Basic Trope: A character reveals they know how to do something because they saw it on TV.
- Straight: During an expedition, Bob warns his fellow crewmates about a poisonous plant. When asked how he knows about it, he says "Discovery Channel".
- Exaggerated: Bob later cooks a meal for the crew, owing to his watching Food Network. He goes on to identify what they're looking for due to watching the History Channel.
- Downplayed:
- Bob isn't sure the plant is poisonous, but thanks to TV he knows enough to ask the crew's botanist to investigate, which saves the crew.
- Bob is the crew's botanist, but he only got interested in studying plant life because he liked to watch nature documentaries.
- Justified: Bob is a knowledge sponge and learns something from everything he watches. More broadly, it could be argued that the existence of educational television justifies this trope as a whole.
- Inverted: Bob used to be a skilled botanist, but watched too much trash TV and now can barely identify plants.
- Subverted: Bob cooks up a nutritious, delicious meal for his crewmates. Someone asks which Food Network show he got that from. Cue Bob revealing he's a trained chef.
- Double Subverted: A trained pastry chef, that is - he got the idea from watching the Food Network.
- Parodied:
- Bob is multilingual, skilled at identifying plants, and a chef par excellence, despite zero formal training. Everyone assumes he watches a lot of educational TV, but nope - he watches Real Housewives and that's it.
- Bob is a small child who learns how to count by watching Sesame Street, and everyone reacts as they'd do to an adult revealing they learned a crucial factoid from a sitcom.
- Zig-Zagged: ???
- Averted: Bob identifies the plants because he's a skilled botanist. He enjoys TV, and the occasional movie, but the two don't intersect.
- Enforced: ???
- Lampshaded: ???
- Invoked: Bob watches nature documentaries before the excursion in the hopes of it being useful.
- Exploited: ???
- Implied: When Bob sees the plant a Flash Back is triggered of a medical emergency narrated by a William Shatner Expy. It's not clear if this is how he remembers it, or if it's filtered for our understanding of it.
- Defied: "Discovery Channel? No, that's a PhD in botany, thank you very much."
- Discussed: ???
- Conversed: ???
- Deconstructed: The expedition fails because their expert is just a guy who watched a lot of TV.
- Reconstructed: The expedition is taking place After the End - a guy who watched a lot of TV is all they have.
I learned how to link back to the main page from watching Echo Chamber. Impressive, yeah?
