of prehistoric life.
** Driven home in ''Frontier'', where [[spoiler:you travel back in time and encounter ''real'' dinosaurs. Unlike vivosaurs, dinosaurs are all Neutral-type, [[RealIsBrown have brown skin]], and are identified by their full names (like "Triceratops" instead of "Tricera")]].
* KatanasAreJustBetter: Mihu, a ceratopsian found in Japan, has ''katanas for horns.''
* KidHero: The main characters.
* KingIncognito: During ''Champions'', you're tasked with finding the Princess of Nomadistan, who has quietly entered the tournament; and are shown a picture of a girl and her dog that you ran into earlier. [[spoiler:The Princess turns out to be ''the dog''; the girl's her retainer. Both the fact that this would have been good to know earlier and the absurdity of [[CaligulasHorse appointing dogs as royalty]] is lampshaded.]]
* LampshadeHanging: The {{Combat Commentator}}s sometimes do this.
-->'''P.A. Leon''': I was wondering, why do we talk through every fight?
-->'''Slate Johnson''': I'm wondering how we can ''see'' every fight happening!
-->'''P.A. Leon''': Excellent point, Slate.
* LargeHamAnnouncer: All the announcers, but special mention must be given to Trip Cera. A couple choice quotes:
-->Not as excited as me! BOOYAH, GRANDMA!
-->'''Trip:''' Just like my
'''Ty:''' You're not married, Trip.\\
'''Trip:''' I'M SO LONELY!
-->There is a literal river of sweat running over my laptop! Seriously, I may electrocute myself before the day is over!
* LastLousyPoint: The five elemental [[spoiler:baby birds]] in the first game, who can only be obtained by getting every other vivosaur in the game and then ''maxing their levels.'' Yikes! They used to be downloadable from the Nintendo Channel on the Wii, but have since disappeared, as the aforementioned channel is no longer supported.
** More generally, you may find yourself gritting your teeth over the last lousy point of every single fossil you can clean. Properly-cleaned fossils are worth a ton of experience points, way more than you can reasonably give any specific vivosaur through combat. It's not ''mandatory'' to get everything perfect, but for perfectionists...
* LeakedExperience: Three vivosaurs participate in each fight, but all five that you're carrying (including defeated ones) get the experience. Averted in ''Frontier'', where all vivosaurs are available to use at all times but only the one used in battle gets experience.
* LizardFolk: In the second half of the game [[spoiler:a race of dromaeosauridae that evolved into hyper intelligent humanoids become the main antagonists after the BB Bandits are defeated. They want to KillAllHumans, naturally.]]
* [[GratuitousForeignLanguage Gratuitous Foreign]] {{Malaproper}}: Nick Nack does this. Airy cat oh! Donkey shine!
* MaskedLuchador: There seems to be a thriving masked-battler community, since each game involves some:
** Saurhead in the first game, who wears [[RefugeInAudacity no less than]] ''[[RefugeInAudacity thirty]]'' full-head dinosaur masks at any given time. [[TheUnreveal Can't risk]] [[DramaticUnmask being unmasked]], after all.
** Pauleen from ''Champions'' also wears a mask. [[spoiler: She wears it because it's shy, and it helps her feel more confident--but the mask is enchanted to bestow confidence, and ''evil,'' so it takes over the wearer's body in a rather literal case of BecomingTheMask.]]
** In ''Frontier'', it's Dino Gigante. You have to find his
* MetalDetectorPuzzle: This is your entire means of finding {{Mons}}--you have sonar and need to search the ground for stuff.
* MisterMuffykins: Joannie and Madame Pooch in ''Champions''. [[spoiler:Joannie's pampering is justified as Madame Pooch is legitimately royalty as "Princess Pooch"; see KingIncognito above.]]
* {{Mon}}: It's a dinosaur-collecting and battling game.
* MythologyGag: Many visual details of the Vivosaurs are based on facts about their dinos:
** Some are [[PunnyName name puns]] (Krona is covered in clock-like Roman numerals, and Coatlus was made to look like its namesake, Quetzalcoatl.)
** Others are based on the location of their discovery (U-Raptor (''Utahraptor'') has feathers that look like a Native American headdress, Carchar has Egyptian details, Chinese Shanshan is designed to look like a ChineseGirl crossed with an Asian dragon.)
*** The
** And more have their own fun facts (M-Raptor was exceptionally bird-like and so resembles a parrot; Megalo was one of the first discoveries ever, so according to
* {{Nerf}}: Support effects were nerfed quite heavily in ''Champions.'' In the first game, vivosaurs had their full support effects regardless of their level, making things like [[GameBreaker Compso]] incredibly dangerous. In the sequel, support effects grow when your levels do... meaning the game gives you a Compso in the ''very beginning of the game,'' and feels no remorse.
** But there's also an inversion, as some game mechanics got stronger in the transition from the original game to ''Champions''. In the original game, only the vivosaur in the Attack Zone could have a negative status effect put on them, and switching zones got rid of status effects. This made attacks whose only purpose was to cause a status effect somewhat weak, but this hurt poison attacks especially--you would need to use a chain of either knockback or [[StandardStatusEffect excite]] skills to get a poison attack to work, and the extra damage frequently wasn't that spectacular. In the sequel, however, all zones can have status effects and rotating doesn't get rid of them, meaning the extra damage from poison is more likely to stick around.
** A similar inversion applies to counterattacks. In the first game, counterattacks only had a 40% chance of working, making them a rather weak and luck-based strategy. In the sequel, counterattacks were upped to a 70% success rate, making them far more dangerous.
* NinjaPirateZombieRobot: The Dinomatons are robot dinosaurs, and the aforementioned Breme is a vampire dinosaur.
** And the sequel brings us skeleton [[spoiler:and zombie]] dinosaurs.
* NoPlansNoPrototypeNoBackup: A rare living example in [[OlympusMons Frigi(saur) and Igno(saur)]]. As soon as you defeat the former, the latter vanishes as well due to them cancelling each other's powers out. Still, it removes a god-like power from your party to prevent a Game Breaker. [[spoiler:Until you can win them from post-game {{Bonus Boss}}es, anyway.]]
* NothingIsScarier: When [[spoiler: the BB Bandits take over Vivosaur Island]], no music plays even in friendly areas.
* NotQuiteBackToNormal: Poor Rosie. The other girl's ending shows she hasn't fully thrown off the effects of the Digadig charm ''or'' the [[spoiler: deevolution ray]].
* OddNameOut: Three of Holt's V-Raptors in the mini-manga are Odin, Thor, and Steve.
* OlympusMons: Frigisaur and Ignosaur.
* OneWingedAngel: [[spoiler:The main villains of both ''Champions'' and ''Frontier'' turn themselves into monstrous dino-beasts for the final battle.]]
* OverlyLongName: Avoided. Many dinos have these, but their Vivosaur counterparts have them cut short.
* PaletteSwap: In ''Frontier,'' certain dinos have variants (based off famous specimens) that are colored differently. They sometimes differ in elements and skills, too--Hypsi comes in Air, Water, and Fire versions.
* {{Panspermia}}: Subverted. [[spoiler: The Dinaurians seeded the planet with life, but it was Earth's own species that survived instead.]]
* PeninsulaOfPowerLeveling: There's a bonus boss post-game that most people have trouble with. However, with the right team (ex. Seismo, Hoplo, and Compso) you can consistently defeat said bonus boss over and over again in about 6 turns each time by abusing a team skill and how long-range attacks work, making leveling up all your vivosaurs to rank 12 easy.
** In the second game, there's the three Barebones Brigade officials. They use teams made up entirely of Boneysaurs; although Boneys have powerful support effects, they're also extreme {{Glass Cannon}}s, meaning vivosaurs several levels lower of them can take them out with some decent planning. They grant a full 30 points (in a game where level-ups come every 50 points) on defeat, making them great for grinding.
** Also in the second game, after you beat the game, you can talk to Prof. Scatterly to "reenact" the final battle with Zongazonga. By thee end of the game your vivosaurs will probably be strong enough to take him out no problem, and he gives you 50 points, so any dinosaurs can be leveled up just
* PlanetEater: [[spoiler:Guhnash.]]
* PlayableEpilogue: A whole crop of stuff opens up after you beat the game. UnusableEnemyEquipment becomes [[InfinityPlusOneSword usable]], new areas open up, everyone becomes a BonusBoss, you get ''both'' the OlympusMons...
* PhlebotinumKilledTheDinosaurs: [[spoiler:Inverted; Dinosaurs were introduced on Earth by the Dinaurians.]]
* PopQuiz: The
** In ''Champions'' there's a roaming quiz show sidequest run by Tess Score.
* PowerTrio: Hunter, Rosie, and Holt become one of these in the mini-manga. In ''Champions'', it's the player, Todd, and Pauleen; with Rupert as SixthRanger.
* PowerupLetdown: Getting the upgrade for Dark Fossils lets you find red fossils, which you could already find anyway, jewels, which you could find anyway, and dino droppings, which you ''couldn't''. Also, dark fossils have an outer shell that can only be broken with a hammer. If there's a speck of outer shell covering that perfect red fossil, expect to lose some points smashing it.
** Yes, but you don't get challenged for finding Dark Fossils in the original. Meaning you don't have to fight tooth-and-nail for every [[VendorTrash Emerald and Diamond]] that you dig up. In addition, the best jewels are available in Dark Fossils, meaning you can now get those all-important case, sonar, and cleaning tool upgrades without running around swinging a pickaxe like
* PunnyName / MeaningfulName: Where to start? We've got name changer Ty Tull, advice giver Tipper, Sam Inaro who teaches seminars... And these are just from the ''first'' game.
** Gets lampshaded:
--->'''Rosie:''' Oh, I can't believe I didn't make the connection before... Knickknacks... ''Nick Nack''. Ugh. Waa ha ha! To think we're out looking for knickknacks for a guy named Nick Nack... It's like some awful joke!
** NeverHeardThatOneBefore: Even the [=NPC=]s warn you that "We've heard all the jokes" about Bea Ginner (who teaches novices).
* PurelyAestheticGender: Your gender has no effect on the plot in ''Champions'' or ''Frontier''.
* QuintessentialBritishGentleman: In ''Champions,'' both Professor Scatterly and Rupert show signs of it. Rupert is more of a nascent one, though he certainly shows signs of Britishness.
* RandomlyDrops: Some fossils are ''much'' rarer than others, and you'll have to go back and forth between the main town and the area where they're found if you want to complete your fossil collection. Averted in ''Frontier'', where fossils for a specific vivosaur can be counted on to show up near each other and always in the same areas; plus they're identified on sight and you no longer need to go back to town to excavate them.
* TheReptilians: [[spoiler:The dinaurians in the original
* RibcageRidge: Treasure Lake in the second game has a gigantic skull of
** Could also be a parody DesertSkull. Food for thought.
* RichBitch: Bling sisters Ruby and Sapphire, aka "the Posh Pair", in ''Frontier'''s postgame; who consider the player a commoner and recruit him/her in a few schemes to get rare jewels. Averted with [[spoiler:Penny]], who is only revealed to come from a rich family in the postgame and is SpoiledSweet.
* RichIdiotWithNoDayJob: A great deal of the Fossil Fighters are implied to be this.
* RoadApples: Yes, you can dig up fossilized dino dung. Nick Nack and John Guano are the only ones who want it for whatever reason (the shop will ''accept'' it, but will pay next to nothing).
* RobotBuddy: [=KL-33N=], the cleaning robot. Rupert has a prototype digging robot called [=Di66-R=]. In ''Frontier'', the Bone Buggies have an onboard AI called [=VR-00M=] (whose picture looks like
* RoseHairedSweetie: Nate from ''Frontier'' is a RareMaleExample, in {{Adorkable}} flavor.
* RuleOfCool: Dinosaurs battling it out is cool enough, but the sequels give them even more powerful, awesome-looking forms.
* RunningGag: In ''Champions'', every time [[spoiler: someone's skull jumps into your pocket]], it
* SamusIsAGirl: In ''Frontier,'' it's revealed that the MascotMook T-Rex--the big red, yellow, and black one that appears on the box art of every game--is specifically a female version (named [[GeniusBonus Sue]]). The male version is a [[RealMenWearPink purple]] variant named [[FluffyTheTerrible Stan.]]
* SaveScumming: If you save before you talk to the cleaning robot, you can reload the save until he gives satisfactory results. No longer the case in ''Frontier'', where you do all the cleaning out in the field where you ''can't'' save.
* SchmuckBait: The Secret Tunnels of the Mole Brothers contain several treasure chests, but a nearby plaque warns you that "greed is its own setback." Opening them keeps you from advancing in the maze. It's later confirmed that opening these chests is why Lemo and O'Mel got separated in the first place.
* SetBonus: Putting three vivosaurs with something in common on the field can unlock a special attack for each.
* ShoutOut:
** One poor nameless NPC is tasked with standing guard over a warehouse, and nothing else. Keep talking to him, and he'll eventually reveal the "deep, philosophical" thoughts he's been having: "'''What is a man''''s life worth? Nothing but guarding '''a miserable pile of secrets?'''"
** The cleaning robots resemble Japanese emoticons.
** A cinematic from the
** In ''Champions'', one
-->Fast cars are exciting, right? Maybe we could [[Anime/YuGiOh5Ds have people battle while driving around a racetrack]]! [[TakeThat No, you're right. That's a dumb idea.]]
** Stella, Staff leader of Ribular Island informs the Hero(ine) that
** ''Champions'' also features a fisherman who became lost at sea. His name is [[Literature/RobinsonCrusoe Robinson,]] and he also talks to [[Film/CastAway a ball, whom he calls his best friend]].
** When its programming goes haywire, Rupert's robot says things such as "[[VideoGame/TheLegendOfZelda I AM ERROR.]]" and "[[Videogame/ProWrestling A WINNER IS YOU.]]"
** In ''Frontier'', if you talk to a shopkeeper about cleaning a daily random fossil, they'll say [[VideoGame/TheLegendOfZelda "It's a secret to everybody."]] During a tournament during one of the postgame quests, one character will also reference [[UsefulNotes/NintendoEntertainmentSystem "playing with power"]].
*
* SignificantAnagram: The Mole Brothers' names are Lemo and O'Mel. Hm. I wonder what ''those'' [[SarcasmMode are anagrams of]]?
* SinisterSchnoz: Snivels, no question.
* SkullForAHead: Don Boneyard [[spoiler:and anyone else who
* NoEnding: Two out
* SlasherSmile: [[spoiler: Guhweep]] has one, but it's
* ObstructiveBureaucrat: In "Before the Law" or "Vor dem Gesetz", the doorkeeper acts as the literal
* SlippySlideyIceWorld: The Glacier dig site from the
* OneLetterName: K. in ''The Castle'' and Josef K in ''The Trial''.
* OntologicalMystery: ''The Trial'' is a cynical, bureaucratic example.
* OurMonstersAreWeird - Several
** All of
* TheSlowPath:
** In the first game, [[spoiler:Dr. Diggins after he's sent back to the Jurassic. Thank goodness he manages to find the Stone Sleep device!]]
** Also seen in ''Frontier''. [[spoiler:While time-traveling, your vivosaur partner gets left behind in the late Cretaceous in order to make sure you get home safely. Eventually, you realize that a fossilized Dino Gear-like artifact you'd found earlier in the game really ''is'' your partner's Dino Gear.]]
* StanceSystem: Used in ''Frontier''. While previous games had tactical systems based on a vivosaur's placement on the field, ''Frontier'' instead focuses on how your vivosaur is standing: straight ahead, rearing up, ducking down, or turned around and baring its tail. Each vivosaur has a different set of strong and weak stances, and different attacks can change your or your opponents' stances (though a vivosaur's stance is always reset when it takes its turn).
* StarterMon: Each game in the series does it differently:
** ''Fossil Fighters:'' You start the game with a Spinax who, while common, is decently powerful. However, at the game start, you also get a free bonus fossil of a
** ''Champions:'' Joe Wildwest lets you pick between dinos of the four basic elements, which are hard to get until late game. All can [[MagikarpPower Super Evolve.]] Plus, boys get a T-rex and girls get a Tricera.
** ''Frontier:'' You befriend Chomp, the most traditionally mons-like dino in the series. He's no recognizable dinosaur species, he's quite powerful, and he evolves at certain points in the game. Plus, he's your TeamPet and your close friend.
* StatGrinding: A mild case in the first game; most stat gains are at levelups but vivosaurs also gain HP gradually between levels. ''Champions'' removes this.
* StockDinosaurs: But also includes any new prehistoric mammals and dinosaurs discovered during the creation of the game.
** The sequel appears to be continuing this, including many other prehistoric creatures from before and after the age of dinosaurs.
* StopHavingFunGuys: [[{{In-Universe}} Rupert]] in ''Champions''. After witnessing Todd take his loss to you in stride, he's baffled as to why Todd's not upset about losing. Though it turns out it's less arrogance that his way is the right one and more ignorance that there are other ways in the first place.
** Turns out it comes from his dad, who tried to drive the "have fun" mentality out of him and wanted him to bail out when facing even a 50% chance of failure. [[spoiler:This game being high on the idealistic end of the scale, this was just dad trying to protect Rupert from the pain of losing. [[ManipulativeBastard Or so he says...]]]]
* StrangelyEffectiveDisguise: [[spoiler: Somehow, the majority of the Dinaurians are fooled by yours and Dr. Diggins' masks.]]
** See also ''Champions'', where the hero(ine) receives a Ty Ranno mask for disguise purposes. No other mask keeps [=NPC=]s from immediately knowing who he/she is; how is this mask different?
* SummonBiggerFish: Calling up Ignosaur to fight Frigisaur.
* TakeThat: After completing the main quest and all the sidequests of ''Frontier'', you'll take a group photo with the main cast; to which Dahlia comments "And it's a PICTURE, got it? Not a selfie. That word is so overused these days."
*
* SchizoTech: The 1994 film version of ''The Castle'' is set in a ClockPunk setting, with medieval architecture, early automobiles, and phones.
* ShaggyDogStory: [[ShootTheShaggyDog The dark kind.
*
*
* TheTetrisEffect: Expect to see fossils in various states of cleaning every time you close your eyes.
* TyrannosaurusRex: The game's mascot, and somewhat of the InfinityPlusOneSword. One NPC ensures the player near the end of the game that
* TheUnintelligible: Rex of the BB Bandits.
** EloquentInMyNativeTongue: [[spoiler:His true speech patterns tend toward SesquipedalianLoquaciousness. Those kooky English bulldogs...]]
*
* TortureTechnician: The Officer from "In the Penal Colony" who uses an execution device with needles to mark the crime the person is being executed for (the person dies eventually after several hours of pain from either shock or blood loss)
* UnreliableNarrator: For example in the short story ''The Judgement'', where at
* UnusableEnemyEquipment: Boy, the Dinatomatons sure are cool, aren't they? Who wouldn't want a
* VendorTrash: Digging up and cleaning gemstones is the only way to make money. The better the gem, the more money.
* VerbalTic: The Digadigs, including Pauleen in ''Champions''. Rosie [[GotMeDoingIt picks it up]] when she is mystically made part of the tribe, and she is very ''diga-''displeased.
* VideoGameCrueltyPotential: Roise asks "you probably hate me now, don't you?". You actually
* UselessProtagonist: Many of his works have protagonists who either willingly or unwillingly have no active role in how the stories progress.
* WeirdnessCensor: Apart from the protagonists, very few people in his stories notice or care
** In ''Frontier,'' when
* XMeetsY: ''Franchise/JurassicPark'' meets {{Mon}}s. (''Magazine/NintendoPower'' said "meets ''Franchise/{{Pokemon}}''", but "meets ''VideoGame/{{Spectrobes}}''" is much more apt.)
* WeCannotGoOnWithoutYou: In the
*
*
*
* WombLevel: The Bonehemoth in ''Champions.''
* WordSaladTitle: In ''Champions,'' all the songs in the sound test have silly and non-indicative names, like "Sleepy Robin," "Chocolate Soiree," or "Raspberry Bell."
* YouGottaHaveBlueHair: Rosie's pink hair could be passed off as an [[LiteraryAgentHypothesis artistic rendtion]] of a strawberry blonde, but there's ''really'' no explaining why Dr. Diggins' hair is ''green.''
** Siamo actually has blue hair, despite being a dinosaur.
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Trivia
Deleted line(s) 50 (click to see context) :
* OutOfOrder: ''The Trial'' contains a lot of self-contained chapters, and it is unclear in what order Kafka intended them to be read.
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----
!! Appearences in popular culture:
* He appears in a historical / flashback episode of ''Series/NorthernExposure,'' played by the series' star Rob Morrow. Yes, the show set entirely in Alaska.
* In ''Film/TheProducers,'' while looking for the worst play ever written, Max reads the first line from ''Literature/TheMetamorphosis,'' and rejects it as being too good.
* Creator/RobertCrumb made an analytical comic book / book about Kafka's life.
* The young Indiana Jones meets him in ''Series/YoungIndianaJones."
* Music/FrankZappa advises buyers of his album ''Music/WereOnlyInItForTheMoney'' to read Kafka's "In the Penal Colony" before listening to the last track.
* The "Director's Cut" episode of ''WesternAnimation/HomeMovies'' features a plotline where teenage metalhead Duane attempts to persuade Brendon to film his RockOpera of [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8uaaF83eVig Kafka's ''Metamorphosis,'']] which Brendon is unwilling to do, preferring to direct a film called ''Louis, Louis'' depicting a fictional encounter between Louis Pasteur and Louis Braille.
-->"A, rock opera, based on Franz Kafka's ''Metamorphosis''... I don't think so."
-->[[PunctuatedForEmphasis "HE! IS! FRANZ! KAF! KA! FRANZ-KAF-KA!"]]
* ''Website/TheOnion'' [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gEyFH-a-XoQ ran a video]] about how Prague's Franz Kafka International airport is the most alienating, dehumanizing airport in the world.
* There's a ShoutOut to ''In the Penal Colony'' in ''[[Literature/BookOfTheNewSun The Shadow of the Torturer]]'' where the head torturer shows a prisoner an apparatus designed to carve slogans into someone's flesh and mentions that it isn't working properly. [[spoiler: In the original story, there is such an apparatus, which malfunctions and carves a slogan into the ''guard's'' flesh.]]
* He was played by Creator/DanielDayLewis in Creator/AlanBennett's 1986 BBC TV drama ''The Insurance Man''.
* Kafka himself is the protagonist of Creator/StevenSoderbergh's 1991 film ''Kafka'', where he's played by Creator/JeremyIrons.
* In ''ComicBook/JohnnyTheHomicidalManiac,'' Johnny's cockroaches (although he believes them all to be one constantly regenerating cockroach) are named "Mr. Samsa," after the character from ''Literature/TheMetamorphosis.''
* The works of Kafka are a major influence on ''Manga/TokyoGhoul'' and its sequel, ''Tokyo Ghoul:Re.'' Near the beginning of the series, Kaneki compares his transformation into a HalfHumanHybrid to ''Literature/TheMetamorphosis.'' It is also mentioned that oft-mentioned novelist Sen Takatsuki titled her first work ''Dear Kafka,'' hinting that she was influenced by his work. In the sequel, Kafka's short story ''A Crossbreed'' is discussed briefly and seems to be a metaphor for the relationship between HalfHumanHybrid Sasaki and his ParentalSubstitute, Arima.
* The Scottish post-punk band Josef K were named after the main character of ''The Trial,'' ''The Castle,'' and ''A Dream.''
* Israeli skit show ''The Jews Are Coming,'' satirizing Jewish / Israeli history and lore, featured [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ms8OlGw38A8 a skit]] in which the moribund Kafka asks Max Brod to burn all of his writings, but keeps asking him to spare more and more works, to the point he wants to keep the empty pizza box in his room. [[spoiler: Finally, Brod, who got so worked up about burning ''something,'' randomly burns a piece of paper he finds... Which turns out to be [[DeathByIrony Kafka's medication prescription]] for his [[IncurableCoughOfDeath tuberculosis]]. [[CrossesTheLineTwice Kafka dies that day]].]]
* The Samsa from ''TabletopGame/WerewolfTheApocalypse'', artificially-created giant shapeshifting cockroaches, are named for the main character of "Metamorphosis".
* Another tabletop game, ''TabletopGame/EclipsePhase'', has samsas, semi-robotic insect bodies primarily used for combat. The default is cockroach-like.
* Quite a bit of ''VideoGame/ResidentEvilRevelations2'' takes ques from Kafka. The general plot of the game is about people trapped in an oppressive world where all the mean-spirited terrors are never explained while being watched over by an uncaring watcher. The main antagonist is a noted fan of Kafka and bases her plans off his works, each level is named after one of his works, and each level is proceeded by a quote from Kafka.
!! Appearences in popular culture:
* He appears in a historical / flashback episode of ''Series/NorthernExposure,'' played by the series' star Rob Morrow. Yes, the show set entirely in Alaska.
* In ''Film/TheProducers,'' while looking for the worst play ever written, Max reads the first line from ''Literature/TheMetamorphosis,'' and rejects it as being too good.
* Creator/RobertCrumb made an analytical comic book / book about Kafka's life.
* The young Indiana Jones meets him in ''Series/YoungIndianaJones."
* Music/FrankZappa advises buyers of his album ''Music/WereOnlyInItForTheMoney'' to read Kafka's "In the Penal Colony" before listening to the last track.
* The "Director's Cut" episode of ''WesternAnimation/HomeMovies'' features a plotline where teenage metalhead Duane attempts to persuade Brendon to film his RockOpera of [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8uaaF83eVig Kafka's ''Metamorphosis,'']] which Brendon is unwilling to do, preferring to direct a film called ''Louis, Louis'' depicting a fictional encounter between Louis Pasteur and Louis Braille.
-->"A, rock opera, based on Franz Kafka's ''Metamorphosis''... I don't think so."
-->[[PunctuatedForEmphasis "HE! IS! FRANZ! KAF! KA! FRANZ-KAF-KA!"]]
* ''Website/TheOnion'' [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gEyFH-a-XoQ ran a video]] about how Prague's Franz Kafka International airport is the most alienating, dehumanizing airport in the world.
* There's a ShoutOut to ''In the Penal Colony'' in ''[[Literature/BookOfTheNewSun The Shadow of the Torturer]]'' where the head torturer shows a prisoner an apparatus designed to carve slogans into someone's flesh and mentions that it isn't working properly. [[spoiler: In the original story, there is such an apparatus, which malfunctions and carves a slogan into the ''guard's'' flesh.]]
* He was played by Creator/DanielDayLewis in Creator/AlanBennett's 1986 BBC TV drama ''The Insurance Man''.
* Kafka himself is the protagonist of Creator/StevenSoderbergh's 1991 film ''Kafka'', where he's played by Creator/JeremyIrons.
* In ''ComicBook/JohnnyTheHomicidalManiac,'' Johnny's cockroaches (although he believes them all to be one constantly regenerating cockroach) are named "Mr. Samsa," after the character from ''Literature/TheMetamorphosis.''
* The works of Kafka are a major influence on ''Manga/TokyoGhoul'' and its sequel, ''Tokyo Ghoul:Re.'' Near the beginning of the series, Kaneki compares his transformation into a HalfHumanHybrid to ''Literature/TheMetamorphosis.'' It is also mentioned that oft-mentioned novelist Sen Takatsuki titled her first work ''Dear Kafka,'' hinting that she was influenced by his work. In the sequel, Kafka's short story ''A Crossbreed'' is discussed briefly and seems to be a metaphor for the relationship between HalfHumanHybrid Sasaki and his ParentalSubstitute, Arima.
* The Scottish post-punk band Josef K were named after the main character of ''The Trial,'' ''The Castle,'' and ''A Dream.''
* Israeli skit show ''The Jews Are Coming,'' satirizing Jewish / Israeli history and lore, featured [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ms8OlGw38A8 a skit]] in which the moribund Kafka asks Max Brod to burn all of his writings, but keeps asking him to spare more and more works, to the point he wants to keep the empty pizza box in his room. [[spoiler: Finally, Brod, who got so worked up about burning ''something,'' randomly burns a piece of paper he finds... Which turns out to be [[DeathByIrony Kafka's medication prescription]] for his [[IncurableCoughOfDeath tuberculosis]]. [[CrossesTheLineTwice Kafka dies that day]].]]
* The Samsa from ''TabletopGame/WerewolfTheApocalypse'', artificially-created giant shapeshifting cockroaches, are named for the main character of "Metamorphosis".
* Another tabletop game, ''TabletopGame/EclipsePhase'', has samsas, semi-robotic insect bodies primarily used for combat. The default is cockroach-like.
* Quite a bit of ''VideoGame/ResidentEvilRevelations2'' takes ques from Kafka. The general plot of the game is about people trapped in an oppressive world where all the mean-spirited terrors are never explained while being watched over by an uncaring watcher. The main antagonist is a noted fan of Kafka and bases her plans off his works, each level is named after one of his works, and each level is proceeded by a quote from Kafka.
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Changed line(s) 10 (click to see context) from:
!!This author's work includes examples of:
to:
* ''Literature/TheMetamorphosis''
!!Other works by Franz Kafka include examples of:
Deleted line(s) 39 (click to see context) :
* {{Metamorphosis}}: Literature/TheMetamorphosis, of course.
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* Another tabletop game, ''TabletopGame/EclipsePhase'', has samsas, semi-robotic insect bodies primarily used for combat. The default is cockroach-like.
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* BiographyAClef: Creator/StevenSoderbergh's film ''Kafka'' uses the author's fiction as a key to tell his life story.
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* NoEnding: His novels.
to:
* NoEnding: His novels.Two out of his three novels have no ending. ''The Trial'' does have an ending, but it's known that Kafka hadn't finished work on it when he died.
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* HopeSpot: Josef K in ''The Trial'' has one, on the last page of the book, when he sees a window open and a person leans out and stretches out his/her arms.
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* CantGetAwayWithNuthin: He was a Trope Codifier. One of the most revealing exchanges in all his work is towards the end of ''The Trial'', when Josef K goes to the cathedral and talks to a priest:
-->'But I'm not guilty,' said K. 'It's a mistake. How can a person be guilty at all? Surely we are all human beings here, one like the other.'\\
'That is right,' said the priest, 'but that is the way the guilty are wont to talk.'
-->'But I'm not guilty,' said K. 'It's a mistake. How can a person be guilty at all? Surely we are all human beings here, one like the other.'\\
'That is right,' said the priest, 'but that is the way the guilty are wont to talk.'
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* OneLetterName: K. in ''The Castle'' and Joseph K. in ''The Trial''.
to:
* OneLetterName: K. in ''The Castle'' and Joseph K. Josef K in ''The Trial''.
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* WrongGenreSavvy: Josef K in ''The Trial'' thinks he's a plucky everyman fighting against injustice. He's very, very wrong.
to:
* WrongGenreSavvy: Josef K in ''The Trial'' thinks he's a plucky everyman fighting against injustice. He's very, very wrong. However -- and this is the characteristically Kafkaesque twist -- it's never clear ''why'' he's wrong.
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** Karl Rossman, protagonist of ''Amerika'', unwillingly gets the family maid pregnant, gets sent off to America by his father without any practical skills he could make a decent living with, finds a long-lost uncle, only to be thrown out after he visits an acquaintance against his uncle's will, gets an alright job as a lift boy, is dismissed due to the Head Porter who has it in for Karl because he does't greet the Porter politely and regularly, falls in with rogues (not the lovable kind), etc.
to:
** Karl Rossman, protagonist of ''Amerika'', unwillingly gets the family maid pregnant, gets sent off to America by his father without any practical skills he could make a decent living with, finds a long-lost uncle, only to be thrown out after he visits an acquaintance against his uncle's will, gets an alright job as a lift boy, is dismissed due to the Head Porter who has it in for Karl because he does't greet the Porter politely and regularly, falls in with rogues (not the lovable kind), etc. [[spoiler: It's averted in the end, when Karl is accepted into the rather utopian Theatre of Oklahoma.]]
Changed line(s) 24 (click to see context) from:
* {{Determinator}}: K in ''The Castle''. {{Deconstructed}}: all his efforts are in vain. He would be happier if he just gave up.
to:
* {{Determinator}}: K in ''The Castle''. {{Deconstructed}}: all his efforts are seemingly in vain. He would be might have been happier if he just gave up.up, although the book ends in mid-sentence and we only have hints as to how it would probably have ended.
Changed line(s) 26 (click to see context) from:
* DownerEnding: The only books that do not have one are the books Kafka never finished.
to:
* DownerEnding: The only books that do not have one are the books Kafka never finished.Much of his work.
Added DiffLines:
** ''The Trial'' contains a sentence in its first page which, in that it represents Kafka's uniquely elusive syntax, is a Mind Screw in itself. Josef K wakes up to find himself under arrest. He says to the man who's arresting him, "Anna is supposed to bring me my breakfast," referring to his landlady's daughter. The man says to somebody just outside the room, "He wants Anna to bring him his breakfast." The next sentence goes like this, in the original German: ''Ein kleines Gelächter im Nebenzimmer folgte, es war nach dem Klang nicht sicher, ob nicht mehrere Personen daran beteiligt waren.'' The most accurate published translation of this sentence's pileup of multiple negatives goes like this: "There was a brief burst of laughter from the next room, but it was not clear from the sound whether there might not be more than one person there." Good luck figuring that out.
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This trope is not in effect because the book in question demonstrates that there are major links between Kafka's experience as a senior official in a worker's accident insurance institute, and his fictional work. It's not just some 'Fandom' project but a well-documented book by a trio of serious academics
Deleted line(s) 48 (click to see context) :
** His Fandom, however, managed to take this to a whole new level by [[http://press.princeton.edu/titles/8791.html publishing the various insurance claim reports Kafka wrote for his day job as a lawyer]] (particularly noteworthy works include "Fixed-Rate Insurance Premiums for Small Farms Using Machinery" and "Accident Prevention in Quarries") and interpreting them in this vein. Although knowing that Kafka used to work in law probably puts ''TheTrial'' into [[WriteWhatYouKnow a new light]].
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Changed line(s) 71 (click to see context) from:
* Kafka himself is the protagonist of Creator/StevenSoderbergh's 1991 film ''Kafka.''
to:
* He was played by Creator/DanielDayLewis in Creator/AlanBennett's 1986 BBC TV drama ''The Insurance Man''.
* Kafka himself is the protagonist of Creator/StevenSoderbergh's 1991 film''Kafka.''''Kafka'', where he's played by Creator/JeremyIrons.
* Kafka himself is the protagonist of Creator/StevenSoderbergh's 1991 film
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Changed line(s) 33,36 (click to see context) from:
* MagicRealism
* {{Metamorphosis}}
* MindScrew
* MundaneFantastic
* {{Metamorphosis}}
* MindScrew
* MundaneFantastic
to:
* MagicRealism
MagicRealism: For example, strange, unexplained transformations.
*{{Metamorphosis}}
{{Metamorphosis}}: Literature/TheMetamorphosis, of course.
*MindScrew
MindScrew: What is ''really'' his works' meaning?
*MundaneFantasticMundaneFantastic: The fantastic is usually seen as completely mundane by almost everyone who is not the protagonist.
*
*
*
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Changed line(s) 19 (click to see context) from:
** Karl Rossman, protagonist of ''Amerika'', unwillingly gets the family maid pregnant, gets sent off to America by his father without any practical skills he could make a decent living with, finds a long-lost uncle, only to be thrown out after he visits an acquaintance against his uncle's will, gets a alright job as a lift boy, is dismissed due to the Head Porter who has it in for Karl because he does't greet the Porter politely and regularly, falls in with rogues (not the lovable kind), etc.
to:
** Karl Rossman, protagonist of ''Amerika'', unwillingly gets the family maid pregnant, gets sent off to America by his father without any practical skills he could make a decent living with, finds a long-lost uncle, only to be thrown out after he visits an acquaintance against his uncle's will, gets a an alright job as a lift boy, is dismissed due to the Head Porter who has it in for Karl because he does't greet the Porter politely and regularly, falls in with rogues (not the lovable kind), etc.
Changed line(s) 37 (click to see context) from:
* NoEnding
to:
* NoEndingNoEnding: His novels.
Changed line(s) 45 (click to see context) from:
* ShaggyDogStory
to:
* ShaggyDogStoryShaggyDogStory: [[ShootTheShaggyDog The dark kind.]]
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* YankTheDogsChain
to:
* YankTheDogsChainYankTheDogsChain: Things may start to look bright. It never pays off.
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* Quite a bit of ''VideoGame/ResidentEvilRevelations2'' takes ques from Kafka. The general plot of the game is about people trapped in an oppressive world where all the mean-spirited terrors are never explained while being watched over by an uncaring watcher. The main antagonist is a noted fan of Kafka and bases her plans off his works, each level is named after one of his works, and each level is proceeded by a quote from Kafka.
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Changed line(s) 46,47 (click to see context) from:
* ShootTheShaggyDog - Almost everything by Kafka falls into this category.
* SliceOfLife - His collected writings contain one-page stories that don't really have a point to them, apart from [[SceneryPorn describing an interesting scene]] and [[SeinfeldianConversation observing things about it.]]
* SliceOfLife - His collected writings contain one-page stories that don't really have a point to them, apart from [[SceneryPorn describing an interesting scene]] and [[SeinfeldianConversation observing things about it.]]
to:
* ShootTheShaggyDog - ShootTheShaggyDog: Almost everything by Kafka falls into this category.
*SliceOfLife - SliceOfLife: His collected writings contain one-page stories that don't really have a point to them, apart from [[SceneryPorn describing an interesting scene]] and [[SeinfeldianConversation observing things about it.]]
*
Changed line(s) 49,55 (click to see context) from:
* SurrealHorror - His protagonists are often utterly (and sometimes fatally) bewildered by circumstances that would be funny if the consequences were less hideous.
* TortureTechnician - the Officer from "In the Penal Colony" who uses an execution device with needles to mark the crime the person is being executed for (the person dies eventually after several hours of pain of either shock or blood loss)
* UnreliableNarrator - For example in the short story ''The Judgement'', where at first the narrator seems to be pretty much identical with protagonist Georg Bendemann, bragging what a considerate person he is because he doesn't tell his unfortunate friend abroad what a happy, successful life he has. How nice and understandable, thinks the reader - until Bendemann's father calls him out and accuses him of being a liar so that we have to start questioning Bendemann's motives and if the friend abroad actually exists.
* UselessProtagonist - Many of his works have protagonists who either willingly or unwillingly have no active role in how the stories progress.
* WeirdnessCensor - Apart from the protagonists, very few people in his stories notice or care when something clearly out of the ordinary has happened.
* WhiteCollarWorker - Kafka himself and his characters provide an [[UnbuiltTrope early]] example of this trope.
* WrongGenreSavvy - Josef K in ''The Trial'' thinks he's a plucky everyman fighting against injustice. He's very, very wrong.
* TortureTechnician - the Officer from "In the Penal Colony" who uses an execution device with needles to mark the crime the person is being executed for (the person dies eventually after several hours of pain of either shock or blood loss)
* UnreliableNarrator - For example in the short story ''The Judgement'', where at first the narrator seems to be pretty much identical with protagonist Georg Bendemann, bragging what a considerate person he is because he doesn't tell his unfortunate friend abroad what a happy, successful life he has. How nice and understandable, thinks the reader - until Bendemann's father calls him out and accuses him of being a liar so that we have to start questioning Bendemann's motives and if the friend abroad actually exists.
* UselessProtagonist - Many of his works have protagonists who either willingly or unwillingly have no active role in how the stories progress.
* WeirdnessCensor - Apart from the protagonists, very few people in his stories notice or care when something clearly out of the ordinary has happened.
* WhiteCollarWorker - Kafka himself and his characters provide an [[UnbuiltTrope early]] example of this trope.
* WrongGenreSavvy - Josef K in ''The Trial'' thinks he's a plucky everyman fighting against injustice. He's very, very wrong.
to:
* SurrealHorror - SurrealHorror: His protagonists are often utterly (and sometimes fatally) bewildered by circumstances that would be funny if the consequences were less hideous.
*TortureTechnician - the TortureTechnician: The Officer from "In the Penal Colony" who uses an execution device with needles to mark the crime the person is being executed for (the person dies eventually after several hours of pain of from either shock or blood loss)
*UnreliableNarrator - UnreliableNarrator: For example in the short story ''The Judgement'', where at first the narrator seems to be pretty much identical with protagonist Georg Bendemann, bragging what a considerate person he is because he doesn't tell his unfortunate friend abroad what a happy, successful life he has. How nice and understandable, thinks the reader - until Bendemann's father calls him out and accuses him of being a liar liar, so that we have to start questioning Bendemann's motives and if the friend abroad actually exists.
*UselessProtagonist - UselessProtagonist: Many of his works have protagonists who either willingly or unwillingly have no active role in how the stories progress.
*WeirdnessCensor - WeirdnessCensor: Apart from the protagonists, very few people in his stories notice or care when something clearly out of the ordinary has happened.
*WhiteCollarWorker - WhiteCollarWorker: Kafka himself and his characters provide an [[UnbuiltTrope early]] example of this trope.
*WrongGenreSavvy - WrongGenreSavvy: Josef K in ''The Trial'' thinks he's a plucky everyman fighting against injustice. He's very, very wrong.
*
*
*
*
*
*
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* Israeli skit show ''The Jews Are Coming,'' satirising Jewish / Israeli history and lore, featured [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ms8OlGw38A8 a skit]] in which the moribund Kafka asks Max Brod to burn all of his writings, but keeps asking him to spare more and more works, to the point he wants to keep the empty pizza box in his room. [[spoiler: Finally, Brod, who got so worked up about burning ''something,'' randomly burns a piece of paper he finds... Which turns out to be [[DeathByIrony Kafka's medication prescription]] for his [[IncurableCoughOfDeath tuberculosis]]. [[CrossesTheLineTwice Kafka dies that day]].]]
* The Samsa from ''TabletopGame/WerewolfTheApocalypse'', artifically-created giant shapeshifting cockroaches, are named for the main character of "Metamorphosis".
* The Samsa from ''TabletopGame/WerewolfTheApocalypse'', artifically-created giant shapeshifting cockroaches, are named for the main character of "Metamorphosis".
to:
* Israeli skit show ''The Jews Are Coming,'' satirising satirizing Jewish / Israeli history and lore, featured [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ms8OlGw38A8 a skit]] in which the moribund Kafka asks Max Brod to burn all of his writings, but keeps asking him to spare more and more works, to the point he wants to keep the empty pizza box in his room. [[spoiler: Finally, Brod, who got so worked up about burning ''something,'' randomly burns a piece of paper he finds... Which turns out to be [[DeathByIrony Kafka's medication prescription]] for his [[IncurableCoughOfDeath tuberculosis]]. [[CrossesTheLineTwice Kafka dies that day]].]]
* The Samsa from ''TabletopGame/WerewolfTheApocalypse'',artifically-created artificially-created giant shapeshifting cockroaches, are named for the main character of "Metamorphosis".
* The Samsa from ''TabletopGame/WerewolfTheApocalypse'',
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Changed line(s) 16,18 (click to see context) from:
* BodyHorror - Some of his characters are physically marred by the traumas they undergo.
* CallingTheOldManOut - Almost. ''Letter to His Father'', which was never given to his dad.
* ChewToy - The protagonists of his books hardly ever seem able to catch a break.
* CallingTheOldManOut - Almost. ''Letter to His Father'', which was never given to his dad.
* ChewToy - The protagonists of his books hardly ever seem able to catch a break.
to:
* BodyHorror - BodyHorror: Some of his characters are physically marred by the traumas they undergo.
*CallingTheOldManOut - CallingTheOldManOut: Almost. ''Letter to His Father'', which was never given to his dad.
*ChewToy - ChewToy: The protagonists of his books hardly ever seem able to catch a break.
*
*
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* DeadArtistsAreBetter - the titular character from "The Hunger Artist." Not to mention Kafka himself.
** Subverted in "Josephine the Singer", though: after she, representing culture in general, dies, nobody will remember her.
** Kafka himself of couse died before attaining universal fame.
* {{Determinator}} - K in ''The Castle''. Deconstructed: All his efforts are in vain. He would be happier if he just gave up.
* DisproportionateRetribution - "The Judgement" among others.
* DownerEnding - The only books that do not have one are the books Kafka never finished.
** Subverted in "Josephine the Singer", though: after she, representing culture in general, dies, nobody will remember her.
** Kafka himself of couse died before attaining universal fame.
* {{Determinator}} - K in ''The Castle''. Deconstructed: All his efforts are in vain. He would be happier if he just gave up.
* DisproportionateRetribution - "The Judgement" among others.
* DownerEnding - The only books that do not have one are the books Kafka never finished.
to:
* DeadArtistsAreBetter - the DeadArtistsAreBetter: The titular character from "The Hunger Artist." Not to mention Kafka himself.
**Subverted {{Subverted}} in "Josephine the Singer", though: after she, representing culture in general, dies, nobody will remember her.
** Kafka himself ofcouse course died before attaining universal fame.
*{{Determinator}} - {{Determinator}}: K in ''The Castle''. Deconstructed: All {{Deconstructed}}: all his efforts are in vain. He would be happier if he just gave up.
*DisproportionateRetribution - DisproportionateRetribution: "The Judgement" among others.
*DownerEnding - DownerEnding: The only books that do not have one are the books Kafka never finished.
**
** Kafka himself of
*
*
*
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* IceCreamKoan - Deliberately.
* KafkaKomedy - Franz Kafka is the TropeNamer. When read the right way by a person with a very dark sense of humour, his books can be genuinely funny. According to his friends, Kafka himself would sometimes laugh out loud while reading his own work.
* KafkaKomedy - Franz Kafka is the TropeNamer. When read the right way by a person with a very dark sense of humour, his books can be genuinely funny. According to his friends, Kafka himself would sometimes laugh out loud while reading his own work.
to:
* IceCreamKoan - IceCreamKoan: Deliberately.
*KafkaKomedy - KafkaKomedy: Franz Kafka is the TropeNamer. When read the right way by a person with a very dark sense of humour, humor, his books can be genuinely funny. According to his friends, Kafka himself would sometimes laugh out loud while reading his own work.
*
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* KangarooCourt
* {{Koan}} - "Before the Law, there stands a guard..."
* {{Koan}} - "Before the Law, there stands a guard..."
to:
* KangarooCourt
KangarooCourt: ''The Trial'', in which the prisoner, Josef K, is never told what the charge is and cannot defend himself. Therefore, he is convicted and then sentenced to death without evidence of anything.
*{{Koan}} - {{Koan}}: "Before the Law, there stands a guard..."
*
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* ObstructiveBureaucrat - In "Before the Law" or "Vor dem Gesetz", the doorkeeper acts as the literal and symbolic obstructive bureaucrat, blocking the man from the country from getting admittance to the Law.
* OneLetterName - K. in ''The Castle'' and Joseph K. in ''The Trial''.
* OntologicalMystery - ''The Trial'' is a cynical, bureaucratic example.
* OneLetterName - K. in ''The Castle'' and Joseph K. in ''The Trial''.
* OntologicalMystery - ''The Trial'' is a cynical, bureaucratic example.
to:
* ObstructiveBureaucrat - ObstructiveBureaucrat: In "Before the Law" or "Vor dem Gesetz", the doorkeeper acts as the literal and symbolic obstructive bureaucrat, blocking the man from the country from getting admittance to the Law.
*OneLetterName - OneLetterName: K. in ''The Castle'' and Joseph K. in ''The Trial''.
*OntologicalMystery - OntologicalMystery: ''The Trial'' is a cynical, bureaucratic example.
*
*
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* AuthorAvatar: A lot of his characters at least share some traits with him, such as a domineering father and a creative desire stifled by the doldrums of everyday life.
to:
* AuthorAvatar: A lot of his characters at least share some traits with him, such as a domineering father and a creative desire stifled by the doldrums of everyday life. A couple of them are named “K“.
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* UselessProtagonist - Many of his works have protagonists who either willingly or unwillingly have no active role in how the stories progress.
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Not to be confused with Creator/FrankCapra, Music/FrankZappa, or [[VideoGame/FinalFantasyVI Kefka]]. And most certainly not [[SayonaraZetsubouSensei Kafuka Fuura]].
to:
Not to be confused with Creator/FrankCapra, Music/FrankZappa, or [[VideoGame/FinalFantasyVI Kefka]]. And most certainly not [[SayonaraZetsubouSensei [[Manga/SayonaraZetsubouSensei Kafuka Fuura]].
* AlternateCharacterInterpretation: In-work in ''The Trial'' when the prison chaplain tells Josef the story [[https://records.viu.ca/~Johnstoi/kafka/beforethelaw.htm "Before the Law."]] Is the gatekeeper an ObstructiveBureaucrat who misled the man into keeping him out until he was too old to enter, or is he a [[WhatMeasureIsAMook tragic hero]] beholden to the Law while the man is free to enter, but chooses not to?[[invoked]]
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* AlternateCharacterInterpretation: In-work in ''The Trial'' when the prison chaplain tells Josef the story [[https://records.viu.ca/~Johnstoi/kafka/beforethelaw.htm "Before the Law."]] Is the gatekeeper an ObstructiveBureaucrat who misled the man into keeping him out until he was too old to enter, or is he a [[WhatMeasureIsAMook tragic hero]] beholden to the Law while the man is free to enter, but chooses not to?[[invoked]]
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* AuthorExistenceFailure - None of his major works were finished. What's more, Kafka never intended to publish any of it and only wrote as a sort of personal therapy. He asked his good friend Max Brod to burn his works after his death, but when Brod refused to do this to his face, Kafka never bothered to find another person to care for the copies instead. Apparently he wasn't THAT bothered by the prospect of being outlived by his work.
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** Similarly, OrsonWelles always considered his film adaptation of ''The Trial'' to be a black comedy, and considered it wildly funny himself.
to:
** Similarly, OrsonWelles Creator/OrsonWelles always considered his film adaptation of ''The Trial'' to be a black comedy, and considered it wildly funny himself.
* ShaggyDogStory
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* ShaggyDogStory
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* The Samsa from ''TabletopGame/WerewolfTheApocalypse'', artifically-created giant shapeshifting cockroaches, are named for the main character of "Metamorphosis".
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Changed line(s) 58,67 (click to see context) from:
!!Appearences in popular culture:
* He appears in a historical/flashback episode of ''Series/NorthernExposure'', played by the series' star Rob Morrow. Yes, the show set entirely in Alaska.
* In ''Film/TheProducers'', while looking for the worst play ever written, Max reads the first line from ''Literature/TheMetamorphosis'', and rejects it as being too good.
* Creator/RobertCrumb made an analytical comic book/book about Kafka's life.
* The young Indiana Jones meets him in ''[[Series/YoungIndianaJones The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles]]''.
* Music/FrankZappa advises buyers of his album ''Music/WereOnlyInItForTheMoney'' to read Kafka's "In The Penal Colony" before listening to the last track
* The "Director's Cut" episode of ''WesternAnimation/HomeMovies'' features a plotline where teenage metalhead Duane attempts to persuade Brendon to film his [[RockOpera Rock Opera]] of [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8uaaF83eVig Kafka's ''Metamorphosis'']], which Brendon is unwilling to do, preferring to direct a film called ''Louis, Louis'' depicting a fictional encounter between Louis Pasteur and Louis Braille.
--> "A, rock opera, based on Franz Kafka's ''Metamorphosis''... I don't think so."
--> [[PunctuatedForEmphasis "HE! IS! FRANZ! KAF! KA! FRANZ-KAF-KA!"]]
* He appears in a historical/flashback episode of ''Series/NorthernExposure'', played by the series' star Rob Morrow. Yes, the show set entirely in Alaska.
* In ''Film/TheProducers'', while looking for the worst play ever written, Max reads the first line from ''Literature/TheMetamorphosis'', and rejects it as being too good.
* Creator/RobertCrumb made an analytical comic book/book about Kafka's life.
* The young Indiana Jones meets him in ''[[Series/YoungIndianaJones The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles]]''.
* Music/FrankZappa advises buyers of his album ''Music/WereOnlyInItForTheMoney'' to read Kafka's "In The Penal Colony" before listening to the last track
* The "Director's Cut" episode of ''WesternAnimation/HomeMovies'' features a plotline where teenage metalhead Duane attempts to persuade Brendon to film his [[RockOpera Rock Opera]] of [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8uaaF83eVig Kafka's ''Metamorphosis'']], which Brendon is unwilling to do, preferring to direct a film called ''Louis, Louis'' depicting a fictional encounter between Louis Pasteur and Louis Braille.
--> "A, rock opera, based on Franz Kafka's ''Metamorphosis''... I don't think so."
--> [[PunctuatedForEmphasis "HE! IS! FRANZ! KAF! KA! FRANZ-KAF-KA!"]]
to:
!! Appearences in popular culture:
* He appears in a
* In
* Creator/RobertCrumb made an analytical comic
* The young Indiana Jones meets him in
* Music/FrankZappa advises buyers of his album ''Music/WereOnlyInItForTheMoney'' to read Kafka's "In
* The "Director's Cut" episode of ''WesternAnimation/HomeMovies'' features a plotline where teenage metalhead Duane attempts to persuade Brendon to film his
Changed line(s) 70,74 (click to see context) from:
* Kafka himself is the protagonist of Creator/StevenSoderbergh's 1991 film ''Kafka''.
* In ''ComicBook/JohnnyTheHomicidalManiac'', Johnny's cockroaches (although he believes them all to be one constantly regenerating cockroach) are named "Mr. Samsa", after the character from ''Literature/TheMetamorphosis''.
* The works of Kafka are a major influence on ''Manga/TokyoGhoul'' and its sequel, ''Tokyo Ghoul:Re''. Near the beginning of the series, Kaneki compares his transformation into a HalfHumanHybrid to ''Literature/TheMetamorphosis''. It is also mentioned that oft-mentioned novelist Sen Takatsuki titled her first work ''Dear Kafka'', hinting that she was influenced by his work. In the sequel, Kafka's short story ''A Crossbreed'' is discussed briefly and seems to be a metaphor for the relationship between HalfHumanHybrid Sasaki and his ParentalSubstitute, Arima.
* The Scottish post-punk band Josef K were named after the main character of ''The Trial'', ''The Castle'' and ''A Dream''.
* Israeli skit show ''The Jews Are Coming'', satirising Jewish/Israeli history and lore, featured [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ms8OlGw38A8 a skit]] in which the moribund Kafka asks Max Brod to burn all of his writings, but keeps asking him to spare more and more works, to the point he wants to keep the empty pizza box in his room. [[spoiler:Finally, Brod, who got so worked up about burning ''something'', randomly burns a piece of paper he finds... which turns out to be [[DeathByIrony Kafka’s medication prescription]] for his [[IncurableCoughOfDeath tuberculosis]]. [[CrossesTheLineTwice Kafka dies that day]].]]
* In ''ComicBook/JohnnyTheHomicidalManiac'', Johnny's cockroaches (although he believes them all to be one constantly regenerating cockroach) are named "Mr. Samsa", after the character from ''Literature/TheMetamorphosis''.
* The works of Kafka are a major influence on ''Manga/TokyoGhoul'' and its sequel, ''Tokyo Ghoul:Re''. Near the beginning of the series, Kaneki compares his transformation into a HalfHumanHybrid to ''Literature/TheMetamorphosis''. It is also mentioned that oft-mentioned novelist Sen Takatsuki titled her first work ''Dear Kafka'', hinting that she was influenced by his work. In the sequel, Kafka's short story ''A Crossbreed'' is discussed briefly and seems to be a metaphor for the relationship between HalfHumanHybrid Sasaki and his ParentalSubstitute, Arima.
* The Scottish post-punk band Josef K were named after the main character of ''The Trial'', ''The Castle'' and ''A Dream''.
* Israeli skit show ''The Jews Are Coming'', satirising Jewish/Israeli history and lore, featured [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ms8OlGw38A8 a skit]] in which the moribund Kafka asks Max Brod to burn all of his writings, but keeps asking him to spare more and more works, to the point he wants to keep the empty pizza box in his room. [[spoiler:Finally, Brod, who got so worked up about burning ''something'', randomly burns a piece of paper he finds... which turns out to be [[DeathByIrony Kafka’s medication prescription]] for his [[IncurableCoughOfDeath tuberculosis]]. [[CrossesTheLineTwice Kafka dies that day]].]]
to:
* Kafka himself is the protagonist of Creator/StevenSoderbergh's 1991 film ''Kafka''.
''Kafka.''
* In''ComicBook/JohnnyTheHomicidalManiac'', ''ComicBook/JohnnyTheHomicidalManiac,'' Johnny's cockroaches (although he believes them all to be one constantly regenerating cockroach) are named "Mr. Samsa", Samsa," after the character from ''Literature/TheMetamorphosis''.
''Literature/TheMetamorphosis.''
* The works of Kafka are a major influence on ''Manga/TokyoGhoul'' and its sequel, ''TokyoGhoul:Re''. Ghoul:Re.'' Near the beginning of the series, Kaneki compares his transformation into a HalfHumanHybrid to ''Literature/TheMetamorphosis''. ''Literature/TheMetamorphosis.'' It is also mentioned that oft-mentioned novelist Sen Takatsuki titled her first work ''Dear Kafka'', Kafka,'' hinting that she was influenced by his work. In the sequel, Kafka's short story ''A Crossbreed'' is discussed briefly and seems to be a metaphor for the relationship between HalfHumanHybrid Sasaki and his ParentalSubstitute, Arima.
Arima.
* The Scottish post-punk band Josef K were named after the main character of ''TheTrial'', Trial,'' ''The Castle'' Castle,'' and ''A Dream''.
Dream.''
* Israeli skit show ''The Jews AreComing'', Coming,'' satirising Jewish/Israeli Jewish / Israeli history and lore, featured [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ms8OlGw38A8 a skit]] in which the moribund Kafka asks Max Brod to burn all of his writings, but keeps asking him to spare more and more works, to the point he wants to keep the empty pizza box in his room. [[spoiler:Finally, [[spoiler: Finally, Brod, who got so worked up about burning ''something'', ''something,'' randomly burns a piece of paper he finds... which Which turns out to be [[DeathByIrony Kafka’s Kafka's medication prescription]] for his [[IncurableCoughOfDeath tuberculosis]]. [[CrossesTheLineTwice Kafka dies that day]].]]
* In
* The works of Kafka are a major influence on ''Manga/TokyoGhoul'' and its sequel, ''Tokyo
* The Scottish post-punk band Josef K were named after the main character of ''The
* Israeli skit show ''The Jews Are
