miscellaneous
(Meta trope) A trope is named after it's most iconic/infamous example
"Fridging" - a love interest female character is killed off (aka "fridged") to serve as motivation to the male main character. Named after a 1994 DC comic where the villain, Major Force, kills Kyle Rayner's girlfriend and stuffs her into a refrigerator.
"Flanderization" - A personality trait of a character is emphasized more and more as the series goes on, leading to them becoming what feels like a caricature of their past selves. Named after Ned Flanders from The Simpsons, whose religious observance became more and more emphasized until it turned into extreme dogmatism.
I feel sorry for Machiavelli. He accurately described what it takes to succeed as a prince in his time and advocated for a republican form of government instead.
This applies to A LOT of philosophers and thinkers. People don't actually k ow anything about them and automatically assume they supported anything they wrote about. Nietzsche gets the same treatment with nihilism.
To be perfectly frank, the only two things I know happen in Happy Days are 1. Fonzi jumping the shark, and 2. That the brother went upstairs at the end of the first season and never came back down.
I thought Judy from Family Matters found him up there in some alternate dimension, and was lost forever... Makes me think they should make a show about characters written off shows with no explanation. Make it a horror or sci fi themed show/movie.
Irrc, the fonz was also not allowed to actually ride his bike, only stand beside it, and as a revenge the writers made him stand besides it literally all the time, even in restaurants and such
According to IMDb, in season 1 the studio executives were afraid showcasing the kind of rebel that wears a leather jacket would lose the family audience. The producers argued that it was safety gear, so the rule became Fonzie could only wear the leather jacket when he was on the bike or about to ride. So they put the motorcycle in every single Fonzie scene and logic be damned. I remember one where Fonzie was reclining on the bike like it was a couch and a couple guys wheeled him into a LOCKER ROOM!
Of course, by season 2 the Fonz was so popular that they considered renaming it to The Fonzie Show...
Let us pause to reflect on the sacred mystery of Richie's elder brother Chuck, who ascended the stairs with his basketball in season one and never came down again.
For context, jumping the shark means when a show or movie has gone off the walls from what it used to be in a negative way while growing the beard is when what starts mediocre grows into its acclaim
Oh Sacher-Mosch and Venus in Fues is this whole insane thing. Not just what he wrote and did, but the way all of that also sort of got embedded in the beginnings of psychiatry as a field and how it calling it masochism was also basically gleefully shoving the knife into an academic rival.
If Lin Manuel-Miranda turned that whole absolutely insane story into a musical, I'd be front fucking row. I mean the rap battles alone.
Tbf he used his sexual depravity in his writing to show a lot of his perceived abuse of peasantry by the aristocracy.
He was...very creative with his imagery though that much is very true.
It evolved into a kink, the broader usage came way earlier. The equivalent of the kink itself in practice obviously came first, probably dating back into prehistory, but not associated with the term.
Most of you probably already know this, but for the two of you that don't: Kryptonite was first introduced to his lore because the man who played Superman on the radio drama wanted to take a vacation, so Superman was incapacitated by Kryptonite for a couple of weeks before miraculously recovering.
The Streisand effect, which states that an attempt at hiding something only draws more attention, is named after Barbra Streisand, who got upset when a beach photography project got a few pictures of her house, and tried to have them taken down. She failed, and the names of the house pictures were changed to reflect whose it was.
When she filed a lawsuit to have the picture removed, it had only 4 downloads. 2 of which were her lawyers. When everyone heard about the lawsuit, the picture was downloaded thousands of times.
To be completely fair, she was worried about one specific stalker, not the general public at large. One download would be enough. IIRC he'd already followed her to five cities at that point and attempted entry of her residence several times.
Her lawyers sucked donkey dick for sure and weren't great at doing anything helpful for her, but it always felt victim blaming to blame her personally.
Supposedly the energy requirements go up exponentially based on the size/mass of the object. Most of the things we replicated in TNG are small food objects like earl grey tea or ice cream sundaes.
I think the largest shown onscreen replicated object was the glass swan Worf gave the O'briens in "Data's Day".
DS9 makes dialogue references to "industrial replicators" that were going to be given the Bajorans by the Federation. I assume those were for larger objects. There was also the magically self-replicating cloaking minefield encountered in the later part of the Dominion War.
Its hard to determine how big those object were, they were heavily inspired by Klingon mines encountered earlier which might have been the size of a photon torpedo. I might be wrong, its been a long time since I have done a rewatch of DS9.
Tbf, Wolverine's power isn't to be strong, it's to regenerate, a better example would be like how every new Avengers villain HAS to trash Thor, who's actually strong
They actually made a reference in the pilot episode. At one point, Carter mentions (to Macguyver himself, Richard Dean Anderson) how she and the engineer team had to Macguyver up a workaround to the Stargate's destroyed control panel.
Also in an outtake from season 1 where Carter says "I am on an ice planet with McGuyver, built a frigging nuke already" or something along those lines.
“Dead Dove: Do Not Eat” is a popular fanfic tag for stories that include exactly what they’re tagged about. based on an episode of Arrested Development when Michael finds a paper bag labeled “Dead Dove: Do Not Eat”, opens it up, and finds a dead dove inside, saying “I don’t know what I expected.” it’s mostly used to accompany mature and controversial tags, but realistically it just means “this fic is what it says on the tin”
I appreciate you pointing this out, because these days whenever Flanderization just gets thrown out my immediate desire is to point out how nobody ever bothers to mention that The Simpsons has been on for so long that Flanders went back to being a good character ages ago lol.
In 1977, A comic called Cerebus was made. The comic was initially just a parody of the sword and fantasy comic’s of the time like Conan the Barbarian only staring an Aardvark, but after a while Cerebus got more complex with its plot. You had storylines involving corruption in both the political and religious levels, storylines that where basically just the writer of the comic (Dave Simm) ranting with minimal illustration, and even an arc that had to deal with Oscar Wilde; all of which were usually taken seriously despite the main character being an anthropomorphic Aardvark warrior.
Nowadays, The comic is perhaps better know for its trope name: Cerebus Syndrome where an initially funny or lighthearted series takes a turn into more serious storytelling and storylines.
I post this comic at least once a month in the DnD subreddits. Often new DMs get frustrated that players show up to the table with a "funny" PC concept but in my experience, whatever funny quirky gimmicky thing they had in mind runs its course by the end of session 2 and they end up developing the character whether they realize it or not.
Unfortunately I do know people who when they get bored of the joke, will just try to get their character killed so they can bring in their next silly character idea.
My favorite version of this trope is narbonic. A zany newspaper comic strip about a mad scientist woman obsessed with ardvarks and the straight man she hired as an intern. Eventually it turns into a genuinely gripping narrative about the nature of evil and one's place in the world and their own personal narrative
My absolute favorite example of this trope is played out in the excessively long webcomic Sluggy Freelance. It was originally just the zany, improbable adventures of two idiot dudes, and somehow has turned into a surprisingly captivating Sci-Fi/Fantasy (but not Sci-Fantasy) action-drama with foreshadowing like you ain’t never seen before and so many interconnected storylines that you would be forgiven for needing to take notes to keep track of it all.
Edit: See also, somehow Dr. McNinja? Still not really sure how that happened.
What's so crazy about Cerebus is how for quite awhile it's a legit excellent read. It's got well written humor, interesting commentary on society and politics, and has an enjoyable variety of characters. Than Dave Sims got divorced and it became big time misogynist energy to the point most people just stop reading (rightful so).
And now Souls-like, adventure/fighting games with a heavy emphasis on parrying and dodging as opposed to hack-and-slash fighting tactics, based on Dark Souls, a pioneer of the genre.
Soulslike falls into this too. And before Halo, the name for the FPS genre was “Doom clones”—though now we’d call that style of FPS a “Boomer shooter.”
A noodle incident is a moment that’s alluded to but not directly shown, giving the audience room to imagine. Other examples being Budapest from the MCU and the llama incident from Milo Murphey’s law.
"A Mary Sue" A character in fan works who has no flaws, is loved by all the good characters, and is the best at everything is named after a (possibly satirical) character in a Star Trek Fan Fiction magazine in the 70s or 80s called...Mary Sue.
An absolutely satirical character. The original story is not even slightly subtle about it. The first paragraph is the character being the youngest officer in Starfleet. The second is Kirk being in love with her and wanting to sleep with her.
I'll be honest. I had my doubts of it being satirical when it was first described to me, but the first bit of dialogue being "Gee, golly, gosh, gloriosky" really wiped the doubts away. I have to wonder if if was done to mock someone specifically.
Edit: Probably should have just read the page further. Pretty interesting! Thanks for sharing.
Unlike some of the examples here, Mary Sue the character was an intentional parody and codifier of a phenomenon that the author has observed and wished to mock. She became a shorthand, not as a shining example, but as a first example of “official” trope recognition. That’s some real Mary Sue energy!
And let me tell you, teenagers on internet RP forums LOVE calling people out for Mary Sue’ing - no matter how near or far one strays from a character’s set limitations.
Source: I was once a teenager on the internet with an RPNation account (2012-2016).
Edit: In retrospect, that could be attributed the recency bias, in part. Give a teenager, who already feels powerless and so has turned to roleplaying, a new method of control and they will JUMP on it, then overuse it.
This isn't a trope so much as a real life term, but "gaslighting" is named for the 1944 Hollywood movie "Gaslight" based on the 1938 stage play by Patrick Hamilton.
Xanatos Gambit, which is when all of the outcomes of someone’s plan benefits them, even if it seems like it would fail. Named after David Xanatos, the main villain of Gargoyles.
Xanatos busts a gang of previous enemies out of prison (except the leader, who stays behind). The gang make trouble for the gargoyles and are defeated. Xanatos doesn’t care, because his real goal was getting the gang leader an early parole.
An ancient gargoyle is brought back to life by a mixture of tech and sorcery. “Coldstone” raids a tech firm, battles the gargoyles, gets talked down and goes into exile. Xanatos’ real goal was to steal a computer virus from the tech firm, which happened back in Act One and nobody noticed it.
I fucking love it when a story manages to properly set up a villain like this. Watching the heroes flounder as the foil plot after plot without realizing the true end goal is good damn reveal. Like firing thirty checkovs guns all at once.
Which isn't to say that the Gargoyles never get an uncomplicated win, or that Xanatos never takes a straightforward L. Nonzero cases where he basically has to come hat in hand to get the good guys to clean up his messes (whether it's "I turned my girlfriend into a rampaging werewolf" or "I helped your ex-girlfriend curse everyone in Manhattan to turn into stone at night")
To answer your last question, it's not negative in the context of the gargoyles villain: in fact, he's often the example of how to do it right.
And a lot of it has to do with clear writing. How do they still win? What were there goals? A Xanatos Gambit can still work if the primary goal fails but a secondary won was completed, for instance. Gargoyles shows that pretty well. The 40k is honestly a bit lit Sage in the Boy's "It was my plan all along" type of thing.
Very nicely done and here’s an example to prove your point.
Xanatos sends a bot that looks like him to free a bunch of mercenaries from prison. After the bot works with them to try and beat our hero’s but fails. We find out at the end of the episode that the bot was deployed to complete 3 objectives.
Main objective- give a prisoner an early release for exemplary conduct (ie staying in prison,) and helping a guard
Secondary objective one - test out the robotics design that could potentially mimic its creator
Secondary objective two - destroy or capture the manhattan gargoyle clan.
The idea is basically that, no matter how things go, the character has engineered their plan to always end in their benefit, even if they fail at one superficial thing or the other along the way. Every plausible and mutually exclusive outcome has to be successful to qualify as an Xanatos Gambit.
if the goons I hired defeat the good guys (unlikely, but still), then I win
if the goons I hired get defeated by the good guys, they will still buy enough time for me to steal the mcguffin, so I win
if the good guys defeat the goons but also somehow grab the mcguffin pre emptively, they don't have the anti-mcguffin stabilizing agent, which will cause the mcguffin and the surrounding 3 city blocks to explode, making it look like the good guys tried to bomb city, killing their reputation publicly and thus they will no longer impede me in the future. So I win.
Deus Ex Machina coming from Ancient Greek theatre using a crane like device to lower in gods during a performance, typically resulting in the resolution of the story’s conflict
The meaning of the phrase today means that an unforseen person or event comes along, with no foreshadowing or build up, and conveniently wraps up all the problems for the main characters.
It means it's a literal act of God happened and saved everyone, resulting in an unsatisfying ending.
The MatPat effect, where a certain edited image has become so iconic, that the original looks edited
Named after Matthew Patrick, former host of The Game Theorists, who often used a cutout of himself to represent him in his videos. That one is the left, the original is on the right.
4kids used to be an anime distribution company back in the day that was notorious for their egregious censorship, most infamous being The shadow realm (a way to censor all the death that was happening in the original yugioh series).
When something is being "4kidsed" it usually refers to that thing being so heavily censored, it becomes unrecognisable.
It's funny that Oceangate was the actual name of the company, because it just sounds like a hastily-invented name for an embarrassing and publicized oceanic incident.
The frustrating thing with this one is that British politics genuinely had a scandal involving an incident that happened at a gate, and the press didn't call it gategate.
Instead, it was plebgate, as a government minister allegedly insulted a police officer by calling him a "pleb" during a "don't you know who I am?" argument about letting the minister through the security on Downing Street.
Though given that the scandal resulted in one police officer going to prison and several more for being fired, perhaps the silly name would do it a disservice.
"Thermian Problem" is my favorite one. It's when people defend parts of a story by using the in-universe reasoning, but ignore the fact that the entire story, complete with all those in-universe reasonings, was created by the author. It's named after the Thermians from Galaxy Quest, who have no concept of lying or fiction in their culture, so they take everything literally.
One example would be the house elves in Harry Potter. They like serving wizards, so the defense of them being slaves is that they like it. Which ignores that they were written to like being enslaved, as well as being written to be slaves in the first place. Another example is Momo in My Hero Academia. She creates objects by growing them out of her body. As a result, her costume is extremely revealing. The explanation people give is that she has to have that much skin showing, otherwise she'd be unnecessarily hampering her quirk, but that ignores that the author decided that that is how her ability works, and he could have written it in a way that didn't require a teenage girl to wear an extremely revealing outfit all the time.
Oh my god I had no idea there was a term for this, I will remember this
More and more nowadays folks approach media with this perspective rather than viewing it as purposefully-written. Especially in TV shows and movies, good writers will not waste limited screen time for 0 reason. Every part of how a story is told is pre-determined.
I looove discussing the deeper parts of books, shows, and movies, or even just. Sitting and processing the ending. None of my friends are really into that anymore. Makes me sad
Holy crap. There is a term for that! I have struggled with it before, often when asking in fan subreddits about Doylist explanations and having gotten the Watsonian ones. I actually don't think this new term will help me at all in those occasions, but it does bring me some solace to know that enough people have suffered through it to have coined a term.
"Oh hey this Zant guy is really cool. I'm glad Twilight Princess decided to bring a new antagonist to the series and try something new to- oh god dammit, the plot's been HIJACKED BY GANON."
For when it seems like the bad guy is someone new, only for the very end to reveal it's the same guy as the last ten games, seemingly out of nowhere. a recent example would be Donky Kong Bananza having Void Kong as the antagonist only for King K. Rool to randomly show up as the final boss.
It Was His Sled - When a major spoiler of a certain media is so shocking and iconic it’s not even considered a spoiler anymore. Originally codified by Citizen Kane, the trope was later named in Family Guy by a recording of Peter Griffin taped over the movie in one episode.
Its the case with Jekyll and Hyde too, where the identity of Mr. Hyde and his relationship to Dr. Jekyll is the central mystery of the original book but is now just a term for alternate personality stories because its so ingrained in culture
This is a variant of "the dragon" second in command to the villain, but the focus on treachery (as well as often being less strong/capabale) than the main villain I would say distinguishes it enough.
Though it is often just called the scheming vizier
Scheming Vizier more often applies to cases like Wormtongue in Lotr where their target is not necessarily villainous
"The Starscream" is notable because it represents a threat to the Big Bad that does not take the form of the Hero, making the central conflict more multilayered and chaotic
My single favorite Transformers scene was Starscream defending Megatron in court.
"Your honor, you can't hold my client responsible for the Cybertron wars because he was a useless moron who was mostly just along for the ride. You shouldn't punish him, you should pity him for being such an incapable jackass no one actually liked."
Not sure, but I think the trope itself was named after this scene by the Nostalgia Chick, aka Lindsay Ellis. That might have made the association in your mind
Growing the beard, when a show gets noticeably better in quality—the opposite of jumping the shark. Named after when Riker grew a beard in the second season of Star Trek TNG.
Isnt this the trope of some massive thing falling towards a very narrow strip of land, and for some reason the characters decide to run parallel to the falling thing rather than just run 20 ft to the side and be out of the path of collapse in seconds?
To be fair, the less directly you run away from a thing, the more it would catch up, so you need to hope you can push that other distance enough in the dwindling gap. Given how close it was, that is very risky. But I can understand why it looks bad.
It's also just hard to gauge trajectory when you're that close to something that much bigger than you are
Think about how you feel looking up at a skyscraper, and then imagining that you witness it collapse in front of you. You'd be booking it on reflex, and if you took the time to think about whether or not you're running in the "correct" direction, you'd be screwed lol
In the tv series arrested developpement there is an épisode where one character open the frigde and there is a paper bag labelled "dead dove do not eat " the character open it and see exactly what it is
The term dead dove is now used in fanfictions espically AO3 as a tag to say "the tag showed here are not an exageration it is really is that"
Dead Dove: Do Not Eat; fanfiction tag meaning that what's in the fic is exactly as it says on the outside so don't be surprised by what you find inside
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u/Mental-Platypus-9192 19d ago
Draco (Ancient Greece) Famously punished any transgression with death His name is where we derived the Term Draconian