Stand back! Iz goin to do science.
"The cosmos is full beyond measure of elegant truths; of exquisite interrelationships; of the awesome machinery of nature."
Tropes on how science gets portrayed, represented or misrepresented in fiction.
In this context, "unscience" includes pseudoscience, misrepresentations of actual science and science that's not real or not really scientific. It does not include things that are not meant as science, such as regular magic. Nor does it include tropes about things that are unscientific, unless their being unscientific is part of the point or premise. Note that the tropes are not sorted by this divider. The overlap is too big, and often varies from setting to setting within the same trope.
See also: Futuristic Tech Index, Indexed and Nerdy, Make My Index Live!, Math Tropes, Philosophy Tropes, Psychology Tropes, and Robot Roll Call.
Character Tropes
- Absent-Minded Professor: A flighty, forgetful but competent scientist.
- Clandestine Chemist: A student of chemical sciences who uses their knowledge for shady purposes.
- Doctor von Turncoat: A scientist switches sides in a conflict and avoids punishment because their expertise is considered too valuable.
- Emperor Scientist: A scientist becomes The Emperor.
- Evilutionary Biologist: An evil scientist who believes humans need to evolve more and it's up to them to make it happen.
- God of Knowledge: A god who represents knowledge, learning, or wisdom, including science and technology.
- Horny Scientist: A scientist has a crush on the lead female character.
- Kidnapped Scientist: The bad guys kidnap and enslave a scientist.
- Mad Scientist: A screwy, evil scientist.
- Maker of Monsters: A scientist or other researcher who uses their knowledge to make monsters.
- Misfit Lab Rat: Alternative subculture-types or nonconformists who have jobs in science or technology.
- Motherly Scientist: A scientist who feels sympathy for the test subject/s.
- Omnidisciplinary Scientist: A scientist who's an expert on all the sciences.
- The Professor: A heroic genius who is part of an ensemble.
- Professor Guinea Pig: A scientist doing experiments on themselves.
- Proud Scholar Race: A culture of scientists, scholars and philosophers.
- Reluctant Mad Scientist: A scientist who works for the villain but doesn't want to or something they invented gets used for evil but they didn't want that.
- Rich Genius: Someone who gets rich off of their inventions and/or experiments.
- Science Foils: Two scientists who act as foils to each other.
- Science Hero: Somebody who uses science to save the day.
- Science Hero's Babe Assistant: A scientist's comely assistant, who doesn't do much science.
- Sole Surviving Scientist: Most people have died/turned into zombies/whatever, but one scientist is unaffected and trying to solve the problem.
- Science Wizard: This is a scientist who is also trained in the mystic arts.
- Stupid Scientist: A character who's meant to be a genius but believes that if something is highly unlikely, that means it is definitely false. This character will be proven wrong.
- The Worm Guy: A scientist in a specialized field of study is consulted on a subject foreign to them, but in which their knowledge is relevant.
Other Tropes
- Abandoned Laboratory: A spooky abandoned science lab.
- Acceptable Breaks from Reality: Some aspect of a work is unrealistic, but the viewers don't mind.
- Accidental Discovery: A scientist (or their assistant) makes a mistake that leads to a discovery.
- Alchemy Is Magic: People can use alchemy to do things that should only be able to be done by magic.
- All Theories Are True: All scientific theories (even ones that have been debunked) turn out to be true in a sci-fi work.
- Animal Testing: Testing medicine on animals.
- Artistic License – Biology: Something happens that goes against real-life biology.
- Artistic License – Chemistry: An unrealistic, made-up element.
- Artistic License – Physics: The laws of physics don't work normally.
- Binomium ridiculus: Naming a new species? Just take a word and add a Latin or Greek ending!
- Break the Scientist: When a scientist sees something that shouldn't be scientifically possible happen, they freak out.
- Cop and Scientist: Cop is Street Smart and Book Dumb; scientist has next-to-No Social Skills or fighting skills.
- Creating Life: Somebody makes a living being (without conceiving the being normally).
- Creating Life Is Awesome: Someone artificially creates a being that is good and is treated as such.
- Creating Life Is Bad: Creating life is seen as inadvisable or wrong.
- Creating Life Is Unforeseen: Accidentally creating life.
- Doing in the Scientist: An aspect in the work that was originally explained as being through real-world science is Retconned into being magic.
- Doing In the Wizard: Replacing a magic thing with a similar, more mundane thing.
- Earth Is Young: The work is set on Earth in the twentieth or twenty-first century or possibly slightly later, but Earth is portrayed as being only thousands of years old, not billions as it really is.
- Eerie Arctic Research Station: A remote lab in an icy cold location as a tension-filled setting.
- Enigmatic Institute: A scientific group that conducts research and experiments in secret.
- Escaped from the Lab: A character who escapes from a laboratory as part of their story or backstory.
- Evil Luddite: The baddies are convinced that science/new technology is bad.
- Fantastic Science: Someone who studies the fantastical elements of a work (e.g., a biologist who studies dragons).
- Fictional Field of Science: A made-up branch of science.
- Fiction Science: Real Life science is used to examine fictional works.
- For Science!: Someone does science just for kicks.
- Genetic Engineering Is the New Nuke: Weird story aspects are explained as being the result of genetic engineering.
- Gratuitous Laboratory Flasks: Scientists have flasks and beakers everywhere.
- Gravity Is Only a Theory: Somebody rejects the theory of gravity or at least acts like it might not be true.
- Hard on Soft Science: Social sciences are not considered "real science".
- Here Comes the Science: A commercial that features a pseudoscience monologue about the product.
- Hollywood Science: A dramatic moment in a work that defies the laws of physics and was not intentional.
- How Unscientific!: Something scientifically impossible or highly unlikely happens in an otherwise-realistic work.
- Improbable Taxonomy Skills: The ability to fully classify an organism with just a cursory examination.
- Jar of the Bizarre: The habit of storing curios, specimens, and old experiments in jars and bottles of preserving fluid.
- Just Think of the Potential!: A character encounters a new, esoteric technology and realizes all the potential applications (military, monetary, etc.) it could be put to.
- Kidnapped for Experimentation: A character is abducted to be a scientific test subject.
- Labcoat of Science and Medicine: Scientists and medical doctors wear lab coats all the time.
- Lab Pet: A scientist who does experiments on their pet.
- LEGO Genetics: Fooling around with DNA can give people superpowers.
- Mad Science Fair: A science fair where the scientists are showing off all sorts of bizarre experiments.
- Magic Versus Science: Magic is scientifically impossible but exists anyway, scientists and magic-doers hate each other, or magic is otherwise in conflict with "science".
- Miraculous Malfunction: An experiment doesn't work as intended but creates even better results.
- Mother Nature, Father Science: Science — especially "hard" science" — is portrayed as a male domain.
- Minovsky Physics: A fictional subatomic particle, element or whatever that has rules on what it can and can't do.
- Natural Elements: While once the dominant hypothesis as to what the base elements of all matter in the world is made of, the idea that the forces of nature are elements has long been since disproven, though this idea shows up in works still, albeit leaning more towards the fantastical and magical.
- No Control Group: Scientists in fiction don't use control groups.
- No Plans, No Prototype, No Backup: An evil device is one-of-a-kind.
- No Tech but High Tech: What counts as technology? A computer, a smartphone, a normal phone, a candle, a catapult... most people would draw the (arbitrary) line at the candle.
- Our Dark Matter Is Mysterious: A mysterious substance called "dark matter".
- Parody of Evolution: Evolution is spoofed.
- Raised in a Lab: A person is raised as an experiment in a lab.
- Reed Richards Is Useless: Someone can do something amazing with technology (cure a disease, help the environment, etc) but they don't.
- Research, Inc.: A company that does research for profit.
- Retro Upgrade: Something that used to be obsolete but isn't.
- Rival Science Teams: Two groups of scientists that are against one another.
- Sabotage to Discredit: A plot revolving around a character sabotaging a piece of technology to give it a bad rap.
- Safely Secluded Science Center: A scientific facility hidden in an isolated setting for safety and secrecy.
- Scale of Scientific Sins: Rules about what not to do while doing experiments.
- Science Cannot Comprehend Phlebotinum: The writers make something seem especially interesting by stating that science cannot explain it.
- Science Destroys Magic: When science progresses, magic goes away.
- Science Fair: An event where children showcase their science projects.
- Science Is Bad: Science is portrayed as immoral.
- Science Is Good: Science is portrayed as a source of good.
- Science Is Useless: Hard work is seen as better than science/technology.
- Science Is Wrong: All science is incorrect.
- Science Marches On: A trivia page for when a work is no longer realistic/relevant due to progression of science in Real Life.
- Science-Related Memetic Disorder: A made-up psychological disorder that makes you both smart and insane.
- Scienceville: A place is best known for producing scientists and other thinkers.
- Scientific and Technological Theme Naming: Characters or items named after themes or concepts from science and engineering.
- Scientist Video Journal: A scientist keeps a video journal to document their progress.
- Scientist vs. Soldier: A scientist and a military person are at odds with one another.
- The Singularity: A theoretical point in technological development beyond which things are incomprehensible to people who came before.
- Soda-Candy 'Splosion: A basic science experiment involving mixing Diet Coke and Mentos to create an eruptive soda geyser, which is often exaggerated in fiction for comedy.
- Sounds of Science: Scientists talk in a particular way.
- Soviet Superscience: The Soviet Union is way too technologically advanced to be realistic.
- The Spark of Genius: A scientist can do anything.
- Taxonomic Term Confusion: Words related to taxonomy (the study of classifying living things) get confused with one another or used incorrectly.
- Technicolor Science: Scientists use multicolored stuff.
- Technobabble: It sounds like technical jargon but doesn't mean anything.
- Technophobia: Being afraid of modern technology.
- Test Subject for Hire: People agree to be a test subject in a scientific study for some extra cash.
- Unscientific Science: When a writer explains something that should be scientifically impossible with an explanation that's also scientifically impossible.
- Unstable Genetic Code: Someone can shape-shift due to wacky DNA.
- Weird Science: Science that works weirdly.
- What We Now Know to Be True: What we take as scientific truth is outdated within the story.
