Basic Trope: A character whose main function is to explain the setting and plot to other characters (and by extension, the audience).
- Straight: After Valerie is recruited into Group Hunter X, Dr. Van Helping is assigned to instruct her on the nature of the monsters she'll go after and how to fight them.
- Exaggerated: Dr. Van Helping is an Omnidisciplinary Scientist who seems to know and be willing to explain Valerie anything at the moment, from the formation of the Universe to how to make bolognese pasta.
- Downplayed: Dr. Van Helping is a well informed individual, but there are things even he doesn't know.
- Justified:
- Dr. Van Helping is an enthusiast of the Occult who has studied everything there is to know about monster-fighting for years.
- "Dr. Van Helping" is a Magical Database computer application used by the Group Hunter X.
- Inverted: Valerie doctors Dr. Van Helping on matters of everyday life he has no idea about because of his life devoted to obsessive study.
- Subverted: Dr. Van Helping's information on a new monster is inaccurate or insufficient.
- Double Subverted: ...but it's enough to knock it out and save the day.
- Parodied:
- Dr. Van Helping expontaneously bursts into random exposition about things that aren't consequential to the plot.
- Dr. Van Helping makes an exposition about things he can't possibly know, like what Valerie did 15 minutes ago when she was at home and he was taking a nap, or what will happen in the third act of the movie.
- Dr. Van Helping gives exposition about things that are downright embarrassing while keeping the same Stiff Upper Lip he uses to expose about everything else.
- When the monster attacks, Dr. Van Helping remains in the same place, still giving exposition. Valerie desperately screams him to do something, and he nonchalantly replies that giving exposition is everything he knows, and he has no actual idea about what to do with his own information.
- Zig Zagged: ???
- Averted: Valerie makes her own research.
- Enforced: The writers believe that the Viewers Are Morons and won't be able to follow the plot if someone doesn't spell it out to them on screen.
- Lampshaded:
- "Don't worry about that, Dr. Van Helping will tell us what to do".
- When asked why he keeps explaining things, Dr. Van Helping explains the concept of exposition.
- Invoked: ???
- Exploited: Any time Valerie has a doubt, she asks Dr. Van Helping.
- Defied: Dr. Van Helping flat out tells Valerie that he won't be there to doctor her forever, and that she must make an effort to learn monster fighting herself.
- Discussed: ???
- Conversed: "Where does Dr. Van Helping find the time to learn all this?"
- Deconstructed:
- Since his only job is to explain everything to Valerie, Dr. Van Helping is helpless when a monster breaks into the base.
- Valerie finds Dr. Van Helping to be an Insufferable Genius, and after a while she prefers not to consult him at all.
- Reconstructed: ...leading to Valerie's utter failure as a monster hunter, which lasts until Dr. Van Helping arrives in the 11th hour to tell her what to do.
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