In case you're not sure if it's a cat toy for iguanas or something.
"I do not talk like that! The way I communicate is much different. I do not reiterate, repeat, reinstate the same thing over and over again. I am clear, concise, to the point!"
— Mojo Jojo, The Powerpuff Girls (1998)
Describe Department of Redundancy Department Here by writing a description of Department of Redundancy Department.
When listing things, a character will repeat an item. Might end with "Did I mention X already?" when making a list. Common ways for it to show up are a list going "A, B, C, B, D, B, E... and did I mention B?" and "You said X twice." "I like X." These occur frequently, especially when listing things, and are often said by characters with short attention spans that are short — especially energetic characters such as the Genki Girl.
Listing things in this manner also tends to be used as a tongue-in-cheek way of implying that the repeatedly listed item is the most prominent characteristic of something, with little in the way of variety.
Alice: Oy, what was it like sailing across the ocean?
Bob: It was nice! There were sea birds, water, fish, water, more water, boats, whales, even more water... y'know, the usual.
The dictionary definition for this trope is a tautology
or pleonasm.
This also shows up frequently with the misuse of acronyms, specifically when part of the acronym is used next to the acronym itself. The Other Wiki knows this as RAS Syndrome (i.e. Redundant Acronym Syndrome syndrome).
With some websites and occasionally in Real Life, the Redundant Department of Redundancy is referred to as an actual organization run by Captain Obvious with a side branch called the Branch of Awkward Wording (or, for bonus points, the Branch Of Awkward Wording Branch).
The Firesign Theatre gets credit for naming this trope on their classic 1970 album "Don't Crush That Dwarf, Hand Me the Pliers", the album where the trope name comes from.
Compare Shaped Like Itself; Broken Record; Repetitive Name; Bread, Eggs, Breaded Eggs; Captain Obvious; Hurricane of Euphemisms. Cluster F-Bomb is generally this trope applied to swearing, where people swear over a swearing word.
Disclaimer: The D.R.D. Department does not share the opinion of anything written on this page, including overly long gags, overuse of Homestar Runner quotes, pot holes, overly long gags, and use of redlinks.
Examples and various cases that exemplify the trope
- Advertisements Using TV to Promote Products to You on Television
- Anime Japanese Animation from Japan and Manga Comics from Japan Drawn by Japanese Comic Book Artists
- Stand-up Comedy Done By Comedians While Standing Up
- Comics with Pictures and Dialogue Drawn by Western Comic Book Artists
- Newspaper Comics Printed in the Comics Section of Newspapers
- Fan Fictions Written by Fans of Fiction Which Is Fictional
- Live-Action Filmed Movies Played by Live-Actors on Film Which Was Used to Film the 3-D World Live-Action Filmed Movies
- Animated Movies Filmed by Animating Cartoon Pictures the Images of the Animated Movies
- Literature Stories Written in Books by Authors
- Live-Action TV Played by Live-Actors on Television
- Musical Sounds in the Form of Melody Which Sounds Like Music
- Pinballs That Have Pins and Balls
- Professional Wrestling by Professional Wrestlers Who Wrestle Professionally
- Radio Playing Radio Music and Radio News on the Radio
- Tabletop Games Played by Gamers on the Top of a Table
- Theatre with Actors Played by People on a Stage in a Theatre
- Toys That You Play with Using Your Imagination
- Video Games That You Play Games with Including Visuals Played Games Using Electronics for the Interactivity of Video Games
- Web Animation Moving Pictures Uploaded to the Internet
- Webcomics Internet Comics That are Made for Uploaded to the Internet by Webcomic Artists
- Web Original Uploaded to the Internet and Consisting of Original Content Which Can Be Found on the Web
- Western Animating Cartoon Animation Pictures from the Western Countries
- Real Life Non-Fictional 3-D World in Reality
open/close all folders
Audio Dramas That Are Dramatised Audibly
- In the Big Finish Doctor Who audio drama Omega, the Doctor (actually a copy of the Doctor's mind) gives one of his "small beautiful things" speeches where he says Sentia can still find happiness in our universe: "It's not such a bad old cosmos. Flowers, cups of tea, trees, mugs of tea, sunsets ... pots of tea. As you can see, I don't expect too much from this universe."
Eastern European Animation Animated in Eastern Europe
- One of Krisztofóró's main characters is a 13-headed dragon described as a "heads-aplenty dragon". He is named Bőfejű, which means "Plenty-Head".
Labels Showing What You Get On A Label
- If you are to google "butter flavored syrup contains no butter", you will get interesting results, including a Reddit post, featuring a bottle of syrup saying: "Butter Rich Syrup: Natural Butter With Other Natural Flavors, Contains No Butter", which could count as a double redundancy, due to "Natural butter with other natural flavors" and the over-excessive amounts of mentioning butter.
Troping Tropes of TV Tropes
- This page is a self-explanatory page of redundancy. So if you're looking for an example of redundancy, this page is one!
- Every now and again, some unsuspecting editor will add an example to a trope page without checking to see if that page contains an example from that series already. If it does (especially if the example itself is repeated), that page becomes an example of this trope, albeit usually only temporarily.
Not just in posts, either: 1: go to the top of this page. 2: Click "go to watchlist" (need to be a known troper) 3: Look at the top. You should see a button that says "recently new."
And then when people find out, instead of removing it, they tend to Natter on about it. Or they explain everything that was already stated a second time because they think the first guy got something wrong.
I just move the two examples next to each other. Especially when the later one asks why this example hasn't been mentioned yet.
The inverse also happens. On a page for a show, a trope with multiple names may be listed twice. For example, ever since they started calling it Hilarious in Hindsight, it's often seen on a page that also has Reverse Funny Aneurysm. Even worse when someone notices the Reverse Funny Aneurysm example and renames it without realizing there's already a Hilarious in Hindsight example. - Some examples from Overly Long Gag also definitely qualify. And anything on Broken Record invokes this by default.
- Sometimes people Pot Hole a link to the page the link is on, thus. Presumably, they Cut N' Pasted the text from another page, and forgot to edit out the link.
- TV Tropes: Repeatedly Used On This Very Wiki.
- Frank Miller loves repetition.
- C-C-C-C-C-Combo Breaker!!
- Frank Miller really loves repetition. And whores.
- xkcd once referenced us.
- It hurts, Ness... It hurts...
- it hurts it hurts it hurts it hurts it hurts
- People die if they are killed.
- Does anyone read Edit Tip #6? "Be sure (your) example isn't here already."
- Kyon-kun, denwa!
- DESTROY US ALL!
- We've entered an endless recursion of time.
- Ness, Ness, Ness, Ness, Ness, Ness, Ness, Ness...
- Hello!. My Name Is Inigo Montoya. You Killed My Father. Prepare to Die.
- Stop saying that!
- You keep using that trope! I do not think it means what you think it means.
- Inertia is a property of matter.
- Blink and you die.
- I'm gonna get these muthafuckin' snakes off this muthafuckin' plane!
- Looks like it's repeatedly used... *Glasses Pull* ...on this very wiki.
- The penis is evil!
- IN SPACE!!!
- Department of Redundancy Department uses this trope.
- Ironically, not to the word Redundant, or any form of.
- Does anyone read Edit Tip #6? "Be sure (your) example isn't here already."
- The Stinger has this trope listed twice - one bullet point right beneath the other.
- Kyon-kun, denwa!
- The trope names for Tsurime Eyes and Tareme Eyes (the "me" in both means "eyes"). Lampshaded on said trope pages.
- I do evil for the sake of evil because I'm evil.
- Incorruptible Pure Pureness
- Irredeemable Impure Impureness
- International Organization for Standardization-Standard Urban Grocieries
- Inverted with "Neutral Neutral", the alternative name for True Neutral: instead of repeating the same thing differently, it uses the same word twice to mean two different things. (That is, "Neutral" with respect to law and chaos and "Neutral" with respect to good and evil.)
- Demonic King the Demon King
- For some reason, several pages on this very wiki have links to themselves. Occasionally the very first words on a work's page.
- There's also an annoying tendency to have a phrase like "Of course, Your Mileage May Vary" added to the end of examples on pages devoted to YMMV examples.
- Since TV Tropes introduced namespaces, some page names are this. Films with "film"/"movie" in the title, comic books and strips containing "comic", wikis, blogs...
- Nowadays, most pages are sorted by media. But in some cases, you have an example in e.g. the film folder, obviously linking to a page in the film namespace, which still mentions that work X is indeed a film. Justified when it's The Artifact from a time when the page wasn't sorted and the page not yet namespaced.
- TV Tropes has a page on itself.
- To avoid having Zero-Context Example entries, all tropes on a list have to have an explanation of why they are there, no matter how blatant they are. As such, if multiple tropes are present because of the same event, that event ends up getting described repeatedly.
- There's a redirect to this page titled Redundancy Department of Redundancy.
Warning Labels That Provide Warnings on Their Labels
- Any time there's a peanut butter jar or a labelled peanut container that says "Warning: May contain peanuts." If it said 'contains peanuts', that would be one thing. The real headscratcher is that it seems to suggest that it might not.
- Because of regulations or lawsuit-related ass covering, in the US a lot of food products that obviously have a product in them (Peanut M&Ms have peanuts!) have this trope in action on their packaging. Like milk or cheese labeled "Contains Dairy product."
- In parts of the world where listing ingredients is mandatory regardless of the product, such as the UK, this trope is sure to occur.
"100% Pure Maple Syrup""Ingredients: Pure Maple Syrup (100%)"
Redundant statement is redundant.
"I just want to tell you both, good luck, we're all counting on you."
