The TVTropes Trope Finder is where you can come to ask questions like "Do we have this one?" and "What's the trope about...?" Trying to rediscover a long lost show or other medium but need a little help? Head to Media Finder and try your luck there. Want to propose a new trope? You should be over at You Know, That Thing Where.
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openBoring White People
White people (usually WAS Ps) as an ethnicity are shown to be boring and unable to contribute meaningfully to culture, incapable of showing any skill at things like dancing (one toothpaste ad touted "teeth so white they can't dance"), eating even slightly-spicy food, playing sports or making music (especially rap), but have a disproportionately inflated and Nigh-Invulnerable ego (e.g. "Carry yourself with the confidence of a mediocre white man"). Any exceptions to the rule (white rappers, sportsmen, etc.) are explained by all the talent that should be spread out actually concentrating in that person.
Oddly, this seems mostly stated and agreed upon by white people, like Self-Deprecation meets N-Word Privileges.
Do we have something like that? It's usually either played for comedy or making a point about cultural appropriation driven by insecurity as with Pretty Fly for a White Guy.
Edited by Chabal2openInterplanetary Genre Live Action TV
There might be more than trope to answer this question, but is there a name for the subgenre of sci-fi show that deals with multi-planetary societies of one sort or another? The story could be exploring these multiple societies like in Doctor Who or Star Trek, or it could be about the tensions between different planetary societies (Star Wars, maybe?)
resolved Moments That Are Infuriating
Is there any YMMV tropes I can attribute to moments that are aggravating to the audience? And I don't mean the stereotypical moments of "oh this streamer is doing bad at a game and it's painful to watch," I mean more a scenario that is meant to invoke anger in the audience, such as a character who is putting a Woobie through the wringer for no reason, or when someone regales a series of unfortunate events that happened to them and it is just very upsetting to listen to.
Does that sort of entry exist at all, or is there something similar that it could be attached to?
openDrug to make animals grow bigger
As I'm working on the TLP draft Giant Logistics, is there a trope about somebody finding a way to make animals grow bigger? It's often sold as a great business idea, to solve food shortage, but often overlooks the problem of feeding and looking after giant animals.
openGeographical In-Joke
like Historical In-Joke, except for locations: a work will bring up something that locals or long-time tourists to the area will know.
this ranges from subversions of the Eiffel Tower Effect (like showing bars or restaurants popular with locals and unknown to tourists) to local-specific issues plaguing the characters, like ungodly Los Angeles traffic, homelessness in San Francisco and angry Tech Bro characters also in SF, clueless tourists in Aloha, Hawaii! getting chased on the West Side of the island
examples include homelessness and a Tech Bro being integral to the plot of Venom set in SF - both have been hot-button topics in the Bay Area for ages
Edited by MsOranjeDiscoDanceropenDefinitely don't do this*
Character A wants Character B to do something (like press the obvious self-destruct button), but can't directly tell them to do it. Instead, they repeatedly tell Character B to not do the thing, sometimes even explaining how to do it, in the hopes that they get the hint and do it anyway.
resolved Chekhov's misfire
A trope where a character does or says something that is strongly implied to be a chehkov's gun but it never ends up happening through either it simply not occurring or it being actively prevented
open"No Jury Would Convict Me!"
A kind of Black Comedy where Alice proclaims aloud her intent to murder Bob and her belief that no one would feel she committed a crime. Not necessarily Bob being an Asshole Victim, can be Bob being Too Dumb to Live / The Millstone / an Insufferable Imbecile and his death being a net positive (e.g. Alice is the office IT girl, Bob needs his password reset five times a day, preventing Alice from dealing with the server catching fire after Bob turned off the cooling system so it'd make less noise).
Rarely results in Bob's death (save as a Red Herring in crime works) but often combined with Let Me at Him!.
Edited by Chabal2openBizarre Boomerangs
Is there a trope for using strange objects as boomerangs? It feels like it doesn't quite fit neatly into Abnormal Ammo, Improvised Weapon, Nerf Arm, etc.
I can think of a few examples:
- Donkey Kong uses a ton as his primary weapon, the Bwananarang, in Mario + Rabbids Kingdom Battle. He starts with the Potassium Pulverizer, a large banana, and gets a ton of others like the Habanero Caballero (hot pepper), Koi Ploy (koi), Curtain Call (rotary telephone receiver), and Weiner Whacker (hot dog).
- Ratchet & Clank has the Comet-Strike, a throw done with a comically oversized wrench. Clank can also use one of his Heli-Pack propellers for it, and in Ratchet & Clank: Up Your Arsenal you can do the move with a whip made of plasma.
- In Donkey Kong Country and Super Smash Bros. Ultimate King K. Rool throws his crown as a boomerang. Additionally, in Donkey Kong 64 he can throw a boxing glove as a boomerang.
- Ape Escape has a bananarang that can lure apes with its delicious scent.
openI'm Useless
Character feels bad because they feel useless to the group
Example: Quint in the The Last Kids on Earth Season 2, episode 3
openColors of Darkness
When it comes to usual color schemes for villains, I often see combinations of red and black, black and purple, black and blue, even black with multiple shades of cyan. Either way, they're all color combos that are usually associated with darkness. I'm also sure there are plenty of evil color combos out there that may be listed. What are they?
Edited by TheSuperShinyMegaGengarresolved Cut to End of Exposition
There's this thing that's sort of an inverse of As You Know, where the actual "Alice tells Bob" part is skipped over, and we cut straight to either Alice wrapping it up or Bob reacting to what he's just been told, usually because the audience is expected to already know it. In military settings, for example, we open up with Bob acknowledging the new orders.
- Avatar: A scene opens up with Quaritch's reaction to having just been told that Jake said he was from the "Jarhead Clan"
- Star Wars: The Bad Batch S3E15 "The Cavalry Has Arrived": Rampart asks Nala Se to explain what Project Necromancer is. We then cut to something else. When we cut back, the scene opens with Rampart reacting to the info he was just given. A rare case in that the audience does NOT know the exact details.
- The Adventures of Jimmy Neutron, Boy Genius: The episode "Send in the Clones"
Jimmy: Wait, everyone! Oh, I can explain. [4 hours later]' And that's how it all happened.
openClasses in shooter games
When shooters have classes such as
- Standard soldier
- Heavy weapons guy, low damage but typically high fire rate and have abilities that increase their survivability
- Sapper, guy who builds stuff
- Sniper
- Medic
openInsult Intentionally Cut Short
A character deliberately interrupts himself before he can finish saying something insulting, while saying enough of it to ensure everyone knows who he's talking about.
e.g. Bob used to work for a Corrupt Politician who employed him for all manner of illegal activities from picking up drugs to bribing officials to silencing witnesses and paternity suit cases. Whenever the subject comes up, Bob always refers to him as "the Republ- *cough* the politician", with no use of names or pronouns, the whole four words and a cough.
openSuperior Dubbed Line Film
Sometimes the slightly/moderately changed dialogue created by dubs can be superior to the original lines. For example in The Amazing Digital Circus Pilot there's a funny moment where Bubble cleans Pomni's vomit with his tongue and Caine replies with "Why are you like this". But in Ukrainian it's even better as the line instead is "Evolution has passed you by".
open(Probably trivia) loads and loads of album versions
A music album that has been released in atleast half a dozen different versions, each with a minimally different choice of songs on them. Imagine Dragons is a serial offender of them.
There is kind of overused trope, when a newspaper or flyer on the wind suddenly hits into a character's face, and most often the newspaper contains some important information for a character, or the plot (pretty sure, most of you seen that a lot in the animated shows or anime). What exactly is the name of this trope?