Laugh Track (Logo by CustardAndPie, Click to see original logo by TropesForever)
Tropers: The Series is a roleplay on the TV Tropes Forum. The basic premise involves tropers living in a parody of TV sitcoms, if that wasn't made obvious by the intro post. It started out like The Big Bang Theory, but got more wigged out as time went on, turning into a Genre Roulette and Fantasy/Sci-Fi Kitchen Sink. As it follows an episodic structure with a new "episode" (GMed by a different person each time) every few pages or so, the tone and genre can vary wildly.
Started by TropesForever on July 3rd/4thnote , 2017, it is ongoing to this day.
The game can be found here
, with the discussion thread here. The thread has also received multimedia expansions. The "opening titles" for seasons 1 and 3 are here and here, while accompanying soundtrack albums composed by TropesForever can be found here.
Tropers: The Series contains examples of these tropes:
- Actor Allusion: Several, to other TV Tropes forum roleplays:
- In "The Clever and Original Whodunnit Plot Parody", TropesForever has an idea that Bev really likes shrimp, but thinks that it might have come from a dream.
- In "The Body Catalog", when the group are deciding on which body Taco should choose, TropesForever suggests "a Joltik". Lampshaded by Taco immediately after.
- G2 pilots a Gundam and that same Gundam is used as a basis for a character's Power Armour in the Our avatars are in a room for together FG thread.
- Puma gets unwittingly transformed into a humanoid feline, just like his character Felis in We're A League of Villains.
- In The Beginning of the End, Part 1, Tre has a walk-on part where he reads a book and then snarks at the cast. The book he's reading, "The Grand Celestial," is the name of the ship in "We Are All Space Mercenaries," which Tre was a part of. And later, in Ruckus Over Repause, Tre stars in a fake Barnes-And-Noble commercial where he's floating in space reading "a novel about a motley crew of space mercenaries."
- Adaptational Heroism:
- Marcia Shyneet was based on Morph Moth, who was one of the original Mavericks from Mega Man X2. Here, Marcia is loyal to the Tropers, even helping them out on occasion.
- Jevil. In his home game, he's a boss who tries to kill the protagonists. In his appearance in the Season 5 finale, he turns out to be a fairly benevolent entity who considers the tropers his "friends", helps them finish off the army of villains, and warns them about Victor's plans for Aveyond. Slightly downplayed in that the tropers still consider him highly dangerous, hiding when he unleashes his attacks on the villains.
- Alien Among Us: Beverly reveals herself to be a Xathian, from the planet Xathos... she doesn't treat it like a very big revelation.
- And Knowing Is Half the Battle: Incorporated into the roleplay of Season 1 and Season 2 up to Episode 23, with each episode ending with a character stating An Aesop. This is completely abandoned from Season 2 Episode 24 onwards.
- And Starring: The show's fake titles credit Beverly this way in the first season, Canon Foreigner Ford Prefect in the third season, and DrNoPuma in both seasons.
- Author Tract:
- This was made by Tales of Under who tried to create a storyline about the Status Quo, but just made an incomprehensible mess. He was not happy. Later Handwaved by the fact that it was just an RPG that everyone was playing.
- ZeroL's "Days in the Future" arc, although to a lesser degree, as it was only a subplot.
- Taco Badger has looked back poorly on the episode “Xathos or Bust”, in which he portrays Bev’s creator.
- Bilingual Bonus: The title of Season 3 episode El Viaje Misterioso de Nuestro Tropers is Spanish for "The Mysterious Journey of Our Tropers".
- Black Comedy Cannibalism: In one episode, the Tropers go to a mansion, feast on the Buffet Table, and eat Filet Mignon. The only problem is that it is heavily implied that the buffet table is made from the mansion's cooks, and the Filet Mignon was made of Steve Urkel.
- Blue-Collar Warlock: Joe from It's Raining Right Here. He's a powerful wizard... and also a sleepy old guy running a diner out in the middle of nowhere, and he acts the part.
- The Bus Came Back:
- After a very long absence, Puma returned to the series. His return was "justified" by him somehow winding up on the same airplane that the rest of the cast was currently on, sleeping in the back before waking up to greet everyone.
- Call-Back: "Tropesburg Gets Even Stranger" has one of Libre's dreams describing the statement contents of someone realising that a young woman they're seeing has become an avatar of the Vast (which also covers meteorological phenomena), referencing "The Perfect Storm", where After mistook Katrina for being the same-named hurricane's Anthropomorphic Personification that has come for revenge.
- Canon Foreigner: From Steve Urkel to Ford Prefect, lots of NPCs are this.
- Captain Ersatz: In-Universe, Queen Bee plays a D&D character called Jokester, who is an obvious subsitute for Jester from Critical Role, even if she insists otherwise.
- Cerebus Retcon: After a long absence, Puma explains that he spent time working for Henderson's circus, but his career at the circus was cut short when the performers got into a pie and seltzer war, which is played for laughs. It's later revealed that the war was started by Pomposo, a truly malicious character with a grudge against Henderson.
- Charlie and the Chocolate Parody: Season 7 Episode 16, "Martin Mint-Chocolate-Chip and the Ice Cream Factory". Instead of just the main charcters, The entire town of Tropesburg gets tickets to tour the factory.
- Cigar Chomper:
- The landlord, Mr. Benedetto, smokes a cigar, which turns out to be his downfall when the ashes light a firework.
- Mr. Meddling, the executive producer, also falls under this trope to such an extent that Thegeniusyoshi's attempts to kill him with cigarette ash don't work.
- Clown Car: "Bobby Buzzer's Bombastic Bameshow" has the Tropers and other characters enter a car into the titular gameshow; atleast 13 characters (based by the amount of tropers posting before the plot has Knife drive the car) are inside the car, when the maximum capacity of a three-row car would usually be 8 individuals.Madface7: How does this car have so many seats?
- Comic Trio: Often, Taco, Tales and Tropes fall into this as Schemer, Complainer, and Fool, respectively. Taco comes up with get-rich-quick schemes which he and Tropes then carry out, while Tales clashes with Taco over the plan.
- Con Man: Taco Badger, who, as opposed to working for money, cheats Bev, Movie, and a Newspaper company out of their money at one point or another.
- Cosmic Retcon: The Status Quo has the ability to use these to enforce his namesake concept. Then, Tamatoa gets control of his powers and just uses them to wreak havoc.
- Crack Ship: In-Universe. One viewer wrote into the show with a list of such ships, including Sam the Cricket x Taco Badger, Gangrenous F x Bev, Zero x Cthulhu Monkey Zero, TropesForever x the landlord plant, and Buddy X The Landlord X The Canned Laughter Machine.
- Drives Like Crazy: Random nearly kills everyone every time he takes the wheel.
- Dynamic Entry:
- Early-Installment Weirdness: One consistent element of the roleplay during Season 1 and Season 2 up to Episode 23 was a moral of some form at the end of the episode. This is completely dropped from Season 2 Episode 24 onwards.
- Either/Or Title: A couple of episodes are like this.
- "The Bowling Tournament" has the alternate title "The Case of the Cunning Conman"
- "Look we never use episode titles properly anyway, it doesn't matter" has the alternate title "The Day The Lights Went Out"
- "Lovey-Dovey Fluff for The Viewers" has "More Pokemon Card Fun Because What The Heck"
- "Wilde Zeiten in Zürich" has its English title, "Wild Times in Zürich"
- "The Magic Tool Bus" has the alternate title "Journey to the World Within".
- "The Nightmare Before Epiphany" has the alternate title "There'll Be Parties For Hosting Marshmallows For Toasting And Caroling Out In The Snow There'll Be Scary Ghost Stories And Tales Of Under (Tales of Under appearance not guaranteed)"
- Establishing Series Moment: The first ever post has TropesForever turn to the camera and saying "this wasn't supposed to be a one-man show, you know!", setting the fourth wall-demolishing tone for the rest of the series. The ensuing Reference Overdosed hijinks when the other tropers show up, and the first episode climaxing with the tropers blowing up their evil landlord with fireworks certainly let you know what you're in for.
- Five-Token Band: Discounting extraterrestrial characters, nonhuman characters, and characters from established fictional locations from other works of media, alot of the characters originate from many countries (outside of the United States, where a majority of human characters come from) and ethnic groups; such as Tropes being Australian, Aveyond being French, Libre being Indonesian, Katrina being stated to come from the fictional nation of Robloxia, West being Chinese-American, and Keiron being explicitly dark-skinned.
- Foul Flower:
- The Landlord Plant's long-lost son Sonny Sunflora is this, as he was the Big Bad of season 3. As of season 4 he's downgraded to a gold hearted-Sitcom Arch-Nemesis, making him a downplayed version.
- Flowey the Flower also shows up as the villain of several episodes, just as psychotic as in his source material.
- "Freaky Friday" Flip: The central plot of "Thrifty Thursday" involves this happening to many characters (specified as 35.5% of the population) as a result of Professor Wasp's body-swapping machine going haywire and getting struck with lightning. Amongst the swapped characters are:
- Mad with Custard.
- Tropes with Knife.
- After with Taco.
- Playing with President Biden.
- Bee with Libre.
- Chey with Kafka.
- Dan with Aveyond.
- Taco Jr. with an anglerfish.
- Junon with Commander Yammark.
- Tilly with Katrina (only occuring sometime after the primary swap wave occurs).
- Dookie with Route (only occuring sometime after the primary swap wave occurs).
- JK Benbot with an unspecified dwarf.
- Professor Wasp with Delilah (Chey and Ford's baby).
- Mr. Loudmouth with a tardigrade.
- Zanreo with the Spiky-Haired Anime Manager (which the former assumed to be a dream when it's definitely not).
- Friend on the Force: Taken up to eleven with G2's position as one of the commanders of the Moore Brotherhood. He tries to use this to get Movie's inventions back for him when they got impounded.
- Gadgeteer's House: Bee's house, a cabin with his various inventions, including a (somewhat unreliable) mechanical arm for pouring cereal.
- Gamer Chick:
- Revaryk carries a replica of the Master Sword the first time she enters.
- Zanreo has an affinity for rhythm games, and often references them.
- Gender Flip: Marcia Shyneet was based off of Morph Moth, a Male Maverick from Mega Man X2
- Groin Attack: When Tales is playing Call of Cthulhu with Taco Badger, he says: "You can only kick people in the nuts so much before it's a SAN check for you."
- Heist Episode:
- Season 1 Episode 5, "The Tropers Rob a Bank" is about the Tropers getting together to rob a bank to get money to go on a skiing trip. Due to many of them conflicting with each other, such as Tropes and Puma who are not so eager to commit a crime, and Random who leaves the group to get coffee, the heist doesn't go well, and they come out with barely any money.
- Season 7 Episode 5, "The Great Los Santos Heist", this time as an homage to the Grand Theft Auto series. There, the Tropers need to pay off their debt after spending much of Tropesberg's taxpayer dollars of the development and marketing of an offical T:TS video game. They end up taking a job offer from Michael DeSanta to rob a bank and a jewelry store in Los Santos. Despite coming up with a plan, the Tropers don't even bother to execute it properly. Despite the disorganized insanity, the heist somehow ends up being successful anyway.
- Hell Is That Noise: Libre hears the receptionist of "Bobby Buzzer's Bombastic Bameshow" pronouncing the red B button emoji as a "loud buzzing bass noise".Libre: Please. Stop speaking with that loud buzzing bass noise...thing...whenever you do the B thing. It's painful.Receptionist: 🅱️ust 🅱️ake the 🅱️est 🅱️leasenote . 🅱️🅱️🅱️🅱️🅱️🅱️🅱️🅱️🅱️🅱️🅱️🅱️🅱️🅱️🅱️🅱️🅱️🅱️🅱️🅱️🅱️
- "Hey, You!" Haymaker: When Beverly's dangerous alien "cousin" shows up and threatens to exterminate humankind, Gangrenous F pokes him in the shoulder, before punching him into a box of kitty litter, killing him.
- I Ate WHAT?!: In the second season finale, The Skittles brought over some cupcakes and Ford tries one. He enjoys it at first but then he finds out the Skittles have a interesting family recipe to put it politely. Needless to say, Ford ended up hospitalized.Ford: These are actually pretty alright. What's in these anyway?
Mr. Skittle: Well it's a special family recipe. We put clam juice, beef hearts, and chicken feet in our batter.
(Ford turned a bit pale-green as he gagged, clutched his rumbling stomach, and dashes to the nearby bathroom) - Incredibly Lame Fun: "Controlled Uncontrolled Re-entry (Home Sweet Home)" starts off with most of the tropers deciding to watch "the extreme slow-drying action of Grand-Father Samuele's Classicke Slow-Dryinge Painte". Except for Sylvi, who is outside on the lawn watching the grass grow.
- Identical Stranger: Both Beverly and Heather (played by the same troper) are near-identical in their physical appearance despite both being Human Aliens from different locations of the universe. As a result of this, Beverly ends up losing alot of her cool stuff in "Back Home Again" by the intergalactic authorities that were after Heather.
- Indecisive Medium: Despite being a Play-by-Post Game, it takes on a structure more akin to episodic shows, involving plots generally seperated via "episodes".
- In-Universe Factoid Failure: When playing Call of Cthulhu, Tales obviously doesn't know about even the most basic concepts of the game: for example, he SAN checked Taco Badger for kicking people in the nuts too much.
- Inherited Illiteracy Title: "Bobby Buzzer's Bombastic Bameshow" has the episode title written with the "G" in "Gameshow" replaced with "B" because of the red B button emoji replacing the "G" in the gameshow's title.
- Journey to the Center of the Mind: Season 3 Episode 21, "Badgamino", has the Tropers enter Taco's mind with the help of a strange trumpet-shaped device with a Xathian crystal upon the wide side of the cone, in order to obtain one of the artefacts needed (a nametag in this episode) create a staff to defeat Captain Fussenpepper, the Arc Villain of Season 3. The inside of Taco's mental landscape contains a number of individuals that look like Taco, and is divided into Main Street, and the Residential-Wish Fulfillment Area, the latter divided into sections that represent aspects of Taco's inner mind. Within the latter area is Self-Aware Taco, the only individual in Taco's mental landscape that knows the true artefact needed to complete the staff.
- Laugh Track: Used extensively with the help of the Canned Laughter Machine. It's often commented on, with the it being destroyed, repaired and even shipped with other characters.Inverted with canned groaning when Zero claimed to have figured out the plot.
- LOL, 69: Some instances happen in "Tropesburg Gets Even Stranger":
- When Knife tells the others that they have 69 bulbs that can be used to replace old ones, Mad and Custard react with the word "Nice".Knife: I got more lightbulbs, by the way! Like you asked. I got...69 bulbs.
Custard: Nice.
Mad: Niiiiice, man. - Bee retorts with an aversion of this trope, Gray Worker #69, stating that she's the most boring person he's ever met.
- When Knife tells the others that they have 69 bulbs that can be used to replace old ones, Mad and Custard react with the word "Nice".
- Ludicrous Gibs: This happens to the landlord when he falls on fireworks that were ignited by his cigar.
- Medium Awareness: Part of the basis for the whole show. Not to mention the "Destroy the Status Quo" episode.
- Mistaken for Clown: In "Queen Victoria's Secret", at one point Afterwards is wearing an outfit with an enormous dress and hat, and heavy makeup. Puma, himself a Non-Ironic Clown, thinks After wants to join him at the circus and is thrilled. After doesn't really get a chance to respond.note
- Monster Mash: Season 8 Episode 15, "Spooky Night Fever", sees the Tropers take a 2-night stay at Torgo Towers, a hotel hosted by a wide variety of horror monsters of various forms of fiction, and then some.
- Musical Episode: The second-season finale "Tropers: The Series: The Musical!" and the third-season episode "Silliness in Sweden" were those.
- New Powers as the Plot Demands: Even Bev doesn't know the limits of her Xathian powers. It's lampshaded a lot.
- No Celebrities Were Harmed: In "Back Home Again," Puma talks to a waiter modelled after Frank Nelson. He's intended to look like Nelson and does some of his signature jokes, including the
"Ee-yeees?" and Ask a Stupid Question.... - Noodle Incident:
- Zero played a prank on a high school buddy using a refrigerator, a banana, and the French government.
- In "Sleepless in Sunflora Apartment", Bee alludes to one that happened during a game of Monopoly, claiming it's better that he not play it again.
- Briya mentioned being the cause of a dragon getting PTSD with only a towel and a doll.
- Offscreen Moment of Awesome: G2 once led a contingent of Mobile Suit troops from the Moore Brotherhood against one of Zero's clones' installations in France. Revenge for the entire episode in "The Cat Who Did Too Much".
- Parody Commercial: There are a number of these in the thread. Whenever someone decides that the current episode should have a commercial break, multiple tropers will write fake commercials advertising various made-up products, most of which are merchandise for Tropers: the Series itself. For example, in Episode 16: Tropers: the Series... Again:
- Chey writes a commercial for Tropers: the Series: the Aftershow, where 4 hosts talk about the newest episode of the series.
- Josh6243 writes a commercial for Fire Emblem Tropera, an unusual tabletop RPG.
- Puma writes a commercial for Werecat Puma Clocks, a parody of the classic Kit-Cat Klock. It also mentions "Claco", an upcoming line of clocks based on TacoBadger.
- Chey writes a commercial for Tropers: the Series novelizations. Unfortunately, they're only in paperback.
- Percussive Maintenance: When Bee's cereal-pouring mechanical arm gets stuck in "Thrifty Thursday", he gets it to move again by hitting it. It's implied this happens a lot.
- Pop-Cultural Osmosis Failure: When Puma reveals that he is actually a werecat, Tropes and Taco remark that his story is similar to that of Remus Lupin from Harry Potter. Puma states that he didn't realize the similarities, as he has never read the books.
- Pun: Naturally, since this is a comedy roleplay, puns show up quite a bit.
- TropesForever gives us this gem in episode 2:
"Wouldn't Taco know more about salsa?"- In "The Maltese Soda Cans", Custard gives an excellent one when they fly over Skull Killer (a deputy):
"Sorry sir, but as a Troper, I am above the law" - Running Gag: There are many references throughout the series to "Steamed Hams," especially by TropesForever and DrNoPuma.
- Seven Deadly Sins: Anthropomorphic Personifications of these appear in "Ruckus Over Repast" as demons working for Satan.
- "Shaggy Dog" Story: Part of the reason the Tropers went to the titular gameshow in "Bobby Buzzer's Bombastic Bameshow" is to get enough funds to fix the apartment that'd been wrecked by Libre in "The Nightmare Before Epiphany". This gets rendered moot when the gameshow's prize ends up as 1 US Dollar and 68 cents, and that Playing revealed that he fixed the apartment whilst the gameshow was running.
- Special Guest: Season 7 Episode 8, "A Very Special Guest", revolves around the tropers preparing for the arrival of special guest Robert Downey Jr.
- Team Pet:
- Possibly Quite Insane, the man-eating cat.
- Recently, this more accurately applies to Taco Badger, whose been turned into a mouse.
- The title currently belongs to Sir Fluff, Revenge's pet cat.
- Possibly Dookie, as even though he plays a role similar to the humans, he is a dog.
- Libre's pet bobbit worm plays this role in "Tropesburg Gets Even Stranger", participating in defending Taco Jr. And Libre against the incoming Demodogs (specifically the Alpha).
- Teleport Interdiction: When the DMV closes for lunch, it closes — when the Tempests attempt to teleport in to grab their updated IDs, they're shunted outside and knocked flat on their ass with a nosebleed.
- There Was a Door:
- Funnily enough, also how Mango makes his exit in "Mechani-chaos." He just does an Unflinching Walk and crashes through the wall of a supply closet. Downplayed in that there's no obvious door described, but Mango doesn't even bother looking for one.
- Trash the Set: Libre's semi-impromptu flight from Jakarta to Tropesburg in "The Nightmare Before Epiphany" ends with him crashing the apartment so hard a large portion of it is in ruins afterward.
- Void Between the Worlds: "Thrifty Thursday" sees Daniel Browne watching the events of the episode from a void whereupon characters that don't show up in the episode hang out. He spends his time in the void singing a 999,997,253-bottle variation of 99 Bottles of Beer.
- Whole-Plot Reference: Season 8 Episode 16, "No Time to Dine", has a wholesale reference to the memetic "Steamed Hams" short, spiritually following its plot beats (from the burnt roast to lying about the hamburgers), and using similar dialogue to the short at times.
- Worthless Yellow Rocks: Season 8 Episode 11, "2021: A Space Robbery", explores this trope at hand with a planet that embodies it: in Shiny-5, gold is as common there as dirt would be on Earth, wood is considered to be a very valuable item in comparison, and the backstory of the then-current leader, Rufus T. Owlcity, incorporates being surrounded by gold as imagery of his former poverty. Tellingly, what seems like a subversion with the odd gold pile in his vault turns out to be Tamatoa's shell, with him still inside.
