TV Tropes

A website with an entry for every archetypal plot device, plot event, plot hole, character, line of dialogue, theme, or musical device that has been thought of more than once which makes the name ever so slightly fucking retarded. People commonly direct to this site when they want to explain an oft-used plot device or cliché to others—rather than explain it themselves in simple words.
These linkers feel guilty shortly afterwards because they know that their victims are now locked in a seven-hour Marathon of browsing through what feels like every single page of the entire archives of the wiki and getting thoroughly lost. It tends to start innocently enough, from Firefly to Catch Phrase to He's Dead Jim to Doctor Who, but then it devolves to Running Gag to The Muppet Movie to Jim Henson to Sesame Street to Acid Reflux Nightmare to Older Than Radio to Walk The Plank to Star Wars to Famous Last Words back to Firefly and then to Crowning Moment of Awesome...and you're stuck just in that section for three to four hours frantically agreeing or disagreeing to what is listed as awesome and what is listed to the contrary.
Each entry has a brief description of the device, or "trope", wherein sometimes there are links to other tropes, which are Typically Capitalized. This is occasionally accompanied by a single image, which is the only image you will find in the entire entry, making this website Inferior To Uncyclopedia. The introduction is followed by a listing of every example the Hive Mind could find of that particular device in anime, comic books, film, live action television, literature, music, tabletop games, theatre, video games, webcomics, web-original content, Western animation, and real life. Tedious pop culture references and/or inside abbreviations are sure to be made, often without any explanation. Most tropers also appear to be unaware of the existence of what are called Discussion Pages.
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Examples
Anime and Manga
* Episode 3 of Obscure Anime Series references this.
** Averted in most anime and manga, whose setting — Japan — rarely encounters TV Tropes, or the real world in general.
* In Yu-Gi-Oh!, tropes are many and common.
* Blah Blah Blah Mahou Sensei Negima, Blah Blah Blah, Blah Blah Blah.
** Blah Blah Blah Blah Blah Blah Blah Blah Blah Blah Blah Blah Blah Blah Blah Blah Blah Blah Blah Blah Blah Blah Blah. Blah Blah Blah.
* Blah Blah Blah Blah Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann Blah Blah Blah Blah Blah Blah Blah Blah Blah Blah Blah Blah.
* In Pokémon, many tropes are invoked by both the games and the anime.
* Appleseed EX Machina: Blah Blah Blah Blah.
** Blah Blah Blah BLAH!!!!!!
* Blah blah blah Neon Genesis Evangelion.
** I'm pretty sure that was a Double Blah Subversion.
* Xamd Lost Memories: Blah...
** Please Elaborate.
Film
* Star Trek is the king of [ TV Tropes]. Both heroes and villains seem to Follow Tropes to a T.
** Well, no. Have you seen the new movie? Red Shirt is subverted.
*** Wrong. Count the Academy cadets clad in red shirts.
*** Also subverted: Continuity.
*** Which would be Cosmic Retcon played straight.
** For goodness' sake, TNG starts and ends with Humanity On Trial.
** That franchise invented technobabble. Even Doctor Who wasn't that bad before Star Trek came along.
*** Surely you mean Techno Babble.
* Bizarrely subverted in The Uncyclopedia Movie when TV Tropes refers to Sophia referring to TV Tropes.
** But played straight later when Oscar Wilde looks to the wiki for Sudden Inspiration From Arbitrary Surroundings.
* This troper can affirm that Tropes on a Site, the movie adaptation of [ TV Tropes], is basically all about this.
** "I have had enough of these clichéd tropes on this clichéd site! Everybody strap in. We're unplugging the servers." Gus's Crowning Moment of Awesome.
** Well, what about "ALL PRAISES TO WARHAMMER 40K!" after Fast Eddie freezes the servers by forcing the computer to play tic-tac-toe with itself forever?
** Ahem. "What's that?" "It's a lampshade." "And you're hanging it." "You think?"
** The film as a whole is a CMoA for TV Tropes.
* One of the titular jokes in The Aristocrats refers to the father being unaware of the chaos around him because he was stuck in a TV Tropes session.
* "Don't cross the tropes."
* "Holy TV Tropes, Batman!"
** Which film was that?
* "A TROPERY!"
** Don't forget the "Dead Trope" sketch in the Hollywood Bowl film.
Literature
* Oscar Wilde refers to TV Tropes in The Picture of Dorian Gray, making this trope Older Than Television.
** Something just seems wrong about that.
* Slightly subverted with Harry Potter's cousin Dudley, who is known not to be a Troper.
** Are you sure this shouldn't go to the Wild Mass Guess section?
*** It's Word Of God. Rowling herself appears to have mentioned it a few weeks ago.
* What?! How has Sherlock Holmes not been mentioned?! This troper swears that he read somewhere about Sherlock Holmes maintaining a database of trite, overused criminal plots to save his deductive reasoning brainpower.
** It's really more of a variation of Magical Database. But this troper thinks he's heard of it too.
** This seems to be apocryphal. It may have appeared in fanfic.
* A lost chapter of Douglas Adams' The Salmon of Doubt apparently was based on a series of random TV Tropes.
*`Probably the Ur Example is in The Bible, in which Hekinnah bargains with God to spare the Tropers. God eventually spares them, for they repent.
**Also counts as an example of Did You Just Bargain With Cthulhu ?
Live Action TV
* Doctor Who is FULL of these. The Third Doctor even says to "reverse the polarity of the TV Tropes."
** Are you sure? I've never heard that.
*** Then you're clearly out of your mind. This troper saw it 9001 times.
*** No, you're out of your mind.
*** NO U.
** The occurrence of the quote in the Third Doctor's tenure is doubtful. The closest is "reverse the polarity of the proton beam."
*** Really? This troper must be having a bad day.
*** You mean "neutron beam."
** Nevertheless, arguably the Library in "Silence in the Library"/"Forest of the Dead" could be a variation on this.
* Subverted cleverly by Obscure Cult Television Series, in the episode "Nobody Cares"
* Averted in CSI when Wikipedia is used instead.
** Later played straight, though.
** Even subverted when TV Tropes has to receive data from CSI's own Magical Database.
** Also slightly subverted when TV Tropes crashes in the middle of a brainstorming session.
*** That seems closer to an aversion, though.
* It's been speculated that, three-quarters of the time on Knight Rider, KITT actually uses TV Tropes to plan his next course of action.
** No wonder. I mean, look at the page for that series. Nothing's subverted there.
** This is apparently Word of God.
** Also features in a BLAM Episode of Team Knight Rider.
* Troper She Wrote has the protagonist predicting her in-universe future based purely on TV Tropes.
* MacGyver in one episode uses a yarn of string, some Play-Doh and TV Tropes to get himself out of a corner.
** Also referenced when he made a computer out of scrap metal, an electric fan and Applied Phlebotinum.
*** And it was still advanced enough to become self-aware and instantly commit suicide. CMoA.
Web Comics
* xkcd makes fun of TV Tropes.
** So does Irregular Webcomic from time to time.
** A respectable webcomic has yet to reference TV Tropes.
* TV Tropes the Webcomic.
** Although it suffers from Adaptation Decay if you ask me.
*** Surely it's closer to Adaptation Distillation.
*** RUINED FOREVER!
** Isn't that an in-joke, making it technically irrelevant?
*** Let me point you to the JustBugsMe page ...
Web Original
* TV Tropes. Duh.
** It is also the trope namer.
** Trope Codifier as well.
*** It also counts as the Ur Example.
*** Actually, it's the Most Triumphant Example.
* Uncyclopedia refers to TV Tropes in [ this entry.]
** As does The Other Wiki.
*** How could you!?
*** Why would you link to Wikipedia?
*** You just summoned The Wiki That Must Not Be Named! IT WILL KILL US ALL!!!
*** Those guys actually care about notability! Here, There Is No Such Thing As Notability!
** TV Tropes reciprocates.
*** And then that entry points to this entry.
*** I'm pretty sure we just suffered a Reality Implosion.
* The Nostalgia Critic does this all the time.
** So does The Nostalgia Chick.
*** No she doesn't.
Western Animation
* Avatar: The Last Airbender!
* And nothing else, because they're not Asian-y enough. No, not even The Simpsons.
Real Life
* Monkeys. Think about it.
**Those are a double subversion! And, after that, they end up discussing it while playing it straight!
* [[Understatement I CAN'T STOP THINKING ABOUT THIS WEBSITE]]!
** That's a trope. This troper has affirmed many times that TV Tropes Will Ruin Your Life.
*** Same here. I Am Not Making This Up.
* This has happened so many times to this troper that he actually joined.
** Yeah. Twitter is full of links here.
** Were you here when the servers crashed?
** This troper still hasn't found his way out of this website.
* It's been suggested that some writers actually pick a random trope and build their stories around it by either using or subverting it.
** Word of God for Star Trek.
** Same for [[CSI]].
*** You know what? All popular culture has its basis on TV Tropes. Case closed.
*** Really? Are you sure that's not Fridge Logic?
*** Clearly you Did Not Do The Research.
*** This troper thinks you have it The Other Way Around.
* i heard that unyplocopedia or however u spell it has this too. or maybe it don't.
** [[Administrivia/RepairDontRespond Hey, it's called "Uncyclopedia", and it's meant to be in the Web Original section!]]
* I can't believe nobody's mentioned monkeys yet!
** Look above, stupid.
*** NO U.
Category:Internet
Category:Websites
Category:Evil
Category:Pages that look like the things they're about
Category:FA Internet
Category:FA Television
Category:Things That You Wouldn't Think Are Evil, But Actually Are