Contrary to popular belief, very few fatal injuries result in instant death. As long as you haven't been decapitated, shot in the head, or asploded, your body will take at least two minutes to fully shut down, giving you a chance to belt out a few parting words to your comrades or the enemy that felled you.
More realistic than the Final Speech, which lasts as long as the plot needs it to no matter ...
Deadpan Snarker
A character given to gnomic, sarcastic, sometimes bitter, occasionally whimsical asides.
The Deadpan Snarker exists to deflate pomposity, point out the unlikelihood of certain plans, and deliver funny lines. Typically a Deadpan Snarker is the most cynical supporting character. In most cases, it is implied that the snarker would make a good leader, strategist, or consultant given their ability to i ...
Spell My Name With An S
This trope describes characters whose names are almost never spelled consistently, usually because of transliteration issues. This tends to happen in Anime and Japanese video games that haven't been officially translated into English, although it also crops up in other languages that don't use the Latin alphabet. Situations include anything from drama between vowel additions to unique-cipher dropp ...
Parental Abandonment
A stunningly large number of heroes and their coteries are lacking in the parent department, either through death or in that they just aren't talked about. Even if both parents are alive, they may well be emotionally or physically distant. Everyone is, for the sake of the plot, Conveniently An Orphan, whether they actually are or not.
This is a very convenient way for characters to be able to run ...
Trademark Favorite Food
A character is partly defined by a Trademark Favorite Food that he or she craves and eats, all the freakin' time. Usually in a way that makes you suspect that they're addicted to the substance. If they're a One Note Cook, they'll typically be good at making it.
When a character exhibits an obsession for food that corresponds with a stereotype for his race or culture, it is usually considered a Di ...
Throw It In
The preservation of ad libs, improvisations, and the occasional accident or mistimed what-have-you for dramatic or comic effect, sometimes at the cost of continuity.
These are often some of the most memorable scenes, for better or for worse, due to their spontaneity.
Differs slightly from attaching Hilarious Outtakes to the ends of shows. Related to No Fourth Wall. See also Rule Of Funny, Rule Of ...
The Other Darrin
A new actor is brought onto a show to play the same character as an actor who's leaving. Often not explained to the audience at all. Named for arguably the most famous case: the Darrin swap — Dick York to Dick Sargent — on Bewitched. Somewhat easier to get away with when dealing with voice actors or with animals.
In daytime soaps, there are several standardized ways this is done:
the new act ...
Why Did It Have To Be Snakes
A seemingly invulnerable character reveals that they are actually deathly afraid of _____... and whatever the character is afraid of is certainly going to be a recurring obstacle, no matter how unlikely. This trope is named for Indiana Jones who reveals early in Raiders Of The Lost Ark that he hates snakes and later asks the titular question when snakes prove to be an obstacle.
A subset of Fatal F ...
Moral Event Horizon
The Moral Event Horizon is the point of no return. Once a character crosses it of their own free will, they cease to be cool or admirable. It is a single act which, while not necessarily objectively worse than anything else the villain has previously committed, affects the audience and the story on a far deeper level. Whether the person has truly become irredeemable may be a question that can neve ...
Breaking The Fourth Wall
Hey! How're you doing out there? It sure is nice to be the Breaking The Fourth Wall page on TV Tropes. Sure, I don't get as much attention as some of the other pages, but I try my hardest.
Anyways, the status quo in a work of fiction is that the characters are unaware of their fictional nature and of their audience. This is the Fourth Wall. Right now, this wall would be the screen you're looking a ...
Big No
The moment when a character realizes that something awful has happened, or notices that something awful is about to happen, and screams 'NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!' If the character is rushing to prevent the something-awful from happening, a slow-motion effect can be employed to draw out the tension of the moment, sometimes to the point of drawing out the 'No' into a comical bass growl. (Editors with more ...
Beware The Nice Ones
Sometimes, trying to Break The Cutie can have consequences. Sometimes, the nicest person in the story gets pushed to the limit of what they can take and the results... are not pretty.
The sweeter, gentler, more polite, and overall nicer a character is, especially if they're female, the worse it will be for the planet when they're subjected to one too many rounds of Break The Cutie, or Dude Wheres ...
Meaningful Name
A name that has a direct, barely-hidden meaning to it. The first, last, or full name says something primal about the character. Often has multiple layers. To hide the meaning a bit, use an alternate spelling or foreign equivalent. Instead of writers having to make up random words or think of real names, they can use mythological names or old words.
As an example, it is common to use for heroic cha ...
Punny Name
Sometimes, a name isn't exactly meaningful or hiding something, but there's still something about it that is weird. And then you read it really fast, and go, 'Oh!' and have your chuckle over the pun.
Pun names are just that: Names that make puns. Some are semi-meaningful in that they sometimes describe an activity germane to the character's profession, such as a baseball player named Homer (of ...
Die For Our Ship
Sometimes, a character is hated because he's annoying. Or because he came in after the show Jumped The Shark. Or because she's a raging Mary Sue and gets too much attention. The list goes on. More often, though, when Shipping comes into play, the character is hated for existing at all.
Hate shrines. Death Fics. Fics where the formerly sweet and loyal character cheats on the heroine with her two be ...
Bad Ass
The Rule Of Cool personified.
A character who gets away with outright insane stunts (defusing a bomb with their teeth, conning a mob boss, getting into a firefight with the entire US army, etc.) that would never work in real life. A Bad Ass is a fantasy figure who the audience roots for precisely because they break the Willing Suspension Of Disbelief - or, between Refuge In Audacity and Rule Of Co ...
One Winged Angel
Classic Big Bads have the tendency, when push comes to shove, to turn into big honking monsters. A mad scientist in a fit of urgency might down his own mutagen, or a cyborg turns his body into a living bomb, or a mild-mannered enemy reveals her terrifying true form. Bets are good they'll become way more bloated, ugly, or plain disfigured. Sometimes this is more subtle, and the character will look ...
Mind Screw
The Mind Screw is basically a show that relies so heavily on symbolism that the immediate response afterwards is 'What the heck was that?!?!'
These shows practically beg for fans to invent their own improbable theories about Epileptic Trees and such.
While some fans can make arguments over what the symbolism means, and what everything represents, many mind screws will pad themselves with meaningle ...
Painting The Fourth Wall
Any author, sooner or later, has to acknowledge the limitations of the medium in which the story is being told.
Some, however, are known to use the media creatively. Essentially, Painting The Fourth Wall refers to using metafictional devices, such as fonts and text position in a book or UI changes in a video game, to indirectly convey a particular story-related message by deliberately breaking the ...
Game Breaker
Occasionally known as 'a cheese' or 'cheesing,' a Game Breaker is controversial because of its vague status of 'cheating'. Since it does not involve outright hacking, such as a ram edit, nor exploiting an outright bug which clearly should not occur, Game Breaking utilizes some organic feature of the game in an unintentional way, resulting in Gameplay Derailment. A major reason these occur is due t ...
Name That Tune
The arch usage of a show's theme music within an episode. Extremely common in anime, far less so in American animated series, for numerous reasons including not trying to sell an artist and the general lack of American cartoon theme quality; American cartoon themes are usually either a straight instrumental or a song that repeats the show's title constantly. Of course, some people would argue that ...
Leitmotif
A leitmotif is a piece of music used repeatedly to represent a character, theme or action. This is a well-established technique used in almost every medium that involves music and story. The leitmotif technique was invented (or at least perfected) by opera composer Richard Wagner in the second half of the 1800s. In his operas, not only would every character have his/her own motif, but also objec ...
Lampshade Hanging
Lampshade Hanging is the writers' trick of dealing with any element of the story that threatens the audience's Willing Suspension Of Disbelief—whether a very implausible plot development, or a particularly egregious use of a trope—by calling attention to it... and then moving on.
The reason for this counter-intuitive strategy is two-fold. First, it assures the audience that the author is aware ...
Paranoia Fuel
When things that should be harmless, or on the children's side, turn nasty, stripping away all sense of safety. THEY CAN SEE YOU. THEY KNOW WHERE YOU LIVE!
How can a child sleep easy in their bed, when they've seen how toys can come alive when all is dark and wreak unspeakable vengeance? What trust can they have that anyone will protect them, when they've just seen some cheerful kid's programme w ...
Nakama
All for one...
'Nakama' is a Japanese term that describes, roughly, the members of a group. However, some anime fans have decided it means a group of people who are as close as real family would be because of the circumstances under which the group of companions find themselves. As the term is not a uniquely Japanese concept, other words such as 'comrades', 'brothers in arms', crew, team, posse ...