Myopia is a term that involves near-focused senses and the lack of ability to comprehend exterior or additional sources. These tropes are part of that issue.
For literal examples, see Disability Tropes.
Categories:
Straight
- Agent Mulder: A character who believes mysteries have a paranormal explanation, even if there are more mundane or scientific explanations.
- Agent Scully: A character who believes mysteries always have a rational, scientific explanation, even if there's evidence of a paranormal explanation.
- All Crimes Are Equal: Believing that everyone who commits a crime is a horrible person who deserves the most severe punishment possible.
- Alternate Aesop Interpretation: Having a different interpretation of the work's moral than what the creators intended.
- Alternative Character Interpretation: Interpreting a character differently than what the creators and the general fandom suggest.
- Anti-Mentor: The one who's supposed to be guiding the youngsters is anything but a reliable source of wisdom.
- Ape Shall Never Kill Ape: A violent group draw the line only at killing one of their own.
- Arbitrary Skepticism: Refusing to believe in something supernatural in spite of believing in or being aware of the existence of something equally supernatural.
- Attack! Attack! Attack!: The only move considered in combat is to attack the opponent non-stop.
- Belief Makes You Stupid: People with religious beliefs are depicted as lacking common sense and assuming that people who don't follow their religion are in the wrong.
- Black-and-White Insanity: A character who takes Black-and-White Morality to the extreme; they believe something is either good or bad, with nothing inbetween.
- Blind Obedience: Unquestionly obeying your superior no matter what they demand of you.
- Boomerang Bigot: A person who is knowingly part of a group they despise (when it results from myopic perspectives).
- Boyfriend-Blocking Dad: A father who will instinctively attack anyone whom he feels is getting too close to his daughter.
- But Not Too Challenging: A character who claims to desire a challenge gets upset at the idea of losing, not realizing that failure is an inherent part of a challenge.
- Captain Oblivious: A character is unrealistically unaware of something no matter how many clues to the truth they stumble upon.
- Category Traitor: The belief that doing or liking something outside a group you belong to makes you a 'traitor' to that group.
- The Complainer Is Always Wrong: The one person who disagrees is always depicted as being in the wrong.
- Confirmation Bias: Only accepting sources that prove your viewpoint.
- Creator's Pest: A character the creator dislikes regardless of what the audience's opinion on the character is.
- Creator's Pet: The creator gives a character special treatment when the audience can't stand the character.
- Culture Blind: A person is somehow unaware of their kind's customs.
- Designated Monkey: A character disliked by the creator is constantly subjected to misfortunes that the audience finds undeserving and too severe.
- Didn't Think This Through: A character comes up with a plan that ends up failing or becoming difficult to carry out because of a detail they failed to consider before it was too late to do anything about it.
- Die for Our Ship: Fans bash a character just because they interfered with their preferred shipping.
- Disproportionate Retribution: Responding to a slight by retaliating in a way that's rather drastic in comparison to how bad the offense truly was.
- Disproportionate Reward: Thanking someone in a much greater extent than needed.
- Dogged Nice Guy: A guy is in love with someone, but their object of affection refuses to reciprocate their attraction.
- Draco in Leather Pants: Fans portray a character as much nicer when they are canonically a horrible person.
- Easily Swayed Population: A population that is easily convinced.
- Epiphanic Prison: A character doesn't escape their confinement simply because they don't think it is possible or necessary.
- Esoteric Happy Ending: The creator thinks their story's ending is happy, but the audience only sees a disappointing Downer Ending.
- Fandom Heresy: The majority of a fandom get angry over one fan having an unpopular opinion about the franchise.
- Fanon Discontinuity: Fans choose to ignore episodes or installments of the series that they dislike.
- Fan Myopia: Fans assume that everyone's familiar with the works that they like.
- Fantasy-Forbidding Father: A parent strongly dislikes their child pursuing their dreams because it clashes with what they see as a path towards a successful future.
- Felony Misdemeanor: Treating a minor offense as if it were an inexcusably horrid crime.
- Fish out of Temporal Water: Someone from the past or future ends up stuck outside of their proper time period and forced to adjust living there.
- Fish out of Water: An outsider who's out of touch with how things are in where they currently reside.
- The Fundamentalist: A religious person who attacks everyone who doesn't follow their beliefs.
- Genre Blindness: A character makes every mistake done by those in stories similar to their current situation.
- Grey-and-Gray Insanity: A character who takes Grey-and-Gray Morality to the extreme; they believe everything is neutral, with nothing on either end of the spectrum.
- Go Mad from the Revelation (inverse, where the "myopia" is broken into insanity)
- Gullible Lemmings: The public are easily deceived by the bad guys.
- Head-in-the-Sand Management: The one in charge proves to be incompetent due to refusing to acknowledge that a threat is real.
- Honor Before Reason: Doing what you think is the honorable thing even if it's not the sensible thing to do in the present situation.
- Horrible Judge of Character: Someone who is very bad at telling whether a person can be trusted.
- Hypocrite: Someone who doesn't practice what they preach.
- Hypocritical Heartwarming: Defending someone from other people hurting them because only you are allowed to be mean to them.
- Ignorant of Their Own Ignorance: Someone drastically overestimates how smart and/or important they actually are.
- Innocently Insensitive: Saying stuff without realizing that your statements could anger or offend certain people.
- Inspector Oblivious: A hero who doesn't know that they're stopping the bad guy.
- Irrational Hatred: Despising a person when there's no rational reason to dislike them.
- It's a Costume Party, I Swear!: A character mistakenly thinks a party they're invited to is a costume party.
- It's All About Me: A person's only concern is what they want to do and what will make things pleasant for themselves.
- Jaywalking Will Ruin Your Life: Committing a misdemeanor will get you in serious trouble forever.
- Knight Templar: A character thinks that noble causes justifies doing heartless and cruel deeds.
- Knight Templar Parent: A parent will go to ludicrous extremes to retaliate against anyone whom they assume to be causing problems for their children.
- Leeroy Jenkins: Rushing into a fight without thinking up a strategy.
- Literal-Minded: A person who doesn't understand when people are using figures of speech and aren't meaning what they're saying in the literal sense.
- Moral Myopia: Someone defends themselves doing bad things while condemning others that do the same things (especially if they're personally on the receiving end).
- Muggles: Ordinary people unaffiliated or unaware of the setting's supernatural elements.
- My Beloved Smother: A mother is unable to realize when their child doesn't need them.
- No Peripheral Vision: The only direction looked is straight ahead.
- No Sense of Personal Space: A person doesn't understand when they are invading other people's personal space.
- Nostalgia Filter: A person who only likes the stuff they grew up with and dismisses all modern works as being trash that isn't worth their time.
- Not Now, Kiddo: Dismissing children when they're trying to warn you about something important.
- Oblivious Astronomers: Objects in space go unnoticed for much longer than they realistically would.
- Obliviously Evil: A villain who doesn't know that what they're doing is wrong.
- Obliviously Superpowered: A character has powers but isn't aware of them - even while using them.
- Opinion Myopia: Assuming that there is no one who disagrees with your opinions and getting angry when someone dares to have a different viewpoint.
- Original Position Fallacy: Somebody supports a position/belief assuming that they'll personally benefit from it, or doesn't think that they'll suffer the consequences of it.
- Outside Joke: The joke is only funny if the recipient is myopic or generally unaware of the joke's subject.
- Paper-Thin Disguise: Wearing a shoddy disguise and expecting people to be fooled by it.
- Paper Tiger: A character builds themselves up as tough and formidable, but is in reality a weakling.
- Parental Favoritism: A parent favors one of their children with no regard to how this would affect the other children.
- Politically Correct History (when the writers are unaware of temporal Values Dissonance)
- The Presents Were Never from Santa: A character believes their skills and weaknesses to be from outside supernatural forces.
- Principles Zealot: Someone insists on sticking to their principles, no matter what inconvenience or problems may result from doing so.
- Protagonist-Centered Morality: The morality of an action is determined not by the action itself, but by whether or not the protagonist did it or by how it affects the protagonist.
- Rash Promise: A character agrees to a promise without much thought towards whether they actually want to oblige it.
- Reckless Sidekick: A sidekick who puts themselves in danger due to thinking they know better than their mentor.
- Revenge Myopia: Someone seeks revenge on a person who didn't actually hurt them or their loved ones out of malice (e.g. it was on accident or self-defense).
- Rich in Dollars, Poor in Sense: A wealthy person lacks common sense because of their sheltered and pampered lifestyle.
- Ron the Death Eater: Fans portray a character as being a bad person when they are nicer in canon.
- Selective Enforcement: Two (or more) people do the same wrong thing, but only one is immediately punished over it.
- Selective Obliviousness: Deliberately choosing to remain ignorant of something in spite of witnessing evidence of it on more than one occasion.
- Shallow Cannot Comprehend True Love: A shallow person can't see that not everyone else is shallow.
- Shipping Goggles: Audiences see romantic subtext where none was intended.
- Start X to Stop X: The only solution to a problem is believed to be creating more of the problem.
- Strawman Emotional: Emotional people are depicted as irrational.
- Strawman Has a Point (when unclear description from creator myopia or overall bad writing causes the audience to agree with the strawman)
- Straw Vulcan: A person who sees emotions as being more trouble than they are worth.
- Tautological Templar: A person thinks they're the good guy and that therefore everything they do is in the right.
- Theory Tunnel Vision: A person filters the information given to them to suit their view of the world.
- Think of the Children!: An activist demands that the media be sanitized and toned down for the sake of the children, frequently disregarding that the censorship may risk ruining the media for the people who enjoy it, that the children's parents should bear responsibility for what kind of content they let their children watch or that the media in question wasn't intended for children in the first place.
- Too Dumb to Live: A character is too stupid to know when certain actions they take are hazardous or lethal.
- Totalitarian Utilitarian (ideological farsightedness)
- Twisting the Words: A person gets in trouble because of someone else using a twisted interpretation of what they just said.
- Unwitting Pawn: Someone doesn't realize that they're being manipulated into facilitating the villain's agenda.
- Viewers Are Geniuses: Not bothering to explain something to the audience under the assumption that they can figure it out themselves.
- Viewers Are Goldfish: Reminding the audience of stuff that was explained a short time earlier as if the audience has very poor memory.
- Viewers Are Morons: Explaining everything as if the audience is too dumb to figure it out themselves.
- Wide-Eyed Idealist: Your optimism blinds you from how the real world isn't completely pleasant and perfect.
- Windmill Crusader: Someone fights against a threat that only exists in their head.
- Windmill Political: Activists rail against a non-existent political threat.
- With Us or Against Us: A person or group is hostile to anyone who disagrees with their agenda in any way.
- Wrong Genre Savvy: A character thinks they know what needs to be done from their familiarity with works of fiction similar to the kind of situation they are currently in, but are foiled due to having the wrong interpretation of what kind of story they're in.
- Your Terrorists Are Our Freedom Fighters: Terrorists see themselves as fighting for noble goals.
Inverted (everyone is myopic except for one or a few)
- All of the Other Reindeer: A person whom everyone else dislikes for being different.
- All Therapists Are Muggles: A super-powered being can't get the professional help they need because they can only find therapists who are normal people.
- By the Eyes of the Blind: A specific entity can only be seen by a certain someone.
- Cassandra Truth
- Convicted by Public Opinion: Someone gets accused of a crime and everyone assumes the person is guilty just because they don't like the person.
- The Dissenter Is Always Right
- Invisible to Normals: A being who can only be seen by unusual people.
- The Last DJ
- Made Out to Be a Jerkass: Someone is assumed to be a jerk just because they rightly lashed out on someone who was bugging them.
- Mentally Unwell, Special Senses: People with mental problems can see or sense things that others cannot.
- Mistaken for Misogynist: Everyone assumes that a man has said or done something sexist.
- Mistaken for Racist: Everyone assumes a person has said or done something racist.
- Nobody Ever Complained Before
- Not Evil, Just Misunderstood
- Only Sane Man (when it involves viewpoint ranges)
- Surrounded by Idiots: Someone has a rather dim view on their subordinates' intelligence and competence.
- Weirdness Censor: Something appears to be preventing people from noticing or caring about the bizarre people, things, and events around them.
