What page is this? Well...
Short version: "My sandbox, for my own twisted amusement. Hee hee!"
Long version: this is where I keep stuff that really doesn't belong to existing articles, such as YKTTW drafts, Dummied Out edits, and Just for Fun stuff, in order to see such things the way they would appear on real pages. Call it a graveyard, or a museum, if you will. Most of these things are short, anyway, so hopefully it's not entirely a waste of wiki space.
Title: Administrivia: Example Lobotomy
Laconic Entry: When all else fails, rewrite the natter as facts.
So, it's come to this. Let's say there's an article dealing with a certain subject, and the subject was very open to interpretation. Subjective, as they say. So subjective, the examples have derailed into Thread Mode, and the article is now a natter minefield, a barren wasteland, the ruins of what a good article was originally supposed to be. This is an insult to Tv Tropes' very existence. You suddenly beg for the mods to intervene, and suggest an Example Sectionectomy, or something even more radical.
Example Sectionectomy? Permanent Red Link Club?! Get A Hold Of Yourself Man!
Sorry for the Dope Slap, but you were kinda raving. What about removing the natter yourself, instead? Here's the plan: if you see any use of "This Troper" or any instance of users replying to other users, simply rewrite their sentences in an objective way, like Wikipedia. List facts as they are, and nobody'll ever notice the mess this article was before your cleanup. See? Now we have the article still accessible to everyone, instead of a blank page destined to eternal oblivion. This kind of cleanup is what we call Example Lobotomy.
First originating in the great cleanup in order to restore the Nightmare Fuel namespace, this writing style mimics The Other Wiki's objective Dissonant Serenity with the articles receiving a Creepy Monotone Retooling. While the result loses the witty feeling Tv Tropes is known for, the soul, the heart of the article will always stay the same, no matter what. The rules of this little game are simple:
- Just list facts as they are.
- Zero tolerance over zero context examples like "Character X" or "the X scene". Saying either that ("X, just X") or adding "... is made of this trope" / "is this trope incarnate" may be informative to who wrote the example in the first place, but not to those outside the fandom. And by "Zero tolerance", we mean deletion without any discussion. Period. Tropers who do Example Lobotomy are still free to provide the context themselves.
- Spoiler policy for certain tropes (Tear Jerker, Moment of Awesome, you name it) needs to be determined on a case-by-case basis: if enough time has passed, there's no need to add the spoiler tag anymore, considering It Was His Sled.
- Italics are restricted to works' titles only (like Chuck or Family Guy) and not to give Large Ham-level emphasis to what tropers say.
- "X caused Y Audience Reaction to me / This Troper" is already implied by the mere addition of that example by the troper him / herself. Pointing that out is kind of redundant.
... and you're done. The point of doing this is that tropers who edit an article, one that has gone through this kind of cleanup, are naturally inspired to write their own examples following these guidelines.
Remember to resort to Example Sectionectomy or the Permanent Red Link Club only when, respectively, example sections or entire articles prove to be beyond hope of salvation, and, if possible, to try this kind of cleanup first.
Title: Unlock Match
Laconic entry: The tricky-to-get-to match, with "Defeat Means Playable" as the outcome.
A gaming trope, mostly seen in (but not limited to) Fighting Games, where, upon the completion of a task - whether the game itself tells you about it or not - you get to challenge another opponent, which makes his entrance through a dramatic, as-vague-as-possible "CHALLENGER APPROACHING" screen.
Then, it's one-on-one. As if the tension wasn't enough by itself, you only have one chance. If you win, you can play as your challenger; but if you screw up... you'll have to access the match again, whether it's a difficult thing to do or not! On that note, see Double Unlock.
See also Promoted to Playable for characters who later in a series become playable. Compare and contrast Mega Manning, which is the same concept applied to the Player Character's moveset.
Compare Defeat Means Playable, of which this is a subtrope.
Examples of this trope in action:
- Perhaps the best known example is Super Smash Bros. and its dramatic "CHALLENGER APPROACHING" screens.
- As shown above, Chocobo Racing did this by having Squall Leonhart as an additional opponent. Then, challenging him again would eventually unlock Cloud Strife... and The Invincible... and Aya Brea...
- Averted in Crash Team Racing: yes, the bosses are unlockable, but racing against them isn't enough. You'll need the gems for that, instead.
Title: Chekhov's Retcon
Laconic: A meta example of the author leaving something that could allow a Retcon in the future.
The author left an object, a sentence, a MacGuffin, or whatever you can name, in a story with a shocking change in the status quo in order to justify any possible Retcon later.
Super-Trope of Actually a Doombot. The opposite trope is a retcon exacuted as an Ass Pull.
Noticeable examples:
- The Paperinik New Adventures Ultimate Universe, "PK", did this with Lyonard's Brain Uploading when it was later used to recreate him as a cyborg when the original was turned into a Godzilla-esque reptilian.
- Mary Jane's whispered Exact Words in One More Day, as explained in One Moment in Time.
- In the pilot episode of Futurama, they added someone else's shadow under Fry's chair, just in case. As it turned out, } they needed it.
- Inverted for Roxas and Ventus. Roxas was created first as a character (read: created by Tetsuya Nomura), but Ventus was born years earlier In-Universe. Therefore, as a meta example, the trope is played straight as Roxas inspired the design of Ventus, and then inverted In-Universe as Roxas is the one looking like Ventus, and not the other way around.
Okay, I need to clarify it a bit.
Let's suppose you're writing something, like a comic book storyline or something else. Then you realise your story is going to affect your setting and its characters... pretty hard.
The change in the status quo, being undoubtedly difficult to un-noticed, is indeed going to have unpredictable reactions from the audience. If this goes well, the fandom rejoices; otherwise, the fandom may either see this as your story Jumping the Shark, a Dork Age that mustn't be taken seriously, or even worse, your entire franchise being Ruined FOREVER.
In other words, you're getting yourself into trouble.
But wait! Your storyline isn't out yet. In fact, it's still there on your desk. You're really going to do it, but you fear this might... no, you fear this will backfire. We're talking about stuff that will need a Retcon within mere months after its release, as your saving throw.
But you don't want that retcon to be an Ass Pull, either. So what do you do? You add a little, barely noticeable detail in the background of your story, like an object or something else, so that, if you need your retcon to be justified, that detail will still be there, as if it was beneath a caption reading, like, "In case of Retcon - BREAK GLASS".
This is the Chekhov's Retcon.
And now, to clarify the One More Day example: as explained in its page as well as in the One Moment in Time article, Mary Jane's whisper was left vague as an example of this very trope. It then got subverted as it turned out that whisper was Mary-Jane reaffirming the deal with Mephisto... but in a way that actually did retcon the deal out of existence, thus turning it back to an example of this trope played straight once again.
Title: Slaughter Is A Free Action
Laconic: The villain is killing off people like it's no big deal.
A common way to establish a character's status as a Complete Monster without wasting time is showing him killing off somebody. And by that, we don't mean showing remorse. We don't even mean warning the victim about what's going to happen, nor we mean an after-kill quip.
The bad guy just... kills whoever he wants, as if it's something as natural as, say, taking a book from a shelf: the difference is that, aside from the former being an irredeemable act, that the former should need at least the killer to acknowledge what he's dealing with, while the latter doesn't necessarily need the guy to say, like, "Oh, hi book. Prepare to not be on the shelf anymore".
Dissonant Serenity here is in full effect, so much that this trope can be considered its subtrope. Also, the lack of acknowledgement of the kill is reminiscent of the unmentioned-ness of the Big-Lipped Alligator Moment.
If a mook has either outlived his usefulness or failed the guy in question, said bad guy responds by killing him off, and this death comes without even a warning or a witty remark, then it counts as this trope, too.
Examples of this trope in fiction:
- The Joker in The Dark Knight did this, for example, in the heist at the beginning of the movie, where he killed off one of his mooks with a machine gun as soon as the poor guy "dared" to talk to the psychotic clown.
- As long as it's not given plot relevance, this is what most players can do in video games such as the Grand Theft Auto series, that allow them to kill off civilians that aren't even able to defend themselves.
- In the Treehouse of Horror episodes of The Simpsons, characters tend to kill off each other for reasons that, in normal episodes, should otherwise get the stink-eye as the most exaggerated retribution. Case in point, Skinner killing Groundskeeper Willie in the third segment of THOH V with an axe in the back without having anything to say about it, for no reason other than - aside from preventing Willie to save the kids - having Willie offed in this manner for the third time.
Title: Null And Void Unmasking
Laconic: The masked hero gets unmasked, but by the end of the episode it doesn't matter anymore.
The Chronically Retconned Unmasking. This is what happens whenever our hero's Secret Identity is put in jeopardy by any villain who temporarily manages to unmask him, and by the end of the episode, may it be due to a Reset Button or because Status Quo Is God, the event is either retconned, forgotten, or made irrelevant due to the villain in question being either arrested or Killed Off for Real.
Whatever the cause, both the unmasking and its implied side effects on the status quo are promptly made null and void, hence the trope name. The unmasking itself is often accompanied with the Stock Phrase, "Now let's see who's behind this mask" (as well as a dramatic close-up of both the mask in question and the hand about to remove it); and more often than not, said Stock Phrase is bound to be the prelude to the ad break.
The null-and-void status of the unmasking is usually executed as an Ass Pull.
Compare The Unreveal, when the lack of revelations leaves the audience in the dark as well. Contrast Broken Masquerade.
Examples of this trope in action:
- Spider-Man: Spider-Man, in all adaptations, can be considered the Trope Codifier. The Marvel Civil War was originally supposed to be a Wham Episode for the status quo, but then One More Day ass pulled a Cosmic Retcon to nullify the effects of Spidey's unmasking. To clarify, Peter Parker originally unmasked himself in front of a press conference.
Title: Clowning Moment Of Awesome
Laconic: A character saves the day by accident, thanks to his flaws.
There are many moments: Moment of Awesome, Funny Moments, Heartwarming Moments, you name it.
And then there's this.
Basically, a hypothetical set-up is sorta like this: the situation is desperate, or even worse, hell, even the Darkest Hour. The heroes are about to be killed... but hey, this is the moment where the Big Damn Heroes rush in and save the day, at the last second... any second now... right... right... right?!?
Oh no, here he comes! The idiot rushed in instead. So, not only the heroes are boned, but the last guy they get to see is this epic dumbass. Oh, and he popped up in a room filled with the same fire he's deathly afraid of, to boot.
How can things get any worse... what? The fool, while running away from the fire, bumped on the villain and made him fall over! How is this even possible?
Give yourself a high-five, dude - or take a shot, if this is what you've been seeking all along - for you've got yerself a Clowning Moment Of Awesome.
This is what happens when a character's flaw proves vital to turn the tables in a given situation, and generally, it sort of goes just as well as in the given example.
It doesn't need to either be a Moment of Awesome, nor a Funny Moment, but might be either one as well, if not both.
Examples of this trope in action:
Anime and Manga
- In the Thriller Bark arc of One Piece, Usopp is not affected by the depression-inducing attack. Why? Because he's The Eeyore already.
- The main modus operandi of Inspector Clouseau from The Pink Panther films.
- The last part of Kingdom Hearts 3D [Dream Drop Distance] has Donald and Goofy "defeating" Xehanort's "Guardian" by falling on top of it.
- When Penny and Brain's competent efforts fail to stop Claw, Inspector Gadget's oblivious klutziness will usually provide a Spanner in the Works.
Title: No Respect for Handhelds
Laconic: The Handheld gaming market isn't treated as seriously as the Home Console market sometimes.
(AKA: Portable Bastardization, Crippled Portableness)
No matter how powerful handheld consoles have become, sometimes they're still denied the respect they deserve. This happens regardless of the presence of high-profile games on any given handheld.
This includes either removing features from a game's portable debut for the sake of making it inferior to its native home console series, thus subtly implying a "for a more complete experience, play it at home" message, or not creating a handheld entry in said series at all. Direct ports who have Gone Horribly Wrong have their own trope for that: see Porting Disaster. This is not about ports.
However, this trend, is far less present now than it used to be.
Since PC games work on PCs and notebooks alike, the currently rising presence of the latter is a huge point in favor of the former in the huge PC vs. Console argument. For the tendency to limit handhelds to either gaiden games or spinoffs, that may be treated as a subtrope on its own right ("Portable Gaiden Spinoff" anyone?).
Remember, this is not about complaining about portable games you don't like. So, as with just about ninety percent of this wiki, deliberate negativity is not allowed.
The following is just a list of handheld games lacking relevant features compared to their home console native series.
Examples of this trope:
- Daxter, first portable outing of Jak and Daxter, was A Day in the Limelight for the sidekick, Daxter, without Jak having a playable role.
- The first handheld title in the Ratchet & Clank series, Size Matters, averted this by playing like an actual home console title, so much it got later re-released for the PS2.
- Square Enix as a whole, long story short, has a bad case of this, what with their most important franchises having main title series only published for home consoles, while handhelds are either used for gaiden games, prequels or spinoffs. Actually good exceptions to this rule are The World Ends with You, brilliantly conceived with the Nintendo DS in mind, and Dissidia Final Fantasy, a title summing up the very best of Final Fantasy in a nutshell.
- Nintendo used to be guilty of this, although this obviously isn't as much of an infamous case as others, given they've always treated the handheld gaming market seriously. To clarify, after having used their own portable consoles just for either spinoffs or remakes, they eventually ended up developing a mainline polygonal Mario game from the ground up, just for their handheld.
- Inverted in the Mario Kart series with Double Dash!! lacking a single race mode outside of multiplayer, a feature introduced in the previous title, that was for a handheld. Played straight in Mario Kart 7, a portable title, that did the very same thing after the previous game, the Wii game Mario Kart Wii, had said single race mode in it.
- Masahiro Sakurai, curator of both Kirby and Super Smash Bros., explicitly stated he never wanted to create a handheld version of the latter. Things have changed lately as it was announced the next SSB game would come out for the next home console, the Wii U, as well as the 3DS.
- Before this announcement, the only handheld game that allowed players to "play as all Nintendo characters in one single game" was WarioWare. Because of this, players tend to play 9-Volt's microgames the most.
- The Nintendo 3DS version of Sonic Generations has this in spades. Go to that article to see why.
- Inverted in the entire Pokémon series, where no one among the home console games seen in that series have ever offered the same vast experience as the handheld games. In fact, the spinoffs almost always end up on home console, while the mainline games always come out for handhelds.
- Kaz Hirai, president of Sony Computer Entertainment and mostly known for "599 U.S. Dollars" and "Riiiiiiiidge Raaaaaaaaaaaaceeeeeeeeer", when the Playstation Portable came out, explicitly stated that it would "elevate handheld gaming out of the handheld gaming ghetto". Make of that what you will.
- An excellent inversion of the trope is the PlayStation Network, providing an online store allowing users to download PSOne Classics to be downloaded on both PS3 and PSP (the opposite of Nintendo's Virtual Console: home console titles for Wii, handheld titles for the 3DS). That's right - actual Playstation titles are now made portable if you access the Store with a PSP. The selection of titles is a bit worse in Europe to say the least, but that's another problem entirely.
Title: Level Thumbnail
Laconic: A small image used as a preview of the level you're about to enter.
Almost an Omnipresent Trope in Video Games, this trope is about any kind of visual aid that helps players telling levels apart with a small image depicting a part of the one they're about to access. Imagine a postcard for a level.
The Level Thumbnail can show up in the Hub Level, in a level selection screen, and even in a Traversible World Map (although more rarely).
This being such a common trope, listing examples might even be redundant, but notable ones are still welcome.
Level Diorama Preview ( only a not-yet-launched ykttw at the moment) is a Sub-Trope, about a more specific and more detailed variant of this.
Examples:
- Generally averted in the Mario Kart series except in Mario Kart 64 and Mario Kart Super Circuit, where the thumbnails are scenery-only screenshots in the former and actual - and sometimes humorous - drawings in the latter.
- The image above comes from the level selection screen in the first Mario vs. Donkey Kong. Notably, without these, the levels' names would make telling them apart nearly impossible, thanks to the "1-1"-like naming pattern the Super Mario Bros. series is famous for.
- Both Yoshi's Island and its DS sequel used these.
- Mega Man (Classic) used the Robot Masters' faces as these.
Title: Level Diorama Preview
Laconic: You get to see a glimpse of the level you're about to enter thanks to a small diorama.
A Video Game trope currently becoming more and more popular as time passes, this is about a diorama used as a small "preview" of sorts for the level you're about to access. It generally comes off as a classy touch, and as a generally nice addition to the game as it makes easier (and in some cases possible) to tell the levels apart.
Given this is easy to confuse with the Traversible World Map, there's a just-as-easy example to distinguish these two tropes: while the World Map illustrates the world as a whole, the Level Diorama Preview is used for a level or world accessible by itself inside either the World Map or Hub Level, depending on the case.
For example, while the smaller World Maps in Super Mario Land 2: 6 Golden Coins actually are dioramas but don't qualify as Level Dioramas, given they show a world as a whole, the level selection screen in Super Mario Galaxy, as well as the World Map in its sequel, both have small dioramas - for the individual levels - in them, and therefore those games count as examples of this trope.
While easier to implement in Platform Games, this trope isn't strange to other genres, either.
Examples of this trope:
- The page image comes from Kigndom Hearts (specifically, a sprite-rip from Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories). Ever since the first installment, worlds have always been physically represented with this very trope.
- Kingdom Hearts 3D [Dream Drop Distance] has its own take on the trope: given it takes place inside dreams, the dioramas are now incased in bubbles.
- Sometimes employed in the Super Mario Bros. franchise.
- Super Mario Galaxy, as noted in the trope's description, was the first game to make an extensive use of this trope. The sequel, while replacing a Hub Level with a Traversible World Map, also did the same.
- Super Mario 3D Land is a far more notable example, as, given the "blending polygonal enviroments with classic 2D gameplay" aspect, this trope is a lot more needed when the levels are "classically" numbered instead of named. This doesn't only makes it easier to tell them apart - it actually makes it possible, and makes this trope a whole lot more useful addition. The dioramas are also pretty neat to look at, too.
- Sonic Generations uses this trope, both in a Hub Level (Playstation 3 and Xbox 360 version) and in the level selection screen (Nintendo 3DS version). The console version also has the possibility for Sonic to jump on (and stand on) the levels' names.
- All of the first three Crash Bandicoot games use this, to some extent. The first has small dioramas for the single levels (a boulder for the Indy Escape levels, or a wooden wall for the "Great Gate/Native Fortress" levels for example, which blend with the Traversible World Map in a natural way; the second had the levels' entrance gates shaped like the same levels' themes; the third is debatable, as the warp-portal showed a small glimpse of the level's setting but wasn't an actual diorama (and, despite each world's hub was a diorama shaped one of the game's settings, that alone doesn't meet the trope's "single levels" criteria.
Echo Chamber WMG theory about Mr. Administrator being Fast Eddie
- Seconded. (Come on guys, even if he wasn't, the Admin character is an obvious stand-in for Fasty.) And if the fictional version is played by the real deal, some Adam Westing wouldn't hurt.
Joe Quesada originally-planned entry on Trolling Creator (the final version I posted is a shorter one, with less context)
- To a lesser extent than Mark Millar, there's Joe Quesada, former editor-in-chief (and now C.E.O.) of Marvel Comics (see the note for context.) He refused to explain the details of One More Day's aftermath at first, only to bring it up again with One Moment in Time, thankfully providing a Mind Screwdriver, as soon as fans started getting over it.
Imageless version. Think of Relax-o-Vision. Article copied in the 29th of January, 2013.
Basically, the worst fate in the universe is to be covered in bees. Nothing so small should cause so much fear amongst creatures so much larger... and yet they do. The distinctive coloration. The horrible buzzing noise. The danger of stinging. The way they move in swarms. The kamikaze mentality. And of course, if you're allergic or if there are a lot of the little bastards, they can put you in the hospital or even kill you.
Subtropes include Bee-Bee Gun. Related to Bee Afraid. If a monster or person is made of bees, then they're The Worm That Walks. Often seen in the Hornet Hole. Sometimes overlaps with Bears Are Bad News because bears like their honey.
Examples:
Anime and Manga
- Pokémon: Vespiquen's Attack Order move summons a bunch of Combee to attack the foe.
- Pokémon: BEEDRILL! IT'S ALWAYS BEEDRILL!
- Beedrill is actually the wild Pokemon that has attacked Ash the most. Not to mention the fact that they attack in massive swarms and are 3'03".
- From Inuyasha, there's the Saimyoushou, the poisonous insects Naraku uses for spying on the heroes and weakening Miroku whenever he uses the Wind Tunnel.
- In No. 6, the dark secret of the eponymous city is that parasitic bees/wasps are propagating and killing people
- How about in Ninja Scroll?
Comic Books
- In the Marvel Universe, there's Swarm, a Nazi made of bees. (Or possibly a swarm of bees in the shape of a Nazi, Depending on the Writer.)
- In Amazons Attack!!, a subplot involves the Amazons having their STYGIAN KILLER HORNETS attack another hero giving him only HOURS to live (a subplot so pointless, it didn't even make it into the book) prompting this hilarious quote:Batman: An Amazon attack.. a deadly bee weapon. Bees. My God.
- Veteran Justice League villain Queen Bee covers this trope.
- There's an old Golden Age superhero called the Red Bee, who used not bees, but a single trained bee, to fight crime. He is generally regarded as a joke character these days.
- His successor, his grandniece Jenna, sort of made up for it by using battle armor and two big robotic bees that fire lasers.
- Calvin hates bees and hornets, and has been known to throw rocks at their hives. When he was stung by a bee, the incident became exaggerated in his memory:Calvin's Mom (applying ointment): I don't see the "harpoon" that "gored" you, but this will help the sting.Calvin: Call the National Guard. I'm sure they can track the bee on radar.
- This is how Dubbelosix and his handler Surreptitius are put to death in [[Comic Book/Asterix Asterix]] and the Black Gold.
- As these boys learn.
(From a story by Wilhelm Busch.)
Film
- In Tommy Boy, Tommy attempts to beat a drunk driving arrest by pretending he is being attacked by a swarm of vicious bees.
- Bees! Bees in the car! Save yourselves! Your firearms are useless against them!
- There was a swarm of bad B-movies about Killer Bees back in the 70s.
- The Swarm (1978), starring Michael Caine.
Bees, bees, lots of bees! *boom*- In the ABC Movie of the Week Killer Bees (1974), Gloria Swanson was the bees' ruler.
- Back in 1966 there was The Deadly Bees, known mostly today for being featured on Mystery Science Theater 3000
- In Little Nicky, Adrian proves to the crowd how evil he is by bringing out Henry Winkler and covering him in bees. Later, Nicky has to do something bad so he can get back to hell, so he also covers Winkler in bees.
- In The Wicker Man (2006), the Island's inhabitants are honey farmers rather than the fruit farmers of the original. The main character (Nicolas Cage) is deathly afraid of bees, due to being allergic to their stings. His over-the-top fear of bees in the film is often mocked by viewers, particularly his famous utterance "NOT THE BEES!"
- The title character in Candyman is revealed to be little more than a skeleton inhabited with the bees that stung him to death originally. With Tony Todd's head, making things scarier.
- The title characters in Invasion of the Bee Girls.
- Vada and Thomas jump into a lake to escape from a swarm of bees in My Girl. Unfortunately, Thomas doesn't manage to escape from them later on, and dies from an allergic reaction to the stings.
- Friar Tuck in the Ridley Scott Robin Hood (2010) is a beekeeper. He attacks the French with them.
- Giant wasps are one problem among many in The Food of the Gods.
- In Honey, I Shrunk the Kids, the kids are visited by a bee while climbing a flower. They wind up riding it around the yard, and are nearly killed when Wayne swings at the bee with a bat.
- The X-Files: Fight the Future reveals that domesticated bees are being used by the Government Conspiracy to spread a deadly virus that turns living humans into breeding tanks for homicidal aliens. All it takes is a single sting from their bee to make a Grey emerge from your body Chestburster-style. Oh, and The Syndicate can remotely control their bees, too. Sleep tight tonight.
- A bumblebee was the cause of Mistaken for Racist in National Security. It started when the black security guard who at first suspected of stealing a car gets attacked by a bumblebee, which he's allergic to. The white cop swings his nightstick around to shoo it away only to make it look like a racial beating which was caught on tape before he was convicted and sent to prison.
- In Save the Green Planet!, the protagonist douses a man in honey and then unleashes crates full of bees. Guess what happens.
- In Nanny McPhee, the children disrupt the wedding of their father to a woman who proves she'll be an "evil stepmother" by pretending an attack of bees, to which the minister is deathly allergic.
Literature
- Stephen King's novel The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon features a horrible bearlike monster that follows the protagonist through the wilderness as she wanders in search of some safe haven. The creature frightens her when she first sees it, but then she realizes — horror of horrors — that it is made out of bees.
- Same creature has an envoy that appears to the protagonist in a dream. A humanoid, robed being with clawed hands and a face made, you guessed it, of wasps.
- It's not made of bees, it's a bear covered in bees.
- Invoked in The Other, the fortieth book of the Animorphs series. Surprisingly enough, it's ultimately averted, with the bee morph being no worse than any other insect the kids have morphed.
- An early example: In The Wonderful Wizard of Oz the Wicked Witch of the West sends a swarm of deadly bees after Dorothy & Co., which they defeat by (no, really) disembowelling the Scarecrow and having all the "meat" characters hide under the straw, while the bees break their stings off on the Tin Woodman and die.
- Inverted in Douglas Coupland's Generation A, where bees have supposedly gone extinct and everything's worse without them.
- In an H.H. Munro (AKA Saki) story called "The Story of St. Vespaluus", a boy is condemned to be stung to death by bees. It doesn't work out that way.
- Inverted in Robin McKinley's Chalice, where the title character moonlights as a beekeeper. Her bees were apparently pretty strange before she gained magic powers; afterwards they approach ridiculous levels of obedience and protectiveness.
- Xanth has Bs, larger and more magical insects, and their ruler, Princess B-nign.
- Why I'm Afraid of Bees
- In The Hunger Games, the protagonist Katniss kills an opponent by dropping a hive full of tracker jackers (mutated bees) onto her.
- The tracker jackers are everything bad about bees taken up to eleven. They have the tracking capability of African bees and will hunt you down for at least a mile. Their stings instantly create painful, plum-sized lumps that ooze green fluid. The venom in the stingers causes hallucinations that will drive a person insane or even kill them if not treated immediately.
- In the Bernard Cornwell novel The Burning Land the Saxon hero Uhtred uses bees as a weapon while attacking a Danish stronghold.
- John Saul's The Homing is all about mutant strains of mind-controlling bees.
- In the story "Red Dog," from the second volume of The Jungle Book, Mowgli tricks the attacking dhole pack into following him to, and awakening, the Little People of the Rocks — aka Indian rock bees.
- In Baby-Sitting Is a Dangerous Job, the babysitter protagonist and the oldest of her three charges subdue their kidnappers by dropping a wasp's nest on them.
Live Action TV
- The Outer Limits TOS episode "ZZZZZ". The queen of a hive of intelligent bees takes human form in order to mate with an entomologist.
- The "Killer Bees" on Saturday Night Live.
- Sliders. Two words: SPIDER-WASPS.
- The season two premiere of Pushing Daisies had a woman who claimed she was killed by a man made of bees, which caused Chuck to ruminate on the possibilities of teaching her bees to form a human shape.
- There was an episode of Smallville called "Drone", where a girl had the power to control bees, using them to attack people she didn't like.
- When you're deadly allergic to bees, Waking up in a cabin full of them is bad!
- One of the first episodes of Lost had Charlie standing on a beehive and eventually breaking it ("It wouldn't be an irrational fear of bees if I could just pull myself together, would it?") causing people to run and take off their shirts ("It was, um, it was full of bees." "I'd have thought C's, actually.").
- He's protected from three inch bees, that's right! He's protected from three inch bees tonight!
- Adam Savage of MythBusters has a fear of bees. One myth tested involved hypnosis and its effects on fear responses, which, among other things, had Adam dipping his hand into a box of bees. The hypnosis didn't help at all.
- A later myth involving bees and a viral video where a swarm lifted a laptop into the air brought this fear up again. At the bee-ginning of the episode, he was just as scared as ever, though by the time he came back to the bee farm later, he felt much more comfortable around the bees, after having worked with them in the shop. On a side note, there may be a similar explanation for why his fear of spiders (in early seasons) is gone now.
- In The X-Files, genetically modified bees cause all kinds of problems.
- An episode of The Starlost has a scientist who's developed giant mutant bees who control his mind and want to take over the spaceship.
- Bees?
- The Aquabats! Super Show! cartoon segments have Space Bees, the deadliest bees in space!
- JAG: In the first season episode ”High Ground”, after breaking brig and taking to the hills Gunnery Sergeant Ray Crockett is spotting Marines approaching and instead of shooting at them, he shots at a bee’s nest above them…
Music
- Psychostick's song 'We Ran Out of CD Space' understates this trope with the following lines:What if your face was made of bumblebees?
You would be like, 'Dude, this really sucks;
I do not want a face made out of bumblebees.'
New Media
- Craigslist is worse with bees, too.
- I Love Bees, despite its name, has a protagonist Melissa who hates bees.
Stand Up Comedy
- AAAAAAAAH! I'M COVERED IN BEES!
- Second City's 1995 mainstage show was called "A Pinata Full of Bees." Note that Second City's titles tend towards either really bad Puns or just plain Word Salad Titles.
- Dane Cook lampooning the idea of killer bees: "It's a fucking bee! I could understand if it was like killer horses! That's scary shit!"
Tabletop Games
- Dungeons & Dragons has had, in several versions of its bestiary, various forms of stinging insects. Among these is the mantis-armed, mecaque-headed MONKEY BEES.
- There's also a monster that's basically an anthropomorphic bee, though that might be something of a subversion since the bee people are not in fact evil.
- BattleTech features Humongous Mecha named after stinging insects, including the Wasp, Hornet, Stinger, and Firebee. The 'worse' is relative, as while they're still at least twenty tons each and rather dangerous to infantry and light vehicles, they are Light Mechs with rather little in the way of armor or offensive weaponry compared to their far larger brethren. Of the four designs named, only the Firebee proves to be much of a threat due to being nearly twice as big and twice as well armed as any of the other three.
Video Games
- The Pain from Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater, who harnesses the power of bees to create guns and transport grenades... as well as just soaking you in bee pheromones and letting the little monsters go to work.
- It was actually mostly hornets, but the bees did the special work.
- Summarized succinctly in this The Last Days of FOXHOUND comic.
- One of BioShock's plasmids includes the ability to attack enemies with bees, also there's a part in the game where you have to be in contact with overgrown beehives.
- In Mega Man X3, Blast Hornet, based on a hornet, sends small homing robot bees to target you. The Charged Attack of his weapon lets X do it too.
- In Mega Man Zero 3, a beehive sub-boss does this, throwing an oily substance to the walls and then at you for its bees to chase on it.
- Then in Z4, a boss replicates the strategy above, throwing a substance that makes your ground movement slippery and then bees home on you; this boss is not bee-based however.
- Mega Man ZX Advent has Queenbee, who carries a massive panzer hive that has missile launchers, small bees, and two different types of laser attacks.
- Mega Man 9 has Hornet Man, who sics robo-hornets on you. His weapon is arguably better than Blast Hornet's, as the hornets treat Mega Man like their "queen" alternately attacking like one-use Beats and bringing items back to him. Some loose items can only be retrieved this way. And they're even cute!
- Don't be so quick to call them cute just because they're under your control. After all, beauty is in the eye of the beeholder.
- Animal Crossing has bees chase you if you shake down the wrong tree. You can catch the bee if you're very quick, but if not, you end up with a swollen face that your neighbors will remark on.
- Spore: The Galactic Adventures expansion introduced the summon swarm ability, and the Cute and Creepy expansion had the bee swarm emote.
- There's a Guy Made of Bees in Kingdom of Loathing. An optional boss, and probably best avoided unless you can find his Weaksauce Weakness, because bees are scary.
- An optional challenge path was recently introduced: Bees Hate You. Wandering bees attack you randomly, you can't use items or familiars that have a "b" in them, equipment with a "b" will hurt you, and monsters with a "b" in their name are stronger. And the final boss is naturally The Guy Made Of Bees.
- Arakune from BlazBlue has a curse mark. Once you are hit, bees will come from the screen and begin the assault.
- In The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past and Twilight Princess, it is possible to get
beeshornets to attack you. Why you would want them to attack you, on the other hand...- In A Link To The Past, you can catch bees that will attack nearby enemies when released. There is also a "good bee" that, if caught, will chase your enemies around and murder them.
- There's one boss that becomes much easier this way. Go bees!
- Bees also appeared in Majora's Mask.
- They can be quite nasty in The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword, but they can be useful if you catch them in your bug net.
- In A Link To The Past, you can catch bees that will attack nearby enemies when released. There is also a "good bee" that, if caught, will chase your enemies around and murder them.
- Metroid Prime 1 and 2 have War Wasps, very annoying giant stinging insects that tend to come in large numbers and respawn untill their hives are destroyed.
- There's even a miniboss in the original Metroid Prime, the Incinerator Drone, which is a robot that attacks by blowing flames at you and disrupting a hive over it that sends out Barbed War Wasps that attack you.
- Earlier in the game, the Hive Mecha is the home of several Ram War Wasps. Releasing these is its only attack, but considering that you have only one Energy tank, and your platform is in the middle of toxic water and it's hard to get back up on if a wasp rams you in, it's enough. And you have a window of time between one swarm and the next to damage the Hive Mecha.
- There's even a miniboss in the original Metroid Prime, the Incinerator Drone, which is a robot that attacks by blowing flames at you and disrupting a hive over it that sends out Barbed War Wasps that attack you.
- Hibachi, the True Final Boss of the DonPachi series is a giant bee that seems to shoot every bullet ever fired in World War II at you while she's on fire.
- If that doesn't scare you, perhaps this will: Hibachi's latest incarnation (aka "Zatsuza") is currently the most probable contender for "Hardest Video Game Boss in Existence".
- If that doesn't scare you, perhaps this will: Hibachi's latest incarnation (aka "Zatsuza") is currently the most probable contender for "Hardest Video Game Boss in Existence
- Hibachi's character sheet asks "what could be worse than a mechanical bee that fires an obscene amount of bullets?" The answer, given to us by Touhou Labyrinth, is two mechanical bees that fire an obscene amount of bullets and are immune to physical and magical attacks respectively.
- Donkey Kong Country and it's sequels have Zingers as enemies, giant bees in multiple varieties that appear all over the place in levels. Many serve as bosses too, and that one in the terrifying chase scene in Donkey Kong Country 2...
- Averted in Super Mario Galaxy and Super Mario Galaxy 2; the bees are actually pretty nice. To top it off, you get a power-up that turns you into a bee.
- Played straight in Super Mario Sunshine and Super Mario 3D Land, however.
- Kingdom Hearts has three:
- Kingdom Hearts II has a minigame where you must defeat the flying demons in Twilight Town.
- Re: Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories'' has a minigame in the Hundred Acre Wood (Well where else would we get bees in this game?) where you must get Pooh honey, while keeping the bees from attacking him.
- Kingdom Hearts: Birth by Sleep has the Hundred Acre Woods Command Board, which has Pooh tripping over while carrying a pile of honey jars as a board-specific event: this causes 2 kinds of honey jars to fall on random spaces and stopping on one (or having one fall on you) with bees around it causes you to lose money, while the ones without them give you more money.
- An official mod for Torchlight adds a Bee Swarm spell. You can either use this spell yourself or teach it to your pet; meaning you can have a dog that when it barks it shoots bees. Or a cat. Or a ferret.
- What is worse than a giant cat that fires lasers in a Team Fortress 2 achievement farming map? A giant cat that fires lasers and BEES!
- Also a mod for the flamethrower that changes the fire effect into a swarm of bees, complete with the proper sound effects.
- Super Mario Bros. 2 has Beezos, which are basically flying Shyguys with tridents.
- Paper Mario has the Bzzap! of Flower Fields, which has two attacks: its normal sting, which has an Attack of 6 and may poison Mario; and it may summon five smaller bees which each try to sting him for 1 Attack each and may make him tiny (reducing all his attacks to 1). However, it has 0 Defense and only 3 HP.
- One of the more annoying enemies in Toe Jam And Earl was a swarm of bees who would follow you everywhere. If you tried jumping into water to avoid them, they just hovered over you.
- Kingsley's Adventure had Gustav The Grave, who was a bear who could summon bees to attack you. Bees AND bears. Strangely, this game had a lot of sharks too, though most of this is due to the game being centred on animal characters...
- In Midway's old skateboarding game 720 Degrees, the announcer says "Skate or Die!" when the game's timer runs out. Take too long, and then a swarm of killer bees appear, and if your skater gets hit by the bees, then it's an automatic game over. The longer you run from them, the more their speed increases, until they inevitably catch up with you.
- In at least the NES version of the game, the bees will start to form menacing shapes once they've chased you for so long, such as a pounding hammer, a skull, and a hypodermic syringe.
- The "Sting" spell in Secret of Evermore summons a small swarm of bees on a foe for a non-elemental attack. It's fairly average strength-wise, but it's notable for its alchemist being fairly well hidden in a desert.
- In the later stages of Banjo-Kazooie, you'll encounter honey hives protected by bees, who will sting you if you break the hive. They have a maximum attack radius, but can only be defeated if you turn on your invulnerability when they attack you.
- City of Heroes has The Swarm, a minor but annoying mook enemy in the Devouring Earth. It's a cloud of bees. In one villain storyarc, you get to use a Vial of Bees as a weapon.
- The beehives in the "Diggin' It" and "Bee-Having" levels in Crash Bandicoot 2: Cortex Strikes Back. They only let out one bee in Diggin' It, but in Bee-Having, they can let out up to five.
- Don't forget Crash Twinsanity. Where you escort Cortex through obstacles as he is swarmed by bees, gets a beehive stuck on his head, gets chased by a bear...
- Bug! had bee enemies in Insectia and Splot. Being Airborne Mooks, they were incredibly annoying to fight- some of them even appeared out of nowhere to ambush Bug! (See here for an entire area filled with them)
- Fallout: New Vegas has Cazadores, which are giant mutant Tarantula Hawks and one of the most terrifying Demonic Spiders of the game just under Deathclaws. While relatively fragile (compared to deathclaws), they are damn fast, making them difficult to target outside of V.A.T.S. They also happen to be poisonous so you'll be losing health like crazy if they get close. And they swarm in groups of 4-6.
- The main area in Infocom's Trinity includes a giant hive of man-size bees. They won't bother you if you don't bother them...but unfortunately the plot requires you to steal honey from them, leading to immediate death if you're not careful.
- In World of Warcraft there's a quest where you must steal honey from a Furbolg village. Doing this will randomly cause bees to attack you, which dispels in either 10 seconds or jumping into a nearby pond.
- The Swarm item in Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed releases, well, a swarm of giant hornets who position themselves in the way of the racer in 1st place, hoping for him or her (and potentially other racers) to crash into them. Even after the sting operation, they'll continue to bug the beewildered racers by flying around their heads.
Web Comics
- Ben from Loserz also has to learn this.
- As Slackerz shows us, whats worse than Zombies? Zom-Beez!
- Asher from Get Medieval catapults a beehive into a castle in order to end a siege.
- Subverted in this◊ Bob The Angry Flower strip.
- One chapter of 'Scary Go Round features a giant bee and a beer idea - er, bee rider.
- In Darths & Droids, Sally thinks the Jedi Temple massacre could be caused by bees. And being D&D, they discuss the trope on the annotation.
- Xaneth's dungeon in True Villains has chests filled with bees- chests that are at the ends of inescapable death traps. Yikes.
- Homestuck almost averts this; Sollux keeps a colony of bees to create the powerful "mind honey." Unfortunately, he accidentally ingests some of it, causing his deadly Eye Beams to go out of control and kill his lusus.
Web Original
- Katherine Blanco from Survival of the Fittest dies after a severe allergic reaction from a bee sting. Mr. Danya is less than sympathetic.Danya: Sometimes, kiddos, you don't have to wait around for the competition to kill you. Some of you are so imperfect that Mother Nature decides to do it herself.
- The second death in v4 is similar in nature, where Dallas Reynolds is stung by a wasp and gets an allergic reaction. Unfortunately, he tries to give himself more room to breathe... by tugging at his explosive collar.
- SCP Foundation: In the situation that the diary is bees, a modified document will be provided.
Western Animation
- On The Simpsons Lisa temporarily has a beard of bees while searching for a new home for them. Marge freaks out over them.
- Subverted in another episode. Homer has a giant sugar pile and is initially annoyed when a swarm of bees lands on it ("Oww! Oh, they're defending themselves somehow!"). However, the beekeepers arrive and offer to buy all the sugar to get their bees back. Unfortunately for Homer, a flash rainstorm melts the sugar and disperses the bees before he gets paid.
- And again in a third episode, Bart is trying to help Lisa prep for an obstacle course, and she ends up hanging by her foot right next to a beehive. This was before the above 'bee-beard' episode, and in this instance, Lisa is terrified of being so close to their hive and helpless.
- Smithers: "I'm allergic to bees, sir. They cause me to, um, die."
- "THE BEE BIT MY BOTTOM! NOW MY BOTTOM'S BIG!"
- "Or what? You'll release the dogs? Or the bees? Or the dogs with bees in their mouths, and when they bark they shoot bees at you?"
- "Hey Willie! Catch the football!!!" *Nelson lobs the bee's nest at Willie*
- Donald Duck was ocassionally bugged by generic bees in the Classic Disney Shorts. It got to the point where a new bee character, Spike (or Buzz-Buzz), was created to co-star with Donald in no less than six shorts. This trope is subverted in the last one of those, called "Let's Stick Together", as Donald and Spike finish the picture as good friends.
- Curiously, the very last Donald cartoon with bees shows him as the rightful owner of a bee farm, and no he suffers no assault from them in the whole short.
- Though Donald had to deal with Humphrey the Bear, who wanted the honey and suffered the wrath of the bees AND Donald.
- Curiously, the very last Donald cartoon with bees shows him as the rightful owner of a bee farm, and no he suffers no assault from them in the whole short.
- Avatar: The Last Airbender had Vulture-Bees. Not fun, we can tell ya.
- No...even worse. They were vulture-WASPS!
- Jimmy Two-Shoes has one of Lucius' birthday presents filled with "extra-stingy bees".
- Mr. Bump from The Mr. Men Show does get a lot of problems with pests like bees and wasps in a couple of episodes.
- Miss Calamity does get a problem with bees in some scenes of her in some of the Season 1 episodes.
- Harry gets some unwanted guests in an episode of Wait Till Your Father Gets Home — a colony of bees and a bumbling live-in exterminator played by Don Knotts.
- Family Guy once featured a giant killer bee with the voice of Bruce.
- "I'm Glenn Quagmire, and this is "Bee Bush."
- Played for Laughs in the Justice Friends episode "Bee, Where?", where the trio try in vain to get rid of a bee roaming their apartment.
- In an episode of Chip 'n Dale: Rescue Rangers, a mad entomologist controls a swarm of bees via (awfully performed) rock music.
- One entire episode of Futurama, "The Sting", revolves around an attempt to get space honey from space bees, bees who are "as large as a Buick and twice as ugly."
- In the Ruby Gloom episode "Hair(less) the Musical," Misery demonstrates how a picnic is worse with bees by jamming a honey stick into a beehive, causing the bees to swarm onto her face and sting her viciously. It's made creepier by the fact that she's mid-song when this is happening, and never breaks the tune.
- Chuck Jones' 'Three Bears' cartoon The Bee-Devilled Bruin has Papa Bear determined to get some honey from a bee hive. Most of his resultant injuries are the doing of his idiot son, but late in the film he gets chased by a bee swarm and his face ends up horribly swollen with stings.
- In "Pink Is a Many Splintered Thing", The Pink Panther once tried to hide from some pesky bees he'd annoyed by jumping into a hollow tree; the bees simply plugged up the open end with a rock, slipped into cracks in the trunk and proceeded to give the Panther what for.
Real life
- The Japanese Giant Hornet kills more people a year than any other animal combined.
- For hornets trying to scout and decimate bees, EVERYTHING WILL BE WORSE. THERE IS NO ESCAPE.
- Debate rages about whether or not the Vuvuzela which sounds like bees is making the 2010 World Cup worse, MAKE IT STOP ALREADY!.
- So what happens when bees merge with vuvuzelas, and with some car alarm thrown in? WHY DID YOU ASK?!?!.
- So what happens when bees merge with vuvuzelas, and with some car alarm thrown in? WHY DID YOU ASK?!?!
- This tale, starring Tim Curry.
- Deborah, the sole female Judge of Ancient Israel, has a name that means "bee".
- Hymenoptera, the order of insects that includes bees, wasps, and ants, is responsible for more lethal attacks on humans than any other animal.
- Three words: Africanized honey bees. They are like European honey bees, but twenty times worse. Overly defensive and easily provoked, they will whip the entire hive into an angry frenzy and chase down a single person for over half a mile.
- Carpenter bees (specifically Eastern Carpenter Bees) demonstrate that not everything is worse with bees. Although gregarious, carpenter bees do not live in colonies like other bees (the time you would find more than one carpenter bee is if you were near their nests). Despite their large size and the scary noises their wings make, they are mostly passive and non-aggressive (unless they're seriously provoked). Although the males are slightly more aggressive (usually around other males), the best they do when a human approaches their territory is is hover a short distance in front of the face or buzzing around one's head. Since males have no stinger, these action are merely show. The females (who do have stingers) rarely use them. In fact, the killing of carpenter bees is now strongly discouraged since they serve an important function in pollinating plants. Regardless of these facts, many people still kill carpenter bees and destroy their nests because they regard them as a mild nuisance as well as their close resemblance to bumble bees, which happen to be more dangerous.
- Most species of Australian native bees either have no sting or have a sting that is too small to sting humans with.
- So the bees are the Least dangerous thing in Australia? Perhaps there it's everything is worse withOUT bees.
- You know those aforementioned Japanese Giant Hornets? The Japanese honey bee is capable of killing it. Only within the hive and with a lot of bee buddies, but it still ends with one less hornet in the world. In this case, the bee is your only hope.
- Most species of Australian native bees either have no sting or have a sting that is too small to sting humans with.
- Accidents where lorries shed their loads on the road are bad enough but during an accident in Idaho the load in question was 400 beehives resulting in a cloud of 14 million bees being released, which resulted in every member of the team that responded to the accident being stung, though none suffered any serious side effects. The authorities are also worried the honey may attract bears too.
- Though bears do eat honey, it would be far more likely they would be attracted to the brood, as that is what bears are usually after when they attack a hive
- The New Orleans (originally Charlotte) Hornets basketball team.
- With how many types of bees there are in the real world you could say this trope is Zig-Zagged because there are some types of bees that want to kill, steal, and just cause pain but some pollinate flowers to make fruits for us to eat, make honey, and are generally harmless unless you do something stupid to aggravate them.
- In World War I, there was a battle in present-day Tanzania which stirred up multiple swarms of bees which attacked both the British and German troops. Thus the alternate name: "The Battle of the Bees."
Bee afraid. Bee very afraid
Statler: They couldn't make it any worse!
Both: Do-ho-ho-ho-hoh!
