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The Only One - TV Tropes "You're the only man alive that can handle this mission, Kremmen." — The introduction to every Captain Kremmen radio episode There's a crisis, and our beloved protagonists are the only people who can handle the problem. Unfortunately, this is because all the other people who could take care of it are woefully incompetent. If the series is about a local police force, the FBI are ivory-tower glory hounds. If the series is about an FBI agent, the local police are all useless types. If the series is about the military, government higher-ups will only be interested in pleasing the voters. If the series is about the government or an anti-military type, then the military will be The Evil Army commanded by a General Ripper type who is just itching to Nuke 'em back to the stone age, never mind the asking questions part. If the series is about a rogue hero, all levels of government and law enforcement, plus the military, are either corrupt or clueless, with the possible exception of a Reasonable Authority Figure who will still be be unable to help because of mountains of red tape. And everyone else will just think that it isn't for them to deal with (at least, at first). In those cases where the people who are supposed to be handling the situation are not also bad guys, you can end up with a Red Shirt Army. Sometimes this is actually warranted by the show's premise, notably Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Dark Angel, Stargate SG-1... okay, any show featuring The Chosen One. A variation that often occurs, particularly in shows or movies where there is a Race Against the Clock situation, is that those who are responsible for taking care of a particular situation (such as the bomb squad) will, for some reason, not be able to make it in time to resolve the problem that the protagonists are facing. In this scenario, the experts may be fully competent and on the side of the angels, but are prevented for some reason from taking care of the problem themselves, meaning that the untrained protagonists are forced to be the only ones who can take care of the problem. This often works to increasing tension; will the non-expert cut the right wire? Compare the subtropes One Riot, One Ranger, where it is justified by a specific decision on the part of the authorities, and It's Up to You (the gamer equivalent). Compare I Work Alone, where the hero chooses this voluntarily. Also compare The Main Characters Do Everything, where extras aren't shown to be competent nor incompetent, they just never get to do anything. Contrast Hero of Another Story. See also Evil Only Has to Win Once, because inevitably the stakes are cataclysmic. When it's The Hero and the Big Bad specifically, you may be looking at Only I Can Kill Him. ## Examples: - Kirby: Right Back at Ya!: Kirby a Star Warrior destined to fight off the Big Bad of the universe. - My Hero Academia: The bearers of One for All are the only ones that can resist All for One's Quirk-stealing power - so they are the only ones that can deal with him. - Valkyria Chronicles: The main characters amount to a single squad of civilian draftee militia. Much like in the game, the country's actual professional army is presented as a bunch of tactically incompetent blowhards who want to hog all the glory and use the Uriah Gambit on the protagonists. They never amount to anything useful and get blown to bits by the enemy. - Green Lantern: - At one point during Hal Jordan's stint as Parallax, things got so bad for the Green Lantern Corps (namely, everyone else being dead or depowered) that Ganthet teleported to Earth and threw the only working Power Ring at a random person. Eventually they got better. - This happens to the Corps every so often. When Hal Jordan was still a rookie, the villain Legion had defeated the entire Corps with its gigantic yellow suit of armor, but Hal figures out that if he covers Legion in mud, his ring will work on him. When cracking the armor open turns out not to have been the best idea, Hal flies into the Central Power Battery and supercharges his ring, giving him the strength to defeat the villain on his own. - After the Crisis on Infinite Earths, the GLC is reduced to the three Lanterns of Earth and a small handful of others spread around the universe. When the sole remaining Guardian is driven mad by solitude, it's pretty much up to Hal to save the day again. - In First Flight, when Sinestro destroyed the central Green Lantern battery, all of the remaining Green Lanterns are left powerless. Only Hal was able to get green element's power working again and fight Sinestro one on one. - Early on in Nova (2007), Richard Rider is the only (known) Nova left alive, but keeps putting off the topic of maybe getting some new Novas so he doesn't have to work alone, and not run the risk of going totally insane from too much power. It doesn't help when the first person to be deputized lasts about a day before suffering a fatal case of "knife in back". Eventually the Worldmind gets fed up of this and just gets some more people while Rich's back is turned. - Rogue Trooper is the last living Genetic Infantryman, if you don't count his biochip buddies. - Runaways: The premise of the second series is that the titular team is the closest thing Los Angeles has to a superhero team after their evil parents drove every other superhero out of the area, and thus have to deal with all the supervillains who decide to move out west in hopes of escaping from the superheroes on the East Coast. This premise falls apart after Civil War, when The Order (2007) is deployed to California to become its government-sanctioned superhero team. - Superman: - Justified in Silver and Bronze Age Superboy stories, as Clark is Earth-1's first and only major super-powered superhero (aside from the teenaged Aquaman as "Aquaboy," plus a few minor heroes such as the original Air Wave) until he reaches adulthood. - Brainiac's Blitz: Since the whole Justice League is off world, Supergirl is the only super-hero left on the planet who is powerful and resourceful enough to try to fight Brainiac. - Bait and Switch (STO): - Double Subverted in the original novella, where the USS Bajor is explicitly not the only ship available to respond to the distress signal from Dreon VII. Instead, Eleya's ship is just fifteen minutes closer than the Jadzia Dax and Amaterasu and is able to get things under control before the others arrive. - Played with in The Headhunt. The Bajor is actually the second starship on the scene of a jailbreak at Facility 4028, but the other ship is a century-plus-old Miranda-class. The Galaxy-class Bajor has capabilities the USS Brisbane doesn't, so her crew takes the lead. - In Remembrance of the Fallen part of the reason Eleya is given the assignment of tutoring Tia and Sobaru is because Sobaru is Bajoran, and Eleya is the only other Bajoran on the Starfleet Academy campus at the moment who has taken Principles of Electronic Countermeasures (officer recruitment on Bajor has apparently been somewhat thin in the past couple of years). - Shakedown Shenanigans directly references the Enterprise-B debacle. Eleya insists on her ship being fully completed, fueled, and armed before she will allow it to be launched for its shakedown cruise. Then when she picks up a distress signal during said cruise, it's made clear that she's going off-mission and because she wants to, not because she's the only ship available (in the Vulcan system, almost as much a crossroads as Sol). - The four get so sick of this trope in The Keys Stand Alone: The Soft World that they basically end up saying, "No, we're not the only ones who can do this. Fuck off." - In Son of the Sannin, the kidnapping of the Senju twins (the story's equivalent of the Sasuke Retrieval Arc) takes place during the Sound Invasion, which limits the rescue team to the Konoha 15 (none of whom are older than 14) since nobody more powerful than them can afford to leave the village. Shikamaru actually realizes en route that the whole thing was specifically orchestrated that way so Akatsuki could capture Naruto and take his Tailed Beast, but by that point Naruto is dead set on continuing anyway since the alternative is letting a madman get their hands on his little brother and sister. - Vow of Nudity: When Haara wants to assemble a team to rescue her former master from the volcano mines, the mission's mandatory nudity note : since they'd be impersonating slaves scares off any adventurers who could help. This forces her to enlist Walburt despite his complete lack of qualifications for a stealth mission. - Played seriously in Inside Out: Joy's \|\|misguided attempts to keep Riley happy all the time backfire disastrously; after she and Sadness are accidentally ejected from Headquarters, Anger, Disgust, and Fear try and fail miserably to keep Riley happy and their efforts end with Riley nearly running away from San Francisco to return to her hometown in Minnesota, thanks to an ill-conceived idea on Anger's part. Just as the control panel begins turning grey and locking them out, rendering Riley apathetic and leaving Anger, Disgust, and Fear in horrified regret, Joy and Sadness return. The previous three emotions swarm around Joy, begging her to fix the problem; Joy, having learned that she went too far in excluding Sadness and preventing her from helping Riley signal to others that she needs help, she surprises them all when she tells Sadness that it's up to her. Sadness, having been ostracized and mistreated by Joy for almost all her existence, is reluctant and afraid at first to take control until Joy firmly tells her, "Yes you can, Riley needs you". This gives Sadness the confidence to take the controls; just as the control panel almost completely shuts down, Sadness successfully removes the idea bulb, reactivating the controls and bringing Riley to her senses just in time so that she can leave the bus and return to her parents. Once Riley has returned to her house and her relieved parents, a silently contrite Joy allows Sadness to return Riley's Core Memories (turning them from joyful to sad in the process) so that Riley can understand why all these things she loved hurt so much\|\|. The emotions watch in sheer amazement \|\|Riley breaks down in sobs and finally admits to her parents that she misses Minnesota and her parents in turn admit to her that they also miss Minnesota and the three of them huddle in a Group Hug\|\|. - There's some fridge brilliance \|\|in this one action because Sadness is effectively the only one who could remove the idea bulb; since she has moved from Minnesota to San Francisco and Sadness has been prevented from signaling that Riley is homesick and miserable in this new city, Riley is outraged and repelled by San Francisco and Anger and Disgust therefore are unable to remove the bulb. Fear is also unable to remove the bulb because Riley's long-lasting fear of losing everything she loves overrules her immediate fear of taking a long (and potentially dangerous) bus journey by herself, and Fear himself was opposed to the idea of running away and outright stated that it was drastic but he was overruled. Even if Joy were there, Riley does not yet have any happy memories of San Francisco, so Joy would probably have been just as powerless to remove the bulb. Sadness, however, could bring Riley to her senses with the simple but painful realization that running away to Minnesota ; her family's old house is sold, her friend Meg has already found another friend, she would have no place to stay, and she would be even lonelier since she'd left her parents in San Francisco, and only Sadness could remove the idea and make her understand this truth and abandon her plan.\|\| would not work - Barbarella. Parodied when Dianthus (President of Earth and Rotating Premier of the Solar System) has to send Barbarella on the mission because the universe has been at peace for so long they no longer have armies or police, "and I can't spare the Presidential band!" - Die Hard: - In the first Die Hard movie, McClane is in the building seeing everything up-close, so he is able to respond to the criminals effectively. However, the authorities have their playbook and go through it step-by-step — despite it becoming increasingly obvious that the criminals have read that playbook and either respond with a specific countermeasure or integrate it into their plans. - In Die Hard 2, the terrorists are renegade U.S. troops, the military troops sent to take out the terrorists are in cahoots with them, and for most of the movie the airport security guards actively oppose McClane's heroic efforts. - From Live Free or Die Hard: Farrell: Then why are you doing this? McClane: Because there's nobody else to do it right now, that's why. Believe me, if there were somebody else to do it, I'd let them do it. But there's not, so we're doing it. Farrell: Ah. That's what makes you that guy. - In Blue Thunder, the villains are part of a Government Conspiracy that has the local police department on its side. Frank Murphy is forced to hijack the titular Black Helicopter and fight an aerial battle against police and military forces in order to provide cover for the evidence he's collected to make it to a reporter. Averted at the end when the U.S. Justice Department does in fact start an investigation. - Subverted in Lethal Weapon 3, in which Riggs persuades Murtagh that they are the only ones present who can defuse a bomb because, of course, "the bomb squad never arrives on time!" Unfortunately, Riggs fails the Wire Dilemma, the bomb goes off, and the building collapses, causing millions of dollars worth of damage... and at that point, the bomb squad arrive, having made it in plenty of time to defuse the device had Riggs and Murtagh not interfered. - As the Batman franchise went on, the role of the police became diminished to the point of utter uselessness, meaning the city was defenceless without Batman. - It's so prevalent in the Star Trek films that you'd think Starfleet wants Earth to be destroyed, especially in pre-TNG era settings, where the Enterprise is often the only ship nearby, even when "nearby" is "the capital of the Federation" (Earth). That or the Negative Space Wedgie epidemic in the galaxy is so bad that all of their ships are busy dealing with them. - Star Trek: The Motion Picture: It's not that any other vessel or crew is incompetent, but whoever is responsible for the disposition of Starfleet's resources needs a stern talking-to. The only starship available to intercept V'Ger is the Enterprise, which is not only at the tail end of a major refit but currently orbiting Earth. - In Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, the Enterprise against the Khan-controlled Reliant; Kirk refers to themselves as the only ship in the quadrant. note : Starting in the TNG era, "quadrant" started be consistently used to mean "galactic quadrant", making this especially funny in hindsight. At the time the film was made, of course, it was clear Kirk didn't mean that since the terms "sector" and "quadrant" were used pretty loosely. He probably meant some sub-unit of a sector. - Star Trek V: The Final Frontier has Kirk's crew charged with saving the diplomat hostages in their malfunctioning Enterprise-A. Kirk actually calls out the Admiral assigning him on this. The movie tries to justify it by saying that while there are other ships in the area, their commanders don't have the experience Kirk has. - Star Trek: Generations: The Enterprise-B is just being taken for a test stroll around Earth and doesn't even have most of its weapons or medical crew, and yet it's miraculously the only ship within range of the Negative Space Wedgie, even though it's still very close to Earth, which presumably has a lot of ships nearby. - Star Trek: First Contact: The Enterprise is part of a huge battle against the Borg, but it appears that only Picard has the tactical instinct to quickly destroy the enemy due to his past assimilation. When the time-traveling escape sphere flies off toward Earth, it's unclear why the Enterprise is the only ship that seems to be following it, but it's possible the other ships are more damaged from the battle due to the Enterprise having been ordered away, which again stems from Picard's past history. - Star Trek (2009): Most of the local Starfleet ships are busy in the Laurentian system, so the ships available to respond to Vulcan consist of whatever happened to be in drydock in Earth orbit at the time, and Starfleet's forced to call up the corps of cadets from the Academy in order to crew them. Then the Narada blows away all of them save the Enterprise (because the Enterprise was late to the party because Sulu goofed). - Star Trek Into Darkness: The Enterprise is on the receiving end of a Curb-Stomp Battle from the Vengeance in orbit of the Moon, and not one other starship comes by to investigate. - Star Trek Beyond: Yorktown Starbase is left undefended apart from some weapons platforms because Krall duped Sulu and Uhura into sending Starfleet the wrong rescue coordinates, so the fleet that would normally be to aid in the defense is out looking for them and Kirk et al. are left to fend off Krall's attack by themselves. - Spoofed in The Hidden (1987) when the Chief says that when the cop protagonist is reassigned: "My department will then crumble, crime will run rampart, the city will fall into ruin, rampaging hordes will control the streets and life as we know it will end!" - In The Fifth Element, Korben Dallas is the only man for the job who has the certifications for a (ridiculously) long list of weapons and spacecraft, and is still alive. - Justified in Executive Decision after Sergeant Matheny, the squad's explosives expert, is critically injured and paralyzed, aviation engineer Dennis Cahill (who has been left behind to "keep an eye" on Matheny) is forced to try his hand at defusing the bomb. He does just that, in a manner that Matheny admits he never would have thought of. Similarly, Dr. Grant joins in the final assault on the terrorists because there are not enough commandos left to take out all the terrorists at once. - Jason asserts this about him and his friends in Mystery Team, claiming that they're the only ones capable of doing what the police can't. - In the Spider-Man Trilogy, five super-powered villains show up throughout the series but Spidey is apparently the one and only superhero. - Superman is obviously the one and only superhero in his films to the point where the Earth seems screwed when a single super-powered menace shows up or natural disaster happens, requiring him to act. In fact, that universe can't even stop a single, non-powered mad scientist from nearly nuking the planet. - The first two films in the Blade Trilogy shows the lone, titular hero going up against an entire world of vampires with only one aging ally for support. The third film gave him two more allies but they were simply really tough and didn't have any powers. - This trope is averted in Iron Man where Tony Stark believes he is the only superhero in that universe and seems annoyed when he gains allies. Obviously, these films are a part of the Marvel Cinematic Universe which has set out to avert this trope in superhero movies. - Hot Fuzz lets us know that Sgt. Angel is far and away the most effective officer in London. Subverted in that this only makes his coworkers annoyed and gets him reassigned to a village out in the boondocks. At the end of the movie, they want him to come back as crime has skyrocketed in his abscence. - Jonah Hex. After The Remnant commanded by Quentin Turnbull steals a Secret Weapon, Army Lieutenant Grass assures President Ulysses S. Grant that his elite military unit is ready to handle it. So Grant assigns him...the task of finding Jonah Hex. Grass isn't happy but obeys orders. Later Hex telegraphs Grass with Turnbull's Evil Plan and Grass is waiting to intercept Turnbull with an ironclad cutter, which is promptly blown out of the water by Turnbull leaving only Jonah (who's held prisoner on Turnbull's ship at the time) to save the day. Though a conversation Grant has with his advisors does justify the trope—given Turnbull's willingness to attack civilian targets he could strike anywhere, so the US military (which was drastically reduced in size and resources from the force Grant commanded during the Civil War) is spread thin trying to cover all potential targets. Jonah can afford to chase after Turnbull but there's nothing to stop Turnbull from changing his plan and striking elsewhere. - The Chronicles of Riddick has the title character as the only guy in the universe tough (and ruthless) enough to take down the Big Bad (Riddick's home planet was filled with such badasses, so of course it was destroyed in a suprise preemptive strike). - Subverted in Star Wars; when Obi-Wan says that Luke is their last hope, Yoda responds by reminding him that There Is Another. - The Mystery Men accidentally kill the only one qualified to be the One, so the city has to settle for their attempt to salvage the day. - Rambo in all but the original film. - Rambo: First Blood Part II: Rambo knows the local terrain of a supposed POW camp, making him perfect for a one-man reconnaissance mission. - Rambo III: Col. Trautman has been captured by the Soviets during the height of the cold-war. The US military can't be seen to intervene leaving Rambo, who is not only highly skilled but not with the military, the only man they can send in with any hope for success. - Twice in Rambo IV; he knows the local area and has a large enough boat, so the missionaries choose him to sneak them into Burma. Later when the missionaries get captured only he knows where he dropped them off so is required to escort a crew of mercenaries to the correct location. - Gant is pulled out of retirement to go on the mission to steal the titular Firefox because he was the only person the CIA could find who could (1) pilot a supersonic jet fighter, (2) speak fluent Russian, and (3) fit into one of the custom-tailored flight suits used by the fighter's test pilots. - By the last book of The Inheritance Cycle Eragon is the last sane, free Dragon Rider left after \|\|Brom is killed by Durza and Murtagh is enslaved by Galbatorix, who mind controls him into killing Oromis and Glaedr\|\|. - Only You Can Save Mankind gleefully subverts this. \|\|You respawn, while the aliens are Killed Off for Real. Also, you're not the only one who can save mankind. Not that it needs saving, anyway.\|\| - Douglas Hill's Last Legionary. The last survivor of a planet of highly-skilled and galaxy-renowned mercenaries versus a shadowy Warlord and his powerful organisation. Fortunately, Keill Randor is a One-Man Army with unbreakable bones. - Subverted in the Ea Cycle where many prophecies talk about the Maitreya but it turns out that they were translated from a language without the definite article. - Not the hero, and certainly others were fairly competent, but during his final campaign, we see that not even Captain Pellaeon, the second-in-command, knew what most of Grand Admiral Thrawn's plans were. This meant that when Joruus C'baoth used the Force to take control of the entire Imperial fleet, he couldn't piece together the plan from the hundreds or thousands who had some hint about those, but it also meant that when Thrawn was killed and Pellaeon stepped up, he had to call a retreat. A sketched-out five-year plan was found later, but, well, it was written with the assumption that the Empire would win that particular battle. - In the wretched tie-in novel for Planetfall an alien diplomat will be unable to stop himself from raping and murdering Earth's diplomat unless the sound of a soprano saxophone is played when they meet, and the protagonist is the only Space Patrol officer who can play one. This just raises further questions. - Star Trek: Ex Machina: - Paradise Lost: Among all the war and greed of the world seven generations after Adam, the only man to remain just is Enoch, who made it his mission to preach righteousness and pass on justice to his descendants. He prefigures Christ, The Only One able to save man from their sin come Paradise Regained. - Game of Thrones: On the opinion of Varys, Daenerys is the only viable candidate to the Iron Throne; stronger than Tommen and gentler than Stannis. Presumably as of the end of Season 6, his opinion is stronger than ever. However, this is downplayed in Season 7. Varys thinks she's The Only One, but this largely depends on her not becoming like Aerys "with the right counsel." - Kamen Rider: - Len from Kamen Rider Dragon Knight not only starts out like this, he wants to keep it that way at first because he doesn't believe anyone from Earth can be trusted with the Kamen Rider Advent Decks, particularly Kit, who is the mirror twin of the Rider who betrayed the team. The fact that most of the Earth Riders actually tend to be bad guys (though a few are innocently duped or framed) doesn't help matters any. He gets better about it as the series goes on, and then it's revealed that he wasn't the last of the Ventaran Riders to escape being vented anyway. - In Kamen Rider Blade, BOARD gets ransacked in the first episode. We start the series with two members (one being our hero) and a mysterious, unaligned Rider who considers everyone his enemy as the only good guys who are alive and free, and a lot of questions as to what is really going on that they have to solve on their own. At least they got to salvage some of the lab equipment (most notably their monster detector.) - Nicely averted on Criminal Minds. While are heroes are always the best, the local cops are almost always helpful and competent. Jurisdiction Friction is played down—in fact, the characters make a point of respecting and aiding the locals. - In The X-Files, federal agents Mulder and Scully were often the only ones who could defeat the Monster of the Week - partly because of the astonishing amount of corrupt law enforcers they encountered, and partly because they were usually the only ones who believed or accepted that the threat actually existed in the first place. - Doctor Who: - The Doctor is often the Only One who can save the day, because he's a Sufficiently Advanced Alien who's way above everyone else and the other Time Lords are either apathetic (in Classic Who) or gone completely (in the 2005 revival). It's long been suggested in the Fandom and the Expanded Universe that the TARDIS is deliberately putting the Doctor into these situations. The Eleventh Doctor episode ''The Doctor's Wife'' expressed it more or less thus: The Doctor: You never went where I wanted to go! The TARDIS: But I always took you where you needed to be. - The local police force vs. FBI variant is the central plot of an In the Heat of the Night episode, in which the Sparta DA's daughter is kidnapped and Gillespie's force—using their small-town savvy—competes (almost literally) with by-the-book FBI agents to locate her. - The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power: Celebrimbor tells Elrond the story of his father, Eärendil, a mortal man convinced he could ask the Valar to fight in the war against Morgoth. In the night he left, Elwing begged him to stay and asked him why it must be him to go on this mission. His answer was that he was the only who could do it. - Star Trek: - The starship Enterprise seems to be the only ship in the sector when a crisis goes down a lot of the time. Most egregiously in Star Trek: Generations, in which the crisis takes place near Earth, the capital of the Federation, and the Enterprise, whose best Applied Phlebotinum won't be in until Tuesday, is still the only ship close enough. Apparently, if the Romulans ever decide to bring the fight to our heroes, they'll only have to get past one ship... - But fully justified in the prequel series Star Trek: Enterprise, as the NX-01 Enterprise is the only Warp 5 spacecraft available until the NX-02 Columbia is completed mid-way through the fourth season. - The lack of sufficient defenses is made painfully obvious when a Xindi probe carves a large swath through the Western hemisphere with its prototype planet-destroying beam. The probe is intercepted and destroyed, but too late for the millions of casualties. When the Enterprise arrives back to the Solar System, pursued by Duras, Archer is surprised to see system defense ships quickly react to the invader. They might not be equipped with Warp 5 drives, but you can do with Warp 3 when you don't have to leave the system. - Likewise justified in the series Voyager. Since the entire premise is that Voyager is stranded halfway across the galaxy from home, there will obviously be no other Starfleet authorities or reinforcements around for them to fall back on. - Also finally averted in the Grand Finale as the Dominion War has apparently made Starfleet wise enough to keep a sizable fleet near Earth, allowing 18 ships to immediately converge on a Borg transwarp aperture which Voyager opens less than a light-year away. - Downplayed in TOS, as while the Enterprise was the only ship in the sector more than once, mostly it was in relatively remote sectors (several other times they weren't the only ship in the sector, just the only surviving ship). Then promptly taken to the cliched extreme in The Motion Picture, when the Enterprise is the only available ship at Earth. - In the Star Trek: Strange New Worlds episode "Spock Amok" viewers are treated to individuals who are the only ones who can perform particular tasks when the body swapped Spock and T'Pring are called to do jobs that only the other can do - whether it's an alien species who will only talk to Spock or a fugitive who will only surrender to T'Pring. With the two trapped in each other's bodies Spock and T'Pring are forced to handle their respective situations as best they can. - Deconstructed in the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode "Sarek". Ambassador Sarek has spent decades arranging diplomatic negotations with the Legarans and has been the lone Federation diplomat that they trust. However, at his advanced age, he is struggling with Bendii Syndrome (the Vulcan version of Alzheimer's Disease), something his aides are trying to hide. Under his condition, Sarek's emotions are unintentionally affecting the Enterprise crew, which forces Picard to confront him and ask whether he is really the only one capable of conducting negotiations. Thankfully, they reach a solution that enables Sarek to fulfill his duties: Sarek temporarily transfers his emotions to Picard through a mind meld, allowing him the necessary mental clarity. - Star Trek: Picard goes to significant lengths to justify this in the finale. As Picard's son Jack is revealed to be a living transmitter for the resurgent Borg, every Starfleet officer below the age of 25 is compromised into the next generation of Borg and the new Starfleet system comprises all of the new ships. As whom ever of the above ages fights to keep their borgified colleagues and family safe, Picard and his old command crew are forced to retreat \|\|to the Fleet Museum to Break Out the Museum Piece. There they find the old Enterprise-D, repaired and refurbished by Geordi as the last ship starworthy and untouched by the system.\|\| - If Criminal Minds averts this trope, CSI: Miami plays it completely straight. The Crime Scene investigators are the only law enforcement personnel who care about getting the criminals. The DA's only care about getting convictions, even if it is a wrongful one. Judges are at best unhelpful or helpless, at worst are corrupt and seek to hinder the CSI in any way possible. Other cops just don't care. Parole Boards are more focused on bureaucracy than on doing their job of making sure bad people stay in jail. - Similarly, cops are unable to do anything without Horatio - a CSI. Down to the point where SWAT teams, in full gear, will wait patiently for Horatio to show up - with a suit and a handgun - before entering a location. Of course Horatio enters first. Most evident in an episode where gunfire was heard in a house,— the cops surround the house, then wait for Horatio before going in to check what happens. (One has to wonder what happens if there are two crimes in Miami at the same time.) Another episode has Horatio personally escorting a truck filled with confiscated drugs that are to be incinerated. - There are several episodes where Horatio is the first responder to 911 calls. Arriving before patrolling officers. - The trope is also present to a large extent in CSI: NY, with those of the CSIs who are actually cops often going in first ahead of the SWAT teams, but without the heavier gear and never with helmets. - Used to the extreme in Heroes where more or less every character has once been declared " the only one who can stop" the bad guys (Sylar, usually.) - In 24, Jack Bauer is the only one allowed to save the day. He is one of usually five people in CTU that isn't a mole, as well. - It's not just Jack. Often someone(usually Chloe) will be fired from CTU, only to be brought back later in the day because (presumably) no one else there knows how to use a computer. In fact, operatives have broken the law and still been brought back because they're the only ones who can do whatever it is they do. - Especially Tony. After he \|\|did a 2-3 episode stint as The Mole\|\| because of an I Have Your Wife situation, he was told \|\|that he could be charged with treason and given death, but if he was very cooperative and very lucky, he'd "merely" do 20 years in a federal prison.\|\| Not only is he allowed to stick around for the duration of the current crisis, he came back the next season because CTU needed him just that much. - Justified in Stargate SG-1 as the public (and, therefore, any help outside of the SGC) don't know about the Stargate program. Unjustified in instances when this isn't the case. - Similarly, the number of times it's SG-1 offworld when a crisis erupts, or that they can't contact the base, or that the endangered aliens specifically ask for that particular team makes you wonder what all the other teams are doing wrong... or right. - Ask yourself, knowing people often number things according to quality (and SG-1 are said to be the point team because they are the best - aiding the assumption), would you want SG-24 helping you or SG-12? - They're the point team because they have lot of experience and specialized knowledge which makes them perfect for first-contact or other unsettled situations where assessing what's going on in a timely manner is critical. Most teams aren't going to have an anthropologist/linguistic expert or an expert on Gate physics/Goa'uld technology. Who can defend themselves and are willing to deal with what SG-1 does on a daily basis... - It was also said that some teams are specialists of their own. SG-9 was the lawyers and diplomat team specializing in dealing with legal issues, like when SG-1 was put on a prison planet in S2-E3 Prisoners. SG-3 came back to the SGC and Hammond told them they did the right thing in coming back. Meanwhile several teams (SG-3, -5, -18, and -25) are mainly combat support. - The show was also named Stargate: SG-1. Presumably if they had a Stargate: SG-3 we would get to see SG-3 running around and taking care of business; we just don't because they're not who the show focuses on. - Somewhat less justified with the various one-shot or recurring scientists. In "The Crystal Skull", the (presumably) second-best archaeology expert can't make heads or tails of the crystal skull and help Daniel. In later episodes, Dr. Lee is often called upon for scientific expertise; he usually just makes things worse. The impression given is that the SGC does try to hire experts other than the members of SG-1, but no one else is as good as they are. - Buffy the Vampire Slayer is the Chosen One, the only one who can defeat the vampires, demons, etc. etc. "In every generation, there is a Chosen One. She alone can stop the vampires, the demons, and the forces of darkness. She is the Slayer." - Later inverted by the appearances of Kendra, Faith, and \|\|eventually, the entire Slayer Army.\|\| Xander: I knew all that "I'm the only one" business was just an attention-getter! - The FBI agent characters in NUMB3RS, especially Don, are not exactly incompetent, but it often tends to look like they need Charlie before they can solve cases. Granted, he's one of the main characters, so cases where they didn't need him wouldn't take up whole episodes, but still, there's got to be someone in that office who can catch a criminal without calling in a mathematician. - Taken to extremes in Las Vegas. The hotel security team is a veritable crime fighter unit that hunts down (and sometimes judges and punishes) suspects all on its own. LVPD is mostly content with picking up the criminals at the end of the show. Moreover, said hotel security team only consists of Ed, Danny, and Mike. Literally every bad guy is personally captured by Danny, never mind there being dozens of other guards in the hotel. - Sharpe: Sharpe's Challenge: Harper: You and me, we're going to stop a rebellion? Just the two of us? Sharpe: I don't see no bugger else. - From Community episode "Introduction to Statistics". Pierce: "Is Jeff out there? He is the only one that can help!" - The titular Merlin is the last Dragonlord. It is revealed when \|\|Merlin's dad dies\|\| that there can be only one and the power passes from one individual to another \|\|father-to-son\|\| upon death. - This is usually averted on Grimm. As a Grimm, Nick has special abilities that make allow him to deal really well with Wesen related crimes. However, the other main characters are no slouches themselves and are often quite capable of resolving the situation on their own. Renard tends to neutralize threats that Nick is not even aware of. Monroe protected Aunt Helen from an attack and later saves Hank when Nick is injured. - Averted in a slightly different way in that the Grimm powers can pop up in anyone sharing the bloodline, and the bloodline has been around since the 1400s at minimum. So not only is Nick not the only person around with the anti-Wesen power set, others can and occasionally do show up that aren't necessarily part of his 'family' beyond some unspecified common ancestor centuries ago. They even have their own bestiaries with sometimes-complimentary, sometimes-contradictory information. - According to the Presidential Succession Act it would be extremely rare for the Secretary of State to be sworn in as President, but in the Madam Secretary episode "The Show Must Go On", Liz McCord ends up being Acting President for a few hours due to a series of coincidences: Air Force One has gone off the air over the Pacific \|\|due to a cyberattack that knocked out communications\|\|, the vice president had to have emergency gallbladder surgery, the Speaker of the House is also on Air Force One, and the President Pro Tempore of the Senate is non compos mentis because of a stroke his staff has been keeping secret until the end of his term. - As The Orville is an Indecisive Parody of Star Trek, it's not uncommon for the USS Orville to be the closest ship available to respond to a crisis, despite being only a mid-level exploration ship rather than a dedicated combatant. Given a justification in the pilot: the Planetary Union Fleet has a severe staffing shortage, which is a major reason Captain Mercer got command of Orville in the first place after wrecking his career following his divorce. - The Living City campaign featured the most incompetent 15th level fighters imaginable as its local police, called the "City Watch". It was claimed that the police weren't incompetent, just portrayed that way so that the players could be the main heroes and not just call the cops to handle problems. Of course, many players believe that by that point, even if they weren't incompetent, they wouldn't be able to do much against high-level threats anyway. - Justified in the D&D setting of Eberron. Elite City guards are level 2 or 3 warriors. Warriors is an NPC class weaker than a fighter. This means that effectively the PCs are the city's only hope against anything, as all but the lowest level of players severely overpower guards (and mid level players can wipe the floor of an entire precinct). - The setting has a few higher-level characters, but they often come into play only at a time where the PCs already out-level them. - Also, this justifies the inclusion of the Warforged, hideously expensive sentient golems used in the latter stages of the Last War (which happened to last about 100 years). They were worth their price because of the unorthodox strategies they allowed. (try besieging someone who has no need of food or water; also, consider the ease of logistics when operating somewhere where delivering supplies would be difficult) and because they came out of their Creation Forges classed as fighter 2. PC classes represent an enormous potential in this setting, so for many jobs they were indeed The Only Ones capable of doing them. After the war, they also were The Only Ones capable of handling jobs like salvaging sunken ships or working in other hazardous conditions. - Somewhat averted in the Shadowrun RPG where the police (Lone Star) are a dangerous paramilitary unit that all player characters should try to avoid. Although, in some campaigns (fortunately, not in any of the official campaigns) they still become bunglers when the player characters are around. - Of course, Lone Star is also portrayed as something of a compromise between competence and budget. Knight Errant, which isn't the official police but does significant security business, is the big player. I think the whole point of the game averts this, though, as the basic outline of a run is your shadowrunning team facing security/police. Yes, the point is to win, but the point is also to have it not be a cakewalk. - At Universal Studios: - E.T. in E.T. Adventure is the only one that can save the Green Planet from dying, due to his healing touch. - Lampshaded in Jimmy Neutron's Nicktoon Blast when Jimmy mentions to Carl and the guests that they're the only ones that save the Nicktoons as well as the entire planet, since only they know of the Yolkians' evil scheme to enslave the earth. - In World of Warcraft, the current player is always the only one who can solve whatever problem a questgiver has, whether it be retrieving a MacGuffin from twenty feet away or slaughtering a horde of invading Mooks. This despite the presence of armed guards nearby who (for Player Versus Player balance reasons) could often singlehandedly defeat every creature in the zone, and faction leaders stronger than anything else in the game except raid bosses. - In Final Fantasy XIV, the player character, as the Warrior of Light, is the one hope Eorzea has of fighting off the Garlean Empire and the Primal threat. While Eorzea has its own military and others with the power of the Echo can resist the Primals' influence, the player character is the one best qualified to decisively solve the realm's many problems. - In Mega Man Battle Network, NetBattling is a skill so well known that there are classes about it in elementary school and there are people who do it professionally as a living. Despite that, the only people who appear to be competent at it are Lan and his rival Chaud, who are ten years old. The Spiritual Sequel Mega Man Star Force had a somewhat plausible explanation for why the ten year-old hero was the only person capable of saving the day — there were probably less than a hundred people around the world who could Wave Change, including the villains, none of whom had more than a year or so of experience. Given that, there's no real reason why a kid couldn't be more talented than everyone else in the field. - In the Battle Network games, it is HandWaved by Rockman.EXE/MegaMan.EXE and Blues.EXE/ProtoMan.EXE being specially made, and thus being inherently more powerful than most other Navis. (Forte.EXE/Bass.EXE, designed as a NetNavi that could operate independently of an Operator, is a similar case.) And they would be more powerful from the start after the first game (in which they only save people because they happen to be in the best position to do it out of people who can try) if not for the Bag of Spilling taking effect. That said, there really isn't anything that stops people responsible for the aforementioned Navis' creation from making more Navis capable of dealing with the danger, so the point stands. - In most of The Legend of Zelda games, Link is the only one who can liberate Hyrule and or save Zelda. If any other characters attempt to save Hyrule, they will usually either end up being killed or captured. - Perhaps the most egregious example is The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword where Link actually lives in a Knight Academy, yet none of the other knights (with the exception of Groose) ever help him in his quest. Somewhat justified by Link still being The Chosen One and Zelda's father keeping everything except that Zelda is missing from the rest of the (small) population. - Particularly frustrating in Star Lancer, where you're part of a large squadron, and the briefings will usually break up a mission into several parts each to be handled by a different part of your squad. But your squadmates are so incompetent that you can expect to have to do every part of it yourself, even if that means constantly afterburning through the whole mission to try to be in two places at once. Even worse, even if you handle your part of the operation flawlessly, if you didn't also cover the parts other pilots were supposed to do, you will get raked over the coals by your superiors for "your" failure. This is so bad that there are actually missions where you get reprimanded for failing to accomplish things (like torpedoing an enemy ship) that you cannot possibly do since your ship doesn't carry torpedoes. In one mission, if you try, your copilot will take over and force you to go home, and you get reprimanded for it. - Dragon Age: Inquisition seems to have this as a driving force of the plot. The world is in crisis after a particularly gigantic tear in the Veil opens, releasing demons and untold horrors upon Thedas. Due to what is implied to be the manipulation of a Hidden Villain, every major faction is at each other's throat instead of focusing on the demons. The two people most capable of reuniting them, the Warden and Hawke, have mysteriously disappeared. This leaves you, the Inquisitor, to reinstate the eponymous Inquisition and bring the factions to heel to combat the tear in the Veil. - In Professor Layton's London Life, a pixellated RPG packaged with most versions of Professor Layton and the Last Specter, Layton explains that the Player Character is The Only One who can prevent The End of the World as We Know It. Why? Because they are a kind soul who gains their greatest happiness from doing good deeds for others, and only a truly happy person can save the day. - The Danganronpa series is well known for this trope. No matter how many people were around to witness it, no matter how many clues you find, no matter if crucial information is easily accessible to the public or not, nobody but you is going to be solving that murder, and everybody else (save maybe two other people) is going to be dragging you off course. Hell, some chapters even make it a plot point — each game features a killer that actively puts out false information since they know nobody else is going to look for clues. - Zig-zagged in The World Ends with You. Only one pair of Players in the Reaper's Game has to complete the objective in order to accomplish the mission, but that isn't always Neku and his partner. For example, on Day 3, after Neku and Shiki defeat the bat Noise that is the target for the day's mission, they realize that it isn't the target with only minutes left to spare. Beat and Rhyme then erase the Noise's true form, a much smaller bat, at the last possible second. However, there are times when Neku and his partner are the only Players who can accomplish the mission. \|\|By the end of the first week, Neku and Shiki are the only Players left, with Rhyme erased and Beat staying with Mr. Hanekoma. Week 3 begins with Neku as the only Player in the game, and he would have been helpless against the Noise had Beat not pulled a HeelFace Turn.\|\| - DOOM Eternal: Various broadcasts and audio logs make it clear that the Doom Slayer has been the only soldier in the conflict with The Legions of Hell who has been able to, not just hold them at bay, but tear through their forces and outright push them back. This is partly thanks to his enhancements that he received eons ago that have also made him universally feared among demonkind. - There is a villainous example in Our Little Adventure. The Evil Empire wants to have an anthem created for it and Umbria/Zaedalkaah is the only bard in the entire empire. Even though as a bard she's not all that great, she completes the song anyway. Her orchestra is a better fit for the trope though as they have no experience whatsoever with music. - Justified in The Adventure Zone: Balance. The protagonists are the only Reclaimers who have ever actually reclaimed anything, as they are the only people able to handle the Grand Relics without succumbing to their malicious thrall... because \|\|they're the Relics' original creators\|\|. - Kim Possible discovers that this week's MacGuffin was stolen a week ago, and sounds peeved that the world thought it could get along without her: Kim: Why am I just finding out about this now? Wade: Um, local, federal and international law enforcement are on the case. They thought they didn't need you. - Happens in The Man Called Flintstone when Fred and Barney find themselves the... well, the only ones who could stop the Villain's plot; The Chief and the James Bond expy (that Fred had been impersonating because they looked alike) had both been incapacitated, while their double agent \|\|was actually the Big Bad\|\|. - The Simpsons do it all the time, whenever a problem or commotion happens in Springfield (which may or not have been caused by the Simpsons), one or two of Simpsons take the initiative to solve it or get other people in Springfield to help in doing something about it. - Lampshaded in The Day the Violence Died where the problem of the week is solved, not by Bart and Lisa, but familiar-looking Lester and Eliza. Bart: Well, I wasn't the one who solved the problem, and neither was Lisa. There's something unsettling about that. - My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic: Dear God, the Mane Six. And the Princesses. Especially when the Canterlot Royal Guard are involved. The season 3 finale, "Magical Mystery Cure" takes this to ludicrous extents, where it turns out that without Rarity, everyone's fashion sense deteriorates; without Rainbow Dash, the weather falls out of whack; without Fluttershy, the animals get unruly; without Applejack, her farm falls apart; and without Pinkie Pie, everyone becomes miserable and unhappy. This despite many of these jobs having other ponies who could pick up the slack for them. - In The 13 Ghosts of Scooby-Doo, it is Scooby and Shaggy's responsibility to recapture the 13 ghosts released from the Chest of Demons because they were the ones who set them free in the first place. Vincent Van Ghoul: Only you can return the demons to the chest! Shaggy and Scooby: Why us? Vincent Van Ghoul: Because you let them out!	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/OnlyOne
Only I Can Make It Go - TV Tropes "No one but me can keep this heap running." — Nancy Callahan , from the Sin City story "That Yellow Bastard." Sometimes the owner or driver of a vehicle has a certain connection to their vehicle (be it a car or spaceship etc.) and a way to demonstrate that bond is to make the operator the only individual who can make it run. In the hands of someone else it will fail to start or come to a stop after a few seconds without the gentle touch of the person who knows the special trick to starting the engine or all the little adjustments you have to make. It tends to happen with either the very best or very worst of cars. The Alleged Car is so rotten through that it needs someone with great knowledge of all its faults to keep it going (and sometimes overlaps with Percussive Maintenance when only the owner knows the sweet spot). The Ace Custom Cool Car can also be full of complex gadgets that you need to keep track of. Or maybe it's just so cool it only deserves the really attentive owner. Only the Chosen May Pilot is this trope for Humongous Mecha, which usually makes it so only the chosen pilot can use it because it's built into it by design. Because horses are just another kind of vehicle, a Moody Mount may respond this way to a Fluffy Tamer (compare Only the Chosen May Ride). When The Hero has a car which stands out for its dated design, it is the Hero's Classic Car. Related are Empathic Weapon and Loyal Phlebotinum, which typically will only work for the owner. (Though it is not unknown for a character using this trope to talk as if that trope was in play — the difference is that those tropes are for devices that refuse to work for anyone else while this one is for devices that malfunction without the owner's special touch.) A Black Box is when the "I" in the equation is not present, and the people involved try to bulldoze their way into forcing the something to run, with unpredictable results. Magic Powered Pseudo Science is when the maker is the wizard who did it. ## Examples: - Eureka of Eureka Seven is \|\|at first\|\| the only one who can pilot the Nirvash TypeZERO. - Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann: Simon is the only one who can pilot the Lagann. This seems to have more to do with the fact that he's the only one with a core drill, not counting \|\|Lord Genome\|\|, but in addition to the key, the Lagann is attuned to Simon because of his latent Spiral power. Other characters develop Spiral power over time, \|\|and eventually get their own Lagann-type mechs in the end\|\|, so it's likely that someone else could pilot it if Simon gave them the core drill. The one time he tries, Kamina rebuffs him because he recognizes that Simon is better suited to it. - Kaneda's bike in AKIRA is tricked up enough that he's the only one who can keep it going. When Tetsuo tries to steal it, it ends up winding down and landing him in trouble. - Hayato from Future GPX Cyber Formula is the only person who can drive Asurada, since the car has an AI system with a unique security feature. - Gundam has had this problem a few times: - Explained as one of the problems with the Zeta Gundam by the time Mobile Suit Gundam ZZ rolls around. By the end of its service life, the Zeta Gundam was so customized and tailored to Kamille Bidan's specs that while Judau and later Roux are able to pilot it with some effort, they can only as much as its base specs allow. They can't access the biosensor to let it do the crazy things Kamille made it do in Zeta because only his mind could trigger it, even though Judau was an even stronger Newtype than Kamille and later on can make use of his own Double Zeta Gundam's biosensor. - In Mobile Suit Gundam SEED, Kira is initially the only person on the Alliance's side able to pilot a mobile suit because, as a Coordinator, he has much greater multitasking abilities than a normal human, mobile suits are too complex to operate without those, and he had already rewritten the Strike's operating system during its first sortie so that it could move properly. Later, Kira is told to place a lock on the Strike's systems that only he can open when they dock at an Alliance base. The reasons for this are due to the Alliance in general being heavily racist against Coordinators, and because the asteroid base that the Archangel is taking refuge in, Artemis, belongs to the Eurasian Federation, which are somewhat at odds with the Atlantic Federation that built the Archangel and all 5 G-Weapon mobile suits, and thus having that lock there gives Kira a bargaining chip to protect himself. - In Mobile Suit Gundam SEED Astray, the OS of the Red Frame Astray is tailored so that only it can use the Gerbera Straight katana without blowing every servo and gear in a Mobile Suit's arm. - Mobile Suit Gundam Unicorn: The Unicorn Gundam has been hard-coded with a DNA scanner set to Banagher Links, meaning he is the only person that can pilot it, which is the primary reason the various factions keep him around rather than just stealing the Gundam for themselves. - Gundam: Reconguista in G: The G-Self only responds to three people: Raraiya Monday, Aida Surugan, and Bellri Zenam. Which is odd, considering that Aida and Bellri had never seen the suit before. Anyone else who sits in the cockpit and presses buttons gets completely ignored. It turns out that \|\|it had been coded by its builders to only respond to Raraiya as a security measure for her mission to Earth... but had also been programmed to accept commands from the members of the Rayhunton family, which both Aida and Bellri are, though they didn't know it at the time.\|\| - Backstory details note this as a failing of the Gelgoog in the original Mobile Suit Gundam. It was a technically-impressive machine for its time, capable of matching or even surpassing the original Gundam in several areas, but it was also designed with a lot of input from Zeon's ace pilots, which influenced everything from the aesthetics to the control arrangement. This meant that in the hands of an ace pilot, it could have matched the Gundam, but by the time they had enough of them to make a difference, there weren't a lot of aces left, just regular pilots who couldn't keep up with their fancy high-performance suits and who ended up getting steamrolled by Federation pilots in GMs, lower-performance mass-produced copies of the Gundam. - In GaoGaiGar, the titular mecha could only be piloted by Guy. It's likely any G-Stone-powered being could use it, it's just that they only had two and Guy was the only one old and big enough to do so properly. Gaofaigar from FINAL, on the other hand, is fueled by Guy's specific Evoluder powers (Mikoto has them too, but they're different from his), meaning he really is the only one who can use it. - In Code Geass, Lelouch's second season mecha, the Shinkirou, features a scattering energy cannon and the strongest Beehive Barrier in existence. However, it takes an exceptionally smart and quick-thinking pilot in order to draw out their full potential, especially given its nonstandard keyboard-based control arrangement; in the hands of anyone but Lelouch, it's still high tech but not nearly as powerful. - It's also mentioned that Suzaku is the only person capable of making the Lancelot move, let alone do anything else. Same with Kallen and the Guren SEITEN. - In Full Metal Panic!, Sōsuke is the first person to pilot the Arbalest, an experimental Arm Slave loaded with black box technology, and is later forced to become its designated pilot since the mech's quirky AI (named Al, with an "L") became calibrated to him and can't be reset because its creator committed suicide. This causes problems in The Second Raid, since Al's eccentric nature (among other things) starts wearing on Sōsuke. It's later mentioned that Al simply won't let anyone else pilot the Arbalest; when Mithril tried, Al kept asking "Where's Sergeant Sagara?" and then shut down and refused to start back up when told that he wasn't around. - Archie Comics: - Archie sometimes plays this trope straight, sometimes pokes fun at it. For instance, in one comic, Arch said he couldn't lend the car out to Betty because he was the only one who knew how to keep her running. Oh course, when the car did break down and he couldn't figure out what the problem was, guess who figures out how to fix the jalopy... - One episode has Mr. Svenson retire and Riverdale High hires a new young custodian for the job, but it's quickly revealed that the utilities and furnace in the school are in such disrepair and so ancient that Mr. Svenson is the only one who can actually keep any of them running without causing actual snowfall in the cafeteria. - Nancy Callahan of the Sin City story "That Yellow Bastard" has a car so old and in such bad shape that it will stall out on anybody who tries to drive it, except for her. When her kidnapper, the title character, can't get it working, he has to take her to the Roarks' infamous farm on foot, giving Hartigan time to catch up to them and save her. - In Suicide Squad, Briscoe claimed to be the only one capable of piloting the team's helicopter Sheba. Given how possessive he was about Sheba, and that she seemed to respond to the sound of his voice, no one was ever quite game enough to test his claim. - Depending on the Writer, the Batmobile sometimes has anti-theft features specifically designed so that no one except Batman can start it. An interesting incident happened during the tail end of Knights End: after AzBats drops into the river, Batman races to the Batmobile (which somehow followed them) and tries to get in. Jean-Paul changed the locks, but Bruce overrode them. He hops in, starts it up... and the Batmobile explodes. He survives and tells Robin (Tim Drake) that he would have done the same thing for an anti-theft deterrent, but not with such lethal intent. - Wonder Woman's invisible plane used to be referred to as her "robot" plane back when the Amazons were still their Golden Age tech whiz selves and the thing was equipped with a mental radio device which allowed Di, and Diana alone, to control it remotely using her mild telepathic abilities. - Biff in Back to the Future Part II had a very sweet ride which only he could start the ignition of (to the bemusement of his mechanic). After the Exposition of this in the scene with the mechanic, it's used as a sort of time travel Trust Password by his future self who had come to give him Gray's Sports Almanac. - It's also notable that the DeLorean's starter motor never stalls out for Doc, only for Marty. - In 2012, the car that's used to escape from the plane would only start from Yuri's voice recognition. - The Transporter has his cars equipped with a keypad that requires a correct code to turn the key. The second film starts with a bunch of punks trying to steal his car only to find out that it won't start without the code. And Frank won't give them the code. Then they make the mistake of trying to beat it out of him. - In Mad Max: Fury Road, the War Rig driven by Imperator Furiosa can only be driven after activating a convoluted sequence of switches under the dash. Which the titular character found out, much to his chagrin. - In the movie Excalibur, Uther Pendragon drives the titular sword into a random stone so that "no one can wield it but meeeee!" Years later, Arthur, Uther's hidden son, desperate for a sword, easily draws the sword from the stone, proving that he is the right-wise King of England. - When \|\|Mr Gilbreth\|\| dies at the end of Cheaper by the Dozen the family sells the car for scraps, seeing how he was the only one able to start it. - In Corner of a Round Planet this is subverted, but not averted. All Auggies have a custom-built rig that responds to their particular brainwaves. The rigs lose significant efficacy when the wrong driver attempts to use them. - In Star Wars: Shadows of the Empire, the Millennium Falcon is described as this, with Han Solo and Chewbacca having over-customized the freighter to the point where even Lando (who had heavily customized it himself before ownership changed hands) can't do proper maintenance on it because the circuitry is such a mess. Interestingly, it fits both sides of the trope; it's The Alleged Spaceship to look at it, but one of the best ships in the galaxy with Han Solo flying it. - Rangers' horses in Ranger's Apprentice can only be ridden if rider asks for permission in specific words mounting for the first time. Anyone who didn't gets a free lesson in doing somersaults. - James Herriot, after much badgering of his boss Siegfried Farnon, was finally granted a car to do his vet rounds in. What he got was a vehicle that was a potentially dangerous risk even by the standards of the free-and-easy 1930's. note : Long before Great Britain introduced those pesky laws about maintenance, insurance and even having to pass a driving test before getting out on the road. Nanny State, eh? Herriot soon got used to driving a car with no floor under the driver's feet and some distinctly underpowered brakes, which almost had to be manually pushed up hills. But the local garage mechanic almost crashed it while reversing it into the working bay, noting, with typical Yorkshire understatement, that Your brakes aren't ower-savage, vitnary. - He got an upgrade after Siegfried borrowed and crashed it, demanding to know afterwards who'd bought such a junkyard on wheels. Well... you did, Siegfried. - Skyward: Spensa's Gran-Gran mentions that her mother was the only one who could make the Defiant's engines run. \|\|It turns out that this was literal. Spensa's family are cytonics, and Gran-Gran's mother was the actual FTL drive.\|\| - Knight Rider: Michael Knight gave the explanation that KITT's on-board computer could read his fingerprints - it's more plausible than the car having AI. - Implied in the old Doctor Who episode "The Pyramids of Mars" that only The Doctor can operate his TARDIS. He may have been lying, though... - The Master sure had no trouble using it, though it may be that only a Time Lord can use it and the Doc is usually the only one around. - Steven and Leela have both managed to pilot it, as has Romana, who is both a Time Lord and the only known person in the series to have gone to the effort to Read the Freaking Manual. - So has River Song - though it's been both denied and implied (in that order) that the Doctor taught her to drive it. - Ultimately denied: she was taught by the TARDIS itself. - In the 2010 Christmas special A Christmas Carol; this time it's not the TARDIS in question but, a device that will save the lives of people aboard an out-of-control shuttle craft in a cloud belt storm. Although it's not a vehicle, it's a machine that controls a planet's clouds. Too bad the only one who can work the controls is a bitter old sod who couldn't give two dumps about what happens to the people aboard. The Doctor gets so fed up with the man's heartless personality that he goes back in time to directly alter that man's past so he doesn't grow up into such a monster. Unfortunately, the Doctor's meddling works too well and \|\|the machine no longer recognizes the man because his personality has become remarkably different.\|\| - A partial example occurs in Lexx: Only one person has the "key" to the titular ship (a small Energy Being that embeds itself on the recipient's hand) at any given time and it can only be passed on by the original holder dying or being "brought to the height of sexual ecstasy". - The rules for this have been inconsistent as in the first installment the original owner transfers the key at will. It may simply be that no one else after him knew how to consciously hand over the key as he hadn't told anyone else before dying. - Severing the owner's hand seems to work too but if they've given at least one prior command to the ship it still requires their voice (or at least a very good imitation) to get the ship to even scan the hand. - Played for laughs on an episode of Cheers. The gang takes a road trip in Cliff's car and crash. Getting the car back on the road requires some things Cliff didn't tell them. Sam: Cliff, I'm turning the key, but nothing's happening. Cliff: That's because I've got it rigged up with a Cliff Clavin Anti-Theft System. What I do is I turn the wheel all the way to the left. (Sam turns the wheel.) Sam: Got it. Cliff: And then I turn the key as hard as I can. (Sam turns the key.) Sam: Oh dear. Cliff, I just broke off the key in the ignition. Cliff: I said as hard as I can, Sammy! - Stargate: A lot of Ancient technology was programmed to only respond to their DNA. As it happens, they interbred some with ancient humans, so a few modern humans have the particular gene the technology is programmed to respond to, and can activate it. Similarly, the Goa'uld programmed much of their tech to only respond to themselves, this time based on detecting naquadah in the blood, which only Goa'uld (and their hosts) will possess. However, someone who was once a host to a Goa'uld will retain that naquadah, so the tech will still accept them despite the absence of an actual Goa'uld. - Warhammer 40,000: - The Orks have a latent psychic field that allows their vehicles to function in bizarre ways because they believe they can (Red wunz go fasta, planes can keep flying without fuel so long as nobody tells them they ran out, etc). So when a non-Ork uses one, it tends not to work. Depending on the Writer, this may be downplayed or exaggerated: - Sometimes this is presented as total It Runs on Nonsensoleum, such as a Codex entry where some Imperial techpriests opened up a gun they had actually seen an Ork fire and found it was an empty shell full of a few broken parts and some loose bullets rattling around at the bottom. - Elsewhere it's presented as Orks actually having an inbuilt propensity to build primitive but genuinely workable technology, and the psychic effect just smoothing things out a bit. For example, Ciaphas Cain ( HERO OF THE IMPERIUM!) at one point had a sizeable fleet of commandeered ork vehicles for his ragtag refugee army. The techpriest he had along was fascinated by them, as they seemingly shouldn't have worked at all, but most still did work with neither her help nor that of a nearby Ork (it helps that most ork gear is scavenged from previously working stuff from other factions). - In the Dark Heresy Spin-Off Only War, Ork weapons can be found and looted on the battlefield, but the rule text makes them explicitly less effective (becoming Reliably Unreliable Guns) when used by non-Orks. - The Tau have a more mundane variation: battlesuits are genetically coded to their pilot, and one Imperial commando attempting to steal one was fried by its security system. - In Pathfinder, the gunslinger class starts off with a basic gun which only they can use properly, and can therefore only be resold for scrap. This is something of an Obvious Rule Patch, since firearms are among the most expensive non-magical items — the ones available as starting weapons should cost 1000 to 2000gp; more money than they should see for at least a couple of levels. Without this rule, it would be a choice between making 1st-level gunslingers go barehanded until they can afford a starting weapon, or allowing them to sell it the moment the game starts for far more money than they should rightfully have access to. - Quite a far out example, but in Breath of Fire II, your town can be turned into a Floating Continent that can only be controlled by your father, who has been wired into the technology. - In Mass Effect, Joker says something along these lines when asked about piloting the Normandy. - Played very literally in the time between the second and third game. Joker and EDI (the second Normandy's AI) collude to give the impression that EDI is only a Virtual Intelligence that will respond only to Joker. - In Jade Empire, by the same developers as Mass Effect, Kang says the same for the Marvelous Dragonfly. In his case he also spends literally every hour of the day making modifications to the Dragonfly (he doesn't sleep). The controls probably change completely from flight to flight. - The Alteisen from Super Robot Wars: Original Generation is an impractical junk heap of a Humongous Mecha that's very hard to handle due to its grossly encumbered frame, unbalanced weight, and ridiculous amount of thrust. Only Kyosuke is stated to be able to handle the machine within the story, thanks to his devil's luck. However, in gameplay, there's nothing that's stopping you from switching in any other pilot. - The thing about the Alt and its upgrade is that piloting it is much like gambling. To use it effectively, the pilot has to dash in and hammer the enemy with close-to-mid-range weapons. The pilot can do a lot of damage this way, but it also leaves them wide open to enemy retaliation; it's a high-risk-high-reward style of fighting. Kyosuke, being The Gambler, likes to fight that way, and has the skill to pull it off. - The heroes of Super Robot Wars Advance also have this going. Axel Almer and Lamia Loveless hail from the Shadow-Mirror universe, and they're pretty much the last remnants of the organization. Neither are science-types, so it's impossible to reverse-engineer their mechas (Axel's Soulgain, Lamia's Angelg, or the Vysaga, which can only be used by either of them). This isn't much of a problem since Axel and Lamia are Ace Pilots and the three aforementioned mechas are very well-suited for their purposes (brawling, sniping, and sword-fighting, respectively). - In the mainstream SRW series, it's justified by most pilots being associated with a specific mecha, making it illogical for someone from another series to use them. On the other hand, Real Robot Genre series such as Gundam play with this - UC-era and Black History pilots are interchangeable, but AC ( Gundam Wing), CE ( Gundam SEED) and After War Gundam X characters are tied to their respective mechas. - The third Dynasty Warriors: Gundam combines this with Mythology Gag. Any Mobile Suit with Attack Drones, psycommu systems, or is otherwise confirmed to require superhuman or extrasensory abilities to pilot can only be selected by pilots with the Newtype attribute * : For the sake of conciseness, this tag also encompasses Coordinators, Innovators, Moonrace et. al., even when the license to unlock it for everyone other than its signature pilot is obtained. - In the original Ratchet & Clank, only Clank can start Ratchet's ship at the beginning of the game, since Ratchet is missing crucial components that makes it start. This aspect is almost immediately forgotten, until Clank reminds us of this after the first boss fight. - \|\|Licia\|\| from Dark Souls II says this about a certain rotating door, saying she needs you to pay souls for her to perform a Miracle to operate it. \|\|She's scamming you: the device just requires a key, a key that she happened to find, and has nothing to do with Miracles at all. If you use the Crushed Eye Orb and kill her, you gain the key and are able to operate the mechanism yourself for free.\|\| - The Last Hydral in The Last Federation is the only one who can control Hydral technology. Occasionally you'll find a battlefield where another race has managed to switch something on, but it's always berserk and attacking indiscriminately. - Mr. Regular of Regular Car Reviews occasionally encounters a decidedly irregular car that requires special care and attention to operate properly. Footage of the owner explaining its quirks to him so he can actually drive it is often left in the main video, unedited, instead of being relegated to the usual POV video that goes up a few days later. Some notable examples: - The Dodge Aspen, which is a shoddily built car that has aged poorly and has trouble turning over. - The Ford Model T, which is one of the oldest cars in the world and was designed before people really knew what they were doing — the owner spends over three minutes trying to explain everything. - A large part of the premise of Megas XLR is that Coop messed around with the mech's interfaces while refurbishing it, to the point that Kiva can no longer make heads or tails of it. Therefore he has to pilot it. The modified interface consists of a Plymouth Barracuda, several different game controllers, and many, many Plot Sensitive Buttons. Even Coop has trouble with it. - In an episode of The Flintstones where Fred gets himself fired, Mr. Slate is forced to get him back after discovering that his handling of his dino-crane has made it so that only he can use it properly. Which makes sense since it's an animal—that he tamed. - Certain high-end cars, such as Mercedes, tried this particularly those sold in countries prone to carjacking, sometimes offer thumbprint recognition as an ignition lock. Unfortunately, this just makes carjackers cut the driver's thumb off. Some thumbprint recognition devices also make sure the thumb is alive first (i.e. check for temperature and blood flow). - In The Netherlands in September 2014, a monster truck accidentally drove into the audience. The police tried to reenact the tragedy, but was unable to get the truck started. According to the lawyer of the driver, it takes "a manual of two A4-sized pages" just to start the vehicle. - Many highly modified and custom-built cars require specialist knowledge usually only possessed by the owner to be driven without blowing something up or in some cases just to start the engine. Most highly tuned cars will have an array of additional gauges on the dashboard displaying everything from boost and oil pressures to air fuel ratios, if these go too high or too low then a mechanical failure is more or less guaranteed. Vehicles with race ignitions will often require a series of switches to be flipped in a certain order rather than just turning a key. - On the other end of the spectrum, horrible jalopies often have chronic malfunctions, all of which are known only to their owners. If the carjacker does not know that one has to (for example) clean all spark plugs with sandpaper before starting the engine, he won't start it. - In a non-automotive example, some televisions can be like this. If a person is used to the setup of one system, using someone else's can result in a lot of trial and error to watch something. Factor in DVD players or video game systems and things get further complicated. A simple (to explain) example is an entertainment system having half a dozen remotes, and only the people who live in that house know which one is for the TV, which for the cable box, which for the sound system, which for the DVD player, and so on. - This can expand even further with one gamer's PC to another. Differences in PC configurations and peripherals can cause players to lose games against players with significantly inferior skills. - Electronic devices can commonly fall into this. On the one hand, you have power users who customize everything they own, often removing things they don't need/use, altering settings in sometimes arcane ways, changing keybindings, and many other things that will make it a nightmare to use for anyone but them (sometimes this is done intentionally). On the other hand, you have generally incompetent users who perform no maintenance and exert little or no control over the device, making it difficult for even an expert user to undo the mess without a complete system reset. At the extreme ends, you have devices so heavily customized that even the original user forgets much of how to use it after an extended period away from it, and devices so mucked up by clueless owners that it's simpler to format them to solve whatever problems they have. - Many pieces of software, particularly those created by independent developers have a tendency to become this making it nigh impossible to interpret or alter for anyone other than the creator(s). This also applies to old-school programming languages such as COBOL and FORTRAN, particularly when legacy hardware is being migrated to more modern platforms.	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/OnlyICanMakeItGo
Only One Me Allowed Right Now - TV Tropes In most time travel/cloning/alternate reality stories, one character can have multiple copies of him- or herself running around in the same time period. Some might have problems if those copies meet each other. Then there are these cases... Only One Me Allowed Right Now is a case where either the Universe flat out denies multiple copies of a character to exist in a same time period, the character and the copies go crazy, the Universe starts to break down, or something else bad happens. Note that this is NOT Never the Selves Shall Meet. In that one, you can have millions of copies of a same character running around in the same universe without that much trouble, only they must not meet each other. In this case, even though there are only two copies and they are at opposite ends of the Universe, the problem still happens. Not as tightly related to the One-Steve Limit as you might think. ## Examples: - In one episode of Sgt. Frog, Keroro accidentally clones himself a thousandfold using the Kero Ball. After various hijinks, the clones start to fade. Kululu gives a Technobabble explanation, but when told by Natsumi to "use words real people understand," he gets down to the point: if they don't destroy all the clones, then the Kero Ball will overload and all the Keroros, including the original, will disappear. - This turns out to be a major plot point in xxxHoLic; \|\|the main character\|\| is a time travel duplicate. As a result, he hates himself and draws in supernatural beings trying to grant his wish and kill him, and if he doesn't develop strong social connections he'll soon cease to exist as reality corrects itself. - In a story arc in the Astro Boy manga, Astro was accidentally transported back in time to the 20th century and attempted to get home via The Slow Path. When the day of Astro's original creation rolled around, Dr Tenma's first attempt to activate him failed for no technical reason because the universe couldn't contain two Astros. - In 86 EIGHTY-SIX, Shepherds, who have full human personalities, seem to be unable to withstand having more than one of it being in existence, unlike Black Sheep which can exist as multiple copies since they don't have personalities. This becomes a problem for the Legion if a Shepherd is getting destroyed, since they can't have backups, they don't seem to transfer the personalities until it's way under emergency, and trying to transfer full consciousness in that condition and in short amount of time is impossible. Thus, even if the personality is transferred over, it's heavily damaged. - This applied to the DC Universe before the Crisis on Infinite Earths. If a character traveled to a time where he or she already existed, it (the version not belonging to that time) would become an invisible, unheard, ineffectual phantom until it stepped out of that moment in time. Note that back then, even if characters were allowed to "meet themselves" history could not be changed, so it was pointless anyway. - Superman's childhood friend Pete Ross, of all people, found a way around this. He was furious at Superman at the time (he blamed Superman for his son getting kidnapped by aliens; long story), and wanted a way to fight him. So he got ahold of some phlebotinum that let him swap minds with Supes's younger self, Superboy, and then returned to the present in Superboy's body, to duke it out with adult Supes. It turns out the Only One Me rule only applies to your mind being in two places at once, not your body. This actually makes a degree of sense, since even if you travel back to before your birth or after your death, the matter that makes up your body should still be around somewhere, and yet you only appear as a phantom if you travel within your own lifetime. - Some early Silver Age Superman stories like A Mind-Switch in Time (& one Justice League tale) used the idea that if Superman traveled within his own lifetime the earlier version would take his place in the present. So if Superman traveled to when he was Superbaby, Superbaby would appear in the present while Superman was in the past. - Played for drama in Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow?, when young, teenage Supergirl visits the present and doesn't understand why she's not intangible. It's because it's after her own death. She asks if the contemporary version of herself is visiting another era and Superman, fighting back tears, confirms that "Supergirl is in the past". - In Nth Man: The Ultimate Ninja , it is impossible for a person to be in two places at once. This causes one character to spontaneously combust when she returns to the past, as she arrives at the same time she's being born. - This happened to Jubilee (Marvel Comics) in an issue of Wolverine: In her youth, there was an incident where she was in a car with her friends, who suddenly asked her why she momentarily disappeared into thin air. Not remembering doing so, she dismisses it as her friends acting crazy. Years later, she briefly falls into the time portal belonging to Gateway, appearing in her parents' house, at the exact same time she "disappeared" in her friends' car. It is explained that two of her couldn't exist in the same point in time, so her younger self simply vanished until the older version returned to the present. - Normally, time travel doesn't exactly work in the Marvel Universe. If you travel into the past, you end up in the past of a similar but distinct universe (which you might not be able to distinguish at the time). For example, when Rachel Summers (daughter of Jean Grey and Scott Summers) traveled into the past, she ended up in the primary universe instead of the offshoot where she was born (where Jean Grey was depowered instead of killed). She didn't realize she wasn't in her own timeline until she saw Jean Grey (well, actually Madelyn Pryor, but close enough) and Scott Summers had a son... she never had a brother. - In George Weasley and the Computational Error, the universe normally works like this, with some exceptions like twins and Time-Turner users. Unfortunately for the universe, it's bad at counting so if someone with an already existing duplicate comes from the far future, it won't take action (that is, eject the time traveler from the universe) unless they call attention to themselves. - Elementals of Harmony: In "Sideboard of Harmony", from "Quod Cucurbita": It's possible to time travel to a point where you're still alive, but travelling to a time when your mother is pregnant with you is noted to be a very bad idea. - The Rigel Black Chronicles: Two copies of a person are actually allowed, but if a witch or wizard has seven copies of themselves in existence at once, their magical cores will destructively resonate with each other and kill one of them. \|\|Harry inadvertently faces this when she's kidnapped and her Time Turner used against her, but she's able to survive by concealing her magical core inside the Dominion Jewel.\|\| - Universe Falls: Because Blendin's time machine works like this, when Steven, Connie, and the Pines twins travel to ten years in the past in "Blendin's Game", Steven's younger self temporarily vanishes into thin air, and doesn't return until Steven travels back to the future. For some reason, the Gem-made "time thing" from "Copies and Clones" works differently, allowing for the existence of time-travel duplicates. - In the French film Les Visiteurs, an object near a copy of itself (from earlier or later in the time stream) will try to merge with its past and/or future selves. Violently. "Near" isn't precisely defined, but seems to vaguely obey the inverse square law. - Played with in Project Almanac While there can be two versions of someone in the same physical space, they cannot both see the other without both being snuffed out of existence. Also, it seems that there can only ever be one time traveling version of a person, since the characters repeatedly travel to the same afternoon at one point without encountering versions of themselves from the previous trips. - Time Freak: Stillman the eccentric inventor shows his buddy Evan the time machine he's invented, taking them both on a trip two minutes into the past. After they're done, Evan wonders where "me from two minutes ago" is. Stillman explains that it doesn't work that way, that there's only ever one of a person and that if you travel into a past where you already existed, the "new" you is the only one there. - In Avengers: Endgame, once Nebula goes back to the past, her mind enters the network only she and Thanos's special equipment could access. Thus, two of her at the same time causes conflicts, namely her past self starting to get future memories and eventually the time traveller crashing down when attempting to return to her own period. - Star Wars Legends: this is believed to be the case with clone madness when the clone is created if the process is accelerated, like using Spaarti cloning cylinder, due to the individual Force-signatures of their minds. Clones have identical Force-signatures, and this exerts pressure on their minds as they develop, even if they aren't otherwise Force-sensitive. If they are grown any faster than double-speed, their minds can't adjust to the strain, and break. So a clone army would take about ten years to grow under ideal conditions. \|\|Grand Admiral Thrawn finds a way around this using ysalamiri, creatures that block out the Force as a defense mechanism against Force-sensitive predators. This allowed him to grow a clone army to adulthood in a matter of months.\|\| - In The Saga of Darren Shan, Mr. Des Tiny can resurrect the dead in the form of his mysterious, grey, stitched-together servants who he calls Little People. Sometimes, he sends them back in time, with or without their memories, and they interact with their past selves. Tiny can shield them from this effect, but if he doesn't, the Little Person body will disintegrate, with, generally, no effect on the "original". - In Connie Willis's Blackout / All Clear, a time traveler has to return before other times that he visited — his arrival then is his "deadline". An important plot point. - Earlier, in To Say Nothing of the Dog, this was a minor point. One character could be sent back a few days because during those days, they were unable to pick him up from his time travel. - Perhaps more accurately, they were unable to pick him up from his time travel because, unbeknownst to them, there was already a version of him running around elsewhere that had been sent to that time from a few days later. - As that universe is a Stable Time Loop where paradoxes are stopped by the universe disallowing the trip from happening at all, a more interesting way of looking at To Say Nothing of the Dog is that retrieving him from the past would have killed his near-future self, which the police would have identified as him, cause a paradox. So it refused to let his past self through. - In Dean Koontz's Lightning, the inventors of time traveling discover that the universe has a built-in anti-paradox mechanism, where you simply get bounced back from the time-gate if you are attempting to travel to a time where you're already present (or even might be - one character tries to correct a mistake by traveling to a time a couple of minutes before he last showed up, and the universe doesn't let him). - In the Time Scout series, you can't travel to a time where one of you already exists because you'll wink out of existence on arrival. Since in the setting time travel takes place via naturally occurring portals, which are not helpfully labelled with their target time period, this makes the eponymous scouts' jobs very dangerous. - In the series Dragonriders of Pern, going back in time to a period where you were still alive causes both versions of yourself to experience physical and mental distress. It gets worse the two selves are near each other. In the first novel, for example, F'Nor spent some five years both carrying out his normal duties in Benden Weyr, and setting up a new Weyr in the Southern Continent. They were generally alright when on opposite ends of the planet, but whenever Future!F'Nor came to Benden Weyr to tell F'lar something, the proximity caused great distress. - In Piers Anthony's Incarnations of Immortality, the rule is, instead, that only three of a person is allowed to exist simultaneously. This mostly comes up in Bearing an Hourglass, as the current Chronos is living concurrently with himself, but backwards, which means he is only allowed to travel to a particular point in his life once and once only. - In Animorphs, Ax states that, if you go back in time through a Sario Rip and come up to the exact same time as the moment you went back in the first place, you will be annihilated. However, since a rip can knock you back to while you were still alive, that means that there are two copies of one person at a time, and the annihilation occurs in place of a stable time loop resulting in only one copy, meaning that the person would go from two to none, instead of one. - Turns out this is averted by another side effect of Sario Rips: \|\|if future!you dies while past!you is still alive, past!you gains access to future!you's consciousness. When future!Jake dies, he snaps to his past self and simply elects not to take the mission that caused the Sario Rip in the first place.\|\| - In the Callahan's Crosstime Saloon series, one of the hard and fast rules of time travel is that a particular person can only exist in one place in one particular instant in time, which means that if a time traveler needs to be somewhere else at that particular moment, he needs to either go to that somewhere else, or jump to another place in time to allow the younger or older self where they need to be. Of course, for some time travelers \|\|like Mike Callahan or Lady Sally\|\| time travel is instantaneous, so you could excuse yourself to a back room to take care of something, disappear, and reappear after perhaps a minute or less, with no one any the wiser you were gone. - A non-time-travel example in Sergey Lukyanenko's Spectrum. A bartender the protagonist meets on one planet reveals that he was one of the earlier humans to use the Keymasters' Gates. A malfunction created multiple copies of him on many planets and continues to periodically create them. According to the Keymasters, the universe does not tolerate multiple copies of the same person and will try to kill all duplicates off through a series of unrelated accidents or unfortunate events (e.g. a docile animal suddenly goes berserk in his presence). The Keymasters warn the original never to use the Gates again until all the duplicates are gone, as he is not likely to make it to his destination. The main Story Arc involves a girl who ends up accidentally duplicating herself with the Gates. By the same token, each time the protagonist manages to find a copy of her, she ends up dying, except this time there doesn't appear to be an original version. - In Aeon Legion: Labyrinth when someone time travels, they become the 'original'. That original will override any other instance of that person when in the same time. This makes it impossible to meet yourself since you override your non time traveling self. It could be assumed that bringing another non time traveling version of yourself into the Edge of Time would also erase that instance since they did not time travel first. - L.E. Modesitt Jr.'s Timegod series has this as an explicit rule: a timediver cannot superimpose himself or herself in space and time. So if one screws something up, he can't just go back a few minutes and try again. - Isaac Asimov and Janet Asimov's The Norby Chronicles: In this setting, you cannot travel to a time where you already exist, although how the universe resolves that tends to vary. Norby cannot travel to a time where he already exists, but he can take passengers along with him. Norby's Other Secret establishes that if one of the passengers already exists at that time, that passenger would disappear, and would only reappear when he travelled to a time where they dont currently exist. Norby and the Queen's Necklace establishes the necklace device, which tries to merge with other copies of itself (including Norby). When they first use the necklace, the past version wriggles towards Albany, who is wearing the present version, so that the two can become one object again. - In 7 Days (1998), when Parker goes back in time, the Parker from the time he goes back to disappears from existence (as does the time machine itself and anything else inside it). - This causes a problem once, as Parker taking back something causes it to impossibly disappear out of a locked-and-handcuffed-to-a-person briefcase of the villain, cluing him in that something very very strange was going on. - There was also an episode where Parker spilling tea on a console resulted in the Sphere jumping prematurely (i.e. before he got in). So when the alarm sounds seven days ago, the others are very surprised to see their versions of Parker and Donovan (the backup chrononaut) still around. All they have to go on are the contents of Parker's bag from the future, including a key. Luckily, Dr. Mentnor knows a genuine psychic. - Not time-travel related, but early in Stargate SG-1, when two of the same character from alternate realities met up with one another, there would be negative "feedback" that would kill them if they stayed in the same reality too long. If the plot does requires the main characters to interact with another universe for longer periods, their alternates conventiently turn out to be already dead. When dozens of duplicates cross universes to cooperate in a later episode, it gets a Handwave by saying that "entropic cascade failure" doesn't occur when the realities are close enough to each other. - In Mirror, Mirror, things that exist at both times are prevented from crossing the mirror: If you try to take one with you, you'll be shocked instead. - The Adventures of Brisco County, Jr.' zig-zags this, albeit probably unintentionally. In one epsisode Brisco goes back in time and gets an Orb from his past self, telling himself that he needs it in the future. In a later episode Brisco goes back in time again to effect a Big Damn Heroes moment that went badly the first time around, but this time his past self disappears from the continuum when he does so. - An alternate reality example in Earth: Final Conflict. When Liam and Augur accidentally end up in a parallel world, where humanity is fighting a losing war against the Taelons, they manage to flee back to their own reality with Maiya, a member of La Résistance and Lili's half-sister. On their world, though, Maiya starts experiencing an effect similar to the one in Stargate SG-1, cause by the presence of her double Isabel. They are told that they must "merge" into one in order to survive. This world's Lili also discovers that her missing father had another family, and that Isabel is her half-sister. When Isabel and Maiya come close, they merge into one body, but, unfortunately, Isabel's personality is gone, leaving only Maiya. - The most important time-travel rule on Timeless. It is impossible to revisit any time-period where another version of the time-traveler exists. This means that time-travelers cannot travel to any point within their own lifetime, or revisit any time-period they have previously traveled to. Its mentioned in the pilot that one attempt to do so resulted in the time-traveler returning mutilated. - The Man in the High Castle: One of the metaphysical laws of dimension-traveling between alternate universes is that a person cannot co-exist with another version of themselves in the same reality. Therefore, one can only travel to a universe where their counterpart is dead. - In one episode of Farscape, Crichton is "twinned" by a villain. The two Crichtons then go their separate ways and spend the rest of the season having their own adventures, until one of them makes a Heroic Sacrifice. This is more a meta case of being enforced by narrative restrictions than the show's universe, though. - Dungeons & Dragons 1st and 2nd edition. When a clone was created with the Clone spell, both the original and the clone knew of the other's existence and each would try to kill the other. If they couldn't, within a week either one would go insane and kill itself (90% likely to be the clone) or, 2% of the time, both would kill themselves. - In Forgotten Realms some mages found a way around this — Zunroun cooperated with a dozen of his clones for some time. Preventing this by keeping all clones cold until the original dies also worked — Manshoon's Stasis Clone spell was a great secret and major plot point, making the Black Network's leader a Recurring Boss while keeping him on a disproportionately low level due to setbacks and memory losses every time he bit off too much to chew and got killed. - The Chronomancy book in 2nd edition enforced this on a planar level. A time traveler (a chronomancer and anyone they take along) could not exist in a timeframe where they were elsewhere on the same plane. The closer they got to attempting, more temporal rifts would open, causing various temporal monsters to attack the travelers. If they somehow outlasted everything until the point where they would have been, a rip in the space-time continuum automatically opens up and shunts the travelers to the next time period in which they would be unique. - 3rd Edition solved the problem by making the clone inert, even rotting unless preserved, until the original died and then his soul would instantly transfer to the clone. - Timemaster: One of the game's Laws of Time Travel was basically this trope. Any attempt to visit a time in which you already existed (either because it's during your pre-time travel life or because you already visited it) will "loop-trap" you into the previous visit. - The Timetricks supplement, which added more freeform time traveling to the game, introduced a device that would let you bypass that law for a short period of time... if it worked. - Chrono Trigger: - Subverted at one point where Robo leaves the party in 600 A.D. to become a forest's caretaker. You get him back in 1000 A.D., and can immediately return to the past and have Robo go face-to-face with his past self without anything happening. - In fact, the universe doesn't seem to care about past and present versions interacting (some characters outright exist outside time), what is verboten is more than three characters from different eras going through the same portal (doing so sends them to the End of Time). - In Infinite Space, a rogue Zenito general repeatedly used mind transfer to escape death when you killed him. \|\|Franny stopped this by altering the transfer to copy the mind to all the clones, causing him to go crazy and die, because there can't be more than 1 copy of a person at a time.\|\| - When the main characters of the WarCraft Expanded Universe The War of the Ancients Trilogy are transported to the past, Krasus, the only one who existed then, finds himself considerably weaker and unable to transform into his true dragon form of Korialstrasz. We find Krasus's past self is experiencing the same problems, and it's attributed to the fact that, since they're one and the same, they're sharing the same life force. They also find themselves much stronger if they are together. Eventually they're able to lessen the problem by swapping one of their scales and using magic to bind them to their skin (It hurts like hell, but Krasus is able to transform his arms just long enough to rip off one of his scales). - The Warlords of Draenor expansion makes a point of killing off the alternate timeline's Velen, for no real reason except that he's one of the few characters to be alive in both timelines whose presence in the story could not logically be ignored. - Castlevania: Judgment is a borderline example. While Aeon is able to face himself in battle, he specifically states that it will cause damage to the timeline. Since he has the power to fix it, however, there isn't much of an issue. - In the Mirror Realm of AdventureQuest Worlds's 2nd Birthday Event, the hero that you play is chosen to save the Mirror Realm because he or she is the only person in the entire multiverse who does not have an alternate in the Mirror Realm — if anyone else in either world were to go to the other world, they'd have to switch places with their mirror counterpart. Paul and Storm do not have mirror counterparts either because they "grew up in a small suburb just outside of the multiverse." Just roll with it. - The Legend of Zelda: - In The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask, no matter how many times you go back in time, there is only ever one Link (and Tatl) in Termina. Most likely, this is the Ocarina of Time at work. - Hyrule Warriors: Throughout Legend Mode, it is never even considered that other versions of characters could be running around different timelines; when rumors of Zelda running around the Era of the Hero of Time are heard, it is immediately assumed to be Hyrule Warriors Zelda and never even considered it could be the Hero of Time-era Zelda. Similarly, no other Links are mentioned or even seen in Legend Mode, even when some of them are playable characters alongside the Warriors Link. - In the Super Robot Wars Z plotline, this trope is the reason why the original Kouji Kabuto and the classic Getter Robo team can't team up with their Shin Mazinger and Getter Robo Armageddon counterparts. - Randal's Monday: Randal has to avoid this by \|\|killing his past self\|\|. - This is central to one character in Fate/stay night, but even saying which is a huge spoiler. \|\|Archer is actually counter-guardian EMIYA, as in Emiya Shirou, as in the idealistic protagonist he shares a mutual hared with. Archer is Shirou's future self from a possible future, and merely existing at the same point in the timeline causes the two to bleed skills and thoughts into each other (well, mostly one way, since Archer sees Shirou as an unskilled idiot). Archer's suicidal, actually hoping this disruption - or failing that, killing his younger self personally - will finally put a permanent end to his existence.\|\| - In the SERAPH event of Fate/Grand Order \|\|Meltryllis kills her alternate past self after travelling back in time, as if there were two copies of her that would cause Kiara to realise what her plan was. The past Meltryllis accepts her death, as she had been shown future Meltryllis's memories and agreed that saving the Protagonist from Kiara was something worth dying for.\|\| - A central point of the time travel mechanics in Radiant Historia is that Stocke can only be in one place at one time. If he travels back to a when, he'll reappear at the corresponding where. While this isn't usually a big issue in the story, it does create problems when a rival time traveler attempts to cut the knot on Stocke's efforts by attacking a key figure before Stocke met them. \|\|Of course Stocke happened to be passing by on another mission and may have bumped into said character if you went to the right area. When he appears to intercept the assassination, said rival is flummoxed for a moment and laments out loud that of course Stocke would have just happened to have been this close at this point in time.\|\| - In Mortal Kombat 11, timeline shenanigans occur thanks to the Big Bad and causes characters from the past appearing in the present time. The multiple copies are allowed to exist except for Raiden. Due to a law from the Elder Gods stating that there can never be more than one of them existing at any time, the Raiden of the present ceases to exist while the Raiden of the past takes his place. No one sees this as a bad thing since the vanished Raiden had become a Knight Templar and the heroes disliked his change. - Homestuck: According to Aradia, a future self who travels back from a doomed timeline is doomed to be destroyed by the universe sooner or later. - This is only a partial example, as people can travel through time without problems as long as they stay in the same universe. - In L's Empire you can only travel to a time before you were born (you will be sent back to your time of origin upon birth). Note that this only applies to mechanical time travel, magical time travel doesn't have any set rules. - In Grrl Power Harem can have up to 5 copies of herself running around, but due to a portal gone haywire she found herself in the future, and became a 6th Harem and her brain went all haywire until they returned back to normal time. - In Justice League, Vandal Savage's time machine cannot send a person back to when that person existed. Since he's an immortal who's lived through around 99% of human history this means he can't actually use it himself. In his first appearance, this did not prevent him from sending a recording and information back into time. In his third, in "Hereafter", \|\|he's the sole human survivor of a distant future, After the End (entirely his fault and he knows it), and when he's finally joined by a Superman who got bumped forward 30,000 years, they eventually realize that Superman is "already dead" and the chance is there for him to go back and prevent Savage's attack from happening\|\|. - Futurama: Bender's Big Score has this in effect. Whenever a duplicate is created through time travel, the universe eventually kills them off to prevent further confusion. However, at the end of the movie, several hundred time-traveling Benders appear simultaneously; this proves too much for the universe to handle, and a hole in space-time rips open. - Gravity Falls: "The Time Traveler's Pig" also had this in effect. When Dipper and Mabel steal a time traveling device lost by a time traveler from the future, they use it to travel back in time to the start of Stan's fair, all the while never running into their past selves from earlier since there aren't any instances of time travel duplicate at all. - In Oggy and the Cockroaches, characters traveling to the past "merge" with their past selves upon meeting to avoid this problem. - In Samurai Jack, a person cannot travel to any point in time that they have existed in. This is why Aku has to prevent Jack from travelling back; If Jack gets through, Aku would be unable to follow him even with his own power, and he's existed for a few millennia since he threw Jack forward. \|\|This is best demonstrated when Jack could only return at best seconds after the moment Aku flung him out, and not at any point in his own lifetime before\|\|. - Where on Earth Is Carmen Sandiego? has time travelers demonstrate the ability to "merge" with their past selves if they come close enough. This even occurs with a horseshoe that gets stolen from Paul Revere by Carmen, then taken by Zack and Ivy, who then have to prevent Carmen from stealing the horseshoe in the first place.	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/OnlyOneMeAllowedRightNow
Forum Speak - TV Tropes The jargon used to describe Internet fora and online discussions such as Blogs and forums. While some concepts overlap with Tropes, on TV Tropes we do not usually catalogue this terminology in the form of individual articles but only as a large glossary. For TV Tropes-specific terminology, see TV Tropes Glossary. Some concepts discussed here are also mentioned by Flame Warriors. ## Forum terms with their own pages: A user is banned when the authorities of a website or social media platform prohibit them from contributing, usually by software means. This is usually due to breaking the rules or being an unpleasant person to be around, but in some places, users can be banned on a whim, for rules they weren't aware of, or even based on a false accusation. Some moderators just have an itchy trigger finger. Others are paranoid of Sock Puppets and will ban anyone who resembles a particularly nasty user. Still others say it's much easier to deal with problematic users preemptively than to wait until they make a mess and clean up after them. Not everyone who is banned will automatically know why their account was suspended, and many will assume it was someone else's mistake . Regardless of whether or not the ban was justified, the best way to handle the situation is usually to step back, look at the rules, look at your behaviour, and then find one of the site's managers and politely ask what you did wrong. Maybe it was a genuine misunderstanding. Maybe your lack of experience unwittingly made you look like a previous rule-breaker. Maybe you can convince them that you understand what you did wrong and you won't do it again. Even though real spammers, trolls, and scoundrels usually protest their innocence, talking it out is still the best way to resolve the problem. Indeed, right here on This Very Wiki , if you find yourself banned or suspended, we have a designated place to talk it out with the staff: the Edit Banned thread . First, though, check out What to Do If You Are Suspended . "Blogosphere" is the term for the interconnections between all the various blogs that exist on the internet. The name was originally coined as a joke, but the joke became so popular that many (especially in the Old Media) mistook it for a real word and began using it in complete seriousness. Memetic Mutation at its finest. The new, irony-free definition of blogosphere implies a view that no blog is an island: all of them are as part of a massive online community. Or at least that blogs on closely related topics share many of the same readers, so that there is a comics blogosphere, a Boise, Idaho dining blogosphere, rival liberal and conservative blogospheres, etc. Whether or not the blogosphere can be meaningfully defined as a distinct subset of the internet depends on how well one can draw the distinction between Blogs and regular old webpages. A browser narcotic is a website that uses up hours of your time with little effort. Like This Very Wiki, which is well known for its capacity to ruin your life. Unlike an Archive Binge, which is linear in nature, a browser narcotic allows you to go in any number of directions, often ending up on a Wiki Walk. The defining feature of a browser narcotic is the tab explosion, a browser with Eleventy Zillion tabs open at once. The name comes from xkcd, specifically the Alt Text of this comic, which explicitly describes TV Tropes as an example. Here are some other offenders aside from TV tropes: - Wikipedia - 4chan - reddit - Any porn site. Admit it, you know it to be true. - Cracked.com. Brazilians have a humorous blog that's just like Cracked. - Dark Roasted Blend - DeviantArt - Pixiv, thanks to its recommendation feature being a little too good, tends to induce Wiki Walks. Heaven help you if you start to browse for fanart of one of the more popular series, like Touhou Project, Hetalia, Pokémon, Vocaloid, or Inazuma Eleven, each of which will get you over 150,000 hits. Though the effect is lessened somewhat, as a large part of the website is in Japanese. - Digg - Everything2 - Facebook - Tumblr - FanFiction.Net. The good ones at least... and badfic too, arguably. This also applies to most well organized fanfic sites like, say, Archive of Our Own. - Fark - Oobject - Damn Interesting - Forums can end up as these if there are enough interesting threads. - The Polish site Wyhacz.pl ~~is~~ was a news service devoted mainly to various instances of citizens being screwed over by bureaucratic incompetence or corporate dishonesty. It's surprisingly fascinating. - The Let's Play Archive: Oh, you've just discovered the Let's Play phenomenon and spent several hours following an LP of your favorite game? No worries, we can recommend LP's from the same genre / author that are sure to interest you. And once you're done with those, we have more recommendations... - The Cheezburger Network - The SCP Foundation can do this, as some of the most popular articles include experiment logs involving other SCPs. The site is trying to minimize this, however. Just watch your step, because you're walking through a minefield of really terrifying stuff. - Snopes - StumbleUpon - Twitter - Orion's Arm, hoooo boooy. - Uncyclopedia - Yahoo!.com (the main page that features news articles). - YouTube - AniDB - Most estate agent/real estate websites tend to provoke this. If you've come to one looking for property to buy, you'll no doubt be opening plenty of tabs to compare different listings, and if you're not... you're probably opening loads of tabs to dream. - Hardcore Gaming 101 - Everything Is Terrible! - WeKnowMemes - Imgur: That is, of course, if we are to believe The Daily Derp. - BuzzFeed, particularly the list pages, and similar clickbait sites - Sports fans can have this on Bleacher Report and Page 2 \ Grantland. - MapCrunch takes you to a random location on Google StreetView. You can navigate on it as usual, or press a button that takes you to another random location. Now try to stop exploring the world. - Not Always Right. The effect is lessened due to only adding 5 or 6 anecdotes a day (easily read in 15 minutes), but increased due to its massive archive and eight sister sites, Not Always Working/Romantic/Related/Learning/Friendly/ Hopeless/Healthy and Legal. - The Polish equivalent of Not Always Right, piekielni.pl . - Uberfacts, with a Website, two apps, and several Twitter accounts. - Any good webcomic with a big enough archive. - Fundies Say the Darndest Things i.e. an immense archive of all the insane things fundamentalists have said in this contemporary age. It even has an article on Rational Wiki. - Most .io Games can easily waste large amounts of one's time due to the ease of joining a game and playing a few rounds... and another... Generally, it happens like this: A well-known (or under-the-radar) celebrity gets an e-mail from his publicist telling him how he should make a blog to boost his sagging reputation. Said celeb decides to try it for a while, but is never really into it, and eventually it fades into the ether. Sometimes, of course, the celeb is absolutely into it, and these tend to drift into other types of blogs. Other times, the publicist insists on Astro Turfing the blog by posting as the celeb, turning it into a Flog. Some celeb blogs achieve cult status among the geekery (the most famous of course being WWDN). You have just finished writing an article. More specifically, it is the masterpiece that TV Tropes has been waiting for. When you suggested the idea in Trope Launch Pad , the number of replies was astonishing. Seriously, this article would move any troper to tears . it's so good! But, being the savvy troper that you are, you know better than to just go submitting it without a care in the world. You smite the Data Vampires, because right as it is about to send, you press the refresh button with lightning fast reflexes, saving your trope entry from a terrible, untimely demise. ...or so you think, as right as you have hit that refresh key, you see the following message: "The database hates you right now. The entry might exist or it might not exist. We would clear this mystery up for you, if we could get to the database. We tried to look it up, but the database puked up an error." What happened? Surely this can't be right! After all, you took every step to stop the Data Vampires in their tracks! Well, unfortunately for you, you have not met the Data Vampires, you've met the database, and it hates you. We're sure you're a very nice person but the database doesn't think so. Never mind the more probable impossible answer that TV Tropes is glitching, because TV Tropes is perfect and does not malfunction. You can't get to this page because you suck. It's that simple. But to avoid this sort of thing, write your article in Notepad or TextEdit before sending, or at least copy and paste your hard work before pressing 'save'. Derailing is when a discussion goes off on a tangent, a subject irrelevant to the main point of the discussion. Sometimes it's done by accident; other times, it's done deliberately by a Troll . Like a train leaving its tracks , it's difficult to get back on track again. That's why forums tend to have strict rules about staying on topic. Not every change in topic is a derail; conversations do drift naturally. Consider, for instance, a conversation about pit bulls, in which someone brings up the perception that they're dangerous animals. A shift to a discussion about animal fights in general is natural. A post of a graphic image of a pit bull mating with a Chihuahua is a derail; it's abrupt, not a natural outgrowth of the prior conversation, and only serves to change the subject. However, the stricter forums might consider both instances against the rules, just to ensure that everyone can follow the conversation. Trolls will often derail a conversation by attacking someone or something, forcing the other users to defend themselves or their ideas. They like to rely on Misplaced Nationalism , Ad Hominem attacks, Victim-Blaming , and whataboutism , which usually require a response unrelated to the topic at hand. Nazi comparisons are akin to blowing up the railway bridge, dropping the train into the sea, and then pissing on it . Threats are also an effective way to derail a thread, shifting the discussion to dealing with the threat; many forums take a hard line on threats and will issue an immediate ban for them, and if they seem credible they may even contact local law enforcement. A less inflammatory but no less effective way to derail a thread would be to become a Left Fielder . Here on this wiki , we deal with derailment by thumping , our method of removing a post. The post is still there, but its content is replaced with a message that the post was thumped. It's usually self-explanatory (and you're free to ask a mod about it in case it's not). Users whose posts are thumped are given a PM about it, and accumulating several thumps can lead to a suspension. See also Change the Uncomfortable Subject , which is an attempt to do this in a real life conversation, usually without the sheer disruption of the Internet equivalent. A doublepost is a comment that's accidentally been added twice in succession. It's usually a result of a software bug; often, a new post is slow to show up due to server lag, so the user thinks it didn't go through and makes it again. Or maybe there's a bug when the user clicks "Add Post" a few times too many. This kind of thing is especially common on Usenet , where the nature of NNTP sometimes causes a substantial lag in the propagation of new posts. In some cases, forums will allow users to delete the last post they made, specifically to combat the doublepost. In most others, the common response is to edit the second post to read something along the lines of "doublepost, mods plz delete". Even if it's not deleted, veteran forumgoers can mentally skip over posts like this, and the conversation can continue as normal. At most places, you won't get into trouble for doubleposting, but if you do it too often, you might be mistaken for a Spammer . In some cases, doubleposting is done deliberately. For instance, some places don't allow you to edit your post (or may require you to be a prolific user before you can do it), meaning that if you wanted to correct something, you have to post again with your correction. The less savvy forumgoers will also do it just to add something to their previous comment. In other cases, there's a long period of time between the two posts, and the last post is repeated by someone wishing to "bump" the thread to the top of the list. Forums with strict limits on the number of characters or images per post might also see "doubleposting" with a single long comment spread out over multiple posts. A doublepost is a comment that's accidentally been added twice in succession. It's usually a result of a software bug; often, a new post is slow to show up due to server lag, so the user thinks it didn't go through and makes it again. Or maybe there's a bug when the user clicks "Add Post" a few times too many. This kind of thing is especially common on Usenet , where the nature of NNTP sometimes causes a substantial lag in the propagation of new posts. In some cases, forums will allow users to delete the last post they made, specifically to combat the doublepost. In most others, the common response is to edit the second post to read something along the lines of "doublepost, mods plz delete". Even if it's not deleted, veteran forumgoers can mentally skip over posts like this, and the conversation can continue as normal. At most places, you won't get into trouble for doubleposting, but if you do it too often, you might be mistaken for a Spammer . In some cases, doubleposting is done deliberately. For instance, some places don't allow you to edit your post (or may require you to be a prolific user before you can do it), meaning that if you wanted to correct something, you have to post again with your correction. The less savvy forumgoers will also do it just to add something to their previous comment. In other cases, there's a long period of time between the two posts, and the last post is repeated by someone wishing to "bump" the thread to the top of the list. Forums with strict limits on the number of characters or images per post might also see "doubleposting" with a single long comment spread out over multiple posts. "You got to love an encyclopedia that has a longer article for the lightsaber than they do for the printing press." Fannage is a wiki phenomenon where things relating to pop culture get more attention than mundane topics, even if the more mundane topics are more relevant to real life. It gives generalised wikis like Wikipedia a poor reputation by making their userbase look like a bunch of hopeless nerds who prioritise fiction over reality. But this generally isn't considered a bad thing in itself. First, you can always ignore wiki pages that don't interest you. Second, every topic will benefit from having contributors who know the subject extremely well. Third, having fun stuff on the wiki will attract more people and encourage them to work on the more mundane stuff. But the danger occurs when topics with high amounts of Fannage attract a large pool of unskilled editors. These guys have bad habits of obsessive editing, promoting Fanon , poor writing style employing lots of Weasel Words , and an obsession with categorisation — every episode and character needs to have their own page. To the extent that these guys edit the pages on mundane stuff, they take their bad habits with them. Wikipedia 's extensive fannage is famous, what with its ridiculously detailed television synopses (even the ones with Negative Continuity ). Although it's frowned upon there, it's tolerated through the sheer persistence of the editors . People will complain that the $12,000 funding drives seem to be going mostly to rewriting the Star Wars Expanded Universe in encyclopedia form. Fannage also overlaps extensively with what Wikipedia calls Fancruft, where articles for mundane things are injected with the subject's appearances in popular culture; Wikipedia is less tolerant of this and will boot such users to the myriad of other wikis that exist for documenting those things . TV Tropes itself mostly runs on fannage, but even here, we get our own version of it with specific works being massively overrepresented compared to others. We've catalogued some of them in Trope Overdosed . First!! On large platforms, there is often a race to be the first to post a comment in a new thread, article, or video, even if you don't have anything to contribute to the topic at all. The only thing you have to say is that you were the first to say something. This has now become an Internet tradition, even though it can get annoying real quickly. Many places discourage it and will just delete such posts on sight, including here at TV Tropes. Fortunately, they're easy to spot, and accordingly easy to zap. Some places even do it automatically, with software. Other places have some fun with the phenomenon, such as the Daily Kitten 's use of the term "Pounce!" Places like 4chan , never particularly content with "rules" and "moderation", will have long tangents based simply on the response to the contentless first post. Fark is probably the most prolific at having fun with it, employing a word filter to change "first post" to "Boobies" and "first comment" to "Weener", which has the added benefit of causing some ribbing if you actually use the word "boobies". If Fark detects these terms in the actual first post of a given thread, it will also move the timestamp to 12 hours into the future, which for many threads means it will be the last post in the thread. Parodied in this video . See also Me Too! and IBTL . A blog that seems to be written by a real person, but is in fact a vector employed by an advertising agency, PR firm or corporate marketing department. Invariably waxes over-enthusiastically about a product, service or company, particularly something brand new and/or trying to increase its market penetration. Almost always a tool for astroturfing. The term — which has been seen in mainstream publications like The New York Times as of December 2006 — is believed to be a blend of "fake" and "blog", but also evokes the verb "to flog" in the sense of "to make a sales pitch". It may also refer to the term 'flack' as a name for a person with a journalism degree who specializes in PR. As of December 12, 2006, the U.S. Federal Trade Commission has begun a serious investigation of so-called "word of mouth" advertising campaigns, which will include flogs among its targets. Not to be confused with the 'flog' that means Freenet blog. For the act of flagellation, commonly known as "flogging", see A Taste of the Lash. Also not to be confused with "The Flog" by Felicia Day (a blend of "Felicia" and "vlog") or the Australian slang term for a useless person. "Today, I could take a photo of my butt and put it online within five seconds, and while this is objectively a good thing (at least in my case, because I have a sweet butt), it comes with the side effect of making trolls lazier. Most raids now involve flooding sites with gore, porn, or various combinations of both. While you can't argue with the effectiveness of this method, there's zero effort there. Where's the love for the craft? What amusing story did you get out of this experience that you'll tell your grandchildren eventually?" The Garbage Post Kid is a kind of Troll who delights in posting offensive and inflammatory text and punctuating them with vomit-inducing pictures and links to Shock Sites . They usually have a personal beef with a specific group member or community and will flood their topics with all the filth the 'Net can offer. If their beef is with a single person, they usually don't care about ruining the day (or constitution) of the many other innocent posters on the board, so long as that one guy knows they can't run or hide. Naturally, the GPK is one of the most egregious Internet personalities. They're known for their persistence, posting voluminous amounts of bile and being very hard to shake. Sometimes it can take hours for the mods to clean up the sewage they leave behind; in extreme cases, the entire forum may need to be temporarily shut down. The name comes from the Garbage Pail Kids , a 1980s gross-out trading-card parody of the Cabbage Patch Kids toyline that depicted some truly disturbing imagery. Just an average day out on the Internet. The Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory, or "GIFT" note : It kinda should be an Internet Law, like Godwin's Law, but it's called a theory to keep the acronym, is an explanation of why people who are quite "normal" in person become anti-social Internet Jerks when they're online. The "GIFT equation" was first formulated by Penny Arcade and goes like this: This phenomenon has been studied academically, and by all accounts, the comic's satirical analysis is spot-on; normal people become more aggressive when they think their behavior carries no real-world social consequences. They think that The Internet makes them anonymous, and they can thus behave as shamelessly and self-servingly as they always wanted , because they'll never have to answer their parents, spouses, teachers, employers, or challengers . (This isn't always true, by the way.) note : To elaborate, most Internet users' data and metadata are quite accessible. IP addresses and other identifying information can be found using relatively basic tools. And many active users on social media platforms will happily reveal information about themselves without thinking. All this means that someone who really wants to know the identity of an "anonymous" user can often find it out. It's related to the phenomenon of Bathroom Stall Graffiti ; they'd never do it in their own bathroom, but they'll happily do it in a public place when they think no one is looking and they don't have to clean it up. The whole phenomenon was identified by Plato in The Republic , where he recounts the myth of the the Ring of Gyges , one of the original Invisible Jerkass stories. Sadly, this leads to a culture of cyberbullying on the Internet. Without any real consequences, people realise they can say anything they want, and as such, they revel in saying the most hurtful and disgusting things, regardless of whether they even believe those things (much less whether they're true or false), probably for the thrill of seeing the damage they can do when people take their words seriously. At least one psychology paper posited that anonymity makes the Internet particularly attractive to narcissists , sociopaths , and sadists , who enjoy seeing others suffer. And since there are a lot of children and teenagers on the Internet, who are particularly vulnerable to cyberbullying, the Internet becomes a playground for these people. The rise of social media networks like Facebook and Twitter is forcing some reevaluation of this theory, though. People have been found to be just as obnoxious, rude, bigoted, and abusive while posting under their real identity as they would be if they were anonymous. This means it's not really the anonymity that drives the phenomenon; it's the lack of consequences. Turns out people will rarely get thrown off a social media site for noxious behaviour, nor will most people's teachers or employers scour their social media accounts. The only real threat in this case is the Internet Detective , who will trawl basically anyone's social media history to look for something even slightly objectionable, and the prevalence of GIFT provides them with some positive reinforcement. See also Invisible Jerkass , Jerkass Dissonance , Loss of Inhibitions and Mask of Confidence . The hit-and-run poster is the least dedicated breed of Troll . They'll make a single provocative comment and then leave, never to be seen again. Sometimes they lose interest, sometimes they're content with just knowing someone is likely pissed off, but often they're smugly watching the backlash from the safety of their own computer, refusing to give the other party the satisfaction of a response. On wikis, the term refers to someone who makes a single edit to the wiki and never responds to requests for clarification of what they did. The Other Wiki has a whole article on the phenomenon. Here on TV Tropes, though, we call this a Drive-By Updater . An item on one web-service that is requested by another web-service, usually an image. This isn't when an image is actually a potholed link. This is not only impolite (it eats up your victim's bandwidth), it's almost always a really bad idea. A hot linked item may have been removed by the original host (this is a big problem with YouTube links). The original host can be undergoing a performance problem. The original host may have changed its linking policy. The original host may no longer exist... The list of possible badness goes on and on. Luckily, this Wiki provides a way for people to upload images that skips a lot of those badnesses. See the Media Uploader on the Tools menu. See Hotlinked Image Switch for another reason not to hotlink to images on this wiki. Short for " In Before the Lock", a contentless post (like First! or Me Too!) made for two purposes: to predict that the thread will soon be locked, and to inflate one's post count. It's usually seen in a very contentious thread that's either devolved into such bickering that it's unsalvageable, or is relatively new but can't reasonably go anywhere other than unsalvageable bickering. It's a relatively useless post for pretty much every purpose. If they're right, the thread is about to be locked anyway, so no one's going to read the comment. If the thread is deleted, "IBTL" doesn't even count for their post tally. And since it's not seen very often, it's not a great way to signal that the thread is headed for lockable territory, as a sizeable number of readers aren't going to get it. It's usually frowned upon in much the same way as "First!", but since most threads that get this treatment are doomed anyway, it's less likely any action will be taken. Implonkus is that feeling you get when you make an effort to write a good post — correct spelling, correct grammar, actual organisation of thoughts, perhaps even writing a draft and working on it — only for the first response to be festooned with Rouge Angles of Satin , Emoticons , and Leet Lingo . It's quite a letdown to realise that you're the only one who actually cares enough about the topic to make an effort to have an intelligent conversation about it. First coined on HBO 's forum for The Sopranos , the term is a Portmanteau of "impetus" and "plonk", the latter a Usenet onomatopoeia for the notional sound made when someone is "killfiled", a reference to a Usenet-era ignore list. "What proof is there that [Hitler] is an atheist? In Mein Kampf , he actually seems to be a believer." "I'm sure you are against classroom prayer and homeschooling as well, just like Hitler. " — Two editors of Conservapedia have a reasoned exchange of opinions The Internet Cold Reader is a particularly annoying online persona who subjects other users to Cold Reading . He'll read a four-sentence post and use it to deduce your life story, psychology, politics, and religious views, and then use that as a basis for their argument. Sometimes they'll invite you to correct them; more often than not, they won't . To give a hypothetical example: You: I didn't think Twilight was too bad, if you don't think too hard about it . Internet Cold Reader: Ah! Obviously, you are a closet misogynist who thinks that every woman needs to find a perfect, godlike, sparkling man to obey absolutely! Also, you probably also have anti-intellectual leanings and feel threatened by the idea that there might be such a thing as quality literature outside of your little bubble. Most Internet Cold Readers don't actually sound like armchair psychologists, but the ones who do are hilarious. Some actually do it on purpose. Arguing with an Internet Cold Reader is generally believed to be a useless proposition, because anything you may say in your defence is just further proof of your deep-seated insecurities . It's a similar mindset to the Conspiracy Theorist , who thinks that all evidence to the contrary is actually evidence of a cover-up. The fact that most people on the Internet really are insecure, won't ever admit to being wrong, and prefer to dig in their heels over conceding a point means that Internet Cold Readers can rely on a grain of truth from which to spin their bizarre personality profile. But in the end, it's an Ad Hominem form of argument, focusing on the other party's obvious desires and misconceptions over the topic at hand. The Internet Detective fancies himself to be the ultimate diviner of truth from lies, a righteous warrior fighting against falsehood on the Internet. Accordingly, the Detective will trawl the Internet for any information they can find about an individual from any period of time, looking for something they did wrong at some point in time, which will then stand for all time and mean they can never be right about anything, ever. These guys can be extremely obsessive, going through old threads, social media profiles, even Real Life public records. They employ heavy use of the Wayback Machine and might even engage in Social Engineering , like posing as someone else to the subject or their friends. Anything they find will be subject to intense examination, taken in the worst possible context (if not removed from its original context outright ), and painted in the most embarrassing possible light . Accordingly, the Internet Detective's obsessive, stalker-like stance and tendency to jump to conclusions makes it an attractive disguise for a Single-Issue Wonk , who wants so desperately to be right about something that they'll scour their opponent's Internet history looking for anything they can use against them. In the worst cases, someone who wants to defend a false claim will become an Internet Detective looking to make a show of force and convince their opponents to back down, which works more often than it really should . The Internet Detective is described on Mike Reed's Flame Warriors Guide as the Archivist . The Internet Tough Guy is someone who will threaten anyone who annoys them online with physical or legal harm. These threats are always empty; Internet Tough Guys couldn't fulfill most of them even if they wanted to. They probably wouldn't even be able to figure out your IP address, much less your real identity. The most common threat is one of violence, evoking the image of a weakling who fancies himself to be a tough guy but could never convince anyone of that in Real Life. The second most common threat is of a lawsuit, which would be immediately thrown out of court if they ever tried it for real. Those threats often invoke the U.S. Constitution in places where it doesn't apply, especially where the forum isn't even owned by Americans. But there are other, more subtle variants, like the user who claims to be close to the forum moderators and threatens to get their adversary banned, or the user who notices that their opponent is a minor and threatens to call their parents. Trolls love dealing with Internet Tough Guys, because they're incredibly easy to provoke into rants, anger, and ineffectual threats — the kind of thing trolls live on. See also the Navy Seal Copypasta, an example of an Internet Tough Guy whose threats and claims of military experience are so outlandish that it became a meme. The Left Fielder is a user who will enter a discussion already under way and start talking about something only vaguely related, or even completely unrelated. When done deliberately, it's a form of derailing a thread, but usually couching the derailment in something not really inflammatory, just horrendously off-topic. Imagine, for instance, a thread about whales in which someone asks the question, "Have you ever noticed that a lot of rock stars from The '70s look like Jesus?" Most forum users can't resist the temptation to answer the question. A skilled Left Fielder will throw out something that requires a lot of discussion to untangle; in this case, the users will discuss whether The Beatles look like Jesus and transition to arguing whether the Beatles really even count as a "70s band". Eventually, someone will remind everyone that the thread was originally about "whales in the time of Jesus or something", and the other users will sheepishly go back to talking about whales, but with a few rogue comments sprinkled in about whether the Beatles were better than Led Zeppelin . This is why many forums have strict rules against "off-topic" posts. Some Left Fielders are Trolls , but others are Single Issue Wonks who just have to talk about their personal obsession, and still others are Noobs who don't know how forums work. Even seasoned users can't resist throwing something out of left field on occasion, and smart moderators will usually establish a new thread for the topic. The term comes from Baseball and is part of more general slang for something strange or unexpected. The exact link to left field (either the area of the field or the player who plays the position) is uncertain, but a commonly-cited origin is from the Chicago Cubs' old stadium at the West Side Grounds, where beyond the left field stands sat Cook County Hospital, a mental institution note : now it's the University of Illinois Medical Center; fans could occasionally hear, coming out of left field, the patients screaming crazy things. See also Weird Aside , for when it happens offline. A blog that focuses primarily on cool links that the author has found, as opposed to original content such as essays. Arguably the original form; Jorn Barger, the coiner of the term "weblog," intended it to mean a log of his Web surfing. Barger's blog Robot Wisdom , one of the oldest, still follows this format. Many Power Law Blogs have this form, often embellished with commentary. (The most pronounced example may be Instapundit who has a habit of potholing his links with cryptic descriptions like Heh. ) A lurker is someone who reads a forum but doesn't participate. They may simply read the conversations without even signing up, or they might register an account but rarely post, if at all. Unlike in Real Life , where a "lurker" would be that creepy guy at the party whom no one remembers inviting and who stands in the corner all night listening to other people's conversations, on the Internet, no one notices a lurker. In fact, lurking is highly encouraged on many corners of the Internet (hence the phrase "Lurk moar"). The idea is that a new user shouldn't just jump in and start posting without a sense of the forum's rules, style, and culture. If you take the time to read the forum and learn how it works, then when you're ready, you can jump in and be less of a Noob . However, lurking wasn't always a good thing. The term was coined in The '80s , when the Internet barely existed and was confined to governments and universities. People would connect their Commodore 64s and IBM compatible computers to bulletin board systems via modem. These were often hosted by fellow geeks in their own homes, and usually used a modem connected to a single phone line, meaning only one user could be on at a time — and many a BBS wasn't even online all day long. Thus, a lurker was someone who tied up the phone line without contributing to the community. Not all lurkers nowadays are prospective users, either. Sometimes they might lurk but not like what they see and decide to stay out of the conversation. Sometimes it's an old forum and nobody's using it anymore, but someone still wants to see an old conversation. In other cases, the forum may be free to read but charge money to register an account, and lurkers are the ones who don't want to pay for it. If you join a forum and admit to being a former lurker, the registered users might be creeped out that someone was reading their conversations, even though they were posted on a publicly viewable forum. Not related to the advanced/evolved form of a Zerg Hydralisk , nor the homeless people on Babylon 5 , nor the enemy monsters in Jak and Daxter: The Precursor Legacy . An online "entourage" or crowd of Yes People surrounding a particular Internet user and/or a "personal army" of Internet users recruited to attack or defend someone in a Flame War or internet flare, or to promote them or their product. This is connected to AstroTurf except that Astroturf is usually for a politician, product, company, or one side in a war or conflict, whereas a Meat Puppet can appear anywhere (and are often why a debate escalates to Flame War, Internet Backdraft, or appearing on Fandom Wank levels). These are usually called Meat Puppet as opposed to Sock Puppet , because they are actually separate people, unlike a Sock Puppet, which is a different user identity (or collection of them) created by the same person. That said, good luck in telling them apart, especially in places that allow anonymity and don't ban proxies. No relation to the Meat Puppet trope, which is about possession or Mind Control. A Mediator is the opposite of a Troll — they respond to most arguments online, particularly the ones that don't directly involve them, by posting comments intended to defuse the debate (or at least admonish the other parties for "fighting"). Unfortunately, they're incapable of doing this without a heaping dose of condescension . As such, this is very grating to people who were simply having a spirited but reasoned argument. In the worst cases, the Mediator will derail the thread and shift discussion to themselves and how important they are to the forum . This, ironically , usually results in a new petty squabble between the Mediator and the users who are challenging their moral authority. The Mediator is often A Darker Me who wouldn't dare intervene in this way in Real Life , and the worst cases become an online Well-Intentioned Extremist who commits the Golden Mean Fallacy — either you're totally peaceful, or you're disrupting the forum. A Mediator who takes the time to actually be good at their job without the self-aggrandisement will successfully morph into the Shepherd . "And posting 'Me too!' like some braindead AOLer I should do the world a favor and cap you like Ol' Yeller You're just about as useless as JPEGs to Helen Keller..." "Me Too!" is a pointless, contentless post, replying to a previous post just to say that they agree with it. Of course, they don't actually have to say the exact phrase "Me too!" Variants include "Seconded," "This," "Damn straight," "+1," and even just "^" (an IRC tradition) to refer to the text above it. In really bad cases, the post will quote the entirety of the text it agrees with. Much like "First!", forums hate this and will often delete it. Indeed, it wastes not only time, but also bandwidth; some places which barely handle the traffic they get will ban posts like this just to keep the site up and running. However, there are a couple of accepted uses. For instance, some boards will automatically close a thread after a certain number of posts, and participants in a thread nearing that limit who want to break it earlier will agree to flood the thread with meaningless posts to get it locked. Threads involving voting for something will often be filled with posts like this, because all that needs to be said is whether the user agrees or disagrees. On Twitter , the phrase was used as part of the "#MeToo movement", where women who were victims of sexual harassment (or worse ) would simply post the hashtag, and the sheer volume of users who did this (particularly high-profile women like actresses — there's a reason for the Horrible Hollywood trope, after all) would draw attention to the scale of the problem. "Me too!" was particularly associated with the Eternal September , when AOL subscribers got access to Usenet and flooded it with posts like this (among other Noob behaviour). In the mid-1990s, "AOL!" became a mocking shorthand for "Me too!" on the site. A ninja editor is a person who makes a post, then almost immediately goes back and edits it without comment. Like a Ninja . Usually, this is done innocently, like fixing a typo. In those cases, it's usually customary to add something to the end of the post clarifying the situation, like "ninja-edited for typo". When it's not done innocently, however, it changes the content of the post. And this leads to mass confusion, as subsequent replies address a post saying one thing, when the post itself says another. It's often done when someone is losing an argument and wants to walk back what they said to make it easier to defend. Because of this, many forums limit the ability to edit posts to a certain period of time after the post was made (typically an hour); this allows for innocent ninja edits, but after that, there will be a marker on the post to show that it has been edited, or perhaps editing may not be permitted at all. Some sites, like GameFAQs , had such trouble with this that they didn't allow editing at all . At other places, it can make for an entertaining forum game, but in that case everyone knows what's about to happen. The most malicious form of ninja editing is a Trolling method by which a user asks a question, gets a few responses, and then goes back and edits their original post to make the replies appear super embarrassing or incriminating. For instance, the Troll might get users to innocently respond with a number under 13, then change their question to "How old are you?" — and many forums will ban anyone who admits they're under 13 years old. Or they might post a really inflammatory comment, get a bunch of inflammatory responses, then edit their original comment to something much tamer or even delete it outright, making the other users look like they started the argument by being needlessly aggressive. The easiest way to combat malicious ninja editing is to quote a user before responding to them. Users generally can't edit quoted text in someone else's post, and it clearly shows the point to which you're responding. Branching-style forums may also delete any responses to a deleted post to prevent this kind of thing from happening. A related phenomenon is the ninja post , where someone takes the time to respond to something, only for someone else to have responded more quickly in the time between the first user reading the thread and submitting their own post. This causes a break in the conversation where one person responds, then the next post appears as if the previous one didn't exist — which is especially confusing if it refers to "the last post" when it really means two posts ago, or it complains that no one's mentioned something when the ninja post did mention it. This is one of the disadvantages of a slow internet connection. Places like 4chan have the variant known as the "Combo Breaker ", where a group of posters tries to complete a sequence one post at a time (like spelling a word or posting pieces of an image), only for two users to post the same image in succession because one ninja'd the other, or for a user to post something irrelevant because they weren't paying attention to the "combo" (4chan finds things like this hilarious ). On TV Tropes, we also have what we call a Serial Tweaker , who makes an edit, realises they missed something, and makes another edit to fix that thing, realises they missed something... "Rewrites every story, every poem that ever was Eliminates incompetence, and those who break the laws." An Orwellian Editor is the extremist cousin of the Ninja Editor who goes to great lengths to remove all evidence of something they said or did online, in the hopes that the Internet will forget about it if it's no longer available. It's usually done as a response to unexpected criticism — rather than address it, they delete the offending comment and then pretend that it never happened. In some cases, though, it could be much more than a comment — like an entire Fan Fic , perhaps one that was extremely incendiary and racist. Orwellian Editors are not limited to hiding their own actions. Just as frequent are cases where a Message Board administrator attempts this on other people, usually when they end up on the losing side of an argument; they'll delete an entire thread and any reference to it to avoid having to face up to it. They'll often ban the most vocal users on the winning side as well, and they'll forbid the remaining users from mentioning the whole affair. This, by the way, is an excellent way to drive away forum users. Either way, whether or not the deleted content is truly damaging is irrelevant; in fact, most of the deletions themselves weigh a lot worse on the Orwellian Editor than whatever was posted in the first place. Some Orwellian Editors also find it very difficult to delete everything , in part because they don't always have the ability to do so (although they may try harassing forum administrators to delete stuff on their behalf), and in part because of the Streisand Effect — their zeal to remove something from the Internet is what gets others interested in what exactly it was to begin with. Out here on TV Tropes, we've experienced this sort of behaviour from people who've written works they'd like to forget and want us to delete our page on them. That's why we have a policy that The Fic May Be Yours, but the Trope Page Is Ours . The term "Orwellian" (in this and other contexts) comes from George Orwell and his novel Nineteen Eighty-Four , in which society is adept at rewriting history to match what the present-day propaganda demands ("We have always been at war with Eastasia."). Post count is the number of posts a forum user has made. It's often displayed in the user's profile, and even next to the user's name on every post. For most people, post count is irrelevant — a good comment is a good comment, regardless of the number of comments the user previously made. But some users use a high post count as a proxy for high status and will judge other users — and their contributions — by their post count. There's a nugget of truth to this, in the sense that someone who's been on the forum for a long time and is highly respected there will naturally have a high post count. But correlation does not imply causation, and some users will try to manufacture respect by building up a high post count. As such, these users will artificially inflate their post counts with contentless posts, along the lines of "First!" and "Me too!", as well as engage in such activities as Thread Hopping and Thread Necromancy . These users are known as "post whores". They're not always bad; sometimes their commitment to contributing actually helps keep the forum stable and active. But others are just obnoxious Spammers . Such users also have a tendency to Suffer Newbies Poorly , because they will naturally think of newbies with low post counts as not worthy of their respect. Clay Shirky wrote an article that observed, in effect, that the popularity of blogs — as defined by inbound links — will be governed by who links to whom. Where popularity breeds popularity, this will have the effect of "clumping" popularity (inbound links, or attention ) around a relatively tight set of interconnected blogs. Naturally, there are Power Law winners in the various blog categories, as well. The Shepherd is a rare and benevolent online persona who actually helps new members find their way on the forum. They'll take the time to greet newbies, teach them the ropes, answer questions that might be common knowledge to established users, and get the rest of the forum to treat them fairly. Shepherds are incredibly useful to have on an Internet forum, where a noob can barely go five minutes without unwittingly hitting someone's Berserk Button . They don't know which topics always lead to arguments, which users have a Hair-Trigger Temper , or which opinions will draw in the Single-Issue Wonk . Most veteran users — especially those who Suffer Newbies Poorly — will not assume good faith, but instead see the new user as a Troll and react accordingly. Such reactions usually discourage the new user from continuing to contribute. But the Shepherd will protect the newbie from the attacks and help them become a respected member of the forum. Shepherds are often held in very high esteem in the Forum Pecking Order , especially if some established users once benefited from the Shepherd's help. Because of this, the Shepherd usually doesn't have to be very forceful in convincing the rest of the forum to shut up. Arguing with or trolling the Shepherd is highly frowned upon , and most other users will rally to their defence. That said, the Shepherd is usually no pushover himself, and is capable of arguing with even the moderators — and winning . And if the newbie betrays the Shepherd's trust , the Shepherd will come down harder on them than even the regulars would have without his intervention . Some particularly rabid newbie-haters will accuse the Shepherd of being a White Knight , and in a broad sense their motives are similar. But a genuine Shepherd is a Good Shepherd who really wants to grow the community, whereas the stereotypical White Knight wants to make a big show of "saving" the newbie and is hoping the newbie is a hot girl who'll fall in love with him. "Show newbies the ropes! If we see a user we've never met before make some mistakes on the wiki, instead of berating or ignoring the user, we'll hunt them down and hang them. No one was a perfect wiki editor straight off the bat, but if you're dumb enough to get caught, you deserve to die." — The Urban Dead Wiki's (Satirical) Project Un!Welcome A forum user who suffers newbies poorly has no patience for noobs and will berate them for not knowing the ins and outs of the forum, its culture, or its underlying fandom. Your average forum has a ton of this type of user, which is why it pays to be a lurker so that one can avoid proving that they're new to the forum in their ignorance. Most users who suffer newbies poorly don't really have a Hair-Trigger Temper and aren't actively looking to scare off the newbies, but their impatience with having to answer obvious questions or cleaning up after a user who doesn't know how things work leads them to blow their top pretty quickly. This user is more of an Insufferable Genius who clearly knows more about the forum and has been there long enough to prove it. This type of user is especially common on forums dealing with a specific fandom, where a new user might not know as much about the underlying fandom and asks the sort of questions that a " real fan" would obviously know. It's also prevalent in forums dealing with video games, where users have little patience for newbies who might be struggling with the game and asking for help; they usually tell them to Figure It Out Yourself . Such users might be slightly more justified if it's an online game like an MMORPG or MOBA and they'd be expected to team up with the newbie, and the newbie's poor performance and understanding of the Metagame negatively affects the veteran's enjoyment of the game. The particularly odd thing about a user who suffers newbies poorly is that regardless of how impatiently they treated you when you were a newbie, the minute you stop being a newbie and move up a rank in the Forum Pecking Order , they're perfectly okay with you and treat you like an equal. In fact, it's not uncommon for such users to be among the most liked and respected on the board; you just needed to prove your worth. That is, if you ever managed to make it that far and didn't just give up when everyone started snapping at you. The effect of users who suffer newbies poorly can be mitigated by the presence of a Shepherd , who can often remind such users that they're being unnecessarily mean. Thread hopping is a term for posting a comment without reading the thread beyond the first or last post. Nine times out of ten, a thread hopper's comment will repeat something that was previously discussed or from which the thread has long since moved on. The term comes from the idea that a person is just going from thread to thread and dropping a comment for its own sake. While it would be unreasonable to expect a user to read the entire thread before commenting (at least if it's a particularly long one), it's generally considered good Internet etiquette to at least skim the thread to see if what you wanted to discuss had already been addressed. At least go through the last page or two. What sets a threadhopper apart is that it seems like they just want to inflate their post count and will say the first thing that comes to their mind with respect to the topic. The cool thing about thread hopping is that if you spot a compulsive threadhopper, you can comment about them in a thread which they'll never actually read. "We have lots of points that we debate to death and beyond. Raise Dead is a 1st level spell on these forums." A Thread Necromancer is someone who adds a comment to a thread that hasn't been active for months, if not years. It's dead, but there's nothing stopping you bringing it back to life, like a necromancer . Supply your own Evil Laugh . Whether or not this is acceptable practice depends on the forum, and in many cases on the topic. Some places very much frown on it and will automatically lock threads that have been inactive for a certain period of time. Others encourage it, because they like to keep all discussion of a single topic in one place and don't like to clog the forum with different threads on the same topic. But more often than not, thread necromancy is not a good idea. Threads die for a reason, after all, and in some cases a thread was actually quite unpleasant and reviving it would just cause more fights . Indeed, one Troll tactic is to deliberately "necro" a Flame War thread that had burned itself out to reignite the argument and grab some popcorn . In other cases, someone will think of the perfect insult days or even weeks after the argument , and unlike in real life, on the Internet you still have the opportunity to throw it out there. Other threads, however, have very good reasons to remain dormant for long periods of time, like a Play-by-Post Game where people have taken a break. Indeed, many roleplayers will often ask for a thread necromancer to show up because they want to pick up a game they haven't played lately. Another "positive" necromancy situation is where someone posts a creative work like a Fan Fiction in installments — it can be a while between installments . In that case, though, some writers will also necro the thread to ask for feedback, which can really piss off the other users who saw a new post and had their hopes up that a new installment had just dropped. The Internet has long adopted the aphorism "timestamps are your friends" to encourage people who stumble across a thread to pay attention to how old it is, lest they anger the other forumgoers with an unwitting thread necromancy. If you absolutely need to leave a post after a long time, it's considered courteous to acknowledge the long delay. Word of Mod is a decision taken by fiat. While the name suggests that it's an order by the forum moderators, in many cases it goes all the way up to the Powers That Be , usually the site owners. Users who don't comply tend to be blocked or restrained. In some cases, the term is used to decry power-tripping forum moderation trying to silence things that reflect poorly on them; Word of Mod can be used to enact the wishes of an Orwellian Editor . In other cases, it's simply a neutral way to playfully refer to moderation decisions. In some cases, "Word of Mod" can be used to distinguish comments by moderators acting in their capacity as moderators from comments by moderators acting as forum members like everyone else. This is exactly how it works on the TV Tropes Forum , where our moderators put on their "mod hat" before invoking Word of Mod. Such posts are easily distinguished by their pink background colour. Police Sergeant Deegan: Ah, this reminds me of Vietnam... Father Ted: You were in Vietnam, sergeant? Police Sergeant Deegan: No, no, I mean the films! The YouTube War Expert is a self-proclaimed expert in all aspects of war studies. They've never actually fought in a war, nor even joined any branch of the military , nor observed any military training regimens or conducted formal study of any historical military campaigns. But they did read a book once. Maybe several! Since a lot of Internet discussion revolves around who would win a hypothetical fight between two sides, this type of Internet persona shows up frequently. They're particularly difficult to avoid on YouTube , where it's practically impossible to post a military-related video without several of these guys flooding the comment section. It usually devolves into an argument where the "expert" insists that one side would obviously win because of a myriad of technical and cultural specifications that they alone had considered. The YouTube War Expert usually exhibits the following traits: - Obsession with the technical details of individual weapons. Real soldiers care far more about the context of a weapon's use; who's using it, what's the target, how many are on each side. The YTWE cares more about how much damage it can do, what conditions it can survive, and how often it will succeed. There are a number of monomaniacs out there who favour one weapon over all others and will extol its superiority in every situation you can think of. They'll rattle off statistics about the weapon at the slightest provocation; if you ever wanted to know about a certain gun's capacity, weight, and rate of fire, they'll tell you before you even have a chance to ask. - Misplaced Nationalism and Cultural Posturing. The YTWE looks at a particular nation or ethnic group and re-characterises them as a Proud Warrior Race, uniquely suited to winning any given conflict because of how fearless and disciplined they are. As one might expect, the YTWE often shares said nationality or ethnicity with the group he's extolling. There are also anti-nationalists out there who look at a certain nation or ethnic group and claim that they are almost certain to fall apart whenever the going gets tough. Expect to see an obsession with old unresolved national rivalries, often involving the Cold War. - Hilariously masculine language. The YTWE will drop terms like "blitzkrieg", "Alpha strike", "lethality radius", and "maximum overkill". If they know anything about the slang of real-world military branches, they'll use it at every opportunity. They often double as an Internet Tough Guy who will threaten you as if they were at war with you, often saying things like, "How 'bout you say that again when I come to your house and point a [weapon of choice] at you?" See also the Navy Seal Copypasta. Any debate involving a YouTube War Expert usually devolves into bizarre hypotheticals ( e.g. which medieval weapons are better), Culture Clashes , arguments over whether Katanas Are Just Better , and comparisons to losers of major military conflicts . Anyone who actually knows something about military history or conflict will just get drowned out by these idiots. These guys nearly universally have no military experience, but in many places (particularly the U.S., which has a lot of Internet users), they can actually purchase weapons for themselves, including firearms. They'll then brag about their weapons, describe them in lavish detail, and fantasise about all the scenarios in which they may have to use said weapon, none of which will ever materialise because they live in Suburbia . These guys are also often called mall ninjas , after an internet discussion involving someone who behaved like this and claimed to be a mall security guard, who may or may not have been trolling . The bottom line is that anyone who's actually been through military training will become well aware of how long it takes to become a real military expert. The YouTube War Expert is so Ignorant of Their Own Ignorance that it becomes blindingly obvious that they've never been close to a military in their lives.	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/OnlineDisinhibitionEffect
One-Neighbor Neighborhood - TV Tropes Despite the protagonists living in some form of Suburbia, where many houses are all near each other, there's only one set of neighbours that ever show up. These neighbours might share a backyard, they might live across the street, or they might live to the left or right of the protagonists. Despite this, whoever lives in the other three houses gets completely ignored, and if they are named, they never appear onscreen. This could also apply in an apartment complex, which tends to have at least half-a-dozen different residents, plus additional neighbours in the buildings adjacent. The reasoning behind this trope is fairly simple: Keeping down the number of characters that the audience has to remember, and thus the number of actors you have to hire, and even the number of sets you have to maintain, in the case of a live-action TV-series. The result is a Limited Social Circle, and the few times a new neighbour is introduced, they promptly disappear by the next episode. This trope doesn't apply when the house/home itself is in the middle of nowhere, or if the protagonists are living in an abandoned warehouse and similar. It only applies when the location is shown or implied to have a large number of residents, but only one set is consistently shown. The "one neighbour" could be a single resident, or it could be a secondary family, a mirror of the protagonists. ## Examples: - Disney Ducks Comic Universe: Donald Duck has two neighbors, one named Jones and one named Smith. They are, however, functionally identical, as they are both sworn enemies of Donald. Often, Donald's other neighbor will just be whoever happens to fit the story (though kind old ladies seem popular). Or it could be someone new who moves in and forces an Enemy Mine situation between Donald and Mr. Jones by annoying both. - Batman: While a few of the other rich folk who live in Bruce's neighborhood show up in stories from time to time, usually because they're being robbed or are corrupt corporate executives, they rarely make more than one appearance. The house next door that is right at the entrance of the Wayne estate though has the Drake family move in and they become recurring characters until their deaths since their son Tim becomes Robin. - In Clerks (and Clerks: The Animated Series), the convenience store, as far as we know, has only the video store next to it — thus making it an interesting case of a Moebius Strip Mall. - One of the many Clerks comic book stories involves the clerks finally noticing a small store set in between the locations. Turns out an old, bearded guy named Claus runs it. - This is one of the questions frequently raised about Harry Potter. Harry spends an awful lot of time in the Gryffindor common room or eating at the Gryffindor table in the Great Hall, yet some of his fellow (and not new) Gryffindors are still strangers by the time he meets them in books five and six. He would have to have been actively avoiding these people for years in order not to at least know who they are. - Small Wonder never showed us the Lawsons' other neighbors, as if they and the Brindles were the only families on their block. - The early seasons of Married... with Children had the Rhodes as the Bundys' neighbors... and nobody else. Later seasons introduced Bob Rooney, another man from the neighborhood, as a recurring character, though it's unclear whether he lives on the other side of the Bundys, or somewhere else nearby. - Played with in the PBS show Square One TV. During the "Mathnet" sketches, George Frankly would often speak of his "right-side neighbor, Mr. Beasley," without ever mentioning who was on the left side. However, in later seasons, the "Math Brigade" sketches detailed the adventures of Dirk Niblick and his "left-side neighbor, Mr. Beasley," which gives Beasley two sets of neighbors. - iCarly: Freddie and his mother live across the hall from Carly and Spencer, but the other residents of their apartment building are usually MIA. - In That '70s Show, this trope is followed, and it's even strongly implied that the Foremans and the Pinciottis each have only each other for next door neighbors (where a lecherous character says he drives by Donna's house a lot because his mother lives next door and Eric protests that he lives next door). - The title character of Everybody Loves Raymond lives across the street from his annoying parents, but neither house seems to have one beside it. - Friends: Averted with the main apartment building. The gang do know other people in their building,( Mr Heckles, Danny, Joey's singing friend, Ugly Naked Guy (who actually lives in a building across the street)) Played straight with their actual floor, as only Apartment 19 and 20 exist: We see the gang running across the hallway to each other, using it as a thoroughfare, never locking their doors, having joint parties in the hallway, getting into fights, riding pogo sticks, putting the chick and the duck out there...without the other residents ever appearing. They may as well have demolished the walls and joined the apartments up completely. - Lampshaded on The Drew Carey Show when one of Drew's wacky neighbors from the early episodes drops by. Drew, not being too happy about them always showing up, asks her, "Don't you have neighbours on the other side?" - Cougar Town: Either played straight or averted, depending on how many houses there are on the cul-de-sac. Either there are not many houses and we know all or most of the residents, or it's a good example of this trope. - Steve Urkel on Family Matters lived next door to the Winslows for most of the series, but eventually he moved in with them. Apparently this left a vacancy in the neighborhood's only other house, because shortly thereafter a new obnoxious neighbor, Nick Niedermeyer, moved in to the former Urkel residence. - On Boy Meets World, the Matthewses and Mr. Feeny are always talking over the fence between their adjacent side yards, but we never see an inch of the rest of the street, or even the rest of their yards. - In Round the Twist, the only neighbour of the Twists is Nell. However, as the Twists live in a lighthouse near a cliff's edge, this is pretty realistic. - Roseanne had new neighbors in the house next door every few years. Sometimes they would be heavy in the plot, and others would be around for a one off joke. No neighbors living in any other house on the block were ever mentioned or interacted with, though. - Justified in The Good Place, where Eleanor lives in a tiny cottage next door to Tahani and Jianyu in a Big Fancy House, with no mention of anyone else living in their immediate vicinity. The justification comes after The Reveal: \|\|they're in the Bad Place. Eleanor, Tahani, Jianyu, and a fourth character are the only real humans in the neighborhood, and were isolated in close proximity so that they would torture each other. The other residents are demons\|\|. - The protagonist of Melody lives in an apartment building surrounded by apartment buildings, but the only one of his neighbors who is ever seen is Becca. - Bitmap World averts this: Both the Smileys and the Ks are plot-relevant. - Andy Weir talks about his attempts to avert this trope in this Casey and Andy newspost (scroll down to the Trivia Tidbit). - This is what is shaping up for Savestate. The only known neighbors for Kade and Nicole at the house they inherited from their Uncle Scooby are a family of reindeer that live across the street. This includes Amber and her two children, Chris and Claire. Possibly justified as Kade and Nicole's house is actually a mansion, which tend to be built on large plots a fair distance from any neighbors. - Living next door to The Simpsons are, of course, the Flanders. But on the other side? Ruth Powers and her teenage daughter Laura. Never heard of them? Don't feel bad; they've appeared in a grand total of maybe two episodes. - And before them there were the Winfields, who appeared in four episodes, including the one where they moved out to be replaced by the Powers. In fact, Ruth's most recent appearance ("Strong Arm of the Ma") suggests they're not living there anymore, either... - A few episodes seem to forget that the house next door exists at all in any way, shape or form. - Similarly, the house across the street from the Simpsons, alternates quite rapidly, some episodes it's a huge mansion as in the episode where George Bush moves in, other times it's a vacant lot, most of the time it's just another regular house with nondescript occupants, but once it was shown that Carl lived there which was never mentioned again. - Of course, there is a Separate Simpsons Geography Thing anyway. And the first time 742 Evergreen Terrace was mentioned, it was a generic house being burgled by Snake rather than the Simpsons' house, adding to the confusion. - Similarly, behind the Simpsons' backyard is most commonly sheer empty space (nothing is drawn behind the fence) or wilderness, but it has also been everything from a graveyard to the Springfield Nuclear Power Plant. - Darkwing Duck has only one set of neighbors, the Muddlefoots. - Eventually abandoned in The Flintstones, in which a group of Addams Family knockoffs: The Gruesomes moved next to the other side of Fred and Wilma from the Rubbles. - In the 1980s they got a similar cast of neighbours, the Frankenstones, who seemed to be based more around The Munsters. The head of the family is a typical Frankenstein's Monster knockoff, and he and Fred really hate each other's guts, even when everyone else gets along fine. - Up until around the sixth season of The Fairly OddParents, it seemed as if the Dinkleburgs (relationship's pretty much ripped off Homer and Ned) were the only neighbors to the Turners. It turned out their other neighbors included a black family and a extremely stereotypical British family. Naturally, they only existed for the sake of the plot of one particular episode and have yet to be seen again. - The Pfifers [the black neighbors] did reappear as one of the childless couples outshining the Turners in "The Masked Magician". - Carl is the only neighbor of the Aqua Teen Hunger Force, and they are his only neighbors (except for the half season or so when they were kidnapped/evicted and their landlord rented the place out to even worse people to live near). Probably makes sense considering how the Aqua Teens seem to demolish property values. - The Amazing World of Gumball: The Robinsons are essentially the only neighbors of the Wattersons. A few shots show various supporting cast and Recurring Extras living in nearby houses, but only Gary the mailman is seen consistentlyand even he's been shown living in several different houses ("The Wand" and "The Allergy" both show Gary living on the house opposite to the Robinsons' house, in "The Remote" he lives across the street, and in "The Nest" and "The Neighbor", to the left of the Wattersons). - Mort and the It's Your Funeral Home and Crematorium is to the left of Bob's Burgers. A constantly changing array of businesses are to the right of the titular shop in the show's opening titles, but the lot in generally vacant in the body of the show's episodes. Jimmy Pesto's Pizzeria is directly on the other side of the street, and various other nearby businesses are visited. - SpongeBob SquarePants, Patrick Star, and Squidward Tentacles live in houses in a row along a street with nothing else in sight but flat ocean floor. - Family Guy attempts to avert this by having several neighbors as a part of the main cast instead of just one neighbor (Joe, Quagmire, Cleveland, Mort, and Herbert) and they all live within the immediate vicinity of the Griffin family's home. Outside of these neighbors, no one else exists on Spooner Street.	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/OnlyOneNeighbor
Only One Name - TV Tropes "My name is Ennis... just Ennis." The character or characters go by a single name, with no family/clan/whatever identifier. Unlike No Full Name Given, it's not that their full name is never made known to the viewer. The full name simply does not exist. Cher is an oft-cited example. Truth in Television for most of history. Bynames, epithets, and family names were used only when necessary to distinguish between people with the same name. In much of the world, having multiple names is a relatively recent invention. Sometimes appears in translations involving a Dub Name Change when it didn't in the original, such as Beetle Bailey being called just "Masi" in Finnish. This could be seen as going under Only Known by Their Nickname, but not when the character is addressed both on a First-Name Basis and Last-Name Basis in the original and the translation uses the one name for both. Contrast I Have Many Names, Repetitive Name (when someone's first name and last name are the same) and compare Everyone Calls Him "Barkeep" for an extreme example. Sometimes happens with Stage Names. Not to be confused with the similar-sounding First-Name Basis or Only Known by Their Nickname. ## Example subpages: <!—index—> <!—/index—> ## Other examples: - A 2012 Progressive Insurance commercial has a close-up shot of Flo's driver's license that reveals that she has no middle or last names. - Almost all characters in Aggretsuko seem to only have one name, which usually are of the A Lizard Named "Liz" or A Dog Named "Dog" variety. One glaring exception is a minor character in the TBS shorts whose name is based on their voice actress's. - Ennis is the only character with no last name in Baccano!, being an Homunculus made by Szilard Quates. The light novels reveal that she eventually does acquire a last name after a number of decades: \|\|Prochainezo\|\| - In Beastars, this seems to be the norm in the world the series is set in, as none of the characters introduced so far have family names. The fact that it's a World of Funny Animals likely has something to do with it. - Berserk: For most of the manga, Nosferatu Zodd is the only character with two names (and even then Nosferatu might be more of a description than a surname), until we start running into characters from rich families (Farnese and Magnifico Vandimion). - Bleach: When Shaoling Feng adopted the codename Sui-Feng, it became her only name. - Tetsu from Cardfight!! Vanguard has nothing other than that name listed in Team AL4's roster. - All of the demons in Chrono Crusade have only one name—Chrono, Aion, Shader, etc. However, it seems most of them have at least one title tacked on, like "The Sinner" or "The Slayer of a Hundred". - Dragon Ball: - Most of the characters only have one name. At one point, Videl even states that surnames have fallen out of fashion in the world where Dragon Ball takes place and very few families still use them. Basically the only ones that have full names are Son Goku and his family and even then Goku's granddaughter Pan only goes by one name as well. - Since people in the west are used to doctor titles being attached to surnames, not first names like in Japan, it became a common misconception that Brief is the last name of Dr. Brief's family, but like everybody else, his first and only name is Brief. That didn't stop the dub or Dragonball Evolution to mispread that misinformation. - Tights from Jaco the Galactic Patrolman has only one name as opposed to every other character introduced in this mini-series. This trope and the fact that her name is a pun to an underwear foreshadow her relation to the Capsule Corporation family. - Delilah and Liddell of Eternal Alice. - In Fairy Tail, the Black Wizard Zeref's last name has seemingly been lost in his 400 years of life to the point no one else knows it, \|\|which makes for one impressive reveal near the end when it turns out to be "Dragneel", as in, the older brother of the resurrected Natsu Dragneel\|\|. - Pretty much EVERY character in Fist of the North Star has no last name. If you can consider most of the names REAL, that is. - From Eroica with Love: Eroica's accountant's name is James. Just James. - In Gamaran many lesser characters have only one name, though the majority of the characters use name and surname. Interestingly, the three main onmitsu of the Muhou School have only one name, that could be a sort of codename (Tsukikage/"Moonbeams", Tsuchiryuu/"Earth Dragon" and Jinkuu/"Divine Sky"). - Hevn and Makubex in Get Backers. With the latter, it actually becomes something of a plot point that he doesn't know what his given name is—or if he ever even had one in the first place. All they know is that he was found in a bag with "Makube" printed on it; later, people that knew and admired his skills added an 'x' to express the unknown. Thus, Makubex. - Gunslinger Girl: - Most of the cyborgs have only one name, a deliberate choice on the part of their handlers due to the difficulty some of them have in making the girls into killers, but have no wish to easily dismiss them because of such. Jose and Hilshire gave their cyborgs female names (Henrietta and Triela, respectively) and, despite initial discomfort, try to connect to them on personal levels, while other handlers give their cyborgs are given boy's names (Rico, Petrushka and Claes) to help them keep some emotional distance and make their reconciling with what they're doing a bit easier. - One exception to this is Elsa De Sica who, despite having a full and non gender-blended name, has less behind it. Her handler, Lauro, simply had to call her something and the first thing that came to his head when he stopped to think about it was the name of the park he was walking through at the time. Elsa's name is precious to her — in addition to being a "gift" from Lauro, it's the keystone that maintains her very sense of self and describes her as a person, not a latterday golem, whose struggles have meaning. The realization that that self is merely a dismissive and indifferent token destroys her \|\|and is one of the reasons why she snaps fatally on Lauro.\|\| - Petrushka doesn't quite fit that criteria as Alessandro didn't give too much thought in naming her, but he easily accepted her identity as a cyborg with little problems, thanks in part to his rather flexible morals and views carried over from his previous duties as a spy, and has grown to care for her to the point that they're romantically involved. - Van in GUN×SWORD is just Van. Instead of a surname he has a number of nicknames, some compliments and some not (his favorite is "Van of the Dawn"). In point of fact, there are only six characters with surnames given through the entire series: William Will Wo, Ray and Joshua Lundgren, Carul Mendoza (she prefers to go by Carmen99), and Michael and Wendy Garret. - Due to being left at a church as infants, Asta and Yuno in Black Clover have no surnames, unlike most of the rest of the cast. - Hetalia: Axis Powers: - Most nations have human names which are not entirely canon (they're never used in the actual manga/anime or by the creator except for two dubious instances in strips, and they originated from saved text from the author's deleted site blog), but very popular in the fandom because many fans are uncomfortable with using the actual country names. The human names are all composed of first, last, and sometimes middle names except for Germany, known only as Ludwig. Most fans borrow his 'brother' Prussia's surname Beilschmidt. - Some fan names are mistaken for (the semi-) canon by the fans. For example, Yekaterina "Kastyusha" Braginskaya (which was inspired by Russia and by Yekaterina being a popular Slavic girls' name), is often used by fanfic authors. As well, "Matthias Køhler", a fan-name for Denmark, was mistaken by fans as an actual name after it was posted on our TV Tropes character page for Hetalia. Officially, all the characters go by their nations' popular names, which are almost all Only One Name (i.e. England, America, Canada, Denmark, Ukraine, France, Germany, Italy (for both Italies), China, Japan, etc.). - At one point the human names were considered to be somewhat canon, as Himaruya answered a fan question and said that they would find out one day why Ludwig didn't have a surname. But as it was an old question on the deleted blog and the names have not been ever officially used, it remains unknown if that "significance" will ever come to light. - Kiddy Grade: - "What's my name?" "Éclair." "Éclair WHAT??" "Just Éclair." Also applies to the entire cast (though Alv seems to get a surname in the spin-off). - Given that "Zita" means "seven" in English, Eureka Zita = Eureka Seven. - Kino of Kino's Journey. It's not even their original name, but one adopted from another traveler. - JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: JoJolion has Toru, Yasuho's ex-boyfriend. He has no last name, and given his past as a drifter, it might not even be his original name. - In Lord Marksman and Vanadis, only nobles and royalty have surnames, while commoners like the maid Titta only have one name. - Lyrical Nanoha: - A good number of Artificial Humans in Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha, such as Signum, Shamal and Vita. Vivio used to be an example, until Nanoha officially adopted her and she received the Takamachi name. - The Familiars like Arf and Rynith have only one name. The majority of the fandom believe that Lieselotte and Liesearia have two names, but their shortened names, Lotte and Aria as well as the collective name Liese are just nicknames. - After StrikerS, four of the Numbers were adopted by \|\|Genya Nakajima\|\| and took his family name, with the rest remaining with only one name. - The INNOCENTS universe averts this, where most characters are given surnames. The Wolkenritter and the three Unison Devices are given the name Yagami, the five Numbers around Scaglietti are given the name Scaglietti, Rynith is given the name Lanster, and each of the three Materials has her own surname. Arf so far is the only exception. - Miss Kobayashi's Dragon Maid: Lucoa and Ilulu don't take on last names when they assume human identities. note : Presumably, they're using the names of the families they're staying with (Magatsuchi and Kobayashi respectively), but they're never referred to as such. - Naruto: - Sai has no family name, since even his given name is nothing more than an alias, while Team 7's temporary leader after the Time Skip is only known by his codenames "Yamato" and "Tenzo". \|\|Sai gains the surname name "Yamanaka" after marrying Ino in the epilogue.\|\| - Gaara and his siblings Kankuro and Temari don't seen to have surnames either. In fact, no one in the Hidden Sand Village has a surname; apparently the culture of the Land of Wind never adopted them. \|\|Temari later becomes "Temari Nara" when she marries Shikamaru Nara, but that's because her husband is from the Hidden Leaf Village.\|\| - In fact, it's easier to list the non-Leaf village ninja in the original series that do have last names; the Seven Swordsmen of the Mist minus Chojuro, the members of Team Dosu, Mizukages Mei Terumi, Gengetsu Hozuki, and Yagura Karatachi (though his surname was only revealed in Sequel Series Boruto), Suigetsu Hozuki, Two-Tails jinchuuriki Yugito Nii, and bit-characters Shibito Azuma, Kiyoi Yotsuki, and Ashina Uzumaki. Even in the Leaf Village, a number of characters go without surnames, such as the Sannin (Tsunade does not use her grandfather's clan name of "Senju") and Tenten (the only one of the Konoha 12 to never be given a surname). - Given that everyone in Naruto is on a First-Name Basis, even to the point of using honorifics like -sensei and -sama with first names, it's possible a lot of characters just haven't had their last names revealed (it took 200 chapters for Danzo's last name of Shimura to be revealed, and we didn't find out that Dan's last name was Kato until 374 chapters after we first saw him). Still, it seems that Leaf and Mist are the only two villages where surnames are commonly used. - Several denizens of the Magic World in Negima! Magister Negi Magi, including every one of the Canis Niger bounty hunters and \|\|Fate, whose real name is Tertium\|\|. - The aliens in Niea_7 only appear to have one name, including the show's eponymous character. - One Piece: - Most characters, especially minor ones, but also some main characters (Nami, Usopp and Brook) have only one name. This becomes jarring when the main characters get wanted posters. Monkey D. Luffy, Roronoa Zoro, Nico Robin, Tony Tony Chopper, and... just Brook or Usopp? - Sanji is a subversion. It initially appears as if he has just one name, but his surname is eventually revealed in the Zou arc: \|\|it's Vinsmoke\|\|. His wanted poster still only refers to him by his given name, though. Until after Whole Cake Island where his family surname is placed on his wanted poster and actually raised his bounty as a result. - Sanji is an invoked example; he chooses not use his name because his family are actually \|\|the royal family of the Germa Kingdom, which he defected from due to being unable to deal with his abusive father\|\|. Using his surname would have revealed his true identity. - Justified with Franky and Nami. Franky's real name is Cutty Flam, but he has been nicknamed Franky ever since he was young, so it stuck. Nami was one of the only survivors when her hometown was ravaged, and since she was a baby at the time, her birth name has since been lost to history. It was her adoptive mother that named her Nami, meaning she literally does have only one name. - Despite all the other Shichibukai (Seven Warlords of the Sea) having surnames, Crocodile is only known as Crocodile. This also extends to his underlings e.g Bentham (Mr. 2), Galdino (Mr. 3), Zala,(Miss Doublefinger), Marianne (Miss Goldenweek), etc., who all only have one real name beyond their code names. The exception is Crocodile's Number Two Daz Bones (Mr. 1). - The Leafe Knights from Prétear have an excuse of not being from our world, but even outside their Magical Land they don't seem to use last names. No one in the human world seems to care. - Everyone in Princess Tutu. Mytho, Ahiru/Duck/Ente, and Rue probably doesn't even have last names, and the characters whose last names are known (Cat, Drosselmeyer) aren't given first names. Well, \|\|on Drosselmeyer's grave\|\| we're given "D. D. Drosselmeyer", so we know his name starts with a D... but that's the closest we ever get to a full name on the show. - Almost everybody in Queen's Blade minus Leina Vance, her sisters, and Annelotte Kreuz from the sequel Queen's Blade Rebellion. - Rebuild World: The vast majority of characters are like this. Most of the family names that are given, have to do with The Clan Ojou Reina Lawrence is from, revealed later in the web novels. - Kazuma from S Cryed has no family name, which is symbolic of his status as an outcast from proper Japanese society. - In 7 Seeds, none of the Summer A team members and candidates have family names. They were raised in a secret (and presumably illegal) government school to be the ultimate survivors (thus creating one team whose members were prepared to survive the apocalypse... shame about them coming out of the process completely traumatized), and the teachers just didn't bother assigning them surnames. - Yuki in SEX, because of his Identity Amnesia. His Distaff Counterpart, the female assassin Yuki also goes by only one name (and is often referred to as Female Yuki). - Shakugan no Shana: - The titular character's name is just "Shana", and she didn't have even that before Yuuji named her after her sword. Which is strange, as all other Flame Hazes have full names. - Most (if not all) Crimson Denizens have only one name. Semi-justified by them being not human. - The entire cast of Simoun is from a culture that gives Only One Name. - Soul Eater: - Black Star. Apparently, every one in his family (the Star Clan) is only named by a colour and "Star". Even though it could be as though his first name is "Black" and his last name is "Star", this is unlikely seeing as nobody ever calls him "Black" or "Star". - Also, Death the Kid, being a younger Death. - Strangely, Crona seems to have just that name as well, even though his/her mother had the last name "Gorgon". - Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann: - Absolutely no one had a last name in the beginning. Apparently surnames were a practice abandoned After the End. They do get them after the Time Skip, though, taking them from their villages' names (Kittan Bachika, Rossiu Adai, Yoko Littner, Nia Teppelin). - Simon, however, remains as just Simon, possibly because either he didn't like his village, or because even without a surname, everyone knows what Simon they're talking about. (If they didn't, they could always go with his epithet, "Simon the Digger".) Likewise, Kamina. - Trapped in a Dating Sim: The World of Otome Games is Tough for Mobs: This is used to reflect social status: Just like in medieval Japan, nobles have family names, while commoners dont. - Chiya from Urara Meirocho is only called Chiya, probably because she doesn't know her mom and she was raised in the mountains. We know her mom is called Yami, but we don't know if she has a surname or not. - Amon of Witch Hunter Robin, and that might just be his Code Name, as he's usually described to the cast rather than named. - In YuYu Hakusho, demons apparently don't have surnames (with one notable exception being Saotome Jorge/George, Koenma's blue ogre). Even if they have more than one name, it tends to be a title i.e. "Jaganshi" Hiei and "Yoko" Kurama (except for the English dub, in which Yoko is his "true" name). For the Uraotogi team, the two names are their name and an adjective that describes their corruption, rather than being a surname and given name, i.e. Kuro Momotaro = Black Momotaro, and Ura Urashima = Reverse Urashima (though Ura Urashima later reveals that his, and likely the rest of his teammate's names are mere pseudonyms in an attempt to deceive others into believing they are demonic reincarnations of folk heroes). - Every Gauls in Asterix only have one name which is fitting since it takes place in antiquity. - Comic book versions of characters from mythological pantheons usually go by one name, as do "new" gods or godlike beings created for the comics. Such as the New Gods, The Eternals, The Inhumans, etc. - DC Comics: - The Amazons of Themyscira. It also applies to the most famous of them: Princess Diana, at least until she came to America, then adopting the surname Prince. All of the Amazons introduced as Amazons rather than becoming an Amazon over the course of the story have only one name, such as Mala, Althea, Dalma, Zoe, Philippus, Io, Euboea, Tekmassa and Artemis. This trope also applies to princesses of other cultures: - When the Metal Men got human secret identities towards the end of their original run, Tin and Mercury's identities were known only as "Tinker" and "Mercurio". - Robin Series and Batgirl (2000) villain Ling has the street name Lynx but otherwise only the one name; no matter who she's introducing herself to it's just Ling or Lynx. - The vast majority of ElfQuest characters have only one name, justified in that they live in small tribal groups. Last names really only crop up with humans later in the timeline. - In the Eightball short "Gynecology," protagonist Epps was born Raymond Epps, but had his forename legally excised from all government records, apparently as part of one of his many efforts to reinvent himself. - Although his gangster pursuers refer to him as "The Stooge", the protagonist of Paul Pope's graphic novel Heavy Liquid, is generally known as "S". "Why have a name when a letter will do?" - Marvel Comics: - X-Men: For decades until his true name was revealed, Wolverine was only known as "Logan." Most of his old friends and enemies still call him that. - Common in Doctor Strange. Justifed in the cases of Dormammu, Umar, Rintrah, and Clea, who all come from other dimensions; not so much with Strange's faithful servant and long-time friend Wong. - Lyra and Skaar, from The Incredible Hulk. There's also Thundra, Lyra's mother. - A few extraterrestrials, like Nebula and Groot. - Guardians of the Galaxy: For decades, Martinex was just known as Martinex. It wasn't until the 90s he got a surname of "T'naga". - In the Valiant Comics title Shadowman, there is a humorous exchange between the titular hero's girlfriend and the sister of the villain Master Darque: Girlfriend: So this guy Darque, no first name... Sandria Darque: His first name is an unsayable symbol. Girlfriend: Oh... oh, like Prince ! Got it! - Gargamel in The Smurfs isn't refered by any other name. - Tintin: - Tintin himself. By the way, in the German translation his name becomes Tim. Which is a first name in Germany too, but people still call him "Herr Tim". Two First Names? - This also extends to Hergé, Tintin's creator. - While the human characters in Calvin and Hobbes presumably have two names, even though we're not told them except for "Susie Derkins" (and no names at all in the case of Calvin's parents, who, again, are not presumably nameless in-universe), Hobbes is a tiger, so it's quite possible he's really just "Hobbes". - Ratatouille: Obviously all the named rats, as well as all the cooks in the kitchen other than Colette and Linguini (Colette's surname is Tatou according to Skinner) and Linguini's first name is Alfredo. - Toy Story 2: Subverted with Al. We don't find out his surname for a long time, but during the scene where Konishi calls him before Al faxes the Woody's Roundup photos to him, you can hear Konishi calling him by his full name, Al McWhiggin. - The Nightmare Before Christmas has a few: Lock, Shock, and Barrel. Sally counts too, at least until the sequel novel has her take "Skellington" after she marries Jack. - In Avatar, all of the Na'vi characters only have one name. They don't seem to understand how human names work, as whenever they address Jake Sully, they pronounce it like one word (Jakesully), with the exception of his love interest Neytiri, who calls him Jake. - The title character of Beetlejuice has no other name, as far as anyone knows. - Parodied in The Dinner Game: a character is actually named Just Leblanc, leading another to wonder: "Really? He doesn't have a first name?" - Nathaniel in Enchanted. Even when he writes a book, the author's name is listed only as "Nathaniel". - Singleton from Love Letters. But this is solely chosen because she has a bout of amnesia and can't remember her real names. - Marvel Cinematic Universe: - Played with for Thor. Since the Asgardians are based on Norse mythology and customs (or rather, in-universe in the MCU, the Norse customs are based on the Asgardians), "Thor Odinson" could be considered a full name for him; however, he is very rarely addressed as such (including by himself, as Thor will introduce himself as "Thor, Son of Odin" instead), and most people generally consider his name to just be "Thor", to the point that even characters who normally go by Last-Name Basis will still call him Thor. - Wong in Doctor Strange. Strange: And you are? Wong: Wong. Strange: Wong. Just Wong? Like... Adele? Or Aristotle? Drake? Bono ? Eminem? - Gamora, Nebula and Mantis all go by a single name without any other identifier. - The roles played by Chico and Harpo Marx usually had Only One Name (Chicolini and Pinky, Fiorello and Tomasso, Tony and Stuffy, etc.), whereas Groucho's characters usually had two names and a middle initial (Rufus T. Firefly, Otis B. Driftwood, Hugo Z. Hackenbush, etc.). An exception is Animal Crackers, where Chico is "Signor Emmanuel Ravelli" and Harpo is just "The Professor". - Cain, the protagonist of More Dead Than Alive. People sometimes refer to him by his old nickname of "Killer" Cain, although he does not like this. When he first meets Monica, he gives his name as "just Cain." He then clarifies that he means "only Cain", and not that his name is "Just Cain." - Star Wars: - "Yoda" and "Chewbacca". - The Force Awakens: Neither Rey nor Finn have last names. Rey was abandoned at a young age, and has no idea who her family is until Episode IX. Finn was raised only with a number callsign as a Stormtrooper (FN-2187); Poe Dameron is the one who gives him the name Finn. - The last scene of The Rise of Skywalker has Rey give herself the surname \|\|Skywalker\|\|, though it's truly \|\|Palpatine\|\|. - Solo: Han grows up without a surname and was given one by an Imperial recruiter in order to complete the necessary paper work. He will continue to use "Solo" as his surname for the rest of his life. - According to Word of God and the Expanded Universe, Count Dooku's full name is simply "Dooku". - In Superbad, Fogell's fake ID has only "McLovin" listed as his name; Evan immediately points out how stupid that is when he sees it. - The title character in the movie Ted does not have a last name. He was named by his friend John when he was just a normal teddy bear and, despite being alive for nearly thirty years, has never bothered to adopt a surname. In the sequel, he gives himself a last name: Clubberlang. - In the Underworld (2003) series, almost all the Vampire and Lycan characters only have one name. - Yukio from The Wolverine. Given she lived in the streets, she might not even know her surname. - Aeon 14: In the 9th Millennium, surnames have fallen out of use among most of humanity and are considered archaic. People who still use them are either time-displaced like the New Canaanites (their colony ship passed through a Time Dilation effect trying to get from Kapteyn's Star to their destination of New Eden), or from some weird traditionalist society (Kylie Rhoads in the Perilous Alliance series, Sini Laaksonen in Repercussions). - In Iain M. Banks' Against a Dark Background, protagonist Sharrow, as a member of the highest level of aristocracy, has only a single name, while lower social classes have more names. - Street Urchin Fred "No-Name" in Avi's Beyond the Western Sea. - Lucretia from Bystander. At least one of the bad guys refers to her as "Bystander," rather than using her given name. - In The Cay, Timothy, an illiterate black deckhand, states that Timothy is his only name. - Pasquinel from Centennial. - Counselors and Kings doesn't give the family name for Zalathorm, nor was it in any sourcebook before D&D3.5 Shining South, nor is it known from the dynasty, since Halruaa is The Magocracy and Netyarch is not a hereditary position. As one fan reasoned: Wizards don't need surnames once they've gotten good enough at what they do. And the same goes for kings, but without the bit about being good at what they do being necessary. And seeing as Zalathorm is both... - Chiun from the Destroyer books, although he did change his name from Nuihc. - In the Diogenes Club series, Richard Jeperson's sidekick, the glamorous Vanessa. "The Man Who Got Off the Ghost Train" reveals that she was a foundling child, who knew her given name but not her surname or anything about her family; in the same story, she goes looking for her past, and \|\|doesn't find it, but settles the surname question by falling in love and getting married\|\|. - Rincewind from Discworld. Once, he says that he doesn't know whether he has a first name. (His Fourecks counterpart is named Bill Rincewind, suggesting that Rincewind is his surname.) - Everyone from the anarcho-communist planet Anarres in The Dispossessed by Ursula K. Le Guin had only one name randomly assigned by a computer. - Divergent: In Dauntless, everyone undergoes Meaningful Rename, with the main protagonist, Beatrice Prior, renaming herself "Tris". - In the Drake Maijstral series by Walter Jon Williams, this is a common practice among members of the "Diadem", an exclusive society of the most famous and popular celebrities. Drake's good friend Nichole is one, as is the actor Etienne. - In The Dresden Files novels, none of the fey have more than one name. They may have a string of titles as long as their arms, but Only One Name. (Toot-toot might be considered an exception, save that it's always hyphenated, and that is only his "public" name.) - In the Federation of the Hub stories, Pilch comes from a culture where people only have one name. - Forest Kingdom: In the Hawk & Fisher spinoff series, Hawk's only name is Hawk. As stated in Book 4 ( Wolf in the Fold): Commander Dubois: Captain Fisher can go by her given name of Isobel. That's quite a fashionable name at the moment. But we don't seem to have a given name on the files for you, Captain Hawk. Hawk: There isn't one. I'm just Hawk. Commander Dubois: You only have the one name? Hawk: I've had others. But I'm just Hawk now. - In Endo and Kobayashi Live! The Latest on Tsundere Villainess Lieselotte, commoners like Fiene don't have surnames, following pre-industrial European (and Japanese)) customs. \|\|Ceases to be this after she's been adopted by Marquis Bruno later on.\|\| - Elias the golem of Get Blank has no surname. Maybe if there was another golem named Elias. - Sara, in Girls Kingdom, lacks a surname, apparently, because she had no name at all until Sakura rescued her from the gutter and gave her that first name but never bothered to give her a las name. - Everyone in the Community in The Giver. Justified, since all of them are raised by adoptive parents assigned by the government, and have no reason to carry family names. This also prevents people from becoming too attached to their adoptive families, since familial love is one of the many emotions that society has let go of. - In the Harry Potter series, only humans have last names. Magical creatures like house-elves, goblins, centaurs and giants have only one name. - Elizabeth from The House of Night, who named herself 'Elizabeth No Last Names' because she couldn't be bothered to come up with a new last name. - Isaac Asimov's "Does a Bee Care?": Kane doesn't have a last name. - In Death series: Roarke. This is his family name; his father is named Patrick Roarke. Nora Roberts has stated that she will never, ever reveal what his given name is. - In the original Jaws novel when Chief Brody looks for Quint the shark hunter's name in the phone book all it's listed under is "Quint". - Played for Laughs in Life of Pi: the tiger who plays a major part in the story was caught by a man named Richard Parker while drinking. However, there was a mix-up with the paperwork, so legally, the tiger is named Richard Parker and his captor is officially listed as "Thirsty None Given" (i.e., no known surname). - Several characters in Sergey Lukyanenko's Line of Delirium only appear to have one name. This is justified in the case of Sedimin, the ruler of the Silicoids, as his name is synonymous with the title (the Foot of the Foundation), which he gained after becoming the ruler through Klingon Promotion. Not justified in the case of the human Emperor Grey. Nowhere in the trilogy is any other name mentioned. The Meklar also appear to only have one name, which tends to be written with an apostrophe or a slash (it's translated from machine code anyway). A Bulrathi named Ahhar is, at one point, calls himself Shivukim Ahhar, although Shivukim could be a Bulrathi title or honorific. The cyborg Andrey never reveals his last name; presumably, he feels he no longer needs one, as he is not human anymore. - Lythande: The mage Lythande is known simply as Lythande, which was a self-chosen name; Lythande's birth name is pointedly not revealed in "Sea Wrack". Maybe there were two originally, but if so they've been left behind. - Maximum Ride of er... Maximum Ride is the only human-avian to have a surname in The Angel Experiment. In School's Out — Forever, \|\|Iggy finds his family\|\| and consequently, a last name but \|\|he abandons them because they want to sell his story\|\|. - Fantine of Les Misérables never knew her parents and so doesn't have any other name. - The title character of the Montmorency books never gave himself a first name when he concocted either of his two aliases, Montmorency and Scarper. For a while, people at his club thought the former identity's first name was "Xavier", but that was from someone mishearing "savior". - The Mortal Instruments: In City of Fallen Angels , Simon asks why Kyle's name is listed as just Kyle even on his apartment door. \|\|It turns out Kyle is his surname and his first name is Jordan, which he hid so that Maia wouldn't find out.\|\| - In The Mysterious Benedict Society series, all of the Recruiters / Ten Men who work for the Big Bad Mr. Curtain go by only one name. More interesting is the case of the Executives Jackson and Jillson. As described in The Perilous Journey, "The children had never determined if the two Executives were brother and sister, boyfriend and girlfriend, or simply partners in crime. They didn't even know them by any names other than Jackson and Jillson — which could have been first names, last names, or nicknames." - In Noobtown, after dying in a car accident in our world, Jim finds himself in another one that functions like an RPG game. Still groggy, he looks at his character sheet during the creation phase and notices a weird-sounding name, so he edits it to what he can recall of his own name: "Jim". Everyone gives him grief over having just one name, since everyone else has two or three. After slaughtering most of a goblin patrol, he tells the survivor to tell the others that Jim runs the area. The goblin says he can't do that, it would sound stupid. He tries to change his name, but is told that once you enter your name during character creation, it's locked for good. And lying isn't an option since everyone can see it in their Stat-O-Vision. - Old Kingdom: Residents of the Kingdom seen or mentioned with a second name that is not obviously a nickname or epithet can be counted on the fingers of one hand, and none of them are main characters. The same applies for the Nine Bright Shiners, named Free Magic beings, and the Greater Dead. This does not apply to citizens of Ancelstierre, the Fantasy Counterpart Culture of 20th-century Britain south of the Wall. - Pendragon: - Lampshaded in one of the books, where Bobby says something to the effect of, "What is it with these people? Am I the only one with two names?" - He does it again when he goes to another territory where people only have one name. Something like, "How far along does a society have to get before they start handing out last names?" - The people on less advanced planets (Denduron, Zadaa, Eelong) have Only One Name, and on more advanced planets (Earth, Cloral, Veelox, Quillan) they have two. - Gucky (or Pucky in the translation) from Perry Rhodan is usually only called by this Nickname, unless called by rank, then the diminutive is dropped (Lt. Guck). His real name is Plofre, by the way. Just "Plofre." - Erik in The Phantom of the Opera. Given that he ran away from his Abusive Parents at an early age, it's possible even he doesn't know his last name—though a few adaptations grant him one. - Project Tau: Tau, and later Kata. - Quite a few in Ranger's Apprentice, most notably Will (until book 6/7) and Halt (until book 8). - Razorland Trilogy: Deuce, Stalker, and Tegan are all introduced with only one name for each of them. Eventually, Deuce and Tegan begin introducing themselves with their adopted family's last name. Stalker stays Stalker. - In Ready Player Two, Aech changes her legal name to Aech. No last name. Shoto follows suit. - In A Song of Ice and Fire, those born as commoners in Westeros rarely have last names, leading to many characters without them. In addition, Septons (priests) and Maesters (order of scholars) discard their family name and the High Septon (head of the clergy) discards even his given one. - In the Spaceforce novels, Jez is one of the few surviving Mixitor, a vampire-like race who were massacred in an uprising by their 'bloodservants' - and she is also a member of the noble class, which was almost completely wiped out. She doesn't use either her full name Jeziandra or her 'house' name in everyday life, and it's implied that this is because she's seeking to distance herself from her Dark and Troubled Past. - Star Wars Legends: - Speculating about their mysterious Uncle Hoole, Tash Arranda in Galaxy of Fear proposes that he only has the one name. \|\|He had two, but deliberately dropped the first after becoming The Atoner.\|\| - The Courtship of Princess Leia: Zsinj. In the Essential Atlas it's revealed this was a custom of his father's people which he went by (though his mother had "Zsinj" as her last name). - Most Yuuzhan Vong from the New Jedi Order series have both a personal name and a domain (clan or extended family) name and are referred to using both at all times (so say Nom of Domain Anor is always referred to as Nom Anor, never just Nom or Anor). There are exceptions however, mostly among the priest caste (whose domain names are rarely revealed), the Shamed Ones (who have either fallen from grace and been repudiated by their domains, or were born into Shame and were never actually part of a domain, though some Shamed Ones do use domain names as an act of defiance), and the Supreme Overlord (who upon becoming Supreme Overlord transcends his caste and domain; therefore while Supreme Overlord Shimrra comes from Domain Jamaane, he would always be referred to as Shimrra rather than Shimrra Jamaane), though there are other individual cases which are not explained. - In Lewis Carroll's Sylvie and Bruno, the title characters. Lady Muriel in fact asks, and is told no family name. - While it's played straight with the other characters, this trope is subverted with Snow White in Disney's A Tale of... books. Her surname is "White", meaning "Snow" is her given name. Instead of being this, she's actually an example of Full-Name Basis. - Hanami, the protagonist of Tasakeru. - In Jasper Fforde's Thursday Next books, the titular character's father is referred to only as "Colonel Next". It is revealed that he actually has no first name, due to having been erased from the timeline by the Chronoguard after he went rogue. - In Tolkien's Legendarium ( The Lord of the Rings, etc) most cultures have only have a given name and a patronymic (with hobbits being the main exception). Aragorn, for example, is "Aragorn, son of Arathorn". Subverted later when he names his newly-founded royal house "Telcontar", effectively making the Elvish for "Strider" his official last name. - To Shape a Dragon's Breath: The Masaquisit and Naquisit people all have a single name; unless there's a title like Aunt, Uncle, or Sachem, they are called by just that name. People are referred to as the children of their parents to distinguish them, e.g. Anequs is called the daughter of Chagoma and Aponakwe. Among the Anglish, Anequs has been given the Patronymic last name Aponakwedottir, but she doesn't like it and rejects it actively as much as possible. - "Trantor Falls" by Harry Turtledove: - In Dagobert VIII's court, he and Marshal Rodak never use any additional names. - In Gilmer I's court, he and his consort, Billye, never use any additional names. - Vorkosigan Saga: The quaddies from Falling Free, being artificial people, didn't actually have names as such, just appellations derived from their serial numbers; these ranged from the normal, like "Tony" or "Claire", through the unusual ("Silver") to the downright odd ("Pramod"). In Diplomatic Immunity, set 200 years later, it's revealed that so many quaddies wanted to name babies after these founding heroes that later generations were forced to allow duplicate names, with numerical suffixes to keep them all straight. There are over 99 people named "Leo" alone. - Waco series by J.T. Edson: The protagonist was orphaned as a baby when his family was killed in a raid by the Waco tribe, and he named himself after that. "Waco" is his full name. - In Warlocks of the Sigil, people are referred to by their name and hometown. Quinn muses how weird it will be to be Quinn of Haldon, as the distinction wasn't really needed in the academy and he was just Quinn there. - Aiel in The Wheel of Time have only one name (when announced formally, they specify their clan and sept too, though). They call non-Aiel by their full names all the time, since to them, calling someone by only part of their name is an extremely intimate gesture. - The Wicked Years: Glinda was originally this in Wicked, but Son of a Witch canonized her musical surname "Upland" as book canon as well. - Heathcliff from Wuthering Heights. His foster family the Earnshaws named him after a son of theirs who had died, but never legally adopted him, so "Heathcliff" became both first name and surname for him. - Visual Kei, full stop. Nearly every musician in the movement uses a single name (often their given name or a shortened version of it), and it's not unheard of for two (or more) different musicians to have the same stage name. This is why, when people talk about specific performers, they almost always specify which band(s) they are/were associated with; how else is someone going to know which Yuki you're talking about? - Adele. - Arianna of The Frozen Autumn. - Beck (Beck David Hansen). - Beyoncé (full name: Beyoncé Knowles, later Knowles-Carter) after Destiny's Child. - Björk. This isn't an affectation, but the normal way to address her in Iceland; like most Icelanders she doesn't have a family name, as her second name Guðmundsdóttir isn't a surname, but a Patronymic (her father's name is Guðmundur). - BoA. - Tricia Brock dropped her surname for her sophomore solo album. - Carman used this throughout his music career, mainly due to the fact his last name (Licciardello) is rather complicated to pronounce. - 70s R&B singer Charlene. - Cher. Her full name used to be Cherilyn Sarkisian, but she legally changed it to just "Cher". - Cheryl after her divorce for solo work. - Several Destruction members, most famously founding members Mike and Schmier. - Dion (his first name note : As opposed to "Céline Dion"), a singer from the 1960s, known for hits such as "Teenager in Love" (with his band Dion and the Belmonts), "Runaround Sue", "The Wanderer", and "Abraham, Martin, and John". - From the 60s, Donovan, Melanie, Melissa and Victoria. - Drake (full name Aubrey Drake Graham). He was known as Aubrey Graham as a teen actor in the Degrassi franchise, but started using just his middle name when he went into music. - Elvis is arguably a subversion — most people know who you're talking about if you just say "Elvis", but most people also know his last name (Presley). During his career, record sleeves and promotions usually just credited him as Elvis from the late 1950s onward; his movies and the actually labels of the records he released, always credited him by his full name. - Enya (Enya Patricia Brennan - originally, as she's Irish, Eithne Pádraigín Ní Bhraonáin). - Fabian, another 60s singer. - While the band is Florence + the Machine and she's still referred to as Florence Welch, starting with How Big How Blue How Beautiful the albums started to simply read "Florence" on the cover. - Gorillaz guitarist Noodle was created in a laboratory and apparently had no name at all until the other band members found her. They named her Noodle because it was the only English word she knew at the time, and she still doesn't have a surname. - Jewel (Jewel Kilcher). - Kristine, a Greek retro New Wave artist. - Liberace only used his surname. Understandable, as his first name was Wladziu. - Lizzo. - Madonna and Prince, though in both cases it's actually their real first name. - Mandia (Nantsios). - Marta Marrero, better known as "Martika". note : When she was first cast in Kids Incorporated (where she was one of the few non-Danzas), she was originally billed under her real name. - Morrissey, who uses only his surname (in full, it's Steven Patrick Morrissey). - Nena (Gabriele Susanne Kerner), of "99 Luftballons" fame. - Harry Nilsson, another singer from the 1960s, was sometimes credited as simply "Nilsson". - Noelle, vocalist for Damone and The Organ Beats, who has also released solo material using her first name only. In fact, The Organ Beats are all credited by first name on their albums. - Oliver!, whose full name was William Oliver Swofford. It was his record producer's idea for him to drop his first and last name; it was done without his consent on the record labels, and initially he was angry about it. He believed it to be "crude and contrived" to use only one name, but eventually he warmed to his professional moniker. - Pharrell Williams is near-universally known as simply "Pharrell". - Raffi. - Similar to several examples above, Rihanna is always known as just "Rihanna", but that's actually her real middle name (her full name is Robyn Rihanna Fenty). - Selena. (No, not her - albeit Ms. Gomez is named after Ms. Quintanilla) - Shakira — except at UCLA. This also extends to her character Gazelle in Zootopia. - 90's R&B princesses Shanice, Brandy, Monica, and Aaliyah. - Sia (Sia Furler). - Sirusho — her real name is Siranush Harutyunyan (well, now that she's married, it's Siranush Kocharyan). - Scottish-born electronic musician SOPHIE. - Before she achieved stardom as Jennifer Warnes, Warnes launched her career as Jennifer Warren before temporarily billing herself as simply "Jennifer" for a couple of years. - Kanye West changed his legal name to "Ye" (a longstanding nickname he'd gone with for years) in 2021. In a weird inversion compared to other examples, "Kanye West" is still treated like a professional stage moniker that his music is still released under, and it's the mononym that's treated with official legal weight. - Mexican singer Yuri (full name: Yuridia Valenzuela Canseco) - In Classical Mythology, Norse Mythology, and Egyptian Mythology, and nearly every other set of ancient stories, characters have only one name just as it was with most ancient cultures. - Arthurian Legend: Merlin, Sir Kay, Guinevere, Percival... and every character in the Arthurian myths. Arthur's father was named Uther Pendragon, the "Pendragon" being an epithet rather than a surname, and this is often mistaken for a surname by modern readers and some writers. - The Bible: Most people count, including, well, you know, "The Prince of Peace". Jesus' name was only Jesus; "Christ" is a title, derived from the Greek word kristós, "anointed". This happens so often in WWE that it's led to a meme called "The Name Goblin", who randomly steals half of a wrestler's name some time after they debut. In recent years, Big E (Langston), (Antonio) Cesaro , (Alexander) Rusev , (Adrian) Neville , Elias (Samson), Andrade (Cien Almas), (Mustafa) Ali , (Matt) Riddle , (Tommaso) Ciampa , and (Austin) Theory have all had chunks of their names lopped off after debuting. The name reduction is never explained and never acknowledged. The most popular theories are that either having one name makes them easier and/or cheaper to market somehow, and that someone high up on creative (usually Vince McMahon himself) thinks having a single name makes them sound tougher. Since taking over the wrestling side of the company in 2022 Triple H has started getting rid of the weird "Vince-isms", including this one, with Riddle and Theory getting their first names back shortly after Vince retired. - WWE women got hit by the single name trend somewhat earlier than the men did. During the Attitude Era women usually had full names, like Terri Runnels and Stacy Carter. However, by the mid-2000s the then-Divas had not only one name, but usually rather generic first names, such as Maryse, Layla, Maria, Melina, Maxine, Natalya, Emma, and Paige. Also noticeable is that the WWE fanbase has actively revolted against this, often using a Canon Name, such as names they used in developmental, to the extent that WWE has actually started using them again, as has happened with Cameron Lynn, Charlotte Flair, Naomi Knight (or not), and A.J. Lee. (In Charlotte's case, she started out using only "Charlotte", despite being acknowledged on-screen as Ric's real-life daughter.) - There's a variant where a Diva will only have a first name, but one that's in two parts, such as Summer Rae and Eva Marie. - One of the first examples of this was Goldberg. WCW acknowledged and occasionally used Goldberg's first name Bill, but he mostly went exclusively by his last name. - For both her WCW and WWE runs, Jacqueline used only her first name. She only started using Jackie Moore in TNA so she didn't have to argue with WWE over the rights to the name Jacqueline. - Parodied and subverted by Just Joe. He introduced himself as Just Joe when asked for a last name, so that's literally how he was announced during his entrances. - Dimension X's "Nightfall": None of the characters are referred to by more than one name, a change from the original. This implies everyone has only one name and that confusion between people is rare. - X Minus One: - "Nightfall": None of the characters are referred to by more than one name, a change from the original. This implies everyone has only one name and that confusion between people is rare. - "The C-Chute": This adaptation leaves out the personal names of Leblanc and the dead Polyorketes brother. Everyone else has their personal names and surnames introduced by Stuart during the Intro Dump. - Belize from Angels in America; most of the other main characters get specified middle names, for crying out loud, but not Belize. It's explained in the character page of the printed version of the script that his given name was Norman Arriaga; "Belize is a drag name that stuck." - Harry, the lead singer of True Connection, in Fangirls. A news report on his kidnapping even describes him as "the young man known to his fans simply as Harry." - William Shakespeare's plays sometimes did this to fit the setting (ancient Greece, ancient Egypt, etc.)... except when dealing with comedic characters. This was because, no matter what the setting or time period, the comedy characters would always be based on Elizabethan-era peasants—and in the Elizabethan era, people had last names. That's why, for instance, the main characters in A Midsummer Night's Dream are named simply "Demetrius", "Theseus" or "Hermia"—but the peasant caricatures putting on the play-within-a-play are named "Nick Bottom", "Tom Snout", "Peter Quince", and so on. - While Barbie has a last name ("Roberts") and even a middle name ("Millicent"), not many people even know she has a last name. - All of the Bratz characters only have first names (except for Burdine Maxwell and other characters that were created for the TV show). - Also applies to the Transformers and My Little Pony franchises mentioned in Western Animation. - Most characters in Tamagotchi have only one name, usually ending with "-tchi." There is an exception to the one-name rule, though — Makiko, for some reason, has actual first, middle, and last names (Madeleine Kirie Dotchine). - Everyone in Bayonetta and Bayonetta 2 has one name each, with the only two exceptions being Luka Redgrave and his father Antonio. - Cave Story features multiple characters with only one referred name. The list includes, but is not limited to Quote, King, Balrog and Misery. Don't get us started about many of the other NPCs. - In Chrono Cross the only people with surnames are \|\|Schala\|\| Kid \|\|Zeal\|\|, \|\|Lucca\|\| Ashtear, and (possibly) General Viper. General Viper's Japanese name is Jakotsu-Taisa (in Kanji), meaning "Snake Bone General", which implies that the character has No Name Given and "Viper" is just part of his title. \|\|Schala is royalty and her last name is the kingdom she's the princess of, so Kid being her spawn justifies her having a last name.\|\| No reason for \|\|Lucca, but no surnames were provided in Chrono Trigger, so it's not known whether it's her last name or just a nickname/title (with most fans assuming it's the former)\|\|. - Command & Conquer: - Seth and Kane. In the first briefing of the Nod campaign, Seth introduces himself as "Seth... just, 'Seth'." Likewise, the news report at the end of the GDI campaign refers to Kane as Nod's "single-named" leader. - You also have Boris. Averted, for the most part, in Red Alert 3, where every named Russian character may be only known by one name but has a full name (minus patronymic) listed in the manual. Played straight with Emperor Yoshiro and Crown Prince Tatsu, but it's typical for Japanese emperors to only have one name (e.g. Hirohito, Akihito). - Dance Central: Most of the characters only have a first name or nickname they go by. Subverted with three characters that later had their full names revealed. Oblio, whose last name is \|\|revealed to be Tan\|\|, Dare (last name Batheson), and MacCoy (real name Oleksander Macko). - Maximilian, aka Max, one of the protaginist of Dark Chronicle. The other, Monica Raybrant, averts this trope. - Most characters in the Dark Parables fit this trope, which is to be expected since they're taken from classic fairy tales. Averted by two sisters, however, whose parents' tombstones are seen in the first game and are engraved with the family name of Stewartson. - Devil May Cry: - Most characters, actually. Kalina Ann appears to be the sole exception, but it's not even clear if "Ann" is her maiden name or a middle name, or even if "Kalina" is really the rocket launcher's own name/model. The name of Dante's father, Sparda, has occasionally been used in the context of a family name (ex.) : Before the showdown with Mundus in the first game, he remarks "Again, I must face a Sparda... Strange fate, isn't it?", but whether it really is is unknown. - That said, Dante joins the ranks of given name + patronymic, with demons frequently referring to him as "Dante, Son of Sparda". Same may be said about Vergil, too. - Most NPCs in the Diablo games don't have both a first and last name. Deckard Cain, Zoltun Kulle, and Haedrig Eamon are some of the few exceptions. - It'd be easier to list the characters in that actually have surnames in Disgaea, as demons and angels generally lack such, but even most of the human characters aren't shown to have any surnames. - In the Dragon Age universe, very few non-player characters actually have last names given in-game, and most of the ones who do are nobility or at least gentry. This may be a Shout-Out to A Song of Ice and Fire, which was acknowledged as an influence on the series. - In Dragon Age: Origins, no non-PC Dalish has a last name, and only one of your companions (Zevran Arainai) has a stated surname. Alistair arguably has a surname, but it isn't used \|\|because it would be a spoiler, and because he's not interested in announcing his Royal Blood to everyone he meets.\|\| - Oghren's surname is revealed in supplemental material. He was born of House Kondrat, but changed to House Branka when his wife became a Paragon and thus founded her own noble house. \|\|Because of what she did, he's now the only surviving member of House Branka.\|\| The other characters are never given surnames; as of Dragon Age: Inquisition, Leliana is confirmed not to have one, and it's stated in Origins that she doesn't even know who her father was, so she couldn't use his name anyway. - Like Shepard of Mass Effect, Hawke of Dragon Age II is only ever addressed by his/her last name. It's because of the Hello, [Insert Name Here] aspect of character creation, but the game indicates that Hawke prefers to go by their surname. The only ones who don't call Hawke "Hawke" are, naturally, their family members. - Once again, most of the companions in this game are this trope, with the exceptions being Varric Tethras and Aveline Vallen. This fits with the note above about surnames being mostly for those of higher-status characters; Varric is part of the dwarven nobility and Aveline is of the gentry class. There's also the DLC-only companion Sebastian Vael, who again fits that note because he's a member of Starkhaven's royal family. - Fenris's former master is a politically powerful Tevinter magister named Danarius. This is the only name known for him, despite his high status in the Imperium. (According to the World of Thedas books, Danarius is actually his surname.) - The Qunari in general don't have last names. Even their first names are merely titles and can be taken away. Anyone who joins the Qun also sheds their name. Sten of Origins is the first example we meet, but there are many others. Slightly averted by the Iron Bull, who gives himself that name for his mercenary work, and explains that many Qunari have nicknames by which they address each other. \|\|He retains that identity if he leaves the Qun.\|\| - Dragon Age: Inquisition changes the standing format, as the majority of your companions now avert the trope, since now most of the companions come from noble or gentry backgrounds. The only exceptions are Cole (who is a Fade spirit impersonating a person), Sera (who is an orphaned city elf), Leliana (who still doesn't have a last name), the above-mentioned Iron Bull (who is Qunari), and Solas (who is... complicated). The game also gives a surname and even a middle name to Cullen, who appeared in both of the previous games and up to this point was an example of this trope. - Dragon Quest: - Dragon Quest IV: - In the Japanese version and the NES version's English localization, it applied to Ragnar, but no longer does in the DS remake's English localization, where he was given a last name (McRyan). - The third chapter's protagonist was just Torneko in the Japanese version and just Taloon in the NES version's localization, but this trope no longer applies to him in the DS remake, in which he's referred to as Torneko Taloon. - Dragon Quest V: Subverted with Pankraz in the English script, despite being from a series where this trope is very common. Of course, his last name (Gotha) is only mentioned when he's telling some guards who he is. - Eagle Eye Mysteries gives us minor character Sergio, who declares he is like Madonna and Cher and has no last name, when asked on one occasion. This causes another character, Silvia Torres, to suspect him in a later mystery of being a criminal and the mystery's guilty party. \|\|He's innocent.\|\| - In Evolve, Crow's real name is Khovalyg. Justified, as he's of Mongolian heritage and the etsgiin ner note : a patronymic, similar to the original style of names like Johnson is largely insignificant even in modern usage. - Final Fantasy: - Final Fantasy IV has several characters that fit this trope: Rydia, Tellah, Palom, Porom, and FuSoYa. - FuSoYa is almost certainly a compound name that is essentially two or three names with no spaces between then, both due to the camelcase and the fact that he has a brother named KluYa. - This can also be because Rydia, Tellah, Palom, and Porom are commoners, and thus do not have last names in this medieval world unlike Cecil, Rosa, Kain, Edward, Yang, and Edge (whose full name is Edward Geraldine) who are of the higher class. - In Final Fantasy VI, almost every major character has a last name. Terra Branford, Celes Chere, Kefka Palazzo, and so on. Notable exceptions would be the Esper race, who have only the one last name. Maduin, Ramuh, Shiva, etc. And also more minor playable characters such as Mog, Gogo and Umaro, as well as Shadow, which is an alias anyway. Also, most of these are not mentioned within the game itself, save the brothers Figaro (Edgar and Sabin), but are seen in the closing credits, i.e. "Cyan as Cyan Garamonde," "Terra as Terra Branford," "Relm as Relm Arrowny," etc. - Final Fantasy VII, on the other hand, gave almost EVERY character a surname (Cloud Strife, Aerith Gainsborough, etc...), though Sephiroth and his father Professor Hojo remain notable exceptions. - One character in the Compilation actually got an upgrade from this to a Meaningful Name, going from just Lazard in the Japanese version to Lazard Deusericus in the English version. Meaningful because \|\|Deusericus is the Latin rendering of Shinra (both meaning "Silken God"), hinting that Lazard is in fact the bastard son of President Shinra\|\|. - Zack didn't acquire an official last name (Fair) until he got his own game, Crisis Core. - Numerous characters like Kunsel, Tseng, Rude, Reno, Elena, Bugenhagen, Palmer, Scarlet, Nanaki, Seto, Heidigger, Elfe, Fuhito, Biggs, Wedge, Jessie and so on are known only by one name, although given the pattern of first/last name with the major human characters, it's quite possible that many of the secondary characters' last or first names simply haven't been disclosed. Jessie was named Jessie Rasberry in Final Fantasy VII Remake. - Final Fantasy X is the other extreme: No surnames in Spira! But hey, in a country where you can call your goth-child "Lulu", does it really matter? Tidus, who comes from a really BIG city hasn't got a last name either, but that's due to his name being an extreme case of "optional" (so extreme that other characters only refer to him as "You", including in the sequel). - Members of the Ronso and Guado tribes have it as a surname, some of whom are related (Seymour Guado is Jyscal Guado's son), but it is never treated as such. - Final Fantasy XII is another notable exception; fans are likely to remember lines such as "I'm Captain Basch fon Ronsenburg of Dalmasca!" and "Ashelia B'nargin Dalmasca! Just how far will you go for power? Does your lust for Nethicite consume you?" And yet, just to mix things up again, several characters, including Vaan, Penelo and Fran, don't have stated last names, even in supplementary material. (Balthier is an alias.) - The series of characters known as "Cid". Excluding the ones in the first, second, tenth, and eleventh games, most Cids have full names. There's Cid Haze ( III), Cid Pollendina ( IV), Cid Previa ( V), Cid Del Norte Marquez ( VI), Cid Highwind ( VII), Cid Kramer ( VIII), Cid Fabool IX ( IX), Cidolfas Demen Bunansa ( XII; there's also a "second" Cid present in Al-Cid Margrace), Cid Raines ( XIII), Cid nan Garlond ( XIV), and Cid Sophiar ( XV; he additionally has a granddaughter named Cidney Aurum, whose name was changed to Cindy outside of Japan). A few notable Cids from the spin-offs have their own full names too, like Cidolfus Orlandeau from Tactics. - The Final Fantasy Tactics series mixes this up a bit. Most of the major characters like Ramza, Ezel, Marche, etc. have surnames, but everyone else does not. In Final Fantasy Tactics A2, Luso Clemens is the only character (besides Ezel) who has a surname, but everyone else has only a first name or a nickname. - GreedFall: It seems that the only people who do have last names are royalty, nobility, or gentry. De Sardet is on the opposite end in that people treat them like they don't have a first name note : In effect, they don't. The game never lets you input a first name. Although Vasco zig-zags this trope, as a Naut he only has a first name, but \|\|it's revealed he was born of a noble family, and his birth name was Leandré d'Arcy\|\|. \|\|He decides to keep his Naut identity, erasing his nobile identity.\|\| - Guilty Gear: - It might be easier to list the playable characters in this series who don't abide by this rule: Sol Badguy (originally Frederick Bulsara), Ky Kiske, Millia Rage, Chipp Zanuff, Axl Low, Kliff Undersn, Anji Mito, Jam Kuradoberi, Sin \|\|Kiske\|\|, Bedman (real name: \|\|Romeo F. Neumann\|\|), Ramlethal Valentine, Elphelt Valentine, Leo Whitefang, Jack-O' Valentine, Kum Haehyun, Goldlewis Dickinson, That Man (real name: \|\|Asuka R. Kreuz\|\|), and — arguably — Happy Chaos (which is an alias he adopted during REV 2; his original name remains unknown). Justice too, on account of The Reveal (sort of) in Xrd that she's \|\|Sol's girlfriend Aria, who was given the last name Hale in materials following Xrd's release\|\|. At first, there was a pretty good balance in terms of "full names vs. only one name" but it started to go out the window from X onward and didn't begin to even out again until Xrd and -STRIVE-, not helped by a majority of characters being named after rock bands and musicians (ex. May, Testament, Slayer, I-No, Zappa, etc.) due to Author Appeal on the part of Daisuke Ishiwatari. Some of the characters who follow this naming convention (and even some who don't, such as Baiken) may instead fall under No Full Name Given, but it's yet to be clarified in-universe. - Testament is an unusual case, as they were actually adopted by Kliff (Testament is presumably the name they were given after their conversion into a Gear), meaning their surname would logically be Undersn via adoption. Despite their fondness for their father even after losing and regaining their memory, Testament's low opinion of humans prior to -STRIVE- and probable lack of legal status (on account of being a Gear) most likely explain why they never reclaimed their last name. - Since she never knew her parents, Dizzy only goes by, well, "Dizzy." Though by Overture she could arguably be called Dizzy \|\|Kiske\|\|, and later material suggests her full birth name should be something along the lines of Dizzy \|\|Hale-Bulsara\|\|. - Due to mishearing a line from the GGX Drama CD, several English-speaking players believed Johnny's last name to be Sfondi, which then circulated throughout the Western fandom. Officially, it's just Johnny, which may be an example of No Full Name Given. - The original Valentine of Overture was succeeded by three new Valentines in Xrd (Ramlethal, Elphelt, and Jack-O'). This could retroactively indicate Last-Name Basis was in play (as Valentine appears to be a Species Surname for any clones of \|\|Aria\|\|), though it's equally possible that her name was simply Valentine. - Halo: - The Master Chief is only known as John-117. The closest thing we have to a family name for him is this MIT prank claiming that he's actually John Harvard. - This sort of thing applies to every SPARTAN-II Super Soldier; because all of them were "recruited" and brainwashed by the military as children, none of them remember their family names, which were replaced by designation numbers. The only SPARTAN-II who even uses a surname is Kurt-051, who was given the last name of Ambrose as a cover when he was assigned to trained the SPARTAN-IIIs. However, expanded universe material have gradually revealed the original surnames of more and more SPARTAN-IIs: so far, we know of \|\|Kurt M. Trevelyan, Naomi Sentzke, Frederic Ellsworth, Linda Pravdin, Kelly Shaddock, Douglas Rutland, Jerome Cable, and Alice Treske\|\|. - Lower-ranking Covenant races, like Grunts and Jackals, are not officially allowed to have surnames, due to the Elites' belief that names are a privilege for only the worthy. On the other hand, the Brutes don't seem to care for surnames to begin with. All that being said, the splintering of the Covenant after Halo 3 has seemingly led to many Elite warlords relaxing the old naming restrictions, considering that a few Grunt NPCs in Halo 5: Guardians actually have official surnames. - In The Forerunner Saga, the long-dead Yprin Yprikushma is the only character in the entire trilogy to have a surname; neither the highly-advanced Forerunners nor \|\|the prehistoric remnants of the once-advanced human and San 'Shyuum civilizations\|\| seem to use them, period. - Eisen and Inori of the original Harukanaru Toki no Naka de are examples of this, for different reasons: Eisen is a monk and the emperor's half-brother, while Inori lacks a family name on the account of his low origins — justified by the fact that Kyou is based off Heian Period Japan, so those who do possess family names are either of noble origins or from our world. On the other hand, the Oni don't appear to have last names either. - Foxy, Fay and May from Harvest Town have no surnames, unlike the other NPCs in the game. Foxy is a justified example, since she's a fox-spirit, but there is no real explanation why Fay and May only goes by their first names when everyone else have surnames. - Heaven's Vault: Timor, a human, where other humans have been known to have surnames. - The Heart Pumps Clay: The witch, Mara is never given a last name. Mara's golem, Bud, doesn't have one. Crow, a Talking Animal, doesn't have a last name. - Helen's Mysterious Castle: Every named character provides only one name. - Many characters in Jade Empire have only one name and a title, and the few that do not are usually related to another NPC. For example, Kia Min, a student in Chapter 1, is the niece of a merchant in the Lotus Assassin fortress. - Almost everyone in the Jak and Daxter series, to the point that the only full names given are either All There in the Manual (Samos and Keira Hagai, though the canon-ness of this is contested) or most likely a joke (Ozmar Itchy Drawers the Third). The only ones who definitely have a last name are Gol and Maia Acheron. - Kingdom Hearts: - Kingdom Hearts, finally, allowed the Disney characters to keep their last names, but eliminated those of the Final Fantasy characters, save for Squall's surname, "Leonhart" — it becomes his first name (which was further pared down to "Leon" in the English releases). The original KH-characters themselves are surname-less, like in FFX. - Squall is still known as such by some of the other characters in the games, and it's explained that he only goes by Leon because of some sort of tragedy and will go back to using Squall when his homeworld is back to normal. Why he didn't go back to Squall in Kingdom Hearts II is another question altogether, but it's probably since his homeworld isn't back to normal yet. - Both Knights of the Old Republic games have many examples. Every Jedi Master ever given a name, Kreia, the Handmaiden's name (\|\|Brianna\|\|), the Disciple's name (\|\|Mical\|\|), Mira, Juhani, Malak, Revan, all of the Wookies, and more. - Parodied in LEGO Batman 2, where a receptionist demands Batman's and Superman's names despite them being in full costume. Batman says he's only got one name (i.e. Batman), "like Madonna." - Characters in Little Dragons Café don't have surnames. - Mass Effect averts this with everyone except for Legion, Jack, and (\|\|until he joins Clan Urdnot\|\|) Grunt. Then again, except for Ashley, Kaidan (due to both being military), Liara (due to her doctorate), and a few formal situations involving Tali, almost nobody's last name is ever mentioned. Due to limitations on the system, the player character is only ever called by his/her last name, Shepard. - Mega Man (Classic): Rock, Roll, and Blues, as well as Bass in the original generation, and Axl and the Navigators Alia, Pallette, and Layer in the Mega Man X series. The titular character is Mega Man X, and his teammate is Zero. Also most of the characters in the Mega Man Zero and Mega Man ZX series. Averted in the Archie comics, where at least Rock (and likely Roll and Blues) share the last name of Light after their creator Thomas Light. - Most named characters in Minecraft: Story Mode do not have a surname, no matter human or animal/mob. The most that some of them have going for them are epithets or titles, e.g. the \|\|Old\|\| Order of the Stone are Gabriel the Warrior, Magnus the Rogue, Ellegaard the Redstone Engineer, and Soren the Architect. The main possible exception are the YouTuber characters, since they are based on and voiced by real-life content creators, but it is never stated whether the names of the creators themselves (e.g. the "D" in LDShadowLady hints towards her initials in real life) also apply to the characters they portray. - Anne and Piko in Mitsumete Knight ; and all characters save for Christopher MacLeod in Mitsumete Knight R : Daibouken Hen. - Many, many Nintendo characters. As a rule of thumb, with few exceptions, only futuristic main characters are given full names (e.g. Samus Aran and Fox McCloud) Specific examples: - The Super Mario Bros. series is an unusual case. Originally, the characters were all intended to have only one name, but over the years several characters have implicitly gained surnames, mostly as a quirk of localization. "Toadstool" became Peach's surname when she began going by "Peach" in English, similarly, Bowser's surname is suggested to be "Koopa", his name in Japan. And then there's the question of "Mario Mario" and "Luigi Mario"; originally, it was just something made up by western sources, like the animated productions, and the movie to justify the name "Mario Bros.", but as of 2015, "Mario" was confirmed as their last name. note : The name came about in the 1983 arcade game because of Luigi originally just being a palette swap of Mario, and both of them being brothers (hence "Mario Bros."). - The Legend of Zelda: Link, Zelda, Ganondorf, just to name the central three. However, Ganondorf was given the last name "Dragmire" in the English manual for The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past, and Zelda's last name is suggested to be "Hyrule", given that the King mentioned in The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker is named Daphnes Nohansen Hyrule and her father in The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild is named Rhoam Bosphoramus Hyrule. - Donkey Kong is a major exception, "Kong" being Donkey's last name. He and Diddy are the only ones that are displayed with the full name in Super Smash Bros., too. - Older heroes like Pit ( Kid Icarus), the Popo and Nana ( Ice Climber). - Many of the other hunters mentioned in the Metroid Prime Trilogy only have one name. - Nearly every character in the Fire Emblem franchise, with a few exceptions up until Fire Emblem: Three Houses: \|\|Albein Alm Rudolf II\|\| and \|\|Anthiese Lima\|\| (aka \|\|Celica\|\|) from Gaiden and its remake Shadows of Valentia; Seliph Baldos Chalphy and Leif Faris Claus from Genealogy of the Holy War; the Reed family (Brendan, Lloyd and Linus) and Pascal Grentzer of The Blazing Blade; and Princess Elincia Ridell Crimea, Jill Fizzart, her father Shiharam Fizzart, and Sanaki Kirsch Altina of Path of Radiance. The first game's OVA also gave Marth the last name "Lowell", though this has never been confirmed in any of the games. Even Three Houses, which does give most of the cast surnames (including the commoners), still has a handful of characters who fit this trope, particularly those \|\|associated with either the Goddess or "those who slither in the dark"\|\|. - Mario's enemy King Bowser Koopa and his family, on the other hand, do have a surname (Koopa) and first names. In Japan however, Bowser's just "Daimaou Koopa", which is more of a title than a name, and each of the Koopalings has only one name (compare with the English version◊). - Everyone in Animal Crossing who isn't a tanuki. ROMSAVE.txt reveals that the DS game stores a number from 0-65535 along with each human character's name that presumably represents an index into a list of surnames, but these aren't displayed in-game. This is possibly subverted with Cyrus and his wife Reese. In the Japanese version, Re-Tail is named "R. Parkers". This suggests their surname is "Parker[s]". - Many of the main party members from the EarthBound/ Mother series have Only One Name. Jeff's is only inferred from him being the son of Dr. Andonuts. - Krystal, from the Star Fox series, lacks a surname for plot reasons. - Every character in the entire Kirby franchise has just one name, most notably Kirby, Meta Knight, and King Dedede. - Okiku, Star Apprentice: The titular Okiku. - Everyone in Onmyōji except Abe no Seimei, Minamoto no Hiromasa and Kijo Momiji, but \|\|Kagura\|\| deserves a special mention for \|\|never being addressed as Minamoto no Kagura even after the revelation that she is Hiromasa's sister\|\|. - Subverted in Open Simulator: You must give your avatar a first name and a family name. Unlike whatever Second Life had in whichever period, however, both can be chosen freely. You can halfway get around a family name by choosing "Resident" which at least some viewers blank out. - Persona: None of the Velvet Room attendants have a surname. Justified, since none of them are actually human despite their appearance. Also, in Persona 4, \|\|Teddie never adopts a surname even after gaining a human form\|\|. - PsyCard: You never learn the surname of any character, or whether they have them at all. Many of them sound like nicknames, though. - Ratchet & Clank: - "Ratchet." And that's it. Sort of justified by him not knowing his real parents. Or would that be "Everyone Calls Him Ratchet" instead? - According to Tachyon, "Ratchet" is not even his real name. - "Clank" is also an example; it was even made up on-screen. The Future trilogy, however, confirms his real name as \|\|XJ-0461\|\|) - In general, Japanese adaptations of Romance of the Three Kingdoms have a translation convention which causes this trope. To prevent same-name issues when people are on Last-Name Basis—Chinese surnames are short, often homophonous, and are relatively few—the characters' first and last names would be mashed together and treated as if it was a last name. For example, Liu Bei (Bei of the Liu family) would be call Ryuubi (not Ryuu Bi as it should be), and when Japanese etiquette requires Last-Name Basis, he would be called Ryuubi-san, rather than Ryuu-san. No, the naming convention in Ikki Tousen wasn't an invention but rather a existing convention. Additionally, these will also refer the characters by their courtesy names (a unique name given later in life according to Chinese tradition). For example, Zhuge Liang is usually referred to as "Konmin", a Japanese rendition of Kongming, Zhuge Liang's courtesy name. - Zig-zagged in Second Life: In the early days, like in Open Simulator, you had to give your avatar both names. From 2010 on, all you could pick was a first name while Linden Lab forced the family name "Resident'' upon you. Since 2020, you've been able to select a family name from a pre-defined list if you pay extra. - As a rigid game mechanic, every playable character in The Sims series must have a first and last name. However, some NPCs aren't meant to be playable and can get away with having only one name: - None of the service NPCs in The Sims have last names, such as Brigit the Maid and Freddy the Pizza Dude. - Ghosts Bernard and Mimsy who roam the Von Haunt Estate in The Sims 4 are given the last name Shallot in surrounding lore, but in-game they are simply called by their first names. If the player cheats to edit them in Create-A-Sim, both their first and last names will be completely blank. - In Sonic the Hedgehog, most of the cast only have first names and a title, "the (species name)". Exceptions include Miles "Tails" Prower, Amy Rose, and Charmy Bee. - Space Channel 5 does this. We have Ulala, Pudding, Jaguar, Purge... - S.T.A.L.K.E.R. - Shadow of Chernobyl goes further than many with this trope. Every unique character has only one name — only generic characters have two names. Granted, most unique characters are Only Known by Their Nickname, but the trope is still played straight elsewhere. - StarCraft: - The Protoss and Zerg have only one name, such as Aldaris, Tassadar, Zeratul, and Zasz. - Given that the Zerg are a Hive Mind, there's no need for names at all. The Cerebrates are the only ones who can even be called individuals in the Swarm, except for the Overmind. There can't be enough Cerebrates to warrant last names. - Tales of Arise: Dahnans, being slaves, universally only have one name. Zephyr exposes Shionne as a Renan (the people who enslaved the Dahnans) when he calls her by her full name. - Tomomi in the Tokimeki Memorial series; she's notable for being the sole case of this in the whole franchise. - Touhou Project: - Many Touhou characters, the most famous being Cirno. The vast majority are in the retconned PC-98 games though, so it could be attributed to Early-Installment Weirdness, until both Undefined Fantastic Object and Double Dealing Character added two examples each. - We also have this with Chen, who still doesn't have her last name revealed, even when Ran Yakumo and Chen come up in the same sentence, though that could have more to do with that she is probably regarded to be more like a pet. - Trick & Treat: Amelia, due to being a magical familiar, doesn't have one. - Valkyria Chronicles: - In the aftermath of the Darcsen Calamity in the series' backstory, Darcsens were stricken of their last names as part of their punishment. Thus, Darcsen units are only known by their given names (Wavy, Nadine, Zaka, etc.) Isara is an exception; while she is Darcsen by birth, she was adopted by Welkin's father, and was given his last name of "Gunther". Another exception is \|\|Cordelia de Randgrez, the princess and archduchess of Gallia, who is revealed to be a Darcsen in the end of the game\|\|. - Aliasse in Valkyria Chronicles II is notable as she lacks a surname and isn't a Darcsen. - Warcraft: - Trolls note : not internet trolls, but the original creatures from folklore, etc. supposedly only have one name, with possibly the name of their tribe added (for example Vol'jin of the Darskspear tribe), but this is contradicted by many troll NPCs having a last name. - The vast majority of draenei don't seem to have last names either. However, they seem to make up for it with titles (paladins are "Vindicator [Insert Name]," for example) and sobriquets (such as "Stormglory"). - Also the vrykul, who sometimes get titles to go with their names (Svala, the first boss of Utgarde Keep, is turned into a Valkyr and dubbed "Svala Sorrowgrave" by the Lich King). - For that matter, orcs in Warcraft lore generally only have one name. They'll identify themselves by I Am X, Son of Y, but it's supposed to be very rare for the to earn sobriquets. Sobriquets do get passed down family lines, but only upon death and only to one descendant (there's only ever one Hellscream or Doomhammer at a time), and it's possible for an orc who inherited their sobriquet to earn a different one. Still, the majority of them fall under this trope; even one of their most iconic heroes, Thrall, hasn't been given a sobriquet. - Everyone in World's Dawn has only one name. Of course, the town itself is positively tiny, and the One-Steve Limit is firmly in place, so there's no need to differentiate Bob Smith from Bob Fisher. - Xenoblade Chronicles has this as sort of a series-wide trend: - In Xenoblade Chronicles 1, this seems to be the case for most Homs and Nopon, including all those who join the party. The only party member with a last name, Melia Antiqua, is a High Entia and a princess on top of that, so her surname is actually somewhat important. A handful of NPC Homs do have last names (ex: Emmy Leater), but it's likely that there's just not a large enough Homs population for surnames to be important. - In Xenoblade Chronicles 2, nobles like Mòrag (Ladair) and Zeke (von Genbu) have last names, but commoners like Rex, Nia and Tora as well as Blades like Pyra, Brighid and Pandoria only have one. Rex is an orphan who considers his entire hometown of Fonsett Village to be his family, while Tora's family seems to follow the same lack-of-surname convention as the Nopon from Bionis. \|\|And Nia is actually a Blade, so like other Blades, she never had a last name to begin with.\|\| - Justified in Xenoblade Chronicles 3, as soldiers of Keves and Agnus are born from People Jars and have no concept of family or lineage to justify a surname (and such concepts would be actively stamped out by Moebius if they ever did spring up). The closest they get is a title relating to their combat abilities or prowess, and at least one colony doesn't even allow its inhabitants to have first names until the party liberates it. The City on the other hand somewhat averts this, as much of its population comes from one of six noble families originating from the City's founders, making family names a big deal for them, though there are still plenty of NPCs whose surnames aren't shown, even if they have them. - Most of the antagonists in Xenosaga have only one name: Margulis, Pelegri, Wilhelm, Sellers, Sergius, and Heinlein. - ZanZarah: The Hidden Portal: Everyone in Zanzarah goes by only one name, like goblin Rafi or dwarf Quinlin (if they are given a name at all). - In Beyond Bloom, characters who did not have a traditional birth do not have surnames. - The companies from Consolers, being companies, only go by the name of the company they represent like "Nintendo", "Sony" and "Sega". In the case of characters with two-word names like Square Enix, it's usually treated like a single full name in two parts rather than a first name and surname. - Dominic Deegan's father Donovan was an orphan raised by elves, and elven surnames aren't given to humans. So he took his wife's last name. - Mori of The Dragon Doctors has only one name because her family's name was destroyed with magic. She doesn't remember it and it's vanished from all documents. - El Goonish Shive: Many immortals seem to go by a single name at a time, such as Jerry and Voltaire (though this is definitely not universal, with Pandora collecting them instead). - Gunnerkrigg Court: Jones "Just Jones will do." Word of Tom confirmed that Jones is her full name. - In Homestuck, characters tend to have their full names revealed when they're introduced, and most have first and last names. There are exceptions, though. The carapacians only use titles (Parcel Mistress, Wayward Vagabond, etc.) and \|\|the cherubs only have one given name each (Calliope and Caliborn)\|\|. - Jayden and Crusader has a fair few of these: Third, Smic and Crusader. Crusader is the more interesting one, as he was called Crusader and had been called Mr. Crusader by some, until we eventually found he was called Crusader Crusader. Effectively having only one name, as first and last name is the same. - The angels in Misfile are on an Only One Name basis, probably related to how they come to exist. - Jack from Mulberry has no last name, unlike leading ladies Mulberry Sharona and Taffeta "Taffy" Sparks. The latter didn't have a last name, either, until a Sudden Name Change from "Tiff" to "Taffy". - Fred from Namesake was a generic card soldier before a half-asleep Elaine decided she needed to call him something. She made up a single syllable based on his title (the Five of Hearts -> Five-Red -> Fred). This would be a case of Only Known by Their Nickname - except, given the immense power that names have in this particular comic, being granted a name plus Elaine's wish for them to "understand each other" slowly changes him from a blank-faced watchdog into something entirely different. A couple of volumes later, Fred is an empathetic, genuinely adorable character with a growing number of human traits (including hair, blood and a fierce affection for Elaine herself). He quite literally only needed one name to become that. Efficient. - The Order of the Stick: Both Elan and Vaarsuvius lack a last name. Elan's brother and father have no known last name as well. - Pibgorn: - In Recursion, Jade, as the clone of an unnamed, long-dead individual, was never given a last name. She probably could have taken the last name of her adopted family, but for whatever reason, chose not to. - Slightly Damned: Demons generally only have one name. \|\|The only known exception is Buwaro, who takes on the surname Elexion after he learns about his adoptive father Darius Elexion.\|\| Jakkai do have two names, but the last name is actually closer to a nickname and not a surname. - The main character of Too Much Information (2005), Ace, legally has no last name. - In Yokoka's Quest, most characters have only ever used one name (Grace's bio being the exception), though a few have titles such as "of Eridanus" or "the Reaper". - Luka from Assassin School is the only one out of the main six characters without a last name. \|\|Later subverted, whereas Aubrey finds out his real name, and his — or their — native language as well.\|\| - Critical Role: - Vax'ildan, Vex'ahlia, and Keyleth all go by their first names, without a last name in sight. - Keyleth mentions in one episode that she doesn't have a last name — though one could argue she has a title instead, being Keyleth of the Air Ashari. - Vax and Vex didn't appear to have last names either... until Episode 59, which reveals their father's surname to be \|\|Vessar\|\|. As they are referred to under this name by associates of their father, it seems the twins purposely choose not to use their father's last name, likely due to their poor relationship with him. - Vex ultimately subverts it when \|\|she and Percy get married\|\|, proudly going by "Lady Vex'ahlia \|\|de Rolo\|\|". - Also, K'varn and Clarota — who are \|\|a beholder and an illithid, respectively\|\|. - In Fen Quest, everyone has only a given name. Even among knighthood and nobility that add titles and honorifics, family names don't seem to exist. - Nightmare Time: Miss Holloway is only ever referred to as Miss Holloway, we never learn her first name. Whether it's something she chooses not to share or a result of a curse that prevents her from sharing her past is unclear. - In Red vs. Blue, there are a number of dumb A.I.s (dumb in the sense of less advanced, not stupid) with only one name—Sheila the tank, Lopez the robot mechanic, and Andy the bomb. Vic is actually an example of Everyone Calls Him "Barkeep"—"VIC" stands for Virtual Intelligence Computer. The Freelancer A.I.s (\|\|and the full smart A.I. they were fragmented from\|\|) are also known by just one name, a letter from the Greek alphabet. - RWBY: - Salem doesn't have a last name. It's a sign of just how ancient she is. While her name doesn't fit the modern world's naming schemes, it was common for her time. \|\|Ozma also only has one name, and he comes from the same time period as Salem. His reincarnation, Professor Ozpin, is actually an example of Last-Name Basis; although his personal name has never been revealed or hinted at, the writers have confirmed it exists.\|\| - Neopolitan is only know by this name, a name she created for herself. Some franchise material call her Neo Politan, which causes confusion, but her name has been comfirmed to be a single word. \|\|Her real name is Trivia Vanille, but she abandoned that name a long time ago to reinvent herself as Neopolitan.\|\| - Toki is just Toki, as "Seamstress" is a last name she's given herself and same goes fro her twin sister, Doki, assuming she doesn't have her foster parents' last name. However, according to Amoridere, Brownie and Brittani do have a last name and that it's "Edwards". - In Adventures of the Galaxy Rangers, Niko doesn't use a surname, and doesn't appear to have biological family. Her mentor, Ariel, is the same. The Kiwi species (a culture of Hobbits) also appear not to use surnames. - Archer: - Avatar: The Last Airbender: - In Avatar: The Last Airbender, Toph Beifong, her father Lao, and her mother Poppy are the only characters to possess a surname. This itself isn't too far off with the traditional Asian theme of the series, in that traditionally, in East Asian cultures, family names were reserved exclusively for members of high nobility, much like the wealthy Beifong family, before common people started adopting family names for themselves. Alternatively, this may be due to the Anglicisation all of the names have undergone, which can be seen when comparing the names given to the Chinese characters occasionally used to spell them. An Ang as written, for example, is rendered as Aang when spoken, and Ai Luo becomes Iroh. In case you're wondering, yes that's probably how they made their names. - In Sequel Series The Legend of Korra, surnames are likewise rare. Toph's descendants all share her surname. Hiroshi Sato and his daughter Asami also have last names. They're rich, but not from nobility, as Hiroshi was stated to be a Self-Made Man. Pro-Bending Combat Commentator Shiro Shinobi also has one. In the last episode, we find that Varrick had been referred to on a Last-Name Basis, and his full name is "Iknik Blackstone Varrick". - CatDog: While most of the characters have full names, Cat and Dog don't have a last name. - Spoofed in an episode of Cow and Chicken. The Red Guy libels Chicken's friend Flem by accusing him of having a girl's name for a middle name, which is apparently a serious crime in this setting. As he's being taken away by the police, Flem protests, "I don't have a girl's middle name! I don't even have a last name! I'm just Flem! FLEM!" - The Crumpets: The villains Uncle Hurry and Aunt Harried don't make it clear if their names are first or last names. The original French version averts this as they're named Karl and Greta Slapète. - On Dan Vs., Dan's ID has no surname. It's also unknown if Elise took Chris' name when they married. - The Dragon Prince: Like in Avatar, there's no reference to any of the main characters having surnames. The only exceptions are the famous explorer "Sir Phineas Kirst" and Callum making up a name during a I Have This Friend story. - DuckTales (2017): Despite her status as Magica De Spell's niece, Lena is never quite referred to as "De Spell". This is likely a combination of Lena hiding said relation, not valuing her connection to the De Spell clan, and \|\|Magica not really considering Lena family\|\|. This also carries over to after she's adopted into the Sabrewing family, as the credits still only list her as "Lena". - In Ewoks, aside from the Warricks, no other characters' last names are known, implying that they don't have any. - The Fairly OddParents!: Cosmo and Wanda's full names were revealed to be Cosmo Julius Cosma (thus why his mother is always called "Mama Cosma") and Wanda Venus Fairywinkle-Cosma, respectively. note : Given what kind of series it is, however, this is may just be a gag, similar to Binky having the last name of "Abdul". - Gargoyles: - All of the gargoyles have only one name, if they have a name at all; they only adopted the practice after dealing with humans. - Fox changed her name from "Janine Renard", and Word of God says that she follows this trope both before and after her marriage, though she doesn't mind people using the "Xanatos" name when speaking about her and her husband together. - (Inspector) Gadget doesn't seem to be known by any other name other than his title/rank. - Henry and June of KaBlam! - Timon and Pumbaa from The Lion King (1994) were given last names, Berkowitz and Smith, respectively in Timon & Pumbaa. Nowadays, though, Disney pretends they weren't. The Lion King characters only have one name. - Metalocalypse: Pickles is the only member of the band to have no apparent last name. Even in situations where everyone else is referred to by their full name, he tends to only be called "Pickles," and when his relatives have shown up, they've been referred to by first-name-only as well. The closest thing he has to a last name is being frequently addressed as "Pickles the drummer." - In My Goldfish is Evil, Beanie and his mom's last names are never revealed. - My Little Pony follows roughly the same naming convention as Transformers. On the odd occasion that we get the names of multiple members of pony families, they'll share a theme, if that, with proper surnames being either unknown or unused. Friendship Is Magic has more two-part than one-part pony names, including just a few acting as surnames, but there are plenty of single-part names too, and non-ponies more often have single-part names (Spike, Discord, Zecora). - The Powerpuff Girls would logically have last names, due to being Professor Utonium's daughters, but this is rarely acknowledged in any official media. One episode of the original series has the Professor offhandedly mention that they're "Utoniums", but the girls never use their surname. The 2016 reboot had Blossom refer to herself as "Blossom Powerpuff" before Season 2 went back to "Utonium" as their surname (specifically, their long lost sister is named "Blisstina Utonium"). - Most characters in ReBoot have only one name. Of the main cast only the Matrixs (Matrices?) have last names, and Matrix wants everyone to forget he has a first name \|\|given that he's not proud of his time as Tagalong Kid Enzo\|\|. That and the fact that \|\|a backup copy of his younger self is introduced at the end of Season 3, enforcing Matrix's Last-Name Basis\|\|. - Of the main cast of Regular Show, Mordecai, Ribgy, and Skips are never given last names, even when we see into their past or family lives. Mordecai and Rigby presumably have ones, but "Skips" appears to be a true mononym (it used to be "Walks"). Hi Five Ghost doesn't have an explicit surname, but judging by the name of his relatives, "(Five) Ghost" may be a functional Species Surname. - The Simpsons: The episode "The Frying Game" includes Lou the cop telling a reporter that he and Eddie (the other cop) have no last names, "like Cher." - Steven Universe: The Gems are all only referred to by a first name with no last names. Gems with names like Rose Quartz or Lapis Lazuli are treated as having multi-part names, rather than a first and a last. There are many gems with the same name and it's debatable if these are even individual names at all or just terms for what kind of gems they are. Homeworld told them apart numerically, but besides a few mentions of nicknames, it's unknown how the Crystal Gems did back when there were enough alive to need such a thing. - Lance and Ilana of Sym-Bionic Titan initially had Only One Name (the latter might have been due to royalty), but adopted the street surname "Lunis" when they came to Earth. Octus/Newton has two names, but neither is a surname note : although since he poses as a family member of Lance and Ilana's, he might use the Lunis name as well. Most of the students of Sherman High have Only One Name, which the exception of Kimmy Meisner and Brandon Chase. - Notably inverted in the 2012 version of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, which is one of the few interpretations where the Turtles don't just have one name apiece. Instead, they all use the "Hamato" family name (due to being Splinter's adopted sons), and collectively call themselves the "Hamato Clan"—so their names are "Hamato Leonardo", "Hamato Raphael", "Hamato Donatello", and "Hamato Michelangelo". - Total Drama: - The naming conventions of the Transformers tend towards one-word names, like Dirge, Cliffjumper, or Rattrap. Two-word names such as Optimus Prime, Ultra Magnus, or Nemesis Breaker, aren't uncommon, but rarely is the second word treated as a surname—usually it's either a multi-word given name, or one word is a rank (like "Prime"). Transformers with names of three or more words are EXCEEDINGLY uncommon, and generally only in Japanese continuity. However, being robots who routinely re-use identical bodies, names, and color schemes, this is probably not a big concern. - Everybody in Winx Club, including Bloom and Roxy, who grew up on Earth and therefore should have last names. Everyone else from the Magical Dimension identifies him- or herself by the realm they're from. - To this day, there are many cultures around the world where, rather than surnames, people have patronymics. - Surnames are an invention that never really caught on in Iceland. In short, most people in Iceland are known by their given names, and they have a patronymic (or occasionally a matronymic) for disambiguation between individuals. The telephone directory is alphabetized in order of first name. For the full details, see Wikipedia's article "Icelandic name". - Patronymic and surnames do have a bit of overlap. That's where we get the surname Johnsson. But in places like Iceland, you only have that name if your father was named John. And only if you're a man. If you're a woman you gets Johnsdóttir instead. - It's quite similar in Mongolia, where family names are replaced by patronymic names. - The Tamil people of India still use a similar system. - As do countries in the Horn of Africa (Djibouti, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Somalia). - In Arab countries, traditionally, one's full name is Abu/Umm your eldest child's name your name nickname father's name grandfather's name Al clan/place/tribe name. Saudi Arabia, the Gulf countries, and a few others use this still, but when individuals spend an excessive time in the West (say for college/graduate school), they'll generally use the grandfather's name as their surname. In countries colonized by Europe where people were forced to take European style names, this pattern was also used. The same goes with countries with heavy western influences. - In Serbian history, last names were usually patronymic. For example, if a man's first name was Ivan, his children's last name would be Ivanovic. If a man was named Nemanja, his children's last name would be Nemanjic. - In Russia, where up to the 15th/16th centuries even the nobles mostly made do with bynames and patronymics, and commoners started to acquire surnames in mass only after emancipation of the serfs in the late 19th century. Before that, only those living in cities would bother with it. - Surnames didn't exist in Gaelic cultures for a long time. O' and Mc/Mac translate to "grandson of" and "son of", with female variations as needed. - Mister T was born Lawrence Tureaud, but had his name legally changed. "Mister" is now his first name. - There have been wrestlers who changed their legal names to a mononym as was an example of Loophole Abuse. WWE trademarks wrestler's names, and wrestlers are forbidden from using them once they leave the company. However, they can't ban somebody from using their actual legal name, so they legally change them in order to do so. - Having a surname is not a tradition for most ethnic groups in Indonesia (and the government doesn't force them to take one), though most people, especially in modern times, still have more than one name, albeit all being given ones. However, only one name is not unheard of, either. The country's longest-ruling president, Soeharto, for example had only one name from birth. His predecessor was actually born with two names (Koesno Sosrodihardjo), but he was later rechristened as simply Soekarno. - In Afghanistan, former presidential candidate and politician Abdullah Abdullah didn't have a surname initially; he added the extraneous name because western journalists kept pressing him for one. - In Burma, there also can be people with just one name. The Burmese Secretary General of the United Nations became known as U Thant, but U is just a honorific, like Mr. - Burmese names are not just limited to one word; modern names can usually have up to 3 or 4 syllable-words, and if the name is a bit long, some might cut down on a couple of syllables to make a shortened version or a nickname. note : Shortening a name or nicknaming isn't generally considered rude in Burma if you've acquainted decently with the person. - In Brazil, football players are usually known by a single name, which can be their given name (Neymar, Romário, Marta), a diminutive form of it (Robinho, Marquinhos, Edinho), a nickname (Pelé, Garrincha, Kaká), and more rarely a family name (Barbosa, Zagallo). A given name plus a nickname is also common, but very few players are known by their full name. - This convention isn't restricted to football in Brazil. Most volleyball players, especially men, are also known by a single name. Mononyms are less universal in basketball, but can also be found - Oscar Schmidt and Hortência Marcari, both members of the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame, are universally known in Brazil by only their first names, and after the player born Maybyner Rodney Hilário made it to the NBA, he legally changed his name to his longtime nickname of Nenê. - With Brazilian comic artists, it's even more interesting: if they have only one name (mostly one of a famous football player), they haven't made it big yet. (aside from cartoonists with slightly unusual names, like Angeli, Glauco, Henfil and Ziraldo) - An old joke revolves around this: Schwarzenegger has a long one, Richard Gere has a short one, Cher doesn't have one, and the Pope has one but never uses it. What is it? Given this article, it is obviously: a last name. - Raymond Joseph Teller from Penn & Teller legally changed his name to Teller. This has caused him some trouble with computerized systems that expect a full name, so for those purposes, he uses NFN (No Fucking Name) as a stand-in for a first name. Even his social security card reads "Unknown U. Teller". - Japanese baseball star Ichiro Suzuki is widely referred to as just "Ichiro" in both Japan and North America, although he retains his family name for legal purposes. His Japanese Wikipedia article is titled "イチロー" (romanized as Ichirō) rather than his full Japanese name of 鈴木一朗 ( Suzuki Ichirō). - Speaking of Japan, while they presently have surnames, it's worth noting that the common Japanese folk took surnames en masse in the late 1800s, nearly two millennia later than their East Asian neighbors, China and Korea, both of whom already have surnames since before the time of Christ. Until the Meiji Restoration, the only people who had surnames were those affiliated with the gentry, and this only took hold near the end of the Heian period circa 1100 CE; before then, no one had surnames. - Even today, the Japanese imperial family have no surname, a tradition that has been upheld since its creation. In Japan, calling emperors (and other royalty figures, but mostly the emperors) by their given name is considered disrespectful, so Naruhito (the current emperor) is simply called "His Imperial Majesty the Emperor"; his father Akihito, who abdicated in his son's favor in 2019, is Jōkō ("Emperor Emeritus") until his death, at which time he will become Emperor Heisei, after the era he reigned; and Hirohito is called Emperor Shōwa, after the era of his reign. Royal women who marry a commoner (which, post-1945, is everyone but their family) take her husband's surname, but they also lose their royal status, since the common men cannot marry into the imperial family. - Incidentally, this late adoption is also the reason why Japanese surnames are so much numerous and varied than Chinese and Korean surnames. Surnames in China and Korea have had two millennia to go through, during which they outnumbered each other or became extinct when they had no male heirs to inherit them (a phenomenon called the GaltonWatson process), not to mention adopting them at a time when the population was much smaller (this especially hits Korea hard). Today, China and Korea only have around 3,100 and 300 surnames surviving, respectively, whereas Japan has 100,000. - Radio talk show host "Lionel". "Mononymous, like God," he says. It isn't either of his real names, though. - Renaissance artists often fall into this. Raphael (Sanzio), Michelangelo (Buonarroti), and Rembrandt (van Rijn) are usually known by only their first names. - Leonardo plays it completely straight, being born with only one name. His de facto last name, "da Vinci", literally means "from Vinci". - Traditional Hebrews did not use last names; they would personally identify themselves with a single name (considered as a first name) and their immediate heritage. - This became a problem when turn-of-the-century Germany and Russia required first and last names in censuses. Often the families taking the census would simply spit out a common last name that they had no actual affiliation with. This is why many European Jewish families have traditional Germanic and Slavic last names. - In the same vein, when the Spanish crown exiled all of the Jews (15th/16th century), they gave them a choice: to become Catholics and stay or to keep their religion and go. Some people stayed in Spain, changed to Catholics and got new names from the first thing that came to their minds, like Flores ("flowers"), Mesa ("table"), Barriga ("belly") or Cabeza ("head"). If you have a name like this, you probably have a converso ancestor. - Among the Portuguese conversos there was a tradition to adopt plants' names as their new Christian surnames. The popular Portuguese surname Pereira ("pear tree") is but one of them. - Dido, formerly Florian Cloud de Bounevialle Armstrong. - Lights (formerly Valerie Anne Poxleitner, although she still has the last name) - Most pets and named livestock have only one name, although vets sometimes append the human owner's surname for ease of record-keeping. - Three Disney Channel actresses, Lalaine Vergara-Paras, Raven-Symoné and Zendaya Coleman, are credited as just Lalaine, Raven and Zendaya respectively. - In French-speaking countries it is a quite common phenomenon for people working in the arts and literature to use made-up names of this type, e. g. playwright Molière (born Jean-Baptiste Poquelin), writer and philosopher Voltaire (Francois-Marie Arouet), novelist Stendhal (Henri Beyle), the architect Le Corbusier (Charles-Edouard Jeanneret-Gris), actors Fernandel (Fernand Joseph Désiré Contandin), Arletty (Léonie Bathiat), Bourvil (André-Zacharie Raimbourg), Coluche (Michel Gérard Joseph Colucci), Capucine (Germaine Lefebvre) and Maïwenn (Maïwenn Le Besco), and comics artists Mbius (Jean Henri Gaston Giraud), Morris (Maurice De Bevere) and Tibet (Gilbert Gascard). - Among Franco-Belgian Comics creators there is a particular fashion to use noms-de-plume that are phonetic representations of their initials, a fashion probably started by Hergé (Georges Rémi) that includes Achdé, Peyo, Jijé, Jidéem, etc. Marvano (Marc van Oppen) is a borderline case. - Before people started making proper armies and urbanization, everyone had Only One Name. Last names were invented to stop 15 people from showing up whenever someone screamed 'Tom'; which gave us poor imaginations when it came to some of the more common last names (Tom the Baker = Tom Baker; John the Smith = John Smith; etcetera.) - And now the Welsh, due to a shortage of distinct surnames, are repeating the process, to distinguish, e.g., Tom Jones the baker from Tom Jones the singer (the latter of whom was actually born Thomas Woodward). This is a recent problem. Ancient Welsh names were easy to understand, and great for tracing their lineages and ancestry back. For example, "Llywelyn ap Gruffudd" means Llywelyn son of Gruffudd. "Senana ferch Caradog" means Senana daughter of Caradog. Anglicisation and the rise of Christianity gave birth to a naming nightmare, where families either wanted to (or were expected to) have more English names, or be named after religious figures. Sometimes the Priest would make mistakes naming the child upon christening (and no one dared to correct a man of God). The consequence of this was everyone ending up with similar names "David David" or "Thomas Thomas" creating a near-impossible task for descendants trying to trace their family trees back. - Chukchi (Russian Eskimos) traditionally have only one name, but can add Russian names for census purposes, so their Chukchi name could be considered their truest name. For example the true name of Yuri Sergeyevich Rytkheu is simply Rytkheu ("unknown" in Chukchi). He added "Yuri Sergeyevich" when Soviet officials asked him to have a Russian-style name. Other one-name Chukchi include Tenevil (herdsman who developed a crude writing system) and poetess (Antonina Alexandrovna) Kytymval. - In Western Finland, only noble and bourgeoisie families had surnames before the 19th century. Others used house names, and patronymics may have been in use in some circles. In Eastern Finland, however, surnames are a long tradition. - Ancient Greece had no surname tradition whatsoever. Aristotle, Socrates, Pericles, Alexander (the Great/of Macedon) and Leonidas I were all surnameless. After Romans conquered Greece and started importing Greek slaves, any freed Greeks had to adopt the surname of their ex-owner since they lacked any of their own. - Even then, the Romans themselves had a rather significant problem with the surnames, as they, just like Welsh, had about a dozen surnames (called "nomen gentile") for everyone, and also weren't any more imaginative with the given names either, so after they first (unsuccessfully) tried to distinguish thousands of various Gaiuses or Marcuses by their clan names, they had to adopt the special official nickname called "cognomen", and when these started to be inherited too, an another byname, the "agnomen". They'd probably soon ran out of them too, but by that time the Rome finally fell. It was so bad that most of the Emperors of the Juleo-Claudian dynasty had names that were almost exactly same: Gaius Julius Caesar <some-nickname-to-distinguish-them>. - Likewise, some rural Dutch didn't use surnames, or just used patronymic, occupation, or place names. When the French invaded, they started a census and demanded first and last names. The locals, annoyed at the conquering armies, started giving last names like Naaktgeboren ("Naked Born") and Piest ("to pee") to troll the census takers. You can still find these names in the phone books. - Most Turks had no surname before 1934, when they were required to adopt surnames as part of President Mustafa Kemal Atatürk's westernization and modernization campaign. His own last name, granted to him by the Turkish parliament, means "Father Turk". - Ditto with the Iranians, most of whom had no surname until Reza Shah laid the tradition as part of the Pahlavi dynasty's modernization program. Before then, Iranians were usually referred by their profession, familial link, or origin. Respected figures would be known with a nickname only, e.g. Jalal ad-Din Muhammad, more well-known by his epithet Rumi ("from Rome" note : The Rome referred in this is the Eastern Roman Empire, a.k.a the Byzantine Empire, where he spent most of his life). Even then, the new surnames are mostly taken from these same titles, hence why you'll see many surnames ending in -i (e.g. Tehrani "from Tehran"), -zadeh (e.g. Emamzadeh "son of Emam"), or -nezad (e.g. Farrokhnezad "son of Farrokh"). - Akoni, a Seattle theater actor. - Chaim Topol is on occasion credited only by the surname. - Many Native Americans traditionally didn't have surnames either. For some nations, their clan name was essentially the equivalent to a surname; as it was passed on hereditarily. - Junko, the mangaka responsible for Kiss Him, Not Me and multiple Yaoi Genre manga. - A rare actual example of this in a Western country: Canadian soccer player Quinn only has one name. Legally, Quinn is their last name, with no first name, as official documents show. Said player was born Rebecca Catherine Quinn, but dropped the first two names after coming out as transgender and non-binary. - Royal families often have no last name, as seen with the Japanese example above. In the event that they need a last name for some reason (such as computer systems that expect a full name), it's common to use the name of their house or dynasty as a last name, or a variation of their royal title. - The British royal family sometimes uses "Windsor" as a last name, as the current dynasty hails from the House of Windsor, and would legally become their last name if the monarchy were to be abolished (e.g. King Charles III would become known simply as Charles Windsor). Prince Harry also used the name "Harry Wales" as his full name during his military service, coming from his then-title as the Prince of Wales. - This caused issues for Constantine II, the last king of Greece. After his reign he refused to adopt a surname, which resulted in him losing his Greek citizenship in 1994 after the law was amended to make surnames mandatory. He still refused to adopt one after this happened, and for the rest of his life travelled on a Danish passport (as he was also born as a Danish prince) as "Constantino de Grecia" (literally "Constantine of Greece").	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/OnlyOneName
Only Sane Employee - TV Tropes Jack : I don't do these things just to drive you crazy, Lemon. I do them for the good of the show. Liz : Well, I'm the one who always has to clean up the mess afterward. Jack : That's why my job is way better than yours. You're the Only Sane Man (or Woman) at The Company and your job description reads, "Babysit everyone else, stay sane and, if you have any spare time, try to get some of your actual work done." Or at least it might as well be. When you have this job, it doesn't matter what you're supposed to be doing - your real job is to manage insane people. For some reason, it's down to you to keep everything from going completely off the rails. And it's quite likely to drive you insane as well. Sub-Trope of The Reliable One and Only Sane Man. Related archetypes include the Nerd Nanny, Cloudcuckoolander's Minder, Beleaguered Assistant, and Hypercompetent Sidekick. ## Examples: - The anime OAV Animation Runner Kuromi combines this with animation-industry self-parody. - Rossiu, from Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann, after the timeskip, is the only one in the Dai-Gurren Junta (with the possible exceptions of Kittan who has enough of a grasp on legal matters to point out everything wrong with Simon's Kangaroo Court and Leeron who just wants to do Science!) with any ability to run things. At all. Seriously, they're shocked by his development of standardization and law courts. It might just be because he's the only one who grasps the concept of sitting down and thinking about things, rather than just running off to blow something up. Of course, when he takes it too far, their complaints began to make sense... - Riza Hawkeye in Fullmetal Alchemist. She's constantly picking up the work left behind by her boss Mustang and telling him and the others off for not doing their work- all with a long-suffering, exasperated expression on her face. - Kureha in Sound of the Sky, especially since the first DVD extra episode established that she Never Gets Drunk. - Tenchi Muyo!: - Kiyone in Tenchi Universe. Although in her case, it's less "only sane employee" than "only sane employee in the local galactic region." (And let's face it, babysitting Mihoshi is a full-time job.) - And let's not forget that Sasami pretty much keeps the house in order and running properly within the OVA continuum. And every other continuum, to some small extent. - Negima! Magister Negi Magi: Chisame's job description: Hack computers, make snarky comments about everything around her, and keep Negi from doing something pointlessly reckless. - In Psychic Squad, Minamoto often plays this role for the good guys at BABEL, and Shiro plays this role for the antagonists at PANDRA. - In Hellsing, unlike the rest of Millennium, the Doktor has more orthodox goals, like continuing his research. He sometimes gets exasperated with his more eccentric colleagues and their antics. Considering his research will in the end benefit mankind, he is 'somewhat better than the rest of them. The fact that he's the Only Sane Employee while still being a Nazi scientist in a perpetually blood-stained lab coat says more about the rest of Millennium than it does about the Doktor. However, given he gets pretty pissed when Walter starts badmouthing them as a group, he holds some level of camaraderie among his more unstable colleagues along with being the right-hand man of the Major. - Reine in Date A Live often plays this role with the Fraxinus crew, especially when Kotori isn't around to keep the vice-commander in check. - Mina Murray in The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. She even states that she is "In charge of this menagerie." Well, when your team consists of an old opium-addicted hunter, a science-pirate, an insane, lecherous invisible guy, and a wussy doctor who can turn into a rampaging behemoth, 'menagerie' is the only word to describe it. She takes it to the point that she's the de facto leader of the group, as she's the only one normal and grounded in reality enough to actually keep them together and pointed in a relatively useful direction. - Inverted Gaston Lagaffe: Gaston is the only dysfunctional employee, but he is crazy enough to turn everyone's job into this trope. Fantasio (and later Prunelle) spends most of his time trying to get Gaston to work. And then when Gaston tries to work, he just screws it all up. - Dilbert: - The comic strip is what happens after the last sane guy quits, replaced by the biggest Cloudcuckoolander of them all. And when those who once tried to keep everything under control (Dilbert, Wally, and Alice) flat out gave up and started exploiting the system for their own personal gain. - Asok the intern would have this job; he has the right perspective and opinions to play this role, but he has no seniority and therefore nobody pays any attention to what he has to say. He shows every sign that his Only Sane Employee nature is an aspect of his inexperience, and he'll be broken of it long before he's been there long enough for anybody to listen. He has started taking lessons from Wally. - Everyone in Retail who's on the lowest rung of the corporate ladder seems to be pretty sane. Store manager or above, not so much. Subverted with Marla, however, since her promotion; she seems to be retaining her common sense, at least so far. - In the All Guardsmen Party, Jim and Hannah are the only members of the Machine Cult on board the Occurrence Border who aren't fanatical, completely out of their gourd, flat-out heretics, or some combination of the three. It's eventually made official when the Magos Juris (Mechanicus internal affairs) investigate the Occurence Border after a long story involving xenotech and threatened mutiny, and find that basically all the Mechanicus except for Jim and Hannah are idiots and remove them from the ship, placing the two in charge. - Discussed in-universe in Doing It Right This Time, when Misato muses that while she's doing something about the fact that There Are No Therapists on staff to deal with how badly messed up her Pilots are, it might be a good idea to get one for everyone else so they can add a "Designated Sane Person" to the organisational chart. - In the Discworld of A.A. Pessimal, junior graduate Assassin Ruth N'Kweze is first the student to, then later the assistant Assassin to, Johanna Smith-Rhodes. She is also Assistant Housemistress to Johanna in Raven House, making her Johanna's personal assistant on several levels. Ruth isn't above delivering snark and reality checks to her boss, and the two play out the relationship between the Disc's black and white "South Africans" in their interactions. - Only a few of the captains under Yamamoto in Please Stop Eating The Hell Butterflies are this, as the rest range from 'disturbed but do their jobs well' to 'disturbed, and they only stay on the payroll because we don't have better options/they'd go on a rampage if we didn't keep a close eye on them'. These are the Captains Ukitake and Konamura, as well as Yamamoto's Vice Captain Sasakibe. - In Stranger Than Fiction, Karen Eiffel is given a personal assistant to help her out with writer's block and make sure she finishes the book (key word: given). She does not want a personal assistant, and she does not want to be forced into finishing her book, she just wants to let it happen organically. Her publishers, on the other hand, want another book to sell. - It's unlikely the listing for the "cemetery caretaker" job in Cemetery Man mentioned having to stop the living dead from escaping the graveyard. Hell, the town doesn't even pay for the bullets. - Don't Look Up: Dr. Ogelthrope of the Planetary Defense Coordination Office is the only sane employee for the entire U.S. government! He helps Mindy and Kate from the get-go while pretty much everyone else in the Orlean administration obstructs the efforts to save the world, is a Jerkass, or both. - Jurassic Park: - In Jurassic Park, Robert Muldoon isn't arrogant like Wu, idealistic like Hammond, or selfish like Nedry; he's all too aware of the dangers of Jurassic Park and the raptors in particular. He knows they could likely never be displayed as park animals and should all be destroyed. Hammond dismisses him as an alarmist, but a lot of deaths could have been avoided if his warnings had been heeded. - The same applies in Jurassic World to Velociraptor trainers Owen Grady and Barry. While park manager Claire views the dinosaurs as assets and Hoskins wants to use the raptors and I. rex as field weapons, these two continually argue that they're living, breathing animals that have personalities and instincts, sometimes very dangerous and unpredictable ones. Yet again, a lot of death and destruction could have been prevented if the higher-ups had listened to Owen's and other trainers' warnings. - Discworld: - Pretty much the duty of the kelda in any clan of Nac Mac Feegles. - Also at Unseen University where this role is filled by Ponder Stibbons, the Archchancellor, or the Librarian, depending on what job needs doing. Rincewind is also an example, as after his running days are over, he seems to accrue any title no one else wants. (At one point, it's shown that Ponder has taken on so much extra work - which the senior wizards were happy to pass off to him — that he actually the controlling stake in running the University.) - The Bursar tried hard to be one of these before he required dried frog pills, but the Archchancellor proved a bit too much for him to handle. - Vetinari as well, not so much the only sane man, but the most sane one. An example turns up in Jingo, surrender was the most logical course for Ankh-Morpork from the very beginning, but only Vetinari is able to see it. - The Last Hero states that for any organization to survive, it needs at least one person who is this. - In Maskerade, Salzella appears to be this at first, but by the end of the book... - While we're at it we may as well give mention to Sam Vimes. As far as city employees go, he's the sanest one around. Compared to Moist Von Lipwig, Collon, Nobby, all the wizards, even Carrot. Sam always gets the job done, no matter what else is going on. One of the early books attributed this to a medical condition called being knurd; he always operates on a mental state a few drinks below sober. - In A Confederacy of Dunces, Mr. Gonzalez is the office manager of Levy Pants, who works with the manipulative Ignatius J Reilly, the senile Miss Trixie, and whose boss Mr. Levy, has no real interest in keeping the business alive, except for trying to keep Mr. Gonzalez employed. - The titular agency of * Lockwood & Co.* comprises a scatterbrained, revenge-driven young man who may only be avoiding committing Van Helsing Hate Crimes on a technicality (depending on your perspective), a slob verging on Mad Scientist territory in his spare time, a borderline Clingy Jealous Girl who doesn't even know she's verging on Clingy Jealous Girl territory...and Holly Munro, who's found herself with the unenviable job of cleaning up after all of them. Although she's only just been introduced, it's a fair bet that she will end up being this trope. - Exaggerated in "Pump Six" by Paolo Bacigalupi. Not only is the protagonist the only one at his workplace who keeps things (and the pumps processing all the waste from the city and beyond) working, it turns out \|\|he's one of the very few people left around in general who can actually get anything done when environmental pollution is turning everyone into idiots. When he goes to look for someone with more expertise than him at the university, he finds the buildings closed down and the students having sex in the streets.\|\| - In "Bandits in Your Grocer's Freezer"; - Pete is seemingly the only employee taking his job seriously; assistant manager of the market and taking care of customers and the bandits camping out. - Mary Stevenson is the market butcher and the only one at the bandit-removal brainstorming session to suggest calling the police until they finally come. - 30 Rock: - The former Trope Namer is Liz Lemon. Her day-to-day life as head writer of the Show Within the Show involves keeping two divas from killing each other, dealing with a Meddling Executive and managing the childish band of writers. However, in her private life, she's just as eccentric and misguided as the rest of the cast. - To a lesser extent, Pete is too, as he has to take care of Liz when she goes off the rails herself, as well as (apparently) dealing with the NBC pages. Although in later seasons, Pete seems to be going off the deep end himself, more so than usual. - Ally and Georgia were more or less this in Ally McBeal - though Georgia was clearly the more level-headed as Ally is completely bonkers in her personal life. This may be why Georgia was often paired with Richard in cases, trying to drive sense into a guy who was in it to make money and destroy the law as a bonus. By contrast, Ally usually worked well with John because she was the only one who understood his neuroses. - Michael Bluth from Arrested Development. Even worse, the insane people are his family, so he has to cope with them 24/7. - Dennis in Auf Wiedersehen, Pet. Usually. - Bar Rescue: - Even in the bars where Taffer can barely stand the majority of the staff, there are usually one or two employees whom he regards as being worthwhile. In a few instances, these employees are also the resident Butt Monkeys simply because everyone else is so dysfunctional that they take it out on them. Case in point: Bryan (a.k.a. "Syck"), the bouncer at O'Face (who keeps trying to talk owners into listening to what Taffer has to tell them, and ends up getting fired after the episode airs), and Cerissa, the server (who gets unjustly fired after she's physically assaulted by her own manager and returns to her job only to see the manager, whom Taffer forced the owners to fire, return to the bar after he had walked out), in "Punch-Drunk and Trailer-Trashed." - In the case of Pat's Cocktails, it was the two female bartenders who called Taffer in to help their bar, out of desperation over the combination of absentee owner and feckless manager, which was dragging the establishment down. Taffer had one of the bartenders deliberately serve nearly eighty free drinks over the course of a hour during recon to hammer home the point that the manager just didn't care what was going on. - Ted Crisp from Better Off Ted, head of R&D for Veridian Dynamics - when he's not helping Lem and Phil with their problems, he's keeping Veronica from doing something even more blackhearted than the last blackhearted thing she's done or "totally not flirting" with Linda. - Bones: - It was FBI Agent Seely Booth's job to work with the No Social Skills "squints." - Then Dr. Camille Saroyan was hired to oversee them all (including Dr. Temperance Brennan, despite what Brennan may think sometimes) so she can be this. - Clark Edison, one of the interns, also falls into this category. He prefers a professional environment, often expressing annoyance when the topic of conversation switches from investigation to the episode's side plot. Which makes it all the funnier on the rare occasion that he joins in, and the others think that his reaction is 'too much'. - Poor, poor Paul Lewiston and Carl Sack in Boston Legal. Shirley Schmidt is usually this in regards to Alan and Denny, and is the serious, sober face of Crane, Poole, and Schmidt, but seeing as how her first appearance onscreen was an innuendo-laden bit of banter with Alan Shore in the men's room, well... - Laura from The Brittas Empire. Most of the problems come from Mr. Brittas, but the other staff are plenty dysfunctional, too. - Chuck Bartowski from Chuck is the head of the Buy More's Nerd Herd tech-repair department, and while his fellow Nerd Herders tend to be the wackiest employees in the store, the other staff eagerly get swept up in their antics. Chuck is so much more competent and responsible than everyone else above and beneath him that he's effectively the Almighty Janitor, as he's the one who really keeps the Buy More running. - Daredevil (2015): Foggy Nelson is the only member of the Nelson & Murdock trio who doesn't have big secrets or an active desire to get involved in dangerous situations like Matt Murdock or Karen Page do. - Game of Thrones: - This is the role of Hand of the King. It's even lampshaded in the first episode: King Robert: Lord Eddard Stark, I would name you The Hand Of The King. Ned Stark: I'm not worthy of the honour. King Robert: I'm not trying to honour you, I'm trying to get you to run my kingdom while I eat, drink, and whore my way to an early grave! - In the books, there's an actual saying in Westeros "The King eats and the Hand takes the shit". The series renders this as the more accurate, though somewhat less poetic, "The King shits and the Hand wipes." - Tyrion and later Tywin both take this role when serving as Hand of the King for King Joffrey. Dealing with insane kings isn't particularly new for Tywin, who had previously served as the Hand for Mad King Aerys. When Tywin served for Aerys, it was the most peaceful and prosperous period in recent history, which says something. - Davos Seaworth is this for Stannis' faction, caught between his inflexibly righteous boss and his religiously fanatical co-advisor. - Lt. Fick of Generation Kill seems to be the only officer in the battalion with much interest in actually surviving the invasion of Iraq. In addition to leading his own eccentric Blood Knight platoon, he spends a large amount of time making sure the other officers don't get their platoons killed. - However, somewhat averted when you look deeper into the source material: most of the company commanders were untested in combat, and falling back on their training and what little experience they had. In fact, one company commander's assistant, who was viewed as a brown-nose by all the men in the company, actually turned out to be one of the most competent and respected commanders when he was promoted. - Glee: - Also Principal Figgins considering some of the crazy and demanding teachers he has to deal with. - Coach Beiste has fallen into this role, occasionally even realizing that she is working in an insane asylum that masquerades as a high school. - Cuddy in House. It's even lampshaded by Chase once when she goes off the rails: "Stopping the madness is her job!" "Somebody's gotta be Cuddy's Cuddy." - Trudy in House of Anubis does the actual day-to-day running of the house with no help from Victor, whose only concern is keeping his secrets secret. - Jen in The IT Crowd — in fact, the first episode has her appointed head of I.T. by the semi-sane CEO, Denholm Reynholm; despite her lack of computer knowledge, she realizes her people skills would help raise the status of the department. Some episodes play with this by having her go completely off-the-rails over something which, although apparently more 'normal' than the geeky lifestyle she is surrounded by, she goes really overboard in taking seriously, leading to Roy or even Moss having to hold the sanity ball. - Jonathan Creek: Jonathan deserves a special mention, as his day job is mentioned by name in the Real Life section below. He's also usually The Straight Man to Maddy or Carla. - Mad Men: Ken Cosgrove is one of the few people at Sterling-Cooper without some crippling character flaw or big secret. He's the only guy to complain about safety before the infamous \|\|lawnmower-meets-foot\|\| incident, and the first to call for an ambulance after. Pete has to use his wife's connections to sell a short story, and Paul's one-act play screams "Her Codename Was Mary Sue", but by season five Ken has quietly published over 20 stories under a pen name - and is embarrassed when his colleagues find out. - The Muppet Show: - Kermit the Frog, although he even subverts it: "Me not crazy? I hired the others." - Scooter is one to a lesser extent when he isn't being pressed-gang into one of Miss Piggy's schemes, often remarking on how insane their coworkers are. Sam the Eagle likes to think he's the only sane one involved in the production of the show, but he is very mistaken. - Daníel from Næturvaktin is the only regular character who can do a decent job. His boss is a dictatorial bully who offends every customer he meets, and his only co-worker is a ditz who's usually either slacking off or (incompetently) trying to make his fortune in showbiz. - With all the eccentrics on his team, Gibbs from NCIS does seem to be running a daycare centre instead of an investigation unit sometimes. - On The Office (US), the employees at Dunder-Mifflin can be grouped into "sane" and "insane", although this definition is fluid and many characters have drifted over time. Notably, many characters who started out very sane have since dove off the deep end (Jan, Ryan, and Toby, though he recovered). Some characters who are insane have flashes of sanity or at least competence (Michael, Angela, Andy, and even Dwight), and some characters are sane but helpless (Phyllis) or apathetic (Stanley, Darryl). Jim and Pam are usually portrayed as sane, though sometimes they let their flights of fancy get the better of them, and, as a recurring theme, whenever Jim finds himself in a leadership position, he is far less competent (since his worst fear is "becoming Michael"). By far the most rational, level-headed character in the office is Oscar, and in more recent seasons he has taken to pointing this out repeatedly. (He cites himself, Jim, Pam, and Toby as the "coalition of reason", and when Jim and Pam took their honeymoon, complained that the ratio of sane-to-insane employees was disrupted.) - While Oscar is often shown as having more knowledge than anyone else, the job of looking after the insane characters falls squarely on Jim's shoulders. He had to defuse Michael's and Dwight's schemes for years. The clearest example is when he goes along as they prank another company branch because left to their own devices they would have used explosives. Oscar sometimes gives background comments, but he never misses work time to do damage control. - In the final season Jim manages to trick Dwight into acting as his own Only Sane Employee. Dwight gets promoted to manager and Jim is the assistant to the manager. However, he convinced Dwight to also assume the role of the assistant to the assistant to the manager. This means that when Dwight has a crazy idea, he passes it to be implemented by Jim who passes it right back to Dwight who then realizes that it is crazy and abandons it. This works so well that by the end of the series, Dwight becomes a rather competent, reasonable, and sane manager. This plus some selective firings has the extra effect of reducing the level of crazy in the office by a massive amount. - Played with to the point of inversion in the British version, where so far as can be determined most of the employees are reasonably sane (with one or two exceptions, such as Gareth); they just happen to be managed by a deluded, egocentric Attention Whore. - Our Miss Brooks: Miss Brooks is oftentimes the only reliable person at Madison High School. Surprisingly often she is called upon to get Principal Osgood Conklin out of trouble or alternatively to stand up to his dictatorial edicts, i.e. "Blue Goldfish", "Public Property on Parade", "School on Saturday", "Wakeup Plan". Other times, she's just around to save the day for a student, i.e. "Stuffed Gopher" and "Two Way Stretch Snodgrass". - In Primeval, Captain Becker is flat-out told that this is his job description. Babysit the scientists, don't get sucked up in their insane theories, don't let them get themselves killed, and, if he has time, review the security of the base. - Scorpion: - Paige's job is to "translate" the geniuses of Scorpion to the rest of the world, but there is an unspoken assumption that she will also help them deal with the parts of the real world they find confusing/frustrating. - Cabe also qualifies, but as he is not technically an employee, but rather the one providing the jobs, he might better be described as a 'sane employer'. George: "We don't care and it shows." - A Series of Unfortunate Events (2017): Jacquelyn Scieczka is far more competent and rational than her boss, Mr. Poe (which, admittedly, isn't really a high bar to clear). Unsurprisingly, as one of the show's few non-useless adults, she's working for V.F.D. - Castiel in Supernatural often comes across as the only sane Angel in the heavenly choir. Castiel : Why won't any of you listen ?! - Ugly Betty: The titular Betty. She babysits her boss 24/7, but she often comes to rescue of everyone else in the main cast, including the ones who treat her badly, not to mention the times she saved the entire magazine. - Also the titular character of Yo soy Betty, la fea, who, while not exactly babysitting her boss, seems to have internalized that "Secretary of Presidency" actually means "make all things possible so the boss doesn't screw up his job", doing things from shielding the boss' fiancée from finding out about his sexual escapades (and distracting the exes so they don't reach the man), to actually creating a full finances plan with a healthy dose of fiscal trickery so the company doesn't go bankrupt under her boss' administration. - WWE agent Adam Pearce is seen as this in 2020. Generally a no-nonsense straight-to-the-point guy in terms of command, Pearce was tasked by his boss Vince McMahon to dress up as "Postman Pearce" to get Depraved Kids' Show Host Bray Wyatt in the Firefly Fun House to sign a contract (with McMahon proudly stating himself a fan of Wyatt's puppet sidekick Huskus the Pig). Pearce's reaction after getting a cackling Wyatt to sign the contract ("I know that I just signed a COUPLE OF DEATH WARRANTS!")? Walking out of the FFH like nothing happened! - Helluva Boss. - Among the demons in I.M.P., Moxxie seems to be the one that's the most on-track when it comes to their actual work, trying his best to keep everybody else in line and get their jobs done right, as well as struggling with his employer's rather unprofessional habit of barging in on he and Millie's life outside of work (Millie herself tends to roll with Blitzø's antics). It's a little subverted in the first episode, in which Moxxie is the one who fumbles at carrying out a hit... but this is due to him being the only one who's especially concerned with the potential innocence of their targets. So on the whole, he is very much this. It's even implied that he has heart problems due to all the insanity constantly going on around him. - Fitting for his role as Moxxie's Foil, Collin serves this role for C.H.E.R.U.B. While he may be just as much of a Punch-Clock Hero as Cletus and Keenie in doing the job of trying to knowingly get downright awful people into heaven, he does the job for the sake of trying to bring some good in the process by trying to inspire their charge to live better in what time he has and possibly use his wealth for good, and his complete lack of and visible discomfort at his co-workers' vices like Fantastic Racism and vulgar dismissiveness towards their charge cements him as this. - In hololive the woman known as Friend A ("Yuujin A", or A-chan) tends to end up depicted this way whenever she appears, as she is not an actual idol but rather support staff (and a close friend of the group's original idol Sora, hence the moniker), though one who has become popular enough in her own right to have her own avatar design. Her occasional appearances are generally in collaborations with several others as an emcee, as she does not have her own channel on YouTube. That's the "employee" part — the "only sane" part comes from the fact that the actual idols in hololive routinely get into silly shenanigans and engage in behavior that is counter to the traditional image of a pure, wholesome "seiso" Japanese idol, while she herself does not (though that doesn't mean she doesn't get affected by it sometimes). This is more pronounced in the Holo no Graffiti shorts where each members' tendencies during livestreams are put into skits and more deliberately invoked — skits where A-chan shows up usually have her act as a normal human trying to make sure the group's idols are doing well and keeping up with their work, which in the shorts is...rather rare. - The eponymous Digger ends up having to do this with, to be honest, nearly everyone she meets in this webcomic, although it's implied the Statue of Ganesh and Boneclaw Mother keep their respective flock/tribe in line. - Roy Greenhilt from The Order of the Stick. - And Redcloak as well, considering he has to ~~stop~~ keep the rest of Team Evil wasting time on games of Feed the Paladin to the Shark. - No Useful Advice Goes Unpunished, does it, Right-Eye? - Lorna Dilbrook from Newshounds, especially in the comic's first incarnation. Then again, as with Kermit above in Live-Action TV, she is the one responsible for hiring everyone else, in this case to fulfill her dream of a news show starring all housepets. - Rival Cycle's Flux in Yehuda Moon & the Kickstand Cyclery. - Tip from Skin Horse to Unity and Sweetheart. And, when Tip isn't around, Sweetheart to Unity. - Elliot from The Snail Factory. - Zoe from Cthulhu Slippers is both literally and figuratively the only sane employee at Cthulhu Corp...at least so far. Everyone else is either a psychopath, a cultist, or an Eldritch Abomination. - In the world of Girl Genius, Moloch von Zinzer is literally this. Most of the people he works with and for are Sparks, with a tendency to slip into The Madness Place. von Zinzer is an Action Survivor Deadpan Snarker and usually the one who comes up with the most simple and effective solutions - like 'cut the power to the overloading machine about to kill us all'. - This is the premise of Chad Vader, although it's highly debatable who the sane one is. - Dana from Echo Chamber has to deal with a Jerkass, a Cloudcuckoolander, and a Psycho Ex-Girlfriend (to name a few) on a regular basis. Watch Episode 3 to see just how sane she is compared to the rest of the population of Echo Chamber. - Cookie Tuesday of Learning Town. - In Agents of Cracked part of DOB's job involves being this and keeping control of Swaim. - In Final Fantasy VII: Machinabridged, Shinra consists of morons, psychopaths, moronic psychopaths, and Reeve Tuesti. Reeve: So then. On to the meeting at hand. All of you, collectively, in this first quarter of the year, have gone SEVEN. HUNDRED. Percent over budget. Now, I would LIKE to go over some things our money has been spent on, STARTING with Heidegger, our SECURITY exec. DOZENS. Of assault charges levied against you. We had to pay off judges, police, the assaultees- Heidegger: And the witnesses! Don't forget those witnesses! Reeve: Oh! How could I? Because when they don't accept our bribes? You assault them! Thus continuing what I like to call: the Assault Spiral! Now on to Scarlet, our weapons development executive- Scarlet: Baroness of Weapons Development. Reeve: My apologies. The "Baroness" of Weapons Development. You built a giant cannon. Scarlet: Why yes I did! Reeve: I heard it's very, very powerful. Top-of-the-line technology! Scarlet: I will only accept the best! Reeve: Yes! But the big problem is... it is pointing in one direction! And... it does. Not. Turn! Thus making it... useless! Scarlet: Funny... I could say the same about you several weeks ago... That's right! I had SEX WITH REEVE! Heidegger: Did he cry during that, too? Shinra Executives: [unabashed, emasculating, mocking laughter] Reeve: You seem to be laughing a lot, Palmer. As the, quote, "Executive Chief Director of Space 'Akkisition' and All the Cool Space Stuff", end quote, could you explain to me how you spend ten BILLION gil to buy, and I quote, again, TEN. SPACES? Palmer: OH! Well, that's easy. First you take both your hands, and you make a telescope out of them! And then! What you see in the night sky there? That's one space! And then! You take one billion gil — which is how much one space costs, by the way — And then! You toss it into a fire! [music comes to a dead stop] And the smoke delivers the payment to space! And that's how ya buy space! Shinra Executives: [a moment of uncomprehending silence] President Shinra: Reeve. I would like the space program budget to go through you from now on. Reeve: Thank you, sir! Palmer: AAAAAAHHH! BUT I WANNA GO TO SPAAACE! I WANNA I WANNA I WANNA I WANNA I WANNA!!! President Shinra: Fine! Cousin Palmer. You will go to space eventually. Palmer: AAAH! YAAAAY! SPAAAACE! I just- e-ever since I was a child I wanted to go to- Barret: [eavesdropping] These are the people who have been beating us. - Edd (Double-D) from Ed, Edd n Eddy is the only one capable of making the Eds' schemes even come close to working. Ed is a complete moron and Eddy is a greedy self-serving jerk; Double-D has to pick up all of the slack as a result. Even then, Failure Is the Only Option when one of Ed or Eddy's many Fatal Flaws come into play. - Charles Foster Ofdensen in Metalocalypse is what happens when a Liz Lemon takes a level in Badass. He and the band have both stated that it is understood, if not directly outlined in his job description, that part of his job is to talk them out of bad ideas they think of when they're drunk (not that they can't think of bad ideas when they're sober), meaning that this trope is almost his literal job description. Further evidenced in the opening episode of Season 3, in which the band almost goes bankrupt due to spending money too recklessly in his absence. - Hank Hill in King of the Hill is the only reason that Strickland Propane is still in business, especially in the later seasons as his co-workers grew more quirky. Business owner Buck Strickland is a Karma Houdini simply because Hank pulls him out of trouble at every opportunity when Buck's vices catch up with him. It's deconstructed in that Buck is acutely aware that Hank's misplaced loyalty is the only reason why his company stays in business; whenever Buck becomes more hands-on, he screws everything up. Buck has come close to firing Hank a few times but never does because that would kill his "golden goose" and send him into bankruptcy. - Sane isn't really the best word to describe her, but Heloise on Jimmy Two-Shoes greatly overcompensates for her boss Lucius' incompetence at ensuring Misery Inc. makes people miserable. When she got fired in a Season 1 episode, Lucius quickly learns he cannot control any of her misery-making inventions, and everything falls apart. - Lana Kane of Archer, especially in the later seasons. Everyone else is either too self-serving, too insane, or both to actually get into the business of saving the world. Archer especially is such a womanizer and an incompetent buffoon that Lana is the only reason Archer's feet are pulled from the proverbial fire more than once. - Bob Belcher from Bob's Burgers is the Only Sane Man to his family (and the rest of the cast) so by extension, he's this trope to the titular family business as well. - The Simpsons - Waylon Smithers is pretty much the only person at the Springfield Nuclear Power Plant who actually knows what he's doing. Several episodes show that Homer is just the worst of an extremely stupid and incompetent workforce. A few episodes have portrayed Smithers as quietly arranging for this to be the case to keep the owner (Burns) completely dependent on him. - Frank Grimes from the episode "Homer's Enemy" is also this, \|\|though not for long, since he dies in the same episode that he's introduced\|\|. Although with the addition of Smithers, he's technically the second sane employee. - Isoroku Yamamoto was very much this in the Japanese naval staff before WWII. He was the only Japanese admiral who had any idea of British and American national character and industrial might, and warned seriously not getting into war with the Americans as it would end in the complete annihilation of Japan. - Inverted with emperor Hirohito who was the only sane boss to call for peace in August 1945. Two Japanese cities had been just nuked, its Army had been annihilated, its Navy had been destroyed, there was absolutely no hope of winning the war and Japan was suffering from famine - the military still wanted to continue the war. - In more recent years, Keiji Inafune seemed to serve this role for Capcom, being quite possibly the only employee there who both wanted to do something other than Capcom Sequel Stagnation and had the ability and clout to do so. (In fact, Lost Planet and Dead Rising were facing cancellation more or less for not being a sequel, so Inafune intentionally made their "demos" go way over budget for the sole purpose of being able to say "we've poured all this money into it, why cancel it now?") Then he resigned from Capcom because he didn't want to spend the rest of his career making half-baked sequels. In no time flat, Capcom made a series of questionable decisions, each of which managed to annoy fans more than the last, culminating in a massive counterattack in response to the cancellation of Mega Man Legends 3.	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/OnlySaneEmployee
Only Sane by Comparison - TV Tropes Fiona: How do you know this guy who hired you? Michael: We worked together in the Balkans, '91-'92. It was a crazy time. He seemed somewhat sane in comparison. Fiona: And now he kills people for a living. In any group of weird and crazy individuals, the Only Sane Man is usually a necessary inclusion to stop the rest from self-destructing. Trouble is, sometimes you have a group that is so crazy that candidates for the position are a bit sparse, and you end up with someone who isn't really that sane themselves. The simple fact of the matter is they aren't simply cynical or eccentric, they are seriously flawed to point of impairment. Maybe they're incredibly stupid, maybe they're emotionally unstable, maybe they're flat-out sadistic and malicious, or maybe they're quite simply nuts in their own right. The issue being that despite all the odds they still also happen to be the only rational, sensible, intelligent, and/or reasonable person in the cast (if only, as is most often the case, by comparison). Always a case of Closest Thing We Got and usually Played for Laughs, this trope is most often used to demonstrate just how low the levels of competence and sanity for the group (and sometimes the situation) really are. The key point is that in any other situation or group they wouldn't have any claim to being the only sane man. Compare with Not So Above It All, where characters will spend most of the narrative presented as sensible and rational whilst having quirks and flaws of their own, and only have occasional moments showing themselves to not be above the insanity after all. To qualify for this trope, the character's flaws and issues have to be at the forefront and extreme enough that in any other circumstance, you could never believe they would qualify for the voice of reason. Flanderization and Character Development can respectively turn one into the other. Also compare Sanity Ball when someone takes on the role of Sane Man temporarily as the narrative needs one. Contrast Dumbass Has a Point, when someone who isn't usually the Sane Man makes a valid argument; and O.O.C. Is Serious Business when the situation simply gets so extreme that it forces someone who is not the voice of reason to take up the role. See also Normal Fish in a Tiny Pond, where an average character only seems above average because of where they are. ## Examples: - Azumanga Daioh: While Koyomi Mizuhara has a mean spirited sense of humor (As shown when she gave Osaka hiccups by feeding her some spicy food) and can sometimes be short-tempered when dealing with Tomo's antics, she is, for the most part, the sanest of the main group. - Bungo Stray Dogs: - In the Fifteen arc, Chuuya is a Blood Knight whose goal is to murder the Port Mafia members, but he still has morals and a sense of right and wrong. In comparison, Dazai is much less sane; while he isn't as overtly unstable, he's extremely ruthless and sociopathic. He giggles as he repeatedly shoots a corpse after delivering a Mercy Kill, and manipulates events to force Chuuya into joining the mafia by turning the boy's friends against him while also using them as hostages— all for the sake of humiliating Chuuya. - Verlaine is arguably less sane than Rimbaud, but by a thinner margin than one might expect. On their mission to capture the seven-year-old Chuuya, Rimbaud had been perfectly fine handing the boy over \|\|to be experimented on\|\| as he did not consider him a human like Verlaine despite them both being \|\|clones\|\|, leading to a fight when he decided to set Chuuya free. However, without Rimbaud to make him feel human, Verlaine's \|\|Cloning Blues\|\| cause him to snap and attempt to murder everyone close to Chuuya. \|\|He gets better\|\|. - Danganronpa 3: The End of Hope's Peak High School: Nagito is known by his class for being a Cloudcuckoolander at best and a deranged terrorist at worst. After being brainwashed, the students use their talents to destroy the world, believing what they're doing is right. In contrast, Nagito's personality is mostly the same and he knows he is Ultimate Despair, though his deeds are far less horrific than those of his peers. - Delicious in Dungeon: Marcille is neurotic, skittish, and secretly specializes in The Dark Arts, and Chilchuck is snarky, blunt, and claims to be Only in It for the Money... but compared to Laios and Senshi's obsession with eating the dungeon monsters— and the crackpot plans in service of said obsession— they're pretty normal. - Dragon Ball Z - Vegeta seems to believe he's the only sane man around Goku and his sons. Like him refusing to do the Fusion Dance because it's unfitting to a warrior, chewing out Gohan for not keeping up with his training during times of peace, and yelling when Goku has one of his goofy moments. He may have a point, if his Blood Knight tendencies weren't worse than Goku's, which leads him to do stupid things. - Chi-Chi is portrayed as very hysterical and irrational due to her Skewed Priorities and her Education Mama tendencies. However, she is the main one who understandably points out how Gohan is too young to be fighting and that he shouldn't be too focused on saving the world as a little boy. She also seems to be the only one that realizes that Heroism Won't Pay the Bills, which is what motivated her to push Goku into farming so he can make a living out of his skills in Dragonball Super. - Durarara!!: Exaggerated. No one is sane in this series, but some are definitely saner than others given the cast includes multiple people obsessed with a headless fairy (some prefer the head, some prefer the body), knife-wielding love zombies, and more. Mikado initially seems to be the only normal person around, \|\|but he also founded a gang online because he was bored and undergoes Sanity Slippage until he becomes suicidal\|\|. Celty - the aforementioned headless fairy - is more consistently portrayed as the sane one, but she is still an entirely inhuman being who's suggested to act the way she does only because of her missing head. - Fullmetal Alchemist: The homunculi are Ax-Crazy psychos with a myriad of individual issues. Gluttony is stupid and eats people, Sloth is similarly dim-witted, Envy is an Attention Whore, Pride is immensely cruel and Lust likes killing people. Greed, however, cares for his property (friends) and \|\|is the only homunculus not part of a giant conspiracy to destroy Amestris\|\|. Wrath \|\|is evil, unlike Greed, but also highly intelligent and able to keep his cool, never hinting at his true allegiance or indulging his rage during his entire career as the Führer\|\|. - Girlfriend, Girlfriend: Shino Kiryuu is relatively the sanest character in the story, but not by much. She called out Naoya on pretty much everything, from pushing Saki into accepting his proposal, to calling out all the legal problems a threesome relationship would have. She is also quick to call everyone else out on their insane naivete as well. However, while she doesn't exactly approve of the poly relationship, she still takes advantage of it because she feels it's the only way she can get romantically close to Naoya, she lies about any attempt she makes to Saki, and there have been plenty of occasions that show she's trying to catch his attention (like deciding to stay at his house or wearing lingerie during her designated sleep with him). - Played for laughs in Kengan Ashura's Yonkoma strips, when Hayami's primary fighters, Ren Nikaido and Julius Reinhold, complain about each other's lack of attire while Meguro snidely remarks that they're both perverts. Hayami realizes with consternation that the Ax-Crazy Meguro is the most "normal" of the three, at least in that particular instance. - In Konosuba, Kazuma is the most generally functional member of his party, but when the other members consist of a crusader who seems to only enter battle for weird sex reasons, a mage who refuses to cast any spell except one that knocks her out immediately afterward, and a priestess who is just profoundly stupid in general, this is a low bar. Kazuma himself is also stupid, lazy, perverted, egotistic, and prone to getting himself killed; he's just not as bad as his compatriots, which regularly shows whenever he has to interact with someone outside his circle. - One Piece: Nami and Nico Robin are by far the sanest members of the Strawhat crew. This is not a great achievement. - Batman: Batman's Rogues Gallery is notorious for the majority of its members suffering from some variation of insanity or other, to the point that even amongst other DC villains they're generally regarded as the crazies. However, some of them are so far over the line that they have this effect on the other members, as demonstrated during their frequent team-ups and interactions. The most notable example is the The Joker with his sheer homicidal mania and sadism being too much even for their standards, but others who provoke this effect include Firefly (in one memorable incident his partnership with Killer Moth ended with Moth seriously fearing for his life after getting a good look at just how insane Firefly really was), The Mad Hatter and Professor Pyg. - Batman himself is this for his rogue gallery. He dresses up as a bat to fight crime as a response to the trauma of losing his parents, is not really a good father but he's still fighting for good and justice - In Sam & Max Sam serves as the straight man of the duo who reins in Max's worst urges... but Sam is also a trigger-happy vigilante who sees Max's violent and sociopathic tendencies as mildly irritating at best (in that they're getting in the way of doing something, not that he's being violent) and adorable character quirks at worst. - Suicide Squad: A psychiatrist once noted that Captain Boomerang is technically the most well-adjusted member of the Squad since he's the only one who is fully comfortable with who he is. Unfortunately, he's a thrill-seeking sociopath who absolutely no one likes because he's a massive asshole and proud of it. - Supergod: Jerry Craven lives in a fantasy where he's in Heaven and goes back to Earth to help the government when really they brought him back to life as a cyborg against his will after he died. Nonetheless, he's the only Supergod to treat humans with respect and compassion rather than apathetically killing them by the thousands. He's also the only one who recognizes that fighting Krishna will only cause massive civilian casualties and should be avoided at all costs. - Bloodedge of Fairy Tail: Ragna notes that despite having more common sense than most of Fairy Tail, Lucy's fixation on her appearance and becoming a prominent member (having unintentionally implied a desire to be just as destructive as the rest) means in several ways she's just as quirky as her new guildmates. - Rick and The Loud House: While Rick himself isnt the sanest or moral person around, he isnt afraid to scold his granddaughters on their more problematic behaviors or aspects of their relationship with Lincoln, such as assuming his bully likes him because said bully a girl. - The Big Lebowski: The Dude is an incredibly lazy, somewhat eccentric, stubborn, and almost perpetually stoned slacker, but he's the only character in the film who is even close to lucid enough to comprehend the world around him, and he generally spends his time having to play the voice of reason to the various lunatics and idiots that surround him. - Cold Turkey: Mayor Wappler is the town council member least prone to lining his own pockets or bolstering his own ego instead of focusing on the town, bullying people who are reluctant to stop smoking, or making unreasonable demands for the prize money. He's still overly excitable, does allow in the media luster some, and deals with his difficulties with going cold turkey by seeing a prostitute. - In Mars Attacks!, General Decker is a hot-tempered and violent General Ripper who thinks the Martians are a threat and should be exterminated from the beginning... and yet he was the only character who was 100% right all along about the Martians. - MonsterVerse: - Admiral William Stenz is a calm and collected military officer who at least tries to listen to the experts he's provided, but he's also all but blinded by his narrow-mindedness to the idea that humans coexisting with the Titans is mankind's best chance at survival and tends to be too focused on neutralizing the immediate Titan threat to recognize that the military's methods for attempting to kill them are very likely to only make things go From Bad to Worse. That being said, after what we saw of Stenz in Godzilla (2014), he comes off as comparatively more open to reason than the other U.S. government figures such as Senator Williams in Godzilla: King of the Monsters (2019), who lack Stenz's respect for Monarch's top brass and are pretty much looking for any excuse to take over Monarch and fall back on Gotta Kill 'Em All. - Also in King of the Monsters, one of Ghidorah's three heads has this comparative to the other two. Ichi (the middle head) appears to be the most intelligent of the three, and he has quicker reactions than the other two when they notice a change in development. That being said, he also appears to be the most sadistic of the three if his more-frequent Slasher Smiles and attack on \|\|Dr. Graham\|\| are any indication; furthermore, if just one of the heads can be held responsible for Ghidorah's Evil Plan to reshape the Earth and wipe out the majority of life on it, it'd be Ichi as the trio's leader. - Godzilla vs. Kong: - Reservoir Dogs: Mr. Pink, despite being a neurotic robber, a jerkish coward, and racist towards black people, fulfills this in comparison to his colleagues and supervisors. Throughout the movie he is the only one who tries to calm down the estranged group as they argue about who the traitor is, reminding them that they are supposed to be professionals and to focus on the situation at hand. While he fails to stop the situation from escalating this is why \|\|only he survives the end of the story, whereas everyone else (including the traitor) dies\|\|. He still gets caught by the Police though. - Alice in Wonderland: The titular Alice is a strange little girl in her own right— prone to talking to herself, believing she might have become someone other than herself, coming up with creepy scenarios to play pretend around among other things— but among the wacky denizens of Wonderland, she becomes the Only Sane Woman by default. - Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Compared to Rodrick (who's illiterate and thinks bacon comes from pigs the way you get eggs from a chicken), his rather useless and oblivious parents, and Manny (who is very bratty and spoiled), Greg can come across as a reasonably normal child. He still regularly does impulsive and foolish things (i.e. not trying to explain himself, putting his socks on over his shoes, and having weird ideas about the world around him, such as thinking houseflies are spy drones). - Discworld: In Ankh-Morpork, the Canting Crew is a recurring group of Crazy Homeless People, with the least crazy among them being The Duck Man, who behaves almost normally, is fairly intelligent, and certainly more able to make good decisions than the rest of the crew... but has a duck riding on top of his head that has been there for years and that he will not acknowledge the existence of. - Owen Underhill from Dreamcatcher is a Reluctant Psycho Sociopathic Soldier who takes sexual pleasure in violence and death, but he's the only one to question the insanity going on around him, which include alien monsters bursting out of people's butts, a guy taking a psychic phone call on a gun, and his unhinged superior Kurtz's moronically bloodthirsty orders. - Flashman: Harry Flashman, supposedly a glorious Victorian military hero of the British Empire, is in reality a bullying, lecherous, backstabbing racist, misogynistic coward who kisses up to superiors and exploits everyone below him. However, compared to the sheer number of Upper Class Twits, incompetents and/or bloodthirsty senior figures that make up the British Army of the 19th century (or for that matter most of the world's armies), Flashman more often than not comes across as far more sane than he has any right to. Likewise while a self-admitted scoundrel (at least in private) and murderer, he's also usually the only one to be visibly disgusted by the needless loss of life or pointless cruelty that every side involved in the wars he takes part in is guilty of. - The Magicians: - Alice seems to be the one member of the Physical Kids who can act sensibly and isn't somehow horribly dysfunctional - at least compared to Quentin's Manchild tendencies, Eliot's alcoholism, Josh's Sad Clown antics, and Janet's nature as an Alpha Bitch. However, you don't get into Brakebills without being obsessive to the point of insanity. Alice is just a lot more self-aware about her issues, having seen her own parents go off the deep end. Among other things, she's one of only two students who participate in Mayakovsky's Ultimate Final Exam - a naked walk to the South Pole - and actually refuses to use the correct technique to do so, instead deliberately botching a spell in a way that'll burn her alive if she makes a mistake. \|\|Later, she's the first to take the journey into the Neitherlands, a course of action that could best be described as "ill-advised - and that's before she sucker-punches Quentin in the face.\|\| - In The Magician King, Julia seems to be one of the few sensible members of the Murs coven, in the sense that she hasn't descended into highly-dangerous Mad Scientist tendencies and thinks that the group's ultimate goal of \|\|summoning a goddess for the sake of truth and happiness\|\| might be a bad idea. However, Julia isn't without her own eccentricities: ever since she failed the Brakebills Incomprehensible Entrance Exam, she's suffered from crippling depression and has been obsessing over magic to the point of abandoning all her prospects, refusing all her college offers, and descending into the magical underground \|\|where she actually traded sex for magical knowledge.\|\| - Numero Zero: Maia Fresia is an eccentric young journalist with somewhat childlike mannerisms and a penchant for randomly blurting out her thoughts, to the point where it's speculated by her co-workers she might have an undiagnosed development disorder. However, compared to her colleagues, who are a bunch of unscrupulous swindlers (plus one crazy Conspiracy Theorist), she appears very rational and level-headed, not to mention quick-witted and sharp. - Sharp Objects: Camille Preaker is the Token Good Teammate of the Preaker-Crellin family, as well as the most normal and relatable of the lot. She's also an alcoholic, a self-harmer, a Jaded Washout, and a completely self-destructive cynic who isn't even very good at her job of being an reporter. However, her mother is an abusive monster \|\|who's been poisoning her children for decades\|\|, her little sister Amma is a Fille Fatale, horrifyingly Barbaric Bully \|\|and a Serial Killer\|\|, and her stepfather Alan enables them both. Camille is at least genuinely trying to do better, tries to protect Amma from their mother, and is acutely aware of her own shortcomings. - Pelagia and the Red Rooster: Emmanuel (aka Manuila) is a a quirky religious prophet with peculiar speech mannerisms. However, compared to the others who are either religious extremists of various sorts (such as the fanatical Russian Orthodox Pobedin) or just plain weirdos (such as a bunch of Camp Gays who rebuilt and inhabited the biblical Sodom, and are planning to rebuild Gomorrah for lesbian women), Emmanuel appears one of the most sane, not to mention kind-hearted. - Brooklyn Nine-Nine: Overall downplayed, but for all his goofiness, childishness and immaturity, Jake Peralta takes the role of the voice of reason a lot more often than you'd think (which might give you some idea about the general level of sanity operating within the Nine-Nine). Sure, he has some slightly strange ideas about the world, some gaps in his knowledge base and he's riddled with daddy issues, but he's in many ways a lot less eccentric and a lot more down-to-earth than several of his co-workers, lacking Holt's robotic stoicism, Amy's dorky neuroses, Charles's being Creepy Good, Rosa's aggressive lack of social skills, Gina's all-consuming narcissism, Terry's insecurity and Scully and Hitchcock's sheer dimwittedness. - Burn Notice: This is how Michael Weston describes his original relationship with his Evil Mentor Larry Sizemore. Initially Michael couldn't see that beneath his charm and willingness to take Michael under his wing, Larry was an utterly amoral and ruthless killer. Only time, distance, and no longer comparing Larry to the craziness of his childhood (Michael grew up with an incredibly abusive father and joined the Army to escape an alternative of life on the street) or the chaos of The Yugoslav Wars let Michael see Larry for what he really was. - Community: - Jeff Winger is proud of being in his own mind, the Only Sane Man of Greendale and the study group. Though his friends (particularly Britta) occasionally take the opportunity to remind him that he's in many ways more messed up than them, being a Narcissistic washed-up Amoral Attorney with daddy issues and a long list of insecurities. - In Season 6, Frankie Dart is introduced as Greendale's voice of reason. She immediately pins down each of the Study Group's idiosyncracies, even Abed, and gets the campus to run like an actual community college—something that makes the Study Group want to get rid of her. When she quits, she realizes that she is this trope when reciting a speech that got her into Greendale only gets her labeled a crazy person herself. After this and an apology from Jeff and Abed, she returns to Greendale and basically takes the role of the one who gets Greendale through whatever wacky, zany scheme they're in with as little damage as possible. - Everything's Gonna Be Okay: Genevieve Moss's struggles to deal with her father's recent death, coupled with severe teen angst, causes her to act out in bizarre and often incredibly stupid ways— such as pretending to get high on her dad's heart medication because she let friends Tellulah and Barb talk her into taking it, or allowing Tellulah to enlist her in a scheme to solicit dick pics from a boy in exchange for a supposed picture of Tellulah's vulva (that was actually just a random picture they got off of the Internet). Nevertheless, she still comes across as the most level-headed and normal of the Moss siblings, compared to the immature, self-absorbed Nicholas (who once almost got dumped after thinking it would be a great idea to pour ceviche on his boyfriend's head) and autistic Matilda (who tried to arrange a threesome with two of her fellow autistic students, despite none of them knowing how to actually conduct a threesome). - The Falcon and the Winter Soldier: Downplayed, as the overall cast is relatively sane, or have reasonable excuses for their actions, but nevertheless Sam's most reliable ally (in the loosest sense of the word "allies") is Baron Helmut Zemo, the villain from Captain America: Civil War who is obsessed with vengeance and wants to ensure there are no more super soldiers (be they superheroes or villains)... mainly since his other allies consist of Bucky, a traumatized hundred-year-old cyborg who has a ton of issues that he projects onto Sam, Sharon Carter, an unpleasant and cynical criminal \|\|who turns out to have been Evil All Along\|\|, John Walker, Steve Rogers' mentally unstable Sucksessor, and Lemar Hoskins, who's far more loyal to Walker and the government than Sam. Unlike the others, Zemo never comes to blows with Sam outside of a minor argument, doesn't cause that many problems, and does everything he can to help them before turning himself in after doing everything that was asked of him. - Farscape: - Compared to the explosively foul-tempered D'Argo, greedy ex-dominar Rygel, mercurial Chiana, and the increasingly eccentric Crichton, Pa'u Zhaan is easily the calmest and most reasonable member of Moya's crew; as such, she can often be relied on to mediate when on-board sanity drops to lower levels than usual. Unfortunately, Zhaan has a dark side that can drive her to extremes of hatred, rage, paranoia, and extreme selfishness, and though she does her best to keep it in check, her control occasionally slips. - John Crichton arguably counts as a deconstruction of this: initially, he's a classic case of Only Sane Man, considering violence a last resort and always trying to make peace; in fact, the only reason why he's considered crazy is due to his habit of making references to human pop culture. However, being stranded in deep space, surrounded by violence-prone fugitives, getting regularly traumatized, being constantly hunted down by an insane military commander and trying to be a reasonable man gradually wears on Crichton's sanity. Over time, he begins demonstrating greater and greater eccentricities until he's barely a few steps removed from a psychotic episode... and yet, he's still trying to be the most reasonable member of the crew apart from Zhaan. In one episode, when the Monster of the Week drives the crew insane with paranoia, Crichton is only able to get the situation under control by going even crazier than all the others! - Father Ted: Father Ted Crilly is a somewhat smug, legitimately corrupt, selfish man who spends the series constantly trying to cheat and scheme his way out of work or into fame and fortune and who is only really smart in comparison to the incredibly low standards of Craggy Island; he is also heavily implied to be a gambling addict and is overall a disinterested, unsuitable priest. However, compared to the childish, incredibly stupid and outright strange Father Dougal McGuire; the foul-mouthed, hot tempered, lecherous, borderline subhuman and utterly insane Father Jack Hackett (who even in flashbacks to when he was sober and lucid was terrifying, abusive and sadistic); and the neurotic, tea- and housework-obsessed (to the point of staying up every night for two years straight in case anyone wanted a cup of tea despite none of them ever doing so), passive-aggressive Mrs Doyle, as well as all the other nutty inhabitants of the island, Ted usually comes across as the only (slightly) competent and rational person, and is generally the closest thing the series has to a normal person. - Frasier: Dr. Frasier Crane is this In-Universe, an esteemed radio psychiatrist who many people look to for guidance in their personal lives; however, while a legitimately skilled psychologist and educated man, his own personal life is a mess of failed relationships and eccentricities, fuelled by his amusingly huge ego and obsessive nature. - Ghosts (US): Sasappis is a lonely, Reality TV-watching troll obsessed with pepperoni pizza, but when the rest of the ghosts spend their time using the washing machine for a vibrator and catfishing the living, he seems like the normal one. - The Haunting of Hill House: Played with in the case of Steve Crain. Steve likes to style himself as the one sane, rational member of the family, and for the most part, he's often the first to take a practical approach to things. By contrast, his father is constantly speaking to an illusory version of his dead wife, Shirley is a Control Freak obsessed with "fixing" the dead through embalming, Theo is "a clenched fist with hair", Luke is an Addled Addict plagued with nightmarish visions, and Nellie experienced visions of her own, spiralled into depression and ended up apparently killing herself. However, Steve ultimately admits to seeing the same visions as the others, believing them to be symptoms of hereditary mental illness - and takes his fear of madness all the way into insanity: he obsessively distances himself from his family's "madness", instinctively denies the supernatural to the point of interrupting any attempts to explain things to him, refuses to acknowledge his habit of hurting people in pursuit of his ambitions, and transfers his guilt over Nellie's death to his father. \|\|Finally, he was so desperate to avoid spreading his "condition" that he got a vasectomy right out of college, and never told his wife, not even when she divorced him out of frustration.\|\| Of course, the supernatural is real in this setting, meaning that Steve is not only completely wrong about the hereditary mental illness deal but is actually less in touch with reality than Luke and Nellie. - The Inbetweeners: Simon and Will tend to trade the Only Sane Man role depending on the situation, with Simon being more socially adept and Will more logical and intellectual. Both are certainly much more sane than Jay, a lecherous Casanova Wannabe who tells some of the most outrageous Blatant Lies imaginable, and Neil, who takes being The Ditz to absurd heights. However, they are still a pair of awkward, whiny, and spectacularly uncool teenagers frequently prone to holding the Jerkass Ball or gaining Acquired Situational Narcissism, with Will being an Insufferable Genius at best and a Know-Nothing Know-It-All at worst, while Simon rapidly transitions from the most rational to least rational member of the group whenever his hopeless infatuation with Carli comes into play. - It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia: Dennis Reynolds is a deconstruction of the Only Sane Man with his higher (by comparison) intelligence and social capability being a sign that he's in fact by far the worst member of the group. However, on occasion, particularly when the situation has gotten ridiculously stupid or insane even by the Gangs standards, he ends up playing the role straight and falls into this. In spite of being a lecherous, narcissist with almost sociopathic levels of Lack of Empathy (as well as being heavily implied to be a Serial Rapist and possibly even a Serial Killer), he is also the most prone to moments of lucidity at how utterly bizarre and abnormal the gang really are and how stupid their plans are. He likewise usually is the only one to have any idea how to get out of the messes they get themselves into (many of which he's just as, if not more, guilty as the others for them arriving in). - The IT Crowd: Jen is a pathological liar with a massive chip on her shoulder, and is so appallingly unsuited for working in IT that she thinks the Internet comes out of a small box. That said, her co-workers are the lazy, immature Roy, Cloudcuckoolander Moss, and eccentric goth Richmond, and thus she was appointed head of the department simply because she's the only one there who can pass for functional. - Lost: - Maniac: The scientists in charge of the Neberdine drug trial seem to be almost as neurotic as the test subjects they're studying: Dr Justin Mantleray is an obsessive, pompous egotist plagued with Mommy Issues and a technology-related paraphilia; Dr Robert Muramoto is a barely-Functional Addict \|\|and has been having an affair with the GRTA behind closed doors\|\|. Next to them, Dr Azumi Fujita seems to be the one consummate professional... except she's almost as obsessed with the project as Justin, compulsively bottles up her emotions, and suffers from such an extreme case of agoraphobia that she rarely leaves the project base. - New Girl: Jess, the title character, eventually becomes this. She's a spacey and awkward Cute Clumsy Girl, and in fact, she was originally supposed to be the main Cloudcuckoolander of the show. But due to Characterization Marches On, her roommates become increasingly weird and over-the-top as the show goes on, leaving Jess to be often put in a Women Are Wiser role, and the voice of reason to the crazy antics of the three guys. - Black Friday: After a Hate Plague infects most of the characters, Linda appears to be the Only Sane Man of her cult. While others became deranged, monstrous versions of themselves with no common sense or even much self-preservation, living only for the cult and the Adorable Abomination it formed around, Linda's personality stays pretty much the same, and she still has her usual level of intelligence and charm. However, this is because she was already a narcissistic sociopath. All the events of the play did was give her an outlet, validation in the form of being named "divine prophet," and a group of willing slaves to do her bidding. - Warhammer 40,000: - The Imperium of Man is a totalitarian, xenophobic, theocratic, dystopia that wages wars of extermination against all alien races and believes any questioning them is an unforgivable sin against the God-Emperor. They're also one of the more level-headed factions, as their primary enemies include the forces of Chaos who revel in bloodshed, hedonist excess, scheming, and pestilence, the Orks who love fighting for its own sake, the Necrons who wipe out life to the molecular level, the Dark Eldar who horribly torture people for sustenance, and much more. - Well, there are some enemies of the Imperium of Man that are comparatively more sane. Those include: - Within the Imperium, some subfactions are less insane and more willing to compromise than others. Then again that isn't saying much, as most Imperial officials aren't willing to compromise at all. - Khârn the Betrayer is the Champion of Khorne, a Blood Knight so devoted to the god of bloodshed and carnage that he never misses in combat, instead hitting someone on his side. This lunatic, who has a kill-counter mounted in his helmet and got his epithet from an incident where he ran around with a flamer attacking both his side and the enemy for refusing to fight in sub-sub-zero conditions... is considered a calming influence on his primarch, Angron. - In the Borderlands games, the Vault Hunters and the Crimson Raiders are mostly this. Though they're a band of misfits with plenty of issues, they're a far more trustworthy commune than the Always Chaotic Evil bandits (who would later unite under the cult-like Children of the Vault), the bureaucratic Crimson Lance (who would take a long time to reform into a much more respectable organization), and a number of armies under weapon manufacturers who are power hungry (such as Hyperion and Maliwan). - Crash Bandicoot: Depending on the Writer at least, Coco Bandicoot is a hot-headed Genki Girl Bungling Inventor who has a tendency to not think her steps fully through. However being the little sister of Crash Bandicoot, an animalistic and extremely clumsy Cloud Cuckoo Lander, as well as often paired up with Crunch, a hyper enthusiastic macho lunkhead, she tends to still often take the role of the Straight Man, at least when Aku Aku is not around. Combined with all the zany and bizarre foes they regularly face, Coco still often manages to come off as the most normal character of the series. - Fallout: New Vegas: - In the Dead Money DLC, Christine Royce seems to be the sanest possible member of your hopelessly ragtag heist team... at least compared to Father Elijah's omnicidal obsession with pre-War technologies, Dog's endless hunger, God's need for control, and Dean Domino's Irrational Hatred for anyone who seems even slightly better than him. However, Christine is almost as obsessed as everyone else on the team - in this case, she's out for revenge against Elijah and has continued hunting him down even after suffering crippling losses in the process: so far, she's lost the ability to read and write due to being \|\|lobotomized by the Big Mountain Think Tank\|\|, been locked in an auto-doc for god only knows how long, and had her vocal cords ripped out. But even mute, brain damaged, and traumatized, she's still saner than any of the others. - In the Old World Blues DLC, every single member of the Big Mountain Think Tank team seems to be wildly eccentric verging on insane: Dr Klein is a bullying narcissist, Dr 0 is a Bungling Inventor with an irrational hate-on for Mr House, Dr Borous is a Red Scare promoting Psychopathic Manchild with No Indoor Voice, and Dr Dala is a creepy Soft-Spoken Sadist obsessed with organic bodies to the point of Fantastic Arousal. Next to them, the unassuming Dr 8 seems quite reasonable, even helpful; at his only problem seems to be his inability to speak in anything other than static. But then, he wouldn't be a member of the Think Tank if he wasn't a Mad Scientist willing to stuff his brain into a jar: translation reveals that he's a bit of a Mood-Swinger... and he's really, really into pleasuring himself, to the point that \|\|he prepares your sonic blaster for combat by sonically ejaculating into it.\|\| - There's also Dr Mobius, former member of the Think Tank turned Big Bad. \|\|He's got the personality of a rambling, senile old man and has an addiction to the mind-altering drugs mentats and psycho but he's also got the strongest moral compass of the Think Tank and had long come to realize just how insane and dangerous they all are so he created an elaborate setup that keeps the Think Tank ignorant and trapped in Big Mountain so they don't wreak havoc on the rest of the world\|\|. - Fire Emblem: Awakening: Both recruitable dark mages, Tharja and Henry, have strong sadistic tendencies and worrying hobbies, as Tharja is a stalker willing to perform experiments her own daughter, and Henry loves senseless violence and gore. However, while Tharja has a grasp of morality and knows the difference between right and wrong, Henry has problems understanding what counts as ethical, frequently offers to massacre people, and routinely admits to being a lunatic. - The New Order Last Days Of Europe: Among the Passionariyy Far-Right clique in Komi, Igor Shafarevich is a less-than-hidden cryptofascist who will pretend to run a democracy where his name's the only one in the ballots, and also a stealthier, but virulent Slavic supremacist that quietly disappears ethnic minorities. Seems awful enough, but when compared to Gumilyov (Eurasianist and Mongol Horde LARPer who wants to tie the continents into one thing), Serov (a literal Commie Nazi who blames the Koreans for everything bad that happened to Russia) and especially Taboritsky (unmedicated schizophrenic that thinks he needs to cleanse Russia to make (the deceased) Tsar Alexei come back, and takes to it with genocidal vigor), he at least tries to look like he'll make something stable. - The Secret World: Issue 9 introduces Harumi and Yuichi, siblings trapped on the outskirts of Kaidan by the Tokyo Incident. Of the two, Harumi is the most rational and a Cloudcuckoolander's Minder to her older brother - who spends most of the day too paranoid to even function \|\|thanks to nearly being used as a suicide bomber by the Fear Nothing Foundation.\|\| However, "Rum" is ridiculously exuberant, ever-so-slightly grandiose, and obsessed with achieving digital omniscience by hacking anything with an internet connection. - Team Fortress 2: Inverted. Although all of the mercenaries are insane, ranging from obsessions with murder to hyperactivity to talking to inanimate objects, all of them are equally afraid and judgemental of the Pyro, whose misunderstood psychosis and irrational behaviour causes them all to label him as insane, even by their standards. - Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines: Alistair Grout is made the Malkavian Primogen almost immediately after being discovered by the Camilla more or less because he was pretty damn sane, for a Malkavian who ALL gain some sort of insanity by virtue of being turned. It's made clear from his tapes though that he is in fact fairly unhinged, not just because of his inhumane experiments of turning dozens of humans into insane ghouls (and that's only those we know about), but that he kept his dead wife's corpse in animation in hopes of reviving her at some point. It's also made clear that his condition has made him exceptionally paranoid. - Danganronpa 2: Goodbye Despair: Hajime is the only normal person with no apparent talent within class of Ultimates, who are at least slightly insane by default. However, \|\|in the past, his insecurity over his lack of talent drove him to enter the Izuru Kamukura project and undergo experimental brain surgery to become talented in everything. This unfortunately lead to him being subjected to Death of Personality and jump-starting the end of the world\|\|. - Doki Doki Literature Club!: \|\|Monika\|\| tries to invoke this in a horrible way. She \|\|programs the other three girls to be more mentally unstable so the player will spend more time with her\|\|. Compared to \|\|Sayori's suicidal depression, Yuri's yandere tendencies, and Natsuki's anger issues and history of abuse and malnutrition\|\|, she naturally looks much more calm and rational in response. Once the player learns that \|\|Monika is haunted by the fact she knows she's not real and wants to kill her club mates just to date the protagonist in real life\|\|, it's clear she's probably the most disturbed of them all. - Hazbin Hotel: Vaggie has a Hair-Trigger Temper and a tendency to threaten people with knives and spears but she's one of the most level-headed and Properly Paranoid of the cast when compared to the cannibalistic Serial Killer Alastor, the drug addicted, promiscuous and flippant Angel Dust, the possibly crazy and obsessively clean Love Freak Niffty and the drunkenly depressed, apathetic Husk. However, it's more of a downplayed example with her girlfriend Charlie; compared to Vaggie, Charlie can be somewhat naïve and overly trusting but she's also the only person who's even attempting to find an alternative solution to Hell's overpopulation problem and has the sense to not make pacts with other demons. - PONY.MOV: Spike is an amoral stoner but is by far one of the sanest characters in the series, often calling attention to how bizarre or stupid their plans are. - Red vs. Blue: The Reds and Blues each have their own individual brand of crazy, and they always drive each other nuts with it. When Agent Washington joins the Blues, their various antics initially wind him up, and they're often only held back from complete self-destruction by his much more sensible, pragmatic attitude. However, he has his own brand of crazy that merely seems lowkey by comparison to the obvious madness of the Reds and Blues. Once Agent Carolina joins the team, Wash has gone through enough healing and character development to leave this trope behind and genuinely become the Only Sane Man along with Carolina; together they end up falling into the roles of Team Mom and Team Dad. - Sonic for Hire: - Sonic himself is easily one of the laziest assholes you'll ever met, having practically zero tolerance for other people, is not above resorting to murder for personal gain, and does just about every drug he can get his hands on. Despite this, there are people even less stable or competent than him, and that's when he becomes the sane one of the lot. - Tails became this in later seasons after previously being the Only Sane Man; he's still a civil and practical fellow, but after living the life of hedonism in Season 4, Tails eventually became no better than Sonic in terms of competency. - Earthworm Jim is probably the most level-headed character in the entire series, but his occasional greed and addiction to sex and drugs proves he's not exactly high on the morality scale either. - 8-Bit Theater: Of the Light Warriors, Thief is the smartest and most level-headed of them. He's also a compulsive thief and over the top haughty elf whose overly miserly and greedy ways would prevent him from being the Only Sane Man under most situations. However his team-mates are a violently insane Card-Carrying Villain wizard, a fighter who's so dumb it lets him ignore reality, and another wizard completely detached from reality, so he comes off as normal by comparison. - Dumbing of Age: Dina Saruyama is implied to have undiagnosed autism, has No Social Skills, and is more interested in dinosaurs than people. She even once kidnapped herself (long story) because she wanted to be able to follow social cues. However, she also had a comparatively angst-free childhood, is a rare character who's able to stay in a stable relationship, and ends up playing the Only Sane Man to multiple more troubled characters, most notably Joyce, who is not really adapted to the real world because she came from a really fundamentalist and conservative community, Becky, Dina's girlfriend who had the same problem as Joyce in addition to having an Abusive Parent who believes Cure Your Gays is possible, and Amber (Dina's roommate), who has a lot of issues. - Romantically Apocalyptic: - Mr. Snippy initially seems like a classic case of the Only Sane Man, being the voice of reason and sanity against Captain and Pilot's insanity. However, it's gradually implied that he's crazy, just not as flat-out bonkers as them, and the second he runs into other survivors he looks like a gibbering lunatic compared to them, to the point that Engineer is genuinely afraid Snippy will murder him. - Engineer counts as this too. While he is probably the sanest person in the wasteland, he's still an asocial Mad Scientist who caused the apocalypse, or at the very least has partial responsibility in it, and an absurdly paranoid hypochondriac who's afraid literally everyone and everything will kill him, to the point of once having had a man reconfigured into an amnesiac DEX because he believed he was an assassin. - The central premise of Terror Island is that the two main characters, Sid and Stephen, refuse to buy groceries themselves and instead go to absurd lengths to trick or manipulate the other into buying groceries. Every other character is similarly devoted to following weird rules all the way to the most bizarre conclusions. Liln is the one character who tends to notice how dumb everyone else is being, and even calls out the grocery debate as stupid, but her proposed solution isn't that much better. Lewis Powell: I'd like to prepare any readers of the comic for the fact that Liln might be about as close to "voice of reason" as you're going to get. And since she recommends petty larceny as a problem-solving technique, that should give you some sense of what 'reasonable' amounts to in a world created by Ben and myself. - Monster Island Buddies: Orga is a wisecracking glutton who self-identifies as evil and repeatedly Breaks the Fourth Wall, questions the show's plot, and directly insults the audience. In any other show, he'd be the Plucky Comic Relief, but since the rest of the cast is varying flavors of stupid, perverted, and insane, he's the one who usually has to play the voice of reason. - The Nostalgia Critic: The titular critic often finds himself playing the snarky straight guy to more off-the-wall characters, such as Chester A. Bum, Hyper Fangirl, the insane personas of his coworkers, or the parody characters who often appear into his house. Of course, Critic himself has always had a Hair-Trigger Temper and serious mental instability, so he's nowhere near sane himself. On the flip side, some episodes have Malcolm and Rachel or Tamara play the straight man to Critic's childish insanity, while still throwing hints that, despite reacting more calmly to movies, they're also quite emotionally disturbed and can get violent at times. A few episodes give up on the charade and present them as equally accepting of each other's insanity. - SuperMarioLogan: - In TomSka's video "The Blame Game", Tom plays a masked madman who plans to kidnap and murder the people responsible for him being bullied as a child. None of the people he kidnaps seem to care about being kidnapped and threatened - they just cheerfully blame their actions on someone else and then join in on threatening the next person to be kidnapped. Tom ends up being the only one who notices how bizarre the situation is getting, and the only one who's confused as to how all these people are popping out of nowhere. - The Amazing World of Gumball: Nicole is often the most responsible member of the Watterson family and tries to steer her kids in the right direction. She's work-oriented and wants her kids to have good lives. Despite this, she has a massive competitive streak, a very bad temper, a hypocritical side, and a rather fragile mental state. Over time, her flaws become more pronounced, and by the fifth season, she's lost any claim to being the voice of reason to Anais... and even she can be a bit off in some episodes, examples include being disturbingly clingy to her new friend in "The Parasite", being an Enfant Terrible in the Whole Episode Flashback "The Rival," kisses a frog to see if it turns into a prince in "The Gift", and sometimes not thinking through her plans. - Aqua Teen Hunger Force: - Carl is an ignorant, sex-crazed, crude Lazy Bum. On any other show, he'd be the wacky next-door neighbour. However, since he's the neighbour of the Aqua Teens, a bunch of crazy anthropomorphic fast food items, he's the sane one by default, being the closest thing to an actual human being. - Amongst the Aqua Teens themselves (and sometimes even to Carl), Frylock is by far the most rational and intelligent of them all. He's still a Mad Scientist of a floating box of fries (and not the most competent one at that) with his fair share of questionable moments. - Beast Wars: Waspinator is an eccentric, fatalistic, scatterbrained Minion with an F in Evil Butt-Monkey; despite all this he usually has to play the Only Sane Man to the rest of the Predacons, who consist of Megatron, a megalomaniacal Diabolical Mastermind who plans to risk destroying reality itself for his mad plans; Tarantulas, a treacherous, sociopathic Mad Scientist who frequently murders animals For the Evulz; Blackarachnia, Tarantulas' equally treacherous partner-in-crime and the resident Wild Card who betrays pretty much everyone; Inferno, a psychotic Pyromaniac who thinks he's an ant and is fanatically loyal to Megatron; Scorponok, a Yes-Man Genius Ditz; Terrorsaur, an incompetent Smug Snake with too much ambition for his own good; Quickstrike, a dense, short tempered Blood Knight; and Rampage, a Nigh-Invulnerable, cannibalistic Serial Killer. - Bob's Burgers: Bob is usually the straight man to the rest of his family, but he's been the subject of odd looks himself, as he has a tendency to take on ridiculous tasks to prove a point, suffer breakdowns, and sometimes talks to himself (or imagines inanimate objects talking to him) under stress. - Count Duckula: Igor is a ruthless yet very polite Card-Carrying Villain who spends most of the series trying to turn the Count back into a vicious bloodsucking vampire, regularly suggesting murder and other villainous tactics as the first solution to any problems they find themselves in. Yet as the rest of the cast consist of the naïve, easily excitable, spotlight obsessed Count Duckula and the immature and incredibly stupid Nanny, Igor is left as the only one capable of rational thinking, providing sensible suggestions to their many calamities and can be trusted to have a solid grasp of their situation. - Dexter's Laboratory: Valhallen, despite being an idiotic rock star, possesses far more self-control, self-awareness, and common sense than the other members of the Justice Friends. - Drawn Together: - Foxxy Love is as wacky as the other main characters, given that she is an exaggerated version of the Sassy Black Woman trope and indulges herself with bizarre sexual activities. However, given that the rest of the cast consists of a moronic Jerk Jock, a hyperactive idiot, a bigoted princess, a self-harming alcoholic, a sociopathic Asian monster, a raunchy internet cartoon, and an overly sensitive Manchild, she often has to fill the role of Only Sane Woman. This is lampshaded when Wooldoor says that Foxxy is the only person in the house who is "not completely retarded". - Spanky Ham can be the level-headed one whenever Foxxy Love isn't, like when he brings up a good solution to a problem. Besides this, he's greedy, crude with his love of Toilet Humor, and has no qualms manipulating others for his own gain. His sane side is more obvious in later episodes, but his avarice and manipulation never completely go away. - Ed, Edd n Eddy: Nazz is this of the main six Cul-de-Sac kids, and this is a very rare case where the Dumb Blonde is the sanest one. Her ditziness aside, she's a calm, friendly, and mature girl, especially compared to crazy weirdos like Rolf and Jonny, aggressive jerks like Kevin and Sarah, or childish nervous wrecks like Jimmy. As a result, she usually stays out of the regular conflicts of most episodes and often serves as the voice of reason. - The Fairly OddParents!: Denzel Crocker is a sadistic petty man prone to shouting spasms, who even ignoring his obsession with fairies is clearly insane. And yet he is the only member of the cast to actually notice and react to the clearly impossible events that occur. Likewise, just about everything he says about fairies proves to be true. - Family Guy: - Lois Griffin is an obnoxiously shrewish and abusive nymphomaniac, though due to her family consisting of her Psychopathic Manchild husband Peter, unhinged Butt-Monkey Meg, neurotic Kiddie Kid Chris, precocious and incredibly sociopathic baby Stewie, and pretentious Intellectual Animal Brian, she still tends to be designated to the Women Are Wiser role in many plots. Deconstructed in "The Most Interesting Man In The World", where Peter undergoes an intelligence boost, and Lois soon wants the old dysfunctionally stupid Peter back. Not because the new Peter is worse, but simply because Peter being well-behaved and clever means she is no longer the smart adjusted one by relation. - Brian can fill this role with his usually down-to-earth attitude whenever Lois is being just as insane as the rest of the dysfunctional Griffins. He's still a smug, pretentious Know-Nothing Know-It-All who thinks he is a brilliant writer (when he's anything but) and he has a habit of getting caught up in his own hype, can be extremely selfish, and consistently refuses to face up to or learn from any of his flaws. - Futurama: - Fry plays this role in "The Day The Earth Stood Stupid". Although he's usually the show's main Ditz, when earth is invaded by the Brain Spawn, Fry's lack of a Delta Brainwave makes him the only person on the planet who is immune to their powers, which turn everyone else into brainless morons. Although he's still very much an Idiot Hero, he's the only person who can save the day by default. It's best demonstrated when he yells at the people of New New York to stop acting so stupid through the wrong end of a megaphone. - Out of Mom's sons, since Larry is an overly neurotic Butt-Monkey and Igner is The Ditz, the oldest brother Walt appears to be the sanest and the smartest of the three. But only in relative terms, since Walt is still a Big Brother Bully who comes up with ridiculous plans. He may be smarter than his brothers, but he's not as smart as he thinks he is. - The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy: Mandy is a cruel and manipulative Tiny Tyrannical Girl, but she's also the most intelligent and mature character on the show, as well as the most competent. It helps that she has a very serious personality and most of the time she's Surrounded by Idiots, especially her stupid best friend Billy, her ridiculous Abhorrent Admirer Irwin, and her silly and obnoxious rival Mindy. Even Grim has his dumb moments and comes off as a loser compared to Mandy. - Inside Job (2021): Despite Reagan's eccentricities, she's still one of the most responsible members of her team. That being said she is still unhinged and dealing with a lot of trauma from her past, and is only sane because the rest of her teammates bar Brett are a bunch of degenerate assholes. - Invader Zim: Dib and Gaz are the only humans who recognize Zim is an alien because everybody else in town is too idiotic to see through his Paper-Thin Disguise. Dib already has a reputation as an obsessive Conspiracy Theorist willing to hurt himself and others just to prove the supernatural exists, so everybody assumes he's just crazy when he insists Zim is an alien. Gaz, on the other hand, doesn't obsess over Zim like her brother, but she's an Enfant Terrible with serious anger issues who stalks and threatens the life of a boy over a video game console. - Kaeloo: Mr. Cat is The Smart Guy and is annoyed at the impulsivity of Cloudcuckoolander Kaeloo, the moronic Stumpy, bitchy Pretty, and Ditzy Genius Quack Quack. That said, he's violent, extremely perverted, and tends to lash out for petty reasons like touching him. - King of the Hill: Hank Hill is extremely uptight and a staunch believer in the Good Old Ways, and is the Only Sane Man among his closest friends: Dale Gribble, a Conspiracy Theorist, Bill Dauterive, a pathologically depressed barber, and Boomhauer, an unintelligible casanova. - League of Super Evil: Doktor Frogg is not just the group's mad scientist, but also the closet thing to actually evil amongst them being a chaos-loving megalomaniac. However, considering the rest of the group consists of the childish Voltar who considers minor annoyances feats of great villainy and the utterly incapable of being evil in any sense of the word Red Menace (who even aside from that isn't especially bright or mature), he is left being their only voice of reason and logic. - The Looney Tunes Show: Bugs Bunny is this in comparison to most of the cast. While definitely much more level-headed than his roommate Daffy, several episodes, particularly in later seasons, show he's still a Looney Tune and just as prone to losing his head as the others. Examples include buying a restaurant he didn't know how to run just so he could have a Friday night hangout, destroying his house in an attempt to install a shelf to display his Nobel Peace Prize rather than hiring someone to do it, ending up in an Albanian prison following a convoluted plot to avoid going to a prune festival with Porky, getting addicted to an expy of Red Bull called Spargle and going on a rampage to get more, and attempting to serve carrot PIE rather than cake at a dinner party. Also several episodes revolve around him getting addicted to things such as coffee, a video game, or Porky's catering. Likewise whilst downplayed in this adaptation, if pushed too far, Bugs has no issues bringing his The Trickster skills back out to dispense retribution. - My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic: Twilight Sparkle started off as the Fish out of Water in Ponyville dumbfounded by the group's eccentricities and even declaring the whole town to be "crazy". As episodes progressed however, she evolved into this trope and Twilight demonstrated just as many comedic flaws and neuroses, which, rather ironically, have led to her having maybe the most exaggerated Freak Outs of the whole main group. To the point that her having a nervous breakdown due to her obsessions has become a Running Gag and the others regularly acknowledge her flaws inverse. - The Penguins of Madagascar: Private is the childishly naïve baby of the team, but he also tends to be the most sane and logical in comparison to Skipper's paranoid delusions, Kowalski's mad science, and Rico's love for explosions. - Pinky and the Brain: Brain is a self-admitted megalomaniac Mad Scientist who wants to take over the world and has a massive ego. He's still relatively sane compared to Pinky, who's completely insane, stupid, and keeps shouting random nonsense words such as "narf" and "zort". Likewise, he is this compared to most of the regular citizens who exist in his world, with most of them being too stupid to even comprehend that he's a talking mouse. Then again, the theme song only says "One is a genius, the other's insane", but not who in the titular duo is which. - The Ren & Stimpy Show: Ren is Ax-Crazy, violent, ill-tempered, greedy, cruel, and prone to Freak Outs. In spite of all that, he is reasonably intelligent, especially compared to his "eediot" best friend Stimpy. - She-Ra and the Princesses of Power: In season four, Double Trouble is an amoral, self-serving sadist whose only goal is to cause drama and make money without a care for how they do it. But, even they are a picture of sanity compared to \|\|Catra\|\|, who by that point has destroyed her relationships and turned into a paranoid, spiteful wreck hellbent on conquering Etheria at any cost. \|\|Thankfully, she gets better\|\|. - SpongeBob SquarePants: - Squidward Tentacles is a rude, selfish, and bad-tempered narcissist and a blatant case of Small Name, Big Ego, but he's also the most rational character who has to put up with his annoyingly idiotic neighbours (originally he was more a grouch and a stick in the mud, but over time their antics became increasingly disruptive and obnoxious), and usually has more common sense than most people around him to the point that he sometimes takes this as far as being effectively the only voice of common sense to the entire town. - Mr. Krabs is generally more mature and sensible than most of the cast, and is likewise usually the only one focused on business and the job at hand, especially compared to the foolish Patrick, the lazy Squidward, and the energetic Cloudcuckoolander SpongeBob, with him usually struggling to keep them in line with and focused on whatever goal he's got. This doesn't make him much saner than the others, though, as he's greedy to the point of obsession, prone to immature bouts of psychosis, and will prioritize his money over just about anything, even his own safety. - Sandy Cheeks is a downplayed case of this since she is legitimately talented, virtuous, and intelligent, often making her the undisputed voice of reason among the main group as a result of their aforementioned vices and stupid qualities. However Sandy also has her own eccentricities such as a violent Serious Business temperament and a very competitive streak. "Sandy, Spongebob and the Worm" lampshaded that her being the most competent civilian of the hapless Bikini Bottom doesn't necessarily make her infallible. - Steven Universe: Played with. Of the Homeworld Elite rulers \|\|Pink\|\| Diamond is initially viewed by the cast as being an insane, galactic tyrant just like her fellow Diamonds, but is eventually \|\|revealed to be the alter-ego of Steven's mom, Rose Quartz, who liberated Earth and fought against the Diamonds after she witnessed the destruction their actions were causing to other planets\|\|. However, it's later revealed that despite all that, she still did a lot of terrible things, such as \|\|tricking Spinel into staying alone for six thousand years, leaving Steven to deal with her problems, and causing Pink Pearl enough psychological stress that her eye is permanently cracked\|\|. In the end, everyone is left with a lot of complicated feelings towards her and her deeds, and accept she wasn't always the \|\|infallible hero they thought she was\|\|. - Teen Titans Go!: Robin definitely thinks he's the only down-to-earth Titan, and though he's not entirely wrong whenever the other Titans are goofing off, he's not entirely sane himself, since he's an egotistical, neurotic Control Freak who constantly wants attention. - Villainous: Dr. Flug is the meek scientist behind many of the schemes and weapons sold by Black Hat Organisation to take down heroes. He's considerably reasonable and easy-going compared to the other members, such as his vaguely demonic Bad Boss Black Hat and crazed cannibal CoDragon Demencia. However, he is still a villain, a Mad Scientist to be exact. His sadism surfaces when he does torturous experiments on others, and in his hobbies such as collecting shrunken planes, supposedly with passengers still inside.	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/OnlySaneByComparison
You Already Changed the Past - TV Tropes "Things have their shape in time, not space alone. Some marble blocks have statues within them, embedded in their future... Any moment now, Janey's watchband will break. Somewhere, the fat man is already lumbering toward the shooting gallery, steps heavy with unwitting destiny." You go back in time to Set Right What Once Went Wrong, only to discover that the "changes" you're making to the past were what "already" happened anyway. In other words, there was no "first time around" - the past only happened once, there were no different "versions" of it, and the changes you made to the past ultimately created the very past you read about in the history books before leaving on the trip. It's like being Time's own personal Unwitting Pawn. This does not necessarily mean that You Can't Fight Fate. For example, if Bob wanted to go back in time to stop Alice's death, he could simply convince his past self that Alice still died in the future. Following this logic, Alice never dies at all — and Bob suddenly remembers how several months ago, some "other" Bob came up to him insisting that Alice was going to die of something and the two of them had to go save her, which they did, so she's still very much alive and well all along. (Do you have a headache yet?) Or to avoid the headache and ensuing paradox, Future Bob could go back and save Alice in such a way that Past Bob still thought that she died - then drop her off in the present - kind of the present, anyway. The future. Past. Something. Needless to add, grammar can sometimes become thoroughly useless at trying to put the point across, as all sense of tense gets thrown of the window. This trope is easier to observe rather than analyze. This trope arguably makes the most sense when considering time travel from a scientific point of view, see the Novikov self-consistency principle. note : Novikov's self-consistency principle was named "the Law of Conservation of History" by Larry Niven in his short piece "The Theory and Practice of Time Travel," published at least ten years prior to Novikov's work. Of course, Larry Niven is a Science Fiction writer, which may explain why nobody cares. Alternatively, this is an illustration of something called Stigler's Law of Eponymy: nothing ever gets named after the first person to discover it. However, the number of time-travel plots that it allows for are extremely limited and the logic gets complicated very quickly. This, however, also has the side-effect of creating a 'self-correcting universe' usually by a slew of Contrived Coincidences (e.g. if you try to shoot your grandfather the gun will jam; if you try poisoning him he will recover; if you try strangling him you will be overcome; if you wear Power Armor from the future you will have second thoughts; if you try sending a bomb back through time and detonating it directly inside his chest the time machine will break down). This can also lead to a scenario where the only reason why the past is not changed is because someone else says 'you cannot' and you take his advice. Meaning the advice itself is a part of the universe's self-correcting nature. Thus, most time travel stories that involve altering the past will provide some of the characters with Ripple-Effect-Proof Memory. This makes less sense, but it makes for a narrative convenience. If a You Already Changed The Past plot is used, the time travel will probably be a one-off thing, since repeating it would most likely get tedious. The Ancient Greeks and Norse loved the notion that You Cannot Change The Future, and their works heavily imply that they believed in this specific notion of time (which even the Gods were trapped in). Although they used predictions rather than time travel, the effect is the same. Many first-time readers of the classics who don't buy into this notion of time, or don't realize this is why You Can't Fight Fate in the classics, have a hard time accepting The Fatalist behavior of classical Greek and European heroes. See also Self-Fulfilling Prophecy. Compare Retroactive Preparation, where having changed the past already works to your favor. Related to Stable Time Loop where you go back in time, because you already changed the past. If the story focuses heavily on an attempt to change the past only to reveal right at the end that the past can't be changed, the result is often a "Shaggy Dog" Story. ## Examples: - Rave Master: After much time is spent freaking out over what horrible ways they've twisted the past, Sieg, Elie, and Haru (but mostly Sieg) discover that \|\|all their actions caused the future they were trying to protect by not taking those actions. Haru made it very clear to the knight that the criminals he brought had invaded the castle ten days earlier, and that the knight was to take credit for catching them, which we see him talking about at the time Haru gave 50 years later. Getting Resha kidnapped enforced the king's decesion to have her fake her own death, leading her into the future where she get's amnesia and meets Haru, and ditching Sieg in the past leads to him being there to set the whole time loop up and make sure they mess with the past like they're supposed to.\|\| - Red River (1995): Yuri is sent back to ancient Turkey, during the Hittite Empire. She tries to keep a low profile, but events result in her obtaining the valuable iron ore for the Empire, as well as gaining power. Yuri thinks that she's changing the past in ways that it shouldn't, but her being sent back is what resulted in the events of history as it's known in her original time. - Tsubasa -RESERVoir CHRoNiCLE-. Details would be massive spoilers, but suffice to say that time travels differently in different universes, and something the heroes do midway through in a world that later turns out to be their own past sets up the very premise of the story, as revealed in the finale. - Also, one character who \|\|pulls a FaceHeel Turn halfway through is fated to pull a HeelFace Turn back, given that his future self, who actually reincarnates in the past is the protagonist's father. Yeah...see, all grammar is useless.\|\| In fact, depending on which angle you see it from, the whole story wouldn't have happened if the past had not already included the influence of the future. - However, the first instance of tinkering with time that we knew of was not an example of this - the group visits the world of Shara twice, before and after visiting Shura which turns out to be the past of Shara; and the effects of their actions are quite visible. CLAMP seems to have lost track of their time-travelling system as the Mind Screw got more and more complicated... - Urusei Yatsura has time travel in a few occasions. - In one, Lum goes into the future where she brings back Ataru's diary. He reads it and believes things will go right for him, but attempting to cause them makes everything go horribly wrong. It's later found that when writing the entry about everything that went wrong, his tears blur the ink, causing it to look like he wrote about things going well. - In the other, the cast goes back in time to prevent Mendo from getting claustrophobia and nyctophobia. As a result, young Mendo pisses off the modern Mendo, causing him to attack his younger self. While hiding from his older self, young Mendo was trapped in a dark jar, causing him to grow deathly afraid of dark and tight spaces. - At the end of Atomic Robo volume 8, the title character is blasted into the 1800's, in spite of his long-held belief that time travel is impossible (due to the speed at which planets are constantly moving). He spends the first few years terrified of changing things and causing a paradox, but when pushed to act he settles on this trope. - A Blade series had Doctor Doom lure the Daywalker to his castle, where Doom then proposed Blade with going back in time and saving his mother from a vampire attack. Blade asked him why he should do it, and Doom replies with "Because I've already seen you do it in the past." Doom is nice enough to give him a serum which would suppress his bloodthirst though. - Doctor Doom's debut in Fantastic Four #5 has him send the heroes back in time to collect the treasure of Blackbeard the pirate for him. In order to do this, they don disguises and the Thing distinguishes himself so well at the swashbuckling that the pirate crew rally around him, electing him to captain the ship and give him a pirate nickname to match his appearance: Blackbeard! - An issue in The Mighty Thor series had an storyline where \|\|Loki sends himself back through time with the aid of Hela to accomplish certain tasks that had already been mentioned in a previous issue, but with certain details left unclear. Turns out that Loki was responsible for many of the major events in Asgardian history, but it's left unclear whether they still would have happened had he never gone back in time. Even he isn't completely sure. He lampshaded this trope, saying that he cannot change the past and make the future play out a different way, but he can make sure it will go the way it did.\|\| - In the "Dead-End Kids" arc of Runaways, the team is sent back in time to the 1900's to avert a catastrophic gang war. As it turns out, \|\|the only reason the gang war boiled over was because the Runaways went back in time; as it turns out, one of the gangs back then was under the control of Gertrude Yorkes's time-travelling parents, and when they discovered that their daughter was dead, they decided to fire up the gang war in hopes that the other Runaways would be killed.\|\| - Subverted in the crossover Spawn/ Wildcats, where future versions of Grifter and Zealot (the former being the original's future self but the latter being a new Zealot) are sent into the past to slay Spawn to prevent him becoming a ruthless dictator known as the Ipsissimus. When they fail to kill him, the present Wildcats and Spawn agree to go with them into the future to defeat the Ipsissimus, but it turns out this was part of a predestination paradox, as the Ipsissimus uses the opportunity to give Spawn the medallion that corrupted him and caused him to turn evil to begin with. When back to the present, the influence stats, and Spawn starts Evil Gloating... until the future Wildcats realize their mistake and make a last attempt to modify a minor action in the past. This causes Spawn to recognize future Zealot as an adult version of his widow's daughter Cyan, come back to his senses and hand the medallion to her, thus preventing the future. - The time travel of The Transformers: More than Meets the Eye is like this, specifically of the Stable Time Loop variety - the war that \|\|Brainstorm\|\| invents time travel to prevent turns out to have been DIRECTLY caused by time travel. On top of this, he was created because of the war, and had sold himself to the Decepticons to fund his project, which was why our heroes on the Lost Light believed he was going to kill Optimus and so followed him... - Then they threw in a few Stable Time Loops of their own - To go into all the ways the Crew mucked up the future by travelling back in time to fix it/stop it from being changed would take up the best part of this page - \|\|Brainstorm\|\| tries again to stop the war by going further back, but the Crew follow him to stop him again (still thinking he's after Optimus in some way), and they all just create more time loops that keep any loops in the future on track. When they all return, nothing in the past has changed and time is as much on track as ever. Except there's now a parallel universe, of course. - The most notable example is how Time Travel is the cause of the legend of the Sparkeater - because Whirl took a gun from Brainstorm's lab that turns people into Sparkeaters, which was only created because Brainstorm met a Sparkeater early on in the comic (which had been made by his gun millions of years ago, no less). - Always a Ranger- an AU of the confrontation with Thrax where he attacked the SPD B-Squad rather than the Operation Overdrive team- features Jen Scott ( Power Rangers Time Force) as part of the team of past Rangers recruited to replace the depowered Rangers. When they question how she was recruited from the past if she came from the year 3000, Jen reveals that after her last meeting with Wes, she checked historical records and realised that she was meant to become Wes's wife all along, prompting her to return to 2004 on a full-time basis. - In Binding Resolution, Hat Kid accidentally drops a Time Piece and travels back in time. When she realizes that the Nice Prince who's helping her is the same person who would later go on to become The Snatcher, she does everything in her power in order to prevent the transformation. This turns out badly because, despite her efforts, the future she tried to prevent was inevitable, as well as realizing that she had a key part to play in instigating the events. - Female Queens and Marco centers around Marco Diaz time-traveling throughout Mewni history and interacting with its previous queens. When he meets Queen Solaria, Marco tries to avert the Fantastic Racism in present day Mewni by showing Solaria that peace and diplomacy is a better alternative to fighting, and appears to succeed to a degree... until a case of Not What It Looks Like and Never Found the Body note : a monster asks Marco for help in opening a jar of strawberry jam. Just as Marco succeeds, he involuntarily time travels, leaving behind his hoodie with strawberry jam all over it. Queen Solaria sees the hoodie and the jam, mistakes it for blood, and comes to the conclusion that the monster killed Marco has Solaria believing that Marco is dead, leading to her hatred of monsters not only returning, but increasing and ensuring that Mewni's hatred towards monsters will persist to the present day. - In the Charmed (1998) fanfic Once and Future Witches, an attack on Leo and Wyatt causes the Charmed Ones of 2007 (just after the series finale) to go back to early season two and then all six of them go back to 1983. Once in that time, they are able to identify their foe as a demonic presence that exists outside of time and whose Darklighter agent had already killed Lynn, who Prue remembers as their childhood babysitter but was actually their first Whitelighter. However, since the Halliwells were travelling in time when Lynne was killed, Grams confirms that this means history hasn't been changed yet and Leo was always going to be the sisters' Whitelighter. - So you time travel to the future and your classmate gets punched... plays with this: - The akuma Time-Turner sends Miss Bustier and most of her class twenty years into the future, aside from Chloe and Marinette (the latter having transferred to another class one month prior). This results in them learning how Lila deceived them all... only the revelation comes far too late. All of the critical events that led to most of the class suffering Laser-Guided Karma have already happened; they just haven't been hit by the fallout yet. As a result, the people explaining this to them in the future are able to detail just what's in store for them all, knowing that even when they go back to the present, they won't be able to prevent what's coming. - The ending also reveals that one of the reasons why everything was set in stone is because \|\|the next-generation heroes from the future decided that since they were already going to be traveling back in time to return the class safely, they might as well take down Hawkmoth and Mayura first\|\|. - Alice Through the Looking Glass carries the message that while changing the past in Underland is impossible, you might be able to learn from it. Alice discovers this the hard way when she tries to \|\|prevent the childhood accident that caused the Red Queen's giant deformed head. Originally Iracebeth hit her head on a grandfather clock that was being carried across the street, but when Alice manages to knock the clock out of the way young Iracebeth ends up tripping and smacking her head on a stone ledge anyway\|\|. - Back to the Future: - Played with in Back to the Future, where Marty goes back in time and introduces 1985 concepts to 1955, but the movie implies that he only changes the source of the original idea without majorly altering their progression into the modern day. He didn't invent skateboards but he introduced skateboarding to Hill Valley earlier than would have caught on naturally, and he didn't write "Johnny B. Goode", but hearing his guitar solo inspired Chuck Berry over the phone. Since these things don't actually change the future, it looks like they were always that way. His comment also inspires the busboy Goldie Wilson to go into politics, although Wilson was already mayor in the original timeline, meaning he would have found inspiration elsewhere. - In Back to the Future Part II, Doc's letter at the end sort of plays this trope straight (the only part of the trilogy to do so), though Rule of Cool applies for obvious reasons. This is debatable however, as since the letter arrives after the DeLorean gets struck by lightning, it could be argued that the Western Union guy wasn't there at all until the ripple effect kicked in. Alternatively, since Doc took The Slow Path to send that letter, the ripple effect kicked in a long time ago, the viewer just doesn't get to see it. The Western Union guy is the only instance of a character being present (and on-screen) for an altered event rather than simply having or, in Marty's case, being a ripple-affected artifact that's been temporally displaced. - In Back to the Future Part III, the 1955 Doc averts this. He specifically sends Marty back to a point in 1885 after 1985 Doc has left the letter with Western Union. As seen in Part III, they didn't do anything about it, which allowed for normal 70+ year delivery: "and the Western Union guy lost the bet!". - Bill and Ted: - Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure: One of the signs that Bill and Ted are clever if not book smart is their recognition of this trope; they realize that to solve a problem in the present, they can use their time machine to plant helpful items in the past, and then they'll be there for their present selves to discover - and they keep reminding each other "Once this is over, we have to go back and place all that stuff!" - The entire climax of Bill & Ted's Bogus Journey is B&T and the Big Bad performing dueling versions of this. \|\|Except that, as Bill points out, only the winner can change history, so all the things the villain thought he planted were just decoys B&T placed to lull him into a false sense of security. In fact, as dumb as Bill and Ted usually are, they tend to be very smart when it comes to this trick.\|\| - Déjà Vu (2006): The first few attempts at actually changing the past just end up causing things the characters and audience have already seen happen. \|\|Eventually, for the sake of having a happy ending, they do manage to make a change that works.\|\| This could be a case of \|\|subversion, as it was mentioned in passing during the course of the movie that a big enough change could change the future (i.e., not having the ferry blow up). As The Other Wiki has a diagram showing at least four runs◊ of the timeline are needed to explain how the events of the movie are possible, perhaps several trips of smaller changes adds up to one big enough change.\|\| - One moment that especially sells it is with regards to Claire's fridge. While investigating her house in the present, Douglas sees somebody had left the message "u can save her" in the magnet letters on the fridge. When he travels to the past and saves Claire, he writes the same message on the fridge only for her to reappear having changed into new clothes, the same ones she was wearing when she died. Douglas realizes he hasn't really saved Claire yet and tells her to change into something different. - The Final Countdown: Martin Sheen is sent on a mission by the mysterious billionaire he's never met. The aircraft carrier is sent back in time and almost prevents the attack on Pearl Harbor and loses one of their officers. When the ship returns to the present \|\|Sheen finds out that the mysterious billionaire is that officer, made wealthy by 30 years of fore-knowledge\|\|. - Godzilla vs. King Ghidorah: The Futurians mistakenly believe that they can alter the past, which leads them to try to erase Godzilla (not the first one, who was killed in 1954, but the second one, who has been attacking Japan since 1984) from history. Thinking that Godzilla was simply a living, but otherwise ordinary dinosaur until a hydrogen bomb test in the 1950s mutated him into a monster, the Futurians go back to the 1940s and move the dinosaur far away from the test, then head to 1992 to see if Godzilla has ceased to exist. It turns out all they did was cause history to play out the same way it already had: the spot they moved the dinosaur to is contaminated by radiation from a wrecked nuclear sub some time around 1979, mutating the dinosaur into Godzilla and causing him to attack Japan in 1984 right on schedule. The Futurians never seem to realize that they were trying to undo events that they themselves caused. - La Jetée: The protagonist's anchor to the past is his hazy childhood memory of seeing the beautiful woman at the airport, and then seeing a man die. Eventually, when trying to flee the scientists, he travels back to the past and to that momentand gets shot by the jailer. So what he saw as a child was himself getting killed, after having fulfilled his mission. - An interesting case is the movie Paycheck. What happens to the protagonist (he is administered a procedure which would erase all of his memories from the coming two years; when he is finished, he's told these two years already happened) would be a perfect example of this trope. Only there's no time travel (though the plot revolves around a future-seeing machine). - In the 2007 film Premonition, Sandra Bullock lives the week of her husband's death out of order. \|\|She's unsuccessful in her attempts to save him, as on the last day she accidentally causes his death by preventing another one.\|\| - Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home: Harve Bennett's explanation for why the Enterprise crew was so careless about altering history seems to be (he says it in a rather disjointed way) that this trope is in place. Although this contradicts how time travel is usually portrayed in the series, it does fall into line with the one episode of the original series that also used the "slingshot around the Sun to visit 20th century Earth" method. - Tenet: Neil often says that "Whatever happened, happened" when The Protagonist intends to change the past. Indeed, whenever the characters invert and go back in time, they end up causing the events they witnessed the first time around. For example, \|\|The Protagonist fights himself in the Freeport while wearing a gas mask and a hazmat suit (this way, he doesn't recognize himself and doesn't touch his self past's skin, which would kill him), and also drives the Saab that he once saw un-crash on the highway. And Kat is the woman she herself saw jumping off Sator's boat in Vietnam\|\|. - The Terminator follows this exact method (the second movie and on go for different rules of time travel). It also gives a rare example of the good guys directly benefiting from the immutability of time. The machines sent back a Terminator to kill Sarah Connor before her son John Connor was born, in response, the rebels send back... the guy who becomes John's father. Also, in a deleted scene, it turns out that Cyberdyne, the company that built SkyNet and the original Terminators, acquired the remains of the Terminator. The sequel shows that they'd begun reverse engineering the Terminator, which would presumably have led to the creation of the Terminators had the events of the sequel not occurred, so it happened on both sides. ## By Author: - Connie Willis: - To Say Nothing of the Dog involves time traveling historians (which first appeared in her Doomsday Book) who spend a lot of effort to repair the "incongruity" caused when one of them inadvertently brings a cat forward from Victorian England (they're extinct in 2057). This involves trying to make sure that the cat's owner winds up with the "Mr. C" that her diary specifies after they've accidentally introduced her to a different man. \|\|It turns out that all perceived incongruities are the continuum's self-correcting system.\|\| - Blackout and All Clear have a similar example. Some historians go back to WWII era, then find that they can't get home. They agonize over every little thing they do, worried that the slightest change might cause the Germans to win the war. \|\|It turns out that the things they did, the people they saved, and so on, were exactly the tipping points to let the Allies win the war. Their future, in which the Third Reich fell, predicates on them getting stuck in the past and doing the things they're convinced will ruin everything.\|\| - Isaac Asimov's works: - The short story "The Red Queen's Race" has a character who tries to make this trope happen. \|\|He was asked to translate several modern books on physics into ancient Greek, with the work being beamed back into humanity's past. History fails to change because the translator was very careful to leave out most of the advanced material, only including information which would account for discoveries and advances already present in our own time line.\|\| - Inverted in The End of Eternity. Despite changing history themselves all the time, the Eternals are certain that the existence of their organization is guaranteed by this trope—how can they eliminate their own existence? The exception, an Eternal who is certain that time loops are intrinsically unstable, turns out to be correct, and Eternity eliminates itself. - Robert A. Heinlein: - The Door into Summer. Various instances of Human Popsicle, but more importantly a weird time machine that has an equal chance of throwing the subject forward or backward. The protagonist uses it knowing he HAS to be sent backwards. Bonus points to a throwaway gag that suggests that Leonardo da Vinci is (and always has been) an accidental time-traveler. - His short —All You Zombies— involves a time agent making sure he completes the correct steps to finish the changes he remembers happening earlier in his life.\|\|This includes sending himself back in time to impregnate himself before his sex was forcefully changed, causing his female past self to give birth to... himself.\|\| - And in his By His Bootstraps, the protagonist is introduced to time travel by a man from the future, and shortly finds himself meeting himself twice, and each self gets trapped into saying and doing the same things he saw and heard said before. Eventually, \|\|he gets the drop on the man who introduced him to time travel by traveling into that man's past 10 years, only to find out he's waiting for himself.\|\| - Stanisław Lem pumped this to the max by time travellers creating the whole world from the physical constants up. What started as an attempt to make things better for everyone ended with our reality because of bureaucracy, competition, attempts of personal gain, human mistakes etc. ## By Title: - Animorphs: In the second Megamorphs book, the Animorphs go back to the time of the dinosaurs. While there, they find two groups of aliens at war with one another, the Mercora and the Nesk, and take the Mercora's side. Meanwhile, they're also trying to get back to their own time period, which will apparently require a nuclear explosion, and so they steal a nuke from the Nesk. This causes the Nesk to leave the planet angrily, but not before diverting the path of a comet that was originally going to narrowly miss the Earth so that it crashes into it instead. Most of the Animorphs want to use the nuke to destroy the comet and save the Mercora, but Tobias has Ax sabotage the nuke in a way so that the Mercora won't realize it's a dud until it's too late, having realized that the evolution of mammalian life as they now it depends on that comet striking. - Tim Powers plays with this trope a lot in The Anubis Gates. The time-traveling protagonist comes to believe that You Can't Fight Fate, then learns that it's not that simple, since historians don't know all the details. - He encounters the brand-new original manuscript of a poem he'd studied in his own century, and wonders how it would pick up the stains he'd seen on it in his own time. A poet he recently met then walks in carrying some food, puts it down, and picks up the manuscript with his greasy hands to look it over. - He encounters a 17th century book with an inscription in it that shakes him up. He later travels accidentally to that century, and on encountering the then-new book, writes the pig-Latin inscription addressed to himself that he would read in the future. - Eoin Colfer's Artemis Fowl Time Paradox \|\|The matter is discussed before they actually Time Travel and Artemis presumes that whatever happened in the past cannot be changed. It turns out he's right. It also lets a huge variety of crazy actions take place.\|\| - Strangely, the previous book in the series, The Lost Colony, completely averts this trope in favor of shooting hoops with the Timey-Wimey Ball. Artemis manages to \|\|bring multiple people Back from the Dead\|\| by firing a stun-gun into the recent past, although it may be justified with the fact that time was currently going bonkers. - In Aunt Maria, by Diana Wynne Jones, the main characters go back in time \|\|in the form of cats to stop Anthony from being imprisoned underground. He ends up tripping over them and falling into the trap\|\|. - Technically \|\|they were only trying to figure out where he'd been buried. The protagonist's mother happened to be a bit stupid though, and tried to save him\|\|. - Happens quite a lot in Count and Countess, in which the two eponymous characters exchange letters with each other despite living more than a hundred years apart. Notably, Elizabeth, living in the 1500s, knows that her ancestor Matyas Hunyadi (in the 1400s) held the throne of Hungary for a very long time. In an attempt to save Vlad Dracula's life, she warns him not to try to make a grab for the throne, or he will probably be killed. As a result, Vlad stays as far away from Hunyadi as possible. \|\|Which gives Hunyadi plenty of time to rouse the Black Forces against Vlad and stop him in his tracks.\|\| - The Dandelion Girl, a short story by Robert F. Young; the trope specifically applies to Julie. \|\|In the end, it is revealed that Anne and Julie are actually one and the same person; Anne/Julie's real name is probably Julianne. And so Mark has always been married to the same girl-from-the-future all along, as "Julie" had traveled further back in time to meet him in his 20's\|\|. - Dragonriders of Pern: - In Dragonflight, F'nor returns from the past to warn his friends that an expedition they're planning is going to fail. Unfortunately they now know that if they don't go it'll create a paradox because the guy who warned them won't come back in time to warn them... so his warning has exactly the opposite effect. Knowing they're going to fail they have to set out anyway. - And of course we have the situation where there are too few riders in the present due to many of them having suddenly disappeared in the past. So someone travels into the past to gather some more, thus causing the shortage. (Although it's not as futile as it sounds because their numbers would have declined anyway due to a coming period of long inactivity. This way their disappearance is useful.) - This is without even mentioning events from a more recent novel in which a Gold somehow randomly jumps to a few centuries in the past after being given a BAD mixture of gene-altering medicines in an effort to cure a plague running through the dragons themselves, which results in said Gold crash-landing in a time when one of the last trained geneticists is still alive, thereby resulting in the creation of aforementioned medicines when they would not have otherwise been made, but had already been made anyway because in the past the sick dragon had already crashed....good god my head hurts. - And even THAT ties back to the original trilogy of books by establishing, at long last, just what the 'Ancient-timers' room was made for, and what the colorful diagrams REALLY were. - Also noteworthy is the climax of All the Weyrs of Pern, where the AIVAS reveals to Jaxom that \|\|two of the three antimatter charges used to divert the Red Star from its orbit have to be placed in the past in order to have the proper effect, and that those past explosions are what caused the so-called Long Intervals in which Thread did not fall\|\|. Of course, if those hadn't occurred, none of the events of those books would have occurred either, including the discovery of the AIVAS itself. - The climax of Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. Harry and Hermione (Ron is in the Hospital Wing with a broken leg) go to the past to save Buckbeak and Sirius, but the method of time travel used has this trope in full force, plus Never Shall The Selves Meet. \|\|Harry breaks the Never Shall The Selves Meet rule to save himself from a Dementor, but avoids consequences because his past self barely saw him and thought it was his father, who he strongly resembles. He also later explains his first perfect Patronus as knowing that he could do it because he'd already done it from his past self's perspective (once he figured out who it was he saw). They manage to save Buckbeak despite supposedly hearing him be executed (the executioner actually realized he was missing and swung his axe at a fencepost in frustration), and use him to get Sirius to safety after he's imprisoned in the castle.\|\| - Used extensively in Haruhi Suzumiya this seems to be the whole purpose of future(er) Asahina. Who is suspected to be the superior of Present(or rather not-so-future) Asahina, and puts her younger self through all the missions and trouble she already went through herself. So she already changed the past because she will order herself to go to the past and change it so she can get to the future and order herself to change the past. - Douglas Adams' The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy universe works this way. In the second book, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe, while stranded on prehistoric Earth with an exodus' worth of incompetent aliens who are plainly going to begin colonizing, Ford Prefect tells Arthur Dent "This doesn't change the past, this is the past." - Then again, Ford and Arthur's presence in the past is almost completely negligible. For example, they simply show up in the alien ship. It was already supposed to crash on Earth and they had nothing to do with that. - In INVADERS of the ROKUJYOUMA!?, Koutarou and Clan are accidentally displaced in time to Ancient Forthorthe when Clan attacks Koutarou for assisting her rival, Princess Theiamillis of the Forthorthian Galactic Empire. There, they become involved in the foundational myth of Forthorthe, with Koutarou wearing a suit of powered armor borrowed from Theia. Clan eventually realizes, after curing a then-incurable disease with advanced technology, that the historical story was only possible through their intervention, with many of the fantastical elements of the myth supplied by Koutarou's powered armor. - In fact, they were originally thrown out of time and encountered the goddess of the setting, who was inspired to create the entire universe based on learning about Koutarou. - In Jago, one of the protagonists is temporarily transported to the past by the Reality Warper power of the villain, Jago, and rushes out a brief and unintentionally cryptic warning about Jago before being transported away again. The main effect of the warning is that it is overheard by a Jago ancestor in that time period, planting seeds of paranoia that warp the Jago family's path and result in the present-day Jago being the person he is. - Joel Suzuki: In Fable of the Fatewave, Joel and Felicity go back to the time of the Fourfoot War in order to prevent Blackspore from \|\|bringing Marshall Byle over to help with the war in order to save all the people Marshall killed\|\|. They overshoot their destination and end up shortly before the start of the war. Joel's presence ends up causing the war - Chief Fourfoot falls in love with him and orders him to marry him, and Joel refuses. Island law allows someone from outside a chief's village to refuse marriage to a chief, and Fourfoot can't change that law without the agreement of the other three village chiefs, so he declares was on the other three villages in order to become sole chief so he can force whomever he wants to marry him. Later, Joel and Felicity manage to talk Blackspore out of \|\|bringing Marshall over\|\|, but just as the timeline is starting to change, Thornleaf knocks out Joel, Felicity, and Blackspore and finishes the incantation himself because he doesn't believe in messing with the timeline. - This is how most of the wizards decide time travel works in The Last Continent ("In fact, history depends on you treading on the ants you've already trodden on.") There's no real evidence they're right, but it's simpler than Stibbons attempting to explain the Butterfly of Doom. It does seem to apply in Fourecks, where Scrappy tells Rincewind that things he's going to do will affect the past, but in Fourecks the Timey-Wimey Ball is in full effect. - The Licanius Trilogy: Since this work deals heavily in themes of fate, predestination, and free will, this trope comes up a lot. \|\|Perhaps the biggest example is when Caeden begs El for the chance to go back in time and prevent Davian's fated death, only to realize at the absolute last moment that it was Caeden himself, shapeshifted to look like Davian, who was fated to die from the beginning.\|\| - This is how Time Travel might work in Magic 2.0, at least, as far as they know. Nothing seems to change the future, past a certain point. For instance, time travelers who went to live out Arabian Nights caused medieval England to have glass windows, but the future is unchanged. Shown in more detail in the second book, where two of the same person are there at the same time, and the older one insists on this trope. Then again, since all of reality is a complex computer program, "time travel" is being played out in accordance with the program's logic. Time travelers are specifically forbidden from going to their own future, implying it doesn't exist yet, even though they know people who have come from a later date. Some theorize that traveling to the past results in the program merely creating a separate version of reality (i.e. a separate virtual world), in which they can do whatever they want without affecting their original "world". - Interestingly, in the case of the same person existing in a Stable Time Loop with herself, all the predictions of her older self turn out to be spot-on, and any even where it seems things will work out differently are actually orchestrated by her to make it seem this way. - Good luck convincing Phillip of that, though. He rejects any idea that his fate is not his to control, which is what first endears him to Brit the Younger (who has been forced to live alongside her older self Brit the Elder for decades, constantly being looked down upon as an immature child). Phillip posits that Brit the Elder is merely a construct of the program, created to maintain the illusion of a Stable Time Loop and that she's not really the future version of Brit the Younger. - Greg Egan plays with this trope every which way from Sunday ( except straight) in his Orthogonal trilogy — mostly just because everybody accepts that it would be impossible to change the past, so nobody tries. - Discussed: As mentioned on the main bullet above, as soon as the characters nail down the nature of spacetime, it's pretty much accepted that Time Travel, while possible (and surprisingly easy), cannot actually change anything. - Double (Triple?) Subversion: On Esilio, a planet with Merlin Sickness, the crew of the Surveyor blow up a rock. After the explosion, they find what looks like writing etched into a newly-exposed part of the rock, which seems to be a message from the ancestors (the inhabitants of the homeworld). Because of the planet's Merlin Sickness, the message must have been carved at some point in the future. The obvious assumption is that the message means the journey is successful; the Peerless makes it home, and at some point the ancestors visit Esilio and carve the message as encouragement to the travelers. But Ramiro decides that he wants to have a hand in fate, so he plans to go out and "carve" the message himself. \|\|Tarquinia prevents him from doing so — and he then realizes that she is going to carve the message. He spends most of the rest of the book under the impression that she did — only to discover after the climax that she tried to carve it, but no matter what she tried, the message stayed there, which means that she didn't do it either. The book ends with an implication that one of the characters who returns to the homeworld in the epilogue is the one to go to Esilio and carve the message.\|\| - Invoked: The Surveyor returns to the Peerless after a long absence to find that the inverted Time Capsule messaging system (which essentially lets people send email back in time) has been built, but also \|\|mysteriously stops working all at once at a known point in the future. But since no one actually knows what causes the disruption, the crew of the Surveyor realize that if nobody does anything, they are most likely consigning themselves to being hit by a meteor. On the other hand, if they attempt to sabotage the system, they are raising the probability that they will cause the disruption, which means no one will be harmed. In other words, they know they Can't Fight Fate since the universe is an absolutely Stable Time Loop, but if nobody tries to cause the disruption, then it's almost guaranteed that it's caused by a disaster such as a meteor strike; but as long as no one knows what causes the disruption and someone is trying to cause it, they are increasing the odds that the disruption has a harmless cause.\|\| Yeah. - Early seasons of Andromeda used this, but it degenerated into Timey-Wimey Ball territory after a while, to the point where an entire episode is devoted to showing how things originally went before being changed (specifically, \|\|Gaheris Rhade kills Dylan in the original timeline and ends up in the Bad Future. Disillusioned with his own people, he resolves to re-create the Commonwealth, but his prejudices and lack of compassion keep him from being successful. As everything is going to hell, he goes back in time, kills his past self, and throws the fight with Dylan in order to ensure that Dylan is the one who ends up in the Bad Future\|\|). - The only time-travel arc on Babylon 5 involves this trope, and it is absolutely central to both the Myth Arc and the background mythology of the show. \|\|Babylon 4 appears in Babylon 5 space four years after it disappears (the episode "Babylon Squared". The events leading up to that appearance are explained in the two-parter "War Without End, Part 1 & 2", in which we find out that Babylon 4 was taken to the year 1260 AD (or so) to help the Minbari and their allies gather to fight the Shadows. To prevent this from happening, the Shadows sent a big bomb to Babylon 4 just as it was about to come online in 2254. However, the White Star also goes back in time (because Delenn, Sinclair, Sheridan, and Ivanova see it in a recording), destroys the bomb, and (as it turns out) takes it back in time as well. However, this is not before the time device (sent by Draal and transported by Zathras) malfunctions, dropping Babylon 4 into 2258, leading to the events of "Babylon Squared." Sinclair then realizes (having received a message from Valen before the journey) that he must take Babylon 4 back in time himself, and then uses the triluminary device to turn himself into a Minbari—specifically, Valen, who led them in the First Shadow War, organized their society, and effectively became the main prophet of their religion.\|\| The Stable Time Loop is fully completed, so to speak, by the fact that \|\|when Valen dies, he eventually gets reincarnated as Sinclair.\|\| - \|\|Valen/Sinclair doesn't need to be reincarnated. From his point of view, he is born in the 23rd century as a human, goes through the War and subsequent events of the series up to "War Without End" and then goes back in time to the 13th century as a Minbari and lives out his life as Valen. The Minbari think he is Valen reincarnated when they encounter him at the Battle of the Line because he has Valen's soul; not knowing about the time travel, they don't see that Sinclair will become Valen in the future before travelling back to the past.\|\| - Additionally, during the Battle of the Line, Delenn wants to bring in a human prisoner to study, so she picks a Starfury about to ram their warcruiser, which happens to be piloted by Sinclair. \|\|She later finds out that she's a direct descendant of Valen, who is Sinclair's future self (in the past). Thus, Delenn inadvertently saves her great-great-great-something-grandfather, which would eventually allow her to be born\|\|. - There are some odd things involving \|\|Babylon 4\|\|, namely Sinclair getting visions of a Bad Future, in which his friends are killed and the Babylon 5 station is destroyed during a battle. That future never comes to pass, although it's possible he simply misinterpreted the vision (\|\|his friends don't actually die, and the station is destroyed in the future, but it's actually decommissioned and scuttled\|\|). Word of God is that the visions are \|\|what would have happened if he had not traveled back in time\|\|. - Doctor Who has, unsurprisingly, used this one multiple times (as with most time travel theories): - "Day of the Daleks": freedom fighters from a Dalek-dominated Dark Future come back to the UNIT era to kill the diplomat they believe incited a nuclear war, but it turns out that they were responsible for the terrorist bomb that started the conflict. Fortunately, the Doctor is able to talk down the bomb-carrier and break them out of their Stable Time Loop. - "Blink": "You're reading aloud from a transcript of a conversation you're still having?" - In "The Fires of Pompeii", \|\|the Doctor doesn't want to avert the destruction of Pompeii, is convinced to avert it anyway, and then is forced to cause the disaster in order to avert a larger catastrophe\|\|. - The \|\|TARDIS explosion\|\| in "The Pandorica Opens"/"The Big Bang" was successfully prevented (in a fairly static timeline, probably) with the help of River Song, who wouldn't exist until a series of events that could only have happened after (?) it. Adding to the temporal weirdness which comes with this is the fact that she was around to see a crack in "Flesh and Stone", even though, from her perspective, the cracks never existed (or maybe they did, but she had just played a direct role in making sure they were completely erased from the universe). Every encounter with River can basically be summed up as "an inexplicably Stable Time Loop". - Another one related to the \|\|TARDIS explosion.\|\| It's revealed in "The Time of the Doctor" that those responsible \|\|were a splinter group of the Silence, who had traveled back in time to kill the Doctor in order to prevent him reaching Trenzalore, where the Time Lords were preparing to return to the universe through a crack in time after having the Doctor confirm his name to them. The explosion of the TARDIS is what caused the cracks to begin with.\|\| - It becomes especially common beginning with the Steven Moffat era, where he cracks down on all the "Why don't they just go back and..." questions that plague any Time Travel story by saying that you can't alter events you're part of or have even witnessed or learned about without causing a Time Crash (presumably for the reason mentioned early in this page description: if Bob saves Alice, Alice never died, so Alice never needed saving... so Bob never saved Alice, so she did need saving, so he did save her, so she didn't need saving... there's just no answer for what the moment after Bob's little time trip would look like. Trying is a good way to break time itself.) However, such events have been thwarted anyway through tricky manipulation of events, ending in "what you saw in the future was unchanged, but it never meant what you thought it meant." To go back to the example at the start of the page, by Moffat's rules, if Bob goes back to save Alice, and then the Killer Robot chasing them eventually disguises itself as Alice and gets disposed of in the ensuing battle by being shoved in front of the very truck that Past Bob saw hitting "Alice" in his vision of the future, the space-time continuum and Alice will be just fine. Cue a Once More, with Clarity! scene with Alice's "death" shown from another angle, and Past Bob running off to fire up his time machine and failing to notice the sparks coming from "Alice" just as he turns his back, while Future Bob and Alice hide and go unnoticed. - Inverted in Farscape. Sent back in time and desperate to keep things the way they were, the crew screws up, with each attempt to force what they know to be history resulting in the present time line getting worse. In the end, rather than the noncombatant survivors of the battle \|\|being spared in a hasty but well-regarded treaty\|\|, they are \|\|butchered by enraged enemy soldiers\|\|. The memorial to peace becomes \|\|a lament of the senseless slaughter\|\|. - A later episode plays this trope much straighter, with strong hints that certain events from John's childhood were always caused by his future self and Moya's crew accidentally traveling back in time to 1985. - How Hodor got his name in Game of Thrones. Lampshaded by the Three-Eyed Raven telling Bran "the ink is dry" on the past should he desire to change it. - In the Haven episode "Sarah", Duke is sent back in time to the point when his grandfather Roy was killed, and decides to try and avert this. Instead he accidentally tips the guy off that he's about to be killed and by whom, sending Roy racing off to start the shootout that ends in his death. - In the Hercules: The Legendary Journeys two part adventure "Armageddon Now", Callisto goes back in time to prevent who she thinks was Xena (because her army was in the village) from killing her parents. While trying to protect her family from Xena's army, the adult Callisto accidentally kills her own father and is forced to kill her mother after realizing that she can't change anything. She then tries to burn her younger self alive, either wishing to break the loop or remembering herself being rescued from a fire. - Legion: In "Chapter 22", David Haller's plan when he travels back in time is to protect his baby self from being possessed by the disembodied Amahl Farouk, but David's presence ends up facilitating the infection. David's attempt at communicating with his mother Gabrielle causes her to faint, and then his father Charles Xavier arrives home from Morocco to find his wife unconscious on the floor. Charles assumes that the ghostly apparition (who is the adult David, but Charles doesn't know that) in his infant son's bedroom is the culprit, so Charles hurls the intruder away with his Psychic Powers. While Charles is distracted trying to revive Gabrielle, he doesn't notice that behind him, Farouk's consciousness is entering baby David's mind. The adult David's interference in the past sealed his own fate. - This concept became a major plot point in the fifth season of Lost (which Hurley couldn't quite grasp) though it was put to the test in the cliffhanger finale... - Particularly annoying with Sayid \|\|shooting young Ben\|\|, which was not only implied to have already happened, Kate and Sawyer's interference in order to put things right seems to actually have caused \|\|Ben to become evil, as Richard says that because the island healed him he would always be "one of them" and that he would "lose his innocence". So by trying to kill him, they effectively caused what they were trying to prevent\|\|. Nice going, guys! - In the season 1 finale of The Ministry of Time, Julián travels back to 2012 to try to save his wife, only to end up indirectly triggering the car crash in which she died. - In the Murder Most Horrid episode "A Determined Woman", a female scientist working on a time machine becomes so frustrated with her idiot husband's antics that she kills him. Several years later she is released from prison, finishes her time machine and goes back to try and save her husband, only to find that his confusion between the two versions of her is what caused his erratic behavior in the first place. - In the Mystery Science Theater 3000 episode "Hobgoblins", Tom Servo tries to go back in time to stop the movie from being made by hunting down the director and... kicking him in the shin. Upon Tom's return to his present, Crow pulls up an article in which the director claimed that his inspiration for Hobgoblins was that time when a squat red robot ran up to him out of the blue and kicked him in the shin... - The Outer Limits (1995): This is a recurring theme in the time travel episodes of the Nicholas Prentice arc. - In the episode "Tribunal", history professor and Holocaust scholar Aaron Zgierski is taken back to Auschwitz by time-traveler Nicholas Prentice (who turns out to be Zgierski's own great-grandson). While there, they rescue Aaron's "older" sister (who is only eight at the time) by bringing her into the future to live out her life free of Nazi oppression. History recorded Aaron's sister as dying at Auschwitz after being "dragged away" by a couple of guards, who were actually Zgierski and Prentice in disguise. - "Breaking Point" involves a scientist building a time machine and traveling several days into the future, where he sees his wife bleeding out from a gunshot wound in their living room. Distraught, he goes back and does his best to prevent this from happening. Not only does he sound crazy to everyone around him (including his wife), but his time travel has also unhinged him, slowly driving him crazy for real, until he accidentally shoots his wife with the gun he got to save her from being shot. The episode then promptly subverts this by having him go back to the day he first met his wife and killing his younger self before the event, himself vanishing due to the Grandfather Paradox. Then we're shown his future wife, who appears to be depressed and preparing to commit suicide (it's implied that meeting him would have helped get through the depression). - In "Gettysburg", Prentice wants to change the past by convincing a Civil War buff (who has pro-Confederate views) of the wrongness of his convictions by taking him and his friend to just before the Battle of Gettysburg. Originally, the buff was going to assassinate a black President in his own future. Instead, the buff takes this opportunity to try to alter the course of the battle in the Confederate favor. He accidentally uses Prentice's time machine (shaped as an old-fashioned camera) to transport a Confederate general through time. His attempts at preventing the (from his viewpoint) catastrophe result in him getting shot for cowardice. Prentice takes the friend back to his time, and the latter finds an old newspaper with the picture of his dead friend. Meanwhile, in the Future the transported Confederate general appears at the moment of the original assassination, and he ends up being the presidential assassin (he was actually aiming for a man dressed as Abraham Lincoln, who was standing next to the president). - "Time to Time" subverts this when a new recruit into the temporal agency goes back in time and prevents her father's death due to eco-terrorists' bomb going off prematurely. This results in another member of the agency suddenly vanishing. His colleagues figured out that, without her father to tamper with the bomb, it went off as planned and killed a lot of innocent people, including an ancestor of the temporal agent who disappeared. Reluctantly, the girl has to let her father sacrifice himself. However, she does alter her mother's fate somewhat by giving her a coping mechanism (in her timeline, her mother's a wreck; in the altered one, she is an accomplished artist). - Quantum Leap was somewhat inconsistent on this trope. It's the trope namer for Set Right What Once Went Wrong, but Sam and Al always remember how things used-to-be even as Sam changes the past (Al keeps track of the current timeline's history using his handheld computer-link to Mission Control). In episodes that directly impacted Al or Sam, they would have the entire memory of both things happening. - Sam \|\|successfully\|\| tries to save his brother's life in Vietnam, which alters history and results in \|\|Al still becoming a prisoner of war. Al allowed him to save his brother by not telling him he was one of the prisoners\|\|. - The series finale had a somewhat omniscient bartender asking Sam if there was anything that he wanted to do differently. \|\|Sam remembers when Al was invisibly dancing with his first wife, Beth, who became heartbroken when she thought Al was killed in Vietnam and married someone else by the time Al was released. Sam then travels to that moment and tells Beth that Al is alive and coming home - the next leap only shows a black screen, with epilogue text stating that Al and Beth had celebrated their 39th anniversary and Sam was never seen again.\|\| Supposedly, this is an example of Executive Meddling, since the creators did not expect the show to be over at this point. When the news came about the show's cancellation, they hastily added a blank screen (so hastily they misspelled Sam's last name) as a half-assed attempt to wrap up the show. - In one episode, Congress is reviewing Project Quantum Leap's funding and leans on Al (acting as the project's representative) to have Sam alter history in ways beneficial to the US. Al tries to get Sam to prevent the U-2 spy plane incident, but Sam is in the past protecting a young attorney. At the end of the episode, the Congressman in charge of the committee is about to cut the project's funding when, in the past, Sam unintentionally corrects the attorney on a key piece of Constitutional law which she had wrong and she says could have made her fail the bar. Cut to the present, where the obstructionist Congressman is replaced by an older version of the attorney, who approves the project's funding for another year. It's never made explicit, but Al's surprise at the sudden change suggests that he's aware of the change. - However, in the episode about the Kennedy assassination, while Sam can't prevent \|\|himself\|\| from killing JFK, it then appears the reason he was sent back there was to prevent Jackie Kennedy from being killed, which most viewers would have assumed had already happened, whether Sam had anything to do with it or not. - The first Time Travel episode of Stargate SG-1 ("1969") can be perceived as following this logic, but none of the subsequent Time Travel episodes in the Stargate-verse can — they all involve alternate timelines instead. - Though it seems SG-1 held to the "Alternate timelines/universes" first. The 20th episode of Season 1 had the "Quantum Mirror" which put Daniel Jackson in an alternate timeline/universe. "1969" was the 21st episode of Season 2. - Stargate: Continuum shows the present universe being erased by Baal's actions in the past. As a part of the SG-1 team consciously try to outrun the phenomenon, the stargate wormhole somehow shields them from it. So, while there are alternate realities in the Stargate-verse, those may be unrelated to time travel. Either that, or the writers just can't decide. - The Star Trek: The Original Series episode "Assignment: Earth" ends with the reveal that the Enterprise's historical records show that a malfunctioning nuclear platform exploded just as it did in the episode, indicating that Gary Seven's mission (complete with Kirk and Spock's interference therewith) was part of their existing timeline. - This actually ended up being shockingly accurate to the viewer's timeline. The episode tells us they're visiting the year 1968, and Spock indicates that on the day in question, there will be an important assassination and that the US will launch an orbital weapons platform (the latter of which becomes the basis of the episode's plot). On March 4th, 1968, six days after the episode aired, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., was assassinated, and the US launched Apollo 6, which crashed...the same fate as the unnamed platform at the center of the episode - Conspicuously averted in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine episode "Trials and Tribble-ations": Temporal Investigator Dulmur: Captain, why did you take the Defiant back in time? Sisko: It was an accident. Temporal Investigator Lucsly: So you're not contending it was a predestination paradox? Dulmur: A time loop. That you were meant to go back into the past? Sisko: No, we're not. Dulmur: Good. Lucsly: We hate those. - Bashir does suggest this as a possibility at one point during the episode, though he turns out to be incorrect (presumably, anyway, since the timeline wasn't altered by the "predestined" event being unfulfilled). Luckily, the investigators weren't around to hear him. - Heartbreakingly (how else?) done in Supernatural when Dean is sent back in time to 1973 and meets his father. He decides to kill the Yellow Eyed Demon that killed his mother, poisoned his brother and set his family on a decades long revenge quest, before it ever comes near his family. Unfortunately, his efforts to kill the YED is what attracts it to his mother \|\|who is manipulated into making a deal with the YED, thus dooming his family\|\|. - In Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles episode "Allison from Palmdale", Cameron malfunctions and believes herself to be Allison Young, the resistance fighter on whom her appearance was based. She calls "her" mother, who says this must be some mistake since she doesn't have a daughter "yet"... Claire Young: [rubbing her pregnant belly] That's a beautiful name though. "Allison"... - Given how time travel appears to work in this universe note : every instance of time travel seems to set up divergent timelines, however, it's probably that Allison's mother would have chosen that name anyway. - The Twilight Zone: - The Twilight Zone (1959): - Subverted in the second season episode "Back There", in which a young engineer has a discussion with his fellow rich friends about this topic. He then finds himself back in time to the night of Abraham Lincoln's assassination. He desperately tries to warn everyone that Lincoln will be assassinated, but he's brushed off as drunk and a man named Wellington (who late turns out to be John Wilkes Booth) takes him in. While in his care Wellington drugs him and goes to assassinate Lincoln. When the engineer wakes up, the president is shot mere moments later and he discovers the man who drugged him was in fact John Wilkes Booth. When he goes back to his original timeline, he discovers he did actually change one thing. The police officer who believed him and tried to save the president got promoted to chief of police then a councilman and later became a millionaire allowing his descendant (who in the original timeline was an attendant at club the engineer was a part of) to inherit his fortune. - Played straight in "No Time Like the Past", in which after a scientist fails several times to change history, he decides to go back to a time where there were no issues, 1888. Upon realizing there will be a fire at the school, so he tries to stop it, but when a horse and buggy swerves to avoid hitting him, it launches a lantern which hits the school causing the aforementioned fire. - In the The Twilight Zone (1985) episode "Profile in Silver", a time travelling historian saves his ancestor John F. Kennedy from being assassinated. The resulting damage to space time then creates a timeline where World War III and the extinction of humanity is inevitable. Kennedy volunteers to go back to set things right but the historian instead sends Kennedy to the future and takes Kennedy's place in the motorcade, being assassinated in his place. A colleague of the historian then tells the Secret Service agent who helped him that "Even the act of traveling in time is part of history" and that the historian's sacrifice was part of the "correct" timeline. - In the The Twilight Zone (2002) episode "Cradle of Darkness", a young woman (played by Katherine Heigl) is one of the few people capable of surviving time travel. She agrees to take a one-way trip to the past to kill Hitler as a baby (it's not clear why the future people think that the new reality will be better). She pretends to be a new maid and ingrains herself into the Hitler family, realizing that Hitler Sr. is the one who taught his son to hate the "lesser races". In the end, she grabs the baby and jumps into the river (also unexplained why she had to jump herself, possibly guilt for killing an as-yet-innocent baby, though it was mentioned in the beginning it was a one way trip so it's not like she could get back to her original timeline). The other maid, takes a homeless gypsy's baby and passes it off as young Adolf. So yeah, if this is believed, Hitler was one of the "lesser races" he hated so much. - The Black Sabbath song "Iron Man". note : No relation to the Marvel Comics character of the same name, although the song was featured in the live-action film and has been retconned as being the character's namesake. A guy goes forward in time and winds up After the End, where the world has been destroyed by some weird metallic monstrosity. He tries to come back and change it, but the change turns him into the weird metallic monstrosity and he is mocked and ridiculed by society. So he destroys the world. - In Ludo's rock opera "The Broken Bride" the narrator builds a time machine to go back and save his wife/girlfriend who had died in a car wreck. \|\|After fighting dinosaurs in the past and a zombie apocalypse in the future, he makes it back to his own time, only to find that the same events are occurring as they did before. Instead of saving his girlfriend/wife, he decides to go along for the ride. One can assume they both die, this time.\|\| - As mentioned, Greek and Germanic mythology tended to hammer on the idea (relying on prophecies instead of time travel) that You Cannot Change The Future. Even the Gods can't change the outcome of the story. (How many steps is Thor destined to take in the final battle of Ragnarok?) Not only that, but historians actually posit that Norse culture went into a prolonged funk over it, presaging the rise of Ingmar Bergman and Werner Herzog by centuries. (The lack of sunlight in wintertime didn't help.) Norsemen in particular lamented the decline in pagan beliefs for exposing them to the horrors of existentialism, making them less resigned to the inevitability of death in battle. Meanwhile, the Greeks preferred to set up stories where characters would have hubris enough to believe this trope did not apply to them, and then brutally swat them down in order to provide an entertaining Aesop. For examples, see You Can't Fight Fate and Self-Fulfilling Prophecy. - There are some indications Germanic mythology played with this, however, in that while one couldn't alter their own fate, because the fates of all beings are intertwined with one another, everyone else's actions can affect another's fate. - The concept of Predestination. This concept is prevalent in all Calvinist churches (Reformed, Presbyterian, Baptist, congregational, Pentecostal), and in nutshell means that the life and final depository of a human being is preordained and predetermined by God and he or she can do nothing to avoid it. In other words, people are selected either to Heaven or Hell before they even were born. - This same concept is prevalent in Islam. The only way to avert the predestination is to get killed in Holy War, which earns you an automatic admission to Paradise. However, most Muslims believe that Allah only sees what people will do ahead of time, but doesn't cause it (whether or not that really allows for free will can be debated of course). - C°ntinuum: roleplaying in The Yet: It's an ironclad article of Spanner faith that there is only one universe — including one past and one future. A player will meet fellow spanners who've been affected by changes that are in the player's Yet, and you'd better do them or risk Frag. - In Transdimensional Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, the GM was to have an important recurring character recognize the characters in a future era even if they hadn't met him yet in a past one. - Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay: The Celestial Order of wizards, who specialize in astrology and reading the future, select their leaders through ontological paradox — they appoint the person they foresee being appointed. The question of what force actually determines who gets appointed keeps the current leader awake at night. - At the end of A Very Potter Sequel Hermione asks future!Draco what was really supposed to happen during their first year and Draco says that this was how it all played out originally, it just makes sense now that he lived through it. - Featured in one of the videos leading into The Simpsons Ride at Universal Studios. Professor Frink arrives looking for Doc Brown's Institute of Future Technology, only to find it replaced by a clownish theme park (Krustyland). He decides to stop it by going "back to the future, I mean past." He gets into a Delorean and accelerates into a time jump. Two years ago, a broker is telling Doc Brown that he'll be able to keep the Institute open for years to come. At that point, the Delorean materializes and runs over the broker. Frink jumps out and Brown yells at him "You ruined everything! Now I'll have to sell the Institute of Future Technology to that mercenary clown!" Krusty promptly pastes a Krustyland logo over the IFT logo on the front sign. - Brown then shows Krusty to his limo, and Krusty tells him to tear tickets at the front gate after he gets a haircut. - In Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors: \|\|Akane\|\| sets up such a time loop to ensure her survival. \|\|Her future self\|\|, posing as a fellow victim of the mysterious kidnapper who set up the second Nonary game, guides her childhood friend Junpei in a way that he can psychically contact her and help her out of the room that she is still trapped in. - Steins;Gate: Understanding this concept is what allows \|\|Okabe (with some help from his "future" self) to turn the constant stream of Downer Endings into something much more pleasant.\|\| His early episodes boast about being "able to cheat the universe itself" doesn't look so silly anymore by the end. That said, the series doesn't follow this trope entirely with regards to time travel; it's more like a combination of For Want of a Nail and Rubber-Band History most of the time. Sending messages to the past can have fairly far-reaching implications (such as \|\|changing the actual biological sex of a person\|\|), and the butterfly effect is explicitly called out by name. However, some events have greater inevitability than others (such as \|\|Mayuri's death in the beta world line by a series of increasingly Contrived Coincidences\|\|). - In Umineko: When They Cry, Ange tries to Set Right What Once Went Wrong in regards to what happened on Rokkenjima in 1986. In the end, it's clear that she can't change her future; \|\|nearly everyone who was on Rokkenjima will die, Ange will still have a strained and miserable relationship with her aunt Eva, and her brother Battler will technically survive but will have undergone Death of Personality due to amnesia and will no longer consider himself her brother.\|\| - A three-part episode of Red vs. Blue had Church travel back in time and try to change history to prevent both his 'death' and that of Tex, as well as attempting to stop the other difficulties that the Blue Team had to encounter at the time (such as the problem with Lopez's switch, and Tucker getting blasted by an RPG). He ends up accidentally causing, or failing to prevent, every major event of the series up to that point \|\|including his own 'demise'\|\|. - He then wants to try again only for another version of him to tell him that it's all been tried a dozen times already by other versions of Church who all failed. Eventually, Church gives up. - The others experience much the same thing when they get to time-travel later on. \|\|That mysterious sniper who killed Butch Flowers the second time, after the alien revived him? That was Future Tucker\|\|. When Tucker does manage to influence the past, the consequences are bad enough that he ends up having to let the changes revert. - 8-Bit Theater has been explained by an in-comic character to be this, with the added You Can't Fight Fate. - In The Adventures of Dr. McNinja, \|\|Chuck Goodrich\|\| is a time traveler from the future who comes to avoid The End of the World as We Know It play with this tropes. it's not like you can't change the past...you can change how it will be The End of the World as We Know It. - The Adventures of Dr. McNinja does use Branching Timelines, it's just that Cumberland Is The Center Of The Universe and everything in the universe is trying to kill us. A more accurate description of the various time traveling adventures of \|\|Chuck Goodrich\|\| is that each disaster in itself acts to prevent all the other disasters that are waiting. - As explained by one character in a particularly nasty future, the branching timelines are the reason you can't technically change the past. See, since a future-you didn't come back in time to the present when you were taking The Slow Path to the current future, you didn't do that, so if you go back in time, you create an alternate past where you did, and the versions of your friends and family in your current future-present will never see you again, and also their lives still suck. - In American Barbarian, Rick's attempt to go back results in his appearing as a character already seen. - All the Time Travel in Bob and George eventually resolves itself into this. - In Homestuck, no matter what means of time travel is used, what is done, or what information is transferred, it can only result in the creation of a Stable Time Loop, or alternate timeline. Everything that happens in the Alpha timeline still happens, already including the changes from any and all time travel, before they're actually made. The Trolls regularly insist that they've already lost the game and that You Can't Fight Fate. - Notably, the alternate timelines created by Time players are "doomed timelines": They and anything and everything from them are marked for destruction. This can still be very useful, though, as things can come to the Alpha from them, though are generally still doomed. Of course, it turns out that the creation of the doomed timelines and their involvement in the alpha timeline was also predestined, so either way, You Can't Fight Fate. - The one exception to this is \|\|John's retcon power, which allows him to make changes to the Alpha Timeline. These changes do not create doomed timelines, and unlike everything else in the Alpha timeline, did not already happen before they were made.\|\| Then it turns out \|\|even this isn't an exception. John's attempt to use this power to defeat Caliborn before he becomes Lord English is what turns Caliborn into Lord English. It's also the same event that turns Caliborn's juju into the juju that gives John his retcon power.\|\| - In Sluggy Freelance Bun-Bun's whole adventure in Timeless Space was based off this trope. As Uncle Time put it, "Life's so much funner with the paradox rules turned off." - How Time Travel works in Umlaut House, as Volair explained to his future son here: Volair: You can't change the future, Pierce. Past, future, it all fits together like a big, freaky jigsaw. Pierce (Who just accidentally broke the UST between his future parents): So the future you knows we're here? Volair: No, but I will if you tell me the date you're from. - Time travel in The Way of the Metagamer runs entirely on predestination. This doesn't stop it from being ludicrously convoluted. - In this xkcd, Black Hat Guy builds a one-use time machine and is sent back in time to kill Hitler. He succeeds... in a bunker in 1945. - Subverted on Le Visiteur du Futur season one, the Visitor claims that time travel does not work like that and that without the Time Brigad interference he could change the past but we are not given any evidence towards it and more and more towards him not knowing what he is doing as well as he pretends. Moreover, things like the Visitor's future self setting up a Stable Time Loop to help his past self escape custody points towards this trope. Eventually, during the climax of the season, the Founders spell out this trope and explain that their plan rely on it. So of course they are proven wrong when Raph manages to change the past. For the remaining of the serie the opposite trope is in full effect. - Red Panda Adventures: - "Eyes of the Idol" has an emissary from the Council of Mages tell the Flying Squirrel that the Nazis have attempted to travel back in time to the middle ages and conquer the past. However, a known issue with time travel is that Surprisingly Realistic Outcome occurs and most people who travel back or forward in time quickly die because they have no immunity to the sicknesses of the age and vice versa. This can be accounted for and avoided, but the Nazis never learned how. As a result, the Nazis who went back all died and, in the process, caused the Black Plague; their attempt to establish the Thousand-Year Reich a thousand years ago was always a part of the timeline. - In "The Honoured Dead", the Red Panda and Flying Squirrel are supposed to recover an artifact that disappeared ten years ago. They decide to go back in time and steal it, on the assumption that this was how it went missing in the first place. While there, they stop a man from committing a rather explosive suicide. Only after the fact does the Red Panda realize the man they saved is someone they know in the present day. - In "The Chimes at Midnight", a pair of would-be assassins come to 1945 Toronto from the future to murder the man who would become the Black Eagle on the day he becomes a superhero. They think that's because it's the day he gets his powers, but all they actually do is confirm that the Black Eagle becomes a name for the history books; much to the Red Panda's and Flying Squirrel's chagrin, since the Black Eagle is \|\|Harry Kelly, an agent of theirs they've known since he was a little boy who, thanks to this event, knows to lie about his origin story to ensure it happens\|\|. - Present in SCP-2000, the Foundation's equivalent of a "reset button," built to reverse the effects of end-of-the-world scenarios by rebuilding humanity from scratch. Not only has the reset been used an unknown number of times, attempts to change human history by resetting the world further back in the past than 20 years are implied to have caused both world wars. - Played with in Beast Wars. After discovering that they're all on prehistoric Earth, Dinobot's mind becomes consumed with the question of whether he actually has free will, or whether this trope is in effect and all of his actions in the past are predetermined. His question is answered when he spies on Megatron and sees him experimenting with altering the future by blasting a mountain and checking an image of the future version of the mountain. When the image changes before their eyes to show the chunk missing, Dinobot realizes that the future can indeed be changed. Ironically, the knowledge that he is indeed free to make his own choices causes him to feel like he has no choice but to invoke the trope anyway, because Megatron wants to change the future for the worse and he's the only one close enough to stop him before it's too late, even if it costs him his own life. Dinobot: The question that once haunted my being has been answered: the future is not fixed, and my choices are my own. And yet... how ironic, for I now find that I have no choice at all! [transforms to robot mode] I am a warrior... Let the battle be joined.... - Played with again in the finale. \|\|Dinobot II, being influenced by the original Dinobot's spirit\|\| sends the Maximals information concerning an Autobot shuttle docked in the Ark. Blackarachnia points out that the historical records never mentioned that the Autobots had a shuttle. Rhinox then exclaims that history is still being made, and uses the shuttle to save the day and take everyone home, which explains why the Autobots supposedly never had it. - In the Darkwing Duck episode "Paraducks", Gosalyn warns Darkwing not to interfere into the past when they went back in time to his childhood. At first he doesn't and returns to the present, only to find that S.H.U.S.H. doesn't exist, the King, a two bit thug from Darkwing's childhood has taken over St. Canard and he serves as the King's cowardly lackey, having never become Darkwing Duck. They go back and time and shut down the King for good and give little Drakey Mallard (Darkwing) the courage he needed. - The Fairly Oddparents special "The Secret Origin of Denzel Crocker": Timmy and 21st-century Cosmo were the ones responsible for \|\|making Crocker lose his fairy godparents and giving him the opportunity to partially get around the ensuing mass mindwipe thus causing his obsession with fairies\|\|, which also indirectly led to his own birth due to \|\|the disappointed scientists at Crocker's presentation in the '80s investing in Dinkleburg's parachute pants and causing him to break up with Timmy's mom, thereby getting his parents together.\|\| - Of course, in the original timeline, 1970s-era Cosmo would have exposed himself and Wanda as fairies due to his own stupidity. In addition, the original timeline Crocker did not have a functional scanner nor build one. Here, Crocker stole the one Timmy got from AJ before putting Cosmo's hair and having an effective fairy detecter, though not any more success. - This is also "confirmed" by being tied to a real-life history example, as Jorgen warns Timmy he is not allowed to interfere with March 1972 ever again after the episode's events, but suggests he is free to interfere with the rest of the year as much as he wants, as long as it does not hurt "President McGovern". In real life, Sen. George McGovern lost that year's presidential election in one of the most notorious landslides in election history, suggesting this is Timmy's doing as well. - Later episodes zigzag this example, by featuring a completely different version of Crocker's fairy godfamily, his childhood behavior, and how he loses them, as the show increasingly adopted negative continuity. - Played mostly straight in the Futurama episode "Roswell That Ends Well", where Fry and his crewmates end up in Roswell, New Mexico in 1947, where his grandfather Enos was stationed in the military, and he spends half the episode just trying to make sure his grandfather is not harmed. After the Professor warns him not to change the past unless he was already destined to change the past, Fry's extreme caution (and stupidity) result in his grandfather being vaporized by an atomic bomb. Although Fry previously recognized both of his grandparents from childhood, subsequent events and episodes nonetheless make it clear that the man Fry killed was not actually Fry's biological grandfather, and that his real grandfather is \|\|Fry himself\|\|. - The standard rule for time travel in Gargoyles. - Goliath tried to convince Demona in the past not to turn evil, and she seems to take it all to heart. Unfortunately, one guy, even the love of your life, telling you to "stay good" is trumped by centuries of being brutalized by humans. It's a true Tear Jerker to realize that Demona and Goliath were once really and truly Happily Married. - During the same incident, Demona also tried to warn her younger self of the destruction of her clan in order to turn her against the humans. Demona is in massive denial, however; she herself was one of the major causes of that very destruction, in one of her anti-human plots. - Xanatos uses this to his advantage. He gives two period coins to the Illuminati, along with a letter, giving instructions to delver them both to himself in the future. The coins are like pennies in the past, but by the present they're very valuable and are the coins that started his fortune. The letter, of course, is to tell him to do just that. - Later, Goliath attempts to use the time-traveling Phoenix Gate to save Griff from being killed during the Blitz in WWII London, after being accused of abandoning or murdering Griff by his companions. With incident after increasingly improbable incident occurring that indicates the universe has decided Griff is its new Chew Toy, Goliath ultimately concludes that fate will not allow Griff to get home and uses the Phoenix Gate to bring Griff back with him to the present, thus causing his original disappearance. - Mid-way through the Avalon arc, the Arch-Mage Took A Shitload Of Levels In Badass via a self-inflicted Stable Time Loop. It starts with his future self rescuing his past self from potential death and continues with instructions on how to use three mighty items of magic. - Goliath winds up in a Bad Future, and various characters suggest using the Phoenix Gate to fix it; Goliath repeatedly points out it doesn't work that way. In the end he is finally willing to try it, only to discover that \|\|this whole thing was All Just a Dream made by Puck as a ploy to get Goliath to hand the Gate over\|\|. - Used on an episode of Justice League Unlimited. Brainiac 5 imports heroes from the past because history mentioned an incident where heroes traveled to the future. He tries to avoid mentioning how it turned out, of course, just to be sure things go the way they're supposed to, with only two of the three returning. \|\|Nobody dies. Supergirl just decides to stay in the future.\|\| - ¡Mucha Lucha!: in Woulda Coulda Hasbeena, Señor Hasbeena uses a time portal to go back to 1972 and prevent a flash of light that briefly blinded him and killed his career as a professional luchador. Ricochet, Buena Girl, and Flea try to stop him because his time travel is altering the present and, in the ensuing fight, present-day Señor Hasbeena uses a signature move that creates the very flash of light that ruined him in the past. - In the season 2 episode "It's About Time" of My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic, Twilight Sparkle is visited by her future self (from a week later, looking entirely worn) and told "whatever you do, don't..." with the sentence being cut off. Past Twilight then spends the whole week worrying about and trying to prevent whatever happens during the next week, with each incident causing her to gain the looks of Future Twilight, indicating she hasn't changed the future at all. \|\|She only then learns later that nothing actually happens. So she goes back into the past to tell her past self "Whatever you do, don't... worry about the future" only to end up being pulled back into the future right where it cut off for Past Twilight, setting the events into motion for the whole episode.\|\| - In The Powerpuff Girls Mojo Jojo goes to the past to kill the adolescent Professor Utonium before he can create the Girls. The Girls pursue him. It turns out that in the past Professor was a lazy ass and a bully with no interest in becoming a scientist and creating the Girls, if it weren't for Mojo's interference and the consequent encounter with and rescue by the Girls that gave him inspiration. - Invoked and averted in Teen Titans. Starfire ends up 20 years in the future, and the time-traveling criminal responsible for this explains this trope. Then she gets back to her time and finds that something has changed. - In the Time Warp Trio episode "The High and the Flighty", this trope ends up being The Reveal. After the trio's great-granddaughters listen to the final Distress Call of Amelia Earhart where she addresses a mysterious third party, the girls go on a rescue mission spearheaded by Freddi to find her supposed killer. After catching the Immoral Journalist attempting to stow away on her plane before takeoff, the girls return to the future only to find that the past went unchanged. A disheartened Freddi takes it upon herself to find out the truth and warps back to 1937 onto her plane, only for Amelia to catch her and repeat the lines in her distress call from the start shortly before the crash and Freddi warping back.	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/OnlyOnePossibleFuture
Only Known by Initials - TV Tropes Some people are Only Known by Their Nickname, others are on Last-Name Basis, while some people are primarily known to the public by their initials or their initials plus their last name. The reasons may vary. Perhaps they have an Embarrassing First Name they'd rather not use, and maybe they have an Overly Long Name that needs to be abbreviated. Others may think it sounds classier, and some may prefer the fact that it is more gender neutral. This was particularly common among Real Life English male writers of the early 20th century, especially academics like A.J. Ayer (philosopher) and A.J.P. Taylor (historian). You do still find some English writers who go by initials today, possibly because of the resulting intellectual associations - like A.N. Wilson or D.J. Taylor. It's also sometimes found with Real Life female writers, often to hide (or at least make less obvious) the fact that they are female. ## Examples include: - Code Geass: Lelouch's otherworldly immortal companion is known by the initials C.C. (pronounced C-two). She has a Spear Counterpart in V.V. (likewise pronounced V-two), a mysterious child \|\|old enough to be Lelouch's uncle.\|\| - Cool Shock B.T.: The series leaves B.T.'s name to his initials, owing to his narrator buddy Koichi's refusal to give out his full name. - In the English dub of Digimon Adventure, while the characters' Japanese names are retained as their full names, the DigiDestined exclusively call each other by nicknames. Takeru Takaishi is the only one to use his initials, preferring to go by T.K. - The dub of Digimon Frontier has J.P., likewise known as Junpei in the Japanese version. - T.R. (Thomas Riley) Edwards from Robotech. Some sources erroneously assume that he has a hyphenated last name (it's true that Riley is usually a last name). However, if this was the case, he would be properly known as T. Riley-Edwards. - V.T. (Victoria Terpsichore) from the Cowboy Bebop episode "Heavy Metal Queen" makes money charging people to guess her name, until Spike works out who she is. - In the first season of Pokémon: The Original Series, an early rival of Ash/Satoshi's is a kid called Akira, renamed as A.J., who managed a Sandscrew and is based on one of the Youngsters of Pokémon Red and Blue. Also, he appears as The Cameo in the opening of the season 2 ( Adventures on the Orange Islands) and as a character in the manga The Electric Tale of Pikachu. - Bakuten Shoot Beyblade has another A.J. in A.J. Topper, one of the two dub-original combat commentators. While his colleague Brad Best even has a second name, Aloysius, A.J. Topper is just A.J. Topper. And there are more initials-only characters: Mister B, Doctor B, Doctor K, and J. J's even less than initials-only, because his initial has to be deduced from the fact he's got a "J" embroidered on his shirt. - Abominable: Whatever CJ's initials are short for is never revealed. Given that she's the only Chinese-American in her circle of friends, it's possible that she dropped her full name in an attempt to fit in better. - DC from That Darn Cat! is only once referred to by a censored version of his full name, not counting the title, and is never referred to by his real full name, on account of it being profane. - Tenacious D in The Pick of Destiny: JB (Jack Black) and KG (Kyle Gass). Pronounced Jables and Kage. - Mary Kate from Epic (2013), frequently only referred to as M.K. - Raising Arizona: H.I. McDunnough is called "Hi" by everyone. We only learn his actual name when he writes a letter saying goodbye to his wife, signing it "Herbert." - In Crossworlds, A.T. is only ever referred to by his initials, except at the very end, when the Queen calls him "Alex". We still don't know what the "T" stands for. - In Thank You for Smoking, Nick's boss is only known as BR, which he started being called while in Vietnam. As Nick puts it, "everyone who knew what it means are all dead." In the book the film is based on, his full name is mentioned early on but everyone still refers to him as BR. - Andy Warhol's Bad has characters credited as P.G., R.T., L.T. and S.F. - Tremors 6: A Cold Day in Hell: Dr. D's full name is never mentioned. - PK Pinkerton in The Western Mysteries, is only known by the initials PK or by the nickname Pinky, as part of the author's attempt to create Ambiguous Gender. - Subverted with Mr. A.E. Pessimal from Thud!, as this is actually his full name. - Superman: Last Son of Krypton. One of Lex Luthor's henchwomen is named Barbara Tolley, but insists on being called "B.J." even though her middle name is Arabella. - Also subverted with BKR, the villain of Rod Allbright Alien Adventures. This is his whole name, and none of the other aliens seems to think it odd. - Robert A. Heinlein's The Number of the Beast. One of the characters is named D.T. ("Deety") Burroughs. She goes by her initials because she's embarrassed by her real first and middle names: Dejah Thoris (her father Jacob was a fan of the John Carter of Mars books). - Y.T. in Snow Crash, though the author does explain what it stands for once, when incidental character hears it as "Whitey" and is considering taking offense ("Actually, it stands for Yours Truly, but if he can't figure that out, fuck him"). - TS Garp in The World According to Garp. He's officially named for his father—except his mother never knew his father's first name, only his army rank. "TS" stands for "Technical Sergeant." Everyone just calls him Garp. (In The Film of the Book, teen Garp tries to convince his girlfriend that it stands for "Terribly Sexy.") - Members of the V.F.D. in A Series of Unfortunate Events are referred to only by their initials to preserve anonymity. This results in complications, as The Unauthorized Autobiography demonstrates during a transcript of a meeting, and in The Penultimate Peril when a total of three characters have the legitimate and undisguised initials \|\|J.S.\|\|. - In the Wizard of Oz books, the wizard reveals that "O.Z." is actually part of his initials. His parents named him Oscar Zoroaster Phadrig Isaac Norman Henkle Emmannuel Ambroise Diggs, noting that it isn't longer simply because they ran out of names. He abbreviated it to Oz because using all his initials would spell out O.Z.P.I.N.H.E.A.D., and he wouldn't attract the right kind of attention calling himself a pinhead. The movie Oz the Great and Powerful names the character Oscar Diggs, but makes no reference to his many middle names or the nickname. - In Left Behind, Tyrola Mark Delanty is referred to as T. - In the Dale Brown novel Day of the Cheetah, J. C. Powell is a hotshot test pilot known for pulling off impossible maneuvers. "J. C." are not his initials, but only his mother calls him "Roland". After one incident, an officer is heard to exclaim "Jesus Christ!", to which J. C. replies with a totally deadpan "Thank you, Sir." Hence... - In the Venus Prime series, one of the major characters is Prof. J.Q.R. Forster. It's not until the last book that anyone bothers to ask him what the initials stand for, at which point he reveals that they don't actually stand for anything; his parents couldn't decide on a name, so they gave him initials as placeholders. - J.P. Beaumont, protagonist of a series of mystery novels by J.A. Jance, always introduces himself (to suspects, etc.) as "J.P. Beaumont"; almost never using his given names (which are Jonas Piedmont). His friends usually call him "Beau". - Actress A.J. Cook has the A.J. for Andrea Joy, her two first names. If well she appears in various movies like The Virgin Suicides and Final Destination 2, she's more known for her roles in TV series like Tru Calling and Criminal Minds, her most known role as the special agent Jennifer "JJ" Jareau. - Andi Mack has T.J. Kippen. In "We Were Here", it was revealed that T.J. stands for Thelonious Jagger. - Arrested Development has GOB (George Oscar Bluth). - B.J. and the Bear has the titular character with this nickname, having the real name of Billie Joe (B.J.) McCay. - Criminal Minds has J.J. which stands for "Jennifer Jareau." - CSI has D.B. Russell. Probably due to his first name being Diebenkorn. - Degrassi: The Next Generation: - Dinosaurs has B.P. Richfield. In "Earl's Big Jackpot", it's revealed that his first name is Bradly. - Fuller House has C.J. Harbenberger which stands for "Connie Jane." - Full House has D.J. Tanner which stands for "Donna Jo." - Good Luck Charlie has P.J. Duncan, the first-born son of the Duncan family. In "Can You Keep a Secret?", it is revealed that PJ's initials stand for Potty John. It was supposed to be Patty John, after his grandfather Patrick John, but Bob was so frazzled when signing the birth certificate that he wrote "Potty John" instead. - Good Times has J.J. which stands for James Junior. - High School Musical: The Musical: The Series has E.J. Caswell. In "The Real Campers of Shallow Lake", it was revealed that E.J. stands for "Elton John" when E.J.'s cousin Ashlyn calls E.J. by his full name "Elton John Caswell." - JAG has A.J. (Albert Jethro) Chegwidden. Prior to the season four episode "War Stories" his staff didn't know what A.J. was short for. - Jake and the Fatman has J.L. (Jason Lochenbar) McCabe, the titular Fatman. He reveals his full name only to his estranged son in the episode where the two are stranded on an uninhabited island. - Kamen Rider Fourze has JK (pronounced Jake). In #36, his real name is turned out to be \|\|Kaizou Jingu\|\|. - MASH* has B.J. Hunnicut. Lampshaded in an episode where Hawkeye tries to learn what "B. J." stands for, only to find "B. J." on all of his friend's military records. When Hawkeye asks who would name their kid "B. J.", then B. J. answers "My mother, Bea Hunnicitt, and my father, Jay Hunnicutt." - The "Batsman of the Kalahari" sketch from the last series of Monty Python's Flying Circus sends up the tendency of cricketers to be known by their initials. Some of the players include V.E. Pratt, M.J.K. Pratt, B.B.C.T.V. Pratt, and Y.E.T.A.N.O.T.H.E.R. Pratt. - NCIS: Los Angeles has G. Callen, later being revealed to stand for \|\|Grisha.\|\| - Power Rangers has two: T.J. Johnson from Power Rangers Turbo and Power Rangers in Space, and RJ from Power Rangers Jungle Fury. Their full names are Theodore Jay Jarvis Johnson (as revealed in the "Forever Red" team-up episode), and Robert James (revealed by a children's book and never used on the show), respectively. - Saved by the Bell has A.C. Slater. It was revealed that A.C. stands for "Albert Clifford." - The A-Team: - B.A. Baracus (played by Mr. T). We know from the pilot episode that his given first name is "Bosco", and that "B.A." is shorthand for his nickname, "Bad Attitude", but eventually it is revealed that his full name is "Bosco Albert Baracus". - H. M. ("Howling Mad") Murdock. - Played with in the pilot of The Beverly Hillbillies: Mr. Drysdale gets a call that the gardeners he'd hired to spruce up the mansion he'd procured for his newest, biggest client ("J.D. Clampett") were being held at gunpoint by "outlaws" note : The Clampetts themselves, who thought the mansion was a prison and that the gardeners were part of a jailbreak. When he gets to the jail where the "outlaws" are being held, he grabs one of them by the collar and demands to know what they did with J.D. Clampett. - The Dukes of Hazzard has Boss Hogg who regularly went by initials "J.D.", which stood for "Jefferson Davis". - The Nanny has C.C. Babcock goes by her alliterative initials, as does much of her family (sister D.D., mother B.B.). Her full name (\|\|Chastity-Claire Babcock\|\|) isn't revealed until the finale. - The West Wing has Claudia Jean Cregg is nearly always referred to as C.J. Cregg. The rare exceptions are usually either formal occasions or wry comments. - ZP Theart, former lead singer of DragonForce. Rumour has it that "ZP" is legally his first name, though. - Starflyer 59. On The Fashion Focus, Leave Here a Stranger note : Everybody Makes Mistakes was released between these two albums, and it didn't follow this pattern, and every album since then, the various band members have just been credited by their first initial and last name. - Poison guitarist CC DeVille. - JC Chasez of NSYNC. His real name is Joshua, but during his audition for The New Mickey Mouse Club, there was another cast member named Josh, so he was dubbed "JC" and has gone by it since. - CJ (Christopher Jospeh) Ramone of The Ramones. - From Backstreet Boys, there's AJ McLean, the Bad Boy of this famous Boy Band group from The '90s. The AJ is for his given names, Alexander James. - DJ Bonebrake, drummer for LA punk band X (US Band). - k.d. lang. Although in some lyrics to her songs she refers to her actual first name (ex. "The Mind of Love": "Where is your head, Kathryn?") - Soul Coughing's M. Doughty, although once the band broke up, he started releasing solo albums as Mike Doughty. - D. Boon of Minutemen (short for Dennes) - J. Mascis of Dinosaur Jr. - The rock pop duet Aly & A.J., a sister duo in which one of them, AJ Michalka, has the AJ for Amanda Joy. - Michael Jackson has as one of his many nicknames, he's called just as "MJ", which makes a double reference with Michael Jordan in the videoclip of his single "Jam" in The '90s. - Andrew W[ilkes-]. K[rier], American rock musician/songwriter/producer. - K. T. (Kay Toinette) Oslin, country singer/songwriter. - In Joy Wilt Berry's "Human Race Club" series of LP's (also known as the "No More..." series), Abraham Lincoln Jones (the second-in-command) is known as "A.J.". note : It's listed as his "nickname", which all the other members have (including Ms. Joy Berry (AKA: "Ms. Berry")). - Wrestling companies are/were generally referred to by their initials. WWF/E (World Wrestling Federation/Entertainment), WCW (World Championship Wrestling), ECW (Eastern/Extreme Championship Wrestling), AWA (American Wrestling Association), UWF (Universal Wrestling Federation), TNA (Total Nonstop Action), ROH (Ring of Honor), PWG (Pro Wrestling Guerrilla), AEW (All Elite Wrestling)... - CM Punk says it stands for "Chick Magnet". - Jim Ross, who became "Good Ol' JR" when he came to the WWF and is almost exclusively addressed as such since. - TL Hopper, the wrestling plumber (the initials stood for "Toilet Lid") - AJ Styles is a famous wrestler who has a successful career, first in indies, Ring of Honor and TNA, to star actually in WWE. As well as his nickname, the AJ is for his real name, Allen Jones. - A.J. Lee (not related with Styles, by the way) was a female wrestler famous for being in WWE between 2009 and 2015 and she's the actual wife of CM Punk. Just as Styles, the AJ is her real name, but in this case her Two First Names: April Jeanette. - Rob Van Dam is generally addressed as RVD, oftentimes even Punctuated! For! Emphasis!. - Parodied by Jeff Jarrett, who addresses himself as the uninitialized "Double J". - The wrestler known in WWE as Big Cass (as in Enzo and Cass) has gone by W. Morrissey (real name William Morrissey) since leaving WWE. - JTG of Cryme Tyme. It is unknown what the letters stand for, but his real name is Jayson Paul, which the J in his ring name implies. - Montel Vontavious Porter (real name Hassan Hamin Assad, born Alvin Burke Jr.) is often referred to as MVP. - Archibald MacLeish's modern take on the story of Job: Job (and the play) is called J.B. - Animal Crossing: K.K. Slider uses initials as his stage name both normally and as DJ K.K., and they likewise appear on most titles of his songs. It's a play on Totakeke, his Japanese (and implied true) name. - The Danger Girl* video game adaptation introduces a new member of the girls, the Canadian mechanic JC, whose real name is never revealed. - Deus Ex has J.C. Denton, which is actually a code name. This is a hold over from the development when it was an ambiguous name to support the option for a female PC (it was latter dropped to lack of space for the voice acting for her and the he/she brother/sister lines) and as a Significant Monogram. - Halo 3: ODST has the Rookie; the only traces of any kind of name he has are the initials J.D. - Riot City have the evil Drug Cartel called the MID Corporation. At no point do you find out what MID stands for. - Your character from the arcade Punch-Out!! series only has a descriptor of "Challenger", and you enter three initials to name him when starting play. - Similarly, the protagonists of Cadash have a name entry screen that only allows three characters, mostly likely meant to be the player's initials, owing to its arcade roots. - Splatoon 2 has C. Q. Cumber, the conductor of the Deepsea Metro. - PJ Pete (Pete Pete Jr.) on Goof Troop, because he shares his father's name and they are both very prominent (and very different) characters. His father calls him "Junior" instead on a very small number of occasions, but even when he's yelling at him (which is a lot) he chooses the initials route and reserves the other for those rare occurrences where he's being or pretending to be affectionate with him. - Total Drama: - In Island DJ is only ever addressed as such, which his real name being unknown. Later on in the series it's revealed that his initials stand for "Devon Joseph". - The 2023 reboot has MK. Unlike DJ, MK's name is revealed the minute she is introduced: Mary Kate. - JB (McBride, the Judge) from BraveStarr. Nobody knows what her initials mean! - I.M. Weasel and I.R. Baboon from I Am Weasel. Also count as Punny Names. - My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic: - Applejack is often called AJ by her friends. - There's also A.K. Yearling, author of the Daring Do book series \|\|and she's eventually revealed to be Daring Do herself\|\|. - Blaze and the Monster Machines: The other human protagonist of the series and companion of Blaze is called AJ, who's Only Known By His Nickname. - T.J. Detweiller from Recess has the T.J. as his nickname and only name to hide his Embarrassing First Name: Theodore Jasper. Note: When adding new examples, please list the person's full name after their initials, in order to preserve consistency. - Male - A. A. (Alan Alexander) Milne - A. E. (Alfred Elton) van Vogt - C. S. (Clive Staples) Lewis - D. J. (Donald James) MacHale, director and author of The Pendragon Adventure Series and the Morpheus Road trilogy. - E. B. (Elwyn Brooks) White, author of Charlotte's Web and Stuart Little. - E. E. (Edward Estlin) Cummings - E. E. (Edward Elmer) "Doc" Smith of Lensman fame. - G. K. (Gilbert Keith) Chesterton - George R.R. (Raymond Richard) Martin - creator of A Song of Ice and Fire. - H. G. (Herbert George) Wells - H. P. (Howard Phillips) Lovecraft - J. B. S. (John Burdon Sanderson) Haldane - J. D. (Jerome David) Salinger - J. D. (James David) Vance, author of Hillbilly Elegy. His two previous names also fit this trope: James Donald Bowman and James David Hamel. - J. F. (Jesse Franklin) Bone - J. M. (John Marc) DeMatteis, writer of Kraven's Last Hunt and Justice League International. - J. R. R. (John Ronald Reuel) Tolkien - P. G. (Pelham Grenville) Wodehouse - M. A. R. (Muhammad Abd-al-Rahman) Barker, creator of the Empire of the Petal Throne/Tekumel Tabletop RPG setting. - S. P. (Sterner St. Paul) Meek - S. P. Somtow, Thai-American sci-fi writer and composer, is a subversion: Somtow is actually his given name, and his full name is Somtow Papinian Sucharitkul. - S. W. Erdnase, author of The Expert at the Card Table. Bonus points for Erndase's true identity remaining a mystery to this day. - T. S. (Thomas Stearns) Eliot - W. E. B. Griffin, American writer of military and detective fiction, was born William Edmund Butterworth III. (He also wrote under 11 other pseudonyms and three variations of his real name.) - Female writers (who may be using initials to hide their sex) - Back when Lord Baden-Powell formed the Boy Scouts, a bunch of girls wanted in on the fun too. But they couldn't sign up using their real names because they were, you know, girls. So they signed up using their initials (and dressed like boys when they were accepted in.) Eventually, the girls got their own group, the Girl Scouts, and much later the Boy Scouts started accepting girls. - There're many sportsmen that use this as a nickname, various of them from baseball (A. J. Burnett and A. J. Pierzynski), American football (A. J. Haglund and A. J. Hawk), race drivers (A. J. Allmendinger and A. J. Foyt) and basketball (A. J. Price, and Michael Jordan is usually known as MJ). - Famous US President Andrew Jackson was also known as A.J. Also, there're other politicians with this nickname like Andrew Johnson. - A. J. (Alan John) Buckley, actor - Indycar racing has had a few such as A.J. Foyt, A.J. Allmendinger, and J.R. Hildebrand. - Brigitte Bardot: If you said B.B. in the Fifties and Sixties everyone knew you were referring to her. - BJ Ward, a famous voice actress known for her roles as Velma Dinkley, Betty Rubble and Jana of the Jungle, uses the "BJ" for her two first names: Betty Jean. - C. C. H. (Carol Christine Hilaria) Pounder, actress - CC (Carsten Charles) Sabathia (Jr.) - retired pitcher for several MLB teams, most notably the New York Yankees. Unlike most examples of this trope, he chooses not to use periods. - Madame C.J. Walker (took her husband's name: Charles James Walker; real name Sarah Breedlove), fashion designer, social activist. - D. B. (Daniel Bernard) Sweeney, actor - D. L. (Darryl Lynn) Hughley, actor, comedian and political commentator - D. W. (David Wark) Griffith - G. W. (George William) Bailey, actor - J. Blakeson, a British director - J. C. (James Cash) Penney (Jr.), founder of the American department store chain now doing business as JCPenney - J. C. (John Carlo) de Vera, a Filipino actor - J. E. B. (James Ewell Brown) Stuart - J. E. (Josh Eric) Sawyer, game designer behind Icewind Dale and Fallout: New Vegas. However, he does go by Josh Sawyer as well. - J. J. (Jeffrey Jacob) Abrams, current director of the Star Trek (2009) and Star Wars movie franchises. - J. J. (Justin James) Watt, superstar NFL defensive lineman. Not to mention his younger brother T. J. (Trent Jordan), superstar NFL linebacker. Averted by middle brother Derek John, NFL fullback, who goes by... Derek. - J. K. (Jonathan Kimble) Simmons, actor known for Whiplash, Juno, and his portrayal of J. Jonah Jameson Jr. - JM J Bullock, who is only JM J because Jim J Bullock was already registered with the Screen Actors Guild * : now merged into SAG-AFTRA. - Jill Price, the first diagnosed hyperthymestic, was originally identified as "AJ." - J. P. (John Pierpont) Morgan, American financier - J. T. (James Thomas Patrick) Walsh, character actor. - K. C. (Kristina Cassandra) Concepcion, a Filipino actress. - Subverted with late professional basketball player and coach K. C. Jones. "K.C." is his real name. - Louis C.K., born Louis Székely (pronounced "SEE-kay"). - L. (Lafayette) Ron Hubbard, creator of Scientology - Inverted with actress Maggie Q. "Q" stands for "Quigley". - M. Night Shyamalan - real name Manoj Nelliyattu Shyamalan; the "Night" was substituted for his middle name just to sound cool. - O. J. (Orenthal James) Simpson, athlete - P. K. (Pernell-Karl Sylvester) Subban, defenseman for the NHL's New Jersey Devils (and previously the Nashville Predators and Montreal Canadiens), who happens to share his initials with an ice hockey special team (penalty kill) to the amusement of color commentators. - P. T. (Phineas Taylor) Barnum, founder of the Barnum & Bailey Circus - P. Z. (Paul Zachary) Myers - RJ Barrett, Canadian NBA player. In his case, the "RJ" stands for Rowan Jr., his full name being Rowan Alexander Barrett Jr. - S. E. (Sarah Elizabeth) Cupp, political commentator - T. K. (Thomas Kent) Carter, actor - W. C. Fields - real name William Claude Dukenfield, American comedian and actor - W.C. (William Christopher) Handy, Father of the Blues. - W.E.B. (William Edward Burghart) DuBois, sociologist and co-founder of the NAACP.	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/OnlyKnownByInitials
Only Known by Their Nickname - TV Tropes "Let me explain something to you. Um, I am not "Mr. Lebowski". You're * Mr. Lebowski. I'm the Dude. So that's what you call me. You know, that or, uh, His Dudeness, or uh, Duder, or El Duderino if you're not into the whole brevity thing."* This is a character who is primarily, or even only, known by their In-Series Nickname. Related to Everyone Calls Him "Barkeep", but that is about people being referred to exclusively by their jobs or what they're best known for doing. Also related to Stage Names. Does not include Fan Nicknames, secret identities or explicit pseudonyms. Also doesn't include people who give themselves new names following an act of self-reinvention, and stop responding to their old name (e.g. Voldemort). Exceptionally badass examples of this trope fall into the Red Baron. Obvious and common contractions, e.g. someone named William introducing themselves as Bill, don't really count either. Usually, Dramatis Personae will give the full name of such a character first, though the actual script will use the nickname almost exclusively even in the unspoken directions. If the character insists on the nickname, it's Do Not Call Me "Paul". If the nickname is actually his real name, it's His Name Really Is "Barkeep". ## Examples: <!—index—> <!—/index—> - Grande Odalisque: The woman's name is never given, not even in the painting's title. She's simply referred to as the Grande Odalisque. - The titular Kid Hero of BoBoiBoy is only ever referred to as such, his real name remaining a mystery. Similarly, BoBoiBoy's grandfather, Tok Aba, only goes by such regardless of who talks to him, although Tok Aba literally means Granddad. - Kung Fu Wa: One of Tee Yang's classmates is only known as "Gossip Boy", everyone refers to him by that nickname, even he calls himself like that. - BBV Productions: - In The Time Travellers, the eponymous characters are known only by their nicknames, "Professor" and "Ace". Toward the end of the series, Ace decides to start going by her real name, which is revealed to be Alice. - The protagonist of The Wanderer has Name Amnesia. In the first installment of the series, another character dubs him "Fred" for the sake of having something to call him, and it sticks. - In The Broons, the three youngest kids are called "the twins" and "the bairn". Maybe their parents got tired of naming kids. - Very few people in Footrot Flats refer to Cooch his given name, which is Socrates. - Doc Boy from Garfield hates being called by his nickname, especially by his older brother Jon, but ironically has no known name. His first few appearances said his name is Doc. - In Luann, only two of the main character's fellow students in junior college have been identified — and they are known only as Mr. Jock and Mr. Goth. - Peanuts: - Pig-Pen. Nobody knows his real name; at his first appearance, he actually says: "I haven't got a name... People just call me things... Real insulting things." In one strip, Pig-Pen says that everyone calls his dad "Pig-Pen Sr." - Rerun Van Pelt. When he is introducing himself to his kindergarten class, he reveals that even he doesn't know what his real name is. - As well: Patricia "Peppermint Patty" Reichardt. - Apparently a characteristic of Pluggers according to this strip◊. - Retail: Lunker is only called Lunker among his fellow employees, at his insistence. Only his Old Friend Crystal is allowed to call him Mel. - Thimble Theatre: - Scooner Seawell Georgia Washenting Christiffer Columbia Daniel Boom, usually called Swee'pea - Popeye, upon finding his long-lost father, asks him what their real names are. Pappy doesn't remember. - In Back to the Outback, when Chaz introduces Maddie to the audience at his show, he calls her "Medusa", but among the other animals (as well as the movie credits and other official material), she just goes by Maddie. - In a couple of Disney Animated Canon examples, there are many characters who are never given real names: - In Cinderella, Gus is originally given the name "Octavius" by Cinderella after she takes him in, but is called "Gus" for short (or in Jaq's case, "Gus-Gus"), and is never referred to by his full name afterwards. - On the surface, The Lion King's Scar appears to be named after his scar, but in a non-canon novel series, it's revealed that his given name was "Taka." This isn't much better, however, as it's Swahili for dirt/trash, which goes to show his status in the family. "Taka" is also Swahili for to want/to wish. This was most likely the intended meaning. The Lion Guard would later confirm his real name to be "Askari", thus making "Scar" both a shortened form of his real name and a reference to his scar. - Tramp from Lady and the Tramp has a rather strange name. He is a homeless stray though, so he probably named himself, since no human named him. Later it's subverted, since that becomes his name (minus "The") once he's adopted. This is also an example of Everyone Calls Him "Barkeep", because one of his old flames wrote a song about him called "He's a Tramp," and the name stuck. - Dumbo's name is actually Jumbo Jr. He doesn't seem to mind the cruel nickname he's given, but his mother certainly does (at least at first). Interestingly, despite it starting as a cruel nickname, it sticks and everybody calls him that (including Timothy Q. Mouse, one of the few characters who is nice to him). - When it comes to the members of Big Hero 6, Hiro and Fred are normal names, and Baymax is a robot name. But Wasabi, GoGo Tomago, and Honey Lemon? They're nicknames given to them by Fred. Adaptation Name Change is in play for Wasabi and GoGo; in the original comics it was "Wasabi No-Ginger" (and it was unclear it was if that was a nickname or his real name), and Jamie Chung (GoGo's voice actress) says that the latter's real name is \|\|Ethel\|\| instead of "Leiko Tanaka." Given that, like the other two, Honey Lemon was Race Lifted, it's unlikely "Aiko Miyazaki" is her real name, either. - Lumpy, originally from Pooh's Heffalump Movie and later My Friends Tigger & Pooh and a couple of other Disney Pooh works has the full name of Heffridge Trumpler Brompet Heffalump the Fourth. However, he can (almost) never remember it, so everyone just calls him "Lumpy". - Flower of Bambi is merely called that because the infant Bambi is blurting out new words he's learning from Thumper. Thumper is about to correct him, but Flower shyly allows the name to stick. - Metegol: El Grosso's real name (Ezekial Remancho) is only mentioned once. - Phantom Boy: The Face's real name is never revealed. - Ratatouille: Since Rémy is presumably unable to write like a human, Linguini never learns his actual name, merely calling him "Little Chef." - Meilin Lee of Turning Red has multiple nicknames. Her real name is Meilin, yet her friends call her "Mei" while her family members call her "Mei-Mei." It's rare that you will hear people call her Meilin (the only one who calls her Meilin is Tyler). - Duck from The Adventure Zone: Amnesty was this for the vast majority of the podcast, until episode 35 revealed his real name was \|\|Wayne\|\|. However, several people in universe still haven't heard his real name by the end, thus still fulfilling this trope. - In In Strange Woods, Shane O'Connor is much more commonly referred to as "Woodsley", stemming from a nickname he got during Scouts due to a malapropism of "I'm really woodsy." - In Pokemon: Adventures in the Millennium, the Cool Loot Gang never reveal their names and are only referred to as "Cool [Item] [Guy/Gal/Pal]". - Red Panda Adventures: The real name of the villain of the novel The Mind Master is never revealed. During his training under Nepalese master Rashan alongside the future Red Panda, he insisted on being called "One", to go along with their master's calling the Red Panda "Two" when he would not give his own name. In Toronto, he adopts the name "Ajay Shah", which the Red Panda explains is Nepalese for "Unconquerable King". Fitting for his stated desire of world domination. - Many, many characters from Welcome to Night Vale, though several of them may not even have real names to begin with. - Just about every Professional Wrestler ever. Has a trope named after the two Pauls, Triple H and The Big Show, who only go by their ring names. - Triple H is a case even in kayfabe, since his full name is Hunter Hearst Helmsley, but he's rarely, if ever, called that anymore. He's still called "Hunter" on occasion, and he and his in-laws are referred to as the McMahon/Helmsley family, so this name is still canon. - Some wrestlers avert this by using their actual real names such as John Cena, Randy Orton (who even named his finisher after his initials), both Hardys, Brock Lesnar, and Shelton Benjamin. - Some other wrestlers are in a middle-ground where they invoke and avert this at the same time. Examples of this grouping include Ric Flair (Ric is a common nickname for Richard while his real last name has an 'h' the ring name lacks and an 'e' that got swapped for an 'a'), Batista (Batista is his actual last name, minus a 'u', and his real first name Dave has been mentioned on-screen occasionally), The Miz (he himself revealed in a 2010 promo that his real name is Mike Mizanin, with the Miz part allowing a contestant on a game show he appeared in to correctly identify him), plus female wrestlers Maryse and Melina (who invoke this in tandem with First-Name Basis; their real-life last names are Mizanin (originally Ouellet) and Perez respectively). - When Rocky Maivia turned heel he gave himself the nickname "The Rock". To say this nickname stuck is an understatement, to the point where his original ring name is all but Canon Discontinuity at this point. - Sesame Street: - Snuffy's real name is Aloysius Snuffleupagus. Even though almost everyone on the series refers to him by his nickname, his mother usually refers to him by his real name. - Cookie Monster, whose real name was eventually revealed to be \|\|Sid.\|\| - "My name is Guy Smiley, and they call me Guy Smiley because I changed my name from Bernie Liederkrantz!" - Journey into Space: Doc Matthews' first name is never revealed in the original. However, it is said to be Daniel in The Host. - James Golden, the longtime call screener for The Rush Limbaugh Show, was consistently called Bo Snerdley. - In Both Your Houses, Girl Friday Hypercompetent Sidekick secretary Greta Nilsson is only ever referred to as "Bus" — and the play never explains why. - In Fangirls, Edna's online Gay Best Friend 'Salty Pringl' is only ever identified by his online handle. - In David Belasco's The Girl of the Golden West, the title character is known as "the Girl" even in the play's Dramatis Personae; only very rarely is her real name, Minnie, mentioned in dialogue. The opera averts this and has her called Minnie all the time. - Sky Masterson in Guys and Dolls, called that because nobody bets higher. In the few moments between "My Time Of Day" and "I've Never Been In Love Before", Sky reveals to Sarah his real name, Obediah Masterson, and says she's the first person he ever told it to. - "Yank", the protagonist of The Hairy Ape by Eugene O'Neill. In one of the later scenes, he gives his name as Bob Smith, "but I been just Yank for so long." - Little Buttercup in Gilbert and Sullivan's H.M.S. Pinafore. Her real name, Mrs. Cripps, appears only in the Dramatis Personae. - In Liliom, Liliom's actual name of Andreas Zavocki is only used when policemen are interrogating him. - The title character of Madame Butterfly is only called "Butterfly," "Madame Butterfly," or "Cho-Cho San" (which means "Madame Butterfly" or "Miss Butterfly"), even by her relatives. Her birth name is never revealed. - In The Most Happy Fella, Tony addresses his love letters to "Rosabella" because he doesn't know her name. Nobody in the play calls her anything else, until the final scene where she reveals that her real name is (or was) Amy. (This is averted in They Knew What They Wanted, where Amy is never called Rosabella.) - The Wreck in My Sister Eileen and The Musical Wonderful Town. His name is Ted Loomis, but nobody calls him Ted. Eileen: Is there anything I can do for you, Mr. Loomis? The Wreck: Leave out the mister—call me Wreck. Eileen: Wreck? The Wreck: That's what they called me at Georgia Tech. I'd have made All American, only I was expelled. - Perfect Pie: The protagonist Patsy's real name (Patricia) is mentioned only once in the entire play, and is very easy to miss completely. - In Summer of the Seventeenth Doll, the male leads go by the nicknames Roo and Barney; their real names are given once, when they're being introduced at the beginning, and then never mentioned again. Then there's the neighbor Bubba, who everyone's known since she was a little girl; it's a significant moment in her personal arc when a newly-introduced character, Johnny, thinks to ask what her actual name is (and it's followed by a scene where Johnny refers to her by that name and Barney is like "who?" before realizing he means Bubba). - In West Side Story, pretty much of all of the Jets only use their nicknames and thus their real names are never revealed. Its less of a case with the Sharks, who have names that Puerto Ricans would likely have. - Barbie: - No one ever calls Barbie by her full name, Barbara. - Her oldest younger sibling seems to have a name, but she's only called "Skipper". - In BIONICLE, the ruthless leader of the Dark Hunters is only ever referred to as "The Shadowed One". Even while other Dark Hunters work under various Code Names, usually their real names are revealed to the audience, but despite the rest of the info known about the man on top (his face, his motives, and even a good chunk of his backstory), there's nothing on his real name. Reportedly, series writer Greg Farshtey chose not to name him due to the amount of backlash he faced in changing the name of the series' actual Big Bad note : Originally known as "Makuta", halfway through the series, it was later retconned that "Makuta" is a title given to several baddies, and that his real name was "Teridax", keeping it unknown to preserve a mystery and save himself the headache. - Fate/stay night: - All the Servants continue using only their class names long after their true identities are revealed. It can be a bit awkward to refer to an apparently teenaged girl by the term "Saber". The only one who is commonly referred to by name is Gilgamesh, who is often called Archer by Saber. - Gilgamesh admits that his weird drill-lance "sword" doesn't have a real name. He calls it "Ea", but this is not its true name, just his own pet name for the weapon. Since it predates the world, it also predates the concept of names, so by definition it cannot have one. - Minotaur Hotel: As you can imagine, the guy known as P wasn't named "P" at birth. Apparently, this was a family tradition, with his grandfather also being known as "P". His real name is \|\|Pedro. "Storm" is also a nickname, with his real name being "Oscar". After the two reveal their real names to each other, the game changes their in-game name to their real names, though they're still known by their nicknames towards everyone else.\|\| - Zen and 707's real names (Hyun Ryu and Luciel Choi, respectively) in Mystic Messenger are mentioned in the prologue, but V (himself an example of this trope) is nearly the only one to use them. There's also a double-nested example with \|\|707: a player who does the Casual Story first will probably assume that Luciel is his real name, but the Deep Story reveals that Luciel is actually his baptismal name and Saeyoung is his true birth name.\|\| - M in Shikkoku no Sharnoth is never called anything but that. \|\|He claims not to actually have a name. If he had a name, it would be James.\|\| - The protagonist of Songs and Flowers tries to invoke this by referring to herself as "Miss Info," but ends up telling her love interest her real name, Jazz Overstreet, early in each route anyway. - Spirit Hunter: NG: - It's revealed in her introduction that Rosé Mulan isn't the woman's real name, but her stage name. Whatever it actually is doesn't get revealed. - Up until all his quests are done and he formally introduces himself, D-Man is only known as such. The nickname came about \|\|by him shortening Desk Man, since he was a desk editor for a magazine in life.\|\| - Ciel in Tsukihime. Her real name is Elesia, which is referenced roughly equally relating to her as to her Nightmare in Kagetsu Tohya: One scene. - The servants in Umineko: When They Cry are all referred to by names ending with the character for "sound" (pronounced "on", "non" or "ne"). Shannon's actual name is Sayo, and Kanon's is Yoshiya. \|\|And then there's the servant who is only known as Yasu. His/her full name is confirmed in the manga to be Sayo Yasuda, further establishing that Shannon and Yasu are the same person.\|\| - Zero Escape: - Everyone except Junpei is eligible for this trope in Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors. The nine players of the Nonary Game decide to create nicknames for themselves based on their bracelet numbers, and then there's Zero, their kidnapper, whose name is also fake, and a couple more characters who also receive nicknames temporarily for the sake of explaining their deaths until the others figure out their real ones. Ultimately, we get to know all their real names except for Seven. Clover is a Double Subversion: her real name actually is Clover, \|\|and using her real name turns out to bite her in the ass, showing just why the characters were using aliases to begin with.\|\| - Virtue's Last Reward: - Zero III is usually called "Zero Jr." by the cast to differentiate him from the actual mastermind of the Nonary Game, who also calls himself "Zero" and who the cast refers to as "Zero Sr." Zero Jr.'s official name is \|\|Lagomorph\|\|, while Zero Sr.'s real name is \|\|Dr. Sigma Klim\|\|. - One participant is an amnesiac man in a suit of armor who can't remember anything about himself except that his name starts with a K, and so asks everyone to just call him "K". \|\|Depending on the timeline, K is either Kyle Klim (who actually has amnesia) or Akane Kurashiki (who is pretending to be Kyle)\|\|. - In Zero Time Dilemma, the amnesiac boy in a strange helmet is only referred to as "Q" by the game and promotional materials. In one path, you learn that his real name is \|\|Sean\|\|. Then, in another, you learn that \|\|Sean was always known to the cast by his real name, and isn't Q at all. Q is actually an entirely different character who was always just offscreen, but who the cast was always well aware of. His real name is Delta, but he also has a second nickname the cast knows him by: Zero II\|\|.	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/OnlyKnownByTheirNickname
Only I Can Kill Him - TV Tropes "I admit you're very skilled. But apparently Cloud is the only one who can eliminate me." The protagonists of any given story are, of course, larger than life. Expecting the various extras and Red Shirts to actually accomplish something noteworthy would probably come off as anticlimactic. But even among the various named characters, there's clearly a hierarchy involved. That hierarchy, among other things, mandates that only the protagonist can achieve certain things. Nowhere is this more clear than when battling the Big Bad, often Because Destiny Says So. Anyone other than the main character will almost inevitably fail to defeat the Big Bad. It's a rule of drama. Any poor schmuck who tries, be he The Lancer, the hero's closest friend, the hero's Love Interest, or a random soldier, will almost certainly be cut down without the Big Bad breaking much of a sweat. There will be gloating. There may be slow-motion footage of their fall, and dramatic music. Camera pans to the hero. Cue the Unstoppable Rage. The reason writers came up with the Hero Secret Service, which gives the rest of the Five-Man Band something important to do without directly taking part in The Hero's mission. Often overlaps with the Chosen One or The Only One, as well as This Is Something He's Got to Do Himself. Differs from The Only One Allowed to Defeat You in that it's a matter of raw ability, not personal preference. ## Examples - Happens all the time in Bleach, but most strangely in the Captain Amagai Filler Arc. \|\|Ichigo has almost nothing to do with Amagai; he only meets him for the first time shortly before he fights and defeats him. And this is in a city filled with badass captains. The only possible reason he would have for being the one to kill him is because he can overcome Amagai's zanpakuto-suppressing ability. This is despite the fact that Captain-Commander Yamamoto, who actually does have a history with Amagai and is the target of his misguided revenge plot, is more than capable of fighting with only his bare hands.\|\| - The Bount Filler Arc is almost as bad; the villain Kariya has little interaction with Ichigo and instead establishes himself as a nemesis to The Lancer Uryu. But when Uryu fights him, he inexplicably overlooks a chance to strike a killing blow and the artifact temporarily restoring his powers breaks, leaving it to Ichigo to finish the battle. - In terms of actual canon, Aizen can only be beaten by Ichigo because \|\|a) Ichigo is one of the only people who hasn't seen Aizen's Shikai, Kyouka Suigetsu, and b) is the only one of those people with enough actual power to even injure Aizen.\|\| Seems to be subverted, but is actually played straight once Aizen \|\|forsakes Kyouka Suigetsu for the sake of greater power through the Hogyoku's evolutions, as once again, Ichigo is the only one who can transcend far enough to actually harm the transcended Aizen, in large part thanks to his ridiculous heritage\|\|. - A variation of this occurs in Cowboy Bebop between Spike Spiegel and Vicious, as each declares that only he can kill the other. \|\|In the final episode Vicious dies for sure, but whether Spike survives or not is left uncertain\|\|. - Subverted a couple of times in Dragon Ball. In the first case, General Red, the leader of the Red Ribbon Army, a criminal organization that's made an enemy of Goku, is killed off by \|\|his assistant, General Black\|\|. In the second instance, Goku \|\|sacrifices himself to stop Cell from destroying the Earth, so his son Gohan ultimately has to kill Cell instead\|\|. - Fairy Tail plays with this trope in different ways: - An early arc had a Big Bad in the form of Lyon, who learned under the same teacher as Gray. As a result, it's Gray who ultimately defeats Lyon. Natsu's opponent is revealed to serve the Greater-Scope Villain of that portion of the story, but in this arc acted as a subordinate of Lyon. - In the Phantom arc, Natsu did fight two of Phantom's top combatants, but Phantom's master Jose is brought down by Fairy Tail's master and Big Good Makarov. - Inverted with Zeref, who bluntly states that the only being who can kill him is the demon E.N.D., which refers to \|\| Etherious Natsu Dragneel, the younger brother he revived with the purpose of killing him\|\|. It's then subverted when \|\|Natsu forgoes killing Zeref using the one power that could potentially do the job because Happy intervened since Zeref admits that Natsu will die with Zeref since as an Etherious, Natsu's life is linked to Zeref's magic. When they fight for the final time, Natsu does win, but lets Mavis strike the final blow in the only way that could kill two immortals (Natsu is saved from dying with Zeref thanks to outside intervention on the part of Lucy and Gray).\|\| - In Inuyasha, Big Bad Naraku is threatening the whole region, yet there are only three fighters outside of the protagonist's foursome that fight the big bad for more than a single scene of them getting slaughtered. Slightly subverted towards the end, where a Buddhist priest manages to take a pot-shot at one of the greater villains, and a Shinto monk actually defeats another (who ends up taking over his body). A pity because \|\|the villain is Naraku's heart, and if the guy had killed him instead of absorbing him, the series Big Bad would have ended.\|\| - Justified in K — only a King can kill another King (though it seems that a King's second can kill their own King under certain circumstances). So the Kings — focal points of the Ensemble Cast — end up filling this role. - Played with in Monster. Dr. Tenma and Nina are both trying to find and kill the eponymous Monster Johan: Tenma because he saved Johan's life, Nina because she was the one who shot him the first time, and both because neither wants the other to have blood on their hands. \|\|In the end, it's a vengeful father who shoots Johan... and Tenma is the one who saves Johan's life once again, thus inverting the trope.\|\| - Subverted in Rave Master with the Arc Villain Hardner. The Hero Haru Glory was able to defeat this foe only because Hardner had already fought and defeated one of Haru's friends in battle immediately before Haru arrived. \|\|The two fights back-to-back wore down the regeneration abilities Hardner possessed which rendered him virtually immortal, leaving him vulnerable to take more damage than he could heal.\|\| - Justified in Shootfighter Tekken by the main hero's father having become a pacifist at this point, but since his son shows an unstoppable drive to face down the Big Bad anyway, he tutors him specifically to do so. Lampshaded by other characters fighting other mooks, or being ambushed by them, but everyone in the entire series knowing and stating only the hero can take on Iron Kiba. In hospital scenes and conversations between trainers, it's acknowledged even further. Only Kiba does not seem to know, as he is completely focused on the hero's father instead because of their battle in the past, and views the kid as being little more than a training exercise. Interestingly, he was nearly proven right, as the hero didn't take the fight seriously at first, and the first 60 seconds was essentially a cock-measuring contest of insults and posturing, each believing the other wasn't a serious challenge. - Vocally invoked by Lina Inverse in the Slayers OVA Jeffrey's Knighthood. This is so that Jeffrey's mother will not beat them up when they leave Jeffrey behind. They're not ditching The Load, they're allowing him to prepare while they carve a path to the Big Bad that only he can best. - The first season of Yu-Gi-Oh! 5Ds had a field day with this. Supposedly, the prophecy said that the Signers and the Dark Signers (the servants of the Crimson Dragon and Earthbound Gods, respectively) would battle every 5,000 years, and that each participant was unbeatable by anyone but a member of the opposing group. The actual conflict had a few parts that may or may not have contradicted this, depending on how you interpreted it, the biggest one being Crow defeating Bommer. (Crow wasn't a Signer at the time, but he would become one later; on the other hand, Bommer was a replacement Dark Signer, so whether he truly belonged in the conflict or not is debatable.) Of course, seeing as the story was related to the heroes by Rex Godwin, it may be hard to truly take any part of it at face value. - Repeatedly Lampshaded in the third season of Yu-Gi-Oh! GX. Whenever Evil Minions like the Masked Knights and other zombies challenge Judai, Johan and the others always step in and remind him that, as The Hero, he needs to wait and save his strength for his inevitable battle with the Big Bad. - Almost subverted in the original series: Jounouchi (The Lancer) gets into a position where Marik has no cards at all to protect himself, a single direct attack will win it, and he has a monster strong enough to do it. However, before he can declare his attack and win Jounouchi collapses from exhaustion, and Marik wins on a technicality when Jounouchi is declared unable to continue the duel. That he was seconds way from defeating Marik was a shock to every member of the cast, including Marik himself who began to freak out when he realized he was going to lose and admits Jounouchi put up a lot better of a fight than he expected. (In fact, this was the one time that Kaiba said anything about Jonouchi that even came close to being a compliment.) - Yu-Gi-Oh! ARC-V plays with this trope like every other trope. The protagonist Yuya \|\|isn't the only one to beat Big Bad Zarc as he is Zarc! The one who beats him is the Big Good Ray who beat him the first time.\|\| - Spider-Man didn't know it, but he was a literal case towards his enemy Kraven the Hunter for a while; a flaw in the evil ritual that his children used to bring Kraven back to life cursed him so that only Spider-Man could kill him. However, this curse was apparently broken when Kaine (as the Scarlet Spider) temporarily killed Kraven by stopping his heart with a blow to the chest and then restarted it with the same move. - A very rare inversion in With Strings Attached. On the Plains of Death, only the secondary character The Hunter can destroy the Heart of Evil by stabbing it with his BFS. Paul merely clears the way for him. - Or so the Hunter says. Since Paul doesn't even try to hit the thing, who knows? - Justified in that the Hunter is The Hero in this world, and the four (otherwise the protagonists of the book) are just being escorted around. - In Shining Armor's side story of the Pony POV Series, Reznov eventually implies that Shining may be the only one who can defeat Makarov, due to \|\|Shining being a temporal anomaly, and thus immune to the abilities that would prevent anyone from fighting him\|\|. - Literary example: The Keep by F. Paul Wilson. A great undead villain reawakens from his sleep, and the only person who can stop him is on the other side of the world — fortunately, he's psychically attuned to the villain and promptly gets moving. - Subverted in The Bourne Ultimatum (novel version) \|\|where, after David Webb/Jason Bourne spends the entire novel saying that only he'll be able to kill Carlos the Jackal, Carlos ends up drowning in a tunnel flooded by the Soviet agent who's working with Bourne.\|\| - Played with in Dragon Bones: The only person who can only be killed by the hero is the magically bound slave the hero inherited from his father. A Wizard Did It, in ancient times, and apparently knew that a slave who is magically compelled to do anything he's ordered to do, would try to commit suicide sooner or later. That's why the slave can only be killed by his owner. - In Grent's Fall, only \|\|the Bladecleaver\|\| and King Osbert have enough talent to defeat each other. \|\|Or fully distract each other.\|\| - Subverted in the Left Behind books as The Word of God demands that nobody can even defeat Satan and the Antichrist except for Jesus Christ. The Antichrist does get killed partway through the Tribulation, Because Destiny Says So, but as he is resurrected by the indwelling of Satan for the remainder of the Tribulation, the Christians during that time will have to wait for Jesus to come again in order for the Antichrist to be sent to the Lake of Fire. - Legend of the Seeker spends quite a lot of time saying how Richard is destined to kill Darken Rahl with the Sword of Truth. It's the same in the book, except there he's explicitly told that the magic of Orden means he can't use the sword to do it. - In Esther Friesner's novel The Sherwood Game, a programmer creates a VR Robin Hood game, and creates a specific rule that his character is the only one who can kill the Sheriff of Nottingham. He comes to regret this when he has to play the game with the safeties off. - Particularly notable in 24, wherein any tac team which does not include Jack Bauer is certain to let the terrorist escape, shoot the wrong guy, be vaporized in a nuclear detonation, etc. - Played straight in Angel — Connor is destined to kill Sahjhan, which appears to mean no one else can. \|\|When Sahjhan is trapped in a magical urn, his enemy Cyvus Vail insists that Connor be brought back to finish him, knowing that such things never hold the bad guy forever.\|\| To be fair, Angel had tried to kill Sahjhan when he was corporeal, and the demon handed Angel his ass. - Buffy the Vampire Slayer: - Averted in the Season 5 finale, "The Gift". Buffy might actually do the beating (with a shit-ton of help), but Giles does the killing. - Also averted in the finale of Season 6, "Grave", when Xander — often the Plucky Comic Relief of the Scoobies — talks a grieving, murderous, high-on-magic Willow out of destroying the world. Buffy, meanwhile, is fighting an endless and pointless battle against Evil Minions. - Subverted in the Firefly episode "War Stories". Mal is battling The Dragon (well... a Dragon, at any rate) when the Cavalry (Zoe, Jayne, and Wash) shows up. Jayne takes aim to shoot Niska's henchman, and Zoe stops him, saying "This is something the Captain's got to do for himself." Mal yells a panicked "No, it's not!" and the three rescuers take out the henchman all at once. - In Gotham, it's eventually revealed that Ra's al Ghul can only be killed by a specific dagger wielded by a specific person, namely Bruce Wayne. To hammer this home, at one point Barbara stabs him, but it has no effect, with him just saying "Ow" in a smug deadpan and pulling the blade out of his chest. - Subverted to a degree in Lost. It seems a lot like Ben was the only one who could kill Jacob. Several others tried, and the Man in Black said that some kind of "loophole" was necessary. - In the play Macbeth, \|\|the title character is informed that "none of woman born/shall harm Macbeth". This makes him believe he was invincible. However, Macduff was born due to a c-section, making him the only one who could kill Macbeth\|\|. - Devil Survivor: - Beldr on Day 3 is immune to everything except devil's fuge (i.e. mistletoe), and you happen to be the only combatant with it when you fight him, which means no one else — not your human allies, not your demons — can damage him. This gives the boss battle with him the unique defeat condition of "player character dies", unlike in other battles where the battle can continue as long as at least one team leader on your side is still in fighting condition, even if you personally bite it. \|\|When you rematch him in the Day 7 Boss Rush, once again you're the only character who can damage him.\|\| - An example where it's someone else rather than the player character who must inflict the killing blow: When fighting Kudlak, non-controllable ally Mari must be the one to inflict the finishing blow, or else story events will be affected very negatively upon his death. For what it's worth, if Kaido is in the fight, his attacks will never bring Kudlak's HP below 1, leaving Mari free to poke him dead. - Justified in Dragon Age: Origins with the \|\|Archdemon, who can only be killed by a Grey Warden because his soul will simply possess the nearest darkspawn when killed by anyone else.\|\| - Final Fantasy: - In Final Fantasy IV: The After Years, the player must confront \|\|the Dark Knight\|\| with Cecil and \|\|Golbez\|\| in the party, otherwise he instantly kills everyone. Once the required cinematic between the three occurs though, any party member can kill the boss. - According to Dissidia Final Fantasy and Kingdom Hearts II, Cloud is the only person capable of killing Sephiroth. When anyone else beats him, he just stands back up and muses over his inability to die at their hands. - in Kingdom Hearts II, we also see Tifa trying to fight Sephiroth in Cloud's place. It mostly follows this trope, as he easily dodges her barrage of punches and kicks and knocks her back. - This was true in the Final Fantasy VII Compilation as well, where Cloud was the only person in the entire setting that's managed to defeat Sephiroth. - Fire Emblem: - In the series, the Final Boss comes down to "kill them with a special weapon, or else you won't defeat him." Whether this is because of the boss's innate ability to negate damage or a rather downplayed version with lowering damage encouraging players to use the Lord with the weapon to fell them easily. - Gharnef's Imhullu spell in Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon & the Blade of Light and Fire Emblem: Mystery of the Emblem negates any kind of attack unless the unit in question is wielding Starlight. This means having your mage be ready to take on Gharnef so that you can reclaim Falchion. In addition, Medeus halves the power of all attacks unless it's either Falchion (which can only be used by Marth) or a Divine Dragon (Tiki or Nagi). - Duma in Fire Emblem Gaiden and its remake, Echoes: Shadow of Valentia becomes immune to all attacks once his HP becomes visible, unless Alm wields the Falchion... or a Cleric of yours is using Nosferatu. - The Book of Loptous in Fire Emblem: Genealogy of the Holy War grants Julius an innate damage reduction against any weapons, unless it is the Book of Naga, which can only be wielded by his sister, Julia. \|\|This is rather aggravating as not only is it possible to not save Julia by accidentally killing her, but also Julius has three different defeat quotes depending on who defeats him (Julia, Seliph, or anyone else).\|\| - Raydrik's Loptr Sword in Fire Emblem: Thracia 776 grants him the same property as the Book of Loptous, unless he is attacked with the Sword of Bragi, which can only be wielded by either Leif, Nanna, Diarmud, or Fergus (which claims that only Holy Blood user can wield, but not only does Fergus imply to not have one but also, neither Mareeta nor Galzus, who has Major Od blood, can wield it). - In Fire Emblem: The Binding Blade, getting the Golden Ending requires Roy to defeat Idunn with the Binding Blade. Thankfully, Idunn is such a massive pushover and the Binding Blade is so overpowered that it isn't that hard. - In Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance, the Black Knight and Ashnard wear goddess-blessed armo that make them immune to anything except Ike's Ragnell, the Dragon laguz, and the Laguz kings. Thankfully, for the former, the Black Knight only cares about attacking Ike over his frail and weak sister, Mist, who is only here to help her brother not die. This is much more downplayed in the sequel, Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn, as not only is the Black Knight's armor is no longer blessed and although certain bosses have blessed immunity through Mantle, \|\|Yune blessed everyone's equipped weapon (or the Laguz themselves) that lets them damage the boss anyway. While Ike and the Black Knight can only kill each other, you weren't given much of a choice on that as the Black Knight put up a barrier that prevents anyone from intervening. Although anyone can damage Ashera, Ike must be the one to finish her or else she'll just revive with all of her HP restored.\|\| - Another literal example shows up in Fire Emblem: Awakening, albeit with a twist. The only power capable of destroying \|\|Grima\|\| is his own. \|\|As your Avatar is Grima's vessel, this means only the Avatar can kill Grima. Though it is only through choice after you defeat them, though anyone can damage them with Chrom dealing full damage through Exalted Falchion.\|\| - The Dragonskin skill grants the unit damage reduction as well as immunity to instantkill abilities or debuffs, with only one weapon (usually The Hero's weapon) that bypass this weakness. That said, it's a downplayed example. - In Friday the 13th: The Game \|\|only Tommy Jarvis can deliver the final blow to Jason after a series of steps are taken.\|\| - Grand Theft Auto V: Fighting his way through an skirmish between the IAA, FIB and Merryweather, Michael finds himself pinned down by an attack helicopter from the mercenary group. His rescue comes in the form of none other than Trevor, who snipes the pilot, sending him down, followed by this exchange: Trevor: Hey! If anyone's gonna kill you, old friend, it's gonna be me! Michael: Oh! You here to finish the job, T? Trevor: No, no, no, no, I'm just here for the opportunity. Now run! - Every boss in Kingdom Hearts II. You can let your AI allies attack as much as you like when the boss is down to 1 HP, but until Sora personally lands a Finishing Move, they won't die. - Raziel and Kain in the Legacy of Kain series — Kain doesn't want to kill Raziel and as he learns more about Nosgoth Raziel loses his desire to kill Kain. However, the two are functionally immortal, so they're the only ones that can kill the other by virtue of Kain \|\|possessing the material version of the sword Soul Reaver that can imprison Raziel within it\|\|, and Raziel \|\|possessing the spectral version of the same sword that can bypass Kain's vampiric body and damage his spirit directly.\|\| - The Legend of Zelda: Being the chosen wielder of the Master Sword, Link is the only one who can kill Ganondorf. - A recurring element in Metal Gear. The Patriots have something to do with all the subsequent incidents. - Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater: The Boss would accept nothing less than to die at the hands of the greatest soldiers she knew. Turns out, that includes her best student John. \|\|Unfortunately, this trope was forced on her by her enemies in Langley; they goaded a psychopath into firing a nuke and the only way to prevent World War III was to ensure that the person who gave him that nuke would be executed by her own disciple.\|\| - Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty: Raiden was selected from the list because he was the most appropriate person to take Solidus Snake out; Solidus raised Raiden as a child soldier, commanding a Redshirt Army of children while Raiden was HIS prized warrior. \|\|The real reason is that, of all the soldiers Solidus raised from kids, Raiden was the farthest away from Skull Face that a butcher could get.\|\| - Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots: And when Ocelot was possessed by Liquid, Snake declares that he's the only one meant to kill him. \|\|Or just Ocelot. As it turns out, the new Foxdie patch did that just fine.\|\| - In Paladog, the titular Paladog is the only character that can even harm Ghost Paladog. All of Paladog's Player Mooks will simply ignore and pass by Ghost Paladog, although they can still be hurt by his attacks. - Only Zeratul is able to kill the Cerebrates in StarCraft's penultimate mission, if the kill is done by any other unit the Cerebrate regenerates. Due to a glitch with location triggers it's possible for another unit to kill the Cerebrate for good while Zeratul is directly nearby, but the intent is for him to do it. In the expansion the player repeats the process in some missions using generic Dark Templar in place of Zeratul to the same effect. - In StarCraft II, several future prophecies specify that Kerrigan is absolutely vital to opposing the Big Bad. This leads several characters, who in the previous game swore to kill her or die trying, actually saving her life and helping her. \|\|It turns out to be because Kerrigan is the only living being with sufficient native power to ascend into a new Xel'Naga, which is the only thing powerful enough to challenge the Big Bad's might (given that he is a Xel'Naga). Plus, having her around means the Big Bad can't just mind-control the entire Zerg Swarm into being his slaves... he still tries and partially succeeds, but now Kerrigan is fighting him for control every step of the way.\|\| - In Tsukihime, the strange way in which Nrvnqsr's body is made up means it is nearly impossible to kill him: you have to kill all 666 of his familiars at once or he can regenerate them instantly. The protagonist, Shiki Tohno, on the other hand, has the explicit ability to kill things Deader than Dead, making him uniquely suited to killing Nrvnqsr. If Shiki kills something, it stays dead. Period. - In Warcraft III, while the trope isn't mentioned by name, it's in effect in the penultimate Night Elf level where Illidan consumes the skull of Gul'dan. This triggers his permanent transformation into a demon, and more importantly gives him Chaos damage, the only type that can damage the demon lord Tichondrius. - One boss in the first chapter of Xenosaga can only be killed if the final blow is landed by Shion or Junior. This is because it is connected to various mental issues of theirs stemming from the Miltia Incident. - Justified in El Goonish Shive. Grace was granted specific genetic modifications since birth, that grant her immunity to Damien's powers. (Namely, she's fireproof and her warform has claws with poison that slows healing, while Damien is a Pryomancer of insane powers with a massive Healing Factor). - Lampshaded by Belkar of the The Order of the Stick, who declines to finish off Crystal because he recognizes her as Haley's nemesis. - In the Sluggy Freelance arc "Dangerous Days," it's ultimately Torg, a pretty ordinary guy, who defeats Aylee, not Badass Longcoat Riff, not super-assassin Oasis, not Killer Rabbit Bun-Bun, not even \|\|the real Aylee\|\|, because Torg was the one with the most emotional involvement. - Also done in the "Oceans Unmoving" arc, where the only one who even stands a chance against Blacksoul is Bun-Bun, and the only one who stands a chance against Bun-Bun is Blacksoul. Makes sense when it's later revealed that \|\|Blacksoul is actually Bun-Bun from the future\|\|. - In the last few episodes of Red vs. Blue: Reconstruction, Washington makes it clear that only Church is capable of stopping the Meta. However, this isn't due to Church's fighting ability (which has never really been particularly good), but rather because \|\|Church is actually the Alpha A.I., and thus the only being capable of neutralizing the A.I.s that the Meta has merged with\|\|. - It was long hinted in American Dragon: Jake Long that only Jake could defeat the Dark Dragon for good. Had it not been for Executive Meddling, it no doubt would've happened. - Justified in Avatar: The Last Airbender. Only the Avatar, The Master of the Four Elements, can stop Fire Lord Ozai and restore balance among the four Elemental Nations. \|\|Iroh\|\|, who is one of the very few normal benders who could possibly match the Fire Lord in battle, explains why it must be the Avatar's responsibility: if anyone else were to defeat Ozai, it would be seen by history as little more than more violence from victims of war or another power struggle. The Avatar, however, is a spiritual figure that the public believes transcends petty worldly desires like revenge or political power. Them defeating Ozai at his strongest would be seen as an enlightened being enacting near-divine justice on a power-mad tyrant for the sake of the world. The symbolic value of this narrative would be powerful enough to prevent the remaining Ozai supporters from gaining public support to restart the war after their defeat. - On Gargoyles, Macbeth and Demona are both immortal until one kills the other, at which point both will die. Macbeth actually wants to slay Demona and put and end to them both, and this has become his lifelong goal; Demona... Not so much. Ironically it seems like most other people aren't aware of this fact, as the Hunters have been trying to kill Demona themselves for nearly a thousand years and the heroes declared No One Could Survive That! on each of them at least once. (Though that Macbeth wasn't even real anyway...) - Storm Shadow in G.I. Joe: Renegades needs to be the one to kill Snake Eyes in order to avenge \|\|the death of his uncle, the Hard Master\|\| and save face with his clan. He's also the only member of Cobra with a chance of actually defeating him one-on-one. - In Justice League, "For the Man Who Has Everything", Batman tries everything to bring Superman out of the Black Mercy-induced dream because only he is anything like powerful enough to defeat Mongul - While not 'kill', it was revealed in a web episode of Mighty Magiswords that only Vambre can hurt Prohyas (it makes sense since they are siblings). - Samurai Jack is a literal case. He is the only one who can slay Aku, because his sword is the only known weapon with the power to do so. - This also applies to the Guardian of the time portal. According to prophecy, only one person will ever be able to slay him and use the portal successfully. Guess who that person is? \|\|However, as the Guardian says at the end, Jack is "not ready" now, but he "will be... someday". Instead, in Season 5, it's revealed that Aku slew the Guardian and destroyed the portal to keep Jack from using, subverting this trope.\|\|	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/OnlyICanKillHer
Shop Fodder - TV Tropes "Some may call this junk. Me, I call them treasures." Shop Fodder is a kind of item found mostly in RPGs, but it can appear in other genres. This item doesn't heal you or buff you, it can't be equipped, it doesn't harm the enemy when you throw it, it won't open the Sealed Cave of the Sidequest or encourage the palace guard to finally let you see the king, and it can't be combined with other items to do any of the above. In fact, having it does nothing but take up space in your inventory. You might as well throw it in the trash. But wait a second — one man's trash is another man's treasure, and didn't the shopkeeper tell you We Buy Anything? Shops throughout the realm will pay money for useless trinkets like that! Money that you can use to buy something actually useful (maybe). Sometimes a respectable amount, too, depending on the nature of the item. In rare cases, the Shop Fodder actually appreciates in value throughout the game! This will often take the form of gold or jewels — if those aren't the very things which constitute the Global Currency. In games that follow Color-Coded Item Tiers, such items are almost always in grey color (junk tier) if it's not used for generic weapons. This is often used to avoid the Money Spider trope, and it may be used to start a rumor that it can be used for a hidden event. Related to Better Off Sold, which refers to items that have a use other than simply being sold, but are generally sold anyway due to players having no use for them. ## Examples: - ANNO: Mutationem: All manner of junk items are explicitly only meant to be sold for credits. At Harbor Town, Ann can be allowed to catch as many fish from the water. Fish can be sold for a much higher price at shops than the usual materials she picks up around area, making by for easy money. - God of War Ragnarök has shattered runes. You'd be forgiven for assuming they'd be used to upgrade equipment, like every other resource, but shattered runes aren't used in any crafting or upgrade recipes. The description even says they still have energy in them, which could encourage you to hold on to them. Since a stack of 50 sells for a hefty 5,000 hacksilver, it's in your best interest to sell them to every shop you stop by. It also has a more straightforward type in the various collectible sets, which have a dedicated quick-sell button in the shop. - Ōkami: - The various Treasures, most of which was pottery and figurines. Issun recommends selling them, because what else would Physical God Amaterasu need them for? - Most of the fish you fish up in the Fishing Minigame only exist to be sold. However, considering Ammy still eats and pees, one wonders why she can't just eat the fish. - If you collect all 100 Stray Beads you get the game's Infinity Plus One Weapon. In the sequel, Ōkamiden, they're the cheapest type of shop fodder you can get. - The Legend of Zelda: - The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker introduces a character who accepted monster-dropped shop fodder items for rewards above simple cash. However, this was never expressly stated in the dialogue with him. - In The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass, there's a whole line of treasure items (Goron Amber, Ruto Crown, etc.) that are nothing but shop fodder. The exact amount for each item varies from game to game and there is a way to trade these items between games to increase your profit. Treasures return in the sequel Spirit Tracks, but this time you can also trade them for ship parts. - Castlevania: - In The Game of the Ages, you struggle to sell an old life preserver you found. You eventually get a single coin for it, a coin that proves essential. - The large refractors you find in Mega Man Legends 2 are only good for selling for some cash. Even though the description explicitly states this, many players remembered back to the first game where the large refractors were important Plot Coupons and were reluctant to sell them, thinking they might ultimately find some manner of machine to stick them in. - Brave Fencer Musashi had some fun with the concept, as you find items in dungeons but need to have them appraised before they can be used. They will always have a vague, and often misleading, description based on what Musashi thought it was when he picked it up. The Old Shield turns out to just be a frisbee and the Helmet turns out to be a bedpan (let's hope he didn't try it on), while things like the "Ugly Belt" turns out to be the L-Belt which lets him Double Jump. The "treasure" that ends up being worthless and mundane junk is only worth selling to Connors for some extra money. - Mystik Belle has countless junk items strewn about the game world, which can be disposed of in the Dumpster. Doing so with all of them yields an achievement. - Sly Cooper: From the second game onwards, Sly can steal valuable items from enemies, which can be sold for cash to purchase new skills for the trio. - Hollow Knight: - The game has four different types of relics that can be sold to Lemm, each with its own price. Unlike most games, it's advisable NOT to sell them immediately, and instead hold onto them until you're actually planning on buying something as to avoid the consequence of lost geo on death. Lemm will also give a lore blurb when selling some relics. - In a normal playthrough, you can give Rancid Eggs to Confessor Jiji to retrieve your Shade. In the game's Final Death Mode (where you cannot retrieve your Shade), Confessor Jiji is replaced by Steel Soul Jinn, who offers you money for the eggs. \|\|In the same mode, Tuk (the NPC in the Royal Waterways who sells you Rancid Eggs) is dead so you cannot abuse this feature for infinite money.\|\| - Magic: The Gathering has many Junk Rares; cards that are indeed rare but have no real competitive value. Head designer Mark Rosewater coined the phrase "rare but well done" to describe them. Their rarity means they can still be sold for a pretty penny, but they usually go to collectors looking to fill out their collection rather than competitive players seeking to actually use them. - Shop fodder is almost everywhere in Dishonored, but for simplicity's sake it is instantly converted to money the moment you grab it, so you never have to explicitly sell it. - System Shock 2 has replicators and vending machines that, among ammo and useful items, also dispense small junk objects at very low prices. You can hack one of the replicators to get a tool that can turn these pieces of junk into nanites. - Kingdom of Loathing: - Items like "fancy seashell necklaces" can be bought to enable one to convert non-exchangeable currencies into the Global Currency. - World of Warcraft: - The game goes as far as color-coding its sellable items. If you see an item with its name in gray, you can rest assured its only purpose in the game is to be sold to vendors note : If it's a piece of equipment, you can theoretically equip and use it but its stats will be so abysmal that past level 5 you won't want it. Otherwise it will be literally impossible to do anything with it other than sell it. One example is an item "Goldenscale Vendorfish," a rarely caught fish which sells for an impressive amount of money for its item level. - Some so-called shop fodder can be sold to vendors for more than even legendary weapons, though these are fairly rare items contained within the daily fishing quest grab-bag. The Beautiful Glass Eye goes for 18 gold pieces, while the Ancient Coins go for 25! - Mists of Pandaria simplified the sellable items somewhat as well. Now, pretty much everything that drops it only has two sellable items they can drop (different specific items depending on the type of monster), one being very common and worth a couple silver each, and the other being considerably rarer and worth several gold apiece. Examples of the latter tend to include handy flavor text explaining why the vendor has a use for the item, even though the player doesn't. - Guild Wars 2 has a reason for why; every piece of trash has "Trophy" below its name, implying that when you sell something useless to an adventurer like yourself, you're giving it to a merchant to pawn off on someone as basically a dust collector or a conversations starter. On the other hand, the game admits to the nature of these items with an achievement track called "Trash Collector". - The net-based game Forum Warz has an entire item category of shop fodder called "Useless Junk". The value of the items ranges from the marble, which sells for only 1 unit of currency, to the nude Mary Magdalene, which sells for over 5000. To avoid quest items being mistaken for useless junk, they cannot be sold. Why is it necessary to make quest items unsellable? Because otherwise you couldn't tell the difference - many of the quest items look, from the descriptions, utterly pointless... - The MMORPG Tales of Pirates has Trade Items, which can only be used for buying in one port and selling it for more money in a different port. - Puzzle Pirates features Fruit (everything else is useful for, well, a trade, since tradeskills are literally half of the game). - RuneScape: After the mining and smithing rework in 2019, monsters no longer drop melee armor and weapons that players can make. Instead they now drop salvage items whose only use is converting them into coins with alchemy or disassembling them for invention parts or selling them to other players. - MapleStory has sellable items with a very appropriate name of "etc items." While some etc items are needed for quests, there are many others that will never be used for anything but selling. Most are pretty standard but there are a few that are really bizarre like soiled rags, a fish's thoughts, werewolf toenails, and zombie teddy bears. Notably the design of the game has evolved to phase this out as a concept, and you can tell how old an area is by if the monsters have etc drops or if they just drop currency instead. - Billy vs. SNAKEMAN has "Treasure Items", most of which were initially only good for their sale price - and they all had to be assessed from their "ash-covered" state before they could be sold (thankfully, even the lowest-value is always worth more than its assessment price). Some of these were initially useful for building Wasteland gear, and the rollout of PizzaWitch made a lot more of them usable for crafting, but Small Gems are still only resaleable. - In Dream of Mirror Online, if it wasn't used for a quest or for alchemy, it was most likely meant to be sold; this was the main source of income as the money you got from finishing most quests was abysmal. - Gems in LEGO Universe are completely worthless to players, but they can be sold to vendors. Depending on the color of the gem, you can receive anywhere from a measly 10 coins to a grand 50,000 coins by selling these gems. - There is a gigantic variety of items you can loot in WildStar, and given their convenient Vacuum Loot feature which sucks up all the loot in an area, you can collect the strangest of things without realizing it. These could be looted jewelry and knickknacks from your enemies, scraps of their equipment, their body parts, and anyone will buy them. - Fallen London: The game's economy is based around having a very large amount of different currencies that can be traded for each other at various rates. You can always sell one currency item for Echoes and pence and buy up another currency item with it, though this is at a loss - you can also exchange quantities of one currency in bulk for another, usually slightly increasing total value. That said, Rostygold, Nevercold Brass and Relics of the Fourth City are relatively useless/abundant enough to let you simply sell them off without a weight in your mind. That said, there is one particular situation in where the term is given a whole new meaning: Certain trades in Uncertified Scrap give you extremely rare and valuable items that are, nonetheless, rather useless in terms of actual storyline or storylet usage. Which leads to conversations between stars, velvet spun from the fur of a Master of the Bazaar (read: An eldritch being that runs the local Bazaar of the Bizarre), intel on where the princes of Hell are hiding and an entire intelligence network being sold for money because they were simply useless to you. - Final Fantasy XIV contains several sellable items, all helpfully identified with the phrase "Exchangeable for gil" in their Flavor Text. The most obvious would be the Allagan <some-metal> Pieces typically given as alternatives alongside more material rewards the player might not need, which are literally currency once used by the local Precursors. As an oblique measure against Real Money Trade, these items retain the original 99-per-slot Cap and were not affected when patch 4.2 increased the cap to 999 for everything else. - The Elder Scrolls Online has two types of sellable items. The first is the standard kind dropped by various monsters, such as hides and ectoplasm. The second kind are various valuable, but useless, items stolen from containers and NPCs and sold to fences. These range from portable chamberpots and children's dolls to precious artifacts, but for some reason sell for more than any other type of item does. - Although monsters in Ni No Kuni: Cross Worlds, do directly drop gold and there are a number of other ways to obtain it directly, one of the most popular ways is by fighting enemies which regularly drop coins or statues of varying gold values which have no use other than to be sold. Dark Magic Crystals, which are used for providing enhancements to weapons, also sell for 10,000 gold each, making them very appealing for selling for gold if you build up a stock of them, since you probably won't be using them all for enhancement due to the other requirements. - In Red & Ted's Road Show, the Indian Trader in Albuquerque will buy the various kitschy souvenirs Ted has collected and trade them for points. - Deltarune: The rare Glowshards can be sold for a decent sum of money. Their one practical use is for sparing a Rudinn, but given that Rudinns are among the most basic enemies in the game and exclusive to the first chapter, it doesn't amount to much. The value they sell for increases with each chapter passed. There's also the Dog Dollar, whose value is said to decrease each chapter (while starting at the same value as the Glowshard). - Weird and Unfortunate Things Are Happening has a whole slew of collectible items that only exist to be sold to the shopkeepers (mainly Erick), with sell to a collector appearing at the end of their descriptions. Notably, this is the only way to reliably get dollars to buy weapons and charms, as enemies only drop obols, which are instead used for other things like unlocking abilities for your party. - In Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, all spike tunnelers serve no purpose in the game (unlike the sequel where they are used for cracking locks), they can be sold for credits, since there is no penalty for bashing doors and locks open like there is in the sequel. Any items with no special attributes or modifiers are meant to be sold because of their uselessness. - Horizon Zero Dawn and its sequel Horizon Forbidden West have a lot of loot items that are only usable for trading to merchants. In a slight twist on the trope while some items are only tradable for shards others are also required to barter for gear upgrades. - Octopath Traveler: A variety of trinkets and miscellaneous items can be found and stolen from NPCs that are only good for selling for money. These junk items range from a "Silver-Filled Pouch" sold for 8,000g to a "Dirty Ball of Cloth" sold for 2g. - SaGa Frontier has the gold ingots. Those can be used in the Takonomics glitch that involved the manipulation of the gold market via the shop at Koorong note : the price of gold goes down as you sell ingots and back up as you buy, but this calculation is (erroneously) made before any actual physical inventory changes hand. You can therefore manipulate the gold market in the shop menu such that when you actually sell your gold, you get more money back. Then you travel to Nelson, where gold ingots are always sold at a fixed price. Rinse and repeat. and then you will have all the money you'll ever need. - Tales of Phantasia: Tapestries, Ukiyo-e paintings, corals, tea cups, pieces of ebony wood, marble fragments, etc. pretty much only exists to be sold at shops for profit. The one exception are the ivory tusks that can be exchanged in a secret shop located on an island for Mahjong pieces, powerful battle items. - Divinity: Original Sin II: Some decorative items, like art and fancy dishes, have no in-game purpose but to be collected and sold by a Kleptomaniac Hero, which their in-game descriptions lampshade: - The Legend of Heroes: Trails: - If you are short on mira, you can convert some of your unneeded sepith to pay for needed gear. Considering that they are capped at 9999 in the Liberl and Crossbell games, there is no harm in doing this every now and then. - The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel has monsters drop crystals called sepith rather than money. Sepith can be traded for money, or used directly to acquire items and upgrades in certain shops. It also has sepith mass, which is a cruder form of sepith that can only be exchanged for money. The main purpose of the latter is so that the player can acquire money without having to exchange normal sepith, which makes it easier to save up for things that can only be bought with sepith. - Breath of Fire: Dragon Quarter, being a roguelike-influenced game, has a lot of randomly generated, unidentified items to find throughout. Most of these have mediocre or redundant effects, but nearly all sell for a good amount of cash (much moreso than the actual, designated vendor shop fodder, which eat up valuable inventory space and give so little money they aren't even worth bothering with), so it's worth keeping them around just to pawn them off for more resources at the next shop you reach. - Master of the Monster Lair: Animal enemies will often drop pelts, while humanoid enemies will sometimes drop rare coins. - Gems can be sold in Darkest Dungeon. This adds a layer of complexity, since your space for items is limited and you may have to choose between gems and greater rewards when finishing the quest, or supplies and a better chance of actually finishing said quest. Additionally, having the Antiquarian class in your party gives a chance to find antiques whenever other items are found, which also serve only to be sold. - In Faria, collecting jewels and selling them to the jeweler in Somusa is a good way to make money, since jewels, unlike useful items, can be sold for 90% of their regular purchase value. - Opoona has several items to sell. Gems, which can sometimes be found when doing the cleaning side-missions, can be sold as-is to a shop, or to a specific NPC, whose price for Gems changes day to day. Medals can be won from the cheapest Artihella stand, and can be sold back to shops to make back money from the stand. (There's even a hidden shopkeeper hiding in Artihella who's explicitly there to perform under-the-table medal trades.) Finally, some of the Rare Random Drops the monsters have are very expensive pieces of shop fodder, with the most expensive being the Raffelesia. - Monster Racers contains bronze, silver, and gold ingots. In fact, you're more likely to receive them as prizes and in treasure chests than you are actual money! That's probably because it's set in our world, and attempts to avert Global Currency. Of course, that still leaves the question of why the world is full of random pieces of metal just lying around... - In South Park: The Stick of Truth: The game is littered with garbage that serves no other purpose than to be sold to vendors. Ceramic shards, broken bulbs, pieces of plastic, used syringes, cardboard tubes, pubes, goo, splinters, tap shoes, etc are only a few of the list of ridiculously useless garbage that you can pick up to sell. - In Xenogears, there are many items (Gold Nugget, Eyeball, Fang, Scales) whose only purpose is to be sold. - Evil Islands: Most non-human enemies can only be looted for body parts or accessories, rather than money, materials or usable items. However, each type is given a short lore description which explains why it is sellable and what the buyers would do with it. Rat tails, for example, make for a decent beer snack, when salted; fire crystals from elementals are turned into lamps and heaters, and banshee cloaks are believed to ward off evil spirits. - Bug Fables has Dark Cherries, which are scattered all over the world buried underground, but cannot be eaten and exist mostly to be sold, with even the description encouraging the player to sell it with In-Universe justification that "collectors will buy them for a big price". \|\|However, it can also be used for cooking, making either a powerful bomb that can inflict random status effect, a powerful healing item that can restore the entire party's HP and TP, the best TP recovery item, and an item that can revive the entire party.\|\| - In Gothic, you can collect certain items from dead animals like claws, fangs, talons, and skins after you learn the appropriate hunting skill. These items have no gameplay use other then sale to vendors. - Pokémon - Items as Nuggets, Pearls, Stardust, and Tiny Mushrooms are only good for selling in most of the series. The exceptions being that in FireRed and LeafGreen, Mushrooms are used in Sevii by the Mushroom Maniac Move Reminder, and in Platinum you can give Star Pieces to the guy at Fuego Ironworks in exchange for shards, which can in turn be given to Move Tutors in exchange for teaching Pokémon moves. - The Pokémon Mystery Dungeon series has the "Gold Ribbons" and the "Lost Loot" for the sake of selling for money. - Pokémon Black and White: - To make up for the lack of trainer rematches, there are three collectors that will buy certain regular items for more than what you'd usually get and will also give you tremendous amounts of money for rare items you can't sell to anyone else (some of which you only get one of). Star Pieces can also be traded to a guy in Anville Town for PP Ups (but he's only there on weekends). - The billionaire in Undella Town will pay you a LOT of money for the Relics you find in the Abyssal Ruins, which you really can't do anything else with. He'll also buy the glass flutes, which lost their functionalities in Black and White, at a premium. - Pokémon Black 2 and White 2 adds another item maniac who collects Mulch (items used in berry growing in Pokémon Diamond and Pearl and Pokémon X and Y, but rendered useless in Pokémon Black and White). The amount of items that are counted as shop fodder is almost absurd. With Disc One Nukes such as Join Avenue and Pokéstar Studios, you'll have more money than you'll know what to do with. - The Elder Scrolls: - Daggerfall has a number of "Misc Items" with no use beyond selling. These range from "light" items such as candles, lanterns, torches to holy tomes, holy daggers, and other objects don't appear to have any value other than for selling. - Morrowind adds hundreds of more items with uses (such as "light" items which can now be held in the off-hand to illuminate dark areas, as well as items such as scrap metal, chunks of ore, and the like which are now alchemical ingredients) but also includes plenty of shop fodder as well. Dinnerware, silverware, empty bottles, musical instruments, etc. cannot be used in any way beyond as decorations, though all are at least worth 1 gold if sold to a merchant. - In Oblivion, the world is filled with objects that you can pick up, add to your inventory and sell. Most of them have no in-game function except as props and shop fodder. However, some items that appear to be shop fodder can actually start a quest. - Skyrim features shop fodder that is (probably unintentionally) more trashy than usual: a throwaway clothing item, "Gloves," which is valued at only 1 coin. Probably because it's two left gloves. note : The artist was probably in a hurry and just duplicated the object because who is going to actually look at a pair of gloves? Hopefully not the vendor! - Shin Megami Tensei: - In Raidou Kuzunoha vs. The Soulless Army, Raidou can acquire "artifacts", such as old coins and pottery, that are only useful when you sell them to Konnou-Ya, the crotchety old owner of the store that shares his name. - Persona: - In Persona 3, coins you get by killing the game's Metal Slime are usually worth a lot of money, and some of the items dropped by bosses are only there for you to sell. - In Persona 4, your first visit to the only equipment shop has the owner tell you explicitly that items dropped by enemies are useless to you and should be sold to him. A nice touch for those worried about selling anything for fear of missing something later on. As an additional reason to do so, new weapons and armor become buyable if you sell certain amounts of stuff to the shop. - Persona 5: Most of the treasure you steal from the various Palaces, including the main Treasure each of your heists are targeting, can only be sold at the weapon shop for cash. They have no other uses and stay in a separate tab from equipment and other usable items. - Shin Megami Tensei IV and Shin Megami Tensei IV: Apocalypse: Relics, AKA everyday items from before the game's events, are the main source of Macca in this game. The game even sells them automatically as soon as you enter a shop. The reason for their value depends on where you sell them: in the medieval kingdom of Mikado, they are valued for being modern-day items, while in Tokyo they are pre-apocalyptic conveniences. - Breath of Fire III has Antiquities that could be sold to any store for money, or to a specific store for more money. However, one of them (the Flower Jewel) is needed to get a certain master to help your party, so don't sell it. - Planet Alcatraz features a staggering number of clothing items that gives no stat bonus whatsoever (beggar clothing, tank tops, skirts, miniskirts, etc), as well as gerbil skins, mushrooms, etc that are only good for selling to merchants. - Skies of Arcadia: - The three statues were originally used for a sidequest, but in the remake, Skies Of Arcadia Legends, this quest was taken out, and the statues became shop fodder. - The game features Crystal Balls, Gold Bullion, and the Zivlin Bane treasures for the sake of selling. - Shadow Madness, a Playstation RPG, had entire barrels of useless geegaws (farming tools, toys, etc.) that would get you loads of money if sold to specific shops. The game gives you no clue about this. - Your main source of income in Final Fantasy XII is selling "loot" dropped/poached/stolen from monsters and beasts. An enemy's entry in the bestiary frequently describes which items a monster drops and what they're used for, making the fact that they sell for decent money more plausible; you can even purchase monographs, which make enemies drop additional loot of much higher value than their usual drop tables. There's also the Bazaar system, where by selling certain loot items (not necessarily all at once), you get a special purchase offer of an item, usually at a reduced cost and sometimes before it's available in stores. Some items, usually powerful endgame equipment like the Tournesol, are exclusive to the Bazaar. - In Baten Kaitos, you take pictures of monsters and sell them for money. It's the only way to make cash as the Magnuses/Magni (magic cards holding the essence of something) dropped by enemies or found elsewhere sell for a pittance. There are some exceptions like the Chump Change that eventually change to Vintage Coints and then to Styx Passage Coins that can be sold for pretty penny or the Consolation Pay that sells for 30000. The series also features inversions of Vendor Trash: a certain magnus (Slight Debt) changes over time to the Debt with Interest, to the Snowballing Debt and finally the Debt Hell. Attempting to sell the Debt Hell will remove 5000 money from your possession. - Mother: - Chickens, rulers, and protractors in EarthBound (1994). Luckily the game also has a "For Sale" sign which causes random people to wander up to you and buy your things. There's also the semi-rare Meteotite, which is dropped by some enemies and (as the description states) doesn't do anything but can be sold for a high price. And then there's the Insignificant Item... though it actually has a use. - The Meteotite appears in the sequel, Mother 3, with the same purpose as in the game's predecessor: selling for money. - Star Ocean: The Second Story: - There is an example of the rarer "appreciating value" type of sellable item, in which it sells (at an incredible price) a bottle of what was translated to "Seltzer". It rapidly increases in value based on the number of squares you've moved since the beginning of the game. This appreciation happens whether or not you own the item, meaning if you want to buy it you'll have to progress far enough that your ability to make money outstrips the time you've spent playing. You can also create it using ultra-rare cooking ingredients. - Inverted with the item Bounced Cheque. In order to get rid of it, you had to pay a shopkeeper to take it off you. - You could collect plenty of shop fodder in Betrayal at Krondor, and some in its sequel, Return to Krondor. Return was perhaps notable for the fact that gems weren't shop fodder, because the game actually assigned a weight value to money. Vendors would automatically convert your coinage into lighter-weight gems. The large mid-game section where you're free to explore the coastal wilderness near Krondor without any easily-accessible vendors could easily lead to serious weight problems just from all the cash you weren't able to convert to gems (not to mention all the potion-making crap both your wizards were likely carrying around). - Dragon Age: Origins contains plenty of sellable items. You may not want to sell off your unused gems, crafting supplies, and runes, as they can be used to give you an advantage in the final battle. But during your quest you'll also find things like blank vellum, silk carpets, and silver chalices, none of which serve any purpose except for selling. - Dragon Age II automatically sorts all unusable loot into the "Junk Items" category, which can be emptied at any shop with a single click on "Sell all junk" button. You can also move useless armor and weapons to Junk to greatly simplify loot selling. The icon for the Junk Items category is even a trash can. - Dragon Age: Inquisition settles halfway between its two predecessors - the "junk" items still get sorted into a separate category, but so do items that are actually important, including research materials that can be turned in for damage bonuses against various enemies and in one level, items that you need to complete a sidequest. - Might and Magic RPG games had gems of different colours and value. They did not have any use except for selling them. And in M&M VIII there were 'shop tours': you could buy or sell Tobersk fruit, Tobersk pulp or Tobersk Brandy from various merchants, making some profit. This was too tedious, though, to earn gold that way. - In Vandal Hearts 2, the bullion (of gold), ingot, and the R (rare) metal are great to sell off, but no use whatsoever except to add weight. Even worse, there are items that doesn't even sell well, and just adds weight. Of course, there's a niche weapon with a niche skill that relies on your overall weight to damage enemies. You don't discover it until later in the game though, which means, most usually, you have sold those said items... - In the .hack// games, end-of-dungeon chests often contain one to three tradeable items that are very valuable for trading with "other players." - Monster Hunter: - While on missions you can find such rare and valuable items as shiny shells, rare bugs, monster guts, fruit, mushrooms that have sat in the stomachs of giant bugs, and living fish made out of gold (no really, read the Flavor Text). With a few exceptions, these items serve absolutely no purpose but for cash, and are sold off automatically when the mission ends. These are usually referred to as Account Items. A surprising number of them are described as delicacies. The general rule of thumb is: If the Flavor Text describes the item as highly valuable and especially if it's followed up by "...but of no use to a Hunter", you can safely sell it without compromising an opportunity for new equipment, assuming the game doesn't sell it for you. - Monster Hunter: World makes it simpler, just labeling these with "(Trade-In Item)" in yellow text and even giving an option to just sell all such items en masse. The player can also farm them intentionally by using the Bandit Mantle, a piece of equipment that makes monsters occasionally drop trade-in items when attacked. Then there's Kulve Taroth, a monster that is literally covered in gold which can be broken off and collected; appropriately enough, you fight it in a location called the Caverns of El Dorado. - Items are your only source of money in The World Ends with You, and the shop fodder is about as obvious as it gets— pins called "[number] Yen", with a design featuring that number, and no other purpose. - In Etrian Odyssey shop fodder is your only source of income. It's also used to improve the shop's inventory: sell the required materials, and new items go on sale. - Items in Wasteland 2 have a "junk" category, whose sole purpose is to be converted in cash. - Fallout 3 supplies vast amounts of useless to marginally useful clutter around the environment and in containers. You only get one ally to load up with unreadable books and unsmokeable cigarettes, but fortunately stacks of Pre-War Money have zero encumbrance. Most of the junk can be used as ammunition for the Rock-It Launcher. Kilian Experience: When asked to describe Fallout 3 , Bethesda said it was a game where you sneak into strangers' houses and steal stuff you can't actually use. I wanted to know if there was more to it than that, and... no. No, there is not. - Fallout: New Vegas describes sellable items handily as "vendor trash." Some items are bound to personalities who take offense at the player picking up their trash. - Planescape: Torment has a lot of sellable items, mostly non-magical rings and bracelets, as well as weak weapons dropped off of opponents that you have long since outgrown, that seem to only exist to be sold to the vendors. However, while most plot items are unsellable, a couple are not and it gets very annoying to suddenly need a hammer and prybar but nobody seems to sell them. Luckily, vendors remember what items you sold them and will sell them back, assuming you can remember who you sold them to and that they're in an area you can still return to. - TaskMaker and its sequel, The Tomb of the TaskMaker, have several sellable items, including "Poison" which does bupkis; "old empty chest" which contains nothing; and other objects which can't be used, and have to be sold or discarded. - Brain Lord has things like Gold Coins and Silver Bullion, which have no use other than to take up space and be sold. Fortunately, they sell fairly well and you get a rather large inventory, but money isn't exactly hard to come by in the first place. - If you play the Memory game in Dragon Warrior 7 for Playstation for any length of time, you will amass a gigantic collection of dung, which gives you a measly 1 gold at the shop and serves no purpose other than attracting enemies (which you really don't need help with). - Neverwinter Nights: - Certain types of creature always drop a specific body part; fire beetles, for instance, drop fire beetle bellies. Shrubs and piles of rock typically yield fenberries and quartz crystals (though the piles of rock can hide more valuable gems). All of these sell for one gold apiece. But just when you've learned to recognize Vendor Trash in Chapter 1, Chapter 2 changes the rules... Now, there's one vendor who won't deal with you until you give her a sellable item (an 'arcane reagent') — every single time you deal with her — and you can also find out how to use some of them in Item Crafting. But you still collect so many of them that they still by and large count as trash. At the same time, certain rare items from the first chapter, worth holding on to for their use in that chapter's Item Crafting, now themselves become Vendor Trash, showing up everywhere. (But fire beetle bellies remain trash.) - Books. You can ransack the Pamphlet Shelf for the same dozen or so books the world over. (And the occasional magic scroll.) Once you've read the page of setting-enhancing text once, they become pure Vendor Trash. - Gems exist solely to keep money in reserve so that when you die you don't lose too much dough. Admittedly, selling gems for money makes sense, but apart from diamonds (which are used in item crafting) they're rarely worth more than 100gp, which is a pitifully small amount of money when you get up to level 10. - Sellng items is the quickest means of getting money in Fossil Fighters. You find "Jewel Rocks" over the world, and clean the rocks to sell the jewels inside. However, it ends up being somewhat "normal" in that, in order to claim a Jewel Rock, you must generally win a battle first. - In The Bard's Tale, the Bard finds several useless things in the chests and barrels he rummages through, but instead of being lugged around with him, they're automatically converted into silver to line his pockets. - The 7th Saga has various gems, which sell for the same price at which they are bought. Their advantage is that you don't lose them if you get defeated in battle (unlike gold). - Darkstone has a number of items collectible from the local dungeons which serve absolutely no point to the player. These include a number of weapons and jewelry pieces which, if wielded/worn by the player character, will actually harm them. Their only purpose is to be sold for extra gold. - Lunar: - In Lunar: Dragon Song, you have the option of getting experience or shop fodder from killed enemies. Said trash can either be sold directly or used in the delivery miniquests that ask you to give an NPC 20 Bear Asses. - Lunar: The Silver Star had tons of useless items just waiting to be sold in the original Sega CD version. The remakes cut almost all such items out. - In Path of Exile, the vendors themselves give you trash. You see, the game works on the barter system and there is no currency. So you can sell items for scraps that eventually combine into something relatively useful like an identify scroll. - Spiderweb Software's Avadon goes so far as to have an additional bottomless pit of a bag that's shared between all of your party members (in addition to their individual bags) which is meant solely for selling. There are some things (such as dead limbs) that shopkeepers just won't buy. - Pandora's Tower features books as pure shop fodder. Picking them up copies their contents to the archive, and then they're so useless Mavda will take them off your hands without even asking for confirmation. She'll also buy Beast Flesh from you in bulk to give your excess some value instead of letting it rot, proving that being a minor Plot Coupon and Vendor Trash aren't mutually exclusive categories. - Xenoblade Chronicles: - Xenoblade Chronicles 1 features sellable items instead of the Money Spider thing. Every enemy, whether Monster or Mechon, will drop either Weapons/Items, or various pieces of its body. Some are used for sidequests, but the majority of them exist only to be sold. - Xenoblade Chronicles X: The golden blatta Tyrants all drop a special item that has no purpose except to be sold for at least 10,000, most 50,000 credits apiece. These items are some of the only in the game that can't be purchased with Reward Tickets. - Xenoblade Chronicles 2 has Collectibles (spawned by collection points) and Treasure (acquired from salvaging). These are items that can be sold on their own, but they're often significantly more valuable when they're sold in collections (particularly the Treasures). There's an implication that the items sold in batches will be used to reconstruct lost technology, or simply form artistic objects with cultural and historical significance. - In Xenoblade Chronicles 3, the items with no purpose beyond selling are marked with an icon that looks like scales... until the main storyline gets rolling, at which point the game cuts out the middleman, and useless items are immediately auto-sold. - Dark Sun games generally have either useful items, or junk with "0 cp" price tag that nobody will buy. But in Shattered Lands there is one trader in Gedron, who buys and sells literal trash (broken pots, mostly) at huge prices. Unfortunately, he gets better when you save his village from evil wizard. - Krater has sellable items that include pinecones, dog hairs and very small rocks. - In Tokyo Xanadu, there aren't any yen in the Eclipse, but small gemstones from the Eclipse are valuable to the Underground and serve as the main source of income. - In Professor Layton's London Life bundled with some versions of Professor Layton and the Last Specter, everything you can pick up is shop fodder. Caught fish, picked flowers, you name it - Bruno will buy literally anything you want to sell him, except for those items necessary for the completion of the main plot. - Every Geneforge game ever has had somebody who was looking for otherwise-useless Shaper equipment, Shaper records or iron bars. The amount of inventory weight they take up vs. the minuscule amount of money and XP you get for retrieving them means it's really only worth it very early on. - Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines has some lootable items — watches, jewellery, pills, car stereos, and the like — that the player character can't use aside from selling them for cash. - Venetica features various jewelleries, golden tableware and other assorted antiques that have no purpose except to be sold for ducats at any vendor, especially antique dealers who will buy these items at twice the sale value. - Alpha Man: - Many items are only good for selling, such as the slinky, the PortaPotty, the cyclotron, and the prosthetic leg. - Subverted with items that appear to be shop fodder, only to have useful purposes, like the Home Movie Projector that puts creatures to sleep, the Massage Unit that relieves fatigue, and the Bottle of Seltzer that is effective against fire-based creatures. - In Ancient Domains of Mystery there are several clearly useless items, like the Scroll of Cure Blindness (to use it you must be able to read it, spot the problem?) or the si. However, there is also a Potion of Uselessness which \|\|grants the player a random artifact if thrown on the Level 49 of the main dungeon. It can only be used for this.\|\| As in NetHack, shops can run out of money - however, they eventually renew. - Castle of the Winds has a junk store specifically for the player to sell broken or cursed items, as the other stores won't take them. At least in the case of cursed items, if the player hasn't already identified them (say, by Save Scumming to find out what they are), stores will buy as if they were ordinary goods — unless the player abuses this privilege, after which those stores refuse to take unidentified items. - Caves of Qud: A noteworthy aversion. The main currency is water, which the player needs to store in water skins and has weight in of itself. As such, any trinkets, unusable or obsolete weapons, nuggets, or other items that are literally worth more than their weight in water are better off kept, not sold, unless the player specifically needs to refill their waterskins. - Dwarf Fortress: - Enemy equipment - you can't wear most of the clothing that other races drop, seeing how it's too big or narrow for your dwarves. You can use most of the weapons, but they're usually poor-quality compared to what you can make locally or buy. However, depending on the material that it's made out of, traders will sometimes give you quite a bit of money for it. Metal items can also be melted down. As a result, goblin invaders were nerfed to wear leather armor, which had the perverse effect of making defending the fortress harder on metal-poor maps despite the weaker enemy armor. - In Adventure Mode, you can sell anything to most merchants, but different currencies are not interchangeable between different towns, so selling a bunch of stuff usually just nets you money with very limited use. But the money can still be thrown for massive damage. - There's also stuff you can create that exists largely to be sold to merchants: Jewellery, toys, drinking vessels etc. Turning a few hundred of those useless quartzite rocks lying around into A Present From Boatmurdered +quartzite mugs+ can be very profitable. It does, however, become odd when vendor-trash material like golden salve or barrels of blood get brought to your fortress by vendors, especially if you then spend hundreds of dwarfbucks on useless barrels of golden salve without knowing what it's for. - Dungeon Crawl makes sure shops don't buy anything, specifically to avert this trope; the author thinks lugging mountains of shop fodder back to the shops just isn't a fun game mechanic. The sole exception is for followers of the god Nemelex Xobeh, who accepts just about anything as a sacrifice, so in a way you're "selling" items for piety. Besides, apart from cursed and/or damaged equipment and a few malevolent pieces of jewelry, there actually isn't anything truly useless — your lvl 20 Troll Monk might not need that book of lvl 1 completely useless spells, or that potion of poison, or that +2 dagger — but for some other type of character those things might be very valuable. - For the King: - Jade stones and golden nuggets are Random Drops that can't be used by player characters but have a relatively high sale price. Flavor Text: Surely this would fetch a fair price at the market. - The Prismatic Fish is a Random Drop that can only be sold or, optimally, traded for specific rare items at the Night Market. - NetHack restricts things by limiting the amount of cash each storekeeper actually has to buy your junk. Once that's depleted, the value of the trash is vastly depleted and you can only get store credit. General Stores are the friends here, where you can sell all the random encounter crud - including the elf armor, the elf weapon, the elf shield and the elf corpse. (Well, it beats eating it - sometimes...) The best type of shop fodder is gems - but you have to have magically identified which are valuable and which are just glass, otherwise the shopkeepers buy them priced as glass, and sell them priced as emeralds, amethysts, dilithium crystals or whatever... - In Elona, killed monsters will sometimes drop a bone, skin, heart or bottle of blood. The only use for these is selling to merchant. However, shopkeepers have limited gold, which prevents you from abusing this too much. - One Way Heroics has some slain monsters drop chipped or whole gemstones, and sometimes you'll even find Ancient Gemstones, all of which are only good for selling for money although they're thankfully weightless. They're kind of flammable though, so beware of firebreathing monsters. - Iter Vehemens Ad Necem - The game mixes shop fodder with Elemental Crafting: items made out of gold, silver, etc. are very impractical to use, but shopkeepers will buy them for a considerable price. Gemstones also count, but weapons/armor made of them are actually quite useful to have. - Timepieces and grandfather clocks are only good for selling. - Cheap and expensive copies of the left nut of Petrus: The expensive variety sells for a good chunk of gold but is useless otherwise. - In FTL: Faster Than Light, once you have no room for installing the drone control system, the drone blueprints become only good for selling for scrap. - Animal Crossing revolves entirely around items that can be sold. You grow it on trees, you fish it out of the river, you pick it up off the beach, you catch it in your net, you dig a fossil out of the ground and have a paleontologist clean it up, and then you sell it all. Some of this stuff — like large fossils in good condition, or gold nuggets — is genuinely valuable in and of itself. However, Tom Nook and, in later games, the Nooklings have a policy of buying anything, and a lot of the stuff you'll sell their shop consist of seashells, clumps of weeds, rusty cans, old tires, old boots, random bugs... This is at least Justified in Animal Crossing: New Horizons by how even the junk items can be used in Item Crafting (weeds, for example, can now be used to make certain types of furniture), meaning all the forms you sell actually have uses now. - Elite and games like it ( Pirates, Escape Velocity, etc...) have this as the basis of the merchant and pirate occupations. Buy low, sell high. Typically, of all goods the only one you can use is fuel, if it isn't sold separately from normal goods, and there are contraband goods which are game-influencing in that being caught with it may get you fined or fired upon. The rest differs only in prices and places where prices are high/low—or, in the case of Escape Velocity's "jünk" resources, the few places where they can be bought and sold at all. - Any Space Sims like Freelancer will have shop fodder in the form of commodities such as food, fuel, light weapons and even oxygen and water. It's only good for freighter builds, since for everyone else it is a bloody waste of time to loot a tradeship. - Many Harvest Moon games traditionally have "foraged items" that respawn daily in the wilderness areas around town. Some of them can be eaten to restore health, and some can be used for cooking or crafting, but the majority of them are most useful for shipping. Especially early on, when you don't have many crops or animals to work with. Some Harvest Moon games also feature jewels and jewelry, which can sometimes be given as gifts but usually make much more when sold. - A lot of the workshop items in Harvest Town, such as crafts, jewelry and (surprisingly) medicine, can't be used as anything aside from filling orders and/or being sold at the Goods Stall. Some of them can be given to NPCs for extra fondness, but most of the items they like require a high Manor level to create that by the time you can start creating the items, your Relationship Value with the desired NPC would probably be at maximum level already, so there's no point wasting expensive items on them. - Sellable items provide the general route to money in Magician's Quest: Mysterious Times. You can collect mushrooms, wild plants, and gemstones to sell them off. However, a large portion of shop fodder can also be used in incantations for magical effects, and many of the gemstones and flowers make good gifts to give to people you want to be your friends. - Neopets has a massive number of items, many of which only exist to be sold. A lot of them don't even do anything; they aren't food, and your pet can't play with them, equip them, or read them, nor do they have any other clear function. At best, they have some situational use; for instance, an NPC may sometimes send you on a randomized Fetch Quest and ask for such an item. NPCs which ask for items have even sometimes been added partially to help combat growing garbage problems, as with Granny Hopbobbin and Atsumi, who host the Charity Corner event (during which players give away large quantities of items, which are often this kind). Some of them were intended to have a function, only for said function to be removed or never added; many others were actually intended to be this. - In Nintendogs, your dogs can find things in the street. Except for toys and accessories, it's all pretty useless and only good for selling. Things that range from actual trash like empty juice bottles to fallen satellites and expensive vases. - In Spiritfarer, the various treasures Stella can find by diving, growing from the Odd Seed, opening treasure chests and crates, or receiving as gifts from Gustav can only be sold to Francis at a high price. - Tomodachi Life has "treasures" that you can get as prizes from winning a Mii's game or beating the boss in the Tomodachi Quest mini game. Said treasures are completely random objects like basketballs, rocks, brooms, and so on. Miis that are in love with another Mii can be given a treasure to woo their potential partner, but beyond that, treasures only exist to be sold at the pawn shop. The rare treasures like gold bars and statue busts are worth a ton of money, which can help if you plan to send a Mii on a trip to outer space (costing $9999.99). - In X, sometimes, the guy you're shooting will abandon their ship, allowing you to claim it and sell it for probably more than the cargo was worth. Not to mention snatching up the jettisoned pilot and selling them into slavery. - The majority of stealables in the Thief games exist to be sold. The entire point of the games (at least initially) is that Garrett steals valuable trinkets for a living. You can't pay the rent with arrows and smoke bombs, at least not in a way that won't attract guard attention. - Resident Evil 4 has various treasures scattered around the place whose only purpose is to sell to the merchant for money, which can then be used to buy and upgrade weapons. Several treasures can be combined to form new items which are worth more than the sum of their parts, too. Luckily, they take up no inventory room and are listed separately from key items note : they even have different pickup sounds, so you know you won't regret selling them later, and the compound treasure items point out in their description that they seem to be parts of a whole. - Dead Space has gold, ruby and diamond superconductors, which exist solely for the sake of being sold for a hefty price. - Dungeons & Dragons: - Anything you can convince the GM to give a value can become shop fodder. As a wise gamer once wrote: "if all else fails, steal the doors straight out of the dungeon". - Tomb of Horrors: Enough players got frustrated with the Tomb's lack of treasure that they just looted the front doors to sell their precious Adamantium. 3 rd edition revised them to be enchanted steel. - This was lampshaded by no less than Gary Gygax himself in the 1st Edition Dungon Master's Guide. Gygax pointed out that things like flasks of oil, the weapons and armor belonging to human enemies, and pack animals could all be resold for decent prices, even if the enemies the players are looting didn't otherwise have a lot of cash on hand. - In 3 rd and later editions, this was codified in the rules for random treasure: rather than cash or items that the party can use, it could also be awarded in the form of gemstones or works of art with equivalent value. - Modules both old and new have all sorts of unusual things that have treasure values. These range from gemstones, jewelry and goblets to statuettes, paintings and vases to rare clothes and furs. Most of them aren't of any practical use to adventurers, and serve as Vendor Trash to increase the amount of treasure the players acquire. - Zigzagged by the body parts of various monsters, such as a beholder's eyes or a dragon's teeth. Some sourcebooks note that these can be used in Item Crafting and players can either sell such items as Vendor Trash or even use the parts to make their own magic items. - D&D's spiritual successor Pathfinder reconstructs this trope with treasure bizarre enough to make a small side story out of finding a buyer and arranging the sale. Items include embalming oils from a famous tomb and a legendary Gadgeteer Genius' room-sized vintage calliope (with further notes on the difficulty of getting it out in mint condition and the depreciation rate for wear and tear). - Ride to Hell: Retribution has its enemies drop baggies of drugs in addition to the standard weapons and money. The drugs all have different names and prices, but they cannot be used or bought. In fact, there's only one NPC in the game you can sell the drugs to, and the prices don't fluctuate at all. Functionally, they're just a second cash pickup. - In Warframe, you can find blueprints for a Kavat Incubator segment even after crafting and installing one, after which all its duplicates might as well be extra credits. - Bloons TD 6 has the Rare Quincy Action Figure, which can be bought at Geraldo's shop. It does literally nothing when placed. The sole purpose of the figure is to be sold at a profit later on, as the action figure increases in selling value after placing it. - In the SNES/PSX game Ogre Battle: The March of the Black Queen several items have in their descriptions that their only use was to be sold off for money; the player could also find that different shopkeepers would offer varying amounts (or trade goods) for certain items. - Fire Emblem: - Throughout the series, enemies or chests will drop gems or bullion that have no purpose except to be sold — except on a ranking run, where selling them kills your Funds score due to the exact definition of the requirement. - In Book II of Mystery of the Emblem you occasionally find Silver Axes, and never recruit anybody who can equip them. In the DS remake you do get several axe fighters, and the Silver Axes are replaced with what they were worth in the first place: gold. - XCOM: - Many alien items have little or no use for the player, but can be sold for big bucks. Of course, it's not hard to imagine why various civilian and military bodies would be quite interested in mind-reading devices. Alien corpses can also be sold for a pretty penny (though you do want to research your first one to unlock a tech), which leads to the question of what these people are doing with all these dead aliens... - X-COM: Apocalypse has several items which were originally supposed to have an in-game use, but was never implemented. One of these things is Psiclone, a narcotic implant often found by gangs and cults in the city (which can lead to X-COM raiding gangs, stealing their drugs, and selling off the take to fund their operations.) - In the reboot XCOM: Enemy Unknown, some stuff you can find in UFOs, like alien surgery tables or damaged flight computers, are only useful as source of cash when you sell them. In a rare display of benevolence from the interface, the player is explicitly notified that those items have no research benefits and should be sold. Raiding the headquarters of EXALT in Enemy Within nets you a number of objects such as art pieces, historical relics and intel that can be sold for a decent amount of cash. - You can literally sell anything you find in the trash in Chulip... and this includes piles of Poopie. - A big part of the Space stage in Spore is gathering spice, which only exists to be sold for absurdly high prices. - Terraria - The Golden Carp serves no purpose other than to be sold for an easy ten gold. - In older versions, the Neon Tetra serves the same purpose but doesn't sell for as much, to offset the fact it can easily be caught in the jungle. In newer versions such as PC and console, they can be cooked into Seafood Dinner, which gives the player the Plenty Satisfied buff to all stats (including life regen) for a short while. - Yakuza 0 and Judgment has Plates, items which are commonly found in substories or by helping victims in the streets, and which serve no other purpose than to be sold. Yakuza Kiwami has one mission where you need a plate (for a dog to drink from), but they're equally useless after that (and even then, you could just sell your gold plates anyway and buy an iron plate that's 1000 times cheaper when you need it). - No Man's Sky has several categories of items that have no use for the player aside from being sold for units. There are various types of slimes usually found clogging damaged machinery worth only paltry sums of units, various archaeological curios that fetch quite a sum and commodities which can be bought cheaply in a system that produces them to be sold in another where they are in high demand. Anime & Manga - In Beyond the Boundary, defeated youmu monsters turn into stones, which are taken and sold to humanoid youmu appraisers. This is how most Spirit World Warriors make a living. Fan Works - In the Eye of the Beholder: The Shadows leave behind quartz bits upon defeat that Lydia sells in the Velvet Room for large amounts of cash to share amongst the group, which they spend on things including but not limited to clothing enchantments for everyone from the Velvet Room (Lydia), paying for art supplies (Jacob), and spending hundreds on convention merch (Damien and Allie). It's even lampshaded that their parents don't really ask where all their extra disposable income is coming from, though Lydia does insist that they refrain from spending too much at once in the real world lest people get suspicious. Gamebooks - Fighting Fantasy have a few entries where you can collect items, which doesn't serve any purpose for your quest, other than something you can sell for money after the adventure is over (assuming you survive). Notably the golden statuette of a skeleton in Temple of Terror: you come across a wounded adventurer who's looking for it, and later on you do find the statuette, which the narration tells you finding it gives you a sense of satisfaction, boosting your LUCK, but othetwise doesn't contribute anything for your quest. Literature Web Comics - Nodwick: More often than not, the haul that the team takes back from a job (which the main character is forced to carry) has as much junk as it does actual treasure. This was taken to its logical conclusion in one story when they had so much junk that Artax decided to hold a yard sale. Web Original Websites	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/OnlyGoodForSelling
Only One Afterlife - TV Tropes Jaunty: There's no reward waitin' when ye die. There's no punishment. It makes no difference what ye do with yer life... Michael Le Roi: Because all that's next is Deadside. This is a situation where regardless of personal morality, you're sent to the same place after death by default. Whatever the actions one may have initially committed in life, anyone who dies gets sent to the same fate. Here is an example of such a situation so you can better understand. Let's say you're meeting two characters for the first time. You find out that one character is a veritable saint and the other is a rude and completely unfriendly person who has committed crimes that you would believe had grievously crossed the line. You would think (if you believe in an afterlife for the just and unjust) that the saint would go to one and the sinner would go to the other, right? In this case, you're dead wrong. This trope can land on the Cynical or Idealistic extreme of the Sliding Scale of Idealism Versus Cynicism depending on the nature of the afterlife in question and the setting that is mentioned in the story. Regardless of what end of the spectrum the story lands on, All Are Equal in Death is the way of the story's hereafter. This kind of situation can be seen in stories as result from the factor of there being a Devil, but No God. Then again it might just happen that God Is Evil or the fact neither the God nor the Devil happen to exist. Sometimes this may be a case of Rerouted from Heaven, if it's happening because evil forces have taken control of the system of the hereafter. In an unlucky case, everyone who dies gets sent to Hell. In a fortunate case, everyone who dies gets sent to a type of Fluffy Cloud Heaven. Other mythologies will use The Underworld or some other spirit world or realm of the dead for their afterlife. In any case, moral choices and conduct in life play no part in where one goes after death. The circumstance of a Self-Inflicted Hell (or Heaven) form of this trope can be present if the single afterlife has the same conditions for all, but its resident can make it Heaven and Hell for themselves depending on who they are. Warning. As a Death Trope, all Spoilers will be unmarked ahead. # Examples - In Berserk, all human characters who perish in the series (Apostles especially) end up being sent to the Abyss, a realm consisting of only nightmarish forms and a swirling ocean of writhing souls known as both Heaven and Hell. Considering the Crapsack World that Berserk is set in, many would consider the Abyss to be Hell, especially since it is the source of the setting's primary supernatural villains, the demon gods known as the God Hand \|\|and the Idea of Evil that created them\|\|. It's implied that the Abyss is actually the astral plane, the realm of the human subconscious mind and soul, which is why \|\|The Idea of Evil\|\| is there in the first place, having been brought into existence by the collective subconscious of humanity. - Death Note sees Ryuk inform Light at the start of the series that "Those who use the Death Note don't go to Heaven or to Hell". Near the end, a flashback shows Light applying some thought to this and concluding that Heaven and Hell don't exist, which Ryuk confirms. The Death Note's own rules state that all humans who die "go to Mu" - whether that's The Nothing After Death or Cessation of Existence can be argued (most fans lean towards the latter), but either way, there's nothing there, and everyone goes to it. - Dorohedoro: Everyone goes to Hell when they die. At least they do in the world of the magic users (what the afterlife situation is like in the world of Hole isn't mentioned). This is because the creator of the magic user world is basically Satan, who made Hell, the magic user world, and everyone in it all out of boredom. The best you can hope for is to become a Devil yourself, but that's an option only available to a few magic users hand-picked by other Devils and involves strenuous training and testing. Everyone else gets tortured for eternity. This is implied to be common knowledge, but nobody seems particularly broken up about it. - In Naruto, everyone who dies ends up in a realm called the Pure Land, the afterlife in which the souls of earthly beings generally reside in death. Oddly, this is casually portrayed as a verifiable fact, even though Zabuza talked about whether he'd go to heaven and hell much earlier. - The Darkness. According to Danny Estacado, a previous host of the Darkness Entity, and Nick (who is actually the true Devil that religious stories of Lucifer and The Devil are all based on), all souls - whether they were good or evil in life - eventually fall into Hell. A rather disheartening side note is that there actually is a Heaven in the series but no human soul has ever been seen to enter it due to the fact only "beings of light" are allowed entrance. - The French comic, Le Dernier Troyen (basically the Trojan War Recycled IN SPACE!), offers a self-inflictive case of this trope in terms of afterlife treatment. One arc features the protagonists visiting the underworld, seeing some of their friends and enemies who'd died. To their consternation, some of their friends are in horrifying torment, while their despicable enemies are enjoying perfect bliss. When they ask Hades, he answered that everyone shares the afterlife, but the dead decide what they become in it. Their friends thought they deserved to suffer eternally for failing to defend Troy, while their enemies had such a high opinion of himself that they thought they deserved no less than bliss. - In Resonance Days, there is one afterlife for magical girls and witches. Doesn't matter if you were a complete asshole or a genuinely good person, if you made a contract with an Incubator, you're bound for the same afterlife. This even includes non-human alien species that the incubators have contracted, with the most common explanation In-Universe being that a magical girl at one point used her wish to create an afterlife to give the incubators' victims a second chance, and the usual Literal Genie rules applied. There are several characters who are Christian and believe in Heaven and Hell (Kyoko Sakura and Elsa Maria among them), but since everyone has Complete Immortality (they're already dead), it's more a hypothetical than anything that actually affects them. - Subverted in All Dogs Go to Heaven: Every dog is immediately sent to heaven after death. And this applies specifically to dogs because, according to the greeting angel known as Annabelle, "All dogs go to Heaven because, unlike people, dogs are naturally good and loyal and kind." The catch is they don't always stay in the same afterlife. Dogs that aren't good boys tend to find it a Hell of a Heaven and try to return to life. Doing so makes them lose their automatic amnesty after which they are just as likely as men to end in the other place. - In Coco, everybody goes for the same afterlife as long as their family/descendants remember them. It's theorises that they might move on somewhere else when their descendants forget about them but it's ultimately unknown. - Corpse Bride features the Land Of the Dead, a twilight but colorful realm under the Earth where everyone goes to when they die, regardless of how they acted in life. In many ways, the realm is a huge improvement over the grey and stifling land of the living, as the dead lose their earthly pain and ailments and often feel better than they had when they were alive. The first stage of the afterlife that is, since the Underworld isn't the final resting place as those who find true closure and let go of all their earthly wants will Ascend to a Higher Plane of Existence and reach true enlightenment. However, while the dead won't touch the living, they will go after anyone who's wronged them once the perpetrator has died and is thus fair game, as Lord Barkis discovered. It's implied that the unrepentantly bad ones like him will just be tortured by the other undead in their conscious corpses rather than being sent to an analogue like Hell. - The primary setting of Even Mice Belong in Heaven is an afterlife that all animals end up in, regardless of how they behaved when they were previously alive. - Soul has dead people moving on to an Offscreen Afterlife called The Great Beyond, apparently with no Hell analogue. There is however The Great Before where souls originate before they're born on Earth. Some dead people go to the Before to coach a soul before they move on to the Beyond themselves or you could fall off the Stairway to Heaven like the protagonist. - In Defending Your Life after death everyone goes to an Afterlife Antechamber called Judgement City for a few days where their life will be reviewed; if they were good enough - which boils down to whether or not they were able to overcome fear - they Ascend to a Higher Plane of Existence, but if they weren't good enough (too fearful) they're reincarnated to try again. Everyone goes through it, but one perceives it differently based on their culture. - Beetlejuice: All dead go to the same afterlife were apparently they remain somewhat looking like the way they died and just live in a twisted gothic version of our world (some may haunt their old homes however), which is not really heaven or hell (depending on your liking) the only ones truly punished are suicides, who are forced to be government workers. - Poltergeist has "the light" where all of the lonely/sad/lost spirits go to because of The Beast, which traps them in Earth. The entrance is the children's room's closet and the exit is the living room ceiling. - There's a joke where an atheist dies and goes to Fluffy Cloud Heaven. As he's being shown around, he sees Muslims, Jews, Hindus and Buddhists all coexisting peacefully, and an enormous wall. When he asks what's on the other side, he's told "Christians- they think they're the only ones around." There's variations of the joke with other groups instead as well. - In His Dark Materials, everyone, from all possible universes, ends up in the same queue for the same underworld, a barren gray wasteland shared with harpies who torment them about their regrets and mistakes in order to feed on their misery. Lyra and Will end up cutting a hole in this underworld and allowing the dead to leave, whereupon they dissipate and become one with the universe. - In Riverworld, there are two afterlives: one for children who die before the age of five, and the Riverworld itself for those who die at an age where they'll be able to care for themselves once they're resurrected. - In The Salvation War, God had already accepted his most blindly devoted worshipers (historically maybe 10% of the population) and closed the gates of Heaven. This action had the effect of ensuring that everyone else (faithful or not) would burn in Hell after death. Humanity is not pleased when this becomes common knowledge. - In The Silmarillion, one's fate after death is determined by one's race, not one's actions. Elves go to the Halls of Mandos (although once there, Mandos can decide to keep them there or resurrect them), while humans go somewhere outside the known universe. The fate of Dwarves is unknown, but speculations among the learned inhabitants of Tolkien's universe range from them also going to the Halls of Mandos (though being kept separate from the Elves) and awaiting the day when they would help in the rebuilding of the world, them (or at least their legendary Kings, such as Durin) experiencing rebirth, or their spirits simply returning to the earth and turning back to the stone they were created from. Hobbits are generally considered a sub-race of Men and presumably share their fate. If there's a particular destination for ents, orcs, trolls, et cetera, it's never specified. - In some Redwall books, characters both good and bad go to "Dark Forest" when they die, which appears to be a neutral place of eternal slumber. This trope is somewhat subverted as later books make mention of "Hellgates" regarding villainous deaths, but there appears to be no Heaven equivalent. - The Last Trump by Isaac Asimov has the Devil convince God to bring about the end of the world, with everyone dead being resurrected and put under the same conditions - endless existence with nothing besides the people. One person claims this is heaven, but then another points out that there is nothing beyond Earth, buildings are crumbling, hills are flattening, desires are gone... Soon, there will be nothing but a featureless plain and people. Fire And Brimstone Hell is unworthy of divine imagination; an eternity of nothingness is a different matter. This was the Devil's idea, with him claiming that since every group has their idea of afterlife, the proper design should be the greatest common divisor-nothing but eternal existence. - Stephen King's novel Revival has a particularly bleak example: everyone goes to the same hellish place. Everyone. Every single human being who has ever existed, including teens, children and babies, no matter their actions, end in the same nightmarish wasteland walking naked in an interminable line harressed by monstruous Lovecraftian ant-like creatures and prey upon by giant Eldritch Abominations. - In Supernatural, it is described how the soul of a monster, regardless of moral alignment, is sent to a realm collectively known as Purgatory after the monster dies. Once there, the soul is placed in a constant struggle of "prey or be preyed upon" by the souls of other monsters for all eternity. - In Torchwood (and considering it's in the same universe probably Doctor Who) everyone sees The Nothing After Death with the added bonus of "something in the dark" moving about in the shadows. - Legend of the Seeker. Like in The Salvation War, everyone who dies goes to a Fire and Brimstone Hell. However, Darken Rahl implies at one point that it's only because the veil has been torn that everyone who dies goes there — in the normal course of things, only bad people go there, while good people go to some mostly unspecified but presumably much nicer place to "bask in the Creator's light forever". note : In the books it's explained that the underworld has levels of a sort, with the righteous becoming "good spirits" that dwell on the top near the light, while the wicked plunge down into the depths where they're tormented by the Keeper forever. - Mesopotamian Irkalla is a partial example, as people who did not receive a proper burial (having been burned, died alone in the desert ) simply ceased to exist instead of going there. - Some theological models have such an outcome. - The teachings of Universalism holds that everyone goes to Heaven eventually. Some Universalists don't believe in Hell, the ones who do think it's temporary. - In Pandeism, the idea is that all people (and everything in our Universe) is simply part of a God which has chosen to become our Universe to experience our lives, and so cannot separately intervene in them; when we die we simply go back to being one with our Creator. This ultimate idea is reflected in pandeistic branches of Hinduism, though in those theologies we may be reincarnated many times before that happens (and through those reincarnations, become enlightened). - Certain forms of Judaism have Sheol, where all the dead, regardless of their actions and/or righteousness in life, congregate. Originally, it was described as a place of darkness cut off from God. Thanks to centuries of evolving ideas and Lost in Translation, the concept was conflated with Hades, and was understood as Hell by the time of the New Testament. - Even some theologians of Christianity have proposed models by which everybody ultimately is saved, and so a Hell exists — but as a place where wicked people are cleansed of their evil instead of a place of eternal punishment. - Most atheists believe this as well, if only in the sense of a Cessation of Existence counting as an afterlife. However, some atheist adherents of religions like Buddhism (and atheistic faiths such as Jainism) exist, in which case they would follow those beliefs concerning an afterlife. - Depending on the production of Les Misérables, Inspector Javert may be among the deceased in heaven during the final scene, despite being the antagonist responsible for many of their deaths and \|\|his own suicide\|\|. - According to Shadowman, everyone who dies ends up in Deadside—basically, hell—where they gradually lose their identities and become mindless zombies. The sole exception is the titular protagonist, due to the power of the Mask of Shadows. - While both Heaven and Hell exist in the Diablo universe, neither are afterlife destinations. Instead, all mortals go to the "Unformed Land", which has yet to be detailed. - In Sunless Skies, it's confirmed that all dead, regardless of deeds or species, have a single destination: the Blue Kingdom, a vast, uncaring Celestial Bureaucracy ruled over by the nastiest god in a cast brimming with Jerkass Gods.	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/OnlyOneAfterlife
Only One Female Mold - TV Tropes At least the female characters (bottom row) are just as diverse in hair color . In most animated works and comics featuring an ensemble cast, the male characters will have a wide range of body types — The Smart Guy will often be small and slender, The Big Guy will be either huge and muscular or endearingly pudgy, and The Hero will typically be somewhere in between. Female characters, however, tend to have almost identical body shapes — typically standing one head shorter than the hero, relatively slender build, very little muscle definition. Breast size varies depending on the work, but in many cases, all the women in the cast will have the same cup size. Surprisingly, this even applies to works with an all-female cast. This often applies to most supporting characters, too. Occasionally, a fat girl may appear as a minor comic relief character, but she will never join the main cast. Compare Sexy Dimorphism, where this trope is applied to fantasy monsters for fanservice reasons. Contrast Amazonian Beauty, Big Beautiful Woman and Bust-Contrast Duo. See also World of Buxom, Only Six Faces, Generic Cuteness, Heroic Build (for when this trope applies to superheroines) and Reused Character Design (for a non-gender-specific variant). Related to Most Common Superpower. ## Examples: - In Case Closed most women have the same face and body type, with their hair and clothes being the only major difference. The exception to this are older women and the occasional one with a different body type who have much more varied designs. - In Chronicles of the Going Home Club (Kitakubu Katsudou Kiroku), all the girls have the same figure. Considering that there is also an Only Six Faces, the characters' hairs and eyes are the only major differences between them (along with few differences in their school uniform). - While the male characters of Dr. STONE have diverse designs, majority of the female characters who've hit puberty share a very similar slim hourglass figure, and also share facial features (the large eyes and often pouty lips). - Fairy Tail is pretty guilty of this, as well as World of Buxom, resulting in almost every girl having a busty hourglass figure, with very rare exceptions. (Basically Levy and Wendy.) - Kengan Ashura features pretty much every possible variation of the male build: fighters who come in a range of different weight classes and varying levels of musculature, old and middle-aged men who stand at varying degrees of fitness, non-fighting teenagers and young adults, etc. While the series does a good job in giving the female characters some distinctive facial features to not make them look like clones of each other, they all fall under the "relatively young, slender yet curvy, and conventionally pretty" mold. Even Togo Tomari, whose face probably has the most unique design of all the female characters still have the same body type as the rest of the ladies. - Gender Inverted in Magical Girl Ore. The girls come in various shapes and sizes, from short and cute, to tall, busty, and cool, to even getting in age and rail-thin. The magical boys, on the other hand, are the same height and build across the board (even Saki's mom, who's been out of the game for years before the story starts, retains this Heroic Build when she transforms). The bad guys are just nude versions of the hero model, making it jarring when one character tells the heroes to stop the "macho" villains. The only exceptions to this rule are Kokoro and Mohiro, both of which don't have much panel time. - Downplayed in My Hero Academia; while quirks can create some monstrous or otherwise outlandish appearances in some people, at most a girl will usually be a Cute Monster Girl. (An exception is Habuko Mongoose, who has a realistic snake head, but she only appears in a side chapter.) - One Piece: - While it has always had a brilliant record for differentiating male characters from one another (perhaps more so than any other manga out there, considering just how outlandish and distinctive each of those characters tends to be), the female characters have traditionally come from a far, far more limited palette, thus evoking the "female characters are more susceptible" aspect of this trope in spades. There was a time when it wouldn't have been a stretch to describe the vast majority of females as "Nami clones" (the few exceptions mostly being the women who barely look human at all like Miss Merry Christmas). Perhaps inevitably, considering just how large his cast has grown, Oda recently seems to have overcome this limitation, even to the point of coming up with an island of nothing but female characters, with a crapload of differentiation, in the largest part because he quit "holding back" and let the female characters have faces as wild and outlandish as any male character. Nami even has a bit more variation in her own face following the recent Art Evolution. Ironically, thanks to the same art evolution and character design change makes Boa Hancock and post timeskip-Robin look too much alike in the process, especially in the close-ups. - Generally speaking, Oda's good at creating unique Gonk or otherwise average/cute female faces which are "allowed" to have odd little quirks, like Perona's unique big black eyes and round head. But when he goes for conventionally attractive ladies, he tends to make Nami or Robin clones. Now they are distinguishable, but each one of them noticeably takes something or the other from Nami or Robin, whether it's hair, eyes, head shape, etc. In Nami's camp, we have Nami herself, Vivi, Conis, Keimi, Bonney, Shirahoshi, Rebecca, Kaya, Scarlett, Pudding, young Shinobu, \|\|Yamato\|\|. As for Robin, there's Robin herself, Alvida, Hancock, Baby 5, Viola, and even Tashigi has some Robin-esque features after the Timeskip. Although, all in all, what really makes them look alike is the fact they all have the same body shape too. - After Art Evolution, Makino (the first woman shown in the series) now actually looks like a combination of Robin and Nami (originally, she and Nami had the same face). - Sailor Moon: Other than height, there's very little difference in build among any of the girls in the show, with the exception of Usagi's fat friend, who disappears halfway into the series and never even gets named on-screen. - Space Battleship Yamato and other Leijiverse works owe this to Author Appeal. Males sometimes have a token Gonk just to skew the ratio. - Yuuna and the Haunted Hot Springs has a bad case of this. While younger characters do appear, most girls teenage or older have the same thin, busty figure and either Yuuna's doe eyes or Sagiri's piercing eyes. One color spread demonstrates this by having the three most prominent love interests (Yuuna, Chisaki, and Sagiri) pose together, and all of them notably have the same general body structure in it. - Michelangelo didn't have female models readily available, and used his own body as a template for most of his paintings and several of his sculptures. - In the earliest Superman stories in Action Comics, new female characters often looked identical to Lois Lane with this not being noticed in-universe. - Archie Comics, from its inception until around 2013, was absolutely infamous for this and Only Six Faces. Aside from certain stereotypes (Dilton the nerd was usually drawn as short and gangly while Moose the jock was One Head Taller than everyone else and equally broad) and matronly characters, you really couldn't tell the main cast apart from the neck down. This was occasionally lampshaded in certain strips, such as when Betty and Veronica decided to switch hairstyles and dyed their locks correspondingly and Archie couldn't tell the difference at first glance. - In Giovanni Rigano's graphic novels based on the Artemis Fowl novels, the women could all be the same person changing wigs. - Elephantmen: All of the major female characters have the exact same body type, with only hair and skin color to tell them apart. \|\|Even Yvette, despite being a hardened killer decked out in scars, is drawn with the same proportions.\|\| Not to mention that they all seem to shop at the same two clothing stores. Compare this to the male characters, who come in all different shapes, sizes, and species, and wear a wide mix of different outfits (though most all of them do sport a Badass Longcoat at some point). - Mike Deodato's art on Wonder Woman (1987) very noticeably has every female meant to be under 80 and/or attractive have the same build and height with hair, costume, and skin tone all that can be used to try telling them apart. This really sticks out when characters like the normally stocky and short Etta or the usually square-jawed and muscled Philippus show up and are entirely unrecognizable until they are addressed by other characters. - Along with Only Six Faces, Beetle Bailey is guilty of this. Apparently, all of Killer's girlfriends have a small slender build. - 9 Chickweed Lane: Every female character seems to be cut from the same cloth, anatomically, except for their hair style and whether or not they wear glasses. - Disney Animated Canon both averts this and plays it straight. Princesses, and even princes, have kept the same essential mold ever since the days of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. These similarities transcend technique and this is especially obvious in the Wreck-It Ralph 2 trailer. On the other hand, there is substantial body diversity with the supporting characters of both genders. Part of the reason for this historically is because drawing all women the same meant they could recycle the same bodily animation over and over again without having to do much reanimating. - An interesting example is in the background of The Incredibles; Edna Mode's design studio has three body type mannequins to model her clothes on: huge buff dude, medium-sized buff dude, and woman. Perhaps she refuses to make costumes for any other body types. The film itself is an aversion: besides the comically-short Edna Mode herself, female characters include Helen Parr (hourglass figure, prominent thighs, relatively small upper body), her daughter Violet (scaled-down, more petite version of Helen), and the comically, almost disturbingly-thin Mirage. - In My Little Pony: Equestria Girls, the overwhelming majority of the female characters are essentially palette swaps of each other with different hairstyles and clothes. - In The Missing Link (also known as B.C. Rock), human men are extremely diverse in appearance — they don't even walk like each other — while all women look about the same. Note that the women look more like the Venus of Willendorf than the supermodels in fur bikinis one might expect. - Inverted in Turning Red: All the female main characters have distinct body shapes but the members of 4Town have less varied body shapes. - In Diary of a Wimpy Kid, all the girls outside of Greg's family are drawn with the exact same face, with only a slightly different hairstyle and hair colour to differentiate them. Jeff Kinney explained this as Greg being a teenage boy who doesn't really understand girls yet and considers them all to be pretty much the same. Indeed, later books have slightly more variation in how Greg draws girls, especially with more prominent characters like Abigail. - In Sega's Sapporo, the men come in a variety of shapes, but all of the women skiers share the same body type. - Most of Barbie's friends have the exact same body shape as her, which is especially odd since no real women do.* Attempts have been made to add more body types to the dolls though. - All the females in BB Senshi Sangokuden are the exact same build, regardless of age, while males come under regular, Toutaku, and Ryofu Tallgeese. - Bratz. It even carried over to the animated cartoon. To the point that when one of the male characters disguises himself as a girl, he has exactly the same body shape as the female characters. - The old Mego toyline had exactly three body sculpts: Average Male, Muscular Male, and Female. As an even further cost-saving measure, the "Muscular Male" mold was made from the exact same amount of plastic as the "Average Male" one; this means that the Mego Hulk is shorter than Mego Spider-Man (and, for that matter, Mego Luke Duke and Mego Captain Kirk). - Initially played straight with Monster High (although the dolls did have different face molds) until the release of Nefera De Nile's doll, which has a taller mold as she is older than the rest. - Inverted with the 4th generation My Little Pony "blind bag" toys. Initially 5 female molds and 1 male. More molds were made later on for both genders, and female molds still outnumber males. Initially, there was only one Pegasus mold. Thus, Fluttershy ended up as a Palette Swap of Rainbow Dash. - The Masters of the Universe creators didn't think boys would want to buy too many female action figures so made Teela and The Sorceress as one figure with changeable headgear. The mini-comics explained that Teela was an Evil Knockoff of The Sorceress created by Skeletor to gain access to Castle Grayskull. Most animated continuities make Teela her daughter. - Evil-Lyn was an Evil Counterpart to Teela in the toyline and was a repainted Teela mold. Though the cartoons scrapped this concept and made them look different. - You can only play a female human, elf, half-elf, or half-orc in Arcanum: Of Steamworks & Magick Obscura because Troika only had enough time/resources to make one (medium-sized) female model. They try to Hand Wave this by having the females of the other species be hidden (as with the dwarves) or missing. \|\|The reason you don't see female half-ogres is that they are all held in a containment facility for breeding purposes.\|\| - The majority of the characters in BanG Dream! Girls Band Party! look like generic anime girls. The only things that distinguish themselves from one another is the hair color, hair style, eye color, and sometimes eye shape. - City of Heroes has 3 body types. Male, Female, and "Huge" (Big male). This is given plenty of lampshading, such as washrooms having a third door for "Huge." - Dead Island uses only a few stock bodies, characters differentiated by their heads, and there are only two bodies for female characters: Little girl and pin-up model. This can create some rather jarring NPCs, especially in the resort area that comprises the first quarter of the game as the women are all in bikinis—you could, for instance, see an old lady with wrinkled skin, a pointed nose, and a mop of gray hair, but she'll have the body of a porn star. - Dead or Alive: - Series creator Itagaki stated in an interview once that the reason that most of the girls' faces are smooth and featureless is that the crew did research on what most (Japanese) people considered to be "beautiful." The result was that the more rounded, youthful, and featureless a face appeared, the more attractive people found it. As such, aside from variation in eye shape and hairstyle, there's very little difference between the ladies. - Even as late as 3, there were only two basic female models - the willowy adult (Helena, Christie, etc.) and the teenager (Kasumi, Ayame, etc.) - with hair, outfit, and fighting styles setting them apart. No longer the case as of 5, however; every character has their own model, and Last Round makes use of the new Soft Engine to give every girl's body unique properties. How actually different these models are in practice, however, is subject to interpretation. - They eventually introduced Marie Rose in DOA 5 Last Round and Nico in Dead or Alive 6, both of which look entirely different from the other girls by virtue of being the Token Mini-Moe characters. Of course, they are quite similar to each other... - Dragon Age: Origins is pretty bad about this, as there are only two body models for human adults of both sexes: "normal" and "fat." Morrigan is a twentysomething whose good looks other characters comment on. Wynne is a mage in her sixties. Put them in the same type of armor, and they're identical from the neck down (companion Zevran actually jokes about this, especially Wynn's "magical bosom" that doesn't reflect her age). Meanwhile, Alistair is a warrior in his early twenties also described as attractive and muscular, and has the same body model as the much older and ailing Arl Eamon, the elderly Bann Ceorlic, and sundry Squishy Wizard mages of all ages. The "fat" model is used for Lloyd the innkeeper and several extras (the female one shows up only on extras and Arl Eamon's cook). - This is generally true for almost all BioWare games, which tend to have only one male and one female model, used for all NPCs regardless of age or sometimes even species (for example, human body models are shared among other things by Twi'leks and Zabraks in Knights of the Old Republic, and by asari and batarians in Mass Effect). Jade Empire, however, averts this, as there are fat, short or skinny NPC men and women. - This is true of any game using the Gamebryo engine, such as The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion. - In Fallout 3 and Fallout: New Vegas even the old wrinkle-faced women will have young-shaped bodies. There are also apparently zero fat people in the post-apocalypse. Averted in Fallout 4, which has variable body types for both genders, ranging from thin to fat to muscular. - True of almost all female champions in free to play MOBA game League of Legends. Despite the large number of playable women, they have only one Barbie-like body type with the exception of a few chibi-style dwarf/imp/child characters. Male champions' bodies vary significantly, though a large portion is dedicated to the muscle man type... until the release of Illaoi. - LEGO Adaptation Game: For most of the games the females are nearly-identical, for obvious reasons. Though male bodies aren't quite different for that purpose, at least they have "big and bulky" body types like Juggernaut, Solomon Grundy, or Hulk. However, a few more recent games have started averting this, letting females also have big and bulky bodies, though still not as common as the regular female mini-fig look or the male big-figs. - Lightning Returns: Final Fantasy XIII: Most of the female NPCs have the same slender figure, but there are a few who are more solidly built; for example, Slaughterhouse Zoe and one of the Chocobo Girls. It may or may not be significant that the fat Chocobo Girl is hidden in an alley and the slim ones are on the main street. - Marvel: Contest of Champions: While the male heroes have several different body types (including "Beast" like Hulk, Juggernaut and Abomination, "Heroic" like Captain America, Black Panther, and Electro, and "Slim" like Spider-Man) all the females have the exact same body type and Painted-On Pants style clothing. Eventually averted by the addition of Spider-Gwen and Ms. Marvel (2014) whose frames are noticeably thinner and smaller than the other female characters', which makes sense as the two are teenagers and the rest are adult women. - Overwatch isn't the worst in this regard, but a vast majority of female characters play the trope straight, with names like D.Va, Mercy, Sombra, Symmetra, Tracer, and Widowmaker are all slender, conventionally attractive women with long, graceful legs and trim waists, give or take some curves and height. There are some instances where the artists consciously avoided falling into this like Zarya (a short-haired, ripped bodybuilder), Mei (a short, chubby Chinese woman), Moira (a very lanky not-sorceress), and Orisa (a big centaur-adjacent robot), but while you could almost certainly tell the difference between each female character during gameplay, more often than not, this has to with costume and weapon design than the actual shape of their bodies. - Rhythm Heaven notably exhibits this. A few women have different body types, but most are indistinguishable from each other aside from hair and clothes. - Senran Kagura: Despite having officially different busts, you'd never be able to tell by looking at most of the cast while in-game. Exceptions being one flat and two larger than everyone else. - Shantae: Nearly every major character has very similar physical builds that differ only by bust size and species. Some exceptions are the fat lady NPC in Shantae: Half-Genie Hero, the Tan Line Island Princess in Shantae and the Pirate's Curse, and some of the enemies from the collective series. - Smite is pretty bad about this. Up until the release of Scylla (a little girl) all female characters had the same body shape, and even then it took another two years for another female with a unique body type to come along (Jing Wei, a teenager.) There were many females introduced in the two-year gap, but they had the same body shape as most of the other females did. Tiamat, introduced seven years after the game's release, was the first (and so far only) non-humanoid female added to the roster. - Sonic the Hedgehog: Downplayed. At a distance, all the characters look like recolors of each other, but there are actually subtle differences in the shapes of their faces and bodies. Rouge has wide hips and a large bust, while Blaze has a smaller chest, and Cream's body is bell-shaped. - Star Wars: The Old Republic got some flak for this. Both genders technically have four body types: short, medium, tall, and heavy. For the men, this results in a wiry short character, a broad-shouldered tall character, and an obese fat character. The women, however, are all nearly identical. While the tall character is a good head taller than the others, her proportions are nearly identical. Short means one inch and a slightly smaller bust, while heavy means a slightly larger bust. You'd be hard-pressed to distinguish between body types at even a short distance. - The Wonderful 101: For the human molds, the males come in a variety of body types: average, fat, skinny, muscular, short, etc, while there's only one female body type. The only other body type used by females are the short molds to represent little girls. - World of Warcraft: This has been a consistent complaint over character models; the alpha builds, while rough, often had the females look like counterparts to the males of their race, but when it came time for final builds (after receiving yea many complaints about being ugly) it was like the developers threw up their hands and said: "screw it, let's make them all barbie dolls". The dwarf, gnome, and pandaren females actually avert this, however, with the first and last being rather thick and curvy, while the 2nd is appropriately proportioned for such a short race. To a lesser extent, so do the Tauren. - Very literal in Yandere Simulator, which has only one model for female characters due to budget limitations. Given these limitations, though, the dev has tried to avert this- female characters have different bust sizes, and more important characters have unique animations, eye shapes, and accessories. - While Danganronpa girls usually play this trope straight, Sakura Ogami from the first game is a notable aversion. - Averted in Daughter for Dessert, and how. Even the girls' vaginas look different. - Largely averted in Double Homework, especially with side characters factored in (Danielas body type is different from that of any other character). - Averted in Melody. The developers intentionally gave all the girls different body types and attributes. - In the early episodes of RWBY, there are three character models for men — one thin, one stocky, and one short and fat, the latter two being seldom used — but only one for women, differing only by slight changes in breast size. It's masked by overall creativity in character design, with not only brightly-colored anime-style hair, eyes, and attire, but also a good variety of skin tones and even height, but given the abundance of women in the series it does get conspicuous from time to time. Men with totally unique character models started appearing in the fourth season, while women with unique faces and bodies didn't debut until the sixth. - Learning with Manga! FGO shows this discrepancy the few times male characters show up. The boys (both in-comic and in the Fate/Grand Order April Fools pranks) have been drawn as variously buff, skinny, cherubic, and plain, and have a wider variety of face shapes. The girls, on the other hand, tend to have the same stocky body and round face. Like the guys in general, the few girls that don't outright don't appear in the strips. - Parodied in Oglaf, where it's revealed that the males of all species look different but the females all look like sexy human women with a few Cute Monster Girl traits added. This causes one group to conclude that humans are secretly abominations because their males just look like "blobby chicks you wouldn't fuck." - Parodied and exaggerated in Sluggy Freelance's World of Warcraft parody. At one point, Riff complains to Torg that he has a 20 Bear Asses quest that requires killing only female slime blobs and he can't figure out how to distinguish them. A little later when Zoë is trying to create a character, she complains to Torg about the difference between the way the male and female characters look — all the female versions are scantily clad and have the same exact generically sexy figure with a different head, even the ugly Jigants (and the females still have the same Jigant face). Upon realising this, Torg becomes Genre Savvy enough to be able to advice Riff, and after hearing his advice, Riff wonders why the hell he didn't notice it sooner that while most slime blobs are just blobs, some of them have that blob for a head atop the same old bikini'd sexy female body. - Averted in Star Impact, where women's body types are every bit as varied as those of the men. For example, Aster is bulky and muscular, Phoebe is lean and slender, and Etna is wiry and walks with a slight hunch. - Tower of God seems to have paradoxically been getting more like this while its art has improved. Attractive female characters tend towards having the same Barbie doll figure, but you wouldn't think of this trope at the beginning. But fast forward to "Hell Train: The Name Hunt Station", you've still got a couple of exceptions like Anaak and Sia Sia, but with all the women suddenly seemingly wearing more form-fitting clothing, as well as being better drawn, you can easily keep listing examples who all look the same shape: Endorsi, Ehwa, Lilial and Shilial, Alphine, Elaine, Hwaryun, Yuri, and that minor character with pointy red hair, just in this story. - Web comic artist Dave Cheung, author of works such as Chugworth Academy and US Angel Corps, is quite notorious for the lack of diversity among the figures and faces of his female characters. The only things that really tend to vary are the hair styles, skin colors, and breast sizes. Especially when you compare them to his male characters, who tend to have more individually unique features. - Similarly, the DC Animated Universe's character designs come in two flavors, generally speaking: Male and Female. This was at its most pronounced throughout Justice League, particularly the JLU seasons. The only body type differences were made by making the body wider or skinnier (Superman was broader shouldered, but generally had the same proportions as the Flash, and similarly, Wonder Woman was simply a broader-shouldered version of Hawkgirl). Females mostly have the same face, with different hairstyles keeping them distinct: when Batgirl and Supergirl appeared together in one episode of Batman: The Animated Series out of costume with their hair covered (as they'd both just showered), they were completely identical. There is one general exception, in the form of the "Block-shaped" male mold used for Gorillas, Grundy, and other stouter types, but that's about it. - Most of the characters in Gargoyles had a Heroic Build but the few exceptions (overweight, small and slim, etc.) were all male. - This was enforced by Hasbro for Jem. The creator wanted more diverse designs amongst the characters. Due to the fact the series was made to advertise dolls, the characters had to have similar models. The comic book reboot completely does away with this and has a Cast of Snowflakes. - Masters of the Universe: - He-Man and the Masters of the Universe (1983) and She-Ra: Princess of Power used pretty much the same body and face types in nearly all the adult female characters, particularly the Action Girls, to the point where the best way to tell them apart was by their clothes and hair. - This was also true of the male characters; there really was only one body mold for each sex in the original He-Man and She-Ra toylines (with a few exceptions). This means that virtually every male character shared He-Man's exaggerated muscularity, especially if they had a toy. - As it happens, subverting this trope was part of the undoing of the He-Man and the Masters of the Universe (2002) cartoon and toyline. It was just too expensive for each character to have a completely new sculpt, especially with the level of detail those toys possessed. Mattel learned its lesson and went back to basing every toy on the same handful of body sculpts in the Masters of the Universe Classic toyline. The toy-line aspect of She-Ra and the Princesses of Power appears to have been almost entirely marginalized for the same reason. - Played with in the Total Drama franchise: with the exception of a few overweight girls almost all of the female contestants have full chests, slim waists, Hartman Hips and tend to be shorter than their male counterparts. The chests were the most egregious with pretty much every girl looking as though they'd be above a c-cup in real life. Contrast the male contestants who come in all shapes and sizes; from huge and buff like Ryan, to morbidly obese like Owen, to conventionally muscular and handsome like Alejandro, to looking borderline anorexic like Mike, and everything in between. - Most of the women (especially teenage and college girls) in Totally Spies! mostly have relatively slender builds with very little variation. - Applies to femme Transformers too. The few femmes that appeared in Transformers: Animated were all slender but also quite curvaceous. Compare them to the mechs who had a wide variety of body types, particularly the main five who were all different. The only female exception to this rule is Strika, who is a Brawn Hilda. - Every girl in Winx Club has almost exact the same body shape. What sets them apart from each other are their different hairstyles and skin color. The same goes for the males. - X-Men: Evolution played with this trope. Most of the characters stuck to Heroic Build, but the few exceptions (e.g. Toad, Blob, Nightcrawler) were all male.	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/OnlyOneFemaleMold
Only Smart People May Pass - TV Tropes "He has figured out Monsieur Adell's greatest weakness: His inability to think." This refers to any barrier that requires the heroes to solve some kind of puzzle, Riddle or test of skill in order to pass. It is often given by Threshold Guardians (especially if the guardian in question is a Riddling Sphinx). You must be able to work it out based on the clues you are given on the spot. It's often a defense against smart people who want to take whatever is being guarded like a Treasure Room. It can also be a Secret Handshake of sorts to only allow smart people inside like Mensa. If you must come to it with some knowledge, it's Only the Knowledgable May Pass. Sometimes if those who tried to deploy that trope were clumsy, they gave you enough clues to make it this, and conversely, if the answer to this is too weird or insane, you may really need to know it in advance. The architect must have deemed this a better barrier than, say, a lock and key carried on someone's person instead of being in a chest elsewhere in the building. After all, keys can be stolen but knowledge is intangible. Unfortunately, this will not stop people who are evil in addition to smart or at least smart enough to trick the heroes into solving the puzzle for them. See Block Puzzle, the various Stock Puzzles and Stock Video Game Puzzles, Riddle Me This, the Knights and Knaves puzzle and Solve the Soup Cans for examples of this. Note that the puzzle itself is often not terribly difficult; after all, the viewers have to be able to follow it (or solve it themselves, in a videogame). This often leads to Fridge Logic about why it wasn't solved earlier or what the point of such a simple puzzle really was. Expect even the least smart of protagonists to be able to find a way to solve what was supposed to be an ingenious puzzle. This trope dates back to at least the Sphinx in Greek Mythology, making it Older Than Feudalism. Compare Only the Worthy May Pass and These Questions Three...; see also see First-Contact Math; and contrast Only Idiots May Pass. Subverted in Doom as Test Prize, where one of these turns out to be a way to dispose of people who are a bit too clever. As mentioned above, Riddling Sphinx is particular form of this. Life-or-Death Question may overlap with this, although in those cases, it's more like only the smart survive. ## Examples: - The Far Side shows a math phobic's nightmare as being required to solve a Train Problem to get into Heaven. - In Prickly City, Carmen is assured only the smartest people are allowed in an exclusive club. - All That Glitters (Othellia): The route to a hidden cave that Hans claims contains a powerful magic artifact is recorded through a series of riddles. - Harry Potter and the Underground's Saviour: Among the physical, magical, and teamwork puzzles the staff (and some Undertale characters) have set up are a few riddles, including: "How many eggs are used in French cooking." This goes unsolved until posed to someone from Beauxbatons, who repeats it in French, leading to the answer, "One, because one egg is un uf." That is, "Enough". - Constantly in Lone Wolf, where all your enemies use number problems to protect their stuff. In a gamebook with numbered sections, of course, number puzzles are the easiest to implement, and leave little possibility of cheating for the player. - In Raymond Smullyan's puzzle book The Lady or the Tiger?, a king is inspired by the titular short story about a king who lets his prisoners choose between two doors, one leading to a beautiful lady and marriage and the other leading to a hungry tiger and death, but instead of leaving his prisoners' fate up to pure chance, he decides to reward intelligence by putting signs on the doors with true or false statements that make it possible for them to deduce which door leads to the lady through logic. However, his prisoners all prove to be smarter than he expected so he makes the logic puzzles increasingly more difficult until his final puzzle gives the prisoner nine doors to choose from and is literally unsolvable until he gives the prisoner a clue. - In the Polish children's book Satan From The 7th Grade, protagonist Adam follows the clues and riddles that a Napoleonic-era soldier left for his brother, to find where he hid the treasure he brought back from the war. The attempted justification is that the soldier picked things only his brother would know, such as the book they read together when they were studying Italian. - In the short story "The Most Precious of Treasures" by Desmond Warzel, the protagonists must solve a room-sized Queens Puzzle in order to pass from one room of a dungeon to the next. Its purpose is to allow people in and keep beasts out, thus it's really a case of Only Sentient People May Pass; the implication is that the builder chose a well-known puzzle on purpose. - In the novelisation of Earthsearch II, the puzzle at the climax is extremely simple but highly effective: \|\|the collected technological knowledge of the pre-Dark Ages Earth is guarded by a metal door that fits its frame too tightly to open, and is kept so by the slight heating from an embedded radioisotope; one must be observant enough to spot the extra warmth, smart enough to figure out that cooling the door will allow it to open, and sufficiently technologically advanced to achieve that on an overheated planet that has been in drought for over three centuries.\|\| - The Polish novel Cylinder van Troffa, set mostly in a dilapidated old city inhabited by gangs. A small group of scientists, while in cold sleep, protects their base from the marauding uneducated hooligans with a door that demands solving a simple algebra problem to open. Once in a great while, the invaders manage to stumble across the answer... only to find themselves imprisoned in a small room unless they can solve a problem from derivative calculus. None of them ever managed that. - In the Warhammer 40k novel The Iron Guard, this is a notable Weaksauce Weakness of the the "changed". While they are quite cunning in other regards, their altered brains seem incapable of solving simple spatial puzzles. The unchanged survivors use this fact to construct barricades that most humans could easily dismantle by moving a few pieces around but the "changed" brains are incapable of reasoning out the puzzle. - From Alice's Adventures in Wonderland: "Why is a Raven like a writing desk?" Lewis Carroll himself wrote: "Enquiries have been so often addressed to me, as to whether any answer to the Hatter's Riddle can be imagined, that I may as well put on record here what seems to me to be a fairly appropriate answer, viz: 'Because it can produce a few notes, though they are very flat; and it is nevar put with the wrong end in front!' The canonical answer, of course, is; "\|\|I haven't the slightest idea.\|\|" Despite Word of God, people keep trying to "answer" the riddle. Some of the more famous "answers" include: - "Because there is a B in both and an N in neither." - "Because they both have inky quills." - "Because Poe wrote on both." - Another answer, in "The Cheshire" by Bill Kte'pi. The Genre Savvy title character \|\|says the outright truth, "It's nothing like a writing desk", which was the point of the original riddle; to show that the Wonderland inhabitants were quite insane.\|\| - Yet another, from a Christopher Stasheff book: \|\|"Both require quills to truly take wing."\|\| Naturally, this hasn't been a really valid answer for some time. - An annotated version of Alice in Wonderland suggested "It stoops with a flap," or a flap of wood that creates an incline on which to write. - Another answer: \|\|"You can't ride either one like a bicycle."\|\| It just seems to fit Wonderland so very well. - Allen Steele's Labyrinth of Night features an alien complex on Mars entered through a series of locked doors with puzzles that require increasingly more intelligence to solve (and still-active death traps for the unwary). The archaeologists were baffled by the last chamber, which just played music, until they brought in a musician to jam with it, proving we have culture as well as brains. - Cryptonomicon plays with this in order to show off Lawrence's intelligence early on the book. Lawrence has to take an admission exam for the US Army Signal Corps. The admission exam is not exactly difficult... until he encounters a question in the math section that basically says "A swimmer can reach up to 2 miles per hour. He is swimming against a river whose current has a speed of 1.5 mph. How much distance he could cover within an hour?". His reaction is to think only an idiot would believe the river follows a simple laminar flow, decides that this should be approached via the Navier-Stokes equations that model water flow using partial differential vectorial equations, and proceeds to fill 10 pages of mathematical scribbles until he can finally calculate a physically accurate answer. When time runs out, he painfully realizes he had completely missed the point of the question, and ends up having to beg the Army bureaucrats to accept his multiple pages of mathematical research that even wound up being published in a scientific journal. - A variant occurs during The Dark Tower series, when Blaine, \|\|the insane supercomputer/monorail\|\| voluntarily takes the heroes to their destination, but agrees to let them live only if they can come up with a riddle he cannot answer. The catch is that Blaine has \|\|computer-access to the Dark Tower, and can therefore draw on the knowledge of riddles from ALL dimensions in existence. He is only defeated by BAD riddles, i.e. Eddie's horrible schoolyard jokes with no logical answers, which enrage Blaine to the point of blowing his own dipolar circuits\|\|. - Dan Brown attempts this in The Da Vinci Code. There are such gems as the "strange script" of an unrecognised language that a symbologist, the granddaughter of a da Vinci expert and another da Vinci expert spend about five pages puzzling over. Two pages into this sequence, there's a copy of it printed — it's in da Vinci's trademark mirror writing. - Pick a Deltora Quest book. ANY Deltora Quest book. Chances are you'll find a riddle that needs solving, some cryptic code that needs cracking or some other puzzle that needs figuring out. Probably more than one. - Exploited in Diamond Dogs by Alastair Reynolds. The novella concerns the discovery of a sealed alien tower that can only be ascended by answering successively more difficult math problems in various chambers. The characters in the story are eventually forced to augment their own intelligence with neural implanting just to proceed. More sinisterly, the doorways between each chamber get smaller each time, forcing the characters to also modify their bodies to fit. \|\|The exploitation comes when narrator realizes that the Tower probably doesn't have anything at the top. It exists solely to goad gullible intelligent species into exploring it. When they get to the top, the tower "harvests" them like a Venus Fly Trap.\|\| - Discworld - Terry Pratchett has a lot of fun with this trope in Pyramids. Pteppic meets the sphinx of Greek Mythology — and gets into a three-page discussion about how the classic riddle ("What is it that walks on four legs in the morning, on two at noon and on three in the evening? — A man") doesn't make a lot of sense. The final version: "What is it that, metaphorically speaking, walks on four legs for about twenty minutes just after midnight, on two legs for most of the day (barring accidents) until at least suppertime, after which it continues to walk on two legs or with any prosthetic aids of its choice?" - Similar to the Lord of the Rings subversion, the plot of Thud! hinges on a magic cube that plays a recording when an unknown password is spoken aloud, that a Mad Artist who thought he was a chicken accidentally activated. \|\|The password turns out to be "Awk", which is Dwarvish for "Speak".\|\| - Harry Potter - In Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, Dumbledore banks on these to hinder Voldemort from getting to the Philosopher's Stone. Most of the puzzles placed to guard the Stone aren't truly puzzles (rather than leave a spell to ask you how to defeat Devil's Snare, Dumbledore let Professor Sprout decide that it would be much more effective to just set the plant on anyone who came through); notably, the exception is Snape's logic puzzle with the potions: "Most wizards haven't got an ounce of logic; they'd never get out alive." When Harry reaches the final room \|\|he realizes this is a Subverted Trope. It's made clear that Voldemort could never have retrieved the Philosopher's Stone from the Miror of Erised, no matter how smart or clever he was in bypassing the other defenses. Only someone who didn't want to use it would be capable of doing so.\|\| - To gain entry to the living quarters of the House of Ravenclaw, one must answer a intellectual riddle. This is designed to help the Ravenclaws increase their intellectual capacity, so it's literally "only smart people may pass". It could even be intentional: perhaps Rowena considered all smart people honorary Ravenclaws? The Pottermore welcome message for Ravenclaw goes even further in this direction. It states that "it's not unusual" to see twenty or more Ravenclaw students trying to solve the day's riddle together, and that it's a great way for first years to learn from older students. It also says that Ravenclaws "learn quickly". - In the fourth book Harry stumbles on a sphinx in the labyrinth and has to solve its riddle. - The Riddle Game in The Hobbit, since Gollum's kinda nuts. \|\|And in the "true" version, which is the only one you're likely to read nowadays, he intended to go invisible using the ring and kill Bilbo anyway.\|\| Then there's the in-universe debate on whether Bilbo technically cheated. It was concluded that "What have I got in my pocket?" shouldn't have been counted as a riddle at all, but it's arguably fair since Gollum accepted the riddle by trying to answer, even negotiating for three guesses. It should also be noted that Gollum demands three guesses, and guesses four things, though one of his guesses was correct at the time Bilbo gave the "riddle" (and had just become wrong a moment ago). - In How Kazir Won His Wife, a king sets his daughter's suitor Kazir puzzles in order to assess his intellect. If Kazir fails, the king will not permit his daughter to marry Kazir. - Journey to Chaos - This happens twice in A Mage's Power: - When Eric tries to enter the Temple of Zaticana, his path is blocked by the temple's guards. They declare that "No earthbound mortal may cross this temple threshold." Eric quickly figures out that instead of forbidding mortals to enter the temple, the statement means they want him to jump across, i.e. prove he is not "earth bound". - Eric's trial in Kyraa to earn Dengel's power involves knowledge from runes to dragon customs to clever use of magic. - The entrance to the Black Cloak's hideout is carefully hidden and guarded. To enter without setting off alarms, Eric has to use several spells in combination - In Looming Shadow, Eric has to pass several tests of magical knowledge to breach the security measures on Dengel's Lair. - The Fellowship of the Ring subverts this with the gates of Moria; what's taken to be a riddle is just a literal instruction, although knowledge of Elven script is required to know that there is a password at all. You could accidentally open it by reading the untranslated inscription out loud. - Raymond Smullyan also wrote What is the Name of This Book?, which had a chapter where Portia from The Merchant of Venice wants the gold, silver, and lead caskets to test her suitor's intelligence instead of his virtue so she has each casket inscribed with a true/false statement that makes it possible to logically deduce which casket has her portrait. Her daughter and granddaughter do similar tests, but a third descendant of hers in the far modern-day future subverts this by giving her suitor what look like logical tests identical to her ancestors' but are actually impossible to logically solve — she had actually decided long beforehand that she wanted to marry said suitor but, being a mischievous sort, wanted to have a little bit of fun with him first. - In The Mote in God's Eye, the alien Moties have museums that are locked using astronomical puzzles. This is justified, since the museums are meant to help restore their civilization after the Dark Ages caused by inevitable, unstoppable population explosions, so the puzzles keep barbarian savages from busting the museum's lasers by using them to smash open walnuts. - The Crown of All Things in The Last Watch was sealed in a most ingenious manner, but Merlin thoughtfully left a rather clever riddle behind. This was justified in that providing a hint was part of Merlin's idea of fair play, and it later turned out he had a very good reason to make it possible for someone intelligent to get their hands on it. - Doubly subverted in Piers Anthony's novel Macroscope. The "Destroyer Signal", a radio signal picked up by a SETI search, appears at first to be a treasure trove of alien scientific knowledge that a few of the smartest humans may be capable of understanding, but turns out to be designed to overload their brains and burn out their minds with too much knowledge. Later in the book, it turns out that it is actually an "only smart and good people may pass" test, designed to destroy any intelligent mind not belonging to Perfect Pacifist People, to prevent all the tech (especially FTL Travel) from falling into the wrong head. - Redwall series has many of these. The first book, for instance, has a series of riddles left by Martin the Warrior that lead to the location of his legendary sword. - Downplayed and parodied in Roger Zelazny's The Chronicles of Amber series. Merlin encounters a Sphinx that will eat him if he can't guess the answer to a riddle. Merlin gives a plausible answer, but the Sphinx is looking for a specific one (that is virtually unknowable, relating to a then-obscure aspect of the story's world). Merlin argues with the Sphinx, eventually getting the concession that the Sphinx will let him pass if he can come up with a riddle the Sphinx can't answer. Merlin does so, with "What's green and red and goes round and round and round?" \|\|A frog in a Cuisinart\|\|. This is echoed in a later book when another guardian refuses to use this sort of test, but just for fun asks a riddle anyway — and it's the same one Merlin posed. - Romance of the Three Kingdoms, Cao Cao is fond of word games, including leaving instructions in the form of incredibly involved plays on Chinese characters. The only problem was that the guy who solved them, Yang Xiu, made Cao nervous, both for his intelligence and for supporting one of Cao's younger sons rather than Cao's chosen heir. \|\|Cao Cao would have Yang Xiu executed when he interpreted one of Cao Cao's signal phrases (chicken neck) as a sign that Cao was preparing for retreat. It should be noted that Cao really was planning a retreat, but canceled the retreat so he could have an excuse to do away with Yang.\|\| - Septimus Heap has the Wright of the Widdle in Queste, where the protagonists have to guess the meaning of some expressions that refer to some symbols to enter the House of Foryx. - One of the gadgets used by the mysterious V.F.D in Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events is the "Vernacularly Fastened Door", a lock which can only be opened by answering trivia questions. It is a theme of the series that the good guys are more well-read than the bad guys. - In Star Trek: Typhon Pact (part of the Star Trek Novel Verse), the home and office of the Tzenkethi Coalition's Autarch is inside a building with a flexible and highly changable design. To access the house requires contemplation of mathematical principles and aesthetics, to puzzle out the likely position of concealed openings. Agents of the Autarch are therefore tested every time they report to the building, and must demonstrate their worth by finding a way inside. - In H. M. Hoover's This Time Of Darkness the main character has been an outcast because she is literate, in a world where people are trained from childhood to be stupid and ignorant. When she comes to a locked door containing a clearly written explanation of how to open it and disarm the guard lasers, she realizes with horror that whoever put the door there intended to kill anybody who went through who couldn't read - that is, if anybody else went through the door, they'd be killed. - Game Shows examples: - Often used when giving away prizes to make sure that it's "skill-based" rather than luck-based, even if it's effectively luck-based. Generally the question is very simple, allowing anyone to answer it. There are entire shows based around this which intend to collect money from unwary viewers via premium-charged phone or SMS, giving away only a token prize for the winner. Another possibility is to make an "unsolvable" puzzle, such as "count the money in the picture" (when the answer is finally shown, it is revealed that there were coins in the picture completely obscured by other coins) or "find the names of 3 bands in the letter square" (which is filled with misspelling of popular band names and the answer is 3 obscure bands with nondescript acronym names). Multiple callers can attempt to answer but generally none will succeed, so nobody gets the prize because they weren't "smart" enough. - In some places (Canada, for example) the law prohibits "gambling" (e.g. a lottery, even if no entry fee is charged) but permits "contests of skill". Apparently, correctly answering "2+2=?" makes it a contest of skill as far as the law is concerned, even if the winner is then randomly chosen from the correct entries (i.e. all of them). In other words, Loophole Abuse. - The first episode of Are You Afraid of the Dark?, "The Tale of the Phantom Cab": The woods are haunted by the ghosts of lost hikers and campers who found Dr. Vink's cottage. He would send them to board the Phantom Cab and die in a replica of the same crash that killed the driver. Why? Because none of them (until the two boys in the tale) could answer his riddle: "What has no weight? Can be seen with the naked eye? And if you put it in a barrel, it will make the barrel lighter?" \|\|A hole.\|\| Other common entities that satisfy this description: \|\|fire, "A flashlight beam."\|\| - In Babylon 5, an alien probe promises to transmit its vast store of knowledge to any species that passes its intelligence test. \|\|It's actually a bomb that will destroy the first planet to answer correctly, taking out any up-and-coming civilization that might one day rival its creators.\|\| - Blake's 7. In "City at the Edge of the World", the descendants of a civilization that descended into barbarism have to get through a door leading to a New Eden (it's a long-range teleporter to a new colony planet). They convince a gang of Space Pirates that what remains of the planets' wealth is sealed up behind the door. They know these criminals aren't clever enough to open it themselves, but they can get hold of someone who is. - CSI: NY: "Death House" involves an abandoned penthouse full of deadly booby traps. In order to avoid them while searching for a trapped victim, the team has to follow clues throughout the apartment to first locate, then solve, two hidden riddles. - Doctor Who: - "The Dalek Invasion of Earth" contains a particularly nice (or nasty?) example. Human captives of the Daleks are imprisoned in cells aboard their ships. The Doctor examines the door-locking mechanism and works out a way to deactivate it and thus escape. \|\|He does, and it turns out that the mechanism is actually an intelligence test those smart enough to escape their cells are potentially dangerous and are sent to be turned into RoboMen.\|\| - The Cybermen do something similar in "The Tomb of the Cybermen". Anyone skilled enough in symbolic logic to get into the tombs \|\|and awaken the Cybermen is clearly a good candidate for conversion into a Cyberman.\|\| - "Death to the Daleks" has a test which takes the form of a series of death traps, killing anyone not smart enough to find the solution quickly. The Doctor speculates that people who can pass might have some other knowledge that might benefit the city. - "42" has a bunch of locked doors that require trivia questions to open. In theory this is a passcode system, not a puzzle the crew of the ship in question set the questions with the intent to be the only group who could give all the right answers. Notably, one of them set his favourite colour as an answer. However, "the crew's changed since we set the questions", the current crew reset the questions while drunk, and some of them have died horribly, explaining the fact that all the questions seen aside from the guy's favourite colour apparently have to be answered by the Doctor or Martha. Granted, this episode is set far enough in The Future that a question referencing The Beatles is listed in the category of "Classical Music". - Subverted in Double the Fist. The Womp has to get past a pair of "one always lies and the other tells the truth" guardians, but he's Too Dumb to Live and when the increasingly frustrated guards try to explain how the puzzle works the liar accidentally tells the truth, causing his head to explode. - Bull of Heaven were known on occasion to troll their fans in this way. Examples range from requiring the listener to change a file extension to .mp3 in order to listen to a song, to a extracting a Matryoshka doll of compressed files, to password-protecting the song without giving any clue as to what the password is, to all three at the same time. What's more, if someone guessed the password and posted it on the Internet, they would change it and reupload the file. - In Season 2 of the BBC Radio Drama Earthsearch, the protagonists finally succeed in finding Earth, only it's a wasteland with what remains of humanity occupying a village next to a tower holding a repository of all human knowledge. The single door is designed so it can only be opened after humanity has regained a certain level of scientific development. \|\|The door contains a radioactive isotope that heats the door slightly so it jams in the frame, requiring refrigeration technology to reverse the effect.\|\| - Inverted in Yarra, River of Death, an (in)famous Polish module penned by Andrzej Sapkowski. At one point, the characters have to haul their barge over shallows made out of shoulder-deep mud teeming with maggots and leeches. After few moments inside the mud, everyone is required to make an Intelligence check. If they pass it, they instantly get a panic attack due to all the filth crawling all over them and won't be able to help that day anymore. In the same time, to haul the barge over, it requires a Strength value impossible without at least 3 average characters working together, thus making a Dumb Muscle PCs very handy. That moment is responsible for roughly third of all Total Party Kills during the scenario, as it's perfectly possible to get stuck there forever and starve to death or die out of malaria. And no, no sudden flood is going to save the party. - Exalted - \|\|In the Time of Tumult the players have to select the wrong answer in a classic Knights and Knaves puzzle. This is fair since the PCs are navigating a maze specifically designed to kill anyone but the creators and they know it.\|\| Only Really Smart People may pass. - Exalted later plays it straight and justifies it in Under the Rose, which has a section of puzzle-based deathtraps designed by Autochthon, the Great Maker. A side-note mentions that as part of his inhuman mindset, Autochthon is physically unable to design any form of defenses without including puzzle-based deathtraps. - Invoked in Jasper in Deadland; Cerberus initially thinks that eating a living person like Jasper will give it some insight into what it means to be "alive". To avoid this, Jasper realizes he can just explain to Cerberus what it means to be alive. - Parodied in the PS1 game Shadow Madness; at one point, the heroes encounter a talking stone mouth located in a crypt that's been unoccupied for centuries. When it tells them to answer three questions in order to pass, one of the heroes asks why, to which it responds with, "You'd be bored too if you were me, honey." - In the game Brothers Pilots, a fridge is locked by a puzzle. After you open it, a cat comes out and opens the door your characters were unable to open by simply pushing it (your characters try to pull it). Apparently, solving this puzzle was simpler than opening an unlocked door. - Chinatown Detective Agency, which is kind of a Spiritual Successor to the Carmen Sandiego franchise and a borderline Edutainment Game for grown-ups, unsurprisingly runs on this, particularly throughout the art theft subplot. The password to the rare book case in the library involves pulling switches coded by characters from major novels, a secret door has to be opened by correctly assembling Bosch triptychs, etc. - Amiga game The Chaos Engine ( Soldiers of Fortune on consoles) features fairly inventive puzzles which can only be interacted with by shooting them. In rooms full of enemies. Often, you'll have solved the puzzle without ever noticing it existed. - In Anachronox, to board the shuttle to Sunder (a Planet of Hats populated by scientists), the heroes must pass the Brain Bouncer, who demands explanations of complex scientific theories to ensure that the hopeful passenger really is a scientist of high caliber. This is then parodied when your helpful robotic buddy downloads the entire galactic scientific database into his memory, and you have to pretend to speak a language that the bouncer doesn't, so your robo-buddy can helpfully "translate" for you. Of course, there are two additional (humorous) swerves: the bouncer speaks all known languages (forcing you to "invent" a language), and at one point, after provided an answer that can be as short as three sounds and as long a twelve sounds, your robo-buddy prattles on for long enough that the scene fades out. - This is the central premise behind the gameplay of Another Code: For some unfathomable reason, the designers of the mansion on Blood Edward Island thought that it would be more efficient to use logic puzzles instead of keys or handles. - There are a handful in Avencast: Rise of the Mage: two requiring the player to figure out biographical information at the subjects' tombs and another only allowing access to an art exhibit to someone smart enough to reconstruct an artwork. - Baldur's Gate II has several such moments. The oddest riddle is one that makes sense as game dialogue but would be quite horrible if someone came to you and spoke it like this: A princess is as old as the prince will be when the princess is twice as old as the prince was when the princess' age was half the sum of their present age. Which of the following, then, could be true: the prince is 20 and the princess is 30, the prince is 40 and the princess is 30, the prince is 30 and the princess is 40, the prince is 30 and the princess is 20, or, they are both the same age? - \|\|The prince is 30, the princess is 40. Any age with the same ratio will also do.\|\| - Banjo-Kazooie's final level is a board game asking questions about various events in the game as well as matching sound effects and jingles to what they mean. - Betrayal at Krondor has a great many chests called "Wordlocks" that are essentially combination locks with letters instead of numbers, and they have riddles on them. The answer to the riddle is the combination, though one sidequest-relevant chest follows another trope. - The Black Mirror series is full of puzzle lock mechanisms and safes with Only the Knowledgable May Pass solutions whose presence in the game world strains credibility. This is Lampshaded in Black Mirror II where at one point the PC sees an "escritoire without a puzzle lock" and muses that it must be an old model. - Brain Lord is Exactly What It Says on the Tin, and EVERY puzzle that doesn't involve 'kill all enemies in the room' will genuinely test your reasoning ability....or patience, if you go for trial and error. - In Conquests of Camelot, there were several Copy Protection-type puzzles which required not only having the manual but correctly interpreting it as well. One part early in the game played this more straight, featuring a magic barrier that could be passed only after talking to some stones and solving the riddles they gave you. - In Cultist Simulator, in order to pass through the Stag Door in the Mansus, the protagonist will have to answer its riddle. - Darklands: The dwarf logic puzzles. (With one exception, which due to writer error is a Guide Dang It!.) - Used on you (as the Featureless Protagonist) in Dark Tales: Murders in the Rue Morgue. When you first meet Detective Dupin so that you might solve the murder together, he puts you through your paces, solving a series of puzzles in and around his house. He wants to make sure you're up to the task before he lets you come with him. - In Dead Space 2, \|\|the Marker tests all that it comes into contact with by transmitting a signal that either drives people insane or gives them the knowledge they would need to create a new Marker.\|\| - Devil May Cry 3: Dante's Awakening has the aptly-named Trial of Wisdom with multiple doors that are each marked with a different number of lights. To proceed, they have to be entered in a certain order, and your only clue to figuring that out is a reference to the Riddle of the Sphinx. Easy enough to solve for those familiar with it, and utterly baffling for anyone who's not. However, this section can be optional if you only wish to proceed to the next area (as only two out of three Trials must be passed to break the rubble blocking the gate), but it's mandatory only if you wish to acquire the Artemis weapon. - Discworld Noir looks like it's headed for this when an ancient guardian wants to ask you a riddle to see if you are worthy to receive the MacGuffin. Then come the subversions, first by the guardian who happened to forget the riddle during his 400-year-wait (but still insists to only hand the item to those who answer it) and then by Lewton who points out that someone of the unworthy faction would just hack the weaponless guardian to pieces. As he's in somewhat of a hurry, he gives the guardian the option to hand over the McGuffin — or he'll just pretend to be unworthy enough... The guardian relents. - Disgaea 2: Cursed Memories has a minor boss in the Inevitable Tournament tries to challenge the heroes with the mother of all geo puzzles, causing the page quote from Tink in regards to Idiot Hero Adell. Adell takes one glance at the puzzle and states its correct solution without missing a beat, freaking out the puzzle creator and the rest of the heroes. Of course, to the player the real puzzle is getting to the solution that Adell pointed out. It's at the end of a maze of No Entry panels guarded by monsters. Although if you have enough range on your spells (which depends on how many times you've cast it before) you can hit it from the starting position. - In Dishonored 2, the lock on Aramis Stilton's manor is designed by Kirin Jindosh, and is so fiendishly complex that nobody has been able to crack it - it even indirectly led to one character's mutilation. When you get there to try yourself, it's...an incredibly simple logic puzzle of the kind found in brainteaser and crossword puzzle books, and you only have to solve half of it anyway. Apparently nobody in the entire Empire except the protagonist is smart enough to go through a simple process of elimination, which honestly explains a lot about the setting. - In the Dragon Age II DLC Mark of the Assassin, the vaults of Chateau Haine are like this. Normal people keep their valuables safe with locks and, perhaps, guards. Duke Prosper prefers to use puzzles. - Dragon Age: Origins: - Dr. Brain is built on this, with plenty of puzzles, labyrinths and other challenges. However, the doctor isn't trying to keep you out, just test you to see if you're good enough to become his assistant. - In Exile II, to address the Vahnatai Council you must complete as many as three tests note : Depending on which puzzles you solved in the previous chapter, you could be required to do all three, or none at all: the Test of Strength (a series of combats), the Test of Speed (outrunning a wall of quickfire), and the Test of Mind (word games, math puzzles, riddles, and a maze). You might suspect that most players would skip the latter if they had a choice, but there's also nothing stopping the player from going after all three even if they're not required. In the remake, Avernum 2, the Test of Mind was replaced with the Test of Patience (a Block Puzzle). - Fallout: - In the early games, this is character-based instead of player based, with Intelligence attribute checks, or various skill checks. Ironically, some story quests are actually much easier if your character is extremely stupid since the quest givers will realize that you are to too dumb to complete them and will do it themselves. - In Fallout 3 a sidequest in what's left of the Smithsonian requires you to answer trivia questions on American history to open a safe containing some loot. Another unmarked sidequest requires you to pick out prime numbers from lists to spawn a unique assault rifle. - Likewise, Quest for Glory IV has Dr. Cranium (supposedly an ancestor of Dr. Brain), whose lab is behind four different puzzles, though all but one are interconnected. Unlike his descendant though, Cranium just wants his privacy and is sufficiently impressed when you enter. He even has a sign on his front door that all but names the trope. - Rakenzarn Tales is fond of doors that only open when you Enter Solution Here, usually by answering a nearby riddle or unscrambling a clue from another area. Plot-required ones are a little easier such as in Chapter 3 where you have to figure out what a place called the Water Sanctuary considers the most important thing, with the sidequest ones being a wee bit more difficult. - Resident Evil: why does a scientific lab require you to manipulate chess pieces to open a locked door? No one knows. The series handwaves it by saying that Spencer, the man who designed the mansion, was insane and paranoid. - Rogue Galaxy: There's a skyscraper sized block puzzle guarding ancient ruins. - Shining the Holy Ark has a puzzle involving weights and scales before you can enter the dungeon proper. Also it has the infamous stone puzzle. - Silent Hill: - The franchise has a lot of this, but Silent Hill 3 stretches it into true absurdity with a puzzle requiring an astoundingly thorough knowledge of the works of Shakespeare to pass (on Hard mode). Of course, it's Silent Hill we're talking about here — making sense is purely optional and any puzzle that can be explained with sufficiently elaborate Epileptic Trees (like, say, a 20 page forum debate between fans who have memorized the game) is obviously logically sound by the laws of the place. - There's also quite a few verbal puzzles in the game that are obscenely simple if you're familiar with the source. The source may be a common Japanese nursery rhyme that makes it impossible for American audiences to solve without some sort of reference, or aspects of American culture that seem blatantly obvious to us but are downright Insane Troll Logic to the original Japanese audience. Which, given the whole confusing nature of the series, may be entirely intentional. - Skyrim: Many of the ancient dungeons have various lever and button puzzles, often with deadly traps to go off if you don't get the solution right. Often, the combination is shown in plain sight, but people still get it wrong. The huge puzzle doors are especially notable, as they require both a key and a combination, but the combination is engraved on the key. However, one book actually points this out - the puzzle doors aren't intended to keep explorers out, but to keep the undead draugr in. The bare minimum of intelligence required to figure out how to open the door is expected because draugr are practically mindless and can't even accomplish that. - Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic: - Arithmetic puzzles get used for everything from decryption to demolitions. - The trivia questions both the ancient Rakatans and Darth Revan used to cover the tracks to their secret base. There's also a Schmuck Bait sidequest that is solved by winning a riddle contest with a prisoner stuck in a mind trap. - Several puzzles in KOTOR are in fact classic puzzles given a more context appropriate reskin. The damaged extractor control system on Manaan is the same "measure 4 liters using only a 3 liter and a 5 liter container" seen in Die Hard 3 (it can be bypassed, but doing so gets you banned from the planet and gives you dark side points), while the Sith tomb's energy ring transfer puzzle is really a jazzed up Towers of Hanoi. - The Brotherhood of Shadow game mod has a wicked one. A Czerka employee was trying to seal off the mining tunnels from his crazed co-workers. He set up a system requiring accessing several terminals in succession and answering questions about "basic galactic history" (read: lore from Star Wars Legends) in order to open the doors. - Super Mario RPG: - While slogging through Bowser's Castle toward the end, Mario reaches six doors, leading to instances of three kinds of challenges. Two are straight combat, two are platforming action, and two are a gauntlet of dime-store brain teasers, hosted by a green Hammer Brother named "Dr. Topper". On the menu: peg-jumping puzzles, counting games, trivia quizzes about the RPG itself, and an infuriating "Who finished what place in a triathlon?" word problem. You only have to pass four of six doors, but randomly speaking, you'll have to face at least one of them. - There are some in the Sunken Ship. A series of platforming challenges give nautically themed clues to a six-letter word puzzle to enter the Boss Room. None of the challenges have to be completed, if a player can suss out a fitting word from the given letters. Both the quiz-gauntlet and the word puzzle are relatively simple affairs, but for younger players, they could be pretty stymieing, as they relied on critical thinking and some outside information. - Used over and over again in Tales of Eternia, the first Tales game with the bright, involved, and unique sort of puzzles that also contributed to Tales of Symphonia being the hit it was. Then, without warning, subverted at the beginning of Volt's ruins: The Smart Guy Keele has been left behind, so while the rest of your party is busy scratching their heads and staring at the obtuse riddle on the front gate, Max walks up to the door and body-slams it down. The rest of the dungeon, of course, is full of puzzles, but damn if the scene wasn't hilarious. - Trauma Center: New Blood: to \|\|escape a pit filling with water, the two doctors and nurse that have refused to help the Big Bad have to solve a complicated puzzle. To do so they have to "connect the four friends," meaning they connect the pegs that match in color to each other. It's surprisingly difficult, which is explained by the puzzle being popular among college students and the like. If you don't solve in time, they all drown.\|\| - Uninvited: The Quest for the Red Diamond: The Mall Demon asks you a question regarding intermediate-level mathematics that you have to answer to live. - In Valkyrie Profile there is an Egyptian-themed pyramid dungeon, in which the Sphinx presents the famous riddle to Lady Valkyrie. Her reply is simply "..." and she is allowed to pass. - Shows up in the mad Finster's mind in Wasteland; you do have to get these right. Note that this guy's not exactly sane, and the fact that you're wandering in his brain with laser machine guns trying to kill him isn't helping his mental state much. - In The World Ends with You, on the 4th day \|\|of the third week\|\|, you are boxed off by invisible walls and to open up these walls, you need to open up special boxes, which won't open unless you solve puzzles involving defeating specific Noise symbols. Additionally, to obtain the Secret Reports, you are required to get hidden items as part of your objectives, and are given cryptic hints as to where to find them, such as "Meet up with the secret" (\|\|examine the Statue of Hachikō\|\|) and "SHOWN A DREAM" (\|\|anagram of "Shadow Ramen," a restaurant where you will find one of the hidden items\|\|). Also, some of the clues as to the daily objectives (\|\|mostly in week 2\|\|) are rather cryptic. Mind you, the characters manage to work them out, saving the player from the extra thought in those cases, at least. - In X3: Terran Conflict, the New Home plot involves a three-part Hacking Minigame. You have to break a four-digit code, then solve a sudoku. The third part is inputting a code you put together from clues throughout the plot. - Ace Attorney: - The series in general is this, with the player either having to find clues, assess evidence, question witnesses or create theories as to how something happened. Only a lawyer (and smart player) is capable of these tasks. - In the fourth game, Apollo has to figure out how a professional magician pulled off one of his illusions. Not for any relevant reason, but because The Judge has decided that he wants to know how it was done, and that he wants Apollo to explain it to him. Once he understands, they continue with the actual trial. - In Danganronpa 2: Goodbye Despair only smart people can play the Final Dead Room's Life-Threatening Game. This is a shout-out to another Spike Chunsoft series... - Zero Escape is a series of Visual Novels whose gameplay is focused on Escape Rooms, usually under time limits. Characters also tend to be trivia machines, stopping for mini-lectures about science and pseudo-science. Add the fact that the games tend to only use lectures on topics that end up being relevant, it means that all this trivia is actually required to escape. For what may be the crowning example in the series, at one point during Virtue's Last Reward, the only way to \|\|begin disarming Dio's bombs, (and thus, ensure everyone lives), is to decipher a code using a key from another ending.\|\| This requires that Alice find all the factors of a 25 digit number! - Subverted in two strips of The Adventures of Dr. McNinja. Turns out, it's \|\|not Only Smart People May Pass, it's "Nobody may pass but we were too cheap to get a motion detector or a door." There is no real answer to the riddle; the statue will shoot you if you say anything. It could also be interperted as "No Inocktek may pass", so you're better off not understanding the ancient inscription at all.\|\| - Goblins: These kinds of puzzles are mandatory in any dungeon crawl. Sometimes there is a straight but not always obvious solution, other times the heroes need to Take a Third Option. - Sluggy Freelance: One of the tests that must be passed to enter the Cave of Yffi (in "The Strombreaker Saga") is a "test of intelligence" that takes the form of a somewhat silly riddle. The heroes make it past by arguing their different answers were all as good as the "right" one. The gatekeeper then tries to make the riddle so specific that it can only be answered the one way ("a bat with lesions"). The villain nevertheless manages to answer it with "a nun with a spear through her head". - Tower of God - Hansung Yu's door test on the second floor — one of the tests required to advance up the Tower — is an ironic example, because while it can be solved by being smart, it's almost easier by being stupid. The test is ostensibly "Find the right door within ten minutes," and there seem to be no hints. \|\|But the implicit hints are all about the time — do it within five minutes — and the real answer is to open any door within five minutes.\|\| Thus, overthinking can be much more dangerous than being impatient or impulsive (or even delusional, as with the guy who supposedly uses divination to solve it). Whether Hansung actually thinks this is a reasonable test of determination or whatever like he explains it, or he's just being a sadist with layers of hidden agendas as usual, is anyone's guess. - On the Hell Train, one test is to solve a simple numerical riddle to open a door. A group of deadly high-level characters are stumped by this because it's not their kind of thing, but they have a Navigator with them who can solve anything by precognition, although she probably could have solved this one by reasoning too. - In Wapsi Square Monica meets Phix, keeper of the Bibliothiki, who asks her a riddle. When Monica answers, Phix gives her a prize. Later on Monica takes her friend Shelly to meet Phix, who asks her the same riddle [large-format strip]. The twist is that Shelly gives her a different answer but also gets a prize. Note that Phix doesn't say that either of the answers are right, she just says "good for you". - In War and Peas, a knight saves a girl from multivariable calculus lessons, then... see the page image. - xkcd: - In The Tim Tebow CFL Chronicles, the Toronto Argonauts find an empty aircraft carrier waiting for them. The only instructions on how to operate the ship are a plaque in the bridge with a strange shape and numbers inside it. Tim Tebow immediately recognizes the plaque as a cryptic reference to a specific football game: November 13, 2011, Denver Broncos vs. Kansas City Chiefs. Tebow was the Broncos' quarterback for that game, and he realizes this is a clue to use several stats from the game to determine how to start the ship's engine and set the bearings. - He-Man and the Masters of the Universe (1983): In "The Secret of Grayskull", Castle Grayskull will let in anyone who answers a riddle. When Skeletor and his minions tried to gain entry, it asked, "What goes through a door, but never enters or exits the castle?" The bad guys couldn't figure it out, so they asked a brainwashed Orko whom they had captured, who answered \|\|a keyhole\|\|. Likely due to the Sorceress realizing what a security risk it is, Grayskull doesn't ask riddles in future episodes. - Played with in Phineas and Ferb Arthurian Legend-slash- The Princess Bride-slash- The Lord of the Rings episode "Excaliferb" has Professor Poofenplotz as a bridge-guarding troll who demands that the answers to three questions must be given correctly in haiku form in order to pass. Baljeetolas notices that the creek is shallow, and the questers go around the bridge, although Baljeetolas gives the correct answer after crossing the creek. Just for the hell of it. Later in the episode, Candavere approaches the bridge having transformed into a uniwhalescorpiopegasquidicorn... girl. Poofenplotz lets her pass out of fear. - VeggieTales did an Affectionate Parody of The Lord of the Rings, which has a scene similar to the Gates of Moria. As the show is for kids the riddle is quite easy. The answer is \|\|an elephant.\|\| - High IQ Societies, like MENSA, require an IQ of at least 130 to join. Either that or a certain percentile on a standardized IQ test, since the absolute score tends to vary between different tests. - This is the point of the technical interview for information technology jobs. The interviewers will give you programming-related logic puzzles to solve and they consider how you attempt to solve these relatively basic problems to assess how well you might handle more complex coding work. This has changed as time as passed. A lot of the "standard" questions have been spoiled by now, so it's effectively becomes a test whether you're clever enough to use Google to prepare beforehand or not. In a lot of real world situations, reinventing the wheel is a bad thing. Figuring out that someone else has probably already solved the problem and finding and using their solution is likely to be a lot faster than working it out yourself, making it a decent screening test again, if not for the reason the interviewer intends. This technique is falling more and more out of favor with both interviewers and interviewees, however, and is generally being replaced with straightforward written tests. How a candidate evaluates a given problem and writes some code to solve it is a more concrete indicator of that person's potential performance on the job than being able to come up with (or just remember) some clever answer to an abstract thought exercise. - Academics naturally has a lot of these. The purpose of an exam is to prove that you are smart enough to advance to the next level. - Graduate school oral exams (and, to a lesser extent, the dissertation defense) are this since the committee can, theoretically, ask you anything related to the subject in question. - For those studying to be a lawyer: - The Law School Admissions Test, or LSAT, in the United States is an imposing 3.5 hour challenge which tests logic, critical thinking, reading comprehension, composition, and more under a very strict time limit. The test-takers generally are college seniors and grads with good enough grades to fancy they will attend law school. Many prepare for weeks to months for the exam, and yet fully half of test takers will not score well enough for them to enter even the lowest tier law schools in the United States. - Pass this challenge, and the bar exam awaits, a test which often is more than a full day long. A law student in theory studies for three years for it, and some take time off after law school to further prepare for the exam. There is no single "bar" exam. States determine the requisite for their own bar exams, but a day of questions and a day of essays is the norm. - For those studying to be a doctor: - Doing well on the 7.5 hour-long MCAT (Medical Colleges Admission's Test) in the United States requires extensive knowledge of biology, physics, chemistry, and organic chemistry as well as excellent reasoning, reading, and composition skills. Everyone taking the exam has or is finishing up a college degree, most of them in biology or chemistry. Furthermore, many students study for months to prepare and have to self-select for being competitive students so a med school will admit them. Two-thirds of the test-takers will not get into med school. - An aspiring American physician can then look forward to the United Steps Medical Licensing Examinations - plural - colloquially known as the "boards." There are four full-day (or two-day!) exams, called Step 1, Step 2 Clinical Knowledge, Step 2 Clinical Skills, and Step 3 that must be taken. After clearing these hurdles, boards for each specialty a physician wants to certify in still have to be taken. - While the US' exams are the most well-known due to Eagleland Osmosis, frankly the path to these careers is littered with similar challenges in any nation where corruption hasn't become too big a part of the system. - In the United States Armed Forces, most people can score well enough on the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery Test to enter the military. Low performers will be limited to low-skill jobs such as truck driving; it takes a fair amount of intelligence for a person to do well enough to be considered for higher-skill jobs such as pilot, linguist, or medical, and the training for many technical jobs have a surprisingly high wash-out rate from those who intellectually can't hack it. - Certain companies make the clever choice to not leave their contact information out in the open, but instead hidden behind multiple clicks that you will only know to click, if you have at least average intelligence. That saves the companies from hundreds of really dumb emails, and ensures that the ones that do get in, are mostly on-topic. - The community forums for Adventure Game Studio, a tool for creating Point-And-Click Adventure Games, requires new registrants to answer a series of questions on proper etiquette. The questions are all multiple choice and the correct answers are incredibly obvious, in context, but framing the rules as a quiz forces users to read them and pay attention to them, rather than just clicking past them. - This is the whole concept behind escape rooms, a popular form of entertainment that originated in Japan and spread all over the world. Based on the You Wake Up in a Room genre of video game, escape rooms see players "trapped" in a small area for one hour, and they are required to solve puzzles, find hidden objects, and use the items they acquire to complete a goal—often escaping, but sometimes other tasks like collecting a hidden treasure or catching a criminal. Some games lack any sort of story and simply have players completing puzzles for no reason, while others have more involved plots that justify each challenge. While the games are often advertised as tools for team building and communication, they're primarily tests of intelligence and the ability to think creatively. Notably, it's considered bad design to include Only the Knowledgable May Pass in escape rooms—everything required to win should be included in the room, and needing outside or specialized knowledge to succeed is a quick way to irritate customers.	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/OnlySmartPeopleMayPass
Takes One to Kill One - TV Tropes Ah, the classic vampire weaknesses: sunlight , garlic , silver , and another vamp's fist through your skull. "Magic must defeat magic!" In many works of fiction, there are creatures that are Immune to Bullets, Made of Iron, and in worst-case scenarios have no Kryptonite Factor. Even nuking them has no effect. But fear not, for while these creatures may be immune to fire, bullets, nuclear weapons, and MTV, these monsters still have one weakness... Themselves, or their own kind. There are ways on how this is accomplished: - Stop Hitting Yourself: It is one easy way to do this - you don't have to find something similar when you can use their own body/projectile/whatever to hurt them. - Carrying the Weakness: If you can manage to make said enemy drop their own weapon/body part/whatever, you can use it to hurt them easily. - Menace vs Menace: Another one of their kind can stop them. - Heroic Menace vs Evil Menace: This is often used as a justification to why the heroes, who either are this kind of monster/alien, can turn into one, or have one under their control, can seriously wail on the Monster of the Week, and yet the military forces and police are still useless though if this becomes a trend, it may lead to other characters being unable to affect the plot in a meaningful way or even turn those connected to the monsters into a Spotlight-Stealing Squad. If the heroes are forced to become this type of monster to win, expect a My God, What Have I Done? moment afterwards. - Menace Civil War: If the monster is unaffiliated with either side, it can lead to Always a Bigger Fish (or A Same-sized Fish in this case). Occasionally, the heroes may trick the two monsters into fighting each other. Sub-Trope of Mutual Disadvantage. Super-Trope to Magic Must Defeat Magic. An opposite of Tactical RockPaperScissors where each type of combatant has some other capable of curb stomping it. However, this can be a subtrope of Elemental Rock-Paper-Scissors if an element happens to be weak against itself. Compare Beat Them at Their Own Game, Hoist by His Own Petard, and Summon Bigger Fish. Contrast Like Cannot Cut Like and Counterpart Artifacts. See also Serial-Killer Killer, which usually doesn't involve the supernatural. ## Examples: - The Imperial Weapons from Akame ga Kill! are guaranteed by fate to kill the user's target- unless said target also has an Imperial Weapon, in which case the resulting battle is certain to end with at least one user's death. - Attack on Titan is a complicated example. First there is special gear used to fight titans. It is definitely possible to kill titans in this manner but there is often a large death toll. Then it's revealed that the only thing that can reliably hurt a Titan is another Titan. \|\|Which makes the Titan Shifters extremely valuable allies.\|\| The gear used by normal humans is much more limited in application and effectiveness in comparison. For example, \|\|Eren doesn't kill a single titan while in his human form for the entirety of the first season, but in Titan form he's brutally effective and even out-fights the dreaded Armored Titan in hand-to-hand combat\|\|. - In Baccano!!, the only way an immortal can die is to be absorbed by another immortal. - In The Big O, one of the few things that can damage a Megadeus is another Megadeus, though this is less an issue of compatibility than a matter of sheer firepower. There have been several organic threats which could have legitimately beaten a Megadeus. - Ryo Takatsuki's nanite-powered Superpowered Evil Side in Project ARMS has a unique power to negate the Healing Factor of other ARMS. - Bleach: Baraggan is resilient enough to withstand a Fantastic Nuke with only minor injury and can unleash an unstoppable, infectious wave of decay at will. He's killed by teleporting an infected hand into his body, where his own power rots him into nothingness. - Blood: The Last Vampire has this as its basic premise. - Same goes for its spin-off series Blood+. Chiroptera will regenerate from basically any wound. Only the blood of an opposing queen can put them down. Same goes for everything else spawned by that Queen, and the Queen herself for that matter. - In Claymore, the eponymous warriors are humanity's only hope against the yoma because they are infused with yoma blood to gain control over yoki, their demonic energy. On the flip side, all Claymores run the risk of turning into super yoma, a.k.a. Awakened Beings. \|\|However, the beings the Claymores were really meant to fight are the Dragon-people whose flesh is the source of yoma.\|\| - Digimon Adventure: MetalEtemon effectively has Nigh-Invulnerability when he is met as not only is he a Mega-level Digimon, but his entire body is coated in Chrome Digizoid, the hardest substance in the entire world. Zudomon was able to leave a crack on his body when he threw his Vulcan's Hammer at him as the hammer is also made out of Chrome Digizoid, allowing him to be killed by SaberLeomon. - Dragon Ball: - King Piccolo was utterly invincible to any human who didn't know the Evil Containment Wave, which kills the person who uses it. Only Goku manages to outmatch Piccolo and later his son Piccolo Jr. They are both aliens sent to Earth to save their lives. - When they were introduced, the Saiyans were so overwhelmingly powerful compared to any enemy that the Earth had ever faced that even after a year of training, the Earth's fighters can't even take down Nappa, who is far weaker than Vegeta. Only Goku and Gohan were able to turn the tides and repel the Saiyans, and Goku is a Saiyan and Gohan is a Saiyan hybrid. - The plot of Eternal Sabbath revolves around getting Shura to kill Isaac, as Shura is the only one who understands Isaac enough to stop him. - In Fairy Tail, the only magic that can even scratch Dragons is Dragon magic. Dragon Slayers are simply humans who wield the same kind of magic as Dragons. The only exception to this are Demons who rely on "Curses" which are fundamentally different from magic. Even then, the Dragon struck by the Curse was already dead, being a spirit. - In some continuities of the Gundam franchise, Gundams are defined by using a technology that makes them leaps and bounds above any previously existing weapon. (In others, Gundams are just one advanced form of mobile suit, if they even had a commonality beyond name, which can be equaled or surpassed by others.) - The director of Mobile Suit Gundam SEED outright said that "Only a Gundam can beat a Gundam" was part of the series' design philosophy. In this case it was aided by the fact that most Gundams use Phase Shift Armor, which is immune to physical damage, meaning that only beam weapons can hurt them. Gundams themselves are also the first suits to have beam weapons, which are otherwise mounted on ships, making them too slow to be effective against agile mobile suits. It's not until late in the series that miniaturized beam weapons are suitable for mass production, and even then the Gundams have defenses against them (albeit less comprehensive than their defense against projectile weapons) that ordinary mobile suits lack. - In Mobile Suit Gundam 00, Celestial Being's Gundams are several orders more advanced than the forces of Earth's militaries, particularly in their use of the GN Drive solar furnace which grants nigh-infinite power. At one point all three of the world's superpowers devote nearly their entire armies, including specialized anti-Gundam units with souped-up mobile suits and the most elite pilots, just to take down Celestial Being's four guns. The best they can do is constantly attack the Gundams until their pilots are exhausted by the nonstop fighting; the machines themselves are completely unharmed. Their strategy collapses when three more Gundams, whose existence was completely unknown before, show up on the battlefield. Late in the first season, the Earth forces are handed a supply of GN Drives and a mobile suit designed to use them, which results in their finally being able to fight the Gundams on equal footing. By the time of the second season, the new Earth Sphere Federation has mass-production machines that outclass the original four Gundams in a straight fight...which, conveniently, is when the Mid Season Upgrades roll out. - Gundams in Mobile Suit Gundam: The Witch from Mercury are suits with a "Permet" Brain/Computer Interface that grants incredible reaction times and a overwhelming swarm of Attack Drones. Their GUND format would have become the standard decades earlier if the damage they do to their pilots hadn't gotten them outlawed. After Elan piloting the Gundam Pharact soundly defeats Guel, an Ace Pilot in a non-Gundam Ace Custom, he states that only a Gundam can defeat another Gundam. We're only shown to the contrary when a Gundam is heavily outnumbered and/or faces an anti-Permet Power Nullifier—and Gundams can outright ignore the latter by increasing the intensity of its system, although this puts a potentially fatal strain on the pilot. Even among Gundams, however, Gundam Aerial specifically has overcome the limitations and drawbacks of the GUND format, putting it in a class of its own — at its maximum potential, not even another Gundam can defeat it. - Played With in Hellsing where almost everyone constantly thinks that in order to kill a monster you either need a monster or to somehow become a monster. By contrast, Alucard, the biggest scariest monster around, thinks the only thing that can truly kill him is a human. This is because he got his ass kicked by Dr. Abraham Van Helsing in his backstory. - Heroic Age: All Nodos are so exceedingly powerful that the only thing that can fight a Nodos is another Nodos. Anything else is certain to get curb stomped. Even then, battles between Nodos can go on for quite a while. At one point, a Nodos battle lasts for 300 hours straight. - Holy Corpse Rising: Nikola points out to his peers that it is pretty much impossible for a regular human to fight a witch. To defeat them, they need witches of their own. - In JoJo's Bizarre Adventure, a Stand zig-zags this with the ways it can be harmed. A Stand is a telekinetic construct of its user's spirit, usually Invisible to Normals, and can only be harmed by another Stand (which also inflicts similar damage on its Stand User). However, a Stand User is just as vulnerable as normal people to being killed by conventional means, such as guns or swords; killing the Stand User will also destroy the Stand. \|\|Then there's how the spirits of Ghost Girl's Alley in Morioh are able to flat-out grab and destroy Stands by ripping them apart (as shown by how they destroy the Stand Killer Queen and Kira's spirit suffers a similar fate thanks to synchronization), though this might still technically count since Stands are spiritual-based and technically 'ghosts' themselves.\|\| - In Naruto: the jinchuriki of the Ten-Tails are immune to all ninjutsu, since the Ten-Tails is the progenitor of all chakra, and its power is virtually the same as the Natural Energy of the world itself. However this also means that Sages, who amplify their techniques with Natural Energy to use senjutsu, are able to harm them. - Neon Genesis Evangelion: The Evas \|\|who are pretty much Angels anyway\|\| are usually the only things on Earth which can fight an Angel and win, because only they can break the Angel's AT fields. To be more accurate, Angels project AT fields so strong that only the similarly-sized Evangelions possess the power necessary to breach them. There are cases where the Evas weren't directly responsible for the victory. One was beaten by blowing up a destroyer in its mouth, Ramiel was taken down by a positron cannon fed with the entire country's power supply (wielded by an Eva, but the cannon did the work). Certain other options exist to hit the 180 million megawatt figure stated to be necessary to overcome Ramiel's AT-Field, which was one of the strongest of all the Angels (behind Tabris and Zeruel, most likely). The largest nuclear devices, for instance, could likely knock out an Angel, though nuking them isn't exactly an ideal solution. - Puella Magi Madoka Magica seems to play with this trope. At first, the Magical Girl magic appears to be the only way to kill Witches (straight trope), but it is eventually revealed that \|\|Akemi Homura actually uses firearms and bombs\|\| (subversion) \|\|to kill Witches off, because of her comparatively weak offensive powers\|\|. And then, in episode 11, \|\|she blasts Walpurgis Night with literally thousands of explosions and doesn't even manage to scratch her (keep in mind she usually manages to kill witches off with barely one hundredth this firepower). For all intents and purposes, it turns out Walpurgis Night can't be stopped by either firepower or magic, and the only reason she is defeated is the Reality Warper power of Madoka's wish which causes a Cosmic Retcon to erase all witches from existence altogether\|\| (thus, double subversion). - \|\|It is possible to stop Walpurgisnacht, but it takes an large group of magical girls and they are all but guaranteed to sustain catastrophic casualties. Considering that Homura unleashes an army's worth of ammunition on Walpurgis to no avail while regular magical girls tend to use much less impressive amounts of firepower, it is possible that Walpurgisnacht is weaker to magical weapons, but just enough to turn the battle from "impossible" to "just barely doable".\|\| - A variant is used in Tokyo Ghoul. Ghoul Investigators hunt Ghouls using a weapon called a Quinque, which is made using a Ghoul's kagune. The audience learns this when Kureo Mado brings out his Quinque to kill Mrs. Fueguchi, who recognizes it as having been made from her husband. Later on, he brings out his newest Quinque to attempt to kill her daughter he had it made from Mrs. Fueguchi after killing her. However, this is the most effective way of fighting ghouls available to humans. They could, theoretically, beat them to death with their bare hands, but ghouls have a physical edge in that area. - In Yu-Gi-Oh! ZEXAL (both, anime and manga), the Numbers monsters cannot be destroyed in battle except against another Number. Subverted in that they can still be destroyed by card effects, and it's entirely possible to negate their invulnerability so that they can be destroyed by any monster. - Invoked in YuYu Hakusho by Kurama when he and Hiei fight against a robot made of an "indestructible" metal. Kurama leads its stretchable claws to crash into each other, which breaks the metal apart and allows him to destroy its exposed internal components. - In The Incredibles, Syndrome's Omnidroids are so tough that only their own claws can pierce their shell. Mr. Incredible beats the first one by climbing inside so that it attacks itself to get at him. \|\|In the climax, Bob realizes that he can use its recently detached claw as a spear to stop the Omnidroid terrorizing their city.\|\| - In the Arcia Chronicles, the Arc Words in The Prophecy of Eric, "Darkness will protect from darkness; light, from light," foreshadow the protagonists' discovery that the best way to combat dark or light magic is with more dark or light magic, respectively. - The Dresden Files: - Nicodemus Archleone, leader of the Denarians, is protected by the noose that hung Judas, which regenerates damage from any cause... \|\|except for itself.\|\| - In Dead Beat, only someone surrounded by necromantic energies could approach the nexus of the Darkhallow and live. The only way anyone but another necromancer could get near it was \|\|to use necromantic energies on something non-human, which technically isn't forbidden.\|\| Luckily, Harry just happened to be near \|\|a tyrannosaurus skeleton\|\| when he found this out... - In Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince there is a inversion. When the new (unnamed) Prime Minister is warned by the new Minister for Magic (Rufus Scrimgeour) that Voldemort is on the move, the PM remarks that the Ministry should be able to handle him since "you can do magic." Scrimgeour reminds him that Voldemort and his people can do magic too. In other words, magic is less effective when used against other magic users. - In The Hollows by Kim Harrison, law enforcement generally sends the same species as the criminal they're dealing with. They know all the ins and outs of how they work, and can defend themselves against their usual tactics. So vamps are sent after vamps, witches after witches, banshees after banshees, etcetera etcetera. Playing mix and match tends to have... poor consequences. - Journey to Chaos: Eric's plan at the start of Transcending Limitations is to become a god (partly) to be better able to defend himself from \|\|Gruffle\|\|, who is now a Grim Reaper. - Comes up with regard to the unmage in Magic Steps. Because the nature of unmagic is to negate true magic, all the power of the entire mage body of Winding Circle (one of the two great schools of magic in that part of the world) is useless against the unmage. The only thing that can counter unmagic is unmagic, which requires either another unmage (which Winding Circle doesn't have) or Sandry's unique power to "spin magic". - Percy Jackson and the Olympians: Beings such as gods and monsters can be hindered by mortal means, but not seriously harmed or destroyed. As such, most heroes carry weapons made from divine metals like celestial bronze, which can both kill monsters and prevent casualties by passing through mortals like a ghost. Demigods, being somewhere in between, are vulnerable to both mortal and divine weapons. - The Raven Tower: Gods can only be killed by an attack from another god or by losing all of their power. Of the known deicides by humans, one used a weapon that had been imbued by the victim god to strike its targets dead, and the other starves the god to death by cutting off the Human Sacrifice it needs to fulfill a Magically-Binding Contract it had entered. - In the Sword of Truth series, the D'Harans say that they are "the steel against steel so that the Lord Rahl can be the magic against magic." Since only the Lord Rahl has the ability to combat magical threats, everyone else has the duty to combat physical threats (and they tend to get concerned when he tries to deal with them himself). - In Angel season 4, Angelus figures out that the only thing that can harm the Beast is a knife crafted from its own rocky hide. Which it had conveniently crafted already as an offering to its master. - Buffy the Vampire Slayer: An episode has the gang threatened by the ghosts of native warriors. Buffy notices they can be hurt by their own weapons. - One of the spells in Charmed for defeating a ghost only works if it's said by another ghost. Fortunately, becoming a ghost doesn't require that you actually die, just be unconscious and near death. - Delete: Lucifer made a second AI tasked to destroy the first based on this theory. The first easily destroys it. - In Demons only vampires can kill other vampires. Anyone else first has to shoot them with a high-tech bullet containing their DNA reanimated by electricity, which turns them back into humans. - In Emerald City, Dorothy has been told that only a witch can kill a witch. So when she runs into the Witch of the East, who immobilizes her with magic and takes her gun, demanding to know how it works, Dorothy tricks her into pointing the gun at her own head and pulling the trigger, thus killing herself. - In Kamen Rider Zi-O, the villainous Another Riders have Resurrective Immortality and can only be beaten permanently by the powers of the Rider they imitate. Unfortunately, their existence has the side effect of retconning the heroic Riders out of existence; fortunately, Zi-O's whole gimmick is Power Copying. Fellow power-copier Kamen Rider Decade could presumably also do the job, but \|\|he spends most of the series pretending to be evil as part of a Stealth Mentor act.\|\| In The Movie, Kamen Rider Den-O (who's immune to changes in the timeline) demonstrates that the originals can do it too if they can dodge the retcon; later on in the series, \|\|mounting time paradoxes eliminate the retcon element, meaning that more Legend Riders actually get to help him battle their evil doppelgangers\|\|. Zi-O also eventually gets around the restriction by using a Mid-Season Upgrade, as it serves as an Immortal Breaker. - Supernatural: - One episode of Xena: Warrior Princess dealt with a villain making weapons out of Hephaestus's metal, which can only be damaged by other weapons made of Hephaestus's metal. \|\|Including, it turns out, Xena's chakram.\|\| - Older Than Feudalism example: In a poem ascribed to Theocritus (3rd century BCE), Hercules discovered that the only thing that could pierce the Nemean Lion's hide was its own claws. Hercules had already strangled it to death by this point — he just wanted to skin it. - In an undated Greek myth, the twin giants Otus and Ephialtes were so strong they could only be harmed by one another. Artemis tricked them into shooting one another with their spears, killing both brothers simultaneously. - "???"-type enemies in Alter A.I.L.A. Genesis are the enemies who use Psych-elemental attacks the most often, but they are also the only enemy weak to it. - Many other enemies do this too; robots use Shock attacks the most, and humanoids tend to use Force, both of which are the elements they're most weak to. - In Breath of Fire: Dragon Quarter, dragons can only be harmed by other dragons. This means that if Ryu transforms in a conventional battle (including the vast majority of boss battles), he is invincible. There is one exception: A certain enemy dragon can be harmed with conventional weapons if a transformed Ryu attacks first and "breaks the defense". - In Castlevania: Order of Ecclesia, the Dominus glyphs, which are required to kill Dracula in this particular game, are made from Dracula's own power. - Magus in Chrono Trigger, a Barrier Change Boss, can only be damaged by the element he's currently using. - Downplayed in that a Custom Robo commander can technically be defeated by relentless carpet bombing, but as robos become cheaper and more widely available robo commanders become the only economical means of combating other robo commanders, especially in densely populated areas. Then came, Rahu, which can only be beaten by robo commanders and is only beatable at all because, for reasons no one can explain, the world destroying menace decided to start using a robo. A toy robo rather than, say, a military grade one. - Destiny: Downplayed. Paracausal entities defy the laws of physics by definition, making them extremely difficult to kill by conventional means — it can be done, but generally requires More Dakka and There Is No Kill like Overkill. Therefore, the most reliable way to kill a paracausal being is with another paracausal being, who can throw punches in the same metaphysical weight class. This is how Guardians are able to kill Eldritch Abominations and Physical Gods despite being a bunch of self-trained Mildly Military irregulars, and likewise how they tend to die in droves against the same despite their powers making them one man armies. It's either that or somehow separate them from their paracausality, turning them into regular flesh and blood. - In The Elder Scrolls series, dragons are ageless beings with divine souls, akin to highly destructive angels. While anyone of sufficient ability can slay the physical form of a dragon, permanently killing one requires absorbing its soul, something only beings who also have dragon souls can do. In order to serve as a natural predator to the functionally immortal dragons, Akatosh, the draconic God of Time and chief deity of the Nine Divines Pantheon, created the Dragonborn, rare mortals gifted with the immortal souls of dragons. Naturally, dragons see these "Dovahkiin" as Humanoid Abominations for what they are capable of. The Player Character of Skyrim is the so-called "Last Dragonborn", sent to oppose the return of Alduin the World Eater, the "first born" of the dragons. - The Foreigner class of Fate/Grand Order is super effective against Berserkers and resists them, and the only way to deal double damage to them is to either use an Alter Ego or another Foreigner. - Final Fantasy Tactics: - The "Faith" stat dictates not only a mage's attack power, but how much damage they incur from enemy spells as well. A character with very low Faith is thus virtually immune to magic, while a character with high Faith is very vulnerable. - Low Faith isn't quite as good as it sounds, because it makes the character virtually immune to all magic, including healing spells. So a character can be impervious to magic, but only at the price of having to rely entirely on items for healing. Though it's actually not a bad trade-off in this game. - In Fire Emblem: Awakening the last act of the game is spent finding a way to stop Grima, the Big Bad of the game. Your party goes to a shrine to Naga in order to perform an awakening ceremony to hopefully give the Falchion the power to slay Grima. However, Naga reveals after the ceremony that slaying Grima with the Exalted Falchion will only put him into a 1000 year sleep, and only his own power is strong enough to truly slay him. \|\|This causes the Avatar to realize that since they were supposed to be the Fell Dragon's vessel, they can also tap into his power, and thus permanently kill him, at the cost of their life.\|\| - Used to justify being able to play the titular kaiju in the single-player campaign of Giants: Citizen Kabuto: \|\|After inadvertently freeing Kabuto to rampage over the Shattered World whilst defeating her mother at the end of her campaign, Delphi the Sea Reaper sorceress uses a shard of the magical Kabuto Stone to transform into a copy of Kabuto, in hopes of this making her strong enough to defeat it.\|\| \|\|Played with, in that whilst Delphi does eventually throw down with Kabuto in her transformed body, she only knocks it out briefly and is then defeated when it wakes up, forcing Baz the Mecc to kill Kabuto by shooting it in its groin-mounted weak spot.\|\| - God Eater: The Aragami are nigh unstoppable monsters made from Oracle Cells that can devour anything in their path. To fight them, humanity resorted to infusing people with Oracle Cells to make them part Aragami and armed them with weapons made of Oracle Cells that essentially eat the Aragami. - Iji was enhanced with nanomachines in order to combat the threat of alien invaders, because nanoweapons are about the only way to even scratch the alien's armor, much less go up against one and win. - The Dragon Element in the Monster Hunter games is the best one against Elder Dragons and the vast majority of weapons carrying Dragon Element are made from Elder Dragons to begin with. Further, the Dragon Element is stated by the devs to deal damage by attacking the mind. Elder Dragons are by far the most intelligent of monsters, and thus the most vulnerable. - In Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door, during the Inevitable Tournament, one of your enemies is a pair of metallic, spike-covered critters... you can't hurt them with jumping-attacks, hammers, fireballs, or anything else. In fact, it's a Hopeless Boss Fight... until Yoshi Jr. joins you for the rematch. By eating one and spitting it at the other, he's capable of damaging them - because, as it turns out, their only vulnerability is themselves. - In Persona 3 and Persona 4, Personas are actually \|\|Shadows tamed and controlled by a sentient being's ego (with Shadows themselves being the coalesced feelings of despair and loathing in all people, so it can be said that Shadows are the Persona of humanity)\|\|. As such, they can (and have) \|\|turn back on whomever they're a Shadow of and consume them,\|\| but are also the most effective way to fight Shadows. - Pokémon: - The Dragon-type is super effective against only one type: itself. Nevermind its Ice-type and Fairy-type weaknesses, sometimes pitting another Dragon-type is your best bet due to their sheer strength. - Similarly, the Ghost-type also has a weakness to itself, even though it's also vulnerable to Dark-type. Since Giratina and the Dreepy are both Ghost- and Dragon-type, they are often the best counter to themselves. - Hoopa Confined and Lunala are both dual-type Psychic/Ghost, so they have the dubious honor of having the only type combination with a double weakness to one of their own types! * : Had a Pokémon with this type combination existed in the first generation, it would've truly had no weaknesses—it was immune to Ghost, Bug-type moves did neutral damage, and Dark didn't exist. Not like those first two mattered, what with said moves being horribly underpowered. - In Pokémon Red and Blue, the Psychic type, while resistant to itself on the Elemental Rock-Paper-Scissors tree, was such a Game-Breaker that the only reliable counter was another Psychic. This was severely nerfed for Pokémon Gold and Silver onwards, where the new Steel and Dark types (respectively) resisted and No Selled Psychic attacks. - When you start messing around with the Elemental Rock-Paper-Scissors, you may start getting combinations of types that wouldn't normally resist themselves paired with a type that is weak to said type—like how the Fighting/Steel Lucario is weak to Fighting, the Bug/Grass Parasect is weak to Bug, and the Steel/Ground Steelix is weak against Ground. note : These types are: Ground, Fighting, Flying, Rock, Fairy, and Bug. No, Normal doesn't count. - In the Pokémon XD spin-off, Shadow attacks are universally super-effective against everything... except another Shadow Pokemon. Keeping one or two Shadow Pokemon on your team that happen to know some ordinary moves is therefore a good strategy (at least for a while, since Shadow Pokemon cannot level up). - Types that usually resist themselves note : Fire, Water, Grass, Electric, Ice, Poison, Psychic, Dark and Steel get a taste of this in the Inverse Battles introduced in Generation 6. Ice especially as it has no other resistances in normal gameplay, so a pure Ice type in an Inverse Battle would only take super effective damage from Ice attacks. - R-Type: The series indicates that the only weapon that is truly effective against the Bydo is the Force Device, a semi-controllable pod that can be attached to either the front or back of the player's ship. The big secret of the Force Device's construction is that it contains an embryonic Bydo lifeform as its core, and the source of its power. Thus, only the Bydo can truly harm the Bydo. - In RuneScape there are two ways to definitely kill a god: using an Elder Artefact from The Old Gods, or a Wave-Motion Gun fueled by divine energy. - The Mortal Blade in Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice can kill immortal creatures, but drawing it from its sheath kills you on the spot. As such, only an immortal can actually use the thing; fortunately, Sekiro qualifies. - Sonic 3 & Knuckles: The first form of the last boss must be damaged with its own missiles. Despite the fact that you are invincible, ramming the boss not only does no damage, but wastes the precious little seconds you have. - This is how the Cerebrates are defeated in StarCraft. "For the Dark Templar use energies that are much like my own, and it is by these energies that they have caused me harm." - In Tokyo Mirage Sessions ♯FE, Mirages can only be defeated by the power of another Mirage. Fortunately, some of the Mirages are willing to lend their power to humans, making them Mirage Masters. - In Touhou Puppet Dance Performance the titular puppets can only be harmed by other puppets. - Implied in TRON 2.0. In that universe, human "Users" digitized and sent to Cyberspace are almost Physical Gods. With one corrupted User unleashing a Zombie Apocalypse over multiple computer networks, and the people behind him about to upload an army of mercenaries to conquer the computer world so they control the human one, Ma3a resorts to this logic and uploads the protagonist in desperation. - In Valkyria Chronicles, Selvaria Bles is a Valkyria whose powers make her a seemingly unstoppable warrior who singlehandedly turns the tide of battles. The only person who manages to defeat her with her Valkyria powers active is \|\|Alicia\|\|, who is also a Valkyria. Selvaria does, however, turn off her Valkyria powers later to fight fairly. - Warcraft III: - The Siege Engine is basically a steam-powered battering ram: it deals high damage to buildings, can't attack ground units, and has building-type armor... which is particularly weak to siege-type damage, which all factions' artillery have. Downplayed, in that killing it with normal units is only a bit longer. - Ethereal units are a subversion: they can cast spells but can't attack and can only be harmed by magic, but two ethereal units can't attack each other. Two ethereal units can kill each other if they both have offensive spells, however. - The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt: Unless a Higher Vampire is finished off by another Higher Vampire, it will regenerate any injury. However, that regeneration can take decades or centuries in case of serious damage, so humans can still defeat Higher Vampires. - The Mechon of Xenoblade Chronicles 1 are all but immune to conventional weapons. However, weapons crafted from trashed Mechon parts can cut through their armor just fine. - Played With in Dies Irae. While killing an Ewigkeit user is doable in theory for a normal human, in actual practice it is nigh impossible. This is due to the way Die Ewigkeit works as it gives it's users effectively extra lives on top of a whole host of other abilities. Thus the only really effective way to kill one is to use weapons that take "several lives on each use", and normal such weapons like bombs and nukes just aren't practical. Hence why Ahnenerbe exists, weapons wielded by Ewigkeit users, as they attack the soul directly and can take all those extra lives with more limited attacks. The only known instance of a normal human killing an Ewigkeit user was \|\|Shirou killing Wilhelm at the end of Kasumi's route\|\|, and that relied on a very specific loophole created by the users own powers. - Played With in Fate/stay night and related works. Servants are said to only be vulnerable to other Servants, but while they are immune to conventional methods of attack (including military hardware up to and including nuclear bombs), in reality any ability infused with magical energy should be able to harm them. In practice, however, Servants are so superhuman that there are extremely few modern magi capable of actually landing a hit on them, meaning that the only way to reliably harm a Servant is through another Servant. Rin claims that even a paper knife can harm one, but only as long as it's wielded by a Servant and infused with mana. That being said, it's entirely possible for a magus to harm a Servant under the right conditions; Rin was able to claim one of Berserker's twelve lives by catching him off-guard with her magical jewels, \|\|and Shirou's copies of legendary weapons allow him to fight Servants for a limited time and even defeat them\|\|. - The titular Mons of Battle Kreaturez are protected by invisible ReinforceFields that spike in response to duress, making them Nigh-Invulnerable. Compounding this, they also have a Healing Factor that allows them to recover from most injuries. This means a rampaging Kreature can only reliably be stopped by another Kreature, necessitating the art of Kreature Taming. - In Homestuck, it's believed that the only reliable way to kill a nigh-invulnerable First Guardian (or a creature possessing its powers) is to send another to fight it. This isn't precisely true; it's just that the First Guardians possess so much raw power that they're in their own tier, and very little even comes close. It is suggested, for instance, that God-Tiered Vriska at her full strength, making full use of her luck-manipulation powers, and cheating her ass off (as she usually does) would have a chance at defeating one... if a slim chance. - The Last Halloween: A fundamental rule of immortality — "immortals can kill other immortals" — is revealed when \|\|Ba'al crushes Robert to death\|\|. - An interesting example in Tower of God with Arie swordsmanship. Known to be uniquely powerful and impossible to describe, Word of God even stated that the only way to defeat a user of Arie swordsmanship is to either be overwhelmingly stronger than them or to be better at Arie swordsmanship than them. - False Swipe Gaming: Downplayed with Snorlax in Gen 2. While anyone can technically defeat Snorlax, the only way to knock out Snorlax in one hit without a Critical Hit is for another Snorlax to use Self-Destruct. - British forces in the Battle of the Atlantic, fighting against the German U-boat menace, were commanded by a submariner. - Frequently inverted by the actual real life military. - Often, the best way to kill or disable a hostile unit is using something completely different against it; for example, battleships fell out of favor after WW2 because too many of them had been destroyed by aircraft, and a tank's worst enemy isn't necessarily always another tank. This is often because the best use of tanks is in destroying supply lines, rather than because tanks are not effective against other tanks. - Averted with submarines, Hot Sub-on-Sub Action notwithstanding. WW2 and earlier subs, largely blind underwater and equipped mainly with unguided torpedoes, were basically incapable of attacking each other at all unless the target happened to be on the surface (in which case it would have been just as vulnerable to gunfire and aircraft), and while more modern ones are equipped with weapons that can seek out and destroy another submarine those weapons can often be just as easily be mounted on other platforms (such as helicopters, against which a submerged sub under attack cannot even return fire). - Until cannons improved, the best (but not only) way to sink an ironclad ship was to have another ironclad, or better yet multiple ironclads, duel it until either the funnel or steering system was damaged. After this the wooden ships could join in and theyd all pound on the enemys armor with their guns until something gave way. - Diamonds can only be scratched by other diamonds.... Or even harder substances. The first of which, cubic boron nitride, was synthesized in 1957. - Averted with scorpion venom. Scorpions are immune to the venom of their own species. - On that note, antivenom in general. Created from the very venom it's used to treat. - Even today with modern rocketry, guidance, computers, and radar successfully intercepting an incoming ballistic missile with one of your own is an incredibly difficult and still not completely reliable task. For the early to mid-Cold War anti-ballistic missile designers tasked with protecting their cities from the enemy it was practically impossible to get their anti-missile missiles to hit incoming ICBMs with enough accuracy to stop them. So what did they do? Give up on the concept of a direct hit and arm their missiles with proximity fuses and nuclear warheads of their own so a near-miss would still hopefully vapourize, melt, disable the electronics of, or trigger the premature (and incomplete) detonation of the enemy warhead. For interceptions in atmosphere the yield was usually a few to a few dozen kilotons. For interceptions in space where you couldn't rely on atmospheric blast effects and where collateral damage was less of a concern the payloads were either neutron bombs or warheads optimized to radiate in x-rays with yields between a few hundred kilotons to a few megatons hoping to fry enemy warheads with radiation. In the Soviet Union such systems were only deployed around Moscow and in America it was only deployed briefly around missile silos in the middle of nowhere as oddly enough some people were nervous about the presence of facilities which were supposed to result in nuclear detonations over the cities they lived in. - In addition to the above during the brief period in the early Cold War before ICBMs became commonplace and everybody expected a nuclear war to be fough with bombers the US air force decided they needed a way to reliably kill large fleets of fast Soviet nuclear bombers while guided missile technology was in its infancy. Their solution? Take normal interceptors and arm them with unguided rockets which make up for the fact that they will inevitably miss by virtue of the fact the rocket was tipped with a tactical nuclear bomb on a 12 second fuse with a lethal radius of 300 meters.	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/OnlyLikeCanCutLike
Domino Mask - TV Tropes "That thing on his face, it's a mask. He wears it in case some Earthling sneaks onto the Interceptor — while we're in space, mind you — and goes 'Ha ha! The Green Lantern on my planet is Hal Jordan! I'm telling everyone!'" A type of mask that covers only the eyes and the area around them. Often called a "Halloween mask" by people unaware of the technical term. This style of mask originated in Venice, Italy, for use during Carnival, but now is strongly associated with the superhero genre. Its usefulness as a disguise varies; in Real Life, while covering the eye area is surprisingly effective against people who don't know the masked individual personally, it doesn't obscure enough of the face to fool anyone who's familiar with them out of costume. Suspension of Disbelief may be required when the hero is rescuing close friends or family members who aren't in on the secret. note : Sometimes, once they're out of danger, the family member (especially the hero's parents) may reveal that they weren't fooled for a moment. In animation and comics, these masks will frequently be Expressive Masks that somehow bind to the wearer's face with no means of visible support. Theatre-savvy readers might assume the wearer is using spirit gum, but the mask often goes from drawer to face without any adhesive applied. Sometimes this effect is achieved by having makeup of the same color as the mask applied to the skin visible through the eye holes. A domino mask will often compose the third part of Coat, Hat, Mask. For villains, a domino mask is also one of the standard accoutrements of the cartoon burglar. They are also commonly associated with raccoons, famously sneaky and thieving animals whose eye markings resemble the domino mask. Bonus points if the mask also removes the wearer's irises and pupils. For other less heroic variants, see Malevolent Masked Man. A Sleep Mask is generally a similar sort of shape, only without the eye holes. The glasses involved in literal Clark Kenting, by disrupting the features around the eyes, derives from a similar idea. ## Examples: - Sailor Moon: - Tuxedo Mask wore a white one. - Sailor Venus wore a frilly one when she was still Sailor V (and yes, she wears one in Codename: Sailor V) - Sailor Moon originally wore a similar mask in the manga but discarded it so often that it eventually disappeared from her character design entirely. - An early prototype for the main cast also depict Sailor Mars and Sailor Jupiter with costumes that also included slimmer, pointed versions of this type of mask. These were removed when the team's uniforms were streamlined. - Red Mantle of Haunted Junction wears a mask and costume suspiciously similar to Tuxedo Mask. A connection made even more explicit in an episode mid-way through the anime in which Haruto has to deal with a group of girls calling themselves the Sailors XO and imagines summoning Red Mantle, complete with top hat. Red Mantle begs him not to make him wear the hat. After an entire episode in which his sister, Blue Hanten, attempts to force him to take off his mask to see what's underneath (assuming he's hiding an ugly face), it comes out that he wears the mask because his beauty is so overwhelming that it will cause anyone regardless of gender or preference to fall in love with him and suffer from a massive headache as the effects wear off. - The Kryptonbrand assassin team in Knight Hunters: Weiß Side B wear these as their trademark. - Papillon from Buso Renkin wears a purple one of these that kind of looks like a butterfly (hence his name). - There's not really a term for what Hentai Kamen wears... - Characters of Hayate the Combat Butler often wear these as their Paper-Thin Disguise, although other people often see through the masks. - Phoenix in Honey Honey No Suteki Na Bouken wears a red mask resembling a Mardi Gras mask. Almost as oddly, it is also frilly. - Kotetsu T. Kaburagi of Tiger & Bunny wears a domino mask whenever he's on duty as Wild Tiger, both in and out of his Powered Armor. - Ransack from Transformers: Cybertron for some reason has his eyes drawn in a way so that he appears to be wearing a domino mask. Since Ransack is a Decepticon, this was actually supposed to make him look like a burglar. - Simone (a.k.a Seine No Hoshi) wears a frilly red one, similar to Sailor V. - Happy Heroes: The primary antagonist, Big M., wears a domino mask. - Motu Patlu: In "Super Duper Men", Motu and Patlu's superhero outfits feature masks of this kind. - Nana Moon: One of Keke's many transformations is a superhero in a red-and-blue costume that looks a lot like Superman's. This transformation's costume includes a red domino mask. - The Spirit: The titular character is one of the most famous and earliest examples. The first issue of Darwyn Cooke's series even offers a Hand Wave for why this works: Ginger Coffee: So what's with all your drama? I mean, the hat and mask don't hide much... is it how you get your freak on? The Spirit: [sighs, then covers Ginger's eyes] Describe me. Ginger Coffee: Riggght. I get it. You're a big blue average with a distraction stuck to his face. - Batman: - And the rest of the DC Comics characters: - Most of the human Green Lanterns, but not John Stewart. He immediately discards the mask when his ring tries to give him one, stating that he refuses to hide who and what he is. Guy Gardner also goes without mask, which is mostly an ego thing in his case. Hal Jordan's also covers and hides the shape of his nose. Simon Baz doesn't wear a domino mask. Instead he wears a mask that covers his entire head except his mouth; effectively hiding his identity. - Kyle Rayner has a sort of... crab thing on his face instead. Despite covering substantially more of his face than the others, it seems to be less effective at hiding his identity; several people who were familiar with his artwork recognized it as exactly the sort of thing he'd design. - Most of the Green Arrow family, including Ollie Queen himself, his son Connor (Green Arrow II), Roy Harper (Speedy I), and Mia Dearden (Speedy II). Roy temporarily wore Cool Shades during his stint as Arsenal, but he's back to the domino mask now. - Katana in her current costume. In older incarnations, she wore fuller head coverings. - Terra in Teen Titans. Her Post-Crisis counterpart Atlee doesn't wear one, though. - Ghost Fox Killer of the Chinese super-team the Great Ten. - Both versions of the Trickster in The Flash, except for when the first did a HeelFace Turn of a sort. - Knockout, of the New Gods and Secret Six. - Superman's cousin Supergirl wears a red domino mask during her Red Lantern stint in Red Daughter of Krypton. In Supergirl: Cosmic Adventures in the 8th Grade, her enemy Superior Girl wears a purple domino mask. - One-time Superman villain Radion wears a dark-orange domino mask in Krypton No More. - In The Girl with the X-Ray Mind, the members of a criminal gang known as the Bank Busters wear tiny black domino masks. - Way of the World: Krallian Rangers wear small, pointy brown domino masks. - Wonder Woman (1942): - Doctor Poison (Maru) wore a black domino mask over the false face mask she wore to conceal her gender. - Mask (Nina Close) wore a domino mask and wig to hid her identity while acting as a villain. A large part of the reason these actually worked as a disguise was that her husband had essentially beaten her into acting meek, quiet and submissive at all times and as Mask she was the opposite of these things. - Wonder Woman's daughter Stephanie Trevor when she took up her mother's mantle in Superman & Batman: Generations. - Black Canary occasionally uses one Depending on the Artist. Usually it's used in modern works only on the first Black Canary (Dinah Drake) to distinguish her with the second one (Dinah Lance). In the classic Black Canary's case, a mask works well to hide her identity because she already wears a wig (her natural hair is black not blonde) and thus her identity is hidden even more. - DC Comics Bombshells sees Batwoman and the Batgirls with painted-on domino masks. - This is less prevalent in Marvel Comics, but happens occasionally: - Several characters from Watchmen, including Nite Owl I, the Comedian, and Ozymandias. Nite Owl I also points out the advantages of spirit gum adhesive versus a simple string or piece of elastic when wearing this kind of mask. - The whole family of The Umbrella Academy, until they disband, even though they don't have secret identities. The Rumor puts on the mask during the first story to help her get in the groove of being a superhero again. - The Phantom Lady would wear them occasionally in the 1940s. When she bothered with a mask at all. - The Phantom. - The Beagle Boys, Scrooge McDuck's primary foes, who first appeared in comic books of the 1950s; also an example of the burglar Sub-Trope. It has been repeatedly lampshaded and parodied, and their masks have been revealed at one point to actually be carnival masks because they could not afford anything better, but eventually decided that those masks had become part of their image. - Pulp-era character the Domino Lady. - Any comic version of Green Hornet and Kato. - Ditto for any comics featuring The Lone Ranger. - Also, some versions of Zorro when it isn't a bandana. - Implied in The Private Eye by P.I.'s eye makeup. He takes it off and puts it on several times in the series. Also notably inspired by a friend of his mother who was shown wearing a legitimate domino mask. - Older Than Television: In The Phantom of the Opera, Christine and Raoul wear white and black domino masks to the masquerade ball so they can meet without the Phantom noticing. - Part of the required uniform of burglars operating with a Thieves' Guild licence in Discworld, along with the black and white hooped jumper, cloth cap, and bag marked "SWAG". That's how you know they're official burglars, and not just random housebreakers. - In Starfighters of Adumar, Wedge wants to go out and think without being recognized. His local guide gives him a mask that's a little more concealing than a domino mask, but not much it covers his forehead, too. And it works. He does wince at the color, saying that lavender isn't him, but she tells him that that's the point. - Rudyard Kipling did a funny poem, "Pink Dominoes," in which the narrator doesn't recognize until it's too late that the girl with whom he's necking isn't his fiancée, because she's wearing a pink domino just like the one his girl had been wearing to the dance. Fortunately, his sweetheart didn't catch him kissing the other girl.... Then Jenny came, and I saw with shame She'd doffed her domino; And I had embraced an alien waist— But I did not tell her so. - In Wearing the Cape, domino masks or their equivalent are often worn by superheroes whose civilian identities are already publicly known. It's an expected part of the costume, but is also useful for making them unrecognizable to anyone who doesn't know them personally, allowing them a measure of privacy in public—a humorous inversion of movie-stars tendency to don baseball caps and sunglasses to go to Starbucks. - Some of the heroes in Relativity wear domino masks... and at least one villain dons one in imitation of the heroes. August Moon: I can see why you capes like the costumes and the masks. Very liberating. - Ernest in The Poster Children wears one for crimefighting or otherwise in the field. June notes that it isn't meant to keep his identity secret (since no BPHA-certified hero has a secret identity), but rather to look professional and also provide night-vision, thermal-vision, and be used as corrective lenses since Ernest wears glasses. - As might be expected from her name, the costume of the Domino Lady includes a domino mask. - Josie, Mae, and Akiko of The League Of Secret Heroes gain these as part of their superhero costumes. - Sherlock Holmes - In The Adventure of Charles Augustus Milverton, Watson makes a pair of domino masks out of black silk for himself and Holmes as they are preparing to break into the titular blackmailer's house. During the heist, they witness Milverton's murder by a third party and Watson nearly gets caught in the ensuing chaos, providing the police with a rather vague description of a man with a square jaw, mustache and a mask over his eyes, but is never found out in the end. - In A Scandal in Bohemia, the mysterious royal personage who comes to visit Holmes is wearing a black visard mask to conceal his identity. Holmes of course has already worked out who he is, so the client just tears off the mask and gets down to business. - Stick Cat: In "Two Catch a Thief", a burglar breaks into Goose's and Tiffany's apartments to steal all their valuables. Said burglar is wearing a black domino mask. - In Arrow, Oliver Queen initially averts this by using greasepaint over the eye area. Barry Allen suggests one of these, causing Oliver to snark back that he should find one that "conforms perfectly to my face and doesn't affect my ability to aim while I'm on the run!" Barry takes up the challenge and makes a black domino mask of compressible microfabric that he leaves as his parting gift. Roy and Thea later wear these, and the Black Canaries have a downplayed version where the masks are bigger, so slightly more of their faces are hidden. Oliver, Roy, and Thea's masks are more justified as they wear hoods, which obscures their heads more. Huntress also adopts a mask even though her real identity is well known, copying the 'masked vigilante' look from Oliver. - Robin, the Riddler, Joker, Catwoman and Penguin from Batman (1966). - Charmed (1998): In "Witches in Tights" the Halliwell sisters are turned into superheroes by a spell and given costumes with domino masks. The masks carry some sort of enchantment that clouds their thinking, making them act like superheroes instead of questioning what's happening to them. - In The Flash (2014), the Villain of the Week Trajectory wears one as part of her speedster outfit. In a later episode, the outfit is repurposed for Jesse Quick, still with one of these masks. - In a season 4 episode, \|\|Iris\|\| temporarily gains super speed and wears one when she has to save the day. - The end of season 4 and the first episodes of season 5 reveal the mysterious girl who appears throughout season 4 to be \|\|Barry and Iris' daughter, Nora\|\|. She also wears a domino mask as part of her speedster outfit. - In fairness, Jesse and \|\|Iris\|\| have their hair tied back and most people probably wouldn't be able to get a good look at them if they are moving fast. \|\|Nora\|\| gets a haircut after her first few appearances throughout season 4, and in season 5 is shown to have the same hairstyle as a superhero as she does as a civilian. However, not many people would really know her, \|\|since she's from the future\|\|. - As mentioned, The Green Hornet. - Also as mentioned The Lone Ranger. - A wish-fulfilling symbiote swarm in Sanctuary takes the shape of full body armour and a domino mask, in line with Walter's and later, \|\|Kate\|\|'s expectations of what a superhero should look like. - Wonder Woman: - In the pilot, "The New Original Wonder Woman", the Amazons on Paradise Island wore these types of masks during the competition to determine who would become Wonder Woman. Diana's mother, Hippolyta, forbade her from competing, but somehow couldn't recognize her in the mask. - In "Fausta, The Nazi Wonder Woman", the titular imposter wears a domino mask with her Wonder Woman disguise. Despite the fact that Diana herself has never worn such a mask (except as described above), everyone is completely fooled; Steve penetrates her disguise only after a Something They Would Never Say moment. - In Queen of Swords a Distaff Counterpart to Zorro, the heroine also wears a black mask that covers only half of her face. This mask is made from her deceased mother's black lace shawl. As usual, no one recognizes her, despite her being extremely attractive with and without the mask. - Zorro. He actually wore a full face mask in the original pulp stories; the domino mask didn't come until the Douglas Fairbanks films. - The Domino Lady, a Pulp Magazine Proto-Superhero, took her name from the type of mask she wore. - Part of the crime-fighting uniforms of The Aquabats! are domino masks. As well as a vital part of the Aquacadet uniforms. - Suggs and several other members of Madness wear domino masks when they're dressed as criminals in the music video for the song "Shut Up". - Taichi Ishikari wears a domino mask as part of his entrance attire. - Katie Lea Burchill as "The Beautiful Nightmare" in mockery of Gregory Helms. - Crazy Star wrestled with a domino mask in her rookie year but after that time got a larger, more elaborate and concealing mask. - According to the rules of Hero System, a domino mask counts as disguise. - These are sported by some of the heroes in Sentinels of the Multiverse. In particular, a domino mask is one of the few things that Energy Being Dr Medico actually wears; it doesn't disguise him, because he's made of bright yellow energy and is instantly recognisable from a considerable distance, he doesn't have a nose or mouth, and while he has eyes, they're hard to tell apart from the rest of him with the glow, so he uses the domino mask as a sort of "look here" marker. - Worn by Sly Cooper. However, since Sly's a raccoon, his face under the mask presumably looks the same. - City of Heroes, of course, features standard domino masks and dozens of variations in the costume creator. - The Sims 2 offers all three kinds as full-face makeup: a black mask for burglars, a red mask for supervillains (that matches the Spikes of Villainy supervillain uniform) and a blue mask for Captain Hero. - Blue Mages from Final Fantasy V wear these. Future incarnations of the class tend to drop this from the design, and specific blue mages like Strago, Quistis and Kimahri don't wear them, but the masks came back in XIV and Explorers. - Leo of Lunar: Eternal Blue wears one when he goes through a sort of identity crisis and pretends to be some kind of superhero. Note that absolutely everyone recognizes him, but they decide there's no harm in playing along. One of the Fanservice bromide items depicts his sister Mauri in a similar costume with the same type of mask, though she never actually wears the costume during the game. - Will of the Elite Four in Pokémon Gold and Silver/ Crystal and HeartGold/SoulSilver wears one. - The Pokémon Riolu has one of these, adding to the black-and-blue color scheme of its fur. - Takenaka Hanbe from Sengoku Basara wears a purple one, for no apparent reason. It goes well with his outfit though. - Some dialogue hints that he wears it because it's good for concealing his emotions. - Team Fortress 2: The Spy's other miscellaneous item is Le Party Phantom, a Masquerade mask. It's larger than most examples listed here, covering the entire upper half of his face that was exposed by his balaclava. - Dorothy Albright from Arcana Heart wears a red one, though she's a young Stage Magician and not a burglar. - Masks like this are an can be chosen on the creation screen for DC Universe Online. If one doesn't choose it there (or one of it's variations) the style(s) can be bought at Hero/Villain's HQ. Calculator or Oracle will also send you an item with this style as it's default appearance after clearing the tutorial. - In The Wonderful 101, all members of the Wonderful 100 put on these masks when assuming their identities. This includes temporary members that you pick up along the way. - \|\|The final boss dons a domino mask in his "Wonder-Jergingha" form.\|\| - In The YAWHG, the Green Man and Blue Lady will wear these if they choose to spend a week fighting crime in the Slums. - Dr. Zeke wears one in Robopon 2. - Guile from Chrono Cross wears a golden one. The reason why he wears it is unknown, but when he takes it off, he shocks his friend so much that she loses some time of her lifespan or so. - Inklings from Splatoon have natural black markings around their eyes that give the impression of a domino mask. - The Big Bad of Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain, Skull Face, wears one. Combined with his stetson, three-piece suit, and leather boots, it makes him look like a twisted knockoff of Zorro. - Persona 5: The Protagonist wears a slightly triangular white and black bird mask that covers around his eyes and the bridge of his nose, but leaves the rest of his face visible. While the rest of the Phantom Thieves also wear masks that expose the lower half of their face, special mention goes to Harus Mask, which is a simple, traditional, plain-black domino mask. - ARMS: Most of the human cast wear these as their normal attire, and so do their fans. Apparently the mask is part of how they control their ARMS power; when they take it off, their arms become much less stable. - The base raccoon skin in Super Animal Royale is literally wearing a tied-on mask. The alternate skins are not. - Maxwell of Triangle Strategy wears a mask like this in conjunction with a nice hat. \|\|After his defeat at Avlora's hands, his mask and hat are recovered by House Wolffort — Roland starts wearing them to protect his identity while Faking the Dead.\|\| - In Everybody Edits Flash, the Robber smiley appears with a black mask around its eyes. - Justice Squad: Worn by both Capeman and Ultrawoman. - Red Panda from Red Panda Adventures wears one. Most likely inspired by those listed under Comic Books and Radio. - Whateley Universe: Several of the students at Superhero School Whateley Academy wear them in their fall term combat finals, including Aquerna and Belphegor. The effectiveness of them is lampshaded by Wallflower, who mentions that she needs to use a lot of makeup around them in order to blend the mask against her face. - The Anthropomorphic Personification of 4Chan's /co/ board, Conrad, and would-be mascot for /aco/, J acolyne, both wear this kind of mask being a send up of The Spirit for the former and The Lone Ranger note : with her own native american (read: Mexican) sidekick /Aco/rn for the latter. As with many examples these masks do move with their faces. Depending on the Artist Conrad's eyes are not shown, in contrast to Jacolyne. - The superhero guide, How to Hero hates these and suggests that superheroes looking to protect their identities look into wearing a balaclava or something else that will cover their entire head instead. - Too many cartoons to count have the domino mask, black and white horizontally striped shirt, and a large sack as standard issue Cat Burglar equipment. This particular trope is Older Than Television, so it didn't start with cartoons. - Phantom Limb in The Venture Bros. - Also \|\|Professor Impossible\|\| when he joins the Revenge Society. - And in the sixth season, Blue Morpho and Kano—as an homage to Green Hornet and Kato—wear blue ones when they're out fighting crime. When \|\|Monarch and #21\|\| take up the mantle to hide their motives, they wear the same masks along with the rest of the outfit. - Wide Wale and his henchman Rocco lampshade the trope when they reveal that, since they know \|\|The Monarch\|\| personally, a domino mask and fedora don't do much to conceal the Blue Morpho's identity. - Quick Draw McGraw wears one as El Kabong. - The title character from the short-lived Stripperella. - Darkwing Duck. - Homer uses one of these to disguise the identity of a raccoon on an episode of The Simpsons. It doesn't change the animal's appearance at all. - Robin's mask in Teen Titans (2003) is worn constantly and manages to act as his eyes and eyebrows (showing frowns, eye-widening, blinks). - The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles are an interesting variation on this. The purpose of their masks is not to disguise them (which is almost impossible anyway) but to differentiate among them. Without their coloured masks, letter belt buckles and individual weapons, they all look alike note : In the original comic, the turtles all wore red masks but had different skin colors (Mikey, for instance, was a brownish olive-green), but this was rarely remembered since the comic was black-and-white, and color was only used in covers and promotional art. The character designers of the '80s cartoon thought it more interesting to color-code their masks instead.. - In Kim Possible, the members of Team Go wear domino masksexcept that Shego never did, even before she quit to become a villain. - When Terry had to fight against his own Batsuit in Batman Beyond, he decided to put on the domino mask from Nightwing's display case to disguise himself. The old batsuits had a few tears and rips in them. - Looney Tunes: Yosemite Sam always wears one, whether his role of the day is pirate, western bandito, knight, or Civil War general. - Swiper from Dora the Explorer. - In The Little Rascals episode "The Zero Hero", Alfalfa wears a domino mask as part of his homemade Alpha-Man costume. - In Beware the Batman, Katana wears a domino mask along with the same black leather jacket she wears as Tatsu. - The titular character of Miraculous Ladybug and her crime fighting partner, Chat Noir both wear one of these — they're a big factor in the heroes' near-ludicrous cases of Cannot Spit It Out and Unrequited Love Switcheroo. The two somehow do not recognize each other. However, since magic is involved, it could be assumed that there is some sort of Glamour making them unable to recognize each other. - Confirmed. In the Miraculous World: New York special, Uncanny Valley explains to Marinette that the masks use quantum masking to conceal their identities, but as an android, she is able to see through it. This is actually a plot point, since \|\|Adrien gives up his miraculous after accidentally destroying Uncanny with his Cataclysm. Thankfully she is revived using Ladybug's World-Healing Wave\|\|, meaning Uncanny needs to give him his miraculous back. - Daemona Prune of Phantom Investigators wears a green one as part of her PI costume.	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/OnlyMyEyesNeedAMask
Only One Plausible Suspect - TV Tropes The story involves a mystery where someone has committed a crime or misdemeanor of some sort, and neither the protagonists nor the audience are supposed to know who the guilty party is. However, The Law of Conservation of Detail and the rules of Fair-Play Whodunnit state that the culprit must be a character who appears in the story before The Reveal. It can't be someone the audience has never seen before, and if the mystery is a big part of the plot, it can't really be a minor background character either. It has to be someone important. In Fair Play Whodunnits and many other types of Mystery Fiction, the writers usually introduce several potential suspects to the crime, and in the end one of them is found to be guilty, while the others turn out to be mere red herrings. However, in some pieces of fiction (typically ones where the mystery isn't the main driving force of the plot), there are no red herrings, and the audience can rather easily deduce the culprit, since they're the only possible major character who could have done it. Either there are no other significant characters among the suspects, or all the other major characters can be ruled out because they're the protagonists, series regulars (in the case of serial media), or other types of characters that aren't typically used as a culprit, such as kids or animals. Of course, even if the audience can guess who did it, it isn't as easy for the protagonists to solve the mystery, since for them the guilty party could be any minor character, or even someone who doesn't appear in the story at all. It's only the audience who can rule these people out. If the writers don't care about the rules mentioned above, they can make the culprit turn out to be some completely unexpected minor character, or even someone we've never met before, but these kind of mysteries tend to be much rarer (and more unsatisfying) than the ones that follow the rules. This trope can overlap with Chekhov's Gunman, if the guilty character doesn't seem to have any proper function in the story before The Reveal. Contrast this trope with Narrowed It Down to the Guy I Recognize, where the viewers can guess the culprit not because he's the only suspicious major character, but because he's the only one played by a major actor. Warning: the examples below contain spoilers... Though, perhaps, rather obvious ones. ## Examples - Attack on Titan: The female Titan is \|\|Annie Leonhart\|\|. Armin figures out that she's another human-shifting Titan almost as soon as she appears, but her true identity is a mystery for most of the first season. What makes it obvious is that we know from Eren Yeager's transformation that the Titan form shares certain features with their normal human form (such as hair color). The female Titan is blonde, and there are only two blonde women of note on the show: Krista and \|\|Annie\|\|. Krista was shown to be elsewhere during the female Titan's attack, so that just leaves \|\|Annie\|\|. - In the early Android Saga of Dragon Ball, Bulma turns out to be the mother of Kid from the Future Trunks. There are a number of clues to this (they have the same hair color in the manga, he shares her Family Theme Naming, he wears the logo of her father's company on his jacket), but the thing that turns it into this trope is that when Trunks was introduced, between Chi-Chi getting married and Launch vanishing forever, she was the only named unwed female character who'd appeared in the manga in about three years. In fact, this caused some issues since this meant Bulma was the only preexisting character who could romance Vegeta, resulting in a rather abrupt timeskip hookup. - Is the Order a Rabbit?: Syaro and Rize speak to their high school classmates to unravel the mystery of "Miss Emerald", a recent alumnae who was able to ace every club she joined during her time at the school. By an amazing coincidence, it turns out to be the only twentysomething female character in the series. - In the 1982 all-comedy issue The Fantastic Four Roast, the team is being feted at a celebrity roast with everyone in the Marvel universe in attendance. But a mysterious figure is out to sabotage the proceedings and after numerous attempts, Ben "The Thing" Grimm says that the only other person besides Reed smart enough to ruin the party is Doctor Doom. However, Doom approaches the dias and pronounces his innocence. - In Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Steve Rogers sets out to discover who has ordered the attacks on both him and Nick Fury. Only one plausible suspect is shown, \|\|Alexander Pierce\|\|, especially after he makes several vaguely ominous statements like "to build a better world sometimes mean tearing the old one down". Perhaps in awareness of this, the film makes little attempt to disguise \|\|Pierce\|\| as the culprit and it only takes five minutes after he and Steve meet for him to become a visible antagonist. The only reason that savvy viewers might be surprised is because \|\|Robert Redford\|\| is not known for playing bad guys. - In Die Another Day, we find out there's a mole inside the MI6 who has, among other things, informed the bad guys who Bond is. Now, obviously the mole can't be Bond himself, nor M or Q or Moneypenny, as they are all mainstays of the franchise. Besides them, there is only one other major MI6 character in the movie, who — surprise, surprise! — does turn out to be the mole. - During the second half of Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country it turns out there's a traitor \|\|among the Enterprise crew\|\|, but no one knows who it is. Since it's obvious they're not gonna make any of the series regulars have a FaceHeel Turn after three TV seasons and five movies, there is only one major character available. Yeah, you guessed it, it's \|\|Valeris\|\|. This might have been a more interesting had the character been Saavik from Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, who the traitor was written in as a replacement. - Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker introduces a spy within the First Order who leaked vital information to the Resistance, enabling them to launch a counter strategy in time to clinch victory against \|\|Palpatine\|\|. There's not enough time between the movies for any known allies of the Resistance to infiltrate the First Order as a mole ( TROS is set only a few months after The Last Jedi), and the only First Order members of any significance are \|\|Kylo Ren and General Hux\|\|. Since \|\|Kylo\|\| is apparently working for \|\|Palpatine\|\|, it leaves \|\|General Hux\|\| as the only possible candidate for the mole, \|\|especially since his animosity with Kylo does give him a motive to want to see his reign end\|\|. Suffice to say, he does end up revealing himself to be the spy. - In Throw Momma from the Train, When Owen asks Larry why he thought Owen's mystery story was too obvious, Larry explains that it is a three page story with two characters, one of whom dies on page 2. - Harry Potter: "RAB" is \|\|Regulus Black, Sirius' dead brother\|\|. He's a fairly obscure character who'd only been mentioned in passing a couple of times prior to the reveal, so it probably would have been hard to figure out... Were it not for the fact that there are no other characters in the series with those initials (well, his middle name wasn't known, but guessing it wasn't too hard when given his family's Theme Naming). Spoiled by the Format was also an issue, as foreign versions of the books that changed the character's name had to change the initials accordingly. - When writing the Lord Peter Wimsey book Five Red Herrings, Dorothy L. Sayers said that people had complained that her previous book Strong Poison had only had one possible suspect for the murderer — as had two of her previous books, Unnatural Death and The Documents in the Case. So she wrote Five Red Herrings with the view that if people wanted to play whodunnit rather than howdunnit, she was prepared to indulge them this one time. - In Wilkie Collins's "My Lady's Money," \|\|Felix Sweetsir\|\|—he is the only person with a motive to steal the money. - In "The Pliable Animal" by Harry Harrison, a prince is murdered on a planet with the strictest possible Thou Shalt Not Kill policy... \|\|for everyone but the king, whose duties include performing the occasional Mercy Kill on trapped dangerous predators\|\|. - The Scarlet Letter has two major male characters — Hester Prynne's long-lost husband who only recently returned, and the Reverend Arthur Dimmesdale. The reveal of whom she committed adultery with is not terribly shocking. - In the Doctor Who story The Deadly Assassin, the President of the Time Lords is assassinated, and the Doctor framed for the crime. The only suspect who gets any significant amount of screen time is \|\|Chancellor Goth\|\|, one of the candidates-in-waiting for the Presidency, and he turns out to be the real assassin. - Season 3 of The Flash (2014) introduces a new masked villain, "Dr." Alchemy. It also introduces one new supporting character: \|\|Julian Albert, an unsympathetic crime-scene investigator who seems to be obsessed with metahumans\|\|. Guess who Dr. Alchemy turns out to be. However, in a twist, \|\|he doesn't even realize he is Dr. Alchemy, and is Good All Along\|\|. - Towards the tail end of Torchwood: Miracle Day we're told there's another evil Mole in the CIA other than the Obviously Evil, Fat Bastard that was outed earlier. There are three CIA operatives that aren't part of the main cast. One is Da Chief and working pretty diligently with Torchwood and wants the case solved and the mole outed. The other is developing the software to find the mole. That leaves the last one, who was \|\|featured prominently in the first episode, who we had just been reminded exists the episode prior, and who just had her wardrobe change up to low cut cleavage showing dresses\|\|. To be fair though, the audience is let in on it before the heroes, who were busy juggling the Idiot Ball the entire season. - Subverted in Sleuth (as well as its movie adaptations): the first half of the story features only two characters, and when one of them disappears under suspicious circumstances, it would seem the other one has killed him. \|\|But it turns out he never disappeared at all, and the policeman investigating the case is actually the "missing" character in disguise.\|\| - Blight Dream: There are only two main characters, and thus only two suspects for the identity of the Serial Killer; of those two, Michiru's brother Yuu is so blatantly set up to be the killer that it becomes obvious he can't possibly be guilty, leaving only Michiru herself, who is established at the beginning of the game as having anterograde amnesia (she forgets her memories of each day past her car accident), which anyone familiar enough with mystery fiction will recognize as setting up an amnesiac killer twist. - Fire Emblem: - Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance has a subplot about a spy in Ike's army, who is eventually revealed to be \|\|Nasir\|\|. This would probably be a lot harder to see coming if he didn't meet the heroes right around the time Ashnard mentions getting a spy into Ike's group and then continue to follow them around long after having fulfilled his original deal with them for no clearly stated reason. Genre Savvy players might also be able to pick him out just based on the fact that he's not a playable character at that point in the game, so nothing will be lost gameplay-wise if he betrays you. - \|\|Zelgius\|\| is the Black Knight. He's well known as a master swordsman and one of the greatest generals in the world, he's the right build to fit in the knight's very large armor, he uses the General/Marshall class (which the Black Knight's unique class is a modification of) and even shares some of the Knight's otherwise unique animations in cutscenes. Like \|\|Nasir\|\| above, he isn't a playable character. All of this by itself isn't necessarily damning, but when you combine it with the fact that there's no other viable candidates, it becomes really obvious. - Bertram is \|\|Renning\|\|. His helmet doesn't cover his mouth, and there's not a lot of other characters with green goatees. - In Fire Emblem: The Sacred Stones, you have the traitor in Ephraim's army. There are four candidates, and you start knocking out suspects fast: it can't be Ephraim, obviously, and Forde and Kyle are the red-and-green cavaliers, who are always a duo. That leaves Orson, who not only fails to fit any obvious character archetypes, but is also significantly stronger and higher-level than everyone else. Not to mention, there's already a character who fills the Crutch Character role in Seth, who is severely overpowered—and Orson is even stronger than Seth, which makes it feel very unlikely that the game would give you such a strong unit with no strings attached. And when it's mentioned that Orson went off alone on a scouting mission, that pretty much clinches it. - The identity of the Death Knight in Fire Emblem: Three Houses. Jeritza is always absent whenever he appears, stops showing up once the Death Knight becomes a known target, rarely interacts with anyone else, isn't available for faculty training and, pre-patch, was one of the only teachers not in the support log. (Implying they won't be playable on any route) The real twists aren't Jeritza is the Death Knight, but that \|\|he's also Mercedes' half-brother Emile\|\|, \|\|it's possible to ally with him on one route\|\| and, after being Promoted to Playable in a patch, that \|\|the Death Knight isn't Jeritza's alter-ego but his Split Personality, and he isn't in control of his actions in that state.\|\| - The Mole in Persona 5 is very easy to guess simply from the fact that they have a Confidant that automatically ranks up during the story, and because they're the one party member who never got much attention in pre-release marketing. \|\|This may have been to disguise the real twists: the Phantom Thieves knew Akechi was a mole from the start, and the whole thing was a setup by a third party.\|\| - The Mega Man Battle Network series often falls into this trope. Whoever is behind the cyber-attack of the week can easily be narrowed down to the NPC with the unique portrait. The Netopia arc in Mega Man Battle Network 2 is especially guilty of this, as Princess Pride fakes her own death to throw off suspicion but is still the only NPC in the castle with a unique portrait and a named Net-Navi you haven't fought yet. - 'Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order: The Second Sister is \|\|Trilla Suduri, Cere's former padawan\|\|. Despite her mask and armor, it's pretty obvious the Second Sister is a human woman and former Jedi, and other than Cere herself, \|\|Trilla\|\| is the only one to be mentioned in any significant capacity. Her supposed death is also described pretty nebulously prior to The Reveal. - Ace Attorney cases with a small pool of suspects often end up falling into this. While this usually only happens with early cases, where the killer's identity is never meant as a twist to begin with, later cases can end up like this too. - Lotta Hart outright acknowleges this in Case 2 of the second game, pointing out during the investigation that since every other potential suspect had an airtight alibi at the time of the murder, if Maya wasn't the killer then it must have been \|\|Ini Miney\|\|. - Case 4 of the second game plays with this. An assassin committed the murder, so you're looking for the one who hired him. Besides the assassin and the defendant, Adrian Andrews is the only non-recurring character in the case. Sure enough, when put on the stand her story has numerous holes. The twist is \|\|your client is guilty as sin, Adrian is innocent. The reason she looks so suspicious is that she tried to frame the guilty party.\|\| - Case 4 of Investigations 2 is a classic example, there are only three people involved in the case who aren't recurring characters, one of them being an old lady who almost certainly didn't have the strength to commit the crime, another being the old lady's granddaughter, and the third being extremely Obviously Evil and adamant about pinning the crime on Kay Faraday. The game does try and set up Justine Courtney as a plausible suspect briefly, but she quickly points out that the evidence shows there's no way she could've done it. Sure enough, the Obviously Evil character did it. \|\|And both the old lady and her granddaughter were accomplices via his bullying and blackmail.\|\| Though the real twist is just how far the culprit's villainy extends. - The DLC case of Spirit of Justice has only three witnesses besides the defendant: recurring Butt-Monkey Larry Butz, the defendant's Nice Guy fiancé, and the doctor Pierce Nichody. The fiancé being the killer would be too dark for a Breather Episode like this, so Pierce is the only viable suspect as he's the only one who could've done it and still allow for a happy ending. - Batman: Under the Red Hood opens with the Joker killing Jason Todd and then introduces the Red Hood in the next scene (which takes place years later). Batman spends the middle portion of the film trying to figure out who the Red Hood is, but literally all of the film's major characters other than the Red Hood are shown fighting and/or talking to the Red Hood, so even a viewer who's not familiar with the comics will probably figure out that \|\|the Red Hood is a resurrected Jason Todd\|\| before Batman does. There's also just the question of "why would they show us this apparently-unrelated death scene at the start of the movie if it wasn't going to be important later?" - In the My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic episode "Rarity Investigates", Rainbow Dash gets framed for a petty act of treachery so that she won't break the long distance speed record. There's only one non-recurring character in this episode: Wind Rider, the holder of said record. - This trope is used frequently in various versions of Scooby-Doo. Subverted in one episode of What's New, Scooby-Doo?, though: the crook in "It's All Greek to Scooby" turns out to be some random person the gang has never met beforehand. Velma naturally is rather displeased and keeps insisting her theory about who was the monster was at least plausible.	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/OnlyOnePlausibleSuspect
Only Six Faces - TV Tropes You can only go so far with paper and scissors, after all. "What kind of women do you prefer/identify with?" Cute girls who look the same as other girls but have blond hair Cute girls who look the same as other girls but have pink hair Cute girls who look the same as other girls but have blue hair Cute girls who look the same as other girls but are secretly demons with dark hair In Real Life, different people have different faces — barring identical twins or doppelgangers — but this does not always hold true when it comes to media. Sure, a child, teenager, and adult of both sexes will be visually distinct from each other (often solely by height), but beyond that... all bets are off. Impossibly Cool Clothes, distinctive Hair Colors, and Signature Headgear can create an extremely powerful framing effect, meaning the rest of the character's design may be quite simple as a shortcut. The unfortunate result may be a fundamentally homogenized artstyle, exacerbated if the designs are simplified further for characters who must be easy to animate in large groups. Naturally this runs the risk of looking somewhat cheap, especially if the cast gets very large. This can be compensated with color redesigns, or sticking a character habitually into one outfit because said outfit is more distinctive than the actual character. In contrast, homogeneous outfits (like school uniforms) tend to encourage faces to be drawn differently. Because of this, a character's outfit actually changing usually means it's supposed to mark an emotional change in either them or how we're supposed to see them. A simple haircut can also mess up who the character is very easily. Anime and manga sometimes use a large amount of eye variation (employing all sorts of non-existent eye colors (red, purple, etc.), eye shapes (slanted inward, slanted outward, slit pupils, etc) and hair variation (with unrealistic (but natural) colors and styles that defy physics), along with other distinguishing features such as scars, tattoos, etc. rather than changing the overall shape of the face itself (anime and manga also stop short at skin colors, though, because taking too much liberty with them as with eye and hair colors could result in sickly or monstrous-looking characters). This results in various instances of Ambiguously Brown characters, where skin tone is the only clue for guessing the characters' ethnicity. Similarly, early western superheroes often look alike aside from their distinctive costumes, particularly those created prior to The Dark Age of Comic Books, where pretty much every superhero was a classically handsome white guy with varying hair colours and styles, with varying eye and face shapes usually used to specifically denote ethnicity, with people of the same ethnicity tending to look alike. Faceless Masses takes this trope to the extreme. The opposite of Cast of Snowflakes, where even the most incidental characters' designs tend to be unique and well-defined. Sounds like but is unrelated to Same Face, Different Name, which is about creators going by different monikers. A clever creator can work around this and create a Reused Character Design habit. See also Generic Cuteness (every character has the same cutesy features), Only One Female Mold (all female characters have the same body type), and You All Look Familiar (the videogame version). ## Example subpages: <!—index—> <!—/index—> ## Other examples: - This is an actual documented issue in ancient art history. Surviving burial portraits from Roman Egypt resemble each other more than real people would. The painters must have mixed and matched a limited repertoire of features, making this trope Older Than Feudalism. (This could also be due to Ancient Egyptian art's long history of making people look good, rather than realistic.) - Porn artist Zimmerman (well known for Rule 34-ing lots of cartoon characters, mostly Jessica Rabbit and Disney princesses) is amazing in how he can draw the same girl over 1000 times in a year, yet they are described as being different characters. Be even more amazed by the fact that he has been doing this for almost a decade and that his models range from Belle to Lara Croft. - Greek Statues, due to the emphasis being on human perfection. The Romans, however, have more variation. - Much as with Classical Greek statues, Regency official portraits tended to all look alike, "because they're painted to a romantic ideal rather than as a true depiction of the idiosyncratic facial qualities of the person in question". Historically, this contributed to Prince George marrying Caroline of Brunswick, who so repelled him on actually meeting that he immediately begged off claiming to feel unwell (and Caroline wasn't very impressed with George either, which didn't help things). The whole marriage was such a disaster he attempted (unsuccessfully) to divorce her, and a good many of his relatives started desperately trying to produce an heir (when it became clear he was never going to have any legitimate children), eventually leading to Queen Victoria. - Byzantine art is classified by gold backgrounds, pattern drapery, and stylized facial types. Most figures in the paintings look like they are related to each other. - Pretty much all figures in classically ancient Egyptian art look identical to anyone else of their gender (unless they have animal heads). This owed to Egyptian culture strongly venerating depictions of a person as how they would be seen in the afterlife, and therefore prioritizing "completeness" over accuracy (hence why they also overwhelmingly have the full body with all fingers and toes visible). One of the more notable exceptions is Akhenaten and many others from his era, who looked very distinct; scholarly theories range from it being representative of his dual nature to him pushing towards greater realism in his reign to him just being that ugly. - All the younger men in Apartment 3-G tend to look alike, at least in the later years when Frank Bolle is the artist. - All young, attractive women in Beetle Bailey over the decades, varying only by hairstyle and clothing. They're also drawn in a very different style from the men and older women, with sensuously flowing lines (which is only an exaggeration of reality). The style has shifted somewhat over the years, but the theme hasn't. Two recurring examples are Ms. Buxley and Beetle's previous girlfriend, who look about as different as they can within this technique, but mostly it applies to the hundreds of usually nameless extras Killer and the other soldiers are typically drooling after. If a young woman is drawn any other way, she's almost without exception meant to be plain or ugly. - Calvin and Hobbes did this, to an extent. Less so as the series progressed. - Scott Adams, author of Dilbert, isn't quite as bad as certain other examples on this page, but has admitted that he can't draw that many faces. This resulted in two main things: - Ted The Generic Guy, and - The Pointy-Haired Boss being related to Phil, Prince of Insufficient Light. - Wally was another template for characters in the early days of the strip. Even after he became a major character, jokes have been made about the Pointy-Haired Boss firing employees who look like Wally out of Mistaken Identity. - The Far Side: Gary Larson, even stating the trope name, once said in an interview in 1998 that he never wanted to bring the same character back in any of the Far Side strips because it felt limiting and that one scenario he made would work with a character but not another. However, he later said, "Although admittedly, as the years went by, all my stuff got boiled down to about six faces. - Characters in FoxTrot are only differentiated by hairstyles and accessories. Andy even changed her hairstyle early on to make her look less like Paige. - The original Mandrake the Magician artist Phil Davis had a tendency to draw his characters with very similar faces, except when a character was supposed to look ugly or weird for a specific reason. - The characters in Peanuts show extremely little variation in face and body type, being to a large extent distinguished by hairstyle and iconic costume. If you look just at the faces, Franklin has Charlie Brown's face in dark (black and white) or brown (color), while Peppermint Patty has Chuck's face with six freckles (which is rather fitting, as she is in many respects his female counterpart). - Lampshaded in this Pearls Before Swine strip. - Once George Wunder took over as artist for Terry and the Pirates, this was the rule, with all the characters — male or female — having the same face. - In They'll Do It Every Time, Al Scatudo had basically one male and one female face. Which was a little odd in the rare strip that featured a woman who was meant to be young and attractive...and had the same face as his frumpy housewife characters, just with lipstick and nicer hair. - For both The Aristocats (1970) and Robin Hood (1973), the (then) financially-strapped Disney re-used several iconic dance scenes from at least three different previously-released Disney animated films, most notably Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. Deja vu, much? The dance scenes in all previously-mentioned films were drawn from the exact same live-action source material (and, in some cases, Xeroxs of that material). note : Both Robin Hood and Aristocats were released during the "Xerography" era of Disney animation, which occurred between 101 Dalmatians (1961) and The Rescuers (1977). During this era, rather than drawing each cell frame by hand, the frame of animation was rough-sketched, photocopied, and then slightly altered for the next frame. Also, whole shots and sequences (including the dance scenes) were re-used between films, and sometimes within the same film, to save money. This helped Disney barely survive the animation-bleak 1960s and 1970s. Disney had taken losses from both multiple animated 1950s films and Disneyland's early years, when the theme park was less profitable than expected. - In Meet the Robinsons, a few generic character models are used for minor roles and a few major characters are recycled. Art's model is used as a college student in the Another Believer montage and Franny's model is used for Lewis's mother. Which is kinda creepy if you think about it. - Pixar: - Lampshaded in the DVD commentary of The Incredibles, in which all of the background and minor characters are "played" by the same, slightly-altered CGI model (dubbed "Universal Man"). Yes, even the female characters. - Pixar actually did this again with Cars where some of the background characters have the exact same vehicle body style! Arguably a Justified Trope in this case, with factories turning them out by the thousands... - Overall, however, Pixar has been pretty good at averting this. Even when using the same model, they've been able to create pretty unique characters, whether they be background or main. - An example with this would be all non-hero monsters in Monsters, Inc. and Monsters University. They designed about half a dozen different Bodies Eyes Limbs Etc, then implemented a process that could mix and match as well as alter the color and scale of each. The end result was the ability to generate hundreds if not thousands of varied monsters that each fell into a "family" based on which Body was used. - For Turning Red, 303 unique background characters were created. - In the Disney fandom, this is called "Sameface Syndrome", a phrase which is commonly used as a criticism of face-recycling in the Disney Animated Canon, often with detractors of Frozen. It's likely due to being designed by the same artist; however, Rapunzel from Tangled, Ariel from The Little Mermaid, and Anna from Frozen have similarities. Rapunzel cameos in Frozen, which has led fans to believe she is Anna's and Elsa's cousin, though nothing has been confirmed. - An interesting case in the Avantasia Protag AU series. None of the characters have canon designs, but since they're from rock operas, they have vocalists. And the band Avantasia has four separate stories with some of the same vocalists "playing" different characters. In this fanfic series, each character has been given the face of their canon vocalist, and since it contains characters from all four canon stories, many of them have the same faces. Including the four main characters. This is lampshaded in-series as everyone can see it and the fact is used in various plot points. The man on the ground before them...was them. It was another double, though this one looked slightly older than Scarecrow. "It's...another one of us..." Gabriel said softly, placing his hand on the stranger's chest. "No way..." Scarecrow muttered, but...it was true. The man was an exact copy in almost every way. - In The 3 Little Pigs: The Movie, all three pigs look exactly the same only with different clothes. - Invoked by the filmmakers of Anomalisa. Michael suffers from the Fregoli Delusion, a rare syndrome in which the person believes that multiple people are the same person in disguise. With the exception of the eponymous Lisa, to Michael everyone appears to be the same generic white guy, the only variation being different clothing and hairstyles. - Beauty and Warrior: The only differences between the female goddesses are the colors of their clothing and hairstyles; and the only difference between the two brothers is eye color. - The DC Animated Movie Universe was an attempt at creating a Shared Universe by having all animated films from then onwards adopt the same art direction. This could have worked better if the character designers used a style similar to their animated series from the 90s and early 2000s, but instead they went with a style where every human and human-adjacent character had identical looks. - In Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa Alex, Marty, Gloria, and Melman find a herd of zebras, among the many herds on the game preserve, and Alex has a hard time distinguishing Marty from the others. He finally manages to identify Marty using the scar on Marty's rump from when Alex bit him in the first movie. In real life, each zebra's pattern of stripes is unique, like human fingerprints. However, it would be like trying to identify a human by using only the fingerprints through a magnifying glass, a task that would be quite difficult. To make matters worse, they're all voiced by Chris Rock, who voices Marty, and have the same general personality and speech patterns. - Mostly averted in Robots, which features a few background characters that are variants on the same model, but otherwise has a fairly diverse array of character designs. - In relation to Charles Schulz' style, this trope makes the much advertised reveal of the Little Red-Haired Girl's face in The Peanuts Movie unintentionally humorous: after all the build-up, she looks just like all the other kids, albeit with a slightly smaller nose. - In the earlier Warrior Cats graphic novels by James L. Barry, there are hardly any variations in character design. This isn't a problem usually, because in the Graystripe's Adventure series not very many characters appeared at the same time, but in crowd shots, it's very problematic. It's especially hilarious in the gathering at the end when there are four cats in the crowd who look exactly like Ravenpaw. - Flash Gordon (2007) cast three near-identical brunette actresses in its three lead female roles, Dale Arden, Princess Aura, and Bayliss. Then it cast a slightly older version of the same actress as Flash's mother. Then they had a duplicate Dale character, Helia. - The Twilight Zone (1959): The episode "Number 12 Looks Just Like You" presents a future where everyone is given a government-funded surgical makeover at puberty, choosing their new face and figure from a limited catalogue of stock models. The effect was achieved in the show by having a handful of actors play multiple roles. - In a somewhat meta example, when a new series of The Bachelor is teased, it has been commented on that the gallery of potential candidates for the titular Bachelor are often near-identical generic hunks. - Enforced by the limits of the medium in The Champion Pub, where every boxer has the exact same character model. - The work of John William Waterhouse took this to extremes—the subjects of his paintings all look exactly alike, just with different clothing and, occasionally, hair color. - Several of the Pre-Raphaelites (Dante Gabriel Rosetti comes to mind) feature this because they tended to have a few go-to female models they used for most of their pictures. The portraits could be more accurately titled "[Model] as/in the guise of [Goddess/Mythological Figure]". - Edward Burne-Jones only does one face, usually from the same angle (three-quarters profile) with the same long thick neck and broad shoulders. When it's supposed to be male he puts a beard on it and covers up the neck with armor. It's Janey Morris (his model) plays everyone in the universe. Particularly pronounced in his stained-glass windows in Birmingham St Chad's, where Janey Morris is Jesus, the Madonna, and the hosts of heaven. - Colombian painter and sculptor Fernando Botero, whose human painting subjects are almost always facing forward with the same moon-faced vacuous expression. There is very little variation in the faces that Botero can paint, usually employing facial hair or glasses to modify exactly the same face over and over again. - Dinosaurs, also made by Jim Henson's team, has unique suits, etc., for only the extended Sinclair family and some of the supporting characters (namely Roy, Monica, Spike, and Mr. Richfield); all the rest are "played" by a group of customizable costumes which are used for minor characters such as the other Wesayso employees and students seen in the school, and were comprised of both full costumes and hand-puppets. - Oobi: Since all of the characters are literal hand puppets, the crew had to find creative ways to make sure the characters didn't all have the same face. This led to some characters having their fingers extended, some having them curled, and others having a fist-like appearance. - There are only a few designs for Anything Muppets in Sesame Street, so some characters are recognisably the same puppet with different hair. This is most obvious with the more distinctive ones such as Fat Blue (Simon Soundman, the customer in the Grover waiter sketches, Dad Twiddlebug) and Orange Gold (Guy Smiley, Don Music, Prince Charming). - For practical reasons this has been the case with most if not all doll lines, namely American Girl, using a few stock face moulds depending on the doll's ethnicity or unique traits if any. The only other things distinguishing the dolls from each other are their hair, skin colour, outfit, and their backstories. - LEGO had a stock smiley face for all figures during the '70s and '80s. Sometime in the '90s, they decided to use more different prints (like bearded man, guy with sunglasses, etc.). They do new faces regularly, but lines like City are still plagued with this - for example, most of the policemen have the same grumpy expression, and there seems to be only three different female head prints; this is possibly justifiable in how City figures are supposed to be generic everymen with no designated characterisation. Conversely, licensed themes handle this better because the main characters need to be identifiable, but they still spam the more generic-looking heads like the Norman Osborn one (who accordingly was also a Nazi, a Communist, his own son Harry, ) for mooks and guards. and the goddamn Batman - Then there's BIONICLE, which in the early days had only twelve different masks for the entire population of Mata Nui, and later possibly the entire universe. Virtually every mask introduced after the beginning was a one-off for the characters on whom they were used, with very rare exceptions, while almost everyone else still just had the same original twelve. Also, underneath the masks? The same four or five head pieces, further exacerbated by the first film trilogy which made all the heads the same — but at least background extras weren't "allowed" to wear the same mask types as the main characters. - This later became a problem when masks became the only unique part of the toys. After the Inika line, almost all Toa-level figures had a standard template for how they're built. While some of them are visually different, construction-wise they were all nearly the same, and a simple armor swap can make one Toa look like another (or a bad guy). Adverted with the Barraki and Mistika Makuta lines, who all had unique construction making them vastly different from each other, even in the same line (the Barraki, in fact, were only similar in the construction of their "skull", while the Mistika Makuta had nothing in common at all). - On Bara Magna, every character used the same headpiece, and not all of them had helmets that covered their face. The youthful and overactive Berix even wore the same type of face-revealing helmet as the veteran, "beyond his prime" Ackar, so aside from their colors, their heads looked the exact same. The movie of that year only made things worse: due to CGI shortcuts, every character belonging to the same tribe looked the same, whether they were mere extras or plot-relevant characters. - In BIONICLE, the recycling of masks reached its most bothersome level in 2006 and 2007. In '06, the six Matoran sets were given the exact same masks in the exact same colors as the Toa Metru from '04 (okay, Dalu's was half a shade lighter), not recolors, which annoyed the mask collectors quite a bit. They released a figure called Umbra the same year, who again was given one of those six masks, meaning that LEGO passed the chance to release a recolored mask twice under a year. In '07, the toy of Sarda was likewise given a standard Toa Metru mask. What's strange is that all the other reused masks of that year were recolors, and even Idris, who came packaged with Sarda, was given a recolored mask for some added collectible value. - Played with in the Star Wars: The Clone Wars line. Clone troopers are meant to all have the same face, and LEGO used the same face for the Boba Fett figurine. However, they also gave the same face to all other Mandolorians and the Senate Commandos, who are specifically stated to NOT be clones. - Mixels plays with the idea, too. While all the Mixels are completely unique from each other, the Nixels, their enemies, are simply black-and-white cube creatures, with the only difference being three different types of ear toppers. This ends up highlighting how uncreative the Nixels really are, in contrast to the Mixels' high creativity levels. - Minimate faces only have eyes and mouths, no noses, so they tend to look a lot alike. The Mobile Action Xtreme line takes this to new heights, with each two-pack of figures sharing one identical face.[1] - Most My Little Pony toys have the same mold and only differ in color, hair, and symbol markings. - It's been pointed out that most female and some male characters drawn by Nasuverse co-founder and main artist Takeuchi Takashi can be turned into each other just by changing their eye color and hair. To say nothing of his ever-growing army of "Saberfaces." - Winged Cloud tends to reuse the same base character models for various entries in their Sakura visual novel series. This is most easily demonstrated in the free Idle Game spin-off Sakura Clicker, where every enemy has variants that look exactly the same save for their hairstyle and skin tone. - All of the characters in the ASDF Movie series have the same appearances, this is often the joke. - Most of the women in Barbie: Life in the Dreamhouse have the same hairstyle, face, and body type, with the obvious exceptions of Barbie, her family, and her friends. (And Raquelle.) Justified in that the series takes place in a community of living Mattel dolls. - All the characters in Vinnie Veritas's CCC series would be indistinguishable with shaved heads and the same clothes, but thanks to his utterly awesome character design (by which I mean unique clothes and unique hair) he manages to make it Cast of Snowflakes at the same time. - All the women of comic-style illustrator Garett Blair suffer from a bad case of this. His unanimously praised gallery seldom gets any criticism at all, adding to the prevalence of this trope in comic books illustration. - Only the color of the human characters eyes change in DSBT InsaniT and Dreamscape, which relies on clothing style and accessories for Distinctive Appearances. - Happy Tree Friends is an especially egregious case, being that most of the characters are different species. With few exceptions, nearly all the characters have flat faces, pie eyes, heart-shaped noses, and buckteeth (including the carnivorans and ungulates), and are all the same size except for Lumpy. You could say this is Stylistic Suck though, considering the show's premise. - Every single character in object shows such as Battle for Dream Island and Inanimate Insanity share the same face and limbs. It's the objects themselves that identify them. - Jacksepticeye, Markiplier and Thomas Sanders all play at least four different characters on their own, leading to fanart having this. - Webcomicker Jeinu seems fed up with this enough to start a tutorial series teaching amateurs how to avoid this very trope. - Justified in The Most Popular Girls in School as most of the characters are Barbie dolls. - Nekci, Kety Perr, Medoner, and Beyonce all share the same facial design in The Nekci Menij Show; in the same show, Rhenna, Keshir, and Lady Gags also share a similar facial design, though they are not identical. - The Nostalgia Critic likes to reuse cast members for different characters on his show, which quickly becomes noticeable because his cast is very small. - Poser (and other 3D art programs). If you are lazy (or poor), all your characters will look the same (Even if you fiddle with the facial expression knobs). - Only One Face in the case of the main cast of Red vs. Blue, as the main characters are all wearing Spartan armor. The only exceptions are the occasional alien (who all look alike except for color and size), Andy, Sheila, and Vic. Season 9 averted this strongly when CGI was used heavily to show the faces of several different characters, all of whom looked quite distinct. - RWBY: - While masked by the huge variation in color, anime-style hair and attire, and even height, nearly every character can be expected to have the same face and body as ever other character of their gender. Only One Female Mold was also a factor, as there were two models for stockier men, but no variation among the women's bodies apart from very subtle differences in breast size. Men with unique character models began being introduced in the fourth volume, women with unique models in the sixth. - Crowd scenes in the second volume fall victim to You All Look Familiar; the first stage of growth past the featureless silhouettes that were background characters in the first volume, were crowds of people a bit too much less distinctive than the major characters, often with several copies of certain individuals in the same shot. - Sanrio Boys runs into this, in part from the art style borrowing from typical Shoujo manga aesthetics. Of the main boys, two of them have a half-lidded "serious" face, while the other three have a round, bright-eyed "playful" face. While this is downplayed somewhat in the blogs by depicting them with a wide variety of expressions, this is emphasized in the anime and visual novel adaptations, which standardizes their appearances. - Ian Hecox and Anthony Padilla, the creators of SMOSH, would reuse themselves as the many different characters that appear throughout their web series, which occasionally led to some Acting for Two moments. This can be excused since the cast is pretty small (at least initially) and it's just generally funnier. - Everyone in Eddsworld has the same eye shape and no nose, with the main differences being the hairstyle and, for the four main characters, what color hoodie they're wearing. The most notably different of the main cast is Matt, who has a square chin, a distinct hair shape, and an overcoat over his hoodie. - Some people suffer from a disorder called prosopagnosia (also called Face Blindness), the inability to differentiate between faces. To these people, real-life people all look the same (barring hair color, skin pigmentation, body shape, and very specific details such as scars). The fact that Real Life people generally don't have a distinctive outfit or hairstyle makes interacting with people extremely confusing for people suffering from prosopagnosia. - A limited form of foreigner face blindness can occur as both an actual phenomenon (as the distinguishing features of an unfamiliar group may be different) or psychological (not bothering to look for any differences). - Members from a certain family will look like each other; such as the family in this photo for example◊.	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/OnlySixFaces
One-Neighbor Neighborhood - TV Tropes Despite the protagonists living in some form of Suburbia, where many houses are all near each other, there's only one set of neighbours that ever show up. These neighbours might share a backyard, they might live across the street, or they might live to the left or right of the protagonists. Despite this, whoever lives in the other three houses gets completely ignored, and if they are named, they never appear onscreen. This could also apply in an apartment complex, which tends to have at least half-a-dozen different residents, plus additional neighbours in the buildings adjacent. The reasoning behind this trope is fairly simple: Keeping down the number of characters that the audience has to remember, and thus the number of actors you have to hire, and even the number of sets you have to maintain, in the case of a live-action TV-series. The result is a Limited Social Circle, and the few times a new neighbour is introduced, they promptly disappear by the next episode. This trope doesn't apply when the house/home itself is in the middle of nowhere, or if the protagonists are living in an abandoned warehouse and similar. It only applies when the location is shown or implied to have a large number of residents, but only one set is consistently shown. The "one neighbour" could be a single resident, or it could be a secondary family, a mirror of the protagonists. ## Examples: - Disney Ducks Comic Universe: Donald Duck has two neighbors, one named Jones and one named Smith. They are, however, functionally identical, as they are both sworn enemies of Donald. Often, Donald's other neighbor will just be whoever happens to fit the story (though kind old ladies seem popular). Or it could be someone new who moves in and forces an Enemy Mine situation between Donald and Mr. Jones by annoying both. - Batman: While a few of the other rich folk who live in Bruce's neighborhood show up in stories from time to time, usually because they're being robbed or are corrupt corporate executives, they rarely make more than one appearance. The house next door that is right at the entrance of the Wayne estate though has the Drake family move in and they become recurring characters until their deaths since their son Tim becomes Robin. - In Clerks (and Clerks: The Animated Series), the convenience store, as far as we know, has only the video store next to it — thus making it an interesting case of a Moebius Strip Mall. - One of the many Clerks comic book stories involves the clerks finally noticing a small store set in between the locations. Turns out an old, bearded guy named Claus runs it. - This is one of the questions frequently raised about Harry Potter. Harry spends an awful lot of time in the Gryffindor common room or eating at the Gryffindor table in the Great Hall, yet some of his fellow (and not new) Gryffindors are still strangers by the time he meets them in books five and six. He would have to have been actively avoiding these people for years in order not to at least know who they are. - Small Wonder never showed us the Lawsons' other neighbors, as if they and the Brindles were the only families on their block. - The early seasons of Married... with Children had the Rhodes as the Bundys' neighbors... and nobody else. Later seasons introduced Bob Rooney, another man from the neighborhood, as a recurring character, though it's unclear whether he lives on the other side of the Bundys, or somewhere else nearby. - Played with in the PBS show Square One TV. During the "Mathnet" sketches, George Frankly would often speak of his "right-side neighbor, Mr. Beasley," without ever mentioning who was on the left side. However, in later seasons, the "Math Brigade" sketches detailed the adventures of Dirk Niblick and his "left-side neighbor, Mr. Beasley," which gives Beasley two sets of neighbors. - iCarly: Freddie and his mother live across the hall from Carly and Spencer, but the other residents of their apartment building are usually MIA. - In That '70s Show, this trope is followed, and it's even strongly implied that the Foremans and the Pinciottis each have only each other for next door neighbors (where a lecherous character says he drives by Donna's house a lot because his mother lives next door and Eric protests that he lives next door). - The title character of Everybody Loves Raymond lives across the street from his annoying parents, but neither house seems to have one beside it. - Friends: Averted with the main apartment building. The gang do know other people in their building,( Mr Heckles, Danny, Joey's singing friend, Ugly Naked Guy (who actually lives in a building across the street)) Played straight with their actual floor, as only Apartment 19 and 20 exist: We see the gang running across the hallway to each other, using it as a thoroughfare, never locking their doors, having joint parties in the hallway, getting into fights, riding pogo sticks, putting the chick and the duck out there...without the other residents ever appearing. They may as well have demolished the walls and joined the apartments up completely. - Lampshaded on The Drew Carey Show when one of Drew's wacky neighbors from the early episodes drops by. Drew, not being too happy about them always showing up, asks her, "Don't you have neighbours on the other side?" - Cougar Town: Either played straight or averted, depending on how many houses there are on the cul-de-sac. Either there are not many houses and we know all or most of the residents, or it's a good example of this trope. - Steve Urkel on Family Matters lived next door to the Winslows for most of the series, but eventually he moved in with them. Apparently this left a vacancy in the neighborhood's only other house, because shortly thereafter a new obnoxious neighbor, Nick Niedermeyer, moved in to the former Urkel residence. - On Boy Meets World, the Matthewses and Mr. Feeny are always talking over the fence between their adjacent side yards, but we never see an inch of the rest of the street, or even the rest of their yards. - In Round the Twist, the only neighbour of the Twists is Nell. However, as the Twists live in a lighthouse near a cliff's edge, this is pretty realistic. - Roseanne had new neighbors in the house next door every few years. Sometimes they would be heavy in the plot, and others would be around for a one off joke. No neighbors living in any other house on the block were ever mentioned or interacted with, though. - Justified in The Good Place, where Eleanor lives in a tiny cottage next door to Tahani and Jianyu in a Big Fancy House, with no mention of anyone else living in their immediate vicinity. The justification comes after The Reveal: \|\|they're in the Bad Place. Eleanor, Tahani, Jianyu, and a fourth character are the only real humans in the neighborhood, and were isolated in close proximity so that they would torture each other. The other residents are demons\|\|. - The protagonist of Melody lives in an apartment building surrounded by apartment buildings, but the only one of his neighbors who is ever seen is Becca. - Bitmap World averts this: Both the Smileys and the Ks are plot-relevant. - Andy Weir talks about his attempts to avert this trope in this Casey and Andy newspost (scroll down to the Trivia Tidbit). - This is what is shaping up for Savestate. The only known neighbors for Kade and Nicole at the house they inherited from their Uncle Scooby are a family of reindeer that live across the street. This includes Amber and her two children, Chris and Claire. Possibly justified as Kade and Nicole's house is actually a mansion, which tend to be built on large plots a fair distance from any neighbors. - Living next door to The Simpsons are, of course, the Flanders. But on the other side? Ruth Powers and her teenage daughter Laura. Never heard of them? Don't feel bad; they've appeared in a grand total of maybe two episodes. - And before them there were the Winfields, who appeared in four episodes, including the one where they moved out to be replaced by the Powers. In fact, Ruth's most recent appearance ("Strong Arm of the Ma") suggests they're not living there anymore, either... - A few episodes seem to forget that the house next door exists at all in any way, shape or form. - Similarly, the house across the street from the Simpsons, alternates quite rapidly, some episodes it's a huge mansion as in the episode where George Bush moves in, other times it's a vacant lot, most of the time it's just another regular house with nondescript occupants, but once it was shown that Carl lived there which was never mentioned again. - Of course, there is a Separate Simpsons Geography Thing anyway. And the first time 742 Evergreen Terrace was mentioned, it was a generic house being burgled by Snake rather than the Simpsons' house, adding to the confusion. - Similarly, behind the Simpsons' backyard is most commonly sheer empty space (nothing is drawn behind the fence) or wilderness, but it has also been everything from a graveyard to the Springfield Nuclear Power Plant. - Darkwing Duck has only one set of neighbors, the Muddlefoots. - Eventually abandoned in The Flintstones, in which a group of Addams Family knockoffs: The Gruesomes moved next to the other side of Fred and Wilma from the Rubbles. - In the 1980s they got a similar cast of neighbours, the Frankenstones, who seemed to be based more around The Munsters. The head of the family is a typical Frankenstein's Monster knockoff, and he and Fred really hate each other's guts, even when everyone else gets along fine. - Up until around the sixth season of The Fairly OddParents, it seemed as if the Dinkleburgs (relationship's pretty much ripped off Homer and Ned) were the only neighbors to the Turners. It turned out their other neighbors included a black family and a extremely stereotypical British family. Naturally, they only existed for the sake of the plot of one particular episode and have yet to be seen again. - The Pfifers [the black neighbors] did reappear as one of the childless couples outshining the Turners in "The Masked Magician". - Carl is the only neighbor of the Aqua Teen Hunger Force, and they are his only neighbors (except for the half season or so when they were kidnapped/evicted and their landlord rented the place out to even worse people to live near). Probably makes sense considering how the Aqua Teens seem to demolish property values. - The Amazing World of Gumball: The Robinsons are essentially the only neighbors of the Wattersons. A few shots show various supporting cast and Recurring Extras living in nearby houses, but only Gary the mailman is seen consistentlyand even he's been shown living in several different houses ("The Wand" and "The Allergy" both show Gary living on the house opposite to the Robinsons' house, in "The Remote" he lives across the street, and in "The Nest" and "The Neighbor", to the left of the Wattersons). - Mort and the It's Your Funeral Home and Crematorium is to the left of Bob's Burgers. A constantly changing array of businesses are to the right of the titular shop in the show's opening titles, but the lot in generally vacant in the body of the show's episodes. Jimmy Pesto's Pizzeria is directly on the other side of the street, and various other nearby businesses are visited. - SpongeBob SquarePants, Patrick Star, and Squidward Tentacles live in houses in a row along a street with nothing else in sight but flat ocean floor. - Family Guy attempts to avert this by having several neighbors as a part of the main cast instead of just one neighbor (Joe, Quagmire, Cleveland, Mort, and Herbert) and they all live within the immediate vicinity of the Griffin family's home. Outside of these neighbors, no one else exists on Spooner Street.	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/OnlyOneNeighbour
Only the Author Can Save Them Now - TV Tropes The Reader: But are The Plague Dogs then to drown And nevermore come safe to land? Without a fight to be sucked down Five-fathom deep in tide-washed sand? Brave Rowf, but give him where to stand— He'd grapple with Leviathan! What sort of end is this you've planned For lost dogs and their vanished man? Making your villains a credible threat to your heroes is what makes any conflict interesting. In some series, most notably Science Fiction and High Fantasy, it may even be necessary for your villain to be a threat to the entire world. A powerful villain and flawed heroes will make for a good story, so it stands to reason that in a lot of stories, the villain is more powerful than the heroes in some capacity. But there is a balance to it. Eventually, the villain is so many orders of magnitude above the heroes that there's absolutely no chance for them to win with any of the capabilities we know them to have. We all know what's coming: a Deus ex Machina. The heroes aren't going to save themselves; the author is going to save them. This Audience Reaction describes a situation in which, when you should be thinking, "How are the heroes going to get themselves out of this one?" you're instead thinking, "What contrived plot device is going to arise at the last minute and rescue them?" The major criteria for this idiom are as follows: - The villain, threat or situation must be much more powerful than the heroes, perhaps even a Villain Sue; - The heroes must not have previously shown that they have powers or skills that would help them escape this situation; and - The situation must ultimately be resolved with a Deus ex Machina. See also The Plot Reaper, Like You Would Really Do It and Strong as They Need to Be. Not to be confused with the literal Post Modernist case where the Author Avatar is forced to save the characters. May contain unhidden spoilers. Caution advised. ## Examples: - Phibrizo from Slayers Next: The credibility point was broken about at the point where he \|\|killed all of Lina's friends without much effort at all, then backpedaled, said he only killed their bodies, and then threatened to destroy their souls as well. And then we got the very literal Deus ex Machina..\|\|. - Digimon has a habit of this: - Digimon Adventure: Myotismon (Vamdemon) gets more and more powerful, shrugging off the heroes' best attacks... so the Upgrade Artifacts spontaneously generate energy chains to hold him in place. Apocalymon, the final enemy, is so powerful that he can destroy both universes in one shot if he feels like it. Again, Upgrade Artifact Ass Pull to the rescue, as they form a force field to contain the explosion. - Completely avoided in Digimon Tamers, but Digimon Frontier gives us the way the kids suddenly became indestructible near the end. Power levels get DBZ-ish, and you have Lucemon slamming the heroes into the ground so hard the moon they're on is destroyed with enough force to take out the two other moons. The kids... just aren't hurt. The villain's final defeat made enough sense, but to last long enough to make it happen, unprotected humans were simply not being hurt by world-destroying forces for about three episodes. - MegaMan NT Warrior falls into this in Stream: when the main villain's Dragon is already pretty much invincible, and her boss can \|\|erase Earth and violate every natural law with a thought\|\|, how are the heroes supposed to win? By having Bass.Exe absorb the powers of Nebula Grey during The Movie and utterly destroy her as paypack for earlier. - That's how Shaman King ended. By the look of it, the heroes are completely screwed. Due to Executive Meddling, the series was canceled, and fans were left with No Ending, or worse, a presumed Downer Ending. The author has since released the ending, which \|\|still has Hao win- the heroes just change his mind\|\|. - This is one of the primary problems with the "Chapter Black" arc of YuYu Hakusho. Sensui walks in and shatters the Sorting Algorithm of Evil with a power level far beyond anything Yusuke could possibly obtain in the short amount of time he has before the portal to demon world opens. Cue the last minute Deus ex Machina bloodline power up. This is then horribly subverted by revealing \|\|the sides were uneven in the other direction - King Enma's men show up and seal the portal with a minimum of fuss. All of the damage was for nothing\|\|. - The whole fiasco in Fushigi Yuugi: Genbu Kaiden regarding Urumiya. Haagasu is Urumiya, at least one half. His brother Tegu is the other half of Urumiya and they need to have both on their side to summon Genbu. Haagasu has the ability to absorb and copy the other senshis' power, making himself stronger in the process and Tegu's ability involves nullifying their powers, which also causes them pain. Tegu is also trapped somewhere and both parties are trying to find him. \|\|It's resolved when some of the senshi and Haagasu find Tegu at pretty much the same time, Haagasu performs a Heroic Sacrifice to stop Tegu from being killed and he also reveals that he was slowly dying, anyway, and one of them needs to die to properly become the Genbu senshi Urumiya.\|\| - The final Big Bad of Zatch Bell!, Clear Note, happened to be so far above the rest of the cast, that previously-established rules of the story had to be broken into pieces to allow his defeat. \|\|Basically, just about every previously-banished mamono temporarily comes back to lend the titular character their strength.\|\| - The last episode of Eureka Seven begins with the \|\|Scub Coral command center destroyed, with Eureka now forced to become the new command center... except that Dewey Novak gave her a virus that will spread to destroy the rest of the Scub Coral on the planet. Meanwhile, Scub Coral antibodies are threatening the good guys. Just when everything seems set for a Downer Ending, The Power of Love transforms the Nirvash and Renton goes off to save Eureka and the day\|\|. - This happens in Magical Record Lyrical Nanoha Force, in a pretty stupid way. The heroes are currently getting pummeled by the Hückebein, a group of people who specialize in Anti-Magic, forcing them to use ridiculous weapons that don't work right, in a sort of in-universe example of Fake Difficulty. To make matters worse, the leader of the Hückebein suddenly shows up and proves how strong she is by one-shotting three heroes in one chapter. How are they going to get out of this? Why, she just lets them go, of course! The only reason the protagonists have any kind of victory (grabbing the Living MacGuffin after they disappear) is because she can apparently predict the future, so what they do doesn't matter. - A commonly made prediction within the Berserk fandom. Guts' mission of killing the Nigh Invulnerable Big Bad Duumvirate of the Berserkerverse already seems impossible enough. And with the \|\|Idea of Evil\|\| thrown into the mix... - Guts has possibly gotten one major thing in his favor, ironically caused by the Godhand themselves: \|\|Griffith's plan to obtain his own kingdom involved fusing the Layered World into a single plain of existence—before this they only existed in a spirit realm separate from the mortal world, meaning any encounter Guts could have before then was nothing but Fighting a Shadow\|\|. - Fairy Tail: - It's common for Natsu to win the final battle of any given arc by means of random temporary power-up, some of which are better handled than others. The first time was against Jellal, when it turned out he could eat Etherion, then with Zero when \|\|Jellal\|\| gave him a magical flame, though that time it was justified because \|\|Jellal was intentionally replicating the same effect that first allowed Natsu to beat him and he had previously shown the ability to use fire magic thanks to the Abyss Break spell, which requires fire as one of its components\|\|. Double Subversion in the Tenrou Island arc where Natsu and company are losing and suddenly gets the ability to also use lightning \|\|from Laxus\|\| only to continue to lose, but then it turns out that the Exceed who wandered off earlier stumble upon the Big Bad's weakness and destroy it, unknowingly giving Natsu and company the edge they need to win. - Zeref already has Complete Immortality as well as One-Hit Kill magic, and later in his final fight with Natsu he \|\|absorbs Fairy Heart, infinite magic power, from Mavis\|\|. He doesn't even attempt to dodge Natsu's Super Mode-enhanced attack to show how potent his regeneration has become. How is Natsu, reduced to his base form, going to win now? \|\|Zeref refrains from using his instant-kill magic because even now he's still wavering somewhat due to his Death Seeker desires, and Natsu puts out even more magic power than ever to burn through the regeneration and take him down, chanting about The Power of Friendship all the way.\|\| - Acnologia proves completely invulnerable to everything thrown at him before \|\|he reveals that he can eat magic\|\|. The only thing left for the story to do is \|\|hastily reintroduce a character thought to have been long dead along with a convenient black hole to shove him into\|\|... and even that doesn't work, in fact making Acnologia even stronger. Said power-up forces Acnologia to \|\|split between a now mindless dragon body and a more vulnerable spirit form\|\|, just to give the protagonists a fighting chance, \|\|with the mindless dragon acting on instinct and allowing the heroes on the outside to lure it into a trap while his spirit form fighting all the remaining Dragon Slayers can't actually kill them despite his claims otherwise because he needs to keep them alive long enough to forcibly extract their magic to stabilize his condition, which he was in the process of doing when Natsu managed to free the other Slayers from their prisons and lead the attack against him\|\|. - Naruto: \|\|The real Madara Uchiha\|\|. His powers can only be described as \|\|basically every power that Naruto, Sasuke, Pain, and Hashirama ever had, all turned up several notches\|\|. By his own admission, Kishimoto had no idea how to make him lose at that point. The heroes even get a Next Tier Power-Up handed to them in the middle of the fight, and it still wasn't enough to stop the guy. He was able to accomplish his master plan and \|\|trap everyone but Team 7 in a permanent dream\|\|. Almost immediately after, \|\|he gets abruptly killed off and supplanted as Big Bad by Kaguya Otsutsuki. While Kaguya is even more powerful than Madara, she gets defeated relatively quickly due to having little fighting experience, repeatedly getting caught off guard by even the most simplistic tactics. It's a neat trick for somebody with 360-degree X-ray vision to manage to get ambushed repeatedly.\|\| - It was least established that \|\|as Kaguya is an escaped Sealed Evil in a Can, the heroes only needed to put her back in the can. Conveniently, the powerup Naruto and Sasuke got during the Madara fight turns out to be the key to doing so.\|\| - Food Wars!: Multiple chapters of the final arc are dedicated to show just how unstoppable Asahi Saiba is. He already curbstomps Joichiro, who was considered to be the world's best chef, and later trounces Eishi Tsukasa, who was the top ranked student of Totsuki. Asahi's ability enables him to instantly assimilate the styles of various chefs. Even the BLUE judges think that Asahi's skills are flawless. At the last moment, however, Asahi loses to Soma because the latter possessed a unique flavor exclusive to him while Asahi lacked it. But this deficiency was never brought up by any of the judges in prior duels. - In the first Dragon Ball Z movie, Dead Zone, Goku and Piccolo end up fighting the immortal Garlic Jr. And while he has the two on the ropes, \|\|Garlic Jr summons a portal to eponymous Dead Zone, and he is promptly knocked into it by Gohan\|\|. - Later on in the series, Garlic Jr returns, only to do the exact same thing. Keep in mind again: Garlic Jr has Complete Immortality. He could defeat literally anything in the universe by just poking it repeatedly. He went for this solution twice. - In Dragon Ball Z Abridged's take on it, the plot of Dead Zone is a script Krillin is pitching to Nappa. When pressed on the issue, Krillin admits that he wrote himself into a corner. Funny enough, this trope isn't so much in place, as Shenron responds to the wish by saying that he can't wait to see how Garlic Jr. manages to blow this. - Dragon Ball Super continues the tradition of not knowing what to do with villains that obtain Complete Immortality. Sure you can beat them around all you want, but they will always come back for more. It takes a literal Deus ex Machina to defeat \|\|Future Zamasu\|\| after he transforms into the very fabric of the universe. \|\|Goku decides to summon Zeno, ruler of the multiverse, who erases the entire timeline from existence.\|\| - The show had two different ways the villain could have been beaten in a more satisfying manner, but both of them were shot down in-story: \|\|the plan to seal Zamasu away with the Mafuba (Evil Containment Wave) failed because Goku suddenly became Forgetful Jones for the sake of comedy\|\|, then during the final battle \|\|Zamasu fuses with Goku Black, only for their fused body to become corrupted and malformed specifically because it's the result of an immortal and mortal fusing. Future Trunks then cut them in half, which would have been the ideal ending for the arc, only for Zamasu's spirit to come back and Shoot the Shaggy Dog\|\|. - The finale of the Claymore manga. At one point, the main villain Priscilla got so overpowered, that active readers at the time were sure that nothing but an ass pull could save the day. They did not know how right they were. \|\|In the end, the main protagonist, Claire, awakens, a process that gives a Claymore an enormous boost in strength and agility, but makes them lose their humanity and become a demon. Except that she awakens into Teresa of the Faint Smile reborn, a warrior considered to be the strongest Claymore there ever was, who then proceeds to awaken as well and turn Priscilla literally into dust in a matter of panels.\|\| - \|\|There was a very very early Chekhov's Gun, however. Whereas every other claymore in existence was fused with Yoma remains, Claire was instead fused with Teresa's remains, which is why Clair was referred to as one-quarter Yoma.\|\| - Tokyo Ghoul plays with this trope when the main character, by now a powerful and feared ghoul, towards the end of the series encounters Arima, a CCG investigator considered the strongest of all, who's built a reputation as being essentially undefeatable. It seems this trope will come into play. \|\|It doesn't. He loses. Badly.\|\| - \|\|This trope actually does come into play, eventually, but not as part of the Tokyo Ghoul manga. Only when Tokyo Ghoul:re is released does everybody see the main character back in action. So the author sort of does save him: Our hero is revived by the power of sequels!\|\| - Bleach just loves doing these in its canon stories. - Sosuke Aizen was a shinigami who was already very well skilled even before revealing himself to be a Bitch in Sheep's Clothing. But by the time it came to finally confront him, he had gotten so ridiculously overpowered that virtually nothing the heroes did could even scratch him since it was always a part of his plan in some form or another. So how's he defeated? \|\|Ichigo undergoing some last minute training, getting a major power up that'll likewise rob him of his power (temporarily as he gets them back in the next arc) and using that to beat Aizen. Heck he doesn't really beat him, just weakens him enough for a Kido spell Kisuke shot into him earlier to finally activate. And even then, they can't kill Aizen, just lock him away.\|\| - And now we have Yhwach, the final Big Bad of the series who is pretty much Aizen 2.0. He steamrolls everyone that goes against him (including Yamamoto, the head of the Gotei 13 who has the power of a sun), manages to get into the Soul King palace, beats his Elite Guards by reviving his own elite guards after they're initially defeated, and manages to take the Soul King's power and merge with it. His power at this point boils down to being a Reality Warper who can see and manipulate every possible future to his whim, even outright breaking the rules of other powers if he wants. By this point, readers are wondering if there's even a way for him and his cronies to be beaten since every new power the heroes use doesn't seem to put them down for very long. \|\|Ironically, Aizen proves to be crucial to his defeat, distracting Yhwach long enough for Ichigo to kill him with a powerful Getsuga Tensho. When Yhwach uses his power to bring himself back from the dead, Ishida negates his powers by shooting him with the Still Silver arrow, which gives Ichigo just enough time to kill Yhwach for good.\|\| - This is also true of Gerard Valkyrie, "The Miracle". His power amounts to getting bigger, stronger, and faster whenever he's attacked, no matter how thoroughly his body is destroyed. \|\|In the end, Yhwach had to kill him off by taking back the power he'd been granted, simply because there was no believable way for the heroes to win against such a cheap opponent. The same goes for all the remaining Sternritter, whose powers pretty much amounted to "I'm invincible."\|\| - Special mention goes to Gremmy Thoumeaux, "The Visionary", who had the power to make anything he imagined real. Whether it was creating truckloads of complicated machinery, large scale natural disasters, or just turning his opponent's body into something brittle, he had few limits. Luckily, when he fights Kenpachi, he \|\|sticks almost entirely to physical attacks, mainly throwing larger and larger rocks at him. Someone called "The Visionary" suddenly lost all creativity and forgot powers they used minutes ago to become beatable. And then out of sheer pride he decided to imagine himself becoming physically strong enough to beat Kenpachi... except the fact that Kenpachi had survived such a ridiculous beating that Gremmy was starting to think of him as invincible. So by simultaneously imagining two contradictory things, Gremmy tried to imagine himself as having beyond infinite physical strength, with the result that he tore his own body to shreds. Kenpachi proceeds to note what a complete moron Gremmy was\|\|. - In [C] Control, not only is Mikuni the richest man in Japan (and thus the most powerful individual in the Financial District), he is the sole holder of a Black Card, which gives him control over the Rotary Press and the economy and futures of Japan. Kimimaro has no means of challenging this, and there's no known process for getting a Black Card. \|\|When Kimimaro does stand up to Mikuni, the higher-ups at the Financial District issue him a Black Card, and the dispute is settled through a Deal.\|\| - JoJo's Bizarre Adventure has been a decades-spanning series of weekly perils. Naturally, it has run-ins with this trope, especially during story climaxes where abilities escalate. - Kars in Part 2 becomes completely immortal and all Joseph can do is run. Luckily, Kars just so happens to get caught in a volcanic explosion that launches him into outer space. Joseph is just as surprised by that turn of events, but pretends it was All According to Plan. - Dio in Part 3 has, among others, the ability to stop time, rendering the heroes completely helpless. Fortunately, Jotaro happens to awaken to the same exact power while fighting him. Even more luckily, it comes packaged with the ability to think, observe, and move while Dio freezes time. - A villainous example, this happens to Kira Yoshikage in Part 4. When he paints himself into a corner, the Stand Arrow suddenly reveals a few new functions, moving on its own to give him the new power to do that day over. This trope essentially becomes a feature of the Arrow, granting certain characters a new power to survive their current danger. - In Part 5, the protagonists are once again faced with a villain with a power they cannot counter. Or even describe sensibly. So the Stand Arrow does its thing, jumping out of the villain's hand to grant Giorno the new power to just prevent every attack against him. - The end of the Negima! Magister Negi Magi Mundus Magicus arc. The Mage of the Beginning has protagonist Negi Springfield's team, Ala Alba, completely beaten down through the last minute arrival of his own Quirky Mini Boss Squad, the expanded Cosmo Entelecheia, which barely were hinted at before their arrival. They utterly defeat Ala Alba, undoing absolutely everything they had achieved up to that point, something that had costed them around a dozen of chapters to do, in pretty much only a couple of chapters, and then are defeated just as soundly themselves by the just as unforeshadowed arrival of Ala Alba's predecessors, the Ala Rubra. Then the Mage of the Beginning soundly defeats them as well by himself, and nothing stands in his way... except because, while nobody in his team was watching over the comatose Asuna, a key piece of his plans, Ala Alba and the rest of Negi's Class 3-A students are able to wake Asuna up, who anticlimactically oneshots the Mage with Negi's help in a single chapter. - In Hunter × Hunter, Meruem is the ultimate Chimera Ant and easily the most powerful character in the setting thus far. He's super-smart and can quickly analyse his opponents and come up with effective strategies, and he can feed on others' nen. Netero blew him up with a nuclear bomb. He survived that and became even more powerful. It quickly got to the point that nobody could beat him. Series main character Gon never even fights him. Then it turned out he got radiation poisoning from the nuclear bomb, and that's what finally killed him. - The Pretty Cure movies have been guilty of running into this ever since the Yes! 5 film introduced Miracle Lights to the audience as a form of Audience Participation, where by lighting up the Lights and cheering for the Cures, they can do whatever is needed to save the day and turn the odds back in the Cures' favor. Outside of the movie theater context, however, and it's obvious just how often the writers like putting the Cures in unwinnable situations just to justify the Miracle Lights' existence and usage, the most particularly noteworthy example being in the Suite and Smile movies where the main leader of their respective team dies only to be revived not even a minute later in a new form because of the Miracle Lights. It should be noted that the Miracle Lights and its alternative were largely abandoned following the Healin' Good movie, though more out of practicality due to COVID-19 guidelines rather than as a creative decision. - The X-Men storyline The Dark Phoenix Saga has to give Jean Grey a split personality (before the Retcon), or else there would be no way to stop it. The writers of the Retcon were basing it on clues in the original storyline. Jean did say something about the Phoenix being part of the cosmos and needing to be sent back where it belongs. - This was a mainstay in the Tintin series, especially in the earlier albums. Tintin's reputation for smarts and ingenuity is only half-earned, because it was convenient luck that tended to save him most often. - When the Fantastic Four faced Galactus for the first time, it was clear that they had no way of defeating an omnipotent cosmic being. Instead, Johnny was sent to retrieve the Ultimate Nullifier — that most infamous of comic book asspulls — to cow Galactus into leaving Earth. - Invoked in the fight between Scott Pilgrim and Todd Ingram, when Scott acknowledges that only a contrived Deus ex Machina could save him. Cue the Vegan Police. - In the final issue of Fables the universe splintering war between Snow White and Rose Red is resolved \|\|when Rose speaks to one of her soldiers (implied to be Boy Blue Back from the Dead),and he simply asks her what happens to Snow's kids after it's all over\|\|. Rose Red decides she doesn't want to continue the war. She also realizes the entire point of their conflict is meaningless as Snow has sons, which should be impossible. - The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: Century ends with Allan, Mina, and Orlando engaged in a hopeless battle against the Moonchild/\|\|Harry Potter\|\|. Just when all seems to be lost \|\|God, in the form of Mary Poppins, descends from on high to destroy him, although She's too late to save Allan\|\|. - Wonder Woman is no stranger to this, especially during the George Pérez Post-Crisis reboot that put more emphasis on magic and mythology. Perez's first Circe storyline stands as an especially shining example, with Circe more-or-less curbstomping all the good guys until she gets her clock cleaned by a literal god, namely \|\|Hermes\|\|. - Secret Empire has this problem with the heroes stuck in space. The heroes are trapped on the outside of a powerful barrier covering the Earth. The only person who can break through it is the new Quasar, but she's put into a Convenient Coma early on. Other heroes with similar cosmic powers attempt to break through it - Spectrum, who has the power to transform into any form of energy in the electromagnetic spectrum; Blue Marvel, who can manipulate matter and anti-matter; and Star Brand, whose power is the same as the one from The New Universe, which is "do anything you want" — and they still can't break through it. Even worse, Galactus refuses to help (he's currently on the good side of the HeelFace Revolving Door, but is busy with other events), and the Silver Surfer has decided to be a no-show for some strange reason. So how do the heroes break through for the big finale? Quasar just abruptly gets better and does a Heroic Sacrifice to destroy the barrier, rendering all the pagetime spent on the space heroes rather pointless. - Lampshaded in Grant Morrison's run on Animal Man. He kills off Buddy's family and turns him Darker and Grittier. Then in a moment of Meta Fiction, Buddy meets his creator who is writing his last issue of the character and explains that Buddy's future is in the hands of the next writer. He then brings the family back to life and restores Buddy's old costume. - Scott Snyder's run reeks of this trope, mostly in his Batman and Justice League (2018) stories. In those stories, the villains are always 5 steps ahead of the heroes, who are always struggling to catch up or straight-up lagging behind and the end of the story, the heroes only save the day by some one last-minute miracle. - Dick Tracy: Chester Gould's seat of his pants writing style meant that he would often put Tracy in death traps without necessarily knowing how he would get out of them. Part of Gould's genius was being able to work his way out of his traps without resorting to this trope, but one Death Trap is worth mentioning: Tracy is put in the bottom of a deep pit the villains have dug in the ground, and a boulder only slightly smaller than the diameter of the pit is dropped in, slowly but steadily grinding its way down to crush Tracy. Any attempt to dig around the boulder will make it fall faster, and none of Tracy's allies know he's in the trap. Gould's admitted this one stumped him, and suggested to his editor that Tracy ask Gould himself for help, as a giant hand would come in and free him. His editor shot this down because... well, because it was a terrible, terrible idea. In the end, Tracy escaped by digging down and coming across a mine shaft, which he escapes into just as the boulder is about to crush him. An obvious lucky escape, but at least not a logic breaking one. - A humorous In-Universe example in Dragon Ball Z Abridged's Dead Zone: \|\|Krillin writes himself into a corner by giving the main villain immortality, so he's forced to resolve it by having said villain open the Dead Zone - the only thing which could defeat him\|\|. - An example of "Only the Original Author can Save Them Now": mirroring the final attack to the final boss in Earth Bound, in An Earthbound Journey the one who ends up doing the final prayer and help winning the final battle for the heroes is \|\|the show's original creator Lauren Faust\|\|. - In chapter 35 of Light and Dark The Adventures of Dark Yagami, the author admits that he made the villain too strong, so he decided to reset the story by having the protagonist randomly find a Reset Note. - Gem Fusion Rarity parodies this in its prologue: Equestria Vlitra, an ancient being even more horrific than Tirek, effortless erases all Equestrian magic and steamrolls the Rainbow Powered Mane Six. The only reason why there's even a plot afterwards is because Rarity is a half-Gem and regenerates back onto the Gem planet afterwards. - The original Thrawn trilogy of Star Wars books by Timothy Zahn would be a good example. Although the Imperial and New Republic forces are mostly equal on paper, Grand Admiral Thrawn holds the initiative and never lets go for an instant. Two and three quarters of the three books are dedicated to the heroes struggling not so much to win as to survive. At the climax of the final book, Luke and Mara are trapped on Thrawn's clone world at the mercy of Joruus C'baoth and the majority of the Republic navy are warping right into a massive trap at the site of their planned counterattack against Thrawn's forces. Only a series of increasingly catastrophic and unlikely setbacks in the final quarter of the third book allow the heroes to win the day. The author himself even commented that writing a plausible ending was difficult because he had "written himself into a corner" by establishing Thrawn as such a Magnificent Bastard. To his credit Zahn did lay groundwork for many of the setbacks that Thrawn suddenly faces, but having them all work out so perfectly in the heroes' favor and all coming together at the same time (thus denying Thrawn an opportunity to adjust his tactics as he had done in previous battles) was a stretch. - In the Sword of Truth series, the last eight or so books have a constantly advancing horde of Imperial Order soldiers advancing little by little across the New World. The heroes have minor victories here and there, and during the fighting retreat led by Kahlan under Operation Fuck Your Shit Up, the D'Haran army slaughtered the Order by the dozens for every casualty they took, but the Order had the sheer numbers to overwhelm all opposition. In the end, the Imperial Order had cut right through the middle of the Midlands and had advanced to D'Hara, where the only army of consequence left in the New World was holed up in a city on a plateau surrounded on all sides. Even sending cavalry into the Old World to pursue a policy of total war as part of Operation Fuck Your Shit Up Twice barely made a dent (partly because said cavalry was fought off by \|\|a witch riding a Dragon\|\|). The only way the heroes managed to pull out a victory was to find the MacGuffin from the first book and eventually use it to \|\|create a new world (which is, incidentally, implied to be Earth) and magically banish everybody that shared the Imperial Order's philosophies there to live out their lives without magic, wonder or the hope of an afterlife. Essentially, the sort of world they were trying to create in the first place\|\|. - The Night's Dawn Trilogy by Peter Hamilton paints the heroes into a corner with its galactic Zombie Apocalypse, and then has to end with a literal Deus ex Machina. \|\|The Naked God is a machine with godlike powers, used to save the human race.\|\| This is built up throughout the trilogy, with what at first appears to be a minor part of the plot involved in investigating various possible sources of external power, and the revelation that the problem has been solved before by Sufficiently Advanced Aliens. It is also made clear that the problem is likely solvable by human technology, but only at immense social and economic cost. - He does it again in the Void Trilogy, perhaps even more literally - \|\|The Anomine machine makes a protagonist, Gore, into a god\|\|. Subverted in that the god powers \|\|are not actually used; the fact that they can exist is enough to convince the Firstlife to un-create the Void\|\|. - Early in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Arthur and Ford are Thrown Out the Airlock without spacesuits. The narration explains the maximum length of time one can expect to survive in that situation, and the sheer improbability of being rescued during that time, at which point they are rescued by a ship that runs on improbability. Douglas Adams admitted that he wrote the situation with absolutely no idea how to get them out of it, and came up with an improbability-based solution as a result of watching a TV show about judo. - In the final book of The Dark Tower saga Stephen King does this literally by sending his characters a letter to warn them of a trap. He even lampshades it in the note with a sentence to the effect of "Here comes the Deus Ex Machina!" Notably, the whole incident leads to them meeting the mysterious Patrick Danville, who eventually \|\|kills the Crimson King by harnessing his unexplained ability to create living artwork to erase him from existence\|\|. It's heavily implied that King himself sends Danville to the Ka-Tet as a "secret weapon". - This is a staple of Malazan Book of the Fallen. The author seems to have created the House of Azath for exactly this purpose. - As indicated in The Plague Dogs, the book seems about to end with the dogs miserably drowning, to the point where the Reader intervenes and begs the Author to save them. The Author obligingly pulls a Deus ex Machina out of his... backside. The movie opted to follow through with what it had started and conclude with a Downer Ending. - Out of the Dark is a hard-SF tale of an alien invasion of Earth. Near the end of the book, the aliens, having run out of other options, decide to simply destroy Earth completely with a massive asteroid, and it's been established many times that humanity has no defense whatsoever against orbital bombardment. The day is saved thanks to a Deus ex Machina in the form of \|\|Count Dracula and an army of vampires\|\|. In what, up until that point, had been a "realistic" hard science fiction novel! - In Twilight, Bella has slipped away from Alice and Jasper, meaning that they have no idea where she is and no way to get to her in time even if they did. She is trapped in a ballet studio with a murderous vampire, with no means of defending herself or escaping. He breaks her leg, throws her around, and bites her... and then Edward and his family show up in time to kill the vampire and suck the venom out of Bella. - As the Tales of the City series entered the 1980's, the AIDS crisis happened, and Armistead Maupin, in an effort to raise awareness of the disease, had Michael and John become infected with HIV, with John succumbing to the disease. Presumably, Maupin though that a cure for the disease was forthcoming, but that did not happen, and thus, to avoid having to either kill off Michael or give him what would have been an unrealistic lifespan for a nurseryman with HIV in the late 1980's, Maupin simply ended the series with Sure of You. Nearly two decades later, he ended up reviving the series with Michael Tolliver Lives. - Bored of the Rings lampshades one instance of this: - Stargate SG-1: - Somewhat the attitude some fans had about how the heroes could possibly overcome the practically god-like Ori. In fairness, though, the writers had found reasonably believable ways for the Ori to be battled — but the eventual resolution in Stargate: The Ark of Truth was nevertheless a Deus ex Machina, involving an impossibly convenient and previously unmentioned piece of Lost Technology. Presumably, if it had played out over the course of a season instead of crammed into a single film, there would have been more believable build-up. - "Reckoning" suffers from this. Clusters of Replicators? More Dakka, or the disruptor introduced at the season start. A galaxy-spanning swarm of Replicators that almost instantly adapts to weapons used against them? Meh, let's use the previously unmentioned Ancient superweapon that wipes them all at once. It seems that ( repeatedly) the writers decided that the Replicators had outlived their usefulness to the plot and handed the heroes a never-before hinted at way to eliminate them, then changed their minds and nullified the heroes' advantage so that the Replicators could be a threat again... requiring them to hand the heroes a new way of winning. - Russell T. Davies did a good job resurrecting Doctor Who after its long hiatus, but he was not very good at writing a satisfying finale to the series broadcast while he was executive producer. He was very bad in that particular area, in fact, so the finale of each Davies series suffered from this trope. A huge fleet of Daleks? Rose looks into the Time Vortex and briefly becomes a Physical God, destroying all of them. Unlimited armies of Daleks and Cybermen? Easy, use something that takes them all out at once. The Master rules the Earth? The Doctor becomes Tinkerbell Jesus to save everyone. Another army of Daleks with the power to DESTROY! REALITY! ITSELF!? Donna develops 1337 Time Lord hacking skills and... they explode, somehow. The Master has turned everyone on Earth into copies of himself? \|\|The Time Lord President Rassilon fixes it with a flick of his wrist.\|\| This has led to the term "Davies Ex Machina" being coined by fans. - Invoked, inverted, subverted, played with, tap-danced on, and turned sideways in the fifth series finale: with \|\|Amy dead, Rory an Auton, the Doctor locked in the inescapable Pandorica, the TARDIS exploding with River inside it, and every star and every planet winking out of existence; everything is hopeless until the Doctor suddenly appears out of thin air and gives Rory the solution to everything. It promptly turns out to be a paradox operating under a Stable Time Loop that breaks all kinds of rules and which the Doctor is only doing because the entire universe is about to be destroyed anyway and the multiple layers of paradoxes cause all kinds of major difficulties for the characters throughout the episode\|\|. - Quasi-lampshaded in "Journey to the Centre of the TARDIS", where Clara moans that there should be a 'big friendly button' that pressing it magically solves the problem. At the end of the episode, when reality itself has broken down, she finds a button with the words Big Friendly Button carved into it, ~~presses it~~ gets her hand burned by its scalding heat when she picks it up, drops it in the direction of the Doctor, and he presses it, and it solves the problem. Arguably not this trope, however, given 1) the perfect memory of Gallifreyans (when they're paying attention, anyway) allowing the Doctor to remember the exact phrase that Clara used, 2) the Doctor having the whole episode to think through what happened and how to fix it if only he could get back to the point in time where it occurred, and 3) the Doctor writing Clara's exact phrase on the button so as to specifically get their past selves' attention (which he obviously does). - Played Straight in "The Time of the Doctor". The Doctor has been given a new set of regenerations from the Time Lords. That's great! But he's still surrounded by a Dalek armada that wants to kill him. That's not so great. But wait! \|\|Regeneration energy can be weaponized and is powerful enough to destroy the Dalek fleet while they just fly around and don't shoot the guy who is attacking them!\|\| Hooray! - Also played straight in the Series 10 finale. "World Enough and Time"/"The Doctor Falls" is bridged by a Cliffhanger in which the Doctor is faced with \|\|his companion Bill Potts having been fully Cyber-converted\|\|, which he has never been able to undo on his own, and the next episode puts him in a position where he cannot seek out a solution elsewhere. Moreover, in the denouement he is completely helpless to do anything due to \|\|dying on a battlefield\|\|. BUT THEN \|\|Heather, last seen as a shapeshifting time-and-spaceship in the season premiere, returns to true love Bill having reasserted her personality, brought her powers under control, and gained new ones to boot in the interim. She promptly turns Bill into a similar being and they take the Doctor back to the TARDIS, with Bill hoping against hope he'll come back as they leave for greener pastures. Turns out her tears in her new form are enough to jump start his body (though he is still resisting regeneration as of the Ray Of Hope Ending, leading into his Grand Finale)\|\|. Hooray! - The Grand Finale of Buffy the Vampire Slayer is spectacularly anticlimactic, seeing as the army of Elite Mooks is easily defeated by two separate Ass Pulls. The fact that the season's Big Bad is incorporeal, and cannot be directly fought note : though Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Chaos Bleeds gives you Hope's Dagger, which can harm said Big Bad (thus shooting down any chance of a satisfying Final Battle against it to begin with) does not help matters. - Inverted in Power Rangers: Dino Thunder: the last Monster of the Week is able to survive a Deus ex Machina style Finishing Move. Except for the fact it doesn't, it dies and the footage is then played backwards to revive it. They then pull another Deus ex Machina to kill it by sacrificing their zords even though they still had Megazords they hadn't even used yet. Later in the episode the Big Bad is shown to be Not Quite Dead and in the ground battle survives a hit from the Red Rangers Battlizer, gets up and proceeds to split into 4 copies. Which they can only stop with a type 3 Deus ex Machina (the episode seemed to love those). Worse, the one time they had used that type 3 it wasn't in the real world, it was in a comic book world making it a type 2. - Supernatural gets like this sometimes. The Winchesters have no magical abilities of their own and routinely go up against demons and monsters with telekinesis or other powers that render the boys' weapons (even the magical ones) totally useless. Yet somehow something always allows the boys to pull out a win. Actually an in-universe exploited trope in the early seasons when the Winchesters realized that they were essentially fated to be the \|\|protagonist and antagonist\|\| in a story being mutually written by the cooperative forces of heaven and hell \|\|who are in turn really being manipulated by the almighty God\|\|. They dove right in to several obviously inescapable situations simply because they knew by season 4 that either fate or divine providence would save them, or \|\|if they died the angels would haul them right back\|\|. \|\|Death\|\| was not particularly amused by these stunts. - 24 pulled this in the seventh season when Jack is infected with a bioweapon and is going to die in hours. The doctor in charge of his condition explicitly states that there is absolutely no cure. Then suddenly in the next hour she reveals that there is an experimental treatment that could potentially exist. - Game of Thrones: The White Walkers army can't be stopped, their leader can raise all his fallen enemies by waving his hands and the good guys just lost their Weaksauce Weakness in a fire. Thankfully for The Hero the TV producers confirmed the fan theory that Valyrian sword works on them too or it would have been even more hopeless. - For its final two seasons, Person of Interest pit its heroes in a losing battle against the forces behind Samaritan, an artificial intelligence covertly exerting ever-greater control over humanity. In the series' final season, Harold Finch pit the Machine, his own A.I., against Samaritan in a series of simulations, which the Machine never won. In the end, it takes a computer virus that had apparently always existed but had never been mentioned to weaken Samaritan enough for it to be destroyed, which it does in the space of two episodes. This goes a step further by completely ignoring the Achilles' Heel Samaritan already had (cutting off its connection to the NSA) in favor of a solution that causes more problems than it solves. - The Vampire Diaries' fifth season finale ends with \|\|Damon and Bonnie trapped on The Other Side, the afterlife for magical creatures, just as the dimension is about to collapse. The episode ends with the two accepting their fate as the scene Fades To White. The next episode reveals that they are trapped in a prison dimension. The existence of this dimension is explained in the Story Arc of the season, but just how and why Damon and Bonnie ended up there remains vague and is not dwelt on\|\|. - Dragons can become this if handled improperly in Shadowrun, and BOY do Game Masters seem to handle them improperly. It should be noted that Shadowrun is pretty explicitly a Crapsack World, and if your party has screwed up to the point of getting dragon'd the GM probably isn't going to save them now. - Always a risk with Classic/Old The World of Darkness games, where the various antagonists were usually in positions of power simply by dint of being unassailable: if they weren't, they would have been dethroned already. If handled badly, this can result in either this trope or Failure Is the Only Option. That said, they don't call it the World of Darkness for no reason, and more than one of their game lines use Villain Protagonists. - One specific example is the infamous Villain Sue Samuel Haight. In the final scenario, he's become a powerful werewolf who became ghouled by drinking massive amounts of vampire blood, plus he has a staff that allows him to do high-level magick as well - without fear of paradox affecting him. He's nigh-unstoppable unless he's confronted by characters who have really been bought up. However, the scenario specifically has Haight losing no matter what - his paradox-proofing eventually runs out even if the players are defeated, which results in his death. This can be averted, however, in previous scenarios, up to and including killing Haight before he's acquired any powers. - A constant problem in Legend of the Five Rings, thanks to the Merchandise-Driven Metaplot that requires major story "rewards" for the winners of the annual CCG tournament. Serial Escalation has also long since kicked in, such that one of the Big Bads of the setting has already been killed twice. - In Shakespeare's As You Like It, as Frederick is advancing with his army on the Duke and his followers, he meets a hermit and pulls a HeelFaith Turn, suddenly repenting everything and restoring the Duke to his throne. - Half-Life 2: Episode 2, the Combine Advisors; something that can throw people with telekinesis and suck out brains is scary, but something that flies, throws people with TK, paralyzes everyone around it, eats brains, that Gordon can't harm or avoid, and it hates you, and knows where you are- no longer frightening, it's in Deus ex Machina's hands now. Since Half-Life doesn't do cutscenes, they have to make do with Scripted Event Power To The Max. - Final Fantasy has its share of apocalyptic super beings that show up near the end before getting stopped. (At least the characters are certainly established as capable of taking out a wide array of horrors.) Final Fantasy III and Final Fantasy IV 's heroes both suffer an initial defeat in their final battle, only for their friends to revive them through prayer for a Heroic Rematch. - The Fate scenario of Fate/stay night has a badly wounded Shirou and Saber facing down Berserker, a mythological hero who comes back to life the first twelve times he is killed, and cannot be killed twice in the same fashion. Shirou is on his last legs, Rin is trapped and badly wounded, and Berserker still has five lives left after having lost six to Archer and one to Rin, and Saber is badly wounded and without enough mana to perform her signature \|\|Excalibur\|\| attack. Berserker charges... and Shirou forces himself able to magically create a copy of the magic sword he had been dreaming about throughout the route, recalling Archer's cryptic advice and parting words. The sword, which has up to this point only existed as an image in a dream, turns out to be able to take seven of Berserker's lives in one powerful Sword Beam attack when Saber jumps in to help him use it \|\|as it is a copy of her lost Noble Phantasm, Caliburn\|\|. Granted, it had been established that Berserker could lose multiple lives to a sufficiently powerful attack \|\|and Excalibur could have done the job itself if Saber had enough mana to pull it off\|\| and Shirou's ability to recreate the sword had been teased at throughout the route before that point, but it comes off as very convenient regardless. - This is kind of how the characters survived a particular situation in Professor Layton and the Unwound Future. \|\|Layton, Luke, Flora, Celeste, and Prime Minister Bill Hawks are in Layton's car, which has just driven off the edge of the Big Bad's Humongous Mecha and is plummeting to the earth. Only then does Layton flash back to something that Don Paolo said, which was not previously shown (and, given the events of their conversation that were shown, seems improbable at best). Pressing a button gives the car the 11th-Hour Superpower of turning into a plane, and they're able to fly to safety.\|\| Though \|\|Don Paolo is established as a Mad Scientist, he did fix the Laytonmobile beforehand, so it's not too unlikely that he made some Deus ex Modifications\|\|. - You cannot defeat Giygas. Seriously, the final battle of Earth Bound is Unwinnable by any normal, in-game means. You have to \|\|invoke Paula's Pray ability, which before now has only had certain randomized and often dangerous effects. She calls on many of the characters you've seen so far in the game, but even their support is not enough to defeat Giygas. Only after she calls out in desperation for anyone to help does the player finally pray for Giygas to die, effectively saving the party with the sheer force of wanting to win the damn game\|\|. - Star Wars: The Old Republic does it with the Sith Emperor in the Rise of the Emperor plotline. He's an immortal Eldritch Abomination whose resurrection and planet devouring plans occur no matter what actions players take. The heroes are informed he's far weaker than his previous incarnation, but that only amounts to eating planets one at a time, instead of dozens at once. The player only survives from being a snack by fleeing the planet beforehand. - Alan Wake has this happen In-Universe. The Dark Presence is using the manuscript that Alan wrote to achieve its goals, which allows Alan to use the reality warping power of Cauldron Lake to change the rules of the story. He gives it a weakness to light, writes in the ammo and weapon pickups that are found in-game, and the numerous near escapes he has from both it and local law enforcement. It results in an in-story Genre Shift from it being a straight Cosmic Horror Story into Lovecraft Lite. \|\|It doesn't come without cost as he must take his wife's place in the Dark Place for it to balance the scales.\|\| - Arknights has an In-Universe example during the Ancient Forge event, which centers around a movie script written by Lava and Nian starring them as the hero and villain respectively. Nian proves to be a ridiculous Invincible Villain, besieging the city of Lungmen with an army of immortal soldiers and shrugging off every attack the heroes attempt on her. In the end, Lava is able to lure her inside a reactor and blow it up like a firecracker with both of them inside, but when the smoke clears we learn the "Nian" caught in the blast was actually a body double she created, and the real Nian reappears to transform the city into a Kaiju. Upon reading this Lava demands she change the ending, partly because filming it as-is would put them severely over budget, but also because she can't think of a satisfying way to wrap up the story after what just happened. - Homestuck: - Invoked when \|\|the Handmaid\|\| tries to break a fifth wall to allow Andrew Hussie's Author Avatar to save her from the current narrator. The author literally charges in to rescue her like a Big Damn Hero \|\|but ultimately fails. She escapes from the current narrator, but is immediately caught by his master, who's even worse\|\|. - Invoked a second time when Hussie rescues \|\|Spades Slick from the destruction of the troll universe\|\| offscreen. - Incidentally, Hussie can't save anyone now \|\|because Lord English killed him\|\|. - Technically, none of the events that Hussie is in are real, as the Handmaid doesn't actually end up going anywhere and Doc Scratch dies with the destruction of the universe regardless of Hussie's intervention. - Eventually played straight with the Ring of Life and the transparent hole retcon device. The former was first used by a villain to guarantee that the timeline would doom and, when the plan failed, it was used in the new timeline to \|\|revive Calliope and ensure she gets her happy ending\|\|. The latter was used to \|\|create a new alpha timeline by retconning three years' worth of change, anti-climactically bringing Vriska back, and resulting in a timeline with no other heroic casualties (except John and Roxy, but their pre-retcon selves survive to fill their shoes)\|\|. Both elements had questionable foreshadowing, to the point where most of the latter's was through retroactively editing the comic, and both are introduced fairly late in to something that otherwise had established rules barely implying they existed before their introduction. - Also invoked in L's Empire to defeat Dark Star. After all; \|\|what could stop an author, aside from another author\|\|? Invoked again in the final arc when \|\|Temporary Dark Samus (now an editor) takes one of the authors hostage and causes the comic to grind to a near permanent halt\|\|. - Parodied by How to Write Badly Well: "Write yourself into a corner". Followed by "Write yourself out of a corner". - The season 3 finale of RWBY has Ruby suddenly \|\|discover that she inherited an incredible secret power from her mother\|\|, which allows her to immobilize the \|\|Grimm dragon central to Cinder's plan\|\| with the only foreshadowing for this being a vague, throwaway line way back in the first episode of season 1 that could have meant anything. Subverted in that \|\|even with both the Dragon and Cinder taken out of commission, it barely saved anything. RWBY's broken, Pyrrha's dead, Beacon is effectively no more, and Cinder still got what she wanted in the first place\|\|. Double Subversion when we find that in the next volume, \|\|Cinder's taken out of commission because of that power and thus, Ruby's journey is slightly easier. Slightly\|\|. - In the fourth season of Teen Titans Slade came Back from the Dead, with fire powers and immortality that let him manhandle all the Titans without breaking a sweat. And he was nothing compared to the Big Bad Trigon, who turned the entire planet into a fiery hellscape within seconds of entering our world. It's only through a handful of plot contrivances that the Titans even survive until the finale, and they only win in the end by Raven suddenly becoming the most powerful being in the universe. This is somewhat foreshadowed by Raven \|\|being the Demonic Invader's daughter and heir all along, with the Superpowered Evil Side you might expect\|\|. - An In-Universe example in the Donald Duck cartoon Duck Pimples, where the characters in a mystery novel Don is reading come to life and accuse him of being a thief. Just when things look blackest for Donald, the novel's author appears to reveal the true culprit (although he has to go back and read his own book to remind him). \|\|It turns out to be the detective, who then threatens to shoot both Donald and the author. Fortunately, his gun turns out to be a "Bang!" Flag Gun.\|\| - My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic: - Discord is so powerful that his debut would have literally ended the series if he didn't just let the Mane Six win. - In My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic S4 E26 "Twilight's Kingdom Part 2", the ponies have lost in a big way. Tirek has the magic of countless ponies, the Mane Six, all the princesses, and even Discord. The princesses are locked in Tartarus. The Mane Six are near comatose and helpless from having their magic drained. Tirek has won, and he knows it. How do the ponies stop him? When, via a sheer stroke of luck, they gain "Rainbow Power" which one-punches Tirek, drains him of all his stolen magic, and restores it to all of Equestria. While it's not the first time a power like this has saved the day, other times the power was suitably foreshadowed note : The Elements of Harmony with their powers and "rules" were firmly established in the prologue, we saw Queen Chrysalis wield The Power of Love against Princess Celestia and win, and the Crystal Heart was well-established as what would defeat King Sombra with the entire plot being about finding it, where Rainbow Power or its capabilities had never been even hinted at: the most foreshadowing it got was in the form of a mysterious chest with six locks earned in the premiere and no real hint whatsoever of what was inside or even that the ponies had found a single key. Justified as the Rainbow Power is quietly implied to be a one-time power-up granted from unlocking the chest and thus is never seen, mentioned or used again for the rest of the series (aside from a dream sequence at the beginning of one episode in Season 5). - Shadow Raiders: The Beast Planet is so many leagues above the heroes that the only thing that saves them from being a snack is \|\|the Prison Planet's teleporter, which allows them to teleport it away and make it Planet Reptizar's problem instead\|\|. - Mighty Mouse: The New Adventures combines this with Medium Awareness in the episode "Mighty's Wedlock Whimsy" (prefaced immediately as a cautionary tale). Mighty Mouse is getting married to Pearl Pureheart, only he's getting cold feet when taking his vows. As he stammers "I...I...I...," the scene suddenly changes to a live action shot of the pencil drawing of Mighty Mouse on an animator's table. The animator can't go through with it.	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/OnlyTheAuthorCanSaveThemNow
Only One Save File - TV Tropes As computer technology advanced and more and more durable memory became available to console manufacturers, saving progress as a feature of a game itself became possible. Due to how computers work, that save must be a file, and memory limits might only allow one save file, a.k.a this trope. But that was the past. Now, technology makes multiple saves possible, so it's the software and therefore the game designers, not the hardware, that truly controls the number of saves that can be concurrently stored. As one of the many possible dimensions of Save-Game Limits applicable to any game's save system, this is the "number of save slots" dimension at its harshest, since "zero" would be lacking that dimension entirely. By the way, the name is talking about save files instead of sessions because it's both shorter and it's usually one file per play session. The other way of "saving" state is a misnomer, because password-based saving, a.k.a Password Save, is regenerating a state based on user input, instead of restoring it from a preserved location. Password Save can also overlap with this trope, since the two could often be found in the same game, using the player's resources as a form of information storage, in addition to the game storing it themselves. As these games don't have other saves to actually select, it is possible but unlikely that a Start Screen would not exist, and instead it just does an Automatic New Game and automatically jumps into the game whenever it's turned on, instead of asking if the player would like to delete their save or some such. Although, it is unlikely since a Start Screen has other uses beyond starting the game, such as being the earliest and fastest location to access the options menu. As a trope that isn't necessary now, if this is done in a modern game, there's likely designer intent behind it. Such as hindering Save Scumming as part of being Nintendo Hard, by making it harder to save favorable states if the wanted result has multiple points of slow failure, especially if the game only Autosaves so there's almost no player control over saving. Multiple slots allows the functional reversal of time, so having only one means that the developer assumes that there's no Unintentionally Unwinnable states that can be reached, such as the "Merciful" type of game mentioned on Unwinnable by Design. Or not, to ramp up the horror of Survival Horror with Wide-Open Sandbox, where the sandbox usually means saving anywhere is possible, for the freedom. Another big inconvenience caused by having only one save file is the inability to dedicate specific save files to good parts of the playthrough that cannot be replayed afterwards unless the player restarts completely, like a Boss Battle, a memorable story cutscene, or a One-Time Dungeon. This can be mitigated if there's a Replay Mode of some sort present, but that feature is unfortunately rare in games of this kind. The Roguelike genre usually does this with only Suspend Save-type saving, to keep the risky nature going, disallowing the reversal of time. For more of a utility consideration, this might occur when giving the player a representation of the save file is not useful, like in most Puzzle Games, Rhythm Games or some other game, where each individual puzzle / stage / song usually has no impact on any other, and there's no permanent loss state, so saving and reloading later would only be a loss of progress, so it's designed so such a negative event can't happen. Then there's the common Arcade Game, Endless Game, or Game Within a Game which are only about Scoring Points, so saving the high score at the end is the only thing that's saved, and you only need one version of that. Also, in regards to "stage-based nature", most games aren't like that anymore, so with continuity between "levels" comes possibly important changes each run, so there's a reason to allow the player to have multiple attempts at the same events, allowing player choice. As an Anti-Frustration Feature, there might be a warning about starting a new game when a save file already exists, likely, if an Autosave might be made so early as immediately overwrite progress if a new game were started. A game's Final Death Mode could also have this, to make it even more difficult. But, just in case, some games have an option to delete the only save, perhaps for "Fresh File" Speedruns and such. Fictional Video Games might appear to be this, especially if they're Nintendo Hard, or if it's a Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game as to keep the characters' Digital Avatars visually consistent by restricting them to only one, for instance. But this doesn't work with Minigames in general because they share the save slot with the outer game, at least in player perception. Then there's financial considerations. Games that sell paid Loot Boxes have high overlap with this and autosaving, usually after every completed action, since allowing players to keep reloading and trying until they got what they wanted would defeat the whole purpose of the loot box mechanic. If gameplay-impacting Character Customization is a thing, then this trope likely doesn't occur, to allow the player the space to experiment without losing previous progress. ## Video Games: - Drawn to Life: The second game only has one save file per game. It's possibly justified by the game itself \|\|being Adventures In Coma Land\|\|. You can't exactly have multiple save files in a universe where \|\|everything takes place in the head of supporting character Mike\|\|. - The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild: For each Nintendo Switch profile, there can only be one manual save file and five Autosaves that overwrite in oldest to newest order, for each difficulty: Normal Mode and Master Mode. However, nothing is stopping a player from making a new Switch profile on the console to have one new save file of each difficulty, so this is a play on this trope, where functionally, there's only one fully player-controlled save, but with proper manipulation, there can be 3 different timelines per profile, each with one "current" and one "previous" state saved. - Ōkamiden has only one save file, a stark contrast to its predecessor which had 30; this is because the game was released on the Nintendo DS and, on a technical level, it already pushes the system's capacity to the limit (the first game, meanwhile, was benefited by the vast space and specs provided by the Playstation 2 and the Wii). Unfortunately, there's a good deal of collectibles that are Permanently Missable — some of which are tied into New Game Plus functionality. - The Ratchet & Clank series has started doing this with its later PlayStation 3 games, having one save per account. This changed after Into the Nexus when fans asked for multiple saves like in the older titles, so starting with Rift Apart, multiple saves have returned. Of the Ratchet games that only have one save, there are a few variations: - Ratchet & Clank: All 4 One: Just plain one save per account. However if you have PlayStation Plus, you can disable automatic save uploads and then use it to manually back up a specific save (or copy them to USB, of course). - Ratchet & Clank: Full Frontal Assault: allows uploading a save file onto cloud storage (no relation to the PlayStation Plus cloud saves); while intended to be used for Cross-Saving between the PS3 and PS Vita versions of the game, it can subvert the intention of this trope by functioning as a second save slot (one save on the console, and another in the cloud). - Ratchet & Clank: Into the Nexus is one file per local account, but it too allows save data to be uploaded to the cloud without needing PS+. - Ratchet & Clank (2016) only has one save file per account like the game before it, but it doesn't offer cloud saves of its own accord, so PlayStation Plus is the only way to do so. - Each game in the Super Smash Bros. series only gives the player one save file for the main game. The story modes in both Super Smash Bros. Brawl and Super Smash Bros. Ultimate meanwhile avert this, giving the player the option to hold a number of different save files at once; every other mode is still limited to one, though. - Them's Fightin' Herds has only one save for its story mode, and choosing another chapter manually will overwrite the previous progress. Thankfully, cosmetics carry over so it's easy to play though another chapter if the player missed anything, and the only thing really lost are checkpoints. - Bioshock Infinite allows only one save file, and combines it with auto-saves. However, each chapter already made is saved and can be overwritten by more recent plays, and players can replay these chapters. The same system is used for the Burial at Sea spin-off. - The Far Cry franchise: Far Cry 2, Far Cry 3, Far Cry 4, Far Cry Primal, Far Cry 5, Far Cry: New Dawn and Far Cry 6, provide only a single save slot for your entire campaign. Among other things this renders you unable to replay any completed scenario. - Singularity notably limits you to only the most recent autosave, it doesn't even have a level select feature unlike almost all other games in the genre. It does at least give you 3 seperate player profiles. - Strife initially had only one save slot. You could save as often as you wanted, but good luck if you saved next to a boss while being low on health or ammo and with no suitable powerups in sight. Even the producers found this to be too harsh, and removed the limit in a later patch. - Copy Kitty: The game is played by traversing through all the levels of multiple worlds, but there's only one playthrough. To restart the game would basically be un-installing, then re-installing the game, making a fresh copy. - Crescent Pale Mist has only one save file, and progress is only saved after clearing a level. High-scores are saved on a different file however and the PC version includes a tool to wipe them without deleting the save file. - Khimera: Destroy All Monster Girls: The Cakeboy Game Within a Game where it's all about Scoring Points, so that's the only thing that's saved. - The LittleBigPlanet series tends to operate on a "one user, one profile" basis, which makes sense given that the saves are tied in part to the online account in respects such as Pins, Trophies, and levels uploaded. - Mega Man: The Japan-only Complete Works re-releases of 1 through 6 for the PlayStation are aversions as they have up to 8 save slots for its Original and Navi Modes, and Mega Man 8 and its later ports on Sega Saturn and its Legacy Collection 2 version have multiple save slots on their respective platforms, however, the ports of these games featured in the Mega Man Anniversary Collection limits players to only one save file for the game. - The Pony Platforming Project series of Fan Games of My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic, made in Adobe Flash are short enough to only need one save file, and saving is done through reaching a Save Point. The games share a world so the mechanics are the same in each one. The games are: Minty Fresh Adventure! and Fresh Minty Adventure. - Sonic the Hedgehog (2006): Unlike the previous games in the " Adventure" era, this game only uses one save file per Xbox/PlayStation account. - Antichamber has only one save. You can't really let a friend try it fresh without losing your own progress. As this is a PC game, you can of course manually keep multiple copies of the save file; in fact, this is what the creator recommends doing, shrugging it off as a Do-It-Yourself Plumbing Project. note : (your Steam installation directory)''steamappscommonAntichamberBinariesWin32SavedGame.bin - One Shot makes this a plot point: You, the player, only have one chance to complete the game. The original version even went as far as to lock you into a game over if you closed the game outside of designated Save Points. - Mario Kart: Series-wide, the characters and vehicles unlocked, as well as the cups won and the Time Trial records stored, are all shared in a game's single file ( 64 and Double Dash!! even require additional Memory Card space to save the ghost(s) in Time Trial). Mario Kart Wii is the only game that averts the trope, thanks to having four save files. - Pikmin 3: Only one save file is stored per Wii U account. Its two predecessors have three each. To make up for this, the game provides a rollback function allowing the player to return to a previous day, should they feel their progression is flawed (i.e. too many Pikmin lost along the way, or too little fruit juice left). - Dragon Quest IX only has one save slot. - Etrian Odyssey: The first four mainline games only have one save file each, but later games allow additional files to be stored via an SD card. - The Final Fantasy Legend: A single save slot, and, unfortunately, it is possible to save in rooms that cannot be exited without a Boss Battle, with a party unable to defeat said boss. - Paper Mario: - Pokémon: The series started as cartridge games for the Game Boy with Pokémon Red and Blue, and this trope is now presumably tradition: - The main series games only allow one save file per slot, owing to limited cartridge space in the first generation making it the only way to nickname every possible Pokémon that the player can catch and store. - Some of the Spin-Off games follow this trend, with examples such as Pokémon Mystery Dungeon and Pokémon Ranger - Zig-Zagged for the Nintendo Switch games, where the device can have multiple save files by switching over to a different account. One save per account. - Pokémon GO, as a Mobile Phone Game, also has only one save state, due to only expecting one user. - Ring Fit Adventure: Having only one file is justified because it's Exergaming designed for only one person to use it. - The World Ends with You: There's only one save file, and selecting the New Game option with a save file present will instead ask if the player wants to erase the existing save data. - Undertale: There is only one save file, as a deliberately retro feature. It's a plot point, as characters remember your previous actions — even actions from a different playthrough from the current one — and some are even aware of the ability to save. - Xenoblade Chronicles X has only one save file per Wii U account. This is due to the online features (and the achievements unlocked with them) tied to the player's profile. - In Animal Crossing, you are allowed one town per disc or cartridge, with up to four player characters being allowed to live in a single town; Animal Crossing: New Horizons increases this limit to eight. In most games, these characters can be deleted and swapped in for new creations whenever you desire, though Animal Crossing: New Leaf and New Horizons disallow you from deleting the first created character (who serves as the mayor/island representative) without erasing the town/island entirely. - Tomodachi Life: A game about island management, which only allows saving one island. - Totally Accurate Battle Simulator: The overall save saves unlocked units to use in individual battles, and how much of the campaign has been unlocked. There's no reason to reverse time. - Invisible, Inc. has four save slots, but each one is for a separate playthrough. On each run you can only continue from your last save. You have the option of replaying a level if you fail, but procedural generation means that it won't be the same as last time. - Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater: The 3DS version only has one save file, and there's no option to store additional files through an SD card. - Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain can only have one saved game at a time. If you want to start the game fresh, you have to erase your old game file. - Metal Gear Survive one-ups this by limiting you to only one save slot, but making up to three extra available... at $10 a pop real-world currency. If you thought Pay To Win was bad, imagine being told you need to pay to let your brother or sister play as well. - Bullet Witch: Only one save file is used throughout the game, with progress being saved as players clear the game's stages. Mid-stage progress is also saved between checkpoints. - Control: One saved path. One latest Auto-Save to reload from and a checkpoint from every plot mission completed if the player would like to turn back the clock for some reason. - The first four Ace Attorney games only have one save slot. The Nintendo 3DS games upgrade to two saves. - Card City Nights 1: Has only one save file because the only Character Customization is in physical appearance, and Unintentionally Unwinnable is impossible. - Cave Story, in its original freeware version, only has one save slot. But the various upgraded ports of the game (starting with the Wiiware version) increased the save slots to three. - In Dead Island, not only is there only 1 save file and the game saves automatically every time you do something, but the game makes it impossible to back up your save game, and destroys your save file if you're sneaky and try to do so. - Dwarf Fortress, in both Fortress Mode and Adventure Mode, uses a save system that is under normal condition effectively the same as most roguelikes: saves are not deleted when you load them, but you can't stop the game without saving it (or finishing it, if you lose) and selecting "quit" from the main menu. Save Scumming is still possible by forcing the computer to close the program or manually copying the same file, but is considered cheating. - FTL: Faster Than Light: One save file per installation. You can only ever have one active game at a time — if you start a new game, the current one is erased. This means you can't have separate games for different ship types saved at the same time, or have one for another person — once you start the game, you have to play it till you win, die or choose to restart and overwrite the save. - Heaven's Vault: Single save only. Mainly saving by Auto-Save. - I Love You, Colonel Sanders!: Saves which checkpoints have been unlocked to be able to start the game from, instead of exactly where the player ended. - Kingdom Hearts: Melody of Memory: There's only auto-saves, so it's effectively this. - Liberal Crime Squad allows only one save file, and auto-saves everyday to prevent Save Scumming - but it can be circumvented by the fact that savefiles still exist even when the game is being run, meaning that one could close the game and reload the savefile if the day went wrong. - Mario Party and Mario Party 2 have each only one save file. Come Mario Party 3, and save slots were added for it and several subsequent games. Starting with Mario Party 9, the series went back to only one save file and has been like that ever since. - Miitopia has only one save file as well. - The three INiS DS Rhythm Games, the Osu! Tatakae! Ouendan duology and Elite Beat Agents, only allow you to keep one save file per copy of the game. Agents only allows you to save one replay per mission, while Ouendan 2 lets you save up to 20 replays of any mission without such restriction. - PsyCard: Because it's a mobile game so space is at a premium, and only used by one person. And there's progressive unlocks without any reason to time travel backwards, since replaying the game is relatively short and easy. - Shadow Complex only has one save file, and it is tied to the Xbox 360 profile, meaning you'll either have to start a game from the beginning from the main menu or make a new Xbox 360 profile to avoid erasing an existing file. The game's Remastered version, after an update, later averts this by adding ten save slots that can be used, however, player levels bonuses are still carried over. - All of the Style Savvy games, Style Boutique, New Style Boutique, New Style Boutique 2: Fashion Forward, and New Style Boutique 3: Styling Star'', have only one save file. - The Treasure Hunter Man series, a.k.a Treasure Hunter Man 1 and Treasure Hunter Man 2: Each game has only one file, so when selecting Load on the Start Screen, there's no selecting a save file, while making a new game doesn't tell the player that a save already exists. - Understand only had one save file until a later patch added three save slots. - Until Dawn allows you to start/restart or continue, but not load another save file. It also autosaves moment-to-moment to prevent Save Scumming. If you mess up, another teenager dies and you can either start all-over, or suck it up and move on. Sure, you can immediately quit and relaunch the game in the hopes of beating the autosave, but you can never start a new file without over-writing your progress. - Vambrace: Cold Soul (released 2019) has three save slots, but each one is for a separate playthrough. You can quit and reload, but the game auto-saves whenever anything significant happens, so any decisions made are permanent.	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/OnlyOneSaveFile
Only the Knowledgable May Pass - TV Tropes Perhaps you know the truth of how the city fell, three centuries ago. Perhaps you know the secret ritual of White Magic — or Black Magic. Perhaps you know the way through the labyrinth. Perhaps you are fluent in Thieves' Cant. Perhaps you know Things Man Was Not Meant to Know. Perhaps you recognize the Geeky Analogy. Perhaps you just know the secret handshake, or that The Password Is Always "Swordfish". But if you can prove it, any of these are proof that you should be taken seriously: you are in the in-group, of those who know this esoteric knowledge. Then, this can mean they want to be rid of you, or exploit you, and there is the little matter of figuring out who would understand if you say it. Heaven help you if you accidentally learned it; you will find yourself knee-deep in trouble before you can blink. In The Infiltration, it is a frequent point of failure — but if you do have the knowledge, it lets you in entirely. The Ancient Tradition, Ancient Conspiracy, and Ancient Order of Protectors take it very seriously. Unlike Only Smart People May Pass, you can not figure this one out from the clues; you have to have learned it. (Occasionally, the Genius can manage to figure it out, but it will always take them serious time and effort.) This is, if they did it right. Sometimes they were clumsy. Conversely, an Only Smart People May Pass riddle may turn into this if the answer is too insane or difficult. Compare Trust Password, Only the Worthy May Pass, Only the Pure of Heart, Only Good People May Pass. If it's something only a specific person would know or say, that's Trust Password or Something Only They Would Say. ## Examples: - The Case Files of Jeweler Richard likes this trope. - Saul tests Seigi's knowledge of gemstones with Richard's acrostic ring to ensure he cares enough to pay attention to Richard's lectures as see his potential as a jeweler apprentice. - Richard leaves a Trail of Bread Crumbs for Seigi with clues from conversations they had previously about gemstones. - In volume nine, Vincent asks Seigi everything he knows about coral as a gemstone before giving him information. - In volume ten, Octavia sets up a riddle game with Seigi and Richard to test Seigi's knowledge of gemstones and Richard's knowledge of ancient Japanese literature. - In Winter War, while meeting in an occupied city, Soi Fong and one of her Onmitsukidou use lines from a Tang Chinese poem as a password, switching off in the middle of lines and then skipping to the end. While someone sufficiently learned might know the poem, they probably wouldn't know when to switch off, or recognize what was going on based on the first phrase. Kage: After battle... Soi Fong: Many new ghosts cry. The solitary old man... Kage: ...worries and grieves. [pause] To many places, communication is lost. I sit straight at my desk but cannot read my books for grief. - The Lumberjack and the Tree-Elf the first installment in the The Victors Project series has this Mack takes Jason to a rebel meeting at the home of Mayor Lourdes and his family. Carla Lourdes: The days are dark. Mack: I brought a lantern. - Crossed Lines: Yamato earns Denjiro's trust because she knows about Toki's Devil Fruit powers, something obscure enough to convince him she genuinely read Oden's journal. - In Guards! Guards!, The Elucidated Brethren of the Ebon Night have a long string of passwords (as does every other secret society in the area, oddly enough at least some of them have the same ones, meaning they have to help each other's members to the right meeting place). - Dune: Lady Jessica is able to gain acceptance among the Fremen by using phrases planted in their culture by the Missionaria Protectiva (which manipulates religious beliefs to benefit the Bene Gesserit). - In Harry Potter, students in Hogwarts need a password to enter their dormitories. (With the exception of the students in Ravenclaw, who use a riddle — Only Smart People May Pass.) - Doubly subverted in Septimus Heap, since while the DoorKeeper of the House of Foryx doesn't allow Jenna and Beetle to enter even after they have resolved the puzzle that is The Right of The Riddle, they eventually get into the house with violence. - The Kaiel Death Rite, in Courtship Rite, which is applied to heretics, consists of seven increasingly difficult deadly tests. Each test must be designed so that someone who is familiar with "the common wisdom" can pass, because it is the common wisdom that is threatened by heresy. When the protagonists are ordered to marry Oelita, the Gentle Heretic, they decide to use the Death Rite to test her fitness to wed them. - In Rick Riordan's The Heroes of Olympus novel The Mark Of Athena, the \|\|ghosts of Mithritic initiates\|\| think they have this. Annabeth does indeed have some of their secret knowledge, but bluffs through the rest, notably added by her ability to make guesses based on the room's decor. - In Dan Abnett's Bequin novel Pariah, Lupan tries to make a veiled approach to Beta. Unfortunately for him, the code terms he used were so ineptly woven in as to signal that something was wrong to her. - Inverted in Illuminatus!. Robert Drake spends a considerable amount of time and effort trying to force his way into The Illuminati by demonstrating his knowledge of the Ancient Conspiracy. - In a short story note : can't remember the author's name, the villain steals art carvings and tries to sell them as his own work. The original sculptor takes him to court, where a judge orders them each to carve an image as he watches. The plagiarist's work is obviously much worse, so he is found out. - The Lord of the Rings: When the Fellowship goes to the Dwarvish mines of Moria, Gandalf finds the doors with an Elvish inscription: "The Doors of Durin, Lord of Moria. Speak, friend, and enter.". So, he tries speaking an Elvish phrase, but when that doesn't work, he tries several others before giving up. That's when Frodo realizes that the password is the Elvish word for friend, "mellon" and it opens. However, they soon see that all the dwarves have long since been slain by orcs. - Call of Cthulhu. In several published adventures, using your Cthulhu Mythos knowledge when speaking to cultists allows you to pass yourself off as one of them, which can considerably increase your life expectancy. - Betrayal at Krondor has a great many chests called "Wordlocks" that are essentially combination locks with letters instead of numbers, and they have riddles on them. The answer to the riddle is the combination, so most of these follow a different trope, though one special chest for a sidequest contains a lore-relevant riddle that requires you to learn the answer before you can open it. - In Impure Blood, Dara uses it twice: - In Girl Genius, Violetta inverts it, thinking that Moloch's ability to get into the rafters shows he must have been trained or have some secret knowledge. He assures her that he knows he doesn't want to get munched on by the thing below them. - In Erstwhile, the prince questions the bride about things during the ceremony and says if she doesn't know them, she's not his true bride. - In Rusty and Co., the bottle fairy has forgotten her Riddle Me This, and replaces with a riddle that no-one would know. - In Grrl Power, Sydney puts Leon to the test before verifying that he is indeed a proper nerd. - In Assigned Male, Stephie asks for a passphrase from Ciel so that she can allow the latter to enter her house, but Ciel doesn't know what it is. Eventually, Steph reveals it to be "Do you want a hug?" - In Avatar: The Last Airbender, the members of the White Lotus, an Ancient Order of Protectors that works for world peace, use a series of these to identify one another in public, all centered on the checkers-like game of pai sho. The first is placing the white lotus tile in the center of the board on the first move; the second is a Trust Password ("I see you favor the White Lotus Gambit. Not many still cling to the ancient ways." "Those who do can always find a friend."), presumably to weed out those who use the tile by accident; and the third is arranging the tiles in a giant lotus shape, just in case the first two methods fail. - In the Futurama episode "Fear of of Bot Planet", two characters in disguise must prove they are robots by passing such a test: Robot #1: Administer the test. Robot #2: Which of the following would you most prefer? A: a puppy, B: a pretty flower from your sweetie, or C: a large properly formatted data file? Robot #1: Choose! [Leela and Fry whisper] Fry: Uh, is the puppy mechanical in any way? Robot #2: No! It is the bad kind of puppy. Leela: Then we'll go with that data file! Robot #2: Correct. Robot #1: The flower would also have been acceptable. - In medieval times, masons needed a way to know whether other masons really knew their stuff, since they traveled a long way on jobs, failures of skill could be disastrous, and it was really hard to check with those who taught them. Their solution was secret rituals — only a skillful mason would be taught them, so knowledge proved his skill. (The true origin of the Freemasons.) - To anyone who has ever forgotten a code or password to access an account, this trope applies. Painfully. This Cracked article describes how easy it is to infiltrate someone's email and facebook accounts by guessing their security questions if you know enough about them, which is why you should treat the answers to security questions as passwords. For instance, "What was the make of your first car?" should be answered with something like, "Piece of crap Toyota Corolla" instead of just "Toyota". - Inverted in some cases — someone who knows too much can appear to have researched a topic artificially out of Genre Savvyness, as one German spy in the US discovered when he could complete a line from the third stanza of the US anthem. - Inverted with the text editor Vi or Vim where, instead of entering, it's almost impossible to exit the program unless you know how. (Then it becomes really simple). - One (most likely apocryphal) story dating back to the late 19th century involves people entering an office building to apply for a job. They're told to sit in the waiting room for the boss to be ready. After a few minutes of sitting among the noisy din, one person in the group stands up and marches into the office without being told, and everyone else is told to go home. It turns out that hidden among the noise was the sound of a telegraph machine constantly repeating the words "If you understand this, come into the office now"; only a person skilled enough in Morse code to translate the message and focused enough to block out all of the surrounding chatter was worthy of getting the position (which is often stated to be for Western Union or another telecommunications company).	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/OnlyTheKnowledgableMayPass
Only Shop in Town - TV Tropes Yes, that leaf in the top left is this town's only "Shop". "However no sooner have you moved into your first broom cupboard then the cruel overtones of the game become apparent; slapped with a hefty mortgage, your initial days will be spent performing tasks for Tom Nook the local shop owner, who also appears to have a monopolistic control over the island." When there's a small number of characters populating a small, communal setting in a remote location, individual characters will often be assigned roles within the community. Of these, a common one is to have the local economy controlled by a shopkeeper who runs the only establishment where one can buy and sell goods. In other words, the Only Shop In Town. Said establishment is usually a small shop with a modest inventory (rather than a big suburban department store) which nevertheless has a monopoly. In other words, it's like a Mega-Corp, only scaled down to match the setting it's in. Note that this setting need not be an actual, literal "town" for this trope to be in effect: whether the shop is in a forest, a city or a Moon station, as long as there are no others nearby, it qualifies. These places rarely have more than one employee: the proprietor, who tends to be The Scrooge and may or may not be an important supporting character in the work (they won't usually be a central character, however, due to the sedentary nature of their role). In Real Life, We Sell Everything and An Economy Is You appear out of necessity in small towns and isolated villages as there may only be enough customers to support one store. In some Company Towns, such as mining camps, the firm may run the company store to sell food and supplies to workers. Since the company store has a monopoly, expect high prices. Sometimes, the government may grant a monopoly to one company. Often found in a Thriving Ghost Town. Can be an Honest John's Dealership, but isn't always. If the shopkeeper trusts you, they may offer Black Market contraband hidden behind a false shelf. ## Examples: - Ads for stores (and other businesses) sometimes use this trope: characters will be shown to have some kind of problem, and the business being advertised will be presented as if it's the only available solution. Ads for products, on the other hand, avert it: they love to show their "competitors" (usually a Brand X version) and how they're not as good as the product being advertised. - In most of the Tremors movies, Perfection, Nevada is served by Walter Chang's Market. - Discworld: - Quarney's General Store in Lancre Town. In Lords and Ladies, Nanny Ogg corners Mr Quarney and asks him if the store is doing well. Quarney, recognising this as a prelude to costing him something, tries to claim business is bad, but since it's not like Lancrastians can shop around, Nanny isn't having any of it. - According to Mrs Bradshaw's Handbook, the Dying Town of Gravelhang has one store that sells tobacco, tinned food, and banjo strings. - In The Great Brain books everyone goes to the ZCMI Store, the only general merchandise store in town. Abie Glassman decides to open a permanent store, retiring his traveling wagon, but everyone is used to going to ZCMI for everything so nobody patronizes his store. He starves to death. - Star Wars: Kenobi: Dannar's Claim is a combination general store/livery/garage/restaurant/cantina, and the center of life in the Pika Oasis on Tatooine. Dannar opened up a shop (instead of a farm) on his plot of land to cater to his neighbors, and his widow Annileen and their children continue to run the place, which has expanded to cover every common need of the area. (The vehicle repair garage is technically a separate business renting space from Annileen.) The nearest small town, Bestine, has more services, but Dannar's Claim is more conveniently located for all of the local moisture farmers. - Balamory: The titular village has one: Suzie Sweet and Penny Pocket run its only shop. To be fair, this is a village with about ten adult inhabitants, with one building each. - Boston Legal: To the point where they occasionally represented both sides in a case. For the record, this is major artistic license: After "Touch Your Client's Money and You're Done", "You Can't Represent Opposite Sides of the Same Case" is probably the biggest single rule in legal ethics. - In Father Ted John and Mary (the couple who are always trying to murder each other) run what seems to be the only shop on Craggy Island. - Wrangler Jane's trading post (and post office) on F Troop qualifies as this, though O'Rourke and Agarn get a lot of their goods from the Indians. - Drucker's Grocery Store is the only store in Hooterville, yet it services two shows, Green Acres and Petticoat Junction. - Downplayed some in Hill Street Blues, but Joyce Davenport is the only Public Defender at Hill Street Station who gets to be more than a one-shot character. Presumably this is down to the Law of Conservation of Detail , as she's already a main character thanks to being Captain Furillo's lover. - JAG: Often it makes you wonder why Harm, Mac et al. at JAG Headquarters gets to act as trial and defense counsel from a wide array of cases from all around the Navy and the Marines and why they're not handled by the command staff judge advocates out in the field. - In the pilot episode, Admiral Brovo makes a suggestion that there wouldn't have been a perceived need to send HQ people out to the USS Seahawk if the missing RIO had been a male for political purposes. - It's suggested many times that they're sent out in the field to be impartial whenever there's a concern that the local judge advocates might not be, or that there are none present on the location at all. - Kingdom: Justified in that Market Shipborough is a rather small town; there's probably another law firm in town, but just the one. Or maybe two. But no more. - Oleson's Mercantile is the only store in Walnut Grove in Little House on the Prairie. - In MASH, BJ's father-in-law lives in Quapaw, Oklahoma, a town Hawkeye sarcastically describes as: Hawkeye:* A gas station, a grocery store, and a fashionable restaurant called "Eats". - The Red Green Show: Humphrey's Everything Store appears to be the only shop in Possum Lake. - On Schitt's Creek the only shop in town, The Schitt's Creek General Store, closes to David's dismay. He eventually takes a lease out on the property and opens Rose Apothecary, which elegantly rebrands local products and crafts. David: I can't tell what's more tragic, the fact that the only store in town is closing or that they decided to display the fungal cream next to the cereal boxes. Stevie: That's actually really convenient because I forgot to have breakfast and I'm running low on fungal cream. - Call of Cthulhu: - The Asylum and Other Tales, adventure "Black Devil Mountain". The town of Indian River only has one general store. When the owner found out that the recently arrived NPC Albert Goddard was living on Black Devil Mountain, he refused to sell anything to him and Goddard had to travel seven miles away to the town of Addison for supplies. - Mansions of Madness, adventure "The Plantation". The Gist general store is the only one in the area. If the PCs want to buy supplies, they'll have to go there. - The Fungi from Yuggoth adventure "Mountains of the Moon". The village of Huancucho in the Andes mountains of Peru has only one place to buy things: a small trading post that carries tools, canned food, and other items. - Shadows of Yog-Sothoth adventure "The Coven of Cannich". The only store in the small Scottish town of Cannich is owned by Jamie MacNab. - Supplement Terror Australis, adventure "Pride of Yirrimburra". The small Australian town of Yirrimburra has only one general store, the source of manufactured goods and luxuries. - Adventures in Arkham Country, adventure "The Dark Woods". The small village of Dunwich, Massachusetts has only one shop: Osborn's General Store, which is housed in an old church. - The Unspeakable Oath magazine - Issue #8/9, adventure "Dark Harvest". The only store in the town of Oak Valley, Iowa is Harv's General Store. Unfortunately for the investigators, the owner of the store is a member of the cult that infests the town. - Issue #19, adventure "The Brick Kiln". The village of Trevor Major only has one shop, a general store run by Mrs. Alderson. - Chivalry & Sorcery adventure Stormwatch. The town of Swift has only one store, a trading post that sells most of the supplies available in the game. - GDW's Dark Conspiracy adventure Hellsgate. The village of Piste has only one shop: the general store and gas station owned by Henry Ruiz. The Player Characters can buy most general supplies they need there, including ammunition. - Dungeons & Dragons: - Judges Guild's Dark Tower (1979). Avvakris' Trade Monopoly is the only general merchants' supply house for miles around the village of Mitra's Fist, and the only place for PCs to buy standard supplies. - Module I6 Ravenloft. Bildrath's Mercantile is the only general store, not only in the village of Barovia but in the entire domain. The store's owner charges 10 times normal prices and refuses to bargain. As he says, "If you want it badly enough, you'll pay for it — because you certainly won't be taking your business elsewhere." - Module O2 Blade of Vengeance. The village of Oakendale has only one store. It carries most of the equipment in the BD&D Expert rulebook at a 5% markup. - Dungeon magazine - Issue #5 adventure "The Rotting Willow". The village of Rotting Willow has only one shop, an establishment called Gerald's Store. It's full of a variety of items, all of which are for sale. Player Characters have a 30% chance of finding any standard non-magical item in the store. - Issue #13 adventure "The Moor-Tomb Map". The only shop in the town of Moorwall is the general store that is part of the Much More Ale Inn. It sells some of the grear needed by adventurers at a mark-up of 40-60% above standard prices. - Issue #22 adventure "Rank Amateurs". The only shop in the village of Trintan is Raoul's General Goods. The Player Characters can buy any good available in the D&D rulebooks. - Issue #24 adventure "In the Dread of Night". The only store in the village of Sisak is the general store that shares part of the building which holds the Bountiful Tappe Tavern and Inn. - Issue #38 adventure "Horror's Harvest". The village of Delmunster has Wulch's General Store, which sells most of the items found in the AD&D Player's Handbook except for armor and weapons. - Issue #56 adventure "Janx's Jinx". The village of Davyd's Rest only has one store: the General Store owned by Prenilla. She has mainly food and leather goods but has a 25% chance of having more exotic items like holy water. - Issue #75 adventure "Non-Prophet Organization". The small town of Kellorville only has one store: Malabee's Provisions. They sell supplies for fishing, farming, and sheep-shearing, along with most other items in the AD&D Player's Handbook. - Issue #77 adventure "A Feast of Flesh". The small village of Shaerie only has one business, Owen's General Store. The store has useful items such as food, a ladder, oil, cider, lanterns, rope and farming implements. - Issue #80 adventure "Fortune Favors the Dead". The small village of Valencia has only one shop, a dry goods store which has some foodstuffs and trade items for sale. - 2nd Edition Forgotten Realms campaign setting: - Boxed set, booklet "Shadowdale". The town of Shadowdale has only one store: Weregund the Trader's general supply store. It carries a variety of supplies but does not compete with the local smithy, weaver, or woodworking shops. - Volo's Guide to Cormyr. The village of Dawngleam only has one place to buy items: a "general goods" shop (general store) named Argyr's Realmsry. It sells just about anything someone could want, and the owner will order items from merchants in other cities if a customer asks. - White Dwarf magazine #18 adventure "The Halls of Tizun Thane". There is only one shop in the village of Cahli, a trading store where the Player Character party can buy supplies. - Gamma World adventure GW1 Legion of Gold. The town known as the Fortress of Horn has only one shop, a general store that sells food, equipment, and other merchandise. - It Came from the Late, Late Show II: - Adventure "Showdown at Dry Gulch Station". The town of Dry Gulch Station only has one store, the General Store owned by the Big Bad John Taylor. Customers can buy any product available in the Wild West, including weapons and explosives. - Adventure "Tyrannosaurus Tex". The town of Bootheel only has a General Store owned by Howard Parrish. - Lejendary Adventures, introductory adventure "Moon Slaves". The town of Simton has only one general store, which belongs to Sylvester Mulhaven. - Rolemaster Shadow World setting supplement Star Crown Empire and the Sea of Fates - Wolda's General Store in the town of Borbinak fills the needs of adventurers and the local farmers and serves the wholesale needs of local inns and taverns. - The small village of Ryne has a single general store. - A downplayed, realistic example in Black Friday. Toy Zone isn't literally the only shop in Hatchetfield, but it is the only toy store in the area — and, since the show is set in 2018, one of the few toy stores in America, period. Because Uncle Wiley Toys' has elected to only sell one very limited order of the Wiggly dolls at Toy Zone, rather than selling them in a larger chain or online, the entire town is forced to gather there on Black Friday to even have a chance at getting one. This ends badly. \|\|And the chaos turns out to be a completely deliberate outcome on Uncle Wiley's part, revealing that this wasn't just a gimmick to build hype, but an active (and successful) attempt at spreading a Hate Plague!\|\| - This tends to occur naturally in the Age of Empires games with the Market building. This building lets you buy and sell resources and trade with the other civilizations, but due to the specifics of how it works each civilization will only ever need one. - Tom Nook's store is the only one in the player's town in the original Animal Crossing (see the page image). The Able Sisters sell clothes and accessories in the sequels, but Tom Nook retains his stranglehold on the economy, being the major source of Bells. This changes with New Leaf, where Tom Nook just sells upgrades for your home (and unlike in previous games, he doesn't force you to upgrade when you pay off your current house). His honorary nephews Timmy and Tommy run the local furniture store, and your main source of income becomes the local recycling center/thrift store, Re-Tail. - Played around in Demon's Souls. Some maps have more than one merchant but every merchant sells all kinds of items (outside the general potion management). - Disney Dreamlight Valley: - There is only one general store where players can buy new clothing and furniture, as well as multiples of furniture they already own. And it's run by Scrooge McDuck, of course. He also happens to own the only construction company in the valley, too. - Chez Remy, run by the talented rat himself, is the only restaurant for the villagers to eat at. Though considering Remy's second-to-none cooking, nobody seems to mind. That said, it's also the only place where players can get peanuts, slush ice, eggs, and dairy products. - While there are multiple stalls where players can buy seeds and growable foods, they are all run by Goofy, and Kristoff runs the only stand dedicated to selling resources. - Played around in Dragon Age. - Some cities get only one merchant but in others, you are bound to see many merchants. The dwarven city of Orzammar oozes with them and you get some Dwarven travelers joining your trip. - It's even the focus of a small sidequest in the besieged town of Lothering, where a Chantry sister is calling out the only merchant in town (aside from the innkeeper) for his price-gouging. The player can choose to drive the sister off or try and convince the merchant to lower his prices. - Averted in Drakensang: Each of Ferdok's areas has several merchants selling different stuff, from armors, to weapons, to clothes, to potions, to magic ingredients to useful items and even useless crap too. The sequel even has two vendors (one for weapons, the other for armors) across the same small square, who'll often snark at each other when they're not doing business with you. - In The Elder Scrolls series, this is common for many smaller towns and villages. They often have just a single general trader. Averted in larger towns and cities, which have many more shops offering a wider variety of often specialized goods. - Quite common in the Fallout series, as the post-apocalyptic world rarely allows for villages and towns large enough to have more than one shop. - While they occasionally include a bar and/or a restaurant, Novac in Fallout: New Vegas has nothing but a general store and a covered communal eating area with no vendor. - Averted in Fallout 4, at least in the player-controlled settlements. You can have as many shops in a settlement as you have settlers to run them. - Final Fantasy: - The series has always been pretty good about averting this trope. Sometimes, weapons and armor or both types of magic might be run out of the same building, but typically each type of supplies gets its own brick-and-mortar store in each town. - Averted in Final Fantasy VI, where you find different shops for different items in different buildings. - I Was a Teenage Exocolonist, starting from the second Vertumnalia Festival, the Strato crew opens the Supply Depot, the first and only shop of the colony. You can spend your Kudos there for special cards, and gaining certain perks by increasing certain skills unlocks new items in stock. - The Legend of Zelda - Each populated area (for example Castle Town, Goron City, and Zora's Domain) in The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time tends to have its own little shop. Interestingly, they have unique shopkeepers (who have their own lines of dialogue), suggesting that Nintendo saw the shop as an important aspect of each such area. - Some of the games do it a little differently, however. The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker has unique shops on a few islands, and the whole rest of the world is serviced by Beedle's Shop Ship. Both are examples of this trope. - In The Wind Waker, the owner of the Bomb Shop on Windfall Island takes pride in the fact that he's the only resident of the Great Sea in the bomb-selling business, and uses it to set ridiculously sky-high prices for his bombs (10,000 rupees for a group of 10 bombs, for example). Though later on, \|\|he takes a level in kindness when Tetra and her group of Pirates, not willing to pay his prices, bind and gag him, and steal his wares from him instead. He starts charging far more reasonable prices after that.\|\| - Video Game Lego Island: The titular island has a Pizzeria owned by Mama and Papa Brickolini that is beloved by the island's residents, even though they are aware that it's the only restaurant on the island. Likewise, the island has only one gas station that also serves as the only garage for vehicle maintenance and repairs. - Lufia II: Rise of the Sinistrals has a rather major aversion: there is a shop for items, another for spells, and another for general items, in different buildings. - Minecraft has an interesting version, where a player on a multiplayer server will often set up a place to barter items with other players (note that this is not specifically provided for by the gameplay). Most servers only have one, because when the niche is filled no one will find another. - Pokémon - The series puts its own little spin on this: each town only contains one shop, but they are all branches of the Pokémart Mega-Corp. - Somewhat played straight in later installments: The Pokémart is now a part of each Pokémon Center, with a small shop in either the front or the back. - Averted in Recettear: An Item Shop's Tale. You are the owner of one of the shops in town and with the merchant credential, you get discounts on the different shops in the market. Some shops are referenced even though you cannot see them. - Resident Evil Village: The Duke runs a thriving mercantile empire from his carriage, which is apparently the only place to buy anything in the titular town. Of course, it's justified in that the entire village is almost abandoned by the time Ethan gets there, with only a few lingering people left, and they're not exactly looking to purchase a lot. - The traditional "only shop in town" trope only appears in the original Shadow Hearts 1, and it's a commodity at that. Most of the time you buy your stuff from an unnamed "tight-lipped merchant" that shows up in places. Covenant gets rid of shops altogether and replaces them with the Magimel Brothers, who appear in every location, including dungeons, regardless of anything and too much to Yuri's disbelief. Only Gerard returns in From the New World and, along with his boyfriend Bunghen, takes pretty much the same role. - Averted and played straight by turns in the Shining Series. Each town usually has one shop for weapons and one shop for healing items and power-ups. Occasionally though both will be sold in one store. - Zig-Zagged in the first Uncharted Waters: in any big port, you will have exactly one shop to trade in common goods, one to trade items and treasures (optional), and one to build and sell ships (each located on the exact same spot on the port's Point-and-Click Map). The second game sometimes has several shops of the same kind per port but also plays it relatively straight for the most part. - In the World of Mana series we get the Cat Merchants which bring the item selling to various dangerous situations. - Free Country, USA in Homestar Runner has Bubs' Concession Stand. This is a small structure where one can buy just about anything. Weirdly, no currency ever seems to actually change hands, even when characters "shop" there. Not only does Bubs run the only shop in the HR universe, but he also personally runs every single form of enterprise, from the bar in Club Technochocolate to Strong Bad's Internet Service Provider. He even runs the local black market! - The Economy Cast of Fireman Sam includes shopkeeper Dilys Price, who runs the only shop in Pontypandy. Probably a justified example, at least in the original stop-motion series, as the village appears to be pretty small. You can also sometimes see characters holding carrier bags from a Bland-Name Product version of Tesco, roughly the British equivalent of Wal-Mart. - The Flintstones: - Bedrock has only one caterer, which is why the owner, as he puts it, can afford to be "such a smart alec". And after Fred hires him to cater Pebbles' birthday party and his lodge's stag party and the guy gets the two mixed up, he actually gets away with it, for the same reason. - Bedrock has the same problem with costume stores, and Fred gets in hot water with his boss after a bad experience with the only such store. - Noddy's Toyland Adventures, based on the Noddy books by Enid Blyton, added a doll named Dinah Doll, whose market is the only shop in Toyland. - PB&J Otter: Dad's General Store seems to be the only shop on Lake Hoohaw. - The Simpsons: - The Android's Dungeon seems to be the only shop in Springfield where one can buy comic books. In a bit of Irony, the one day Comic Book Guy tried to gloat about it to customers threatening to buy comics elsewhere was the day a bigger comic book shop was opening across the street from his. - In one episode, Homer hires a builder called Surly Joe when the house's foundations were damaged but gets outraged when Joe gave him an expensive estimate and tells him "Forget it! You're not the only foundation guy in town!" He goes inside, opens the phonebook to "foundation repair", and finds one advert: "Surly Joe's Foundation Repair, THE ONLY FOUNDATION REPAIR COMPANY IN TOWN". - For the most part, the people of Springfield only ever seem to buy groceries at the Kwik-E-Mart. - Occasionally happens in rural areas, where a village will be served by one family-run grocery shop. Not exactly common in cities. Sometimes the local government has to step in. In Baldwin, Florida, for example, after the only grocery store in town closed, the mayor opened a government-run store. - Wroxham in Norfolk, United Kingdom (pop. 1,500) has about a dozen outlets of Roys of Wroxham, including Roy's Food Hall, Roy's Garden Centre, Roy's Toys & Games, Roy's DIY, Roy's Zone Young Fashion, Little Miss Roy's girls' outfitters — it's like Hazzard County there! - A fair number of villages in the UK will have a post office (which doubles as a small supermarket), and typically a pub and a church. - A common problem in company towns, where all local amenities, including the store, are owned by a single company and are able to sell their goods at an inflated price. - Due to population decline in Japan, some towns have used post offices to double as supermarkets.	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/OnlyLawFirmInTown
Only Sane Man - TV Tropes "I began to get a feeling... of being the only sane man in a nut house. It doesn't make you feel superior but depressed and scared, because there is no one you can contact." When there is a group of characters who are all just totally weird, either in general or in a particular scenario, the Only Sane Man is the only one who, well, isn't. Picture this: Alice is the Stupid Evil Psycho for Hire, Bob is a Cloudcuckoolander, Henry is an Empty Shell, Charlotte is a Chaotic Stupid prankster, Karl is too nice for his own good, Daniel is Charlotte's Annoying Younger Sibling, Emily is a shallow sociopath, Maria often Rhymes on a Dime, Franklin is a Mad Scientist, Gardenia is a Lawful Stupid Fundamentalist, Jacob thinks he's a hero on a grand quest, and Lily is a Mad Artist who's obsessed with her wax "statues." Looks like your standard Dysfunction Junction. But then you have Isaac. Isaac is actually a very well-adjusted individual. He reacts with appropriate horror to things like Alice's finger and eyeball collection, Gardenia's tendency to attack anyone not believing in her religion, Franklin's experiments to revive the dead with science, and the crimes against nature that Franklin calls pets. Or reacts with either annoyance or bewilderment to things like Bob's warped logic, Karl's Honor Before Reason mindset (honor being always thought first in his case), Maria's insistence to rhyme all the time, and Jacob's delusions of being a hero. Isaac is the Only Sane Man and The Only Voice Of Reason in the room. The other variant is where the other characters aren't always that weird, but everyone save one character is acting weird in a particular situation. For example, they might regard something absurd as Serious Business, with the Only Sane Man the only one who notices how crazy that is. This latter variant also includes a standard comedy piece: something absolutely insane is going on, but only one person notices (or cares). There are usually three stages, with a rough correspondence to the Five Stages of Grief: Bewilderment (Shock and Anger), trying to get others to see or admit the weirdness (Bargaining and Denial), and bitter sarcasm (Acceptance). In the more extreme cases, the poor soul may be trapped in a World Gone Mad and/or wind up Giving Up on Logic in frustration. Sometimes, though, they are Not So Above It All. A character may also think of themselves as the Only Sane Man without proper justification. A Too Dumb to Fool character may be the Only Sane Man, although he is likely to be less worked up about the failures of others to see than in most cases. The Only Sane Man is often relied upon as the Only Sane Employee. This character often ends up a Knight in Sour Armor. For a more horrific version, see Through the Eyes of Madness. For the sci-fi version, the Ignored Expert is your go-to guy. The comedy version will often end up being either a Butt-Monkey or a Chew Toy. If all the other characters are otherwise sane, and really should see something, but only one guy does, he's an Einstein Sue. See also Cassandra Truth, Surrounded by Idiots, and Surrounded by Smart People; contrast with the Unfazed Everyman. May temporarily overlap with What the Hell, Hero?. If several characters take turns being the Only Sane Man, they're playing with a Sanity Ball. If it's a two-person show, with one person playing the Only Sane Man to the other's wackiness, it's a Straight Man and Wise Guy scenario. This trope is the savvy half of a Savvy Guy, Energetic Girl duo, one third of a Comic Trio, and part of the Four-Man Band. If they're only later proven right, it may be The Dissenter Is Always Right. Usually, but not always, a Cast Full of Crazy contains an Only Sane Man. Usually, he's prone to Sanity Slippage. Sometimes, he's Only Sane by Comparison, in which he's pretty crazy himself but not as crazy as the rest of his cohorts. The Wonka may well feel like this (or be this!) in a world that doesn't follow his thinking. Insanity is, after all, in the eye of the beholder, and The Wonka often has quite valid points. No Real Life Examples, Please! - Real Life does not have only one sane person. ## Example subpages: <!—index—> <!—/index—> ## Other examples: - The US Fire Emblem: The Blazing Blade commercial has several barbarian kings all eating and laughing around a table (the gist was that they'd all just agreed to be allies). One of the men suddenly keels over, dead. There were many confused faces and cries of alarm, prompting one of the kings to shrug and say, "I put poison in his mutton." After a pause, the kings laugh and continue eating... except for one, whose facial expression clearly communicates that he knows that he's the Only Sane Man in the room. - Exit Tunes Presents ACTORS: Hinata Mitsutsuka. Despite his character design and cheerful personality, he is in fact the one who reins in his fellow club members' more... unorthodox ideas. [talking to the Singing Club, about the cat the Singing Club had accidentally adopted] "Like I said, that kind of naming sense is no good!!" - In ACTORS2, Rei Ichijoudani. While he has his moments where he acts otherwise, for the most part, he acts like this. Especially when it comes to his former nanpa partner Takato... - In ACTORS3, Seijun Yuyama, mostly with regards to his Club President Kouya and friend Kaoru. Seijun: Don't drag me into this conversation, you perverts. Kaoru: I'm no pervert! I'm a Covert Pervert ! Seijun: Don't just say that so easily!! - Most comedians are trying to invoke this trope a lot of the time, particularly in observational material. - This is the schtick of Japanese comedian Jinnai Tomonori. His sketches involve him being placed in the middle of increasingly surreal situations where he's forced to point out just how ridiculous what he's dealing with is, and futilely try to enforce order on the situation. This is a fairly typical example. It's similar to a Boke and Tsukkomi Routine, except that the Boke is not an actual individual character, but anything from a video game, to an ATM, to someone we never see who's controlling the lights on a building. - The title character of Dilbert. He's about the least dysfunctional character in the comic and the closest to a genuinely good one. - Frank Mellish from Liberty Meadows gets flustered and dismayed at the animals' antics. - Sam from InSecurity may have his quirks, but compared to his wife Sedine and her cousin Roy, he's practically the voice of reason. - Conchy and Oom Paul split this role between them in Conchy, with Conchy being The Everyman and Oom Paul being a Deadpan Snarker. - Sara in Knights of the Dinner Table. - Nodwick frequently plays the role of Only Sane Man to his party, having by far the greatest amount of common sense of the lot and being less bound by the Contractual Genre Blindness that seems to come naturally to adventurers. This happens in almost every standalone story they're in, but by far the most noticeable is the comic's pastiche of The Lord of the Rings. - Franklin from the Peanuts comics: he is the only character not to have some sort of quirk or obsession. He is also the only person to point out exactly how weird everyone else in Charlie Brown's neighbourhood is. And — in a twist that was particularly ironic in the late 1960s - he is the only black character in the strip. Charlie Brown: Franklin! Where are you going? Franklin: I'm going home, Charlie Brown. This neighborhood has me shook. I didn't mind the girl in the booth or the beagle with the goggles, but that business about the "Great Pumpkin" - no, sir! Charlie Brown: But... Schroeder: Hi! Did you guys know there are only sixty more days until Beethoven's birthday? Charlie Brown: Oh, good grief ! Franklin: [under his breath] Like, wow! - Twisted Toyfare Theatre: - Spider-Man is basically the only person in the entire world with a single lick of common sense. However, this has caused him to become so jaded he flat-out refuses to participate in any kind of action if he can avoid it, for example immediately taking the blue pill to go back to sleep when Morpheus offered to take him to The Matrix. - Spider-Man might have company in the "not completely out of his mind" department in Doctor Doom, the series' other main character. Maybe. - In Bolt, Mittens the cat is the only one of the main characters who doesn't constantly have her head in the clouds, and is also the only one who is aware of the fact that Bolt is living in a fantasy world — Bolt believes that everything he's been in on his TV show is real, and Rhino would have the capacity to know what Mittens would know if he wasn't so cripplingly fanatical about Bolt and so off his rocker. - In El Arca, everyone seems to be totally in love with the female panther Panty, all of them singing and dancing to her song "I will Survive", none of them seeming to notice she's talking about murdering and eating them except for the pig, who is clearly uneasy and suspicious, while everyone else, including the other prey animals, is completely oblivious to the actual words of the song, only really seeming to pay attention to Panty's... um... assets. - Charlotte's Web: Edith Zuckerman is the only one to point out that the writing in the eponymous spiderweb ought to be taken as a sign that the spider is special. She is quickly dismissed. - The Nightmare Before Christmas: Sally seems to be the only denizen of Halloween Town who even approaches the realization that people don't want to be scared or attacked on Christmas. Santa himself later lampshades her wisdom: "The next time you get the urge to take over someone else's holiday, I'd listen to HER. She's the only one who makes any sense around this INSANE ASYLUM!" - Pocahontas: Pocahontas herself is the only character in the film, apart from Grandmother Willow, who knows right from the start that war and xenophobia will do absolutely nothing to help matters between the opposing English settlers and Powhatan tribe. She is the reason John Smith gains a greater appreciation for both the landscape around him and the people inhabiting it, and \|\|she is also the reason why the war at the end of the film comes to a peaceful resolve.\|\| - Deconstructed in Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse: Miguel O'Hara, Spider-Man 2099, is the leader of the Spider Society, which means that he's the unfunny and grounded one in a tower full of quippy, eccentric Spider-People, and the lone pragmatist in a group of idealists. It's played for laughs most of the time, but he complains to Gwen just after meeting her that he seems to be the only one taking the threat to the multiverse seriously. By the end of the movie, he's full-on ranting while slamming Miles Morales against a wall: - Sleeping Beauty: Merryweather proves to be the most realistic and grounded of the Three Good Fairies, often pointing out flaws in Flora's plans and correctly anticipating Maleficent's schemes. When Flora and Fauna attempt to make Aurora/Rose a new dress and cake for her sixteenth birthday, Merryweather is the only one who points out that they're doing an absolutely terrible job and insists on using their magic to fix the presents, saying that they have to put Aurora's happiness first. - Trolls: Branch gives off vibes of this, compared to the hyperactive Poppy and her happy-go-lucky brethren when dealing with the Bergen trying to eat them. - In Turning Red, Jin is the only one in the family who tries to approach Mei on her own terms. When Jin sees the video Mei made with her friends, he encourages her not to delete it. - In WALLE, Captain McCrea is the only human on board the Axiom that isn't entranced by the 700-year-long ennui of their existence. - The Beatles: "The Fool on the Hill". - The protagonist from Harry Chapin's "The Rock". - The singer in Tears for Fears' "Mad World" sees himself as this. It's arguable whether he actually is. - The Spine of Steam Powered Giraffe is arguably this, being much more calm and rational than his siblings. - Contessa of Emilie Autumn's Bloody Crumpets likes to see herself as this. Then again, seeing as how the Crumpets are supposed to be a group of asylum inmates, "sane" is relative. Contessa: I would like to make it very clear that I am not, I repeat, I am not, not, NOT insane! Everyone Else: [hysterical laughter] Emilie: [to the audience] ...She eats people! - Daniel Amos: The album ¡Alarma! includes a short story in the liner notes where the narrator winds up in a decrepit city, where he's the only one to notice that the religious leaders are all spouting nonsense. The narrator outright calls himself "the only sane mind in this mad world." - Drake is naturally this on the four-way collaboration "Forever" from the More Than A Game Soundtrack, since the other three are Eminem, Lil Wayne and Kanye West. - In the music video for Imagine Dragons' "On Top Of The World" has Stanley Kubrick, Richard Nixon and the band members faking the moon landing. Very badly. The whole thing is being broadcast live and everyone is watching with anticipation. Eventually, the ruse becomes obvious and people burst into the studio... so that they can cheer along with the fake astronauts, even laughing along as Richard Nixon does a cabaret line dance with the astronauts. Meanwhile, Stanley Kubrick is obviously humiliated by the entire event and the cosmonauts are watching with mixed confusion and irritation. - Caleb the medic from the Firefly game of Cool Kids Table is the only member of the Zelda's crew who isn't weird (Roc), bloodthirsty (Kimmy), or just plain thirsty (Mickey). - Kakos Industries has the company owner, Corin Deeth the III, act as this for the most part. He's a lot more logical to an almost pretentious degree though even he has had instances of becoming obsessed with inanimate objects and believes having a live baby implanted into someone's thigh is a good idea for a Halloween costume. - In Welcome to Night Vale, most Night Vale residents are so often exposed to Orwellian government surveillance, eldritch abominations, and supernatural disasters that they don't recognize such events as odd any more. Carlos, a recently-arrived scientist from the outside world, is the only person in the town who realizes just how WRONG all this is. Though even he doesn't seem to appreciate the full extent of just how weird Night Vale is - Georgie is this in Wooden Overcoats, being an easy-going Hyper-Competent Sidekick among a misanthropic jerkass (Rudyard), a shy, Covert Pervert mortician (Antigone), a talking mouse (Madeleine), and a Parody Sue (Eric). She's also Funn Funeral's Only Sane Employee. - Joey Styles was signed to play precisely this trope in ECW. Paul Heyman told him "In the midst of all the craziness, I want you to be the steady voice of reason" - In WWE, it's pretty common for play-by-play guys on commentary to do this (Especially if their were Face). Jim Ross did this on RAW while Michael Cole was the same on SmackDown!. - In a rare example of the colour commentator coming off as this, William Regal on WWE NXT - This is continuing now that he is the GM of NXT - Several heels tend to think they're this, including Chris Jericho, CM Punk, and Damien Sandow. They usually tend to drift into Not So Above It All. - Though Punk was the genuine sane one in the "love triangle...square" storyline, as Daniel Bryan was certifiably insane by that point, Kane's reputation spoke for itself while A.J. Lee, the object of all their "affections", was clearly off her rocker and three-fourths of the way to being committed. - Whenever WWE or TNA wrestlers venture out into the "real" world for skits, there is usually at least one bystander who fills this role. The "Special Guest Host" on Monday Night Raw (usually a non-wrestling-related celebrity) also tends to play this part, but there have been some exceptions - and, in at least one instance, the Special Guest Host turned out to be the heel of the show. - Jerry Springer filled this niche when he guest-starred on Monday Night Raw. Yes, that's right - Jerry Springer. (Double-subverted when he proved to be Not So Above It All, of course.) - Jonathan Coachman caught the Sanity Ball - temporarily, anyway - at the 2007 Royal Rumble. He, Theodore Long, and Kelly Kelly - representing Raw, SmackDown, and ECW, respectively - were backstage watching the Royal Rumble Match participants file in to choose their numbers from a bingo tumbler that Kelly was cranking. It wasn't long before Coachman was becoming visibly unnerved by the Carnival of Killers - including a pair of vampires (Kevin Thorn and Ariel) and a mentally-challenged Indian giant (The Great Khali) - lining up to take their numbers, as well as frustrated that Theodore Long and Kelly Kelly seemed completely unfazed by these frightening individuals. Finally, Coach lost his temper and - in a manner that made him look anything but sane - screamed at Long and Kelly that he had had all he could stand of "Your SmackDown freaks!" and "Your ECW degenerates!" As it happened, the final man to enter the room was Ric Flair - and this caused Coach to cheer up and become pleased that at last they had a classy, "normal" Superstar in their midst. Then Flair revealed that he was Not So Above It All by getting down with his bad self at an impromptu dance party thrown by Kelly's "Extreme Exposé." Talk about Playing with a Trope until its wheels fall off. - At Survivor Series 1999, wrestling porn star Val Venis led his team of "Sexual Chocolate" Mark Henry, wrestling vampire Gangrel and, filling this role, wrestling martial artist "The Lethal Weapon" Steve Blackman to victory over Davey Boy Smith and The Mean Street Posse. - CHIKARA 2009-2010: Crossbones played this role in UltraMantis Black's The Order of the Neo-Solar Temple, as a subtrope of The Un-Favourite. Mantis would fawn over Hydra and Delirious while belittling or dismissing Crossbones. - Nobody was better at being the eye of the storm while wrestlers were ranting and raving than Gordon Solie was. - On a late 1992 episode of WWF Prime Time Wrestling, Bret Hart teamed with THE ULTIMATE WARRIOR to defeat wrestling voodoo master PAPA SHANGO and KAMALA THE UGANDAN GIANT! - The Shield: Originally, Roman Reigns used to be this for the stable. Dean Ambrose was liable to fly off the handle at any time and Seth Rollins showed a startling lack of self-preservation during matches along with a sadistic streak after he ended the Shield to join The Authority. However, as the years went on, the actual Only Sane Man turned out to be Ambrose, at least in part because he was the only member to make peace with the end of the stable. Both Reigns and Rollins, meanwhile, underwent such severe Sanity Slippage that they made even Ambrose at his worst look sane in comparison. - Central to the style of comedy team Bob & Ray. As neither was a classic Straight Man, they played point/counterpoint between this and the Cloud Cuckoolander instead. - The Goon Show: Hercules Grytpype-Thynne fills this role, not that this is particularly difficult. - The Jack Benny Program: Mary was generally the most level-headed character on the show. Jack and the guest stars would fill this role often as well. - In The Men from the Ministry April essentially plays this role in Series 1. This might've been a factor to her disappearance in Series 2, since she doesn't get much material in the comedy (apart from the episode "Moderately Important Person", where she's the main focus of Prince Salim's lust). - Old Harry's Game: At the start of the show, The Professor is the only major character who isn't completely incompetent and/or a vicious sadist. \|\|After he leaves, Edith takes his place\|\|. - Karl Pilkington of The Ricky Gervais Show. While Ricky and Steven laugh about all his thoughts, a fair number of his questions and statements are perfectly logical: notably a thought experiment where he wondered if one would be able to confidently state that they are the original if they had a clone with all the same exact memories up to the point of their creation. - Dawn of a New Age: Oldport Blues: - Despite her mental illnesses that make her believe that she's unstable, Zia is shown to be one of the more dependable characters in tense situations. When she finds a group of students attempting to break out the school- without even bothering to check the emergency exits first- she calls them out for overreacting. She does so again when the group jump to killing Benjy now that he's hulked out, rather than seeking a non-violent solution. - Nurse Dini lacks the quirks of the other staff at Rogers High, and is instead a straight-talker who's sensible to her patients. - Ace Attorney: All playable lawyers (these being Phoenix Wright, Mia Fey, Apollo Justice, Miles Edgeworth, Gregory Edgeworth, and Athena Cykes) play this role. They live in a world full of wacky over-the-top personalities, and they are constantly reminded of that. Most of them seem to enjoy it most of the time though, constantly thinking on how ridiculous nearly everyone else is in the comfort of their minds. That said, there are a few other stable personalities besides them, but they are the exception. It's worth noting that even the main characters are only really stable by comparison: this is the agency that made its name for itself doing things like cross-examining a parrot and summoning ghosts whenever they ran out of ideas, after all. - Apollo deserves special mention, as he is consistently portrayed as the Only Sane Man, even when he is not the playable character. - The ultimate prize for Only Sane Attorney has to go to Gregory Edgeworth; when he's playable in a flashback, he proves laid-back, polite, and professional, with his only 'quirk' being how much he thinks about his young son Miles. He even admonishes his assistant for appearing to not take the crime scene seriously. - The Only Sane Prosecutor prize goes to Klavier Gavin (with post-timeskip Edgeworth as a runner-up). Yes, he has a second career as a rock star, and yes, he air guitars in court, which is kind of weird. He's also the only prosecutor you face to be a Graceful Loser with no baggage regarding his win record, completely non-corrupt, and have no grudge against any main characters. He's also fairly good at keeping quirky witnesses on-task (compare Edgeworth, who can never get them to even say their names on the first go) and is the only prosecutor to think of issuing a gag order surrounding a high-profile crime. Being called "Herr Forehead" and lightly teased/flirted with is tame compared to what other prosecutors get away with. The only times Klavier is remotely antagonistic is when he's an Unwitting Pawn to people he genuinely trusts, and he immediately about-faces when given reason to believe they've betrayed that trust. - In Code:Realize, Victor is not particularly any more normal than the rest of his companions — a group which includes a self-proclaimed gentleman thief with peculiar ideas about justice, an excitable and mishap-prone Gadgeteer Genius who plans to travel to the moon, the mysterious and eccentric Comte de Saint-Germain, the hero of the Vampire War who's known as a "human weapon," and an amnesiac girl who melts anything she touches — but he is the only one of them who seems to expect people to behave or events to occur in a reasonable manner. Cardia is also normally sensible but doesn't have a strong frame of reference for what's normal and what isn't, which means poor Victor is the one most often reacting in dismay and exasperation to the group's antics. - Danganronpa: - All of the 'Detective' characters (Kyoko, Chiaki, Shuichi) count, as they're the ones whose first reaction to a crime scene is to start solving the crime instead of freaking out or accusing random students- a very important trait when not solving crimes gets everyone but the perp killed. - The player characters (Makoto, Hajime, Kaede) embody the trope in a different way, since they're the ones most vocal about how mistrusting each other is playing into Monokuma's hands and focused on ending the game instead of playing it. Hajime gets special mention as the snarkiest protagonist and the one most likely to vocalize his observations. - As a general rule, the vast majority of Danganronpa characters are a massive Dysfunction Junction who seriously needs therapy note : especially the more unstable characters like Togami, Kyoko, Chihiro, Mondo, Mikan, Hiyoko, Nagito..., but outside of the painfully normal main protagonists, there are two exceptions overall: Leon Kuwata and Sonia Nevermind; Leon's Casanova Wannabe and Keet tendencies aside, the former had a pretty normal upbringing due to getting his talent through The Gift and implied to come from a rich family (his cousin, Kanon, is the daughter of a TV company executive) and thus is pretty quick to point out a lot of the cast's zanier behavior. Sonia is largely the same way, who's generally speaking a Spoiled Sweet Nice Girl who, outside of being a Nightmare Fetishist and Covert Pervert, doesn't have nearly as many issues as her friends do. Interestingly, \|\|Leon had the rotten luck of being attacked by Sayaka and killing her in impulse that he justified as self-defense, resulting in his execution. Meanwhile, Sonia had no such incidents and it's her friendly personality that helped her survive to the end of the game\|\|. - Jaehee Kang in Mystic Messenger is by far the most reasonable member of the RFA, the charity organization you join at the start of the game. This trait is made apparent in the choices necessary to enter her route: she likes a main character who is optimistic and hard-working, but sensible and cautious. She claims that nothing special has ever happened to her (downplaying the fact that she's lost both of her parents so young) and is the only one in RFA who is rightly wary of you the beginning of the main routes, which makes sense because you're a total stranger entering a locked, private server, and suddenly living in their dead friend's apartment under extremely suspicious and mysterious circumstances. Whereas everyone else warms to you pretty quickly, you have to put in a little work to get her to begin trusting you. - The protagonist is the only one in Dra+Koi who seems to actually be at all well balanced. His classmates are all crazy and his mother wants to rape him. The dragon herself indicate she'd like to eat him or sleep with him and sees little difference between the two options. - The Fruit of Grisaia: Makina believes that this is how Yumiko sees herself, and considering the quirky and wacky nature of her classmates, it' no wonder. - Kenji and Hisao both claim they're this in Katawa Shoujo. Kenji is quite offended at Hisao's claim: "There can't be two last sane men... There can only be one, like in that foreign movie where there could only be one, and in the end there is only one dude left, because that was the point." (In other words, Hisao is, Kenji only thinks he is.) - Doki Doki Literature Club! - Natsuki is the only member of the titular club who keeps her head throughout the entire game, even as \|\|the game starts to show its true psychological horror colors\|\|. She even writes a letter begging the player to help Yuri with her Self-Harm problem and is the only member of the group who \|\|doesn't commit suicide when she dies\|\|. - Subverted with Monika: In the first act, when everyone else's problems are still relatively normal (so Natsuki, for example, is suffering from lack of respect, poor self-esteem, and anger management issues), it seems Monika is the only one who's totally fine and stable. \|\|It turns out she's worse than any of the others and the cause of all the insanity going on since the end of the first act.\|\| - Shinrai: Broken Beyond Despair: Raiko, the Player Character, is a somewhat gloomy introvert, but she's by far the least eccentric of the ten teenagers who attend Rie's party. It's played seriously at the climax, when Raiko is the only surviving character who thinks rationally and \|\|doesn't immediately accuse Kamen of the murders.\|\| - Unlike Rire and Strade, Sano in Boyfriend To Death isn't as gung-ho to kickstart the Cold-Blooded Torture, and is considerably kinder if he warms up to you. It says something about how utterly fucked up in the head the "boyfriends" are when the Mad Doctor is the closest to a sane man. - Ab3, the Author Avatar in The Binder of Shame. He's kind of a jerk, but he's still leagues more moral and rational than the other players, and is the only one who calls out things like El Disgusto's obsession with ninjas and lack of personal hygiene, Psycho Dave's white supremacy, etc. - The Black Legion of the Dark Lord Sketch Melkor has Mac, who is a friend of the Dark Lord Sketch and holds the title of Plain Old Bilbo. She has, so far, basically been the only one to attempt talking reason to Sketch. Everyone else just goes along with everything she says. - Welshman in Englishman started out like this (and usually turned out to be wrong) while later on he seems to give up and accept the insanity of the Englishverse. - Oli White in Escape the Night is the only one who never loses focus of the groups original goal; escaping the house with as many people as possible. He never wastes time bickering and is always looking out for his fellow teammates. Hes also the least eccentric cast member in the entire show. His reactions to situations are also the most realistic.(usually exasperation) - Sasha Hunter in Greek Ninja finds herself rolling her eyes all the time at her comrades' antics. - Guy of Life in a Game, being the only "real" person in his video game world, is the only one who questions the insane video game logic that everyone else seems to take for granted. It comes and goes, but the best example of it is in Episode 6-2. - Rational Wiki: The category Right of Reason is for conservatives with enough reasonable viewpoints that they can be taken seriously note : Gerald Ford, Robert Taft, T.Boone Pickens, etc.. The leftist version is called Left of Reason note : Oscar Wilde, George Orwell, Bernie Sanders, etc.. - Algernon's characterization in the Something Awful: Dungeons & Dragons gaming sessions, being dragged into increasingly ridiculous situations with increasingly ridiculous people. - Whateley Universe: Both Lancer and She-Beast play this role for Team Kimba and the Bad Seeds, respectively. - Several in Farce of the Three Kingdoms, on different levels. Of the founders of the titular kingdoms, Sun Quan is the only one who could possibly be described as "sane." Zhou Yu is far from sane, but he's the only character to point out that the hero/villain premise is absurd, and the first to react appropriately to Liu Bei. - Survival of the Fittest: A common character trope that shows up, in particular in response to some of the more outlandish characters. A few examples of this include: Heather Pendegrast, Lyndi Thibodeaux, Huy Tran, Eddie Sullivan, Christopher Harlin, Melanie Beckett, Sean Leibowitz. - Hall of Sida in Njal Gets Burned. Though he certainly has his Cloud Cuckoo Lander moments (for instance, he thinks Christianity is based around worship of the Archangel Michael), he's the strongest advocate for peaceful resolutions and one of the few people respected enough by both sides to have a chance of pulling it off.	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/OnlySaneMan
Only the Creator Does It Right - TV Tropes "Believe me when I say that unless I was going to slavishly reproduce Fleming's Bond I was always going to get knocked simply because I wasn't Fleming." This is Creator Worship taken to the next level. When someone makes a sequel to a popular work which they did not create, and it is completely savaged by fans. Sometimes a Justified Trope because, while the actual quality will always be a point of contention, this trope is the result of the objective fact that the original creator is the only one who approached the work, the world, and/or the characters using a particular execution or tone that isn't replicated by later creators. Can be considered a form of Jumping the Shark, only with that trope, the creator him/herself can do it. If there's a Franchise Zombie, people may claim this. Despite all this, complaining about the new work solely because it is not by the original team is a fallacy, and can be a form of Fan Myopia. Bear in mind that in the case of many popular media of a collaborative nature — Theatre, Movies, TV shows and Comic Books — there is often a lack of clear information about how much creative control the artist had towards their work, and what the specific contribution by certain figures were in the making of a given work. A great deal of the fan backlash for and against certain works stems from rumor, dated information, and lack of clarity and agreement about what made a work great in the first place. So when this trope is invoked, it is most effective when its done with an awareness of what the original creator brought to the project. Compare Disowned Adaptation. Contrast My Real Daddy, where the fandom prefers a version of a work or character not made by the original creator. See Running the Asylum, when other creators are considered evil step-parents. ## Example subpages: <!—index—> <!—/index—> ## Other examples: - One could perhaps say this about anime Filler in general. No matter what the series, it's exceptionally rare for fans to feel that a filler arc is as good as the original manga. - To say nothing of non-canon anime movies. For example, the non-canon movies from the One Piece franchise are barely acknowledged by parts of the fandom, the exceptions being the fourth, fifth, and sixth movies which are considered some of the best movies in the franchise with movie six especially being a fan favorite. The eighth and ninth movies are usually not counted because they are simply compressed retellings of previous arcs, although the ninth movie gets a lot of praise for being a good compressed retelling. When Oda actually penned a movie himself ( One Piece Film: Strong World), it was regarded as the best One Piece movie ever and universally praised by the fandom (it also helped that it was canon). The next movie he wrote, One Piece Film: Z, was similarly praised, though it wasn't canon (it was supposed to be, but the story would cause too many plot holes in the main canon timeline, so Oda decided not to include it). - Dragon Ball gets the same sentiment. The Dragon Ball movies are considered subpar to good, with a few fan-favorites like the Cooler and Broly movies, except movie 11 which is considered the worst, along with movies 1, 9, and 13. The two movies with direct input from Akira Toriyama, Dragon Ball Z: Battle of Gods and Dragon Ball Z: Resurrection 'F', are near-universally considered the best movies with rave reviews. They are also canon and have been adapted into Dragon Ball Super. Dragon Ball GT is often use as case study of what happens when Toriyama has little to no involvement. note : Although Super takes place between the end of the manga's last arc and its final chapter, it introduces several inconsistencies that bring GT's canonicity into question. And let's not even get started on Dragonball Evolution. - Tellingly, most fans prefer the film versions of both Battle of Gods and Resurrection 'F' to the anime arcs (Toriyama had much less involvement with the anime series than the films). Meanwhile, Dragon Ball Super: Broly was written almost entirely by Toriyama, and is considered far-and-away the best Dragon Ball film to date. - Boruto, the sequel to Naruto, has been getting this sentiment since Masashi Kishimoto only has a supervising role in it, while his former assistants, Ukyō Kodachi and Mikio Ikemoto, handle the writing and drawing respectively. This was especially noticeable with the initial reaction to the different art style; although in later chapters this has been lessened somewhat thanks to Ikemoto's Art Evolution making it closer to Kishimoto's own style, in addition to the latter's announcement that he'll become more involved with the new manga. - The Fullmetal Alchemist (2003) series has gotten hit with this with the conclusion of the manga and the second anime adaptation. The first anime series split off from the manga halfway through and ended up creating its own original storyline. This storyline took the Character Development of several of the main characters in a different direction than the manga. As a result... Some fans of the manga have now adopted this mindset. Interestingly, the original manga author not only approved of the different direction, but actually encouraged it. - Gundam has some fans who insist that the Alternate Universe shows are all crap because Yoshiyuki Tomino had nothing to do with them (ignoring the fact that ∀ Gundam was not only his baby, but acknowledges everything that came before). Some take it a step further and say The Creator Does It Right Only When He's Depressed, savaging Gundam ZZ (made to clear up the gloom from Zeta Gundam) and the very divisive reception to Mobile Suit Victory Gundam and Gundam: Reconguista in G, shows that even the creator can get it wrong. - Jessie, James, and Meowth from Pokémon: The Series are a good, but little-known example of this. The late Takeshi Shudō, the show's original head writer, created the trio. Even though the characters have appeared in all but a few episodes of the show to date, when you watch the episodes and movies he wrote, it's clear who created the trio and truly knows what they're all about. In fact, he wrote many, many blog articles in Japanese concerning Team Rocket, their origins, personalities, and even philosophy (!), and stated he did not like the Running Gag character route they took after his departure from the anime, with many fan circles agreeing with him on this. - Fans of Psycho-Pass who dislike the second season often claim that the reason for its lack of quality was due to Gen Urobuchi not writing it. Similarly, detractors of Puella Magi Madoka Magica The Movie: Rebellion's infamous ending often point out that it was not Gen's idea but Akiyuki Shinbo's. - The Asterix books written by Albert Uderzo after the death of René Goscinny have been less well received. - While far from awful, the Avatar: The Last Airbender comics have gotten this reception for being written by people who were not part of the show. Azula's handling in them is met with particular scorn. Averted with the F.C. Yee novels, which have been warmly received. - A lot of people feel this way about the handling of Bucky Barnes by anyone other than Ed Brubaker. While Brubaker didn't create Bucky, he did redefine him and was the one to give him the Winter Soldier identity, the role the character is now much more famous for. This gave Brubaker uncontested My Real Daddy status over Bucky. Some people just don't like it when other writers handle Bucky, especially since a lot of the time, it tends to result in him either regressing (such as being flippant about killing) or adding things to his history that hurt the original story (Rick Remender added that Bucky could somewhat fight his programming). - Disney Mouse and Duck Comics: Some fans - especially in America - only consider the classic Duck-comics by Carl Barks as true Duck comics. Don Rosa is often seen as an exception - but noticable, he himself only considers Barks' stories as canon for his own series. In a similar way, the Mickey Mouse-comics by Floyd Gottfredson are regarded as the only good ones - Mouse stories never became as popular as Duck comics ever again after Gottfredson's strips ended. - The overriding opinion on Earth 2 is that it took a sharp nosedive once James Robinson left the title. Under Robinson's pen, the series served as a place where characters mostly tied to the Justice Society of America were allowed to flourish, as well as other characters Retgone'd from the main DCU. It also was obviously slowly building up to the formation of the Justice Society. Once Robinson left the book, it increasingly focused on alternate versions of the Superfamily and Batfamily, to the point that the original leads were reduced to supporting characters. - Gwenpool tends to be this when she's written by anyone besides Christopher Hastings, often forgoing the Character Development she rapidly underwent in her own series to instead be an self-righteous, stupid, and narcissistic caricature of a stereotypical 2010s "millennial" teenager. It doesn't help that Marvel itself tended to shill her as such with cameos in other comics and video games, which completely goes against and misses the point of her character. Thankfully, most fans agree that her characterisation in West Coast Avengers (2018), the series she migrated to after her solo run ended, is more in line with Hastings's vision. Her second solo title, Gwenpool Strikes Again, is another point of contention, some approving Leah Williams for still making Gwen an endearing Talkative Loon (Hastings himself liked it), while others deemed she went for a too meme-y Deadpool approach, regardless of the Meta Twist that explains her behavior. - Steve Gerber's comic, Howard the Duck, is considered a classic. Howard comics not made by Gerber? Not so much. - Most Jack Kirby fans agree that nobody else has ever had a really good grasp of the New Gods characters and their universe but Jack himself. The series left a lot of unanswered questions, so inevitably every new writer ends up filling in the blanks with their own ideas, which usually feel at least a little "off." The most well-regarded version of the characters after Kirby are not the comics so much as the DC Animated Universe animated series by Bruce Timm. - Alan Moore's work offers a nice series of contrasts: - Moore has often drastically reinvented pre-existing creations such as Swamp Thing, Miracleman, Supreme and likewise written what many consider the definitive Joker story in The Killing Joke. All of them are generally regarded as the best runs of the respective comic books and none of them were created by Moore. On the other hand, none of the later attempts and runs at the respective titles (with the exception of Neil Gaiman's run on Miracleman) have matched Moore's stories in impact, acclaim and esteem. - Some of the Before Watchmen miniseries might be considered exceptions - Minute Men and Silk Spectre were fairly well-received by critics (Interestingly, both were done by Darwyn Cooke, who also did some acclaimed work on the Spirit as well), though fan reception is much more mixed. However, everyone agrees that all of it falls short of Moore and Dave Gibbons' original, but then considering that Watchmen is an all-time classic, it was a tall order anyway. - Critically, Ms. Marvel (2014) has never been as long-lasting and beloved as the GWW run. - Although New Warriors was conceived by Marvel editorial, the series has never again been as popular or as cohesive as it was under writer Fabian Nicieza in his original 53-issue run. With changes in team roster and storytelling direction, the brand had been increasingly irrelevant for the decade after Nicieza left (despite efforts to retool it as a comedy in the third volume), and the team being used as throwaway scapegoats in Civil War ensured it would never recover. - Brian K. Vaughan and Runaways. As soon as he left, it went downhill. - The Speed Force and Mark Waid. As originally devised, it was the source of the various DC speedsters' powers and a kind of power limiter that restricted the characters from running at the speed of light, lest they become lost to it. It was also where speedsters go when they die, and everyone inside it eventually loses their individuality as they become fuel for the next generation of speedsters. This was a threat that was made clear, even though Wally West managed to return from it. Other writers tend to use the Speed Force as a Deus ex Machina, letting it do whatever the plot needs it to and using it to pull endless retcons, to the point that it's reached memetic status. - There are some, namely Alan Moore, who argue that Spider-Man declined greatly after Steve Ditko's departure and that the art style and quality was greatly softened by later writers. While there are quite a lot of prominent Spider-Man elements and stories that succeeded Ditko's run, in terms of consistency and artistic quality, it remains the Glory Days of the comic. - This is the general opinion about The Spirit comics not written and drawn by Will Eisner. There's some conflict about whether the strips drawn under Eisner's supervision but not personally by him are up to standard, but much less about the several attempts to revive the character after his death. - This trope was invoked on the 90s-era Superboy books. After sales dropped substantially during the run of Ron Marz and Ramon Bernado, the character's original creators (Karl Kesel and Tom Grummett) returned to the title in an attempt to recapture the magic the book once had. However, the new stories featured a radically different direction and despite the original team, never truly recovered. - Many Thanos fans tend to dislike depictions not written by Jim Starlin, as the character tends to devolve from a complex, multifaceted villain into a generic Evil Overlord under most other writers. - Combined with Tough Act to Follow, many people feel this way about the handling of Viv Vision, the Vision's daughter created in The Vision (2015) by writer Tom King. King's approach to writing has always been on a more complex level, and his writing of Viv's approach to humanity was lauded as a fresh take on a very old idea. His series was nominated for a Hugo Award and earned him a Harvey and Eisner award. When Mark Waid used Viv in his Champions run, fans of King's Vision run were less than impressed, as not only did Waid write her in a more typical "robot wants to understand humans" way, but she seemed to lose a lot of complexity. - Wonder Woman: There has long been an element of the fandom who felt that the character only really worked in the original Marston/Peter comics, despite or because of their idiosyncrasies. Joye Murchison who wrote under the same pen name as Marston also gets a pass with this group, as she was Marston's assistant as well as writing on her own, but every writer since has tweaked the Amazons and Wonder Woman significantly from their pacifist feminist roots. - Books that get turned into movies are nearly 100% this. - At least a significant portion of the Douglas Adams fans out there were not at all satisfied with And Another Thing..., which was written by Eoin Colfer several years after Adams' death. - Certain V. C. Andrews fans feel this way after her death and Andrew Neiderman took over the name. In terms of series that she actually started, the last three Casteel books had this response. - The sequel series to The Chronicles of Amber written after Roger Zelazny's death is universally regarded as Fanon Discontinuity. This stance is considerably helped by the fact that several of Zelazny's friends have publicly stated that he abhorred the idea of anyone else writing canonical stories in the Amber 'verse. - Conan the Barbarian. To the most visible portion of the fanbase, the true Conan stories are the ones written by Howard and only by Howard. The post-Howard writers are referred to as "Conantics," and backlash ensues if you admit to liking any of the books by Lin Carter or the others. The films largely have a separate fanbase, and fans of one are usually civil to the other. - H. P. Lovecraft is often seen as the best writer of the Cthulhu Mythos literature. Fellow authors like August Derleth who carried on writing literature based on the mythos are derided by some as missing the point of the bleak, hopeless outlook on the universe that Lovecraft conveyed. - Fans generally don't like the Dragonriders of Pern books written after Anne McCaffrey died. - This was one of the reasons the TV series adaptation of The Dresden Files failed compared to the books. Most fans did not see the show as good without Jim Butcher. - Frank Herbert's Dune series was taken over by his son after the former's death, based on his father's notes. Despite this, many fans suggest stopping after Chapterhouse: Dune, Frank's final Dune work (other fans suggest stopping after the original Dune). - The James Bond novels written after Ian Fleming's death are nowhere near as famous as the ones written by him (nor as typically well-received). Of course, there wasn't really any other way around his death. - Literature.The Millennium Trilogy was planned to be much longer had writer Stieg Larsson not died right after submitting the manuscripts. The publisher eventually decided to continue under the pen of David Lagercrantz, and those who dislike the new trilogy will give this assessment for their inferiority. - Although the sequels to Rendezvous with Rama ( Rama II Garden of Rama, Rama Revealed and the Gentry Lee solo spinoff novel Bright Messengers) have Arthur C. Clarke as co-author with Gentry Lee, most readers have concluded that Lee did the majority of the actual writing with Clarke doing little more than pitching in a few ideas and that having Clarke on the cover as co-author was more of a cynical marketing ploy than anything else note : They actually put Clarke's name on top of Lee's as if he was the primary author but no one was fooled by this.. The writing style is nothing like Clarke's. His longtime readers know that he did not focus on heavy character background stories and soap-opera style relationship drama, which makes for almost 85% of the sequels' content. Clarke's 1973 original novel was heavy on concept and focus on the Big Dumb Object while the characterization was mostly absent. While some critics may feel that the sequels correct the characterization deficiency in the original, many of Clarke's loyal readers feel that these critics miss the whole point of the original book. - "Erin Hunter" has always been a pseudonym for a group of writers, but originally Warrior Cats and Seeker Bears were done by the same group of people: Vicky Holmes plotting out and writing the storylines and editing the books, with individual writers Kate Cary, Cherith Baldry, and Tui Sutherland fleshing out the storylines into the full books. Survivor Dogs got a lot of backlash around the time of its announcement and the first book's release, as it was by an entirely new team of writers and editors under the Erin name and many readers were of the opinion that it didn't have the same feel or tone as previous Erin Hunter works. Eventually, Vicky retired from the books around the Warriors arc Dawn of the Clans and a "story team" took over writing Warriors in addition to the other Erin Hunter books. Although sometimes fans still express doubts about the books written by the new team compared to the ones written by Vicky, and the newer Erin books ( Bravelands and Bamboo Kingdom) aren't quite as popular, overall the fandom has reached the general consensus that both Vicky and the story team have their own strengths and weaknesses. - Robert Jordan famously kept churning out volume after volume of his hit mega-series The Wheel of Time, rarely moving the plot even close to a resolution, and then finally passed away before finishing. There was some debate over whether another author would step in and finish, but eventually Jordan's widow Harriet McDougal did choose Brandon Sanderson to write the last book in the series, which turned into the last three books. Some of the more devoted fans of the series will tell you in no uncertain terms that the final three books show a measurable drop in quality, with Sanderson butchering many of the characters and story arcs he obviously didn't understand. Other fans who were irritated with Jordan's rather extreme wordiness, languid pace and seeming unwillingness to resolve any of the plot threads felt rather differently about Sanderson... - Gene Roddenberry's Andromeda was Ruined FOREVER when its creator and head writer, Robert Hewitt Wolfe, was fired from it near the end of Season 2. However, most of his core writing team (Zack Stentz, Ashley Edward Miller, Matt Kiene, Joe Reinkemeyer) stayed behind and kept the show more or less watchable throughout Season 3. It was ruined forever again a year later, when those four writers left and there was nobody remaining who had any idea what the hell they were doing. - Joss Whedon was largely absent from Season 6 of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, as he was working on Firefly. The result was a season that was disliked by a lot of fans, with the exception of the beloved "Once More With Feeling", which, funnily enough, was the only episode Whedon wrote and directed that season, though as always he contributed the overall seasonal plot and made notes on others' work. - The first two seasons of Charmed, where creator Constance M. Burge acted as the show's creative lead while Brad Kern handled the showrunning duties, are usually regarded as being by far and away better than the rest of the show's run, where Kern alone was in charge of things. - A widespread perception of the fourth season of Community, made after creator Dan Harmon was fired by the network. In the following seasons, after Harmon was reinstated, the characters shrug off their odd behavior that year as the effects of a gas leak in the study room. - Game of Thrones: - The early seasons aligned mostly with the plots developed by George R. R. Martin, including having him write a few episodes. Unsurprisingly, those episodes written by Martin (particularly the Battle of Blackwater Bay) are seen by fans as being among the strongest in the series. The demarcating mark amongst critical fans seems to be the strange decision not to write in the Tysha betrayal storyline in season four when Jamie releases Tyrion; a defining mark in Martin's storyline. Once the showrunners David Benioff and D.B. Weiss were fully responsible for the direction of the show, the gaping plot holes developed and the dialogue got weaker to the point of Memetic Mutation. The declining quality reached its zenith in the final season, regarded by most fans as a total letdown and is unwatchable to many. - Averted so far with House of the Dragon. The first season has received much praise across the board. Martin being back with some degree of creative control over it probably helped, in addition to Ryan Condal replacing Benioff and Weiss as showrunner. - Zigzagged with Gilmore Girls. Creator Amy Sherman-Palladino and her husband Daniel left the show after Season 6. Opinions on the following seventh season differ, but it's generally acknowledged that the show just wasn't the same afterwards. However, when the creators returned with full control for the 2016 Netflix revival, Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life, which reportedly incorporated developments that were originally planned for season 7, the reception ended up ranging from mixed to negative, subverting the trope. - Gossip Girl. When Joshua Safran took over as showrunner the quality of the show went drastically downhill and the ratings followed, which led to the majority of the fans complaining about him. It did not help matters that Safran frequently argued with the fans on twitter and that one of the show's directors stated that people who didn't like the changes were not real fans. He left the show after the fifth season, but the damage was done (the next season was its last, and its lowest-rated, and Cut Short to boot. And as for the Series Finale...). - Shari Lewis was a great ventriloquist and puppeteer. Her daughter Mallory... decidedly less so. - Star Trek: - Star Trek: The Original Series. The Gene Roddenberry produced Seasons 1 and 2 are regarded as being way better than Season 3, where Fred Freiberger took over. Inverted by the following Star Trek shows however, which are widely regarded to have hit their strides after the original creators stepped down from the showrunner role (see My Real Daddy for more info). There are also some fans who regard only the Roddenberry-produced episodes and film as genuine Star Trek, and everything else as brainless trash, though this is very much a minority viewpoint. - Inverted by the movies, which saw a huge improvement after Roddenberry was kicked off of them, and by Star Trek: The Next Generation, which got much better after he was Kicked Upstairs and subsequently died (although Star Trek: The Motion Picture has been Vindicated by History thanks to its 2001 Director's Cut). - Played straight when the Rick Berman era ended and the Kurtzman era began. Berman wasn't involved in the franchise until 1987, but he at least had the benefit of working with Gene Roddenberry and being his hand-picked successor. Kurtzman, on the other hand, is best-known for working with Michael Bay to ruin Transformers forever. - Superman: - Deborah Joy LeVine was pushed out of Lois & Clark after the first season, and her intentions to chart character trajectories for the two leads and to emphasize Clark's impact on others (as in the Jack storyline) were scrapped for what some saw as a heavier reliance on soap and melodrama. In particular, the post-LeVine leadership was blamed for the notorious Clone!Lois story arc. - Arguably also true of Smallville. After the departure of co-creators and original show runners Alfred Gough and Miles Millar at the end of Season 7, the show seemed to end up in something of a Running the Asylum state with what was originally conceived as an accessible story about the future Superman with a loose approach to the mythology degenerating into DC Continuity Porn. It didn't help that most of the original cast had left by the time Gough and Millar stepped down. - Supernatural. Many fans blamed Seasons 6 and 7 showrunner Sera Gamble for the show's less-than-stellar state after Eric Kripke, the creator and original showrunner, stepped down (though Kripke still had some input on the show). After Season 7, Gamble also stepped down and was replaced first by Jeremy Carver and then by Andrew Dabb, who closed out the show after fifteen seasons. Carver was praised for getting the show back on track, and Dabb was praised for adding new characters, including The Wayward Sisters and Jack Kline, but most fans agree the Kripke years are superior to anything that came afterward. This persists despite many beloved standalone episodes primarily because the show never nailed its arcs the same way after Kripke's departure. Moreover, since the controversial Series Finale, fan opinion remains divided even though nearly everyone agrees that Kripke's vision for the end, which was the Season 5 finale, was superior. - For a number of fans, the quality of writing on True Blood went downhill after showrunner Alan Ball left at the end of Season 5, and took most of the veteran writers on the series (Alexander Woo, Raelle Tucker, Mark Hurdis) with him. The result is that Brian Buckner took over, and brought in a new host of writers who weren't familiar with the show. It is believed this is the reason a lot of the story threads set up in Season 5 note : The destruction of the Authority, the war between vampires and humans, Luna accidentally outing shifters to the world, the revelation that Warlow was coming for Sookie, Pam/Tara's relationship, Andy's faerie kids, Alcide becoming leader of the pack, Jason struggling with visions of his dead parents encouraging him to hate vampires, Jason's hunt for Warlow, Nora reforming and joining Eric, Bill becoming Billith didn't get properly followed up on in the final two seasons, and that these writers wanted to redeem Bill's character after all the heinous things he'd done. - The West Wing. Creator and showrunner Aaron Sorkin left the show at the end of the fourth season; the fifth season was savaged by critics and fans alike, and while the sixth and seventh were generally accepted as being an improvement, there are many fans of the Sorkin era who simply ignore everything after season four. - BIONICLE's story zig-zags this. The first three Direct to Video movies were bashed for not being written by original comic author Greg Farshtey, but he later became Misblamed when some of his ideas divided fans and it was revealed he wasn't part of the original concept creators. Christian Faber, Bob Thompson and Alastair Swinnerton dethroned him as the "fandom's favorites". Faber in particular rose to prominence after the series' cancellation thanks to his blog and a book about the LEGO company revealing the extent of his contributions — although the fans' goodwill toward him has been slipping due to his cryptic and confusing social media activities. As for the movies themselves, most fans dislike the fourth because it wasn't made by the creators of the much more popular (if still not well-loved) first three. With the series' failed reboot, the absence of the original creators was felt even more, as it became clear that neither the new team, nor the LEGO execs really "got" Bionicle. - The Muppets has often sparked this response, with regards to Jim Henson's death in 1990. There are quite a few beloved Muppets projects to be released after, such as The Muppet Christmas Carol or The Muppets (2011), but even the greatest fans of the post-Henson era will admit that the loss of Henson dealt a blow that the franchise never truly recovered from. - Rooster Teeth: - One such case is gen:LOCK, which got a second season on HBO Max that fans wished had remained in RT's hands instead of done by an entirely different company who downplayed the most liked elements (slick mecha action and interesting character moments) while taking the show in widely criticized new directions. - After Monty Oum's death, some fans of RWBY felt that Rooster Teeth hasn't done a good job continuing the series, usually citing the fight scenes not having Monty's unique flair and believing the story isn't moving in the direction he would have wanted. Unfortunately, things have become so heated and vitriolic that the current showrunners (who were close friends and colleagues to Monty prior to his death) have been subject to frequent online abuse and Mis-blamed for choices that were actually Monty's ideas; for instance Jaune's prominence in the story is not down to Miles' doing a self-insert — Monty always intended for Jaune to be an audience viewpoint character, the "Watson" to Team RWBY's Sherlock. - Many Adventure Time fans have this opinion regarding Pendleton Ward and, to a lesser degree, Rebecca Sugar. After Ward stepped down as showrunner during the fifth season, with Sugar leaving the production entirely to helm Steven Universe, the show shifted into a more introspective tone under new showrunner Adam Muto, which many felt was pretentious and distracting from the actual plot. A lot of fans who felt this way argue that only Ward and Sugar really knew how to balance the crazy adventures and humor evenly with the darker elements. Thus, in their opinions, the rest of the crew was allowed to get self-indulgent due to no longer having someone to restrain them. - The two best-received Asterix animated films, Asterix and Cleopatra and The Twelve Tasks of Asterix, are also the ones that were written and directed by series creators Rene Goscinny and Albert Uderzo. None of the other ones are generally considered that bad, but the only two to be up near the ones that Goscinny and Uderzo themselves directed were Asterix vs. Caesar and Asterix in Britain, which lacked any hands-on involvement from Uderzo (Goscinny had died by this point), but were written by Pierre Tchernia, who was involved in making Cleopatra and Twelve Tasks. - The Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes fans rarely think highly of episodes written by Man of Action Studios instead of the usual Marvel Animation writers. - Downplayed with the Ben 10 franchise. The original series, which for a long time was the only installment that had Man of Action Studios as showrunners, is the only one that the fanbase can be said to be in overall agreement about. Every sequel show afterward suffered from Broken Base for one reason or another, leading to many fans just wanting MoA to take the reins again. When Man of Action came back for the fifth installment (which served as Continuity Reboot), the result still led to a Broken Base, due to the creators deciding to go in a Denser and Wackier direction. - This is most people's reactions to sequels to Don Bluth movies. An American Tail: Fievel Goes West is still considered a classic as well, but notably Steven Spielberg was still involved in the production as he was with the first movie. - The consensus on Season 4 of The Boondocks is that the show only works when Aaron McGruder is at the helm. [adult swim] seems to think this as well, as the season has never appeared in reruns since concluding, with the channel always wrapping back around to the first episode after the Season 3 finale "It's Goin' Down". - Fans of Code Lyoko when comparing it to Code Lyoko: Evolution, which had very limited input from the original showrunners, who themselves have basically politely disowned the series as canon in their view. - Like The Powerpuff Girls (see below), fellow Cartoon Network series Dexter's Laboratory was this following the Ego Trip movie, as Genndy Tartakovsky had moved on to make Samurai Jack. Not only did the show suffer an unpleasant redesign, but fans felt the new staff largely flanderized a lot of the characters. Tartakovsky, however, did return to work on "Chicken Scratch" and "Comedy of Feathers". - Disney: - There's a subset of animation fans who feel this way about Disney after Walt and Roy died, particularly about the films released between the early '70s and the mid-80s before the older, Walt-era management was shown the door and the new, outside management took over the studio. Anything made from the late '80s on tends to get mixed reactions, with the general consensus seeming to be that the work overall is an improvement over the early '70s to mid '80s films, but it just "isn't Disney". - Similarly, not many fans cared for the subsequent incarnations of Oswald the Lucky Rabbit (by Charles Mintz and Walter Lantz), preferring the originals done by Walt Disney and Ub Iwerks. - Gargoyles fans got this attitude after Disney tried to do a season without Greg Weisman and botched it up. - Zig-zagged with Doug. Many fans believe that Nickelodeon was the only ones who could do Doug right, thanks mostly to the huge tonal shift when it moved from Nickelodeon to ABC. However, Jim Jinkins and several of the staff were actually involved with Doug even during the Disney run despite accusations that they weren't. However, Jinkins has stated that as the series went on, he had less and less to do with it, and some of these episodes are the ones that fans have the most issue with. The main example being the Quailman episodes, which were much more numerous in the final season. - Max and Dave Fleischer: - The Superman Theatrical Cartoons produced and directed by Max and Dave Fleischer, respectively, broke new ground for the Superman mythos and provided strong inspiration to other animators. The cartoons produced by Famous Studios don't have as high a reputation. - To only a slightly lesser extent, the Fleischers' Popeye cartoons. Many of those are considered to be among the best classic cartoons ever made, while the cartoons produced by Famous Studios are notorious for being Strictly Formula and for their heavy use of Recycled IN SPACE!. - Many fans of the Ice Age movies didn't like the Disney+ film The Ice Age Adventures of Buck Wild due to it lacking the involvement of Blue Sky Studios, which was shut down by Disney a year prior (and in fact, never even involved in that production), and anyone from the original franchise's creative team. - Zig-zagged with Johnny Bravo. The first season, which the creator, Van Partible, had full input on is considered the best season by fans. The second and third seasons were made without him and, while they have their fans, are more polarizing among fans, mainly in regards to Johnny taking a level in dumbass. Partible would eventually come back on board for the fourth season. However, that season was received so poorly that it wound up killing the series. - Johnny Test is an interesting case in that its first season (produced by Warner Bros. Animation) is considered average at best rather than being a great show. Regardless, everything after that first season (produced by Cookie Jar Entertainment/DHX Media, and having little to no involvement from creator Scott Fellows) is considered some of the worst Seasonal Rot to ever befall a show, to the point of rendering it (well, that and the fact that the show was Adored by the Network throughout its run) one of the most hated cartoons of all time to many (though people have started to lighten up on it since it got cancelled). - After Lauren Faust lessened her role on the show, My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic got its fair share of criticism as she was only indirectly supervising Season 2's production and left the show entirely by Season 3. However, with the show going on to have far more seasons that didn't have Faust's involvement, fans debate whether the show was better under her or Meghan McCarthy. - The Powerpuff Girls (2016) is this for many fans of the original series, since the original creator Craig McCracken had no involvement with it. In a related vein, the original series was also guilty of this, as McCracken left the show after the fourth season to focus on Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends, and the episodes in Seasons 5 and 6 declined in fan reception. - This was once a commonly held consensus by fans of The Ren & Stimpy Show, who for a long time believed that Nickelodeon had been in the wrong when they fired John Kricfalusi, and that the seasons produced following his firing were overall inferior to the seasons he had worked on at best, and absolutely horrible and a blatant insult to Kricfalusi's own creation at worst. Over the years, however, attitudes towards the post-Kricfalusi episodes of Ren & Stimpy have improved, and are now usually seen as being generally good cartoons in their own right. But what really led this trope to be overturned was in 2018 when Kricfalusi was accused of sexually abusing minors, as well as having unreasonably high demands of his animators, thus destroying what was left of his career. Nowadays, the common consensus among fans is that, while the post-Kricfalusi episodes of Ren & Stimpy may be inferior to the seasons that he was involved in, Kricfalusi himself deserved to be fired from the show. - An In-Universe example in Rocko's Modern Life: Static Cling, where Rocko believes that the original creator of The Fatheads should make the special to save Ed's job, as he believes the Chameleon Brothers would mess it up. The special generally takes Rocko's side, as the Chameleon Brothers' attempts at making the special are... shall we say, less than stellar. Rocko: But, Mr. Bighead, if Ralph doesn't make The Fatheads, the special will flop! Ed: Flop??? Rocko: Those guys will ruin The Fatheads! [Cut to the Chameleon Brothers goofing around with their laptops as Mr. Dupette picks his nose] - Trey Parker and Matt Stone had little involvement behind Season 2 of South Park, due to filming Baseketball at the time. As a result, many fans see it as one of the worst seasons of the show, alongside Season 20. It is also Parker and Stone's most hated season, and the only season they haven't done commentaries for on DVD. - The general consensus among fans of SpongeBob SquarePants is that the show's quality dipped after Stephen Hillenburg left the series following The Sponge Bob Square Pants Movie. Season 4 is considered to be the start of the Seasonal Rot, but it has enough well-received episodes that some will include it with Seasons 1-3 as the Golden Age of SpongeBob. Season 5 has fewer defenders than Season 4 and Seasons 6-8 were poorly received by fans. Hillenburg returned for Seasons 9-11 and many agree that the quality started to go up again before Hillenburg's sudden passing. - Many fans of the original Teen Titans (2003) feel this way about Teen Titans Go!, as very few involved with the well-regarded former series worked on the divisive latter series. - In an interesting case that actually does mix in a bit of My Real Daddy, while Ciro Nieli has remained on the 2012 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles cartoon, Joshua Sternin and Jennifer Ventimilia, who were also heavily involved with its development as well as the original head writers for the series, both took off after the first season was over. Opinions on seasons two and onward have notably been much more divided between fans. - The fandom has several opinions about this with Thomas & Friends: - One side feels that the episodes in the first four series were the best, as these were the ones adapted from the Awdry books - Another side feels that the fifth to seventh series were all right — but everything after (When David Mitton was replaced as episode director) wasn't as good. Some even feel Series 6 and 7 were the start of the decline, because Allcroft, Mitton, and Maidment had less and less involvement to the point when David Mitton wrote no episodes in Series 7 but remained the director. - The 1990s Tintin cartoon produced by the Canadian animation studio Nelvana is a curious variant in that it was created long after creator Herge died. However, the cartoon is still much better received by fans than earlier adaptations, in no small part because it generally stuck to adapting Herge's original comic albums instead of coming up with its own plots the way other adaptations have done. - Fans of Tom and Jerry usually agree that the shorts directed by Hanna and Barbera themselves are the best, with reception of subsequent entries varying wildly (the Chuck Jones shorts and Tom and Jerry Tales get generally good reception, but have their detractors; the Gene Deitch shorts, The Tom and Jerry Show (1975), and The Tom and Jerry Comedy Show are mostly loathed, and The Tom and Jerry Show (2014) is divisive).	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/OnlyTheCreatorDoesItRight
Only One Who Likes Spam - TV Tropes Onion infused water: Kid-tested, Lana-approved. Wakko: Please, sir, can I have seconds? Brain: Seconds!? Wait. You actually like this fetid calorie paste, urchin? Wakko: I love it! This is a guy who eats a dump truck full of garbage in the intro, so maybe take my opinion with a grain of salt. They say there's no accounting for taste. A Trademark Favorite Food for one person can be the least appetizing thing in the world for another. However, there are foods so disgusting and borderline inedible that almost nobody likes them. Keyword being "Almost". They are the Only One Who Likes Spam. The ones with such... unique palates that they're able to consume, and even enjoy, food (often a Stock "Yuck!" or Foreign Queasine type) that everyone else finds disgusting. The food this character likes that everyone else hates may even be their Trademark Favorite Food. This kind of character is often a Big Eater who isn't very picky, and often enjoys food from a Cordon Bleugh Chef, or is even able to stomach food of a Lethal Chef. See also Does Not Like Spam, Extreme Omnivore and Bizarre Taste in Food. Compare Only One Finds It Fun, which is this trope applied to an activity rather than a food. ## Examples: - Played with in Hell Teacher Nube, in which Kyoko engages in a literal Cooking Duel against an oyster demon for Hiroshi's heart. The oyster demon is able to excrete bodily fluids that make the food taste more delicious to the person she loves (in this case, Hiroshi), and the more love the cook has for the person eating it, the more delicious it will taste. During the cook, the demon drops a bead of sweat on Kyoko's cooking, and because Kyoko's love for Hiroshi is much greater than the demon's love, Hiroshi finds the former's frankly disgusting dish more delicious, thus winning her the competition. When her other classmates try the dish, they all find it taste the terrible cooking it really is. - In Letter Bee, Sylvette Suede, who is otherwise a good cook, frequently serves a peculiar soup that most people describe as "disgusting and pukey". Only her brother Gauche likes it. - Pokémon the Series: Ruby and Sapphire: May's attempts to make Pokéblocks always end in disaster. Her first attempt produces light blue Pokéblocks that only Beautifly likes. Her second attempt, which she dubs "May's Purple Surprise," results in purple Pokéblocks that apparently taste like jet fuel and burning truck tires, but a wild Munchlax likes them. - In the Johto seasons, Misty tried filling in for Brocks role of cook by making a soup recipe. However she ends up spilling massive amounts of ingredients into it to try and balance them out and, rather than dump the broth and start over, adds even more. It turns out so inedible that Ash, James, Meowth and Wobbuffet cant even take a single bite. Jessie however loves the soup, claiming it to be the work of a genius. For hilarious bonus points they share the same VA in the dub version. - During the Bakusai Tenketsu training arc of Ranma ½, we learn for the first time that Akane is probably the Trope Codifier for Lethal Chef. Then we learn that Ryoga can eat her cooking without any trouble. - In Sk8 the Infinity, Miya maintains his health by eating protein bars and amino acids supplements, much to the surprise and disgust of Reki and Shadow. When Miya stealthily changed Reki's soft drink to a protein milk drink one time, Reki immediately spat it out. - In Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann, Simon (along with his pet Boota) is not only the only person who can eat Nia's horrendous cooking without getting food poisoning, but he finds it delicious. This possibly says something about his resilience, and also foreshadows his and Nia's later relationship via the Through His Stomach trope. - BoBoiBoy: Yaya's cookies consist of normal and abnormal ingredients, and whoever eats them (cats included) either faints or remarks that they taste like sandpaper. However, there are a few exceptions: - Adu Du's Robot Buddy Probe enjoys Yaya's cookies, claiming that he genuinely enjoys the sandpaper taste. - The Extreme Omnivore alien Lahap eats toxic substances to shoot dangerous blasts from his mouth. Yaya's biscuits appear to be a more effective fuel for him than his own toxic liquids, and he asks for more of them. - Asterix: - In "Asterix the Legionary", the Roman army's standard meal is a soup made with cheese, bacon and wheat all cooked together into mush which only Selectivemploymentax, the British conscript, likes (the Briton diet in Asterix consisting mostly of cabbage, overcooked meat in mint sauce, warm beer and a spot of hot water). - "Asterix in Corsica" has the infamous Corsican cheeses that only Corsicans enjoy (or rather, don't feel faint when near one). - In the Mickey Mouse Comic Universe, Goofy's cousin Arizona Goof is very fond of a brand of licorice that apparently is loathed by everyone in the world except for him. - Robin (1993): Tim's taste in pizza toppings is derided by his friends, family, and random fellow students at boarding school. He never has to share his beloved Canadian bacon, onions, and artichoke hearts. - Green Arrow has a chili recipe which most of the Justice League find intolerably hot — except Batman, who just says it needs more crackers. (The actual recipe printed in the comic doesn't seem to be anywhere near the spice level suggested by the scene, though it's possible the phrase "to taste" in the recipe is doing some heavy lifting.) - Prince Valiant: A notorious and feared commander of a pirate fleet has been plundering merchant ships, including those from Thule. The commander's secret base remains unknown until Valiant remembers that the man tried escargot (snails), and took an immediate liking to them. A careful mapping of snail shipments points Valiant to the North Atlantic island of Ouest, which proves to be the pirate commander's home base. - A Bad Case of Stripes: The reason why Camilla is so self-conscious is that she's the only one among her friends who actually likes lima beans. She pretends to dislike them so that they'll accept her, which leads to her going through horrific transformations. - FUDGE: In Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing, Warren tries to make dinner, only to mess up, badly. Fudge is the only one who enjoys their dinner, and he's even upset when they throw it out. - Lizard Music: Victor is the only member of his family who likes pizza with anchovies. He doesn't get to have it often because the rest of his family won't let him eat anchovy pizza in the same room as them, and his sister Leslie will freak out and claim she can taste anchovies in her pizza even if he goes elsewhere with his slices. He takes advantage of his family being out of town to order a pizza with double anchovies. - The Machineries of Empire: It's a common Kel military joke that consuming ration bars voluntarily is a sign of mental distress. Cheris has a moderately infamous fondness for the squid-flavoured bars, one of the more "distinctive" flavours (and odours). - Origami Yoda: Dwight loves Rib-B-Qs. In "The Surprise Attack of Jabba the Puppett", when Rib-B-Qs are discontinued in the cafeteria, Dwight suggests that he and the rebels rally to get Rib-B-Qs back, only for the others to tell him that everyone else is glad to see them go. - Septimus Heap: Septimus is the only one who likes Aunt Zelda's cooking, which includes boiled cabbage sandwiches, jellied eel stew, and haddock-and-banana pie. - In A Song of Ice and Fire, the poorest parts of the city of King's Landing have a distinctive stew in cheap taverns and potshops known as a "bowl of brown" for its distinct color. Anyone actually forced to eat it knows better than to ask what the scraps of meat inside is, and on a couple of occasions it's all but said that one way to get rid of an inconvenient body is to turn it over to the right butchers and let them chop up the body and turn it into bowls of brown. While on the run from Westeros, Tyrion meets a mercenary exile from Westeros who describes how he misses the bowl of brown that he used to eat as a boy, and wishes he could get the real thing again. Tyrion is suitably freaked out by this. - One issue of the official Moshi Monsters magazine involves Sprinkles baking some muffins and accidentally getting them wet. Most of the characters hate them, but Captain Buck loves them. - Fraggle Rock: Boober has a recipe for Doozer Stick Stew. He's the only one who likes it, though, thinking it improves with age. - The Puzzle Place: In the episode "Leon's Pizza," Jody's favorite pizza topping is anchovies, which all the other kids find disgusting. - Lightbulb is the only Inanimate Insanity contestant who likes oatmeal raisin cookies, as all others loathe them (Tissues in particular believes them to be the cause of global warming). - Animaniacs (2020): In "Wakkiver Twist" Wakko (as the title character of Oliver Twist) is the only child in the orphanage who enjoys his bowl of gruel, and he spends the rest of the story hungry for more. - In the Arthur Christmas Special Arthur's Perfect Christmas, George brings a tin of lutefisk (dried and boiled fish), part of his Swedish family's holiday tradition, to school. Everyone pinches their noses and passes it around except for Buster, who happily eats a piece and then scarfs down another. - Archibald's Next Big Thing: In "The Four Flamingos", Archibald is the only one who enjoys beet juice, which everyone else in Crackridge think tastes gross. - Codename: Kids Next Door: - When Sector V is attacked by Grandma Stuffum and her disgusting cooking, Numbah 2 gleefully devours it, whereas his teammates flee in terror. He is shown to have limits, as in Grandma Stuffum's debut episode he eventually did get full. \|\|Fortunately the hamsters returned from their vacation, who also turn out to like the food and finish the job.\|\| - Another episode shows Numbuh 2 is the only kid in school who likes spinach and eats it willingly whereas the other kids are held prisoner by the Spinach Inquisition who only offer it to not eat it themselves. - On the villains side we have The Toilenator as the only one who willingly eats vegetables like asparagus. - Chowder: In the episode "The Flibber-Flabber Diet", the titular Flibber-Flabber is a kind of green goop that Mung Daal, Truffles, and Schnitzel all find gross. Chowder, on the other hand, can't get enough of it, and sighs in disappointment when they don't have to eat any more of it. - Futurama: - When Bender serves his first meal, almost everybody in the crew spits it out for being too salty, but Zoidberg has seconds (which worries him when he learns the food contains only less than 10% of the lethal dosage of sodium). Justified as the series would later establish Zoidberg to be constantly poor and hungry and an Extreme Omnivore. - In "A Fishful Of Dollars", Fry becomes a multimillionaire thanks to compound interest on the dollar he had in his bank account before being cryogenically frozen, and buys the last can of anchovies in existence to serve to his friends on a pizza. Most of his friends end up choking and spitting the pizza out, with the only people to enjoy them being Fry himself (who admits "no one likes them at first, but they grow on you"), and Zoidberg (who is driven into a feeding frenzy by the salty fish aroma, and whose species drove anchovies to extinction in the first place). - In "Xmas Story", Bender serves the crew a dead parrot he found lying in the street. Everyone hates it except for Nibbler, who eats it all. - Gravity Falls: In the episode "Summerween", all the kids discuss how they hate what they call "loser candy", which consists of all the candy gotten during trick-or-treating that no one seems to like. After being attacked by the Summerween Trickster, the kids learn that he is made of "loser candy" and only desires to be enjoyed. Only Soos enjoys "loser candy", and eats the Summerween Trickster, which the monster tearfully appreciates as he dies. - Infinity Train: Tulip Olsen enjoys eating raw onions like most people eat raw apples, which her best friend finds freakish. Deconstructed and reconstructed by Word of God - at a young age, Tulip's mother humored her request to let her eat a raw onion, figuring she wouldn't like it. Tulip didn't like it at first, but refused to admit it and out of pure stubbornness, she acquired a taste for it over time. - Jane and the Dragon: In one episode, Pepper, who's temporarily lost her sense of taste due to a tongue injury, makes some stew. Most characters think it tastes of swamp water, but Dragon enjoys it. - Jurassic World: Camp Cretaceous: When Ben provides the group with some celebratory carob (a chocolate substitute) bars and juice, he enjoys them while everyone else spits them out and Sammy describes them as tasting like dirt. To be fair, they were expecting actual chocolate, and Ben's been eating them his whole life, so it might just be an acquired taste. - League of Super Evil: The episode "Hot Can-Tato" has Skullossus promoting a contest where the winner will earn a visit to his space station and a catered lunch if they manage to find a ticket in a can of his Skullosus Brand Synthetic Ham-Flavored Meat Product. It's actually all a plan Skullosus concocted to get rid of his supply as he mentions that the food is disgusting and came about from a bad investment suggested to him by one of his Skullmandoes. Only a single old lady mentions that she actually likes the stuff while everyone else comments about how gross-tasting it is. - The Loud House: Lana Loud, being a lover of everything gross, also enjoys gross food. As seen in the page image from the episode "Health Kicked", when she and her siblings try onion-infused water, she's the only one who doesn't spit it out in disgust. - Monsters vs. Aliens (2013): Susan Murphy/Ginormica, in the series, enjoys turkey tetrazzini, a disgusting, greenish substance that even her fellow monsters can barely look at, let alone eat. note : For the curious, tetrazzini is a pasta-based casserole dish that has no set recipe, but is often similar to a cheesier form of chicken/turkey a la king, and generally isn't especially gross. - Muppet Babies (2018): In "Kermit Gets the Grumpies", Kermit is in a bad mood and not even Summer's snow cones are making him feel better. Gonzo suggests adding mayonnaise-covered sardines to his snow cone, and everyone else is squicked out. - My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic: In "Applebuck Season", a sleep deprived Applejack mishears the ingredients for a muffin recipe, leading to the creation of muffins with worms, lemon juice, potato chips, and no flour. Spike is the only one who likes them. Justified as they give everybody else food poisoning. - Octonauts: Above & Beyond: In "The Monster Digger", Paani happily eats some patties he made himself. He then says they're made of fruits, seeds, and dried bugs. Tunip, Tweak, and Peso all cringe at that last part, but Paani himself doesn't seem to mind. - PAW Patrol: Cap'n Turbot often enjoys (or makes) some kind of strange food like squid jerky while everyone else cringes in disgust. - The Proud Family: While we've never seen him actually eat them, Peebo has stated several times on the show that he likes Proud Snacks, which are universally despised by everyone else. note : Even people who actually like the taste of Proud Snacks (besides Peebo) end up getting sick soon after. - Rugrats: In "Tommy's First Birthday", the kids finally get ahold of some dog food. They eat it and start reacting in disgust, except for Phil, who keeps digging in. - SpongeBob SquarePants: - Subverted in the episode "Plankton's Regular". Plankton seemingly finally gets a regular customer who actually likes his chum, where as everyone else in Bikini Bottom can't stand the stuff. \|\|At the end of the episode, however, it's revealed that Plankton's computer wife, Karen, had been paying the customer to pretend to enjoy his chum.\|\| - In some episodes, specifically "Free Samples", Patrick is the only one who actually enjoys eating Plankton's chum. - Steven Universe: In "Drop Beat Dad", Marty uses his son's show to advertise Guacola, an avocado-flavored soda with the consistency of guacamole. When he throws free samples into the crowd, everyone is disgusted by the taste, except Onion, who drinks it, pauses, and then finishes the whole thing. - Teen Titans (2003): - Terra is the only human being to enjoy Starfire's alien meals. - When Raven tries to cook for her friends in Season 4, it's so disgusting that none of them can eat it... except Starfire, who likes it a lot as it reminds her of the meals from her planet. - In the first episode, Mammoth is seen gleefully devouring the spoiled food in the Titan's refrigerator. Starfire later laments that someone has eaten "all of our blue furry food!" - Total Drama: Most of the campers find the food Chef Hatchet serves them to be disgusting. Brick the military cadet, on the other hand, actually enjoys Chef's food. - Trolls: The Beat Goes On!: - In the episode "Fluffleberry Quest", the Snack Pack go on a mission to restore the lost Fluffleberry cake recipe made by Branch's grandmother. Once the recipe is restored, the Snack Pack decide to try a Fluffleberry cake for themselves, but they think that it has a missing ingredient once they find it to have a bad taste. They go on another trip in order to find the supposed missing ingredient, only to be told by Branch that it was used to make the dish and the cake's recipe was actually correct. He takes a slice of the cake for himself, which gets the rest of the Snack Pack disgusted. - Most Trolls are shown to generally dislike Fluffleberry. Aside from Branch, the only other Troll who's known to like it is Nova Swift, who was seen drinking a Fluffleberry latte.	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/OnlyOneWhoLikesSpam
Only One Finds It Fun - TV Tropes Calpernia: All right everyone, gather round and take a seat! I hope you're all as excited as I am, because... IT'S LECTURE DAY!!! Saffron: Ughh kill me now... They say that you can't please everyone, but this trope is for when something meant to please a whole group of people only pleases one of them. The thing could be some food, a drink, a joke, a story, a trip, basically anything, but it has to be designed to be enjoyed, however, only one person enjoys it. This is nearly always Played for Laughs and usually says something about the sole enjoyer in question. Maybe they're very optimistic, weird or both. They may also be stupid, or at least considered as such by the rest of the cast. If it's a joke, maybe they're easily amused or have a peculiar sense of humour. If it's food, they might be an alien or a pet or whatever with a different palate from the average human, or possibly just a human who eats weird stuff (it might also serve to demonstrate how bad a chef the cook is or that the cook likes to experiment). If it's an outdoor activity, maybe they're a Nature Lover. When it doesn't say something about the character, it's often because everyone else is having very bad luck and the one person who enjoys it is just lucky. For instance, there might be a camping trip that's a Horrible Camping Trip to all but one. It might also be because the character is the friend/lover/family member of the person who brought the thing into existence (told the joke, made the cookies, etc). A common variation is having something meant to entertain kids that doesn't entertain them at all and the one being entertained is an adult. This usually, but not always, means they're a Manchild. It could also mean that the entertainment was too complicated for kids to understand (something too complicated for kids to understand may also have the sole enjoy-er be a Child Prodigy). Can overlap with Stock "Yuck!", Incredibly Lame Fun, Stylistic Suck, Epic Fail, Low Count Gag, and Lame Pun Reaction, and can also overlap with Museum of Boredom, Tough Room, and Nature Is Boring (although those tropes are downplayed as they at least please one person). Compare and contrast the YMMV page Fun for Some, which is for when a few people find something fun that was never meant to be fun and Slow Clap for when only one person claps at first, but then gradually, everyone does. Also compare Abilene Paradox for when no one wants to take the course of action, but everyone agrees because they mistakenly think everyone else wants it. Contrast Somebody Doesn't Love Raymond, for when only one person dislikes some one. Can sometimes invert Even The Rats Won't Touch It by having only a rat or whatever want it. Compare Only One Who Likes Spam for the food equivalent. ## Examples: - BlazBlue: Remix Heart: Noel is known for being such a Lethal Chef that none of her closest friends like her cooking. Except for Mai, due to her "super-taste" ability, she can sense the innocence and earnestness of Noel behind her efforts, which apparently makes it taste like heaven (to her). - Pokémon the Series: Sun & Moon: - When forming the Ultra Guardians, Lusamine designs suits for the heroes that are Sentai-based because she thought it would be cool. Ash is the only one who agrees with her while everyone else cringes from them and finds the suits embarrassing to wear. - In the episode "Sick Daze," Misty made a stew with practically every ingredient and it turned out so inedible, Ash wouldn't even eat it. Hilariously Jessie enjoyed it, calling it a blend of sweet and sour flavors that tickled, teased and tantalized [her] trembling tastebuds, thinking it must be the creation of a genius chef. Adding to that is in the dub Misty and Jessie share the same VA. - In the Asterix book Asterix the Legionary, when Asterix and Obelix join the army, they are served soup, which everyone hates except for the British conscript (who, in one of Goscinny and Uderzo's many pokes at British cooking and the people who make and eat it, says it's just like the food back home). - Discworld: In the comic book adaptation of Mort, an added scene shows Death at the circus, where he's the only person in the audience laughing at the clowns (although whether this is because of the Discworld maxim that "if it was funny, clowns wouldn't be doing it," or simply the effect of his presence on everyone else is unclear). - In The Simpsons comic "The Geek Shall Inherit the Earth", Doug and Troy McClure make a sci-fi film which bombs because Doug decided to avert Acceptable Breaks from Reality, and making it scientifically accurate was more important than its entertainment value (there are no sound effects during the spaceship battles, and the spaceships move slowly because he wouldn't allow faster-than-light travel). The last panel of the premier shows that the entire audience has left in annoyance except for Doug and Troy themselves, and Comic Book Guy, who enthusiastically proclaims it "a triumph". - In Calvin and Hobbes, Calvin's dad drags him and his mom on an annual camping trip despite their open disdain, and suggestion that they go somewhere, and do something, else. His main response to their criticism of their camping experience is that "Misery Builds Character." - One of the Fox family traditions in Foxtrot is a wilderness camping trip. Bumbling Dad Roger looks forward to it with great gusto, but the rest of his family dread it. - In Garfield, the eponymous fat cat often has to endure activities that a normal person might find mind-numbingly boring, but his owner, Jon, finds exciting. - A two-panel The New Yorker cartoon showed a group of old men at a party being served a giant cake you'd expect a girl to jump out of. In the second panel, the men are eating gigantic slices of cake, with most of them looking annoyed and only one smiling. - Alice in Wonderland: When the White Rabbit introduces the Queen of Hearts at the croquet match, the spectators loudly cheer. But when he introduces the diminutive King, we hear only one spectator shouting, "Hooray!". - During Coco, a trio of nuns are playing their accordions during a Battle of the Bands for the privilege to meet and play for Ernesto de la Cruz... and they only manage to get one patron to enjoy their music. - In My Little Pony: Equestria Girls Rainbow Rocks: - Snips and Snails are shown doing a freestyle rap that doesn't catch very much excitement from others, with only Pinkie Pie and Sonata Dusk liking it. - During the Rainbooms' "Shake Your Tail" number, their act falls humorously apart when the other acts sabotage their performance; during this, Pinkie Pie is the only one still having fun, while Rainbow Dash just gets mildly confused. Also, Celestia and Luna applaud at the performance happily while the other students are bored and unimpressed, because of the Dazzlings' spell. - In Blast from the Past, Calvin, an engineer, has created a bomb shelter to protect himself, Helen, his wife, and their incoming son. When the Cuban Missile Crisis begins, he takes her to the shelter, to show her that they would be protected in case war broke out. Just then, a fighter jet malfunctions and crashes onto their house and Calvin locks them in the shelter for thirty-five years, thinking that the Soviets dropped a nuclear weapon. Calvin enjoys the fruits of his labors, while Helen develops a drinking habit due to the isolation and claustrophobia, and since Adam was born and raised in the shelter, only goes along with it because he doesn't know any better. - In Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, the tour of the chocolate factory is prefaced by an incongruous and weird bevy of chirpy animatronics telling the listeners how amazing its owner, Willy Wonka, is. The gathered winners and their parents just stare, unsure what to make of it... except for Augustus Gloop (and his mother) who can be seen smiling and dancing a little. - Coming to America: During the truly cringeworthy performance by Randy Watson and Sexual Chocolate, the only one who likes it is Sweets the barber, much to the chagrin of his colleagues. - While Prince Akeem seems to enjoy posing as a blue collared immigrant laborer, his manservant, Semi, constantly complains as to how men of their social class have to do tasks such as washing dishes and emptying trash cans. - Death Becomes Her: Ernest is the only one in the audience who loves Madeline's performance, as the rest of the audience leaves. He even gives her an ecstatic standing ovation, calling out "Woo!" - In Elmo Saves Christmas, Elmo uses a magical snowglobe that Santa gave him as a reward for saving him to wish for it to be Christmas every day. Unfortunately, Elmo creates a Bad Future as a result; everyone is broke due to having to buy presents and Christmas trees every day, the Fix-it Shop goes out of business due to it being closed on Christmas and Maria and Luis being out of practice, Big Bird is upset because Snuffy is still celebrating Christmas in Cincinnati with his grandmother and can't get back home to Sesame Street, the carolers have lost their voices from singing too much, and even The Count is sick of counting Christmases. Oscar the Grouch is the only one who loves it being Christmas every day, not just because of everyone else's misery, but also because he is getting tons of garbage in the form of wrapping paper and used Christmas trees. In fact, when Elmo announces that he is going to use his last wish to turn everything back to normal, Oscar protests and tells Elmo to use his last wish to get some new roller skates, since that was what Elmo's original plan was. - Played for Horror in The Loved Ones. Lola throws an entire prom, in which her "date" is an unwilling participant, her mother is incapable of speaking or reacting, and her father is solely obsessed with her happiness. - In The Producers (1968), after the deliberately tasteless opening of the "Springtime for Hitler" musical, the audience is frozen in a collective Jaw Drop, but one lone viewer is elated and begins to applaud. Just when you may think it's a Slow Clap about to begin, everyone else turns on him and pounds him mercilessly. - Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country: When McCoy is on the witness stand during the trial, he is asked about his current medical status. He answers, "Aside from a touch of arthritis, I'd say pretty good.". A single Klingon laughs his ass off while the rest of the courtroom is dead silent. - In Dirty Work, the protagonists destroy a production of Don Giovanni with a combination of skunks in the aisles, homeless men squeezing through the seats, and their ailing, horndog father wandering onstage to hit on the performers. One opera patron thinks it's the most brilliant interpretation he's ever seen. - In the Dirty Bertie story "Burp!", Bertie is eating lunch with his friends and only he likes his lunch. - Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing: Similar to the Star Trek: The Next Generation example below, Peter's father makes an omelet of dubious quality (Peter notes that he used an entire carton of eggs, while his mother only uses one or two). Peter tastes it and finds it hideous, but pretends to like it. His father tastes it and realizes that he made a horrible mistake. He scoops up the other plates and throws the omelet in the trash. Fudge starts screaming because he actually liked it. - In The Big Bang Theory, Sheldon Cooper has a knack for manipulating group activities so that they end up skewed towards his interests and predilections. Once Sheldon does that, everyone else in the group does not find the activities fun anymore. Especially because if they try to go against it, the Insufferable Genius gets upset, and Hilarity Ensues as he gets revenge or annoys the whole lot of them. - Also Raj is the only one among the group who enjoys murder mystery parties, mostly cause he throws them. Everyone else groans whenever he announces one. - Cheers: - A recurring joke in the Diane years is Diane trying to get the Cheers gang to enjoy something, and being the only one interested. Mainly because Diane's far more high-brow (or just sometimes pretentious) tastes clash with the far more low-brow ones of the others, and Diane's incapable of enjoying the same things. - Cliff's jokes, which are usually inane, or just not actually jokes at all. Lilith is the only one who finds them funny. - In The Cosby Show, a comedian tells jokes to Cliff, Rudy, and a bunch of other kids. Since the jokes are geared toward adults, Cliff is the only one who laughs. - The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance: during the Wanderer and the Heretic's opera, the heroes are clearly very annoyed at having to sit through the entire performance, wanting to learn how to stop the Skeksis; as such, they spend most of the next few hours groaning exasperatedly, staring in despair, or falling asleep. The one exception to this is Deet, who's fascinated by literally everything aboveground and clearly having the time of her life throughout the entire show. She actually applauds at the end of it! - Dinosaurs: In "Switched at Birth", the Sinclairs discover evidence that their baby may have been switched with another baby while still an egg. This is implied to be the case at first, as Aubrey, the baby belonging to the Molehill family, is green like the rest of the Sinclair family, and Gus, the father of the Molehill family, has a personality similar to Baby's. Tests from the laboratory result in Aubrey belonging to the Sinclairs and Baby belonging to the Molehills. Aubrey's neurotic personality gets on the nerves of Fran, Robbie, and Charlene, as he fusses over minor injuries, gets frequent nosebleeds, and requires sugar-free tofu teething cookies. Earl is the only member of the Sinclair family who likes having Aubrey as a son, because Aubrey doesn't regularly terrorize him like Baby does. Fortunately for Fran, Robbie, and Charlene, there was a mix-up with the tests, meaning that Baby does belong to them after all. - Frasier: It's often shown Frasier is the only one who enjoys what he enjoys. At one point he throws a Halloween party and even Niles, usually every bit as stuffy as he, isn't enjoying it. All the other people Fras invited came down with sudden last minute "illness". Given Frasier's idea of a fun Halloween night apparently involved discussing the Human Genome Project, it's not hard to see why. - Friends: - On Legends of Tomorrow, anyone not being mind-controlled by the Fates thinks the mush they're forced to eat is disgusting and horrible ... except for Nate. As the Legends rally people against the Fates' control, Nate proclaims, "I happen to like mush, but that's not the point!" - Saturday Night Live: - In one sketch, reggae singer Tyrone Greene (Eddie Murphy) leads his band in singing the song "Kill The White People", which, as you'd expect, alienates the primarily white audience to the point that, by the end, there is only one person who's still there clapping along. - During Brendan Fraser's hosting stint, he decides to stop the show so he and Will Ferrell can sing songs celebrating the friendship they developed during the week. The rest of the cast is creeped out... except for Norm Macdonald, who smiles and cheers them on throughout all of the songs. - Star Trek: - Star Trek: Deep Space Nine has something called "yamok sauce", which everyone but Garak hates. - In an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation, Riker makes his friends scrambled eggs using eggs he got from an alien planet. Most of the people present find the results disgusting, only Worf (who both has a big appetite and is a Klingon) likes them. There's a little fridge brilliance in the scene once one remembers that Riker likes Klingon food. - Star Trek: Voyager has something called "leola root", which Neelix adds as an ingredient, but besides him, only Kes seems to like it. - Cabin Pressure: On a long-haul flight over Russia, Arthur and Martin are bored out of their minds, but reject an equally bored Carolyn's suggestion of letting Arthur play "I, Spy", because his choices are terrible. Arthur figures it would make the boredom actually fatal. \|\|Sadly, she eventually gives in.\|\| - A Dragon magazine article tying in with the Dungeons & Dragons Age of Worms Adventure Path describes various shops and hirelings the PCs could employ to improve their apparent status at the Prince of Redhand's grand ball. If they choose to hire the urchin Shrieking Sammi as a herald, she'll do the job for free just for the experience, but will turn out to be under the impression that the louder and shriller she announces her employer the better. This causes a penalty to Diplomacy checks with the other guests ... except the Prince himself, who will be greatly amused and ask Sammi to make the announcement several times. - In the Trespasser DLC for Dragon Age: Inquisition, Josephine (with high approval and/or romanced) invites the Inquisitor to join her for an evening of Orlesian opera. Should they accept, the scene which follows makes it clear that Josephine is thoroughly enjoying herself... the Inquisitor, not so much. Note that they're not bored by it, they're terrified. - Dragon Quest Builders 2: After the Builder and Malroth \|\|escape from Skelcatraz\|\|, Lulu decides to throw a private party just for the three of them and brings out a cake that she had baked just for that occasion. Unfortunately, it has some rather... questionable ingredients and Malroth is the only one who enjoys it. - Genshin Impact: Most people hate Cyno's joke. However, every once and a while there is someone who actually enjoyed them. So far, that list of people who independently enjoyed them are Albedo, Nahida, and Charlotte. - Very sinister example from Xenoblade Chronicles 3. \|\|Unlike some of the other Consuls/Moebius, such as J/Joran and/or N, the original Noah, who didn't like seeing all their Past-Life Memories and going mad from them, D/Blackblaze Dirk enjoys seeing all of his past lives, seeing it as "transcendence", since he gets to remember all of his kills before Z recruited him.\|\| - Cursed Princess Club: Calpernia likes to hold lectures that she thinks will help the club members with life. But the club members are considerably less excited than her to discuss topics like "Financially-Savvy Princesses and the Fairy Godmother that is Compound Interest" or the history of ancient beauty rituals. As she lectures on the latter topic, the club members even wear some of Jolie's extra eye masks to unconvincingly pretend to be awake while they doze off (except for Gwendolyn, but that's probably more due to her being polite rather than genuinely interested). - Darths & Droids: During Pete's short turn as GM, he manages to upset all the other players with his Killer Game-Master attitude, and the fact his playstyle requires them to have memorized the entirety of rules and know how to manipulate them (except for Jim, whose character he was legitimately trying to kill). Pete doesn't seem to realize no-one else actually likes this. - In Girl Genius, when it turns out Master Payne's circus has been putting on shows based on Agatha's adventures, her friends and associates are all horrified or enraged by how they're being portrayed. Agatha herself finds it hilarious. (Although, after she gets over her initial shock, Zeetha agrees. Which doesn't stop her going backstage and pretending to be mad about it.) - American Dad!: In the two-part episode "Stan of Arabia", Stan is reassigned to Saudi Arabia, forcing the Smiths to move. The family finds the country horrible due to their strict and oppressive laws, but for hardcore conservative Stan, it's a dream come true. - Avatar: The Last Airbender: Toph is the only character to enjoy the completely biased Fire Nation-sponsored play recapping the Gaang's adventures (despite not being able to see it), in part because the play's version of her has much the same personality, if a laughably wrong physical profile (the play's Toph is a burly adult man instead of a twelve-year-old girl). Her opinion sours at the end though. - Back at the Barnyard: In "The Good, the Bad, and the Snotty", Snotty Boy feeds the animals pizza laced with hot sauce. While everyone else has the standard reaction, Pip, being Mexican, stomachs them just fine and calls the others lightweights. - Big City Greens: - Codename: Kids Next Door: In "OPERATION I.T." when Numbuh 13 gets tagged as "it", meaning he'd become the new KND leader, a job no one else wants, not even Numbuh 362, he's elated at the prospect, only to have everyone dog pile on him just to make sure he doesn't stay "it" for long. - Daisy is the only person in DuckTales (2017) who not only fully understands Donald, but finds his singing voice to be beautiful. - Ed, Edd n Eddy: Whenever the Eds are in a certain predicament that ends with them on the short end of the stick, Ed is usually the only one who is still quite happy, even in the rare episodes when the Eds are captured and later tortured by the Kankers. - One episode has Eddy write slanderous articles about the cul-de-sac kids to write newspapers. They're furious when they're reading it, Jonny 2X4 however finds all of the stories to be hilarious, including the one about him finding Atlantis in his nostril. - In "Pain in the Ed" Jonny was the only one to enjoy Ed's terrible violin playing that was driving everyone else mad. - Fanboy and Chum Chum: - The first episode "Wizboy" begins with wizard Kyle giving a rather drastic and realistic grand entrance. No student in the class seems to catch on except for Fanboy and Chum Chum, who cheer excitedly (because they believe it was an act he set up). - The episode "Night Morning" has Fanboy invite the whole class over to watch what Chum Chum does in the morning at night... which is just his regular morning routine. However, only Fanboy likes what he's doing, while the rest of the class boredly take their money back and leave. - Jane and the Dragon: In one episode, Pepper makes some stew but it tastes like swamp water to everyone but the dragon (Pepper can't taste it herself because her tongue isn't working). - In a Looney Tunes cartoon, Elmer Fudd is boxing against Daffy Duck and most of the audience boos Elmer, but his dog says, "Hooray!". Justified as, except for the dog, the audience has nothing but ducks. - The Loud House: - In "The Crying Dame", there's a singing toy, however, only Lily likes his song. The rest of the Louds find it annoying, even Lori, despite her liking it when she was Lily's age. When the toy is taken away, it causes Lily to become increasingly depressed, falling into Heroic BSoD territory. - In several episodes, but starting with "Sleuth or Consequences", there's a comic called Princess Pony, which most of the Louds find too saccharine, even Lola who usually likes saccharine things. Ironically, the one Loud who likes it is Lucy, the stoic goth. - By the time of the fifth season, Lily appears to be the only one who likes Luan's April Fool's pranks, and devises a plan by swapping places with Charles and booby-trapping the whole house to convince Luan to come out of her 10-Minute Retirement. - In "A Bug's Strife", Leni is the only one of the siblings to enjoy Aunt Ruth's 700 slides of the Malls of the Midwest. - Subverted in Martha Speaks: There's a TV show called 'Mushy Duck' and at first it seems that only Ralph the duck likes it, however, it's then revealed that other ducks like it and, in "Martha's Sweater", that Bob does too. - My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic: - In "Applebuck Season", Applejack is sleep-deprived and mishears the ingredients for Pinkie Pie's muffins, resulting in muffins made with potato chips, soda, lemon juice and earthworms. Not only do none of the ponies like them, they actually get sick, but Spike the dragon likes them and doesn't get sick. This is Justified by his draconian physiology. If he can swim in lava and eat gems like they were candy then some bad muffins aren't going to get him sick. - In "Family Appreciation Day," all the students are bored by Filthy Rich's guest lecture — except his daughter, Diamond Tiara, who seems entranced. - In "What Lies Beneath", when Twilight announces her upcoming test, all the students groan exhausted... except Cozy Glow who smiles and applauds. - Cloudcuckoolander Pinkie Pie makes something of a habit of this. - When Discord takes over Equestria and causes mass chaos, everypony works to rein it in except for Pinkie, who delights in the absurdity as much as Discord himself. Even when she was corrupted into her opposite element she was still enjoying the chaos, more or less. When he returns in "Keep Calm and Flutter On," she's still constantly amused by his antics while the others are suspicious and angry. - In "The Maud Couple", Maud tries to be a stand-up comedian, but only her sister Pinkie Pie finds the jokes funny. - In "Equestria Games", Spike unintentionally chooses to sing the Cloudsdale anthem (he was expecting the Ponyville one to play), and given that he doesn't know any of the words, he sings his own poorly made rendition, inserting references to the Wonderbolts, Cloudsdale, nice trees, and wishing the song was over. Not one person in the audience is enthused...except Pinkie Pie, who smiles and bobs her head, and once he's finished, she belts out, "NAILED IT!!!" - The Owl House: It's revealed in "Any Sport In A Storm" that Amity is the only person in the entirety of the Boiling Isles who has any interest in Good Witch Azura book series. - The Patrick Star Show: In "Klopnodian Heritage Festival", Bunny is the only member of the Star family to enjoy the festival, since she's been attending them since she was a kid and thus is actually experienced with the traditions. GrandPat holds a grudge against the Klopnod people and ends up getting a cream puff thrown in his face, while Cecil, Patrick, and Squidina are forced to take part in dangerous and humiliating activities. - In the Phineas and Ferb episode "Road to Danville", the kids decide to make a quilt. In the end, Buford says that it was surprisingly fun, but everyone else vows to never do it again. - Of all the characters in The Proud Family, Peabo is the only one who enjoys Proud Snax. - Recess: In "The Substitute", Mr. E substitutes for Mrs. Grotke during the latter's bunion surgery. During recess, he makes all the students do push-ups and jumping jacks. Most of the students are miserable and exhausted from doing so, but Vince, being the gang's jock, is the only one who enjoys them, saying that if they exercised as often as he did, they would be in better shape and he wouldn't have to carry them all in kickball. Mr. E even praises Vince for doing such a good job exercising. - Rugrats (1991): - In "Tommy's First Birthday", the babies try eating Spike's food because they think it'll turn them into dogs. Not only does it not work, they all hate it except for Lil, who eats weird food anyway. Phil does too, but he still didn't like the dog food. - In "The Mysterious Mr. Friend", Stu makes a toy for the babies called Mr. Friend, however, the babies just find him scary. Angelica, however, likes him. - The Simpsons: - South Park - The South Park version of Heaven is a prime example of Good Is Boring. It's frequently depicted as being so boring that only Mormons (who, according to the show, are the only ones allowed to go there anyway) like hanging out up there. - In "The China Problem," when some of the boys react badly to the 4th Indiana Jones movie, Butters says that he thought the film was okay. - Cartman is the only kid in the class who likes the Sexual Harassment Panda. Even Wendy, who usually likes and cares about socially relevant stuff, doesn't have much of an opinion about him. - In "Pandemic", the Boys are at the mall when they come across a Peruvian pan flute band playing for the patrons. While Stan and Cartman complain about it, Kenny is seen grooving to the music. - SpongeBob SquarePants: - In "Mermaid Man and Barnacle Boy VI: The Motion Picture", the movie that SpongeBob and the gang make turns out to be terrible and full of Bad "Bad Acting", and obviously received backlash from the crowd; the only ones watching the movie who liked it were SpongeBob, Patrick, Mermaid Man and Barnacle Boy. - Patrick's Brown Note song in "Sing a Song of Patrick"; only SpongeBob likes the song, while most of the Bikini Bottomites riot against it. However, only a teen male fish and Old Man Walker liked it as well. - Starfire of Teen Titans is frequently the only one of the team to genuinely enjoy things that the others consider to be disgusting or boring. When Raven once attempted to make pancakes that looked more like steaks, Starfire was the only one who enjoyed them for being "crunchy on the outside, yet runny on the inside". - Thomas & Friends: - In "Tickled Pink", Bridget Hatt and her friends were the only ones who did not laugh at James' pink undercoat, because she loves pink as it's her favorite color and the theme for her birthday party. - In "Splish Splash Splosh", Rosie and Charlie were the only ones who liked Thomas' mud splashing game while Emily, James and Sir Topham Hatt complained. - In Time Squad, Edgar Allen Poe forces the squad to listen to his stories, which are not horror but instead nauseatingly saccharine romance novels and children's books. These stories bore Tuddrussel and Larry to death, but Otto actually takes a strong liking to them and claps excitedly when Poe finishes telling his story. This sudden change of Otto enjoying the stories is funny when you realize that Poe's books actually changed him from being the more mature member of the team to being the child he's never really allowed to be while on a mission, forcing Larry and Tuddrussel to figure out how to fix Poe's unrelenting zest for the bright side of life themselves. - Tiny Toon Adventures: In "Henny Youngman Day", Henny Youngman substitutes for a sick Daffy Duck, and bores the class with his jokes to the point of them leaving him. Not only is Hamton J. Pig the only student who likes Henny's jokes, but also the only one who stays in class for the whole episode to hear them. - The Transformers: The loud rock music Blaster broadcasts is commonly seen as an earache by the most of the other Autobots (and Spike's dad Sparkplug) and is only appreciated by Cosmos and fellow music-loving Autobot Jazz, who even dances to it. - In The Weekenders, all four protagonists have a different thing planned for one weekend and agree to each go to each other's events. But Lor, Carver, and Tish are each the only ones to like the events they had planned and hate the others so much that they refuse to go to Tino's comic book convention. \|\|In the end they change their minds, on the grounds that Tino suffered through their events, and all four wind up liking the convention anyway.\|\|	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/OnlyOneFindsItFun
Only the Worthy May Pass - TV Tropes "Know this. Only one may enter here. One whose worth lies far within. A diamond in the rough." There is a barrier that blocks the progress of the protagonists unless they are worthy. Exactly what "worthy" means depends on the work. In a video game, it might mean your character must be at or above a certain level, that the Karma Meter is positive (or that the dark magic hasn't been used more than X times), or simply that you've run across the right event trigger. In an idealistic show, the pure of heart or the innocent will be worthy, and the Card-Carrying Villain will be blocked. In a cynical work, the pure in heart and the innocent will be blocked; the pragmatic will be worthy. It may happen that there are people on the far side of the barrier who shouldn't be worthy. This trope hinges on the Rule of Perception more than it ought to. Sister Tropes include Only Smart People May Pass (you are worthy if you're smart enough to solve the puzzle), Only the Knowledgable May Pass, Only the Pure of Heart, Only the Chosen May Wield, Only Good People May Pass. Compare Because Destiny Says So, Only Idiots May Pass, Secret Test of Character. ## Examples: - A variant: The Gate of Judgment in Ah! My Goddess: The Movie that tests the love between a couple. - In Fist of the North Star, Raoh was only able to ride the legendary horse Kokuoh after he had gained its respect. - In the Inuyasha anime, there's a sacred cave near the Demon Hunter Village where the Shikon Jewel was formed, that only people with pure intentions can enter. Inuyasha is able to enter at first, but when he starts talking about how he's going to use the jewel's power to slaughter his enemies, he's forcibly launched outside. He was able to re-enter in order to save Myoga near the end of the episode. Apparently the ejection isn't irrevocable. - Shaman King. Anyone that tries to enter the Star Sanctuary must prove they are worthy to Spirit Birds. The birds even say the name of the Trope. "Only the worthy may pass". - In Dragon Ball Z, this is how the Namekian Dragonballs were supposed to be gathered, with each village offering a different test to anyone who came looking for them. Freeza just went with a more direct route. - Only the sufficiently awesome can wield Thor's hammer (Marvel's Thor anyway). Beta Ray Bill manages it (and gets his own equally awesome hammer). Captain America can lift it; but it's too heavy for him to swing. Superman used it briefly, but rather than meeting the requirements Odin simply suspended them because the current situation was that desperate (it's implied that the hammer likes a warrior spirit, and Supes is too nice). Wonder Woman did it in a non-canon crossover, as has Conan the Barbarian. One unnamed paramedic has also found and returned the hammer to Thor in the aftermath of a battle. - The hammer can also ditch you almost instantly if you cease to be worthy. When the Jane Foster incarnation of Thor was assimilated mid-battle by the alien Poisons, it took mere moments for Mjolnir to desert her, causing her to transform back into an un-assimilated human. - A Don Rosa story of Scrooge McDuck trying to discover the lost treasure of The Kalevala leads to Scrooge and Donald seeking entrance to Tuonela, the underworld in Finnish mythology. The guardian of the entrance tells them that only the 'sleeping' recorded in his Book of Sleep are permitted entry. Scrooge tries his own name, which the guardian rejects and denies them entry. Scrooge then asks him to look up Donald's name. The guardian basically rolls out the red carpet without having to consult the book. - During the Ego Trip in With Strings Attached, the four and the Hunter must use a portgate to get to the Plains of Death. However, the portgate is guarded by the Warrior Women, who will only let the worthy go through. Slight aversion in that because so many people have died after going through the gate, the weakest in the party must prove himself worthy by defeating their champion. - Among the four, weak is, of course, relative. - In The Keys Stand Alone: The Soft World, the wizard Shaamforouz won't see anyone who doesn't prove themselves a hero. (Naturally, just because we've been chosen by the gods to save the world doesn't mean a thing, sneers John when he's told this.) - In The Dresden Fillies: False Masks, the Order Triune is protected by wards operating on these principles. Bob points out how stupid it is and how relying on subjective morality is a dumb idea. Case in point, even the formerly demonically possessed semi-villain who hadn't really learned their lesson managed to pass by being self sacrificing enough to tell the others to go on without them as they were trapped. Basically any basic decency was enough to pass. - In the Batman fic "Grudge Match," the resting place of the Sword of Salvation is inside a sacred cavern, and a warning essentially saying this trope is etched on the entrance. Batman and Robin enter together, while Talia Al-ghul runs in after them to get the sword for herself. \|\|The trio suddenly find themselves separated in the middle of a sandstorm, in a blazing hot desert. Then illusions representing their greatest sins (including perceived sins) come out from the storm to torment them. Batman, with his infamous self-loathing, is quickly overwhelmed by the sheer number of spectres, while Talia is too deep in denial of her feelings of guilt to do anything but exhaust herself fighting them back. Only Robin figures out how to appease his demons: Ask for Forgiveness. The sand turns into a gentle rainfall, and the sword in its pedestal appears in front of the boy.\|\| Given that the test was designed by a born-again Christian, the presence of \|\|Symbolic Baptism\|\| was likely intentional In-Universe. - In the Fairy Tail fanfic The Eagle in the Oak Tree, a Celestial Spirit, Aquila the Eagle, exploits Fear of Thunder to test the bravery of any summoner that would vie for his silver key by hanging the key in a large oak tree and throwing bolts of lightning at any person who approaches, until a Celestial mage is brave enough to climb up and grab his key even as he's throwing lightning at the candidate. Lucy loses all her fear once she recognizes Aquila's test for what it is, remembering the Thunder Palace incident seven years prior and crediting Laxus with forcing her to overcome her fear of lightning by being the instigator-in-chief of said incident. - In The Rigel Black Chronicles, Aldon Rosier and Edmund Rookwood are intrigued by "Rigel", but set a test before giving their approval to a friendship with Pansy Parkinson: retrieving a cluster of berries from the Forbidden Forest, without magic. Rosier: Yes, tested! If we're to approve your friendship with Pansy, you must be worthy in some way, and since it is obvious you aren't trustworthy, we'll just have to see if you're another kind of worthy. - The ancient Egyptian variation below was shown in one of the Sesame Street movies, Don't Eat the Pictures, where a sub plot involved Big Bird and Snuffy encountering the spirit of a young Egyptian prince who had been unable to get to the afterlife because he was unable to answer a riddle. With Big Birds help, he answers the riddle and ascends after Big Bird is able to convince Osiris to let him pass even after he fails the test. - A subversion in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. Only the penitent man shall pass makes it sound like a worthy person is the only one who will get through. But the truth is \|\|all anyone has to do to get by this trap is prostrate themselves on the ground. And then do a somersault. You know, like you do in church\|\|. - Played straight by the fourth and final trial you must undergo to get the Grail. It's somewhere in a room with hundreds of false grails that will kill you if you take from them. \|\|Donovan, who is neither a scholar or a true believer (he's just a smug rich asshole who wants to live forever) picks out the gaudiest cup he can find, takes a sip and promptly dies horribly. Indy and Elsa then pick out a simple wooden cup from the pile, which is the real one (when you think about it, it's obvious).\|\| - In Raiders of the Lost Ark, finding the Well of Souls, which hides the Ark of the Covenant, requires digging in an extremely specific spot. Finding said spot requires reading the words on a medallion which must be placed atop a staff carved to the exact measurements given by the inscription; the medallion will then focus the sun's rays on the correct location on a scale model of the desert which contains the Well. The instructions themselves are also tricky: while one side of the medallion tells seekers to make a staff "six kadam high," the other side informs them to " take back one kadam to honor the Hebrew God whose Ark this is," suggesting that only someone who respects divine power is worthy of uncovering the treasure. - Played with in Monty Python and the Holy Grail. The Bridgekeeper of the Bridge of Death will only allow those who answer "his questions three" to pass. (Of course, the questions are completely random and their difficulty, if it follows any pattern at all, seems inversely proportional to the confidence of the person to whom the questions are directed). Bridgekeeper: What...is your favourite colour? Sir Galahad: Blue. No, yellOOOOOOOW!! [is cast into the gorge] later Bridgekeeper: What...is the average air-speed velocity of an unladen swallow? - The Sphinxes in the film version of The Neverending Story only allow the confident to pass (although Atreyu had to fudge it; it turns out you can dodge). - Aladdin, at least the Disney version, is the only person able to enter the Cave of Wonders and retrieve the Magic Lamp. It seems to be related to Aladdin's general kindness and lack of greed. The Cave of Wonders refers to him as "a diamond in the rough". Any unworthy person who ignores the Cave's warning gets eaten. - Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald features a dark variant when Grindelwald creates a circle of magical fire that can only be traversed by his true followers. One minion who doubts Grindelwald tries to pass through and is burned to ashes. - In The Adventures of Caterpillar Jones, the Life Watch is a series of memories that must be viewed and overcome for a caterpillar to climb the Tree of Life and become a butterfly. - In the original Aladdin, Only Aladdin Could Pass, but no mention was made of it being due to his character, which is rather lacking before Disneyfication. - In James Swallow's Warhammer 40,000 novel Red Fury, Gorn insists that Rafen give him the message intended for Lord Seth. Rafen demands to be treated with respect. Gorn's reaction is that he has some fire after all, and Lord Seth, in the back of the room, comes forward to receive it. - In Neverwhere, Richard must face an Ordeal in order to earn a special key. - A subversion occurs in the original book of The Neverending Story. Atreyu assumes that the Sphinxes guarding the Southern Oracle will only allow the worthy to pass, but the gnome who studies the Southern Oracle corrects him: the Sphinxes will sometimes block good and worthy heroes while allowing evil cowards to pass. The gnome's best guess is that whether or not someone is allowed to pass is completely random. - The Dresden Files: - The mantles of the Summer and Winter Knights are given to mortals at the Queens' choosings. For each side, there are three Queens: The Queen Who Was, The Queen Who Is, and The Queen Who Will Be. Any may select a mortal they feel has proven his worth, however if an elder queen decides this is a poor choice, then they can override and, if they choose, kill the mortal to take the mantle until they find a better choice. - Greek God Hades holds this idea in regards to some of his great treasures. One vault filled with riches from literal diamond-spewing fountains and gem-made topiary, to some of the world's greatest artistic works, and \|\|the Holy Grail, the Spear of Destiny, the Shroud of Turin, the placard bearing Christ's title, and the Crown of Thorns Christ wore\|\| is guarded by three dangerous gates: The Gate of Fire, the Gate of Ice, and the Gate of Death. Any who can pass all three can have their share of things, assuming they don't break anything and set off the security system which is a horde of angry spirits that will kill any who they get their hands on. - To reach the Sangraal in Stargate SG-1, one must be virtuous, pure of spirit, AND smart enough pass the multitude of tests along the way. Adria (correctly) deduces that she will not be able to retrieve the Sangraal as a result but suggests that Daniel, as a former ascended being, is a perfect candidate. - The rules surrounding the Great Divide in Once Upon a Time in Wonderland stipulate that only "the pure of heart" can cross. It's a Leap of Faith. - In Ancient Egyptian religion, your heart is weighed against the Feather of Justice, to see if you are worthy of their paradise. If not, Ammit eats your heart. - It's more like oblivion/destruction of the soul vs. an afterlife that's an improved version of the life you just lived, rather than Heaven or Hell, though. - In the gospel of Matthew, Jesus says only those who do the will of God the Father are worthy to enter the Kingdom of Heaven. - Seen in Dungeons & Dragons with its various protective and trap spells that can be keyed to, among other things, Character Alignment. Thus, a character may well run afoul of magical wards for whose purposes he or she is literally not 'good enough'. - Or not evil enough. - In the adventure module Apocalypse Stone, the Castle Pescheour can only be reached by those who pass a series of tests of character. Of course, as these things go, the player characters get a break from this rule when they're unwittingly stealing the Cosmic Keystone on the Big Bad's bidding, but when they're trying to get it back to save the world, they have to pass the tests. Or three out of five, anyway. You can't trust PCs to get it right. The tests they are given consist of focusing on their quest rather than running after XP, not selling their superior fighting skills to seriously imbalance an entire small war for treasure, giving a death knight a chance for redemption, investigating an accusation of witchcraft properly to make sure justice is done, and donating magic items to save a village. - In Warhammer the new king of the High Elves has to pass through the Flame of Asuryan. While Asuryan's standards aren't that high and they've had a few terrible kings, after Malekith schemed and murdered his way to the throne he ended up burned so badly he requires a magical suit of armor to give his ruined body strength. He managed to throw himself out of the flame in time, but never passed through it. - In several Role Playing Games, you have to put a certain party member at the front of the party in order to pass a checkpoint or get past a specific guardian. In some cases, a spellcaster is not permitted in an area, or the thief has to leave the party until after you enter the building. - An example can be seen in Interplay's Lord of the Rings, where you can't enter a bar with a kid in your party, or with a horse in your party, or you can't enter a certain hobbit's house when a certain character is present. - The trope is invoked in the second Dark Parables game, where a door in the palace bears a plaque saying almost this exact phrase. You can't open the door until you're on the hard mode New Game Plus, when you can receive the MacGuffin that will unlock it. - The time machine that can save your leader in Dark Reign is locked behind a 12-step lock opened by simulating and beating the key battles of an interplanetary war. After all, there is only enough power for one trip, so Togra wants to be damn sure that whomever comes back to get him knows how to fight and knows the weapons and tactics of the forces they will have to defeat. - In the end of the Urn of Sacred Ashes quest of Dragon Age: Origins, the Guardian states this out, word for word, and puts you through tests of faith. \|\|And by faith, he means logic.\|\| - If you bring Sten with you, he deconstructs this trope a bit when he remarks that Andraste must have a surplus of followers if she is willing to endanger them with these tests. - Appears in a couple of The Elder Scrolls games: - The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion uses it several times: - You must be of a certain level to begin several of the Daedric quests. - In the Knights of the Nine expansion, you must give the right answer to the Prophet before he will even let you start the main questline. Next, you must pray at nine shrines, one for each deity. The quests for the Relics of the Crusader contain several more tests of your worthiness. Finally, after you acquire the Relics, you're only allowed to use them if your Infamy is 1 or less. - The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim: When you reach the entrance to the Hall of Valor in Sovngarde, the guardian Tsun challenges you to tell him why you should be allowed to enter. Immediately subverted when your dialogue choices appear: by this point in the game you will always have at least one valid answer, and possibly as many as five depending on how many of the major side-questlines you've completed. - In Eternal Darkness, Karim and Ellia guard two of the four artifacts until the Chosen Ones (Roberto Bianchi and Edwin Lindsey) come to claim them. - In Heretic 2 there is a door with the message "Only those who are Pure of Heart, or possesses the Warrior's Shield, may pass." somewhat subverted in that there's no way to actually prove yourself pure of heart... You need the shield. - In Jak II: Renegade, Mar's heir must face "The Tests of Manhood", but since he is too young, Jak goes through it instead. \|\|Turns out, Jak is Mar's heir, thanks to a Stable Time Loop\|\|. - This is alternately parodied and played straight in a number of places in Kingdom of Loathing: - Three doors at the beginning of the Naughty Sorceress's Tower require the character to have some sort of effect. Since this is Kingdom of Loathing, they are both arbitrary and wacky (in one ascension you might need spiky hair gel, a piece of pickle-flavored chewing gum, and a potion that makes you randomly teleport in order to pass the gates). - See also the Altar of Literacy, aka the trial to gain access to the chat. - There are also three doors you need to pass into the Dank and Dark and Sinister Cave during your Nemesis quest. - The original Knights of the Old Republic contains either a subversion or an example of the cynical type: There is a program on Kashyyyk which asks questions of the main character, expecting the Dark Side answers that \|\|Darth Revan\|\| would give before you are able to pass. If you stick to your Light Sider convictions, it repeatedly attempts to kill you with big robots before relenting. - To elaborate: \|\|The MacGuffin has been programmed by you, Darth Revan, to only give out its information to yourself. Since it has been slightly damaged since then, it tries to ascertain your identity by asking you questions. If you answer "wrongly" (i.e. you made a switch to the Light Side in the mean time), it sends you a few droids to exterminate you, but finally recognizes you by your feelings while fighting\|\|. - A similar subversion happens in Fallout 3, where a player with significantly Bad Karma can get into Paradise Falls with no questions asked. Players with Good Karma, on the other hand, are told to go enslave somebody before they're let in. - Most (if not all) Zelda games have something like this in it: - The Legend of Zelda: No one can enter Death Mountain without the Triforce of Wisdom. This is partly about proving your worth, but also about being able to survive what lies inside. - Zelda II: The Adventure of Link has this as the entire game. Ganon's leftover goons need Link's blood to revive their boss, but the dungeons, including The Very Definitely Final Dungeon, are all a big test. Ironically, this is the hardest game in the entire franchise; the test is worse than the actual villains you must face to save the world in the other games. - The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past: Only a descendant of the Hylian Knights can acquire the necessary Plot Coupons to succeed in the game's quest. - The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time: The Ocarina of Time, the Song of Time, and three gems belonging to three different races are needed to get to the Master Sword, and the Master Sword itself poses as a barrier to any not worthy of the Triforce, requiring them to not ONLY be fundamentally good, but (according to some people) also physically fit. - The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker: One must beat The Tower of the Gods before being given access to \|\|the submerged Hyrule\|\|. And said Tower is only attainable if you have the pearls of the goddesses in the right places, which must be obtained from their respective guardians. - The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword: During the second act of the game, each dungeon is preceded by Link completing a item-gather challenge in the Silent Realms note : Themselves designed to be tests, as you are only endangered by the Guardians if you fail to collect the items within before enduring the dungeon itself to find \|\|the Sacred Flames\|\|. Then in the third act, Link must search out \|\|the Song of the Goddess from the dragons\|\|. While two of the dragons are nice about it when Link encounters them, \|\|Faron forces Link to gather the notes of her song after flooding her forest to rid it of strong monsters\|\|. Then once that is completed, \|\|Link must do a fourth Silent Realm run before entering Sky Keep and gathering the pieces of the Triforce together\|\|. - In Mario & Luigi: Partners in Time, the Star Gate (no, not that one) works like this, but it does lie to Luigi, claiming that he is unworthy when in fact he was all along. It did this ostensibly to get the group to accept a test to prove their worth, but it also seemed to derive some pleasure out of tormenting poor Luigi. - Pokémon: - In Pokémon Diamond, Pearl and Platinum, there is a person blocking the entrance to Snowpoint Temple. She refuses to let you enter because you're unworthy, and you can only get in after beating the game. - Pokémon Red and Blue ( FireRed/LeafGreen); the Cerulean Cave is blocked by some random guy until you become the League Champion and complete the sevii islands quest (only in Fire Red/Leaf Green). In fact, all of the games have certain areas inaccessible for one reason or another until Championship is obtained. From Generation III and on, it usually opens up some sort of enhanced trading, too, because you would need to beat the champion to get the National Pokedex, allowing you to get Mons not available already in that game. - And in a slightly earlier instance: you have to prove yourself worthy of the League by obtaining all eight Badges. - Nocturne: Rebirth requires the player to beat the Final Boss with a party of level 35 or less in order to unlock the Developer's Room. In turn, the door to the room is guarded by the Author Avatar. - Deconstructed in Path of Exile with the Labyrinth, a sprawling maze of puzzles, traps, and monsters, built by Emperor Izaro with the intent that only the most worthy could find their way to its heart and succeed him. In practice the Labyrinth was a complete failure, as the person who completed it was Chitus Perandus. He was the scion of a wealthy and corrupt merchant family, and won because they had the wealth and lack of morals to support him as he devoted all his time to training for it, bribe its architects to smuggle him the blueprints and sneak in caches of food, and hire assassins to murder the competition. - In Looking for Group, Cale is the only member of the party allowed to pass through a time travel portal to Gamlon because he has not committed murder with anger in his heart. - Tower of God. Only those who are worthy may climb the tower. Though what exactly makes you worthy is Headon's secret. A Ranker uses this as the foundation of his own test. He puts up a barrier made of Shinsu and only those able to walk through, regardless of skill, strength or power, are worthy of advancing and anyone who can't his simply a failure. He says tests like this are only testing "luck"... but on the other hand, he also makes it clear enough why the test makes sense, because people without Shinsu resistance can't survive higher up in the Tower anyway. - A certain base-jumping training camp tests your character by requiring you write a letter to your parents, explaining why you died base-jumping, before you can even start.	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/OnlyTheWorthyMayPass
Only the Pure of Heart - TV Tropes Oscar: [heads toward a wall at top speed] I'm gonna die! Glinda: It's a magic wall. Only those who are pure of heart may pass through it. Oscar: ...I'm gonna die! Some things are just too good to let everybody get their hands on; they might be too rare, too dangerous or maybe just too evil to start dishing out all willy-nilly. However, people with pure hearts will have the chance to access things less pure-hearted people cannot, such as: Note that despite the heavy-handed Aesop, pure good is usually portrayed as extremely difficult both to attain and maintain: Just as Virgin Power requires that you Can't Have Sex, Ever, any small stumbling will destroy your powers, too (even if it is in mind only). Occasionally Pure Is Not Good and the pure evil characters pass muster as well. In some cases, the concept that Unicorns Prefer Virgins is tweaked to an affinity for pure-hearted characters as well. A Wide-Eyed Idealist (or otherwise, just The Idealist) may fit this trope, in which case the bad guys might exploit them to get around this security feature. For a weaponized form of this trope, see Morality-Guided Attack. Subtrope of Phlebotinum-Handling Requirements. Compare Only the Knowledgable May Pass, Only Smart People May Pass, Only the Worthy May Pass, Children Are Innocent, All Crimes Are Equal. Related to Fantastic Aesop. Super-trope for Only Good People May Pass. ## Examples: - Dragon Ball: - This trope was formerly called Nimbus Privileges, after the dub name for Goku's Kinto'un cloud. Neither Muten Roshi nor Kuririn/Krillin can hope to ride it because Kuririn stole dirty magazines for Muten Roshi, although a few other characters more pure of heart apparently can. Gohan, Goten, Chi-Chi, and (in a tellingly specific way) "Good" Lunch/Launch, but not Bulma. As one might expect from shounen, this isn't a Virgin Power; Goku, Gohan, and Goten mainly stop riding because he and many other characters simply fly on their own, much faster than Kinto'un can (although it is a handy transport when wanting to save on energy). - For his part, Goku started off as a comedic example because, not one chapter/episode before riding the cloud, he was patting Bulma's crotch wondering where her balls were, and several chapters after that, does it to Chi-Chi (his future wife) and an old lady. However because Goku is such a Chaste Hero with No Social Skills, he genuinely doesn't mean any harm by it and the social reasons for why he shouldn't do this simply don't occur to him. - In Cross Epoch, a crossover with One Piece, Luffy rides the Kinto'un as well, as do Arale and Gatchan 1 and 2 when Goku visits Penguin Village. - Goku's pure heart also renders him immune to Akkuman/Devilman's ultimate move, the Akumaito Kōsen/Devilmite Beam, which works by causing the negative thoughts in a person's mind to explode. - At one point it's mentioned that only someone of a pure heart can become a Super Saiyajin/Super Saiyan. Vegeta then explains he was capable of it because his heart is pure evil. The trick with becoming a Super Saiyajin/Super Saiyan is a combination of purity and rage. So you have to be pure, and then something has to piss you off in a big way. Emotional bursts flares up one's Ki, and causes the transformation; the purer and kinder the individual, the more potent the rage-burst when it happens (potentially explaining why Vegeta had such a hard time - he's always angry, so him raging isn't that big an emotional burst). "Need" is also a factor. In Vegeta's case, he ended up putting himself in an extremely dangerous position while training in order to force himself to need the power just to survive. It might sound crazy, but consider that he probably wouldn't want to live anymore anyways if he couldn't pull it off after seeing Goku achieve it. - A bit of a Zig-Zagged Trope in this regard as while the need for a pure heart is greatly emphasized early on, by the middle of the Cell arc it's never brought up again and seemingly dropped as a requirement. It has never been demonstrably confirmed that a Saiyan can't turn Super Saiyajin/Super Saiyan because they aren't pure of heart, and at least one character, Bardock, has achieved it despite a dubious personality at the time, albeit in a What If? story. - The Genki Dama/Spirit Bomb can only be used by someone of pure heart as well. Therefore, when Goku enters the Super Saiyajin/Super Saiyan form, he's unable to use it, because the Super Saiyajin state taints his heart with rage and bloodlust. This doesn't prohibit him from going SSJ after forming the attack, which he does in the Android 13 movie (outright absorbing the energy), in the final battle against Kid Buu, and against Jiren in Dragon Ball Super. Through training, Goku and Gohan learn to activate and stay in Super Saiyajin/Super Saiyan form as if it were their normal state, likely why these acts can happen. - Cell claims to be able to use the Genki Dama/Spirit Bomb, but never actually does so in the anime. Fans speculate that like Vegeta's Super Saiyajin/Super Saiyan, being pure evil satisfies the "pure of heart" requirement, while others suggest that his line in * Dragon Ball Z: Budokai* ("Okay planet, gimme that stupid energy!") implies that he's forcibly taking the energy rather than asking for donations. - Inuyasha: Mt. Hakurei has a purifying barrier around it so only the pure-hearted can enter. When Sango and Miroku enter, the latter finds it difficult to proceed when he thinks dirty thoughts about Sango. - In the third season of Sailor Moon, the purity of the heart can be extracted as a crystal. The Big Bad guys, called the Death Busters, as well as Sailor Uranus and Sailor Neptune are searching for three specific Pure Heart Crystals that contain powerful treasures known as Talismans. When the three Talismans come together, they produce the Holy Grail, which could either purify the world or put the world into eternal silence, depending on whose hands it falls into (The Messiah of Light or the Messiah of Silence). - The Holy Grail reacts with the Silver Crystal, essentially giving Sailor Moon her first power-up, into Super Sailor Moon. Because of this, they initially thought Sailor Moon was the Messiah of Light, but this theory died quickly when Sailor Moon proved she couldn't handle the immense power of the Holy Grail. - After Mistress 9, the Messiah of Darkness, allows the Final Big Bad, Pharaoh 90, to absorb the Grail, she explains to Sailor Moon that the Holy Grail is the Crystal of the purest heart in existence, and the only way to save the world now was to produce a heart of greater purity. Hotaru eventually takes her body back from Mistress 9 and awakens as Sailor Saturn. She goes off to fight Pharaoh 90 at the cost of her own life. - Saddened by the possibility of losing Hotaru, Sailor Moon produces her own Pure Heart Crystal with the help of the other Sailor Soldiers. She transforms into Super Sailor Moon and helps Sailor Saturn defeat Pharaoh 90 before he can plunge the world into eternal silence. - Minako was initially worried that her heart wasn't pure after the Death Busters targeted the rest of the Sailor Senshi. She became very cheerful after the Death Busters attacked her and extracted her heart crystal...until she collapsed because her spiritual heart had just been ripped out. - In Mobile Suit Gundam Unicorn, the RX-0 Unicorn Gundam can only be used by someone who is pure of heart and has good intentions. How this actually works is unknown. Note that this is only true in the novel: the OVA makes no such mention of any such system, and the reason only Banagher can pilot it is that the Unicorn was registered to his DNA in the first episode as a security measure. - It isn't actual purity per se, but Luffy's total lack of lust in One Piece grants him complete immunity from Boa Hancock's Love-Love powers. - In one of the manga adaptations of The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past, Link's pure heart shields him from being transformed by the Dark World. To a lesser extent, Ganty seems to be somewhat shielded as well; she was transformed, but unlike the rest of the cursed people, she can shapeshift between her transformed form and her normal form at will. \|\|Of course, that doesn't mean Link's heart can't be tainted by rage and hate, which Agahnim tries to use to his advantage.\|\| - Crops up occasionally in Saint Seiya, as in how the Gold Clothes of Athena's most powerful saints are said to have just enough sentience to tell whether their owner truly fights for justice or not. This eventually leads to \|\|the Cancer cloth abandoning Deathmask mid-fight for being a murderous psychopath, though it of course waits until an appropriately dramatic moment to do so\|\|. However, even those who desire peace and justice can be lead astray, and the entire conflict of the Twelve Houses ordeal comes straight from the Goldies failing to recognize the evil in their current Pope until it's too late. - On the flip side, every time a Holy War crops up, the person with the purest heart on Earth is ultimately destined to \|\|become the human vessel of Hades, through which he intends to destroy the world. This happens even if said soul is already on the other side of the conflict.\|\| - In the Kirby anime, Meta Knight's sword, Galaxia, is an ancient Empathic Weapon that senses the intent of those who try to wield it. If it doesn't like their intent, it electrocutes them. - Only one who is pure of heart can retain their humanity when possessed by a demon and become a Devilman. - Only the purest and most devoted of warriors can even lift the hammer of Thor (as depicted in the Marvel Universe, anyway), and fewer can actually use it. The list of people who can do this is very short (though Beta Ray Bill, Captain America, and \|\|Jane Foster\|\| the "new" Thor have been able to wield it, and Deadpool got his hands on a pretty close copy) and Thor himself lost the ability during The Reigning when he veered into serious Knight Templar territory. Beta Ray Bill temporarily lost the ability to wield his own hammer Stormbreaker which has the same enchantment after his quest for vengeance against Galactus for eating his homeworld ventured into He Who Fights Monsters territory. - Notably, during the DC crossover JLA/Avengers, Wonder Woman can manage it but not Superman. (Supes used the hammer, but only because Odin lifted the restriction due to the critical situation; afterwards Thor explains this but also remarks that it's never been in worthier hands.) - In Original Sin, Nick Fury whispers something to Thor \|\|that instantly makes Mjölnir find not only Thor but every single Asgardian unworthy of it.\|\| It's later revealed in The Unworthy Thor that \|\|the thing that made Thor and the rest of Asgard unworthy was that "Gorr was right", that is Gorr the God Butcher claimed that the gods were unworthy of the love and affection mortals gave them because they were such vain and vengeful creatures.\|\| - Oh, it gets better. In AXIS, \|\|Loki becomes worthy of Mjölnir as an effect of being Inverted (i.e. Heel-Face Turned).\|\| Not related to the hammer but in the same event said person expressed the notion that "... pureness of heart is the greatest magic of all!", before turning into a unicorn. Yes. That happened◊. - In Justice Society of America, Power Girl was specifically told that Stargirl, not she, had to defeat the King of Tears because purity of heart was needed. (Earlier in the same story, Stargirl had her heart broken because a villain had needed her love to cast a spell for her purity of heart.) - In both the Marvel and DC universes, reigning Lords of Hell (Mephisto and Neron respectively) have attempted to ensnare the most incorruptibly pure souls only to be unable to actually HOLD them in Hell because of that very same trait. The souls in question? \|\|Silver Surfer and Captain Marvel (again respectively)\|\|. - Part of the plot of The Resurrection of Ra's al Ghul involves the Fountain of Life, a fountain in Nanda Parbat which Ra's considers a more pure version of the Lazarus Pit, which according to the monks of Nanda Parbat, can only be used by people with pure hearts. The Sensei, Ra's father, scoffs at this as he intends to taint it, but sure enough, when his fight with Batman results in the two of them landing in the Fountain, he is destroyed while Batman's injuries from the fight are healed. - In King In Black: Black Knight, this trope is flipped on its head. \|\|Dane Whitman, the current Black Knight, learns that the Ebony Blade can only be welded by impure hearts and that the wizard Merlin has lied to him and the previous welders.\|\| - Be All My Sins: Natalie has a sobering moment when she realizes the presence of a holy relic of a martyr burns her. It's quite the wake-up call as to how far she's fallen into corruption... which she does her best not to think about. - In Equestria: Across the Multiverse, Innocence Magic can only be used by those completely lacking the desire to do harm, even the temptation to do so. As a result, it can only be wielded by the World of Empathy ponies or ponies channeling past lives that were from there. Innocence Magic is no better than normal magic on its own and its true power comes from how it interacts with other forms of magic. Namely, it gives a significant boost to Light Magic but weakens Dark Magic by the same degree, and is a straight-up Kryptonite Factor to those using corruptive magics. This makes it a perfect fit for them, as they're Actual Pacifists and thus can use it to provide support for their more combat-willing allies. - The Golden Child's immunity to being harmed by Sardo Numspa's demonic forces is based entirely on him maintaining his innocence. Even the slightest slip, such as drinking blood, would be enough to allow him to be slain. So they lock him in a cage with no food, hoping to wear down his resistance. Given that he's a Buddhist monk (and managed to sneak some leaves along with him), he holds out for just long enough to be rescued. - Monty Python and the Holy Grail. "He who is valiant and pure of spirit may find the Holy Grail in the Castle of Aaaaaauuuuggghhh..." - In Highlander: The Source it was revealed that the prize the immortals fought for was claimable only by virtue, rather than strength. This, of course, made the millennia of immortals killing each other to gain the strength to claim the prize a bit pointless. Also the fact that the prize was the ability to have children. - Deconstructed in SHAZAM! (2019). The wizard Shazam wants to find someone pure of heart to pass his powers on to after the last champion abused his powers, but can't find one pure enough to pass his Secret Test of Character even after many decades of testing countless people and one of the people who failed his test (who grew up to become the villain Sivana) tells him point-blank that he'll never find someone pure-hearted enough to meet his impossible standards. Shazam ultimately passes on his powers to Billy who's definitely not pure of heart and admits as much himself, due to him having no more time left to find a successor and settling for the best candidate he can find. - David Eddings: - Eriond from The Malloreon is this trope personified. Despite (apparently) having no power to speak of, being pure and innocent enough to be one of three people in the entire world who can touch the Orb of Aldur without being destroyed, and being inoffensive as milk, evil is incapable of harming him. The quintessential example of this comes when he stands in front of the Big Bad who has shapeshifted into a dragon and emerges completely unscathed from her fire. It helps that his ultimate destiny is \|\|to become a God\|\|. - The prequel novels claimed that the whole "pure of heart" thing was bull that some bard invented later. The reason why the Orb burned Torak was that it hated Torak personally. The reason the Orb was entrusted to Riva was that he was the one person in the party who retrieved it that had no ambition and therefore could be trusted not to use it for anything. - Tolkien's Legendarium: - The Silmarillion: - Evil and tainted-by-evils characters cannot touch the Silmarils without getting burned. Morgoth put them into his crown and it's said that the burns continued to hurt him forever. - When Maedhros and Maglor finally recover the gems, they will no longer suffer their touch because of all the evil deeds they've committed to fulfill their oath to get them back. - Beren and Lúthien: Carcharoth, a giant wolf raised by Morgoth to guard Angband's gate, eats Beren's Silmaril-holding hand and goes on a mad rampage through the continent while it burns him from the inside out. - Lloyd Alexander's The Chronicles of Prydain: When Taran first tries to wield the sword Dyrnwyn in The Book of Three, he's blasted by its power. In The High King he's able to use Dyrnwyn to destroy the Cauldron born and Arawn Death-Lord. Dyrnwyn has an inscription: "Draw Dyrnwyn, only thou of noble worth, to rule with justice, to strike down evil. Who wields it in good cause shall slay even the Lord of Death." When Taran first drew Dyrnwyn he was a callow youth. When he drew it the second time he had matured into a noble man. - In Hannu Rajaniemi's The Fractal Prince, Matjek, questioned about why he appears like a child, says that innocence is the key to the Kaminair jewel — and when he had thought Christianity ridiculous. - In Madeleine E Robins's Sold For Endless Rue, Crescia enjoins Laura to keep everything scrupulously clean, and keep washing her hands, and make up the brews in clean pots — no soap traces, even. She explains that the saints love purity, so they must keep things pure to invoke their aid. \|\|Later, after Laura's seduction, she explains that Laura would have had to remain a virgin to follow her.\|\| - In Jack Campbell's The Lost Fleet novel Guardian, the ships they find \|\|keeping patrol on Earth\|\| refuse to let them pass because of some impurity, which they do not define well but are obsessed with. - In The Dresden Files, only the pure of heart may wield a Sword of the Cross; if someone who isn't picks one of the blades up, it only acts as a normal, somewhat dingy sword. We meet several Knights of the Cross in the series, and all of them are different shades of the Messianic Archetype. (Incidentally, belief in God is not required; the wielder must simply be honest, faithful, and truly devoted to helping mankind, even at the cost of their lives.) This is a good thing, as the Swords are extremely powerful weapons that can slay nearly any being, human or supernatural, when fully empowered. - It should be noted that the swords' stringent requirements are also constant, and their Fatal Flaw; if a Knight lies, hurts innocents, or kills without very good reason, their Knight abilities are instantly lost, and the sword they bear has a chance of breaking. Once broken, a sword can never be fixed, and one of humanity's greatest weapons against evil is destroyed. Nice Job Breaking It, Hero. \|\|However, there is hope. Even after an improper use of the Sword's power, Michael Carpenter reminds Harry that the key aspect in any of the Swords is not sword but the trait it represents. When the Sword of Faith was depowered and broken by improper usage, it was reconstituted when a worthy man grabbed it and reformed in the shape of his faith.\|\| - In Harry Potter, the Good Hurts Evil Patronus Charm is an exceptionally difficult spell to perform and is said to only be able to be performed by the pure of heart, as an Evil Sorcerer in the past attempted it and was devoured by a swarm of maggots pouring from his Magic Wand. However, Evil Principal Dolores Umbridge ends up being a case of Pure Is Not Good as she's able to cast it perfectly fine. - Raziel from The Mortal Instruments will only help those with pure intentions, such as Jonathan Shadowhunter. \|\|In City of Glass, out of total displeasure at Valentine's dream, Raziel swiftly kills him\|\|. - In Sunshine, a vampire's vulnerability to light seems to be proportionate to the amount of evil they have committed: Constantine (the closest thing to a Friendly Neighborhood Vampire we encounter) can tolerate moonlight and starlight while Bo (particularly depraved even for a vampire), can't even speak words related to light. - The The Unexplored Summon://Blood-Sign series implies this to be the reason that Kyousuke could build a gateway to the world of Materials when many others tried and failed. It's like the difference between building an arch and building a high-tech secure door: one is a simple, egalitarian construct that lets people enter and exit as they wish, the other is a complex device that places restrictions/demands on those who use it. Since Kyousuke was just trying to let Materials through, not control or trap them, his gateway was more successful than those of his greedy peers. - The Talking Weapon Nightblood in Warbreaker was created to destroy evil, defining evil by anyone who wants to use him to rob or kill someone (except in self-defense). Those with those desires end up killing themselves with the sword. Those without can wield him, which only makes Nightblood a little less dangerous for them because Nightblood drains the user's life. - A Master of Djinn: The Ring of Sulayman only reveals its true form to someone who has pure motives. - In Teen Wolf: This is what makes a True Alpha a True Alpha. - In 3x07 Currents, \|\|Dr. Deaton\|\| is taken. Knowing it would (most likely) be \|\|Scott\|\| who'd come to save him, the villain, put \|\|Dr. Deaton\|\| in a ring of Mt. Ash - which supernatural creatures cannot cross. \|\|Scott\|\| indeed does come to the rescue and tries to break through anyways, and in the process, \|\|Scott's\|\| eyes turn red - but \|\|he\|\| is still a Beta. This also confirms what \|\|Dr. Deaton\|\| reveals \|\|he\|\| had believed. As \|\|Dr. Deaton\|\| explains to \|\|Scott\|\| post-rescue: "It's rare. It's something that doesn't happen within 100 years, but every once in a while a Beta can become an Alpha without having to steal or take that power. They call it a True Alpha. It's one who rises purely on the strength of the character, by virtue, by sheer force of will." - Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers: Under Zedd and Rita's castle on the moon is the Cave of Deception, where the mythical Zeo Crystal is held, but surrounded by a force field. Only one pure of heart can grab the crystal from inside it; anyone else will be destroyed if they try. Tommy goes down to try to steal it, but he's worried that there is still a lingering amount of evil in his heart from when he was brainwashed in season 1. When he grabs the crystal, he is hurt a bit, but ultimately manages to grab the crystal, proving that he truly is pure. - In the Wizards of Waverly Place movie, "The path will only reveal itself to those whose intentions are pure". - On Grimm, the only way to lift \|\|Juliet's curse\|\| is a kiss by someone who is pure of heart. This is difficult to do these days, so they do it chemically via a potion that purifies your heart. Unsurprisingly, this has some lingering psychological effects. Like obsessing over the person you kissed... - This comes up a few times during the last two seasons of Stargate SG-1. In the season 9 premiere, both knowledge and "truth of spirit" are required to access Merlin's hidden treasures. Comes up again the following season when "only those of virtue true may win the prize concealed beyond the reach of the flawed and tainted"; i.e., only those with truth of spirit can access the Sangraal. This proves to be true when Adria discovers she can't use her Ori mind powers during the quest for the Sangraal and she is left behind when the others are teleported away during the journey. - In Xena: Warrior Princess, in the Season 5 episode "Chakram", only the purest soul could obtain the Chakram of Light (which could kill gods). Xena, newly reborn and innocent, was the only one who could do it. - In the Raven game show's spin-off * Raven: The Dragon's Eye, only someone who fits this trope can retrieve the title MacGuffin without getting corrupted by its power. \|\|Once it is retrieved, Raven destroys it.\|\| - Kingdom Adventure: It requires a pure heart to make a special, magical flower called a trilly grow. When Pitts walks past trillies, they tend to wilt. - Arrow. In a flashback to how they met on Lian Yu, Oliver Queen (posing as a mercenary) is taken by John Constantine to recover a magical artifact. There are words in Egyptian in the cave where it's located that Oliver thinks mean "Keep Out" but are actually this trope. Constantine handcuffs Oliver outside then enters himself. Oliver releases himself from the cuffs and follows, saving Constantine's life from a Booby Trap to demonstrate that he too has a pure heart. - In Russian folklore, only those who are pious and pure of heart will be able to see and enter the city of Kitezh which sits at the bottom of Lake Svetloyar. - Arthurian Legend: - Galahad gets these privileges, as befits the man who represents Incorruptible Pure Pureness so much that he's otherwise a very flat character. He's also Too Good for This Sinful Earth. - The Siege Perilous (Dangerous Seat) from some Arthurian stories can only be safely occupied by a pure knight. Again, this tends to be Galahad in most versions. - In The Bible, Jesus indicates that only the pure of heart would get to Heaven in several occasions. One of them is in the Sermon of the Mount: "Blessed are the pure of heart, for they shall see God."* (St. Matthew, 5:8). Another one is in St. Matthew 18:3: "Except ye be converted, and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of Heaven." And in the Book of Hebrews, Scripture tells us to strive for the holiness without which no one will see the Lord. - According to Tibetan Buddhist tradition, the kingdom of Shambhala can be accessed only by those who are enlightened and spiritually pure. - The Character Alignment system in Dungeons & Dragons leads to this trope sometimes: - The Paladin is granted their powers through their dedication to their path, which, prior to 4 th Edition, means that they must remain Lawful Good and adhere to a code of conduct to retain their special abilities. - In 3.5 Edition, evil clerics could not cast Good spells, lawful clerics could not cast Chaotic spells, and so on (giving True Neutral the best spell selection in the core). Furthermore, in some supplements, there were Corrupt spells that only evil characters could cast and Sanctified spells that only good characters could cast. - Eberron averts the normal restrictions on Good, Evil, Lawful, and Chaotic spells, though gives no specific ruling as to what the rules are concerning Sanctified and Corrupt spells. - This is a Phlebotinum Handling Requirement for several Holy and/or otherwise heavenly magic items. Subverted in that any character with the right training can trick a magic item into believing that they meet the prerequisites. - Hackmaster: The GM guide contains a full-page graph on which the GM is supposed to plot each character's alignment infractions on two axes. Character's actions are considered to move their alignment by a certain amount towards a certain alignment. One character class (Knight Errant) even has a certain innate resistance to alignment changes. - Warhammer 40,000 has Pure Faith for the Sisters of Battle that allows them to perform certain miracles. Whether a bunch of holier-than-thou Knight Templars who tend to apply Kill It with Fire to everyone less holy if given the chance can be considered to "lack evil in their hearts" is another question... - It also seems odd, given that half of everyone else in the entire universe is like that but doesn't have such powers. - Keep in mind that in this universe, "magic" and "psychic powers" are pretty much the same thing. In the Sisters' case, it's not that they lack "evil," but rather they lack "doubt"; their faith in the Emperor is so unwaveringly strong, even though they're not (all) Psykers their combined faith is able to direct some tiny fragment of the Emperor's power to the battlefield. Other times, they're using "weapons/armor of faith" that they THINK are magic, but that's only because the Mechanicum tells them they are. - In Blue Rose, there's a magical artifact that makes sure Only The Pure Of Heart become nobles in the Kingdom of Aldis. It only works once on any given person, though, so there's nothing stopping nobles from becoming corrupt after they pass the test. Absinthia : Methusaleh claims that he'll only allow those who are pure of heart to enter Ambervale. In a twist on this trope, he cares more about the purity of the party's future actions rather than their past actions. - Battle for Wesnoth: Delfador came across the Staff of An-Usrukhar during his misadventure in the land of the dead in Delfador's Memoirs. It was only granted to him because its guardian tested him and found him to be a complete servant of the light and thus worthy to be its wielder. - Mega Man in Mega Man Battle Network 4 and 5 has "Light" Mega Man. If you've never used a Dark Chip except for plot-required moments, he eventually is able to achieve "Full Synchro" with Lan more easily (in 4) and is able to use certain chips that he couldn't otherwise. - This applies the other way too: when Mega Man uses Dark Chips he becomes Dark Mega Man, and he can use DS chips and others that are based in darkness like Static. - In Ultima, the Avatar character class can equip any weapon, any armor, and cast magic. This originally required a Karma Meter or 8 of them. - Kairi of Kingdom Hearts and the assorted Disney Princesses are the only beings in the world(s) that have no darkness in their hearts, and therefore are the only ones allowed to open the door to Kingdom Hearts, the center of all the worlds and greatest kingdom in existence. They also have the ability to send their hearts into other bodies for safekeeping, causing their bodies to remain comatose but magically protected until the hearts are returned. - Birth By Sleep gives us \|\|Ventus, who had the darkness in his heart forcibly removed. This caused him to have nothing but light allowing him the same privileges the princesses have including access to Kingdom Hearts, as well as the ability to seal his heart in another being (which he does at the end of the game, by seeking shelter in Sora's heart) while leaving behind a comatose body (à la Kairi in KH1).\|\| - Sora also deserves mention here, as the purity and courage within his heart is what makes him the Keyblade bearer. In fact, it's revealed late in the game that Riku was intended to be the bearer from the start, seen when he claims his weapon by force, but it snubbed him in favor of Sora for allowing darkness into his heart. - In Knights of the Old Republic, particularly the second installment, having high Light or Dark Side scores affected not only dialogue but the Force Point cost of Light and Dark Force powers. Also, some items could only be wielded by adepts of a particular side and there were even a few restricted to "Grey Jedi", i.e. Force users who don't venture too far into either extreme. Lastly, the sequel had a lightsaber crystal that changed its properties as your Karma Meter rating grew. - The Triforce in The Legend of Zelda is bound by such rules. The Triforce will grant a wish to anyone whose heart is balanced with power, wisdom, and courage. If someone is lacking in that balance, then the Triforce will break apart into its component triangles—the person who touched it will get the piece that corresponds most to themselves, while the other two go and find someone else who shows a great affinity for that component. Hence Ganondorf gets Power, Zelda gets the Triforce of Wisdom, and Link the Triforce of Courage. The Triforce can be recompiled after this and the wish can be carried out once it is. - Another restriction on the Triforce is that only mortals may use it. The three Goddesses intentionally created the relic such that no being of divine power could use it. - In [1], Fox is told that "only the pure of heart can return the spirits to Krazoa Shrine". Ironically, Fox is not the right choice as he is only in it for money and has a scene where he is bewitched by her looks (complete with sexy saxophone music). The latter is humorously interrupted by Peppy. - The Master Sword was also like this originally. That restriction came back around in Skyward Sword. When the blade is blessed by the goddess, it is said that only Link may now wield it. - In Disgaea: Hour of Darkness: \|\|~~Vyers The Dark Adonis~~ Mid-Boss\|\| can touch Flonne's pendant (which harms evil) without being punished. He says that "the heavens wouldn't punish such a pure heart as mine". This is foreshadowing, as \|\|he is King Krichevskoy, and working with Seraph Lamington in a Batman Gambit (it depends on the actions of the player) to make his son a better person (or demon), and unite the Netherworld and Celestia.\|\| - In Fate/stay night, \|\|rejecting the physical corruption of The Grail\|\| requires a truly pure heart and those who are not are consumed by the corruption. Notably, the only person in the show who's able to shake it off without effect is Gilgamesh, a self-centred sociopath who is so beyond human that he cannot regard humans as anything but possessions. - In Jak II: Renegade the only one who can open the Precursor Stone is \|\|young Jak\|\| because he still has "the pure gift". It won't open for \|\|the older Jak because he was corrupted by Dark Eco through the experiments in prison.\|\| - In Skullgirls, only a pure-hearted woman can make a purely selfless wish on the Skullheart without being turned into a Humanoid Abomination. One character was close, who wished for another to have a good life, but the skull noted that the wish was driven by guilt, so was slightly impure. The wisher didn't immediately turn into a Humanoid Abomination but was slowly turning into one. - In Harry the Handsome Executive, you must prove that you are "pure of spirit and blameless of heart" by \|\|emptying your weapons before proceeding, leading to a No-Gear Level\|\|. - In Watcher's Keep in Baldur's Gate II, there is a pillar on the third floor that gives, when touched, a warning that only the pure may uncover the secret. Any Lawful Good characters then touching the pillar get a powerful sword, put there by a righteous hero who infused his essence into it. Anyone else gets an Abi Dhalzim's Horrid Wilting thrown at them, this being a powerful spell that can decimate entire parties, especially those of a low level. - In Dragon Quest VII, Kiefer initially believes that the path to the Shrine of Awakening is opened by The Power of the Sun, and nicks various sun-related artifacts to try to open the gate to no avail. He is later told by a wise hermit that the way to open the shrine has nothing to do with sunlight whatsoever, but that it actually requires a pure-hearted soul to present itself before the statue outside. Using this knowledge, he and the protagonist return to the shrine and pray in front of the statue, which then uses a mystical light from its torch to open the gate, allowing them to enter. - Epic Battle Fantasy 4: Kate of Greenwood Village refers to Slime Bunnies as "magical creatures who reveal themselves to those with pure hearts" - In Shuyan Saga, calling on the full power of each kingdom's guardian spirit is partly down to Royal Blood, but partly down to purity of heart. As such, Ganbaatar considers Shuyan to be potentially more dangerous than her father — and therefore in need of being "broken". - In Pokémon Masters, it's explained that only the pure of heart can even see Ho-Oh, and he'll only choose those that are exceptionally worthy. He chooses \|\|Silver\|\|. The Chosen One in question is extremely surprised, and thinks he's unworthy because he has a rather checkered past. Lance sets him straight. - Divinity: Original Sin II: The Path of Blood is a test of character left by Lucian the Divine. A player character who has never stolen, killed, sworn to the God-King, or taken souls wins angel wings, a holy glow, and access to the endgame level without the usual quest. One who has gets death by Bolt of Divine Retribution. Meeting those prerequisites is a grueling Challenge Run. - The potential player characters of Darkstone are the only ones capable of assembling the Dismantled MacGuffin needed to defeat the evil Draak for this reason. Bonus points for fulfilling this trope literally, as they are members of a group called the Pure of Heart owing to their Incorruptible Pure Pureness. - What's also worth mentioning is that even the manual itself comments on the fact that your character may be a slightly unscrupulous rogue or a mage whose magic arouses suspicion from everyone else yet STILL be one of the Pure of Heart, waving it off as being a good person even if your methods are a bit shady. - According to the Moon Goddess in Goldilocks and the Fallen Star, the Fairytale Detective of the Dark Parables franchise can succeed in her various quests because of her unusually pure heart. - In The Adventures of Wiglaf and Mordred, only Wiglaf could get the magic sword from the lake because he is good, and only those who are "pure" can wield it (pure evil seems to work too). - In City of Reality, one of the Alternate Universes is the World of Magic, where magical power is the dominant force. One of the rules of magic is that it must be consensual; therefore a strong enough will can resist any spell. Todo, as the embodiment of all that is idealistic and noble in Reality, surprises a Hierarchy mage by being completely immune to his attacks. - In Sluggy Freelance the Goddess of Goodness is left pitifully weak because her home dimension has been overrun by demons and turned into a wasteland with barely a scrap of purity or goodness in it. So Torg takes her to the Dimension of Lame, a world where everyone is almost unbearably sweet, kind, and innocent, and suddenly the Goddess has got herself a massive power boost. - In 8-Bit Theater, Fighter is the only Light Warrior capable of wielding the Infinity Plus One Swords of the Real Light Warriors. Red Mage and Thief experience intense pain and discomfort and Black Mage is instantly set on fire upon contact. - In The Order of the Stick, only the pure of heart can activate the gate Xykon is after, so he lures the heroes there to activate it for him. This is foreshadowed in their dealings with the Linear Guild, who similarly manipulate them into accessing Dorukan's Talisman — Haley puts the two together just in time to stop Elan from activating the gate. - In Draconis Wicked only the pure of heart can get at the dead king's treasure, owing to the magical barrier he put up. - To Prevent World Peace: In multiple forms: - Parodied in Val and Isaac: Space Dread recovers and sells a chalice that kills any impure soul who touches it by carrying around a pure soul in her coat and using him like an oven mitt. - In Erma, the titular character's father Sam befriends a bar full of hostile yokai by drinking a wine that would have killed him if he had been anything less than pure.	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/OnlyThePureOfHeart
The Only One Allowed to Defeat You - TV Tropes "Nobody kills my wingman but me!" One person or group considers another person or group as their rival, and will not allow anyone else to be the one to defeat them. This can sometimes lead to them helping their rival against other enemies, justifying it with a lame excuse, to make sure that they survive until the final battle between the rivals. Sometimes, this trope can become the basis of a HeelFace Turn. It also frequently leads to a "Not So Different" Remark and Antagonist in Mourning. This is also the one-sided obsession of the Unknown Rival. It's also (usually) a big no-no on the Evil Overlord List (see #117). This may be motivated by respect given to a Worthy Opponent. It can lead into Foe Romance Subtext if this excuse is used too much and opportunities to defeat the rival are not taken. In some cases it can simply be fueled by pure pride, as a more egotistical villain will find the mere thought of someone else taking credit for a goal he has worked so hard for utterly insufferable. See also It's Personal, which is a recurring reason for this trope to come into play, especially for a villain seeking Revenge. Compare Only I Can Kill Him, for where the character in question really is the only one who can defeat the rival. Also compare Leave Him to Me!, Hypocritical Heartwarming. Sometimes this is the reason behind Secret Identity Apathy. ## Example subpages: <!—index—> <!—/index—> ## Other examples: - Aquaman's archenemy Black Manta is psychotically obsessed with killing Aquaman for some reason or another (originally his motives changed often and were suggested to simply be made up to justify his obsession, but the New 52 retconned it into him wanting revenge for his father's accidental death at Aquaman's hands). This goal is the only thing that Black Manta lives for and when Manta thinks Aquaman is dead in Forever Evil (2013), he vows revenge against the people who claim to have killed him, the Crime Syndicate. Black Manta: The Syndicate killed Aquaman. They took the only thing I wanted from me. So I'm going to take everything from them. - Archie Comics: Betty and Veronica would clearly rather Archie choose the other, rather than Cheryl Blossom. - Batman '66: Heroic example. Alfred beats up his evil cousin because he feels like, since they're family, he'd not be able to face himself if he let others decide his cousin's punishment. - Blaze of Glory: The leader of the nightriders \|\|AKA Kid Cassidy\|\| shoots one of his henchmen for \|\|seemingly\|\| killing Reno Jones, telling him that "No one kills Reno Jones but me!" - Captain America: The Red Skull feels this way about Steve Rogers, and on occasion has sent his minions to thwart the schemes of other villains if it looks like they're going after Cap (or just kill them outright). He's also reamed Crossbones out for leaving Cap in a death trap without permission. - Daken has this with his father; he fought Deadpool when it seemed he was about to kill Logan. Of course Wolverine set the whole thing up. - Something like this happens in Deadpool Kills the Marvel Universe, when the Hulk rips Deadpool apart. Hulk: YOU KILL HULK'S FRIENDS! YOU KILL HULK'S ENEMIES! ONLY HULK GETS TO KILL HULK'S ENEMIES! - Fantastic Four: - Doctor Doom is perfectly willing to save the Fantastic Four from certain death at the hands of anyone else, just so that he can kill them himself later. However, he only gets involved if Reed Richards is with them — if only the other three are in danger, he couldn't care less. - During the Onslaught crossover, Doom was at his embassy in New York City, and dispassionately listening to reports of the devastation Onslaught was inflicting on the city. It was pretty obvious he had no stake in the fight and was planning on staying out of it...until one of his people informed him that Onslaught had kidnapped Reed Richards' son Franklin. Saying that Doom was seriously pissed off is an understatement. "This mutant upstart dares to kidnap the son of my greatest enemy? It's apparent this Onslaught individual is going to require my personal attention!" - Stand-ins also count. In a storyline where the original Fantastic Four were killed and their positions taken up by Spider-Man, Wolverine, Hulk and Ghost Rider, Doom stepped in and killed the enemies threatening them, saying "None may defeat the Fantastic Four... save Doom." - In Doctor Strange, Dormammu is so obsessed with destroying Strange himself that he practically gave up godhood just to fight him. What's more, he has fought Strange hand-to-hand, rather than obliterating him with his superior power and subsequently lost. (Of course, Strange is enough of a Guile Hero to exploit this weakness.) - Batman: - The Joker extended this trope to Robin (Tim Drake) at the end of the mini-series Robin: Joker's Wild. After being defeated by Robin while Batman was out of town, Joker sat angrily in his cell at Arkham, warning the other inmates, "No one touches the boy, d'ya hear? He's mine! The little bird is mine. Do you hear me? None of you touch him. He's the Joker's property from now on. And next time he'll stay dead." - The Joker to Batman himself. He has, on numerous occasions, proclaimed that his only reason to live is to kill Batman and throws mad rages (or even completely snaps and turns sane) when he thinks somebody else did the job. Furthermore, he proclaims the self-imposed parallel as well where all he wants is to drive Batman to the point where Batman will kill him, thus crossing the line. - Before the New 52 reboot, Joker had taken it upon himself to kill anyone who tried to kill Batman; only he can kill Batman and only Batman can kill him. Nothing more romantic than double homicide and hate is just another kind of love. - Death of the Family: Interestingly enough, Batman has taken this attitude towards Joker, and is even turning down the Batfamily's offers to assist him. This may come back to haunt Batman.... - Batman used this trait as a Batman Gambit in Mad Love to save himself from Harley when the latter tries to win the Joker's affections. While the clown is furiously driving to the spot where Batman is being held captive, he imagines the reactions of other members of Batman's Rogues Gallery, who all make fun of the thought of the Dark Knight being defeated by his girlfriend. - In Spider-Man and Batman: Disordered Minds, Joker won't let Carnage kill Batman. - Bane took this attitude with the Joker. While they didn't meet during Knightfall, Bane disliked the idea that the Joker and The Scarecrow might kill Batman before they fight and in Batman: No Man's Land, he gets into it with the Joker over who should confront Batman. - The Incredible Hulk: - Skaar has this for his father the Hulk, and it's why he protects Banner while he waits for the Hulk's return. Granted, Skaar isn't a bad guy (He's mainly angry because he thinks he abandoned him) and Banner is training him for when the Hulk returns. - The Leader has this for the Hulk as well. He even got a bit depressed when he found out Hulk was shot into space. - In Lucky Luke, Joe Dalton has an obsession with being the one to shoot Luke dead, to the point of interfering with other villains' attempts to off Luke. - In the Marvel Adventures remake of the Iron Man storyline, "Armor Wars", Doctor Doom appears halfway through as a Doombot, allowing Tony to use the armor to aid in his quest to recover his armor. At the end of the story, Tony talks to Doom, revealing that he wasn't going to let some "stale, Cold War leftovers" kill Tony when he would be the one to do so. - In one run of The Punisher, Frank is seemingly executed in an electric chair, only to have his death faked by a mafia family who have their own plans for him. Frank's arch nemesis Jigsaw dresses up like him and goes around killing anyone who had anything to do with the sentence. When he finds out that Frank's alive, he's initially overjoyed. Then he realizes that he killed all those people for no reason, and rages at Frank for making a fool out of him. - Averted with tragicomic consequences in an issue of What If? where The Punisher succeeded in killing Spider-Man during their first meeting. His various villains throw a party and invite the Punisher as the guest of honor. Unfortunately for them, they've misunderstood Frank's motives, and he takes the chance to mow them all down. - Also, Frank had been duped into thinking Spider-Man was a villain. After Spider-Man was dead, he had a My God, What Have I Done? moment when he slowly realized Spider-Man was actually a hero. What drove it home was a bunch of Spider-Man's enemies throwing a party for him and seeing what a bunch of psychotic lunatics they were, while all of Spider-Man's friends (i.e. practically every superhero alive) tracked him down and beat the crap out of him. Hell, the Fantastic Four was so pissed each one of them came after Frank individually. Part of the trigger for Frank's rampage killing of all the villains was his own rage at himself. - In an early Master of Kung Fu story, Shang-Chi was captured by a gangster who intended to kill him. At the last second, Fu Manchu, Shang-Chi's Archnemesis Dad, arrived and his troops slaughtered the gangsters. Before departing, Fu Manchu stated that he intervened because only he may decide when and how Shang-Chi will perish. - This is Dr. Eggman's attitude toward Sonic in Sonic the Hedgehog (Archie Comics). In the 2010 Free Comic Book Day issue, one of the badniks created by the original Eggman/Robotnik is about to kill Sonic... and he proceeds to destroy it so it wouldn't "ruin his time-table", much to Snively's immense frustration. - Both of Spider-Man's archenemies, Green Goblin and Venom, believe this about Spider-Man. Venom in particular, as he blames Spider-Man for ruining his life (it wasn't Spidey's fault, but Venom would never admit that). Whenever he teams up with other villains he always betrays them, as he doesn't want them finishing off Spidey before he can; this actually led to the defeat of the Sinister Six on the one occasion they let him join. Surprisingly, the two have never met and clashed over this conflicting goal, though Green Goblin was "dead" during Venom's period of ascendancy as the premier Spidey villain. - Another Spider-Man villain, Dr. Octopus, has this for Spider-Man. On several occasions he's stopped other villains from catching or killing the wall-crawler...so he can do it. He even once cured Spider-Man of a poison that Vulture had injected him with, not wanting him to be killed by anyone but him. - Subverted in Star Wars: Darth Vader. Vader has secretly discovered that Luke Skywalker is his son, but lets everyone think this trope is the reason why he's dedicated to tracking down the pilot who destroyed the Death Star. - Superman: - Transformers: - The Transformers (Marvel): In a story by Bob Budiansky, Optimus and Megatron agree to settle their differences by video game tournament, and Megatron wins (by cheating). Thus, the ref blows up Optimus, and so Megatron slides into depression and insanity due to not being the one that struck the fatal blow. In fact, he is so obsessed over the matter, that when Brawl tries to console him, Megatron crushes his head; and when Brawl, the most Ax-Crazy of the Combaticons, is trying to be the voice of reason, you know Megs has gone over the edge. - The Transformers (IDW): Megatron in Regeneration One is determined to get Optimus this way, even if he has to die himself. He even taunts Prime with what he's done to Earth in the two decades it's been since the Autobots went back to Cybertron. - Megatron uses this trope to his advantage in the Transformers: Shattered Glass comics. He knows full well that an Autobot would never kill him out of fear of what Optimus would do to them later for destroying Megatron before he got the chance. They're even afraid to tell Optimus that Megatron MIGHT be dead. For those unfamiliar with Shattered Glass, it's a universe where the Autobots are evil conquerors and the Decepticons are heroic freedom fighters. Calvin and Hobbes Code Geass - Code Geass Megiddo: Suzaku admits he's willing to wait an eternity for the day he can finally kill Lelouch. Crossover - BlazBlue Alternative: Remnant ( BlazBlue & RWBY): In Chapter 60, Jin tells Ragna that he intends to finish the duel they had back in Chapter 49, warning him not to lose so they can face each other in the Vytal Tournament. Ragna tells him to do the same. - J-WITCH Series ( Jackie Chan Adventures & W.I.T.C.H.): While facing Lord Cedric in the chapter "Divide and Conquer — Chaos and Hilarity", Hak Foo proclaims that Jackie, the Guardians and their allies are his to slay. He later tells that same thing to Prince Phobos when they first meet. Impressed that Hak Foo just got inside his castle by following Tarakudo unnoticed through the Shadow Realm and utterly curb stomped the guards and the Dark Chi Enforcers, Phobos decides to let him slay the heroes as a Dark Chi Warrior under his command. - Turnabout Storm ( Ace Attorney & My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic): While Trixie apparently took on the case's prosecution to settle a score with Twilight, as the case unravels she starts getting personal with the defense, Phoenix. Eventually, when a witness gets too aggressive with him: Trixie: Leave him alone! You're the one who's dead meat if you lie again! Phoenix: (How cute, she's sticking up for me.) Trixie: Besides, Mr. Wrong is Trixie's! He shall feel the GREAT and POWERFUL Trixie's wrath before this trial is over! Phoenix: (Or not...) Fate/Grand Order - Inverted for laughs in Morgan Commits Vehical Manslaughter when Morgan accidently runs over Sigurd with the Storm Border. While Sigurd survives thanks to his Guts skill, he is still enraged as he only allows his beloved Brynhildr to kill him and demands to know who was driving. Godzilla Invader Zim Jackie Chan Adventures - Queen of All Oni: When Ikazuki selects Tohru as his new host, Jade lashes out at him, since she views Tohru as her Arch-Enemy and doesn't want anyone else to harm him. Unfortunately for her, Ikazsuki is more powerful and forces her to do things his way. JoJo's Bizarre Adventure Kim Possible - At the start of Anything's Possible, Shego gets offended when Kim comes to fight her already covered in bruises. Only she can toy with Kim. - Don't Haze Me: Shego tells Kim that she aims to kill her and that she won't allow anyone else to kill her. When Kim eggs Shego on to try and kill her then and there, Shego ends up kissing her instead. Mega Man - Mega Man: Defender of the Human Race: ProtoMan is like this towards Mega for a good while. - \|\|Bass\|\| is also this to a much more frightening degree. - Mega Man Reawakened: Bass is this to Megaman. - Crash Man also tries to be this, which ends up taking out some of his fellow robots. - In Mega Man Recut, Proto Man is slowly becoming this towards Mega Man. My Hero Academia - An interesting variation appears in Nemesis (MHA). High-profile villains can effectively invoke this by declaring a specific Pro Hero to be their nemesis; this gives the Hero special privileges to automatically get involved with any case involving that villain, but also saddles them with the pressure of being seen as personally responsible for dealing with them. This world's version of Midoriya Izuku, who faked his own death and became the evil Mischief, exploits this by declaring 'Kacchan' to be his nemesis the day after Bakugou Katsuki gets his provisional hero license, forcing him into the spotlight alongside a crime spree highlighting how he bullied him in the past. My Little Pony - Substitute Harmony: After Pinkie Pie is falsely implicated for the disappearances of her friends, Trixie shows up and wants to kill her... because she wanted to defeat Twilight Sparkle first. Gilda shows up for similar reasons, as (she believes) Pinkie has robbed her of her last chance to patch things up with Dash. Pokémon - The Pokemon fic "Meanwhile" presents Jessie, James and Meowth as having this attitude towards Pikachu; when Butch and Cassidy manage to successfully steal Pikachu at one point, when the Trio intercept Butch and Cassidy during their escape they actually not only take Pikachu from the other team but proceed to take him back to Ash rather than just take credit for the theft, affirming that they want to be the ones to take Pikachu from Ash themselves. Professional Wrestling - The JWL: Once their feud started, The Undertaker and Rhyno became this, for each other. - The Return-Remixed: When each team strategizing before the big battle royal that climaxes the story, Kelly Kelly declares that no one eliminates Victoria but her, as Victoria had put Kelly's best friend, Eve Torres, in the hospital by repeatedly powerbombing her on the exposed arena floor. Kelly further says that anyone else in the Diva Army eliminates Victoria, she will eliminate them. Super Smash Bros. Wander over Yonder - In this fan comic, Wander comes down with a high fever. Lord Hater ends up helping him get medical treatment, claiming that the only one allowed to kill Wander is himself, and that he won't let anything (including a fever) keep him from achieving that goal). Unsorted - Superman: Doomsday: Lex Luthor is pretty ticked off that an "intergalactic soccer hooligan" robbed him of the chance to defeat Superman with some sort of brilliant Evil Plan. Of course, Lex was responsible for releasing said hooligan, but even then he can't take credit because Mercy Graves destroyed the evidence. \|\|So he kills Mercy instead.\|\| - The Doctor from Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. is obsessed with getting his revenge on \|\|Whitehall\|\| for killing his wife. When \|\|Coulson\|\| kills him just as the Doctor is about to begin their fight, the Doctor has a Villainous Breakdown and shifts all of his anger to \|\|Coulson.\|\| - Angel: - Inversion: \|\|Lindsey\|\| seemed to think that Angel had to be the one to kill him, as his last words, after \|\|being shot by Lorne\|\|, were "You kill me? A flunky?! I'm not just...Angel...kills me. You don't... Angel..." - This is a common Joss Whedon technique: a character may think that only one person is able to defeat them, but Joss delights in pointing out that unless they're supernaturally powerful (and sometimes not even then), they die just the same from one gun as another. - The reason Connor defended Angel from Linwood's commandos in "Tomorrow". - In A.P. Bio, Jack Griffin the AP Bio teacher regularly bullies his own students always forcing them to work hard to build up his career into becoming a best-selling book writer and philosopher who is very popular with women or else he'll give them F's. Though when his own students get bullied, he goes after those bullies himself. - Arrow: - In "Identity", China White is glad to see that the Arrow didn't die in \|\|the earthquake\|\| at the end of Season 1, as it would have deprived her of the chance to kill him herself. - \|\|Slade\|\| enforces this throughout Season 2. He warns Brother Blood not to go after Arrow yet, so that when the time is right, he can be the one to finish him, after destroying everything he cares about. - A version of this shows up in the Babylon 5 episode "The Coming Of Shadows", in which G'Kar was about to assassinate the Centauri Emperor at a reception, but was interrupted when the Emperor keeled over from illness. He later complains about this to his contact back home, and hopes that the Emperor will recover so that he'll have an opportunity to try again later. - Another version comes from Londo stating early on that, due a prophetic dream, he knows that \|\|he and G'Kar will strangle each other to death\|\|. In a moment of rage Londo tries and defy that by \|\|grabbing a gun to murder G'Kar\|\|, and later \|\|G'Kar tries and kill Londo by not saving both of their lives in a dangerous situation\|\|, but both times external factors make sure the prophecy will come to pass. - When Tio Salamanca has a heart attack in Better Call Saul Gus Fring works desperately to keep him alive. This, we already know, is because he doesn't want Salamanca to die before he can exact revenge on him. - In Castle, a conversation between Beckett and Senator Bracken, the man who, years earlier, hired a hitman to kill her mother, upon being forced to defend the man against an unknown sniper: Bracken A shooter... on the loose... me in the crosshairs... must be a dream come true for you. Beckett In my dreams, I'm the one who gets to pull the trigger. - The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance: After being badly wounded, skekVar is saved from being killed by Tavra when his rival the Chamberlain comes to his rescue. SkekVar believes that he misjudged the Chamberlain and calls him a true friend... \|\|not realizing until far too late that the Chamberlain only saved him so he could kill skekVar personally when the time is right. Which he does.\|\| - This causes the title character in Dexter to \|\|save the Trinity Killer's life\|\| which comes back to bite him hard in the end. He also, at least once, plants evidence to steer the police away from a criminal whom he wants to kill. - Doctor Who: - The Master, despite often trying to kill the Doctor, agrees to try and save his life in "The Five Doctors", because (in his words) "the cosmos without the Doctor scarcely bears thinking about." - This is actually a recurring trait with them. During "Trial of the Time Lord", the Master actually flat out says he'll help defeat the Valeyard because he wanted to defeat the Doctor himself. Even in "The End of Time", the Master sacrifices himself to save the Doctor from the Time Lords (and get revenge on Rassilon). Add in the Foe Romance Subtext between these two, and it might just be that all the Master wants is to "keep" the Doctor all for himself, which he actually does in "Sound of the Drums"/"Last of the Time Lords"! - When The Doctor refers to Davros as his Arch-Enemy, The Master, now "Missy", is visibly offended. - Elementary: - Moriarty feels this about Sherlock. Sherlock is a unique and interesting player against Moriarty. Sherlock's actions have garnered some respect and unique feelings in the criminal mastermind. This extended to Moriarty calling off two assassins in the cabal from harming Sherlock. When one goes rogue and wants to hurt Moriarty, he goes after Sherlock to kill him \|\|which forces Moriarty to kill the assassin in front of Sherlock and reveal herself to be Irene Adler\|\|. - Watson also gains this view from Moriarty. After the events of the first season finale \|\|where Joan Watson "solved" Jamie Moriarty and identifies a weak spot that allows her capture\|\| and later Watson proving her intelligence by avoiding Moriarty's mind games, Moriarty doesn't like other criminals trying to hurt Joan. \|\|So when the leader of a drug cartel in jail tried to poison Joan and only managed to kill her boyfriend, Moriarty had the woman killed and left no evidence leading back to her. Only in a letter to Joan does she even subtly hint at her involvement in removing this danger to Joan's life\|\|. - The Flash (2014): In "Heart of the Matter Part 2", Barry Allen convinces Eobard Thawne to help him stop Godspeed by pointing out Eobard wants to be the one to defeat Barry. - Game of Thrones: When Bronn has been promised a castle of his own and a highborn woman for a wife by Jaime Lannister, he literally snatches Jaime away from death's jaws to avoid missing out on his reward. Bronn: [to Jaime] "Listen to me, cunt. Until I get what I'm owed, a dragon doesn't get to kill you. YOU don't get to kill you. Only I get to kill you!" - Kamen Rider - In Kamen Rider BLACK villain Birugenia decides that he will be the one to defeat Kamen Rider and constantly gets in the way of his allies plans when it seems possible they might actually defeat Kamen Rider. - In Kamen Rider Decade, Kaito refers to this trope by name in the last episode, expressing his feelings towards Tsukasa's decision to go and fight Apollo Geist. - The Mandalorian. Played for Drama in "The Rescue". Bo-Katan insists that she be the one to fight Moff Gideon, which no-one disagrees with. However, Din ends up fighting and defeating Gideon, despite him being armed with the Darksaber. When Din hands his prisoner over to Bo-Katan she's aghast; as Gideon smugly points out, according to tradition the Darksaber must be won in combat. Even though Din is entirely willing to hand it over to her, she can't claim to be the true ruler of Mandalore unless she does this. - In Married... with Children, Peg often begs Al not to give away his own money on their children Kelly and Bud who keep hounding Al for money to go out and eat at restaurants. That way, Peg can hog all of Al's money for herself so she can keep shopping for luxuries (such as perfume, make-up, clothes, Bon Bons). Peg will even shoo away Kelly and Bud if they're beseeching Al for money because then she can have Al all to herself to beg him for money. In addition, despite Peg being a terrible, negligent and selfish mother to Kelly and Bud, she occasionally steps up and intervenes if Al himself is being a terrible father to them i.e. strangling Kelly in the neck or threatening to throw them out of the house to cut expenses in favor of affording his TV Guide subscription. - This is Patrick Jane's attitude about Red John in The Mentalist, but not to the point of helping him out of other scrapes. - The feeling is mutual, and Red John is willing to extend his own efforts to protect Patrick from those less worthy. - In Power Rangers in Space and its Super Sentai origin, Denji Sentai Megaranger, the Psycho Rangers/Jaden Sentai Neziranger had this attitude towards the real Rangers, which is no surprise, seeing as each one was programmed to defeat his or her counterpart. It was, in fact their greatest weakness in more ways than one; the hate that each of them showed towards their counterpart kept them from cooperating with each other at all (as opposed to the true Rangers, who were very good at doing so), and they were so obsessed with defeating the Rangers that when Astronema (or her Megaranger counterpart, Dr. Hinelar) truly had them at their mercy by turning them all into computer chips, they ruined the plan by turning them back to normal simply so they could fight them. This ultimately lead to their downfall. - \|\|However, Psycho Pink actually seemed to succeed in killing one of the Pink Rangers in Power Rangers Lost Galaxy; she turned up alive in the series finale, but it was still a victory.\|\| - In Power Rangers Samurai Deker has this attitude towards the Red Ranger Jayden, considering him to be the ideal opponent in the Ultimate Duel therefore he even goes as far as reviving Jayden from poisoning to make sure he is fit enough for a fight between them. He even lampshades it to Jayden at one point. Deker: Saving you has become an increasingly annoying habit. Though, it is one I intend to sub break. - Spartacus: Blood and Sand: Crixus expressed this sentiment towards Spartacus during and after the Segovax incident. - In Stargate Atlantis, Ronon wants to be the one to defeat a Wraith bruiser, telling Sheppard that he'd kill him if Sheppard killed the Wraith before Ronon. \|\|The Wraith beats the living crap out of Ronon until Rodney and Carson hit him with a missile. They're both profoundly apprehensive about it...until Ronon gives Carson a big hug and thanks him instead.\|\| - In an interview with William Campbell, the actor who played the Klingon Koloth in the Star Trek: The Original Series episode "The Trouble with Tribbles", Campbell revealed that the original plan was to make Koloth a recurring villain, sort of the Klingons' opposite number to Kirk. He saw Koloth as someone who respected Kirk as an adversary, and would even protect Kirk from other assailants on occasion, explaining that "No one can kill you but me." - Lucifer has this view about Michael in Supernatural. Going so far as to \|\|blow up Castiel for throwing a Molotov Cocktail of holy fire.\|\| - Zamusha, an Alien Swordsman in Ultraman Mebius came to Earth solely to fight Tsurugi (semi-formerly, Ultraman Hikari) despite having endangered the planet while fighting two rogues. After being beaten by Mebius and Tsurugi in battle, Zamusha vowes to carrying out his plan to kill Mebius and Hikari someday. Towards the series finale, Zamusha returns to save GUYS from a rogue Imperializer (\|\|and latter Alien Emperor,\|\|) from killing them simply because a weakened Mirai was amongst them. - Damon of the series The Vampire Diaries has this attitude toward Stefan in the show. He saved Stefan's life because he didn't want anyone else to have the pleasure of killing him. Given the arc of their relationship over the course of the series, it seems this was really an excuse; he actually didn't want his little brother dead, but was keeping up the "I hate you so much" schtick. - The intellectually vain Detective McNulty of The Wire has this attitude towards Stringer Bell, his Worthy Opponent on the other side of the law, to the point where \|\|he's all but brokenhearted when Stringer is killed by rival gangsters before he can bring him down.\|\| - CG5: In the music video for "Let Me Through," Funtime Foxy is shown dismembering/killing some of the other animatronics. The lyrics make it clear that he's doing this because he really wants to be the one to get the security guard. - Red Panda Adventures: The Red Panda's self-proclaimed nemesis, the Mad Monkey, is distinct from others in the Red Panda's Rogues Gallery in that his main motivator is fighting and defeating the Red Panda rather than simple crime or world domination. On two separate occasions, the Mad Monkey assists the Red Panda and the Flying Squirrel because the threat they face is one that could conceivably take the Red Panda out before he can. Towards the end of the series, as the Red Panda acts with an eye towards retirement, the Mad Monkey is an obstacle because he won't allow the mystery man to simply bow out quietly. The issue is resolved by \|\|making it appear as if the Mad Monkey killed the Red Panda and Flying Squirrel, but died in the process\|\|. The Monkey is content with this, as it means that he gets all the credit for taking the Red Panda out of the game, and is responsible for keeping him out, as the Mad Monkey makes it very clear that if the Red Panda and Flying Squirrel ever again don their masks, he'll come out of retirement, too. - On an 1987 edition of Saturday Night's Main Event, Randy Savage interfered in an Intercontinental title match between Ricky Steamboat (the one who defeated Savage for the title at WrestleMania III) and Hercules Hernandez, helping Steamboat win and then attacking him after the match. - At the 1994 King Of The Ring tournament, Jim Neidhart interfered in the WWF World title match between Bret Hart and Diesel, getting Bret disqualified when he was on the verge of losing. Later in the card, Neidhart helped Owen Hart win the King Of The Ring tournament finals. It was later revealed that Neidhart saved Bret from losing the title so Owen could be the one to defeat him for the title. - In Dungeons & Dragons, this is suspected to be why Asmodeus keeps Mephistopheles around. All devils are by their nature plotters and backstabbers, but Mephistopheles is a bold enough Starscream to tell Asmodeus, to his face, that he will be the one to topple and supplant him. The Lord of Cania is so set on this, in fact, that Mephistopheles will interfere with his rival archdukes' own schemes to take over the Nine Hells. Who better, then, for Asmodeus to put on the layer between his capital of Nessus and the rest of Baator? - In Warhammer 40,000, the daemon hordes of Khorne have a special hatred of the Blood Angels Space Marines and all their descendants for resisting the lure of the Blood God for thousands of years. When the extragalactic Horde of Alien Locusts descended on their homeworlds and the Blood Angels were on their last legs, a massive daemon army fell upon the Tyranids and destroyed many of the leader beasts until Imperial reinforcements arrived to finish off the swarm. The daemons promptly disappeared back into the Warp, waiting to claim the Blood Angels' skulls another day. - A Subverted Trope in CLANNAD. For some reason, Sunohara adamantly believes that he and Tomoyo share this dynamic, but he's quickly proven wrong with a kick into the sky and nothing else, not even a passing glance from her. Ouch. - Fate/stay night: - As an odd example of this trope, Gilgamesh seems to believe that he's the only one allowed to defeat anybody. He considers the world and everything in it his property, which means that he is allowed to do anything he wants to anybody he wants, but if someone else starts killing people en masse he becomes infuriated and will hunt them down for attacking his 'subjects'. - In the Unlimited Blade Works route, as Archer's identity and motives are revealed, it can be inferred that this trope is the reason why, earlier in the route, he \|\|saved Shirou from Caster only to attempt to kill him afterward. Archer believes that the only way to free himself from his contract as a Counter Guardian is to personally kill his past self, engineering a large enough time paradox which will erase him. It won't work if somebody else kills Shirou before he can.\|\| - Used in Hatoful Boyfriend, brought up in a bonus chapter of Holiday Star. An assassin hired to target Sakuya will defend Sakuya from other assassins, because he has to be the one to kill him in order to fulfill his contract. \|\|So Sakuya hires the assassin himself to kill him upon a predetermined signal, so in the meantime the assassin will act as his bodyguard.\|\| - In Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney Justice For All, this claim is the reason Franziska Von Karma is mad at Phoenix. Because he beat Miles Edgeworth in court before her, she now wants to hurt both him and Wright by besting him. - Red vs. Blue: Sarge holds this opinion about the Blue Team. While the thought of Blues dying is a joy to him, realizing that Red Team won't get credit for it means he'll order the Reds into battle to save their eternal nemesis. - In Adventurers!, when Big Bad Khrima (a Harmless Villain) saves the heroes from Eternion in a Big Damn Heroes moment, he does it because he doesn't want another villain upstaging him. - In Antihero for Hire, Wizard to Dechs, Dechs to Hector. - Shicmuon from Black Haze is positively obsessed with the Black Magician Blow, AKA Rood Chrishi, to the point where he stalks every mission Blow could possibly go on just for the chance to fight him to the death. Hilariously, Rood has absolutely no idea who Shic even is outside of "that crazy guy who stalks me" and so goes to extreme measures to stay hidden and refrain from engaging him. This gets exaggerated to the point where Shic has gone out of his way to rescue Rood just so that he can kill him himself at a later date. Like the rest of the series, it's played up with a blend of drama and comedy. - In Brawl in the Family, Meta-Knight has Kirby cornered when Dedede attacks him from behind, saying "This is MY battle." To his dismay, Kirby hugs him in gratitude. - Seen here in Dominic Deegan: Oracle for Hire, but subverted over the next three strips, which make it clear that Jacob's motives for killing the Chosen were purely selfish. - In Goblins, Dellyn knows Thaco has some sort of trickery planned when Thaco challenges him to a duel, but still accepts when Thaco points out that Dellyn would rather kill Thaco personally than let one of his men do it for him. Later subverted when Dellyn believes Thaco feels the same way, but Thaco refuses to kill Dellyn or call him his nemesis. - Last Res0rt has Jason Spades filling out this role to a tee: - Parodied in Looking for Group when Benny heals the mortally wounded man who killed her lover, just long enough to smash his head with a mace. - Narbonic: When Helen hears that the Dave Conspiracy has hired Mell to kill Dr. Narbon, she exclaims, "I don't care if they are a powerful top-secret conspiracy! No one takes out a hit on my mother! Her head is mine, darn it!" - In The Order of the Stick, Belkar helps rescuing Elan from bandits who've captured him, because "if anyone is going to get XP from him, it'll be me." - Also lampshaded when Crystal is more than willing to let Haley go so that she can take another level of Assassin from all the free XP she gets in order to be at exactly the same level as Haley whenever they meet. - Elan's father Tarquin inverts this. Elan is the only one he will allow to defeat him — a fair chance anyway — since that would make an epic story. Tarquin is pretty savvy otherwise and takes precautions against letting anyone else get close enough to even try to kill him — especially not The Unfavorite, Nale. - Speaking of Nale, his girlfriend Sabine won't let anyone except her kill Haley, and gets extremely mad at him when he (posing as Elan), seduces Haley with the intent to kill her. Notably, being a succubus, Sabine is more upset about the attempted murder than the seduction, and is only placated when Nale ensures her that he was only going to capture Haley so they could "romantically" kill her together. - Speaking of Nale and Sabine... Nale has made it clear that he wants to be the one to kill Elan, but Sabine is so sick of Elan "making things complicated" that she's willing to go against Nale's wishes if it gets Elan out of the picture. When Elan brings up this trope in an attempt to dissuade her, she just says "I know lots of tricks that will help him get over it. Maybe we'll do some of them on top of your corpse." - Malack insists that Durkon be left for him to "handle" when it looks like their parties will be fighting each other, though primarily because he considers Durkon a friend. It's not clear whether handling him means removing him from the battlefield, killing him, or \|\|turning him into a vampire like himself, which is what he ends up doing.\|\| - Taken to an extreme in Spacetrawler: Growp won't allow anyone else to kill Emily. So when his teammates fire at Emily, he shields her from the energy blasts — with his own body.	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/OnlyOneAllowedToKillYou
Only Known by Their Nickname - TV Tropes "Let me explain something to you. Um, I am not "Mr. Lebowski". You're * Mr. Lebowski. I'm the Dude. So that's what you call me. You know, that or, uh, His Dudeness, or uh, Duder, or El Duderino if you're not into the whole brevity thing."* This is a character who is primarily, or even only, known by their In-Series Nickname. Related to Everyone Calls Him "Barkeep", but that is about people being referred to exclusively by their jobs or what they're best known for doing. Also related to Stage Names. Does not include Fan Nicknames, secret identities or explicit pseudonyms. Also doesn't include people who give themselves new names following an act of self-reinvention, and stop responding to their old name (e.g. Voldemort). Exceptionally badass examples of this trope fall into the Red Baron. Obvious and common contractions, e.g. someone named William introducing themselves as Bill, don't really count either. Usually, Dramatis Personae will give the full name of such a character first, though the actual script will use the nickname almost exclusively even in the unspoken directions. If the character insists on the nickname, it's Do Not Call Me "Paul". If the nickname is actually his real name, it's His Name Really Is "Barkeep". ## Examples: <!—index—> <!—/index—> - Grande Odalisque: The woman's name is never given, not even in the painting's title. She's simply referred to as the Grande Odalisque. - The titular Kid Hero of BoBoiBoy is only ever referred to as such, his real name remaining a mystery. Similarly, BoBoiBoy's grandfather, Tok Aba, only goes by such regardless of who talks to him, although Tok Aba literally means Granddad. - Kung Fu Wa: One of Tee Yang's classmates is only known as "Gossip Boy", everyone refers to him by that nickname, even he calls himself like that. - BBV Productions: - In The Time Travellers, the eponymous characters are known only by their nicknames, "Professor" and "Ace". Toward the end of the series, Ace decides to start going by her real name, which is revealed to be Alice. - The protagonist of The Wanderer has Name Amnesia. In the first installment of the series, another character dubs him "Fred" for the sake of having something to call him, and it sticks. - In The Broons, the three youngest kids are called "the twins" and "the bairn". Maybe their parents got tired of naming kids. - Very few people in Footrot Flats refer to Cooch his given name, which is Socrates. - Doc Boy from Garfield hates being called by his nickname, especially by his older brother Jon, but ironically has no known name. His first few appearances said his name is Doc. - In Luann, only two of the main character's fellow students in junior college have been identified — and they are known only as Mr. Jock and Mr. Goth. - Peanuts: - Pig-Pen. Nobody knows his real name; at his first appearance, he actually says: "I haven't got a name... People just call me things... Real insulting things." In one strip, Pig-Pen says that everyone calls his dad "Pig-Pen Sr." - Rerun Van Pelt. When he is introducing himself to his kindergarten class, he reveals that even he doesn't know what his real name is. - As well: Patricia "Peppermint Patty" Reichardt. - Apparently a characteristic of Pluggers according to this strip◊. - Retail: Lunker is only called Lunker among his fellow employees, at his insistence. Only his Old Friend Crystal is allowed to call him Mel. - Thimble Theatre: - Scooner Seawell Georgia Washenting Christiffer Columbia Daniel Boom, usually called Swee'pea - Popeye, upon finding his long-lost father, asks him what their real names are. Pappy doesn't remember. - In Back to the Outback, when Chaz introduces Maddie to the audience at his show, he calls her "Medusa", but among the other animals (as well as the movie credits and other official material), she just goes by Maddie. - In a couple of Disney Animated Canon examples, there are many characters who are never given real names: - In Cinderella, Gus is originally given the name "Octavius" by Cinderella after she takes him in, but is called "Gus" for short (or in Jaq's case, "Gus-Gus"), and is never referred to by his full name afterwards. - On the surface, The Lion King's Scar appears to be named after his scar, but in a non-canon novel series, it's revealed that his given name was "Taka." This isn't much better, however, as it's Swahili for dirt/trash, which goes to show his status in the family. "Taka" is also Swahili for to want/to wish. This was most likely the intended meaning. The Lion Guard would later confirm his real name to be "Askari", thus making "Scar" both a shortened form of his real name and a reference to his scar. - Tramp from Lady and the Tramp has a rather strange name. He is a homeless stray though, so he probably named himself, since no human named him. Later it's subverted, since that becomes his name (minus "The") once he's adopted. This is also an example of Everyone Calls Him "Barkeep", because one of his old flames wrote a song about him called "He's a Tramp," and the name stuck. - Dumbo's name is actually Jumbo Jr. He doesn't seem to mind the cruel nickname he's given, but his mother certainly does (at least at first). Interestingly, despite it starting as a cruel nickname, it sticks and everybody calls him that (including Timothy Q. Mouse, one of the few characters who is nice to him). - When it comes to the members of Big Hero 6, Hiro and Fred are normal names, and Baymax is a robot name. But Wasabi, GoGo Tomago, and Honey Lemon? They're nicknames given to them by Fred. Adaptation Name Change is in play for Wasabi and GoGo; in the original comics it was "Wasabi No-Ginger" (and it was unclear it was if that was a nickname or his real name), and Jamie Chung (GoGo's voice actress) says that the latter's real name is \|\|Ethel\|\| instead of "Leiko Tanaka." Given that, like the other two, Honey Lemon was Race Lifted, it's unlikely "Aiko Miyazaki" is her real name, either. - Lumpy, originally from Pooh's Heffalump Movie and later My Friends Tigger & Pooh and a couple of other Disney Pooh works has the full name of Heffridge Trumpler Brompet Heffalump the Fourth. However, he can (almost) never remember it, so everyone just calls him "Lumpy". - Flower of Bambi is merely called that because the infant Bambi is blurting out new words he's learning from Thumper. Thumper is about to correct him, but Flower shyly allows the name to stick. - Metegol: El Grosso's real name (Ezekial Remancho) is only mentioned once. - Phantom Boy: The Face's real name is never revealed. - Ratatouille: Since Rémy is presumably unable to write like a human, Linguini never learns his actual name, merely calling him "Little Chef." - Meilin Lee of Turning Red has multiple nicknames. Her real name is Meilin, yet her friends call her "Mei" while her family members call her "Mei-Mei." It's rare that you will hear people call her Meilin (the only one who calls her Meilin is Tyler). - Duck from The Adventure Zone: Amnesty was this for the vast majority of the podcast, until episode 35 revealed his real name was \|\|Wayne\|\|. However, several people in universe still haven't heard his real name by the end, thus still fulfilling this trope. - In In Strange Woods, Shane O'Connor is much more commonly referred to as "Woodsley", stemming from a nickname he got during Scouts due to a malapropism of "I'm really woodsy." - In Pokemon: Adventures in the Millennium, the Cool Loot Gang never reveal their names and are only referred to as "Cool [Item] [Guy/Gal/Pal]". - Red Panda Adventures: The real name of the villain of the novel The Mind Master is never revealed. During his training under Nepalese master Rashan alongside the future Red Panda, he insisted on being called "One", to go along with their master's calling the Red Panda "Two" when he would not give his own name. In Toronto, he adopts the name "Ajay Shah", which the Red Panda explains is Nepalese for "Unconquerable King". Fitting for his stated desire of world domination. - Many, many characters from Welcome to Night Vale, though several of them may not even have real names to begin with. - Just about every Professional Wrestler ever. Has a trope named after the two Pauls, Triple H and The Big Show, who only go by their ring names. - Triple H is a case even in kayfabe, since his full name is Hunter Hearst Helmsley, but he's rarely, if ever, called that anymore. He's still called "Hunter" on occasion, and he and his in-laws are referred to as the McMahon/Helmsley family, so this name is still canon. - Some wrestlers avert this by using their actual real names such as John Cena, Randy Orton (who even named his finisher after his initials), both Hardys, Brock Lesnar, and Shelton Benjamin. - Some other wrestlers are in a middle-ground where they invoke and avert this at the same time. Examples of this grouping include Ric Flair (Ric is a common nickname for Richard while his real last name has an 'h' the ring name lacks and an 'e' that got swapped for an 'a'), Batista (Batista is his actual last name, minus a 'u', and his real first name Dave has been mentioned on-screen occasionally), The Miz (he himself revealed in a 2010 promo that his real name is Mike Mizanin, with the Miz part allowing a contestant on a game show he appeared in to correctly identify him), plus female wrestlers Maryse and Melina (who invoke this in tandem with First-Name Basis; their real-life last names are Mizanin (originally Ouellet) and Perez respectively). - When Rocky Maivia turned heel he gave himself the nickname "The Rock". To say this nickname stuck is an understatement, to the point where his original ring name is all but Canon Discontinuity at this point. - Sesame Street: - Snuffy's real name is Aloysius Snuffleupagus. Even though almost everyone on the series refers to him by his nickname, his mother usually refers to him by his real name. - Cookie Monster, whose real name was eventually revealed to be \|\|Sid.\|\| - "My name is Guy Smiley, and they call me Guy Smiley because I changed my name from Bernie Liederkrantz!" - Journey into Space: Doc Matthews' first name is never revealed in the original. However, it is said to be Daniel in The Host. - James Golden, the longtime call screener for The Rush Limbaugh Show, was consistently called Bo Snerdley. - In Both Your Houses, Girl Friday Hypercompetent Sidekick secretary Greta Nilsson is only ever referred to as "Bus" — and the play never explains why. - In Fangirls, Edna's online Gay Best Friend 'Salty Pringl' is only ever identified by his online handle. - In David Belasco's The Girl of the Golden West, the title character is known as "the Girl" even in the play's Dramatis Personae; only very rarely is her real name, Minnie, mentioned in dialogue. The opera averts this and has her called Minnie all the time. - Sky Masterson in Guys and Dolls, called that because nobody bets higher. In the few moments between "My Time Of Day" and "I've Never Been In Love Before", Sky reveals to Sarah his real name, Obediah Masterson, and says she's the first person he ever told it to. - "Yank", the protagonist of The Hairy Ape by Eugene O'Neill. In one of the later scenes, he gives his name as Bob Smith, "but I been just Yank for so long." - Little Buttercup in Gilbert and Sullivan's H.M.S. Pinafore. Her real name, Mrs. Cripps, appears only in the Dramatis Personae. - In Liliom, Liliom's actual name of Andreas Zavocki is only used when policemen are interrogating him. - The title character of Madame Butterfly is only called "Butterfly," "Madame Butterfly," or "Cho-Cho San" (which means "Madame Butterfly" or "Miss Butterfly"), even by her relatives. Her birth name is never revealed. - In The Most Happy Fella, Tony addresses his love letters to "Rosabella" because he doesn't know her name. Nobody in the play calls her anything else, until the final scene where she reveals that her real name is (or was) Amy. (This is averted in They Knew What They Wanted, where Amy is never called Rosabella.) - The Wreck in My Sister Eileen and The Musical Wonderful Town. His name is Ted Loomis, but nobody calls him Ted. Eileen: Is there anything I can do for you, Mr. Loomis? The Wreck: Leave out the mister—call me Wreck. Eileen: Wreck? The Wreck: That's what they called me at Georgia Tech. I'd have made All American, only I was expelled. - Perfect Pie: The protagonist Patsy's real name (Patricia) is mentioned only once in the entire play, and is very easy to miss completely. - In Summer of the Seventeenth Doll, the male leads go by the nicknames Roo and Barney; their real names are given once, when they're being introduced at the beginning, and then never mentioned again. Then there's the neighbor Bubba, who everyone's known since she was a little girl; it's a significant moment in her personal arc when a newly-introduced character, Johnny, thinks to ask what her actual name is (and it's followed by a scene where Johnny refers to her by that name and Barney is like "who?" before realizing he means Bubba). - In West Side Story, pretty much of all of the Jets only use their nicknames and thus their real names are never revealed. Its less of a case with the Sharks, who have names that Puerto Ricans would likely have. - Barbie: - No one ever calls Barbie by her full name, Barbara. - Her oldest younger sibling seems to have a name, but she's only called "Skipper". - In BIONICLE, the ruthless leader of the Dark Hunters is only ever referred to as "The Shadowed One". Even while other Dark Hunters work under various Code Names, usually their real names are revealed to the audience, but despite the rest of the info known about the man on top (his face, his motives, and even a good chunk of his backstory), there's nothing on his real name. Reportedly, series writer Greg Farshtey chose not to name him due to the amount of backlash he faced in changing the name of the series' actual Big Bad note : Originally known as "Makuta", halfway through the series, it was later retconned that "Makuta" is a title given to several baddies, and that his real name was "Teridax", keeping it unknown to preserve a mystery and save himself the headache. - Fate/stay night: - All the Servants continue using only their class names long after their true identities are revealed. It can be a bit awkward to refer to an apparently teenaged girl by the term "Saber". The only one who is commonly referred to by name is Gilgamesh, who is often called Archer by Saber. - Gilgamesh admits that his weird drill-lance "sword" doesn't have a real name. He calls it "Ea", but this is not its true name, just his own pet name for the weapon. Since it predates the world, it also predates the concept of names, so by definition it cannot have one. - Minotaur Hotel: As you can imagine, the guy known as P wasn't named "P" at birth. Apparently, this was a family tradition, with his grandfather also being known as "P". His real name is \|\|Pedro. "Storm" is also a nickname, with his real name being "Oscar". After the two reveal their real names to each other, the game changes their in-game name to their real names, though they're still known by their nicknames towards everyone else.\|\| - Zen and 707's real names (Hyun Ryu and Luciel Choi, respectively) in Mystic Messenger are mentioned in the prologue, but V (himself an example of this trope) is nearly the only one to use them. There's also a double-nested example with \|\|707: a player who does the Casual Story first will probably assume that Luciel is his real name, but the Deep Story reveals that Luciel is actually his baptismal name and Saeyoung is his true birth name.\|\| - M in Shikkoku no Sharnoth is never called anything but that. \|\|He claims not to actually have a name. If he had a name, it would be James.\|\| - The protagonist of Songs and Flowers tries to invoke this by referring to herself as "Miss Info," but ends up telling her love interest her real name, Jazz Overstreet, early in each route anyway. - Spirit Hunter: NG: - It's revealed in her introduction that Rosé Mulan isn't the woman's real name, but her stage name. Whatever it actually is doesn't get revealed. - Up until all his quests are done and he formally introduces himself, D-Man is only known as such. The nickname came about \|\|by him shortening Desk Man, since he was a desk editor for a magazine in life.\|\| - Ciel in Tsukihime. Her real name is Elesia, which is referenced roughly equally relating to her as to her Nightmare in Kagetsu Tohya: One scene. - The servants in Umineko: When They Cry are all referred to by names ending with the character for "sound" (pronounced "on", "non" or "ne"). Shannon's actual name is Sayo, and Kanon's is Yoshiya. \|\|And then there's the servant who is only known as Yasu. His/her full name is confirmed in the manga to be Sayo Yasuda, further establishing that Shannon and Yasu are the same person.\|\| - Zero Escape: - Everyone except Junpei is eligible for this trope in Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors. The nine players of the Nonary Game decide to create nicknames for themselves based on their bracelet numbers, and then there's Zero, their kidnapper, whose name is also fake, and a couple more characters who also receive nicknames temporarily for the sake of explaining their deaths until the others figure out their real ones. Ultimately, we get to know all their real names except for Seven. Clover is a Double Subversion: her real name actually is Clover, \|\|and using her real name turns out to bite her in the ass, showing just why the characters were using aliases to begin with.\|\| - Virtue's Last Reward: - Zero III is usually called "Zero Jr." by the cast to differentiate him from the actual mastermind of the Nonary Game, who also calls himself "Zero" and who the cast refers to as "Zero Sr." Zero Jr.'s official name is \|\|Lagomorph\|\|, while Zero Sr.'s real name is \|\|Dr. Sigma Klim\|\|. - One participant is an amnesiac man in a suit of armor who can't remember anything about himself except that his name starts with a K, and so asks everyone to just call him "K". \|\|Depending on the timeline, K is either Kyle Klim (who actually has amnesia) or Akane Kurashiki (who is pretending to be Kyle)\|\|. - In Zero Time Dilemma, the amnesiac boy in a strange helmet is only referred to as "Q" by the game and promotional materials. In one path, you learn that his real name is \|\|Sean\|\|. Then, in another, you learn that \|\|Sean was always known to the cast by his real name, and isn't Q at all. Q is actually an entirely different character who was always just offscreen, but who the cast was always well aware of. His real name is Delta, but he also has a second nickname the cast knows him by: Zero II\|\|.	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/OnlyKnownByHerNickname
Only Shop in Town - TV Tropes Yes, that leaf in the top left is this town's only "Shop". "However no sooner have you moved into your first broom cupboard then the cruel overtones of the game become apparent; slapped with a hefty mortgage, your initial days will be spent performing tasks for Tom Nook the local shop owner, who also appears to have a monopolistic control over the island." When there's a small number of characters populating a small, communal setting in a remote location, individual characters will often be assigned roles within the community. Of these, a common one is to have the local economy controlled by a shopkeeper who runs the only establishment where one can buy and sell goods. In other words, the Only Shop In Town. Said establishment is usually a small shop with a modest inventory (rather than a big suburban department store) which nevertheless has a monopoly. In other words, it's like a Mega-Corp, only scaled down to match the setting it's in. Note that this setting need not be an actual, literal "town" for this trope to be in effect: whether the shop is in a forest, a city or a Moon station, as long as there are no others nearby, it qualifies. These places rarely have more than one employee: the proprietor, who tends to be The Scrooge and may or may not be an important supporting character in the work (they won't usually be a central character, however, due to the sedentary nature of their role). In Real Life, We Sell Everything and An Economy Is You appear out of necessity in small towns and isolated villages as there may only be enough customers to support one store. In some Company Towns, such as mining camps, the firm may run the company store to sell food and supplies to workers. Since the company store has a monopoly, expect high prices. Sometimes, the government may grant a monopoly to one company. Often found in a Thriving Ghost Town. Can be an Honest John's Dealership, but isn't always. If the shopkeeper trusts you, they may offer Black Market contraband hidden behind a false shelf. ## Examples: - Ads for stores (and other businesses) sometimes use this trope: characters will be shown to have some kind of problem, and the business being advertised will be presented as if it's the only available solution. Ads for products, on the other hand, avert it: they love to show their "competitors" (usually a Brand X version) and how they're not as good as the product being advertised. - In most of the Tremors movies, Perfection, Nevada is served by Walter Chang's Market. - Discworld: - Quarney's General Store in Lancre Town. In Lords and Ladies, Nanny Ogg corners Mr Quarney and asks him if the store is doing well. Quarney, recognising this as a prelude to costing him something, tries to claim business is bad, but since it's not like Lancrastians can shop around, Nanny isn't having any of it. - According to Mrs Bradshaw's Handbook, the Dying Town of Gravelhang has one store that sells tobacco, tinned food, and banjo strings. - In The Great Brain books everyone goes to the ZCMI Store, the only general merchandise store in town. Abie Glassman decides to open a permanent store, retiring his traveling wagon, but everyone is used to going to ZCMI for everything so nobody patronizes his store. He starves to death. - Star Wars: Kenobi: Dannar's Claim is a combination general store/livery/garage/restaurant/cantina, and the center of life in the Pika Oasis on Tatooine. Dannar opened up a shop (instead of a farm) on his plot of land to cater to his neighbors, and his widow Annileen and their children continue to run the place, which has expanded to cover every common need of the area. (The vehicle repair garage is technically a separate business renting space from Annileen.) The nearest small town, Bestine, has more services, but Dannar's Claim is more conveniently located for all of the local moisture farmers. - Balamory: The titular village has one: Suzie Sweet and Penny Pocket run its only shop. To be fair, this is a village with about ten adult inhabitants, with one building each. - Boston Legal: To the point where they occasionally represented both sides in a case. For the record, this is major artistic license: After "Touch Your Client's Money and You're Done", "You Can't Represent Opposite Sides of the Same Case" is probably the biggest single rule in legal ethics. - In Father Ted John and Mary (the couple who are always trying to murder each other) run what seems to be the only shop on Craggy Island. - Wrangler Jane's trading post (and post office) on F Troop qualifies as this, though O'Rourke and Agarn get a lot of their goods from the Indians. - Drucker's Grocery Store is the only store in Hooterville, yet it services two shows, Green Acres and Petticoat Junction. - Downplayed some in Hill Street Blues, but Joyce Davenport is the only Public Defender at Hill Street Station who gets to be more than a one-shot character. Presumably this is down to the Law of Conservation of Detail , as she's already a main character thanks to being Captain Furillo's lover. - JAG: Often it makes you wonder why Harm, Mac et al. at JAG Headquarters gets to act as trial and defense counsel from a wide array of cases from all around the Navy and the Marines and why they're not handled by the command staff judge advocates out in the field. - In the pilot episode, Admiral Brovo makes a suggestion that there wouldn't have been a perceived need to send HQ people out to the USS Seahawk if the missing RIO had been a male for political purposes. - It's suggested many times that they're sent out in the field to be impartial whenever there's a concern that the local judge advocates might not be, or that there are none present on the location at all. - Kingdom: Justified in that Market Shipborough is a rather small town; there's probably another law firm in town, but just the one. Or maybe two. But no more. - Oleson's Mercantile is the only store in Walnut Grove in Little House on the Prairie. - In MASH, BJ's father-in-law lives in Quapaw, Oklahoma, a town Hawkeye sarcastically describes as: Hawkeye:* A gas station, a grocery store, and a fashionable restaurant called "Eats". - The Red Green Show: Humphrey's Everything Store appears to be the only shop in Possum Lake. - On Schitt's Creek the only shop in town, The Schitt's Creek General Store, closes to David's dismay. He eventually takes a lease out on the property and opens Rose Apothecary, which elegantly rebrands local products and crafts. David: I can't tell what's more tragic, the fact that the only store in town is closing or that they decided to display the fungal cream next to the cereal boxes. Stevie: That's actually really convenient because I forgot to have breakfast and I'm running low on fungal cream. - Call of Cthulhu: - The Asylum and Other Tales, adventure "Black Devil Mountain". The town of Indian River only has one general store. When the owner found out that the recently arrived NPC Albert Goddard was living on Black Devil Mountain, he refused to sell anything to him and Goddard had to travel seven miles away to the town of Addison for supplies. - Mansions of Madness, adventure "The Plantation". The Gist general store is the only one in the area. If the PCs want to buy supplies, they'll have to go there. - The Fungi from Yuggoth adventure "Mountains of the Moon". The village of Huancucho in the Andes mountains of Peru has only one place to buy things: a small trading post that carries tools, canned food, and other items. - Shadows of Yog-Sothoth adventure "The Coven of Cannich". The only store in the small Scottish town of Cannich is owned by Jamie MacNab. - Supplement Terror Australis, adventure "Pride of Yirrimburra". The small Australian town of Yirrimburra has only one general store, the source of manufactured goods and luxuries. - Adventures in Arkham Country, adventure "The Dark Woods". The small village of Dunwich, Massachusetts has only one shop: Osborn's General Store, which is housed in an old church. - The Unspeakable Oath magazine - Issue #8/9, adventure "Dark Harvest". The only store in the town of Oak Valley, Iowa is Harv's General Store. Unfortunately for the investigators, the owner of the store is a member of the cult that infests the town. - Issue #19, adventure "The Brick Kiln". The village of Trevor Major only has one shop, a general store run by Mrs. Alderson. - Chivalry & Sorcery adventure Stormwatch. The town of Swift has only one store, a trading post that sells most of the supplies available in the game. - GDW's Dark Conspiracy adventure Hellsgate. The village of Piste has only one shop: the general store and gas station owned by Henry Ruiz. The Player Characters can buy most general supplies they need there, including ammunition. - Dungeons & Dragons: - Judges Guild's Dark Tower (1979). Avvakris' Trade Monopoly is the only general merchants' supply house for miles around the village of Mitra's Fist, and the only place for PCs to buy standard supplies. - Module I6 Ravenloft. Bildrath's Mercantile is the only general store, not only in the village of Barovia but in the entire domain. The store's owner charges 10 times normal prices and refuses to bargain. As he says, "If you want it badly enough, you'll pay for it — because you certainly won't be taking your business elsewhere." - Module O2 Blade of Vengeance. The village of Oakendale has only one store. It carries most of the equipment in the BD&D Expert rulebook at a 5% markup. - Dungeon magazine - Issue #5 adventure "The Rotting Willow". The village of Rotting Willow has only one shop, an establishment called Gerald's Store. It's full of a variety of items, all of which are for sale. Player Characters have a 30% chance of finding any standard non-magical item in the store. - Issue #13 adventure "The Moor-Tomb Map". The only shop in the town of Moorwall is the general store that is part of the Much More Ale Inn. It sells some of the grear needed by adventurers at a mark-up of 40-60% above standard prices. - Issue #22 adventure "Rank Amateurs". The only shop in the village of Trintan is Raoul's General Goods. The Player Characters can buy any good available in the D&D rulebooks. - Issue #24 adventure "In the Dread of Night". The only store in the village of Sisak is the general store that shares part of the building which holds the Bountiful Tappe Tavern and Inn. - Issue #38 adventure "Horror's Harvest". The village of Delmunster has Wulch's General Store, which sells most of the items found in the AD&D Player's Handbook except for armor and weapons. - Issue #56 adventure "Janx's Jinx". The village of Davyd's Rest only has one store: the General Store owned by Prenilla. She has mainly food and leather goods but has a 25% chance of having more exotic items like holy water. - Issue #75 adventure "Non-Prophet Organization". The small town of Kellorville only has one store: Malabee's Provisions. They sell supplies for fishing, farming, and sheep-shearing, along with most other items in the AD&D Player's Handbook. - Issue #77 adventure "A Feast of Flesh". The small village of Shaerie only has one business, Owen's General Store. The store has useful items such as food, a ladder, oil, cider, lanterns, rope and farming implements. - Issue #80 adventure "Fortune Favors the Dead". The small village of Valencia has only one shop, a dry goods store which has some foodstuffs and trade items for sale. - 2nd Edition Forgotten Realms campaign setting: - Boxed set, booklet "Shadowdale". The town of Shadowdale has only one store: Weregund the Trader's general supply store. It carries a variety of supplies but does not compete with the local smithy, weaver, or woodworking shops. - Volo's Guide to Cormyr. The village of Dawngleam only has one place to buy items: a "general goods" shop (general store) named Argyr's Realmsry. It sells just about anything someone could want, and the owner will order items from merchants in other cities if a customer asks. - White Dwarf magazine #18 adventure "The Halls of Tizun Thane". There is only one shop in the village of Cahli, a trading store where the Player Character party can buy supplies. - Gamma World adventure GW1 Legion of Gold. The town known as the Fortress of Horn has only one shop, a general store that sells food, equipment, and other merchandise. - It Came from the Late, Late Show II: - Adventure "Showdown at Dry Gulch Station". The town of Dry Gulch Station only has one store, the General Store owned by the Big Bad John Taylor. Customers can buy any product available in the Wild West, including weapons and explosives. - Adventure "Tyrannosaurus Tex". The town of Bootheel only has a General Store owned by Howard Parrish. - Lejendary Adventures, introductory adventure "Moon Slaves". The town of Simton has only one general store, which belongs to Sylvester Mulhaven. - Rolemaster Shadow World setting supplement Star Crown Empire and the Sea of Fates - Wolda's General Store in the town of Borbinak fills the needs of adventurers and the local farmers and serves the wholesale needs of local inns and taverns. - The small village of Ryne has a single general store. - A downplayed, realistic example in Black Friday. Toy Zone isn't literally the only shop in Hatchetfield, but it is the only toy store in the area — and, since the show is set in 2018, one of the few toy stores in America, period. Because Uncle Wiley Toys' has elected to only sell one very limited order of the Wiggly dolls at Toy Zone, rather than selling them in a larger chain or online, the entire town is forced to gather there on Black Friday to even have a chance at getting one. This ends badly. \|\|And the chaos turns out to be a completely deliberate outcome on Uncle Wiley's part, revealing that this wasn't just a gimmick to build hype, but an active (and successful) attempt at spreading a Hate Plague!\|\| - This tends to occur naturally in the Age of Empires games with the Market building. This building lets you buy and sell resources and trade with the other civilizations, but due to the specifics of how it works each civilization will only ever need one. - Tom Nook's store is the only one in the player's town in the original Animal Crossing (see the page image). The Able Sisters sell clothes and accessories in the sequels, but Tom Nook retains his stranglehold on the economy, being the major source of Bells. This changes with New Leaf, where Tom Nook just sells upgrades for your home (and unlike in previous games, he doesn't force you to upgrade when you pay off your current house). His honorary nephews Timmy and Tommy run the local furniture store, and your main source of income becomes the local recycling center/thrift store, Re-Tail. - Played around in Demon's Souls. Some maps have more than one merchant but every merchant sells all kinds of items (outside the general potion management). - Disney Dreamlight Valley: - There is only one general store where players can buy new clothing and furniture, as well as multiples of furniture they already own. And it's run by Scrooge McDuck, of course. He also happens to own the only construction company in the valley, too. - Chez Remy, run by the talented rat himself, is the only restaurant for the villagers to eat at. Though considering Remy's second-to-none cooking, nobody seems to mind. That said, it's also the only place where players can get peanuts, slush ice, eggs, and dairy products. - While there are multiple stalls where players can buy seeds and growable foods, they are all run by Goofy, and Kristoff runs the only stand dedicated to selling resources. - Played around in Dragon Age. - Some cities get only one merchant but in others, you are bound to see many merchants. The dwarven city of Orzammar oozes with them and you get some Dwarven travelers joining your trip. - It's even the focus of a small sidequest in the besieged town of Lothering, where a Chantry sister is calling out the only merchant in town (aside from the innkeeper) for his price-gouging. The player can choose to drive the sister off or try and convince the merchant to lower his prices. - Averted in Drakensang: Each of Ferdok's areas has several merchants selling different stuff, from armors, to weapons, to clothes, to potions, to magic ingredients to useful items and even useless crap too. The sequel even has two vendors (one for weapons, the other for armors) across the same small square, who'll often snark at each other when they're not doing business with you. - In The Elder Scrolls series, this is common for many smaller towns and villages. They often have just a single general trader. Averted in larger towns and cities, which have many more shops offering a wider variety of often specialized goods. - Quite common in the Fallout series, as the post-apocalyptic world rarely allows for villages and towns large enough to have more than one shop. - While they occasionally include a bar and/or a restaurant, Novac in Fallout: New Vegas has nothing but a general store and a covered communal eating area with no vendor. - Averted in Fallout 4, at least in the player-controlled settlements. You can have as many shops in a settlement as you have settlers to run them. - Final Fantasy: - The series has always been pretty good about averting this trope. Sometimes, weapons and armor or both types of magic might be run out of the same building, but typically each type of supplies gets its own brick-and-mortar store in each town. - Averted in Final Fantasy VI, where you find different shops for different items in different buildings. - I Was a Teenage Exocolonist, starting from the second Vertumnalia Festival, the Strato crew opens the Supply Depot, the first and only shop of the colony. You can spend your Kudos there for special cards, and gaining certain perks by increasing certain skills unlocks new items in stock. - The Legend of Zelda - Each populated area (for example Castle Town, Goron City, and Zora's Domain) in The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time tends to have its own little shop. Interestingly, they have unique shopkeepers (who have their own lines of dialogue), suggesting that Nintendo saw the shop as an important aspect of each such area. - Some of the games do it a little differently, however. The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker has unique shops on a few islands, and the whole rest of the world is serviced by Beedle's Shop Ship. Both are examples of this trope. - In The Wind Waker, the owner of the Bomb Shop on Windfall Island takes pride in the fact that he's the only resident of the Great Sea in the bomb-selling business, and uses it to set ridiculously sky-high prices for his bombs (10,000 rupees for a group of 10 bombs, for example). Though later on, \|\|he takes a level in kindness when Tetra and her group of Pirates, not willing to pay his prices, bind and gag him, and steal his wares from him instead. He starts charging far more reasonable prices after that.\|\| - Video Game Lego Island: The titular island has a Pizzeria owned by Mama and Papa Brickolini that is beloved by the island's residents, even though they are aware that it's the only restaurant on the island. Likewise, the island has only one gas station that also serves as the only garage for vehicle maintenance and repairs. - Lufia II: Rise of the Sinistrals has a rather major aversion: there is a shop for items, another for spells, and another for general items, in different buildings. - Minecraft has an interesting version, where a player on a multiplayer server will often set up a place to barter items with other players (note that this is not specifically provided for by the gameplay). Most servers only have one, because when the niche is filled no one will find another. - Pokémon - The series puts its own little spin on this: each town only contains one shop, but they are all branches of the Pokémart Mega-Corp. - Somewhat played straight in later installments: The Pokémart is now a part of each Pokémon Center, with a small shop in either the front or the back. - Averted in Recettear: An Item Shop's Tale. You are the owner of one of the shops in town and with the merchant credential, you get discounts on the different shops in the market. Some shops are referenced even though you cannot see them. - Resident Evil Village: The Duke runs a thriving mercantile empire from his carriage, which is apparently the only place to buy anything in the titular town. Of course, it's justified in that the entire village is almost abandoned by the time Ethan gets there, with only a few lingering people left, and they're not exactly looking to purchase a lot. - The traditional "only shop in town" trope only appears in the original Shadow Hearts 1, and it's a commodity at that. Most of the time you buy your stuff from an unnamed "tight-lipped merchant" that shows up in places. Covenant gets rid of shops altogether and replaces them with the Magimel Brothers, who appear in every location, including dungeons, regardless of anything and too much to Yuri's disbelief. Only Gerard returns in From the New World and, along with his boyfriend Bunghen, takes pretty much the same role. - Averted and played straight by turns in the Shining Series. Each town usually has one shop for weapons and one shop for healing items and power-ups. Occasionally though both will be sold in one store. - Zig-Zagged in the first Uncharted Waters: in any big port, you will have exactly one shop to trade in common goods, one to trade items and treasures (optional), and one to build and sell ships (each located on the exact same spot on the port's Point-and-Click Map). The second game sometimes has several shops of the same kind per port but also plays it relatively straight for the most part. - In the World of Mana series we get the Cat Merchants which bring the item selling to various dangerous situations. - Free Country, USA in Homestar Runner has Bubs' Concession Stand. This is a small structure where one can buy just about anything. Weirdly, no currency ever seems to actually change hands, even when characters "shop" there. Not only does Bubs run the only shop in the HR universe, but he also personally runs every single form of enterprise, from the bar in Club Technochocolate to Strong Bad's Internet Service Provider. He even runs the local black market! - The Economy Cast of Fireman Sam includes shopkeeper Dilys Price, who runs the only shop in Pontypandy. Probably a justified example, at least in the original stop-motion series, as the village appears to be pretty small. You can also sometimes see characters holding carrier bags from a Bland-Name Product version of Tesco, roughly the British equivalent of Wal-Mart. - The Flintstones: - Bedrock has only one caterer, which is why the owner, as he puts it, can afford to be "such a smart alec". And after Fred hires him to cater Pebbles' birthday party and his lodge's stag party and the guy gets the two mixed up, he actually gets away with it, for the same reason. - Bedrock has the same problem with costume stores, and Fred gets in hot water with his boss after a bad experience with the only such store. - Noddy's Toyland Adventures, based on the Noddy books by Enid Blyton, added a doll named Dinah Doll, whose market is the only shop in Toyland. - PB&J Otter: Dad's General Store seems to be the only shop on Lake Hoohaw. - The Simpsons: - The Android's Dungeon seems to be the only shop in Springfield where one can buy comic books. In a bit of Irony, the one day Comic Book Guy tried to gloat about it to customers threatening to buy comics elsewhere was the day a bigger comic book shop was opening across the street from his. - In one episode, Homer hires a builder called Surly Joe when the house's foundations were damaged but gets outraged when Joe gave him an expensive estimate and tells him "Forget it! You're not the only foundation guy in town!" He goes inside, opens the phonebook to "foundation repair", and finds one advert: "Surly Joe's Foundation Repair, THE ONLY FOUNDATION REPAIR COMPANY IN TOWN". - For the most part, the people of Springfield only ever seem to buy groceries at the Kwik-E-Mart. - Occasionally happens in rural areas, where a village will be served by one family-run grocery shop. Not exactly common in cities. Sometimes the local government has to step in. In Baldwin, Florida, for example, after the only grocery store in town closed, the mayor opened a government-run store. - Wroxham in Norfolk, United Kingdom (pop. 1,500) has about a dozen outlets of Roys of Wroxham, including Roy's Food Hall, Roy's Garden Centre, Roy's Toys & Games, Roy's DIY, Roy's Zone Young Fashion, Little Miss Roy's girls' outfitters — it's like Hazzard County there! - A fair number of villages in the UK will have a post office (which doubles as a small supermarket), and typically a pub and a church. - A common problem in company towns, where all local amenities, including the store, are owned by a single company and are able to sell their goods at an inflated price. - Due to population decline in Japan, some towns have used post offices to double as supermarkets.	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/OnlyShopInTown
Onrushing Army - TV Tropes "CHAAAAAAAAARGE!!!" " A line of dust floats at the base of the Red Mountains. A thin brown line, growing larger and larger. Specks appear in the haze. A noise rises up, like a hundred roaring engines. A thousand thundering hooves. Ten thousand uplifted voices... They come in a ramshackle cavalry charge that whips the desert into a sandstorm. At the center of the charge is a old, battered truck. On the roof of the cab stands the Victor, grey hair whipping in the wind, nightgown flapping against her bony legs, a pitchfork in one hand and a pistol in the other, shrieking a war cry that reaches the eagles in the sky." A popular subset of Hollywood Tactics. Opposing armies will not engage in tactics or maneuvers of any kind. Instead, they simply form up into two opposing masses and charge straight at each other across a flat field. Afterwards, even this rudimentary formation will be lost as soldiers break up into a chaotic series of individual duels. If there are any cavalry, they will not work as a separate unit or form up together; rather they will just be scattered in amongst the infantry. If one side doesn't charge, they will hold their fire until the very last moment. Or they will fire exactly one volley of arrows before charging themselves. Before firearms, this tactic was rare, the "shield wall" being a much more common tactic. Even ancient barbarians generally knew better than to just gang up and run toward the enemy. Actually, the advent of firearms temporarily increased the use of this tactic, the goal being to close within melee range before the enemy could fire a second volley (this tactic being used by Scottish Highlanders), but even then, soldiers still maintained formation rather than charging in a formless mass. Ever increasing range, accuracy, and speed of firearms finally rendered this tactic suicidal in the First World War, both sides relying on suppressive fire from artillery to enable the attack to close on its target, with horrible consequences if the barrage was insufficient or badly handled. Realism aside, this trope makes for a useful and iconic image for filmmakers, and is popular in an introductory scene as a way to quickly tell the audience that these two large groups of people really, really don't like each other. Compare Animal Stampede, where the charging troop consists of mindless animals rather than soldiers. A subtrope of Call That a Formation? ## Examples: - The inhabitants of a certain Gallic village in Asterix (as well as the eponymous hero and his buddy Obelix by themselves when abroad) do this regularly to the Roman army, the unfortunate recurring crew of pirates, and whomever else they may end up fighting in the given album. Justified in this case by Panoramix's magic potion giving them superhuman strength (plus of course the Rule of Funny). - The Lord of the Rings - The prologue of The Fellowship of the Ring features mindlessly rushing Orcs against more disciplined Elves. - The Return of the King: - The Rohirrim's charge against the Orcs at Minas Tirith. One really big line of horses coming at full speed on the Orc army, whose volleys of arrows do little to impede the cavalry charge before they're all swept away by a literal equine tidal wave. The Rohirrim attempt the same strategy against the line of Mûmakil covering the Orcs' retreat, but fail hard due to the Oliphaunts' sheer size and are left scattered. Not too long after the Rohirrim are nearly spent, Aragorn's group joins the fray with the Army of the Dead, bullrushing any and all resistance on the fields. - The final battle between Aragorn's force and the combined, very much larger force of Mordor plays this trope even stronger; with the need to distract Sauron's gaze away from Frodo and the Ring, Aragorn simply charges forward and his army follows suit, despite being completely surrounded by the Black Gate's army. - The Chronicles of Narnia - In The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe: The final battle also features this, though there is some strategic use of boulder-dropping fliers before the forces clash. In a slight twist, Peter's army charges in the shape of a flying wedge, in contrast to the Witch's army charging in the typically crowd-like fashion. Notably, there are actually two collisions, each sides' great cats charge ahead of the rest of the forces and slam into one another ahead of everyone else. - Used to a T in Prince Caspian. The Telmarines send their cavalry in first, far ahead of the infantry, charges far ahead, then monolithic rectangles of infantry slowly walk in, supported only by trebuchets. - Braveheart plays with this. There are Screaming Warrior charges, sure, but there's also archers, cavalry, and Irishmen deployed in various battles before they get to that bit. During the climax of the Battle of Stirling, the Scotts, right after trapping and slaughtering the English cavalry, meet head on with the incoming English infantry, complete with alternating shots of both armies rushing and screaming. - The climactic battle of The Last Samurai. After enduring several volleys of gunfire, Katsumoto and his men manage to divide the Imperial Japanese army with columns of fire, pelt the stranded half with arrows, before rushing them on foot. The Imperial army, for their part, also meet them head on, having a slight range advantage with their guns until the samurai close the distance. Then there's the final cavalry charge, which consists of Katsumoto, Algrene and any surviving samurai pushing as far as they can through the Imperial Army's lines until they're brutally stopped by machine gun fire. - The Spartans do this in 300 whenever they don't feel like using a phalanx as they're supposed to (which is most of the film aside from the start). - Parodied in Meet the Spartans: The Spartans and the Persians charge at each other, and collide in the middle, falling to the ground. - Big Trouble in Little China. The Chang Sing and Wing Kong secret societies line up facing each other (a "Chinese Standoff"). When one of the Wing Kong members yells, they charge to attack each other. - The first battle sequence in Gladiator looks like it will subvert it, with the Romans clearly being aligned in formation while the disorganized Germans are not. However, by the end of the battle, it turns into the same swirling melee that all Hollywood battles are wont to do, which is especially egregious given the fact that Rome's military success came from its incredibly well drilled legionaries and use of formations. - Done in The Mummy Returns. We see lots of this trope in flashback, and toward the climax it's also done with the Medjai versus the army of Anubis. Partially justified, since Anubis warriors are dog-headed monstrosities and possibly not smart enough to use strategy. - In The Dark Knight Rises, this is how the battle between Gotham's police and Bane's army plays out. In the cops' defense, there wasn't time nor a supply chain for anything more tactically sound, what with \|\|only ten minutes to stop Bane before he set off a nuke\|\|. Armed with only police batons, smoke grenades and pistols, the GCPD charge against Bane's army, who are armed with automatic assault rifles. - In the first assault on the city in Troy, the Greek army does this... And gets stopped cold by the Trojan phalanx, before a Rain of Arrows sends the survivors back to the ships. - In the final battle of Warcraft (2016), the two armies hurl themselves at each other with complete disregard of formations. It could be that, with the humans being in a canyon, there was quite literally no other tactic possible than to go forward, but this still doesn't excuse lack of even the most basic shield-wall while it's made very clear their orc adversaries are individually far more mighty. - In Avengers: Infinity War the Wakandan army led by the Avengers charges toward a similarly charging army led by Thanos' children. Somewhat justified by the fact that the Wakandans (and most of the Avengers) excel in melee combat, with few specifically ranged weapons among them (Bucky is smart enough to stay at range when using his gun, but also closes to close range to take advantage of the fact that he's also a skilled close quarters combatant). - In Avengers: Endgame, the combined force of the Avengers, the Guardians of the Galaxy, and an army of Wakandans, Asgardians, and Sorcerers, charge against Thanos and his army in an even and epic clash, breaking down to showcase just about every Avenger in action. - Monty Python and the Holy Grail plays this for laughs, as King Arthur and his knights (and later his entire army) always attack by charging. The trope is exaggerated on two occasions, when they charge at an enemy castle. Notably, they never win a single fight. - On the Discworld, this is the policy of the D'regs. As their wise man said in Jingo, "It is always wise to charge." - Deconstructed the first time a viking raiding party fights a Saxon force in Vikings. The Saxons try to ambush the vikings (who are coming from raiding a nearby town) before the vikings can get back to their ships. The Saxon battle plan consists solely of firing a single volley of arrows and then charging at the vikings in a disorganized mass. The vikings on the other hand stay in a tight shield wall, have a reserve to fill in any spots should someone in the front line of the shield wall die, etc. The vikings slaughter the Saxons, while only suffering two casualties, plus the two guys who were originally watching the boats. - Played for Laughs in Monty Python's Flying Circus with the sketch on the Batley Townswomens' Guild's re-enactment of the Battle of Pearl Harbour. - Typically averted in Spartacus: Blood and Sand, with the Romans frequently using a shield wall, necessitating the rebels to use some sort of additional tactic such as ambushes or catapults. The Grand Finale seems to play it straight with both sides charging right at each other, only for the rebels to stop and hold \|\|leading to the Romans falling into a Pit Of Spikes\|\|. - Warhammer 40,000: - The basic ork strategy is to run at the enemy while yelling and shooting. Justified in that the standard ork soldier is seven feet tall, tough enough to survive most small-caliber weapons, and have the numbers for such a strategy to be viable (and their biology requires orks to die to create more down the line). - Tyranids do something similar, but applying It Can Think by sending genetically-designed Cannon Fodder first (they don't even have digestive systems since they aren't meant to survive the battle) to ensure the defenders waste their ammunition before sending in the bigger monsters. - A trailer for War Craft III shows this, with a battle between Orcs and Humans which quickly goes in a different direction when demons unexpectedly rain from the sky and kill everyone. - Happens in the intro to Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War. Initially averted, as the Blood Ravens hold their positions while the Orks first charge them, but it gets played straight as the Blood Ravens charge forward after the reinforcing Dreadnaught obliterates the attacking Orks, and then the Orks charge back. Possibly a Justified Trope, as after the Blood Raven commander collapses from being shot and placing a flag at the top of a hill, Space Marine drop pods fall from the sky behind him. The flag is theorized to be some sort of device to call in those reinforcements from the drop pods, so the Blood Ravens had to make a reckless charge. The Orks reciprocating their charge more or less just makes complete sense - Orks totally love doing stuff like that. - It would also make sense if one considered tabletop rules, where for several editions standing one's ground wasn't worth it against the enemy's charge bonuses, especially with Orks' Furious Charge rule. - Pretty much any Real-Time Strategy consisting of individual units to be micromanaged attack-moving - they'll all just run toward the selected point until they can see something they can hit, run toward that until they can hit it, and then keep hitting it until they can't and go back to running toward the selected target in search of things they can hit. It will depend on the game for Screaming Warrior to make an appearance. - In the Total War series, this trope is generally a very bad idea despite the trope picture ( Total War: Shogun 2). Though charging units have a bonus when they make contact and not charging in an open field battle loses out on this bonus, flanking the enemy causes a significant penalty that is definitely worth doing instead of just running at the enemy head-on. Furthermore, lots of units (especially pikemen) have the "charge defence" trait that only works when they stand still and nullifies a head-on charge. The AI in earlier games was fond of this trope, however, as it was really easy to code. - From Total War: Rome II and onward in the series, a "bracing" bonus exists for infantry units that are standing totally still and facing toward enemy units to help reduce the damage an enemy's charge against them will cause. A variety of units in these later entries can also have a bunch of other bonuses to encourage averting this trope again enemy units which have a more fearsome charge than them, such as negating charge bonuses entirely as previously mentioned, doing more damage against charging adversaries while braced, or even completely reflecting an enemy's charge bonus right back onto them (especially good against cavalry, of course). - This is largely how infantry combat plays out in Black & White 2. - Mortal Kombat: Armageddon has all the bad guys on one side charging towards all the good guys in the intro movie. - Ultimate Epic Battle Simulator can have armies numbering well into the hundreds of thousands duking it out, which naturally means that individual unit AI seems to be a very low priority. Consequently, the only thing armies can really manage by themselves is to run in the direction of the closest enemy, then begin attacking the moment the enemy is in range until they are dead. - Most ancient and medieval battles had relatively light casualties until a rout started. Soldiers would usually panic long before they would be wiped out. The point of charging is to hope to break your enemy's resolve with a sudden onslaught. If that fails, the charge is of little benefit. This shows that while it was not a very effective strategy, it is a very intuitive one, prone to appear in cultures with a primitive approach to war. - Less professional and/or poorly led armies often turn to this strategy, sometimes unintentionally. The typical result is a bloodbath if their enemy does the same, or a one-sided massacre if he doesn't - their enemy would have to be very very worse in either or both regards for it to work. Of course, it makes slightly more sense when there's no cover to speak of and the other side has superior artillery support, but a sensible commander avoids getting into such a situation in the first place. - Ancient Greeks usually fought in phalanxes, and a fairly good way to tell apart one formed by disciplined and motivated soldiers from one that, well, wasn't, was depending on the way they charged. Since they were usually formed by militiamen who never saw many battles in a single lifetime, plenty of battles had the attacking hoplites charge the enemy head-on in a fairly loose formation in spite of their spears and heavy shields. Controlling this factor was instrumental in the victories of the Spartans, the Thebans and the Macedonians (and the Athenians in Marathon). - The real-life Battle of Agincourt was lost by the French deciding to employ this trope at exactly the wrong time. At the time of Agincourt, conventional wisdom held that the shield/pike wall would defeat a headlong charge; thus the army that attacked first would lose. The French, holding home terrain, superior numbers and not crippled by disease and logistical issues, thus decided to hold and wait for the English to make a desperation charge that the French could crush with their cavalry and men-at-arms. Thus, as the English advanced their longbows into firing range and put down a wall of stakes, the French did not respond. The end result: The English began bombarding the French with arrows and the French, instead of giving ground, decided to charge the English lines en masse. The outcome, exactly in accordance with conventional wisdom, was a devastating French defeat. - Something approximating this was used to substantial effect by Highlanders against Hanoverian armies during the Stuart rebellions, particularly the '45 and its aftermath - although it should be noted that it was used as part of a wider strategic system with more professional troops. The Highland charge was a tactic of sprinting into an enemy's musket lines and hacking at them with broadswords while they're still struggling to fix their bayonets. Later in the war, though, the redcoats developed tactics to defend against such charges and won a horribly one-sided victory at Culloden which ended the rebellion at a stroke. - In The Napoleonic Wars the British had a variation of this. They would wait. Occasionally chant. But mostly wait like a silent inhuman wall. This would push the soldiers' tension to its absolute limit which often came at the same time as the French were worn out. Then in a moment they would give a shout, fire their muskets, and charge. The French would almost inevitably collapse. - In the age of firearms, is the basic concept behind a bayonet charge, although such attacks are rare (and functionally similar to pike rushes, mentioned above), and typically only done if ammo is short and the enemy near. While bayonets are usually considered Awesome, but Impractical at best (even if the enemy is arm's reach from you, you can still just shoot him), they are also viscerally intimidating, and often result in a total rout as the enemy flees rather than risk getting stabbed to death by a berserking soldier. The most recent bayonet charges by modern military forces were both courtesy of the British military, with Scotts from the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders routing a larger force of Iraqi militiamen near Al Amara in May 2004, and in Afghanistan in October 2011 a squad of soldiers from the Prince of Wales Royal Regiment caught in a Taliban ambush forced the enemy to retreat by immediately launching a bayonet charge counter-assault. - Up until the development of guided missiles, air-to-air combat could take on traits of this, especially with large forces of fighters intercepting massed bomber formations (the bombers had to stay close together to accurately hit their targets and protect each other, the fighters had to mass together to effectively attack the large formations before they could release their bombs). That said, it was relatively rare for dogfights to start this way. It was much more common for fighters to get "bounced" by an enemy that spotted them first and moved into a blind spot to engage with the element of surprise (which by definition was almost always from behind). - A modern version of this, done for fun, can be seen at quite a few metal festivals. Witness: The Wall of Death.	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/OnrushingArmy
Only Serves for Life - TV Tropes "For life, possibly, but apparently not for long." — Vetinari on Moist von Lipwig's appointment as Master of the Mint in Making Money A President for Life expects to hold office for quite a while. This isn't necessarily the case: although the post cannot technically be vacated with the office holder's deposition, it can quite easily be vacated at any time via his death. This is often mentioned in the context of a threat. If a President for Life manages to remain as a ruler even after they died, it becomes The Necrocracy. See also Klingon Promotion, In It for Life. Has nothing to do with serving a life sentence. ## Examples: - In the X-Wing Rogue Squadron story arc "Mandatory Retirement", Ysanne Isard as part of her attempt to consolidate her control over what remains of the Galactic Empire, tries to recruit Admiral Krennel to her side. Krennel declines, saying he's pledged his loyalty to General Carvin (the official leader at the time) and that such allegiance is for life. Isard reminds Krennel that "life" is not synonymous with "long", and shortly afterward has Carvin assassinated. - In The Tamuli, Sephrenia is dealing with another Styric, who uses the excuse that he holds his position for life. Sephrenia responds, "Precisely my point", and proceeds to cast a death spell. - Note that she does not actually kill him, she just threatens to (she indicates to him that she just holds off from finishing the spell and so metaphorically holds his heart in her hands). This also makes the point that out of over a thousand people present with the awareness and ability to easily stop her (not counting that the man is the high priest of a deity able to intervene), some of whom were her political enemies, nobody was doing a thing. - Discworld examples: - The Patrician of Anhk-Morpork serves for life as a dictator, but always with the understanding that if too many of the rich and important people decide he needs to go he'll be assassinated. The incumbent throughout the series (except for most of Night Watch, in which we get to see a previous Patrician play it very straight indeed) is Havelock Vetinari, who is so good at having that not happen to him that he has a trope about it named after him. - The jobs Vetinari gives Moist von Lipwig. In Going Postal he reflects "Postmaster General was a job for life - one way or the other. That was why Vetinari had put him here". And in Making Money, Vetinari calls Moist's appointment as Master of the Mint "For life, possibly, but apparently not for long." - Tribesmen of Gor: the way to become the head of Klima, a Penal Colony/salt mine surrounded by hundreds of miles of desert, is to kill the current head. This also applies to lower ranking leaders. But bear in mind before you try to kill him - he successfully killed his predecessor. And so on. - In Warrior Cats, Clan Leaders serve until their death, which can take a while since they're granted nine lives upon becoming leader, so they must die nine times before they'll stay dead. The Clan deputy automatically becomes leader when the leader dies, so this has led to a couple times when a Leader Wannabe deputy decides that his leader's taking too long to die and tries to secretly kill the leader himself. - In Twilight at the Well of Souls, Marquoz is re-made by the Well into a Hakazit, a species of large, powerful, reptilian warriors. The Hakazit have a truly unique form of government: The Supreme Lord is an absolute dictator - but the office is passed on only by Klingon Promotion, and every other Hakazit in the entire hex spends their spare time trying to find a way to assassinate him and become Supreme Lord in turn. When Marquoz arrives, the current Supreme Lord is fifty-seven years old and has held the position a little over three years. In his lifetime there have been sixty-six other Supreme Lords. The historical record for holding the position is nine years, three months, sixteen days, five hours, forty-one minutes. - When Oberyn Martell of A Song of Ice and Fire makes a statement that might be construed as a threat against Hand of the King Tywin Lannister and is warned that eavesdroppers may be listening, he says, "Let them. Is it treason to say a man is mortal?" - In the Romulan state as depicted in the Rihannsu series, Senators are not democratically elected and serve for life. As Gurrhim tr'Siedhri puts it in Honor Blade, "Once a senator in ch'Rihan, always one - while you breathe, anyway." By tradition, constituents display their displeasure by mailing swords to encourage suicide. Very few Senators fail to take the hint, probably because those who do get removed more directly. - Invoked in the Shadowrun sourcebook Cyberpirates. While talking about the situation in Haiti, Shadowland poster The Gingerbread Man (a Pirate) states that the president of Haiti serves for life - and then notes that that term, in Haiti, averages out to about ten years, and that every outgoing president gets voted out "the old fashioned way - with an HK227 (a model of submachine gun) to the back of the head." - Discussed in the Stonecutters episode of The Simpsons. Homer has been named the leader of the Stonecutters lodge because of a birthmark. He can't be voted out of office or anything but the rest of them don't like his leadership. They discuss killing him, but they end up just all quitting the lodge. - On June 7th, 1975, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman declared himself President for Life of Bangladesh, establishing a "unity government" that banned all political parties and independent press. He was assassinated later that year on August 15th with most of his family. - Invoked a few times by The Vatican, who elected an old or sick man as The Pope, hoping for a short and/or uneventful reign. It's been known to backfire when The Pope lived longer or was more active than expected. - Defied (or perhaps Invoked in Inversion) when the Vatican, meeting for the second time in as many months, elected a 50-something cardinal to the Papacy in hopes they wouldn't have to have a conclave for at least a decade. It worked: John Paul II had the second-longest papacy in history (26 years) and none of the cardinals that voted then were eligible to vote for his successor. note : A cardinal must be under 80 to vote for a pope, and everyone who voted for John Paul II was too old (or too dead) to vote for Benedict XVI. - Possible Ur-Example: The Rex Nemorensis, or "King of Nemi," was the priest of Diana at a particular grove on the shores of Lake Nemi. By tradition, he must be a fugitive slave who found a golden bough in the grove and then slew his predecessor. He serves until the same thing happens to him. - Subverted by the North Korean government. Despite Kim Il Sung's death in 1994, he retains the title of "Eternal President", thus making him the country's de jure head of state. - Less than ten popes have ever (voluntarily) resigned. - Julius Caesar was named dictator for life in February of 44 BC. He was assassinated only a month later, in March of the same year. Whether he actually intended to remain dictator for the rest of his life is impossible to determine. While the title dictator perpetuo ("dictator in perpetuity") gave him the option of remaining in office for life, it's entirely possible that he intended to step down eventually but wanted to hold power for longer than the normal 6 month limit for a Roman dictator. But a group of Senators weren't willing to wait and find out, some because they feared he did plan to rule for life and others because they were simply his political foes.	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/OnlyServesForLife
Only the Pure of Heart - TV Tropes Oscar: [heads toward a wall at top speed] I'm gonna die! Glinda: It's a magic wall. Only those who are pure of heart may pass through it. Oscar: ...I'm gonna die! Some things are just too good to let everybody get their hands on; they might be too rare, too dangerous or maybe just too evil to start dishing out all willy-nilly. However, people with pure hearts will have the chance to access things less pure-hearted people cannot, such as: Note that despite the heavy-handed Aesop, pure good is usually portrayed as extremely difficult both to attain and maintain: Just as Virgin Power requires that you Can't Have Sex, Ever, any small stumbling will destroy your powers, too (even if it is in mind only). Occasionally Pure Is Not Good and the pure evil characters pass muster as well. In some cases, the concept that Unicorns Prefer Virgins is tweaked to an affinity for pure-hearted characters as well. A Wide-Eyed Idealist (or otherwise, just The Idealist) may fit this trope, in which case the bad guys might exploit them to get around this security feature. For a weaponized form of this trope, see Morality-Guided Attack. Subtrope of Phlebotinum-Handling Requirements. Compare Only the Knowledgable May Pass, Only Smart People May Pass, Only the Worthy May Pass, Children Are Innocent, All Crimes Are Equal. Related to Fantastic Aesop. Super-trope for Only Good People May Pass. ## Examples: - Dragon Ball: - This trope was formerly called Nimbus Privileges, after the dub name for Goku's Kinto'un cloud. Neither Muten Roshi nor Kuririn/Krillin can hope to ride it because Kuririn stole dirty magazines for Muten Roshi, although a few other characters more pure of heart apparently can. Gohan, Goten, Chi-Chi, and (in a tellingly specific way) "Good" Lunch/Launch, but not Bulma. As one might expect from shounen, this isn't a Virgin Power; Goku, Gohan, and Goten mainly stop riding because he and many other characters simply fly on their own, much faster than Kinto'un can (although it is a handy transport when wanting to save on energy). - For his part, Goku started off as a comedic example because, not one chapter/episode before riding the cloud, he was patting Bulma's crotch wondering where her balls were, and several chapters after that, does it to Chi-Chi (his future wife) and an old lady. However because Goku is such a Chaste Hero with No Social Skills, he genuinely doesn't mean any harm by it and the social reasons for why he shouldn't do this simply don't occur to him. - In Cross Epoch, a crossover with One Piece, Luffy rides the Kinto'un as well, as do Arale and Gatchan 1 and 2 when Goku visits Penguin Village. - Goku's pure heart also renders him immune to Akkuman/Devilman's ultimate move, the Akumaito Kōsen/Devilmite Beam, which works by causing the negative thoughts in a person's mind to explode. - At one point it's mentioned that only someone of a pure heart can become a Super Saiyajin/Super Saiyan. Vegeta then explains he was capable of it because his heart is pure evil. The trick with becoming a Super Saiyajin/Super Saiyan is a combination of purity and rage. So you have to be pure, and then something has to piss you off in a big way. Emotional bursts flares up one's Ki, and causes the transformation; the purer and kinder the individual, the more potent the rage-burst when it happens (potentially explaining why Vegeta had such a hard time - he's always angry, so him raging isn't that big an emotional burst). "Need" is also a factor. In Vegeta's case, he ended up putting himself in an extremely dangerous position while training in order to force himself to need the power just to survive. It might sound crazy, but consider that he probably wouldn't want to live anymore anyways if he couldn't pull it off after seeing Goku achieve it. - A bit of a Zig-Zagged Trope in this regard as while the need for a pure heart is greatly emphasized early on, by the middle of the Cell arc it's never brought up again and seemingly dropped as a requirement. It has never been demonstrably confirmed that a Saiyan can't turn Super Saiyajin/Super Saiyan because they aren't pure of heart, and at least one character, Bardock, has achieved it despite a dubious personality at the time, albeit in a What If? story. - The Genki Dama/Spirit Bomb can only be used by someone of pure heart as well. Therefore, when Goku enters the Super Saiyajin/Super Saiyan form, he's unable to use it, because the Super Saiyajin state taints his heart with rage and bloodlust. This doesn't prohibit him from going SSJ after forming the attack, which he does in the Android 13 movie (outright absorbing the energy), in the final battle against Kid Buu, and against Jiren in Dragon Ball Super. Through training, Goku and Gohan learn to activate and stay in Super Saiyajin/Super Saiyan form as if it were their normal state, likely why these acts can happen. - Cell claims to be able to use the Genki Dama/Spirit Bomb, but never actually does so in the anime. Fans speculate that like Vegeta's Super Saiyajin/Super Saiyan, being pure evil satisfies the "pure of heart" requirement, while others suggest that his line in * Dragon Ball Z: Budokai* ("Okay planet, gimme that stupid energy!") implies that he's forcibly taking the energy rather than asking for donations. - Inuyasha: Mt. Hakurei has a purifying barrier around it so only the pure-hearted can enter. When Sango and Miroku enter, the latter finds it difficult to proceed when he thinks dirty thoughts about Sango. - In the third season of Sailor Moon, the purity of the heart can be extracted as a crystal. The Big Bad guys, called the Death Busters, as well as Sailor Uranus and Sailor Neptune are searching for three specific Pure Heart Crystals that contain powerful treasures known as Talismans. When the three Talismans come together, they produce the Holy Grail, which could either purify the world or put the world into eternal silence, depending on whose hands it falls into (The Messiah of Light or the Messiah of Silence). - The Holy Grail reacts with the Silver Crystal, essentially giving Sailor Moon her first power-up, into Super Sailor Moon. Because of this, they initially thought Sailor Moon was the Messiah of Light, but this theory died quickly when Sailor Moon proved she couldn't handle the immense power of the Holy Grail. - After Mistress 9, the Messiah of Darkness, allows the Final Big Bad, Pharaoh 90, to absorb the Grail, she explains to Sailor Moon that the Holy Grail is the Crystal of the purest heart in existence, and the only way to save the world now was to produce a heart of greater purity. Hotaru eventually takes her body back from Mistress 9 and awakens as Sailor Saturn. She goes off to fight Pharaoh 90 at the cost of her own life. - Saddened by the possibility of losing Hotaru, Sailor Moon produces her own Pure Heart Crystal with the help of the other Sailor Soldiers. She transforms into Super Sailor Moon and helps Sailor Saturn defeat Pharaoh 90 before he can plunge the world into eternal silence. - Minako was initially worried that her heart wasn't pure after the Death Busters targeted the rest of the Sailor Senshi. She became very cheerful after the Death Busters attacked her and extracted her heart crystal...until she collapsed because her spiritual heart had just been ripped out. - In Mobile Suit Gundam Unicorn, the RX-0 Unicorn Gundam can only be used by someone who is pure of heart and has good intentions. How this actually works is unknown. Note that this is only true in the novel: the OVA makes no such mention of any such system, and the reason only Banagher can pilot it is that the Unicorn was registered to his DNA in the first episode as a security measure. - It isn't actual purity per se, but Luffy's total lack of lust in One Piece grants him complete immunity from Boa Hancock's Love-Love powers. - In one of the manga adaptations of The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past, Link's pure heart shields him from being transformed by the Dark World. To a lesser extent, Ganty seems to be somewhat shielded as well; she was transformed, but unlike the rest of the cursed people, she can shapeshift between her transformed form and her normal form at will. \|\|Of course, that doesn't mean Link's heart can't be tainted by rage and hate, which Agahnim tries to use to his advantage.\|\| - Crops up occasionally in Saint Seiya, as in how the Gold Clothes of Athena's most powerful saints are said to have just enough sentience to tell whether their owner truly fights for justice or not. This eventually leads to \|\|the Cancer cloth abandoning Deathmask mid-fight for being a murderous psychopath, though it of course waits until an appropriately dramatic moment to do so\|\|. However, even those who desire peace and justice can be lead astray, and the entire conflict of the Twelve Houses ordeal comes straight from the Goldies failing to recognize the evil in their current Pope until it's too late. - On the flip side, every time a Holy War crops up, the person with the purest heart on Earth is ultimately destined to \|\|become the human vessel of Hades, through which he intends to destroy the world. This happens even if said soul is already on the other side of the conflict.\|\| - In the Kirby anime, Meta Knight's sword, Galaxia, is an ancient Empathic Weapon that senses the intent of those who try to wield it. If it doesn't like their intent, it electrocutes them. - Only one who is pure of heart can retain their humanity when possessed by a demon and become a Devilman. - Only the purest and most devoted of warriors can even lift the hammer of Thor (as depicted in the Marvel Universe, anyway), and fewer can actually use it. The list of people who can do this is very short (though Beta Ray Bill, Captain America, and \|\|Jane Foster\|\| the "new" Thor have been able to wield it, and Deadpool got his hands on a pretty close copy) and Thor himself lost the ability during The Reigning when he veered into serious Knight Templar territory. Beta Ray Bill temporarily lost the ability to wield his own hammer Stormbreaker which has the same enchantment after his quest for vengeance against Galactus for eating his homeworld ventured into He Who Fights Monsters territory. - Notably, during the DC crossover JLA/Avengers, Wonder Woman can manage it but not Superman. (Supes used the hammer, but only because Odin lifted the restriction due to the critical situation; afterwards Thor explains this but also remarks that it's never been in worthier hands.) - In Original Sin, Nick Fury whispers something to Thor \|\|that instantly makes Mjölnir find not only Thor but every single Asgardian unworthy of it.\|\| It's later revealed in The Unworthy Thor that \|\|the thing that made Thor and the rest of Asgard unworthy was that "Gorr was right", that is Gorr the God Butcher claimed that the gods were unworthy of the love and affection mortals gave them because they were such vain and vengeful creatures.\|\| - Oh, it gets better. In AXIS, \|\|Loki becomes worthy of Mjölnir as an effect of being Inverted (i.e. Heel-Face Turned).\|\| Not related to the hammer but in the same event said person expressed the notion that "... pureness of heart is the greatest magic of all!", before turning into a unicorn. Yes. That happened◊. - In Justice Society of America, Power Girl was specifically told that Stargirl, not she, had to defeat the King of Tears because purity of heart was needed. (Earlier in the same story, Stargirl had her heart broken because a villain had needed her love to cast a spell for her purity of heart.) - In both the Marvel and DC universes, reigning Lords of Hell (Mephisto and Neron respectively) have attempted to ensnare the most incorruptibly pure souls only to be unable to actually HOLD them in Hell because of that very same trait. The souls in question? \|\|Silver Surfer and Captain Marvel (again respectively)\|\|. - Part of the plot of The Resurrection of Ra's al Ghul involves the Fountain of Life, a fountain in Nanda Parbat which Ra's considers a more pure version of the Lazarus Pit, which according to the monks of Nanda Parbat, can only be used by people with pure hearts. The Sensei, Ra's father, scoffs at this as he intends to taint it, but sure enough, when his fight with Batman results in the two of them landing in the Fountain, he is destroyed while Batman's injuries from the fight are healed. - In King In Black: Black Knight, this trope is flipped on its head. \|\|Dane Whitman, the current Black Knight, learns that the Ebony Blade can only be welded by impure hearts and that the wizard Merlin has lied to him and the previous welders.\|\| - Be All My Sins: Natalie has a sobering moment when she realizes the presence of a holy relic of a martyr burns her. It's quite the wake-up call as to how far she's fallen into corruption... which she does her best not to think about. - In Equestria: Across the Multiverse, Innocence Magic can only be used by those completely lacking the desire to do harm, even the temptation to do so. As a result, it can only be wielded by the World of Empathy ponies or ponies channeling past lives that were from there. Innocence Magic is no better than normal magic on its own and its true power comes from how it interacts with other forms of magic. Namely, it gives a significant boost to Light Magic but weakens Dark Magic by the same degree, and is a straight-up Kryptonite Factor to those using corruptive magics. This makes it a perfect fit for them, as they're Actual Pacifists and thus can use it to provide support for their more combat-willing allies. - The Golden Child's immunity to being harmed by Sardo Numspa's demonic forces is based entirely on him maintaining his innocence. Even the slightest slip, such as drinking blood, would be enough to allow him to be slain. So they lock him in a cage with no food, hoping to wear down his resistance. Given that he's a Buddhist monk (and managed to sneak some leaves along with him), he holds out for just long enough to be rescued. - Monty Python and the Holy Grail. "He who is valiant and pure of spirit may find the Holy Grail in the Castle of Aaaaaauuuuggghhh..." - In Highlander: The Source it was revealed that the prize the immortals fought for was claimable only by virtue, rather than strength. This, of course, made the millennia of immortals killing each other to gain the strength to claim the prize a bit pointless. Also the fact that the prize was the ability to have children. - Deconstructed in SHAZAM! (2019). The wizard Shazam wants to find someone pure of heart to pass his powers on to after the last champion abused his powers, but can't find one pure enough to pass his Secret Test of Character even after many decades of testing countless people and one of the people who failed his test (who grew up to become the villain Sivana) tells him point-blank that he'll never find someone pure-hearted enough to meet his impossible standards. Shazam ultimately passes on his powers to Billy who's definitely not pure of heart and admits as much himself, due to him having no more time left to find a successor and settling for the best candidate he can find. - David Eddings: - Eriond from The Malloreon is this trope personified. Despite (apparently) having no power to speak of, being pure and innocent enough to be one of three people in the entire world who can touch the Orb of Aldur without being destroyed, and being inoffensive as milk, evil is incapable of harming him. The quintessential example of this comes when he stands in front of the Big Bad who has shapeshifted into a dragon and emerges completely unscathed from her fire. It helps that his ultimate destiny is \|\|to become a God\|\|. - The prequel novels claimed that the whole "pure of heart" thing was bull that some bard invented later. The reason why the Orb burned Torak was that it hated Torak personally. The reason the Orb was entrusted to Riva was that he was the one person in the party who retrieved it that had no ambition and therefore could be trusted not to use it for anything. - Tolkien's Legendarium: - The Silmarillion: - Evil and tainted-by-evils characters cannot touch the Silmarils without getting burned. Morgoth put them into his crown and it's said that the burns continued to hurt him forever. - When Maedhros and Maglor finally recover the gems, they will no longer suffer their touch because of all the evil deeds they've committed to fulfill their oath to get them back. - Beren and Lúthien: Carcharoth, a giant wolf raised by Morgoth to guard Angband's gate, eats Beren's Silmaril-holding hand and goes on a mad rampage through the continent while it burns him from the inside out. - Lloyd Alexander's The Chronicles of Prydain: When Taran first tries to wield the sword Dyrnwyn in The Book of Three, he's blasted by its power. In The High King he's able to use Dyrnwyn to destroy the Cauldron born and Arawn Death-Lord. Dyrnwyn has an inscription: "Draw Dyrnwyn, only thou of noble worth, to rule with justice, to strike down evil. Who wields it in good cause shall slay even the Lord of Death." When Taran first drew Dyrnwyn he was a callow youth. When he drew it the second time he had matured into a noble man. - In Hannu Rajaniemi's The Fractal Prince, Matjek, questioned about why he appears like a child, says that innocence is the key to the Kaminair jewel — and when he had thought Christianity ridiculous. - In Madeleine E Robins's Sold For Endless Rue, Crescia enjoins Laura to keep everything scrupulously clean, and keep washing her hands, and make up the brews in clean pots — no soap traces, even. She explains that the saints love purity, so they must keep things pure to invoke their aid. \|\|Later, after Laura's seduction, she explains that Laura would have had to remain a virgin to follow her.\|\| - In Jack Campbell's The Lost Fleet novel Guardian, the ships they find \|\|keeping patrol on Earth\|\| refuse to let them pass because of some impurity, which they do not define well but are obsessed with. - In The Dresden Files, only the pure of heart may wield a Sword of the Cross; if someone who isn't picks one of the blades up, it only acts as a normal, somewhat dingy sword. We meet several Knights of the Cross in the series, and all of them are different shades of the Messianic Archetype. (Incidentally, belief in God is not required; the wielder must simply be honest, faithful, and truly devoted to helping mankind, even at the cost of their lives.) This is a good thing, as the Swords are extremely powerful weapons that can slay nearly any being, human or supernatural, when fully empowered. - It should be noted that the swords' stringent requirements are also constant, and their Fatal Flaw; if a Knight lies, hurts innocents, or kills without very good reason, their Knight abilities are instantly lost, and the sword they bear has a chance of breaking. Once broken, a sword can never be fixed, and one of humanity's greatest weapons against evil is destroyed. Nice Job Breaking It, Hero. \|\|However, there is hope. Even after an improper use of the Sword's power, Michael Carpenter reminds Harry that the key aspect in any of the Swords is not sword but the trait it represents. When the Sword of Faith was depowered and broken by improper usage, it was reconstituted when a worthy man grabbed it and reformed in the shape of his faith.\|\| - In Harry Potter, the Good Hurts Evil Patronus Charm is an exceptionally difficult spell to perform and is said to only be able to be performed by the pure of heart, as an Evil Sorcerer in the past attempted it and was devoured by a swarm of maggots pouring from his Magic Wand. However, Evil Principal Dolores Umbridge ends up being a case of Pure Is Not Good as she's able to cast it perfectly fine. - Raziel from The Mortal Instruments will only help those with pure intentions, such as Jonathan Shadowhunter. \|\|In City of Glass, out of total displeasure at Valentine's dream, Raziel swiftly kills him\|\|. - In Sunshine, a vampire's vulnerability to light seems to be proportionate to the amount of evil they have committed: Constantine (the closest thing to a Friendly Neighborhood Vampire we encounter) can tolerate moonlight and starlight while Bo (particularly depraved even for a vampire), can't even speak words related to light. - The The Unexplored Summon://Blood-Sign series implies this to be the reason that Kyousuke could build a gateway to the world of Materials when many others tried and failed. It's like the difference between building an arch and building a high-tech secure door: one is a simple, egalitarian construct that lets people enter and exit as they wish, the other is a complex device that places restrictions/demands on those who use it. Since Kyousuke was just trying to let Materials through, not control or trap them, his gateway was more successful than those of his greedy peers. - The Talking Weapon Nightblood in Warbreaker was created to destroy evil, defining evil by anyone who wants to use him to rob or kill someone (except in self-defense). Those with those desires end up killing themselves with the sword. Those without can wield him, which only makes Nightblood a little less dangerous for them because Nightblood drains the user's life. - A Master of Djinn: The Ring of Sulayman only reveals its true form to someone who has pure motives. - In Teen Wolf: This is what makes a True Alpha a True Alpha. - In 3x07 Currents, \|\|Dr. Deaton\|\| is taken. Knowing it would (most likely) be \|\|Scott\|\| who'd come to save him, the villain, put \|\|Dr. Deaton\|\| in a ring of Mt. Ash - which supernatural creatures cannot cross. \|\|Scott\|\| indeed does come to the rescue and tries to break through anyways, and in the process, \|\|Scott's\|\| eyes turn red - but \|\|he\|\| is still a Beta. This also confirms what \|\|Dr. Deaton\|\| reveals \|\|he\|\| had believed. As \|\|Dr. Deaton\|\| explains to \|\|Scott\|\| post-rescue: "It's rare. It's something that doesn't happen within 100 years, but every once in a while a Beta can become an Alpha without having to steal or take that power. They call it a True Alpha. It's one who rises purely on the strength of the character, by virtue, by sheer force of will." - Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers: Under Zedd and Rita's castle on the moon is the Cave of Deception, where the mythical Zeo Crystal is held, but surrounded by a force field. Only one pure of heart can grab the crystal from inside it; anyone else will be destroyed if they try. Tommy goes down to try to steal it, but he's worried that there is still a lingering amount of evil in his heart from when he was brainwashed in season 1. When he grabs the crystal, he is hurt a bit, but ultimately manages to grab the crystal, proving that he truly is pure. - In the Wizards of Waverly Place movie, "The path will only reveal itself to those whose intentions are pure". - On Grimm, the only way to lift \|\|Juliet's curse\|\| is a kiss by someone who is pure of heart. This is difficult to do these days, so they do it chemically via a potion that purifies your heart. Unsurprisingly, this has some lingering psychological effects. Like obsessing over the person you kissed... - This comes up a few times during the last two seasons of Stargate SG-1. In the season 9 premiere, both knowledge and "truth of spirit" are required to access Merlin's hidden treasures. Comes up again the following season when "only those of virtue true may win the prize concealed beyond the reach of the flawed and tainted"; i.e., only those with truth of spirit can access the Sangraal. This proves to be true when Adria discovers she can't use her Ori mind powers during the quest for the Sangraal and she is left behind when the others are teleported away during the journey. - In Xena: Warrior Princess, in the Season 5 episode "Chakram", only the purest soul could obtain the Chakram of Light (which could kill gods). Xena, newly reborn and innocent, was the only one who could do it. - In the Raven game show's spin-off * Raven: The Dragon's Eye, only someone who fits this trope can retrieve the title MacGuffin without getting corrupted by its power. \|\|Once it is retrieved, Raven destroys it.\|\| - Kingdom Adventure: It requires a pure heart to make a special, magical flower called a trilly grow. When Pitts walks past trillies, they tend to wilt. - Arrow. In a flashback to how they met on Lian Yu, Oliver Queen (posing as a mercenary) is taken by John Constantine to recover a magical artifact. There are words in Egyptian in the cave where it's located that Oliver thinks mean "Keep Out" but are actually this trope. Constantine handcuffs Oliver outside then enters himself. Oliver releases himself from the cuffs and follows, saving Constantine's life from a Booby Trap to demonstrate that he too has a pure heart. - In Russian folklore, only those who are pious and pure of heart will be able to see and enter the city of Kitezh which sits at the bottom of Lake Svetloyar. - Arthurian Legend: - Galahad gets these privileges, as befits the man who represents Incorruptible Pure Pureness so much that he's otherwise a very flat character. He's also Too Good for This Sinful Earth. - The Siege Perilous (Dangerous Seat) from some Arthurian stories can only be safely occupied by a pure knight. Again, this tends to be Galahad in most versions. - In The Bible, Jesus indicates that only the pure of heart would get to Heaven in several occasions. One of them is in the Sermon of the Mount: "Blessed are the pure of heart, for they shall see God."* (St. Matthew, 5:8). Another one is in St. Matthew 18:3: "Except ye be converted, and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of Heaven." And in the Book of Hebrews, Scripture tells us to strive for the holiness without which no one will see the Lord. - According to Tibetan Buddhist tradition, the kingdom of Shambhala can be accessed only by those who are enlightened and spiritually pure. - The Character Alignment system in Dungeons & Dragons leads to this trope sometimes: - The Paladin is granted their powers through their dedication to their path, which, prior to 4 th Edition, means that they must remain Lawful Good and adhere to a code of conduct to retain their special abilities. - In 3.5 Edition, evil clerics could not cast Good spells, lawful clerics could not cast Chaotic spells, and so on (giving True Neutral the best spell selection in the core). Furthermore, in some supplements, there were Corrupt spells that only evil characters could cast and Sanctified spells that only good characters could cast. - Eberron averts the normal restrictions on Good, Evil, Lawful, and Chaotic spells, though gives no specific ruling as to what the rules are concerning Sanctified and Corrupt spells. - This is a Phlebotinum Handling Requirement for several Holy and/or otherwise heavenly magic items. Subverted in that any character with the right training can trick a magic item into believing that they meet the prerequisites. - Hackmaster: The GM guide contains a full-page graph on which the GM is supposed to plot each character's alignment infractions on two axes. Character's actions are considered to move their alignment by a certain amount towards a certain alignment. One character class (Knight Errant) even has a certain innate resistance to alignment changes. - Warhammer 40,000 has Pure Faith for the Sisters of Battle that allows them to perform certain miracles. Whether a bunch of holier-than-thou Knight Templars who tend to apply Kill It with Fire to everyone less holy if given the chance can be considered to "lack evil in their hearts" is another question... - It also seems odd, given that half of everyone else in the entire universe is like that but doesn't have such powers. - Keep in mind that in this universe, "magic" and "psychic powers" are pretty much the same thing. In the Sisters' case, it's not that they lack "evil," but rather they lack "doubt"; their faith in the Emperor is so unwaveringly strong, even though they're not (all) Psykers their combined faith is able to direct some tiny fragment of the Emperor's power to the battlefield. Other times, they're using "weapons/armor of faith" that they THINK are magic, but that's only because the Mechanicum tells them they are. - In Blue Rose, there's a magical artifact that makes sure Only The Pure Of Heart become nobles in the Kingdom of Aldis. It only works once on any given person, though, so there's nothing stopping nobles from becoming corrupt after they pass the test. Absinthia : Methusaleh claims that he'll only allow those who are pure of heart to enter Ambervale. In a twist on this trope, he cares more about the purity of the party's future actions rather than their past actions. - Battle for Wesnoth: Delfador came across the Staff of An-Usrukhar during his misadventure in the land of the dead in Delfador's Memoirs. It was only granted to him because its guardian tested him and found him to be a complete servant of the light and thus worthy to be its wielder. - Mega Man in Mega Man Battle Network 4 and 5 has "Light" Mega Man. If you've never used a Dark Chip except for plot-required moments, he eventually is able to achieve "Full Synchro" with Lan more easily (in 4) and is able to use certain chips that he couldn't otherwise. - This applies the other way too: when Mega Man uses Dark Chips he becomes Dark Mega Man, and he can use DS chips and others that are based in darkness like Static. - In Ultima, the Avatar character class can equip any weapon, any armor, and cast magic. This originally required a Karma Meter or 8 of them. - Kairi of Kingdom Hearts and the assorted Disney Princesses are the only beings in the world(s) that have no darkness in their hearts, and therefore are the only ones allowed to open the door to Kingdom Hearts, the center of all the worlds and greatest kingdom in existence. They also have the ability to send their hearts into other bodies for safekeeping, causing their bodies to remain comatose but magically protected until the hearts are returned. - Birth By Sleep gives us \|\|Ventus, who had the darkness in his heart forcibly removed. This caused him to have nothing but light allowing him the same privileges the princesses have including access to Kingdom Hearts, as well as the ability to seal his heart in another being (which he does at the end of the game, by seeking shelter in Sora's heart) while leaving behind a comatose body (à la Kairi in KH1).\|\| - Sora also deserves mention here, as the purity and courage within his heart is what makes him the Keyblade bearer. In fact, it's revealed late in the game that Riku was intended to be the bearer from the start, seen when he claims his weapon by force, but it snubbed him in favor of Sora for allowing darkness into his heart. - In Knights of the Old Republic, particularly the second installment, having high Light or Dark Side scores affected not only dialogue but the Force Point cost of Light and Dark Force powers. Also, some items could only be wielded by adepts of a particular side and there were even a few restricted to "Grey Jedi", i.e. Force users who don't venture too far into either extreme. Lastly, the sequel had a lightsaber crystal that changed its properties as your Karma Meter rating grew. - The Triforce in The Legend of Zelda is bound by such rules. The Triforce will grant a wish to anyone whose heart is balanced with power, wisdom, and courage. If someone is lacking in that balance, then the Triforce will break apart into its component triangles—the person who touched it will get the piece that corresponds most to themselves, while the other two go and find someone else who shows a great affinity for that component. Hence Ganondorf gets Power, Zelda gets the Triforce of Wisdom, and Link the Triforce of Courage. The Triforce can be recompiled after this and the wish can be carried out once it is. - Another restriction on the Triforce is that only mortals may use it. The three Goddesses intentionally created the relic such that no being of divine power could use it. - In [1], Fox is told that "only the pure of heart can return the spirits to Krazoa Shrine". Ironically, Fox is not the right choice as he is only in it for money and has a scene where he is bewitched by her looks (complete with sexy saxophone music). The latter is humorously interrupted by Peppy. - The Master Sword was also like this originally. That restriction came back around in Skyward Sword. When the blade is blessed by the goddess, it is said that only Link may now wield it. - In Disgaea: Hour of Darkness: \|\|~~Vyers The Dark Adonis~~ Mid-Boss\|\| can touch Flonne's pendant (which harms evil) without being punished. He says that "the heavens wouldn't punish such a pure heart as mine". This is foreshadowing, as \|\|he is King Krichevskoy, and working with Seraph Lamington in a Batman Gambit (it depends on the actions of the player) to make his son a better person (or demon), and unite the Netherworld and Celestia.\|\| - In Fate/stay night, \|\|rejecting the physical corruption of The Grail\|\| requires a truly pure heart and those who are not are consumed by the corruption. Notably, the only person in the show who's able to shake it off without effect is Gilgamesh, a self-centred sociopath who is so beyond human that he cannot regard humans as anything but possessions. - In Jak II: Renegade the only one who can open the Precursor Stone is \|\|young Jak\|\| because he still has "the pure gift". It won't open for \|\|the older Jak because he was corrupted by Dark Eco through the experiments in prison.\|\| - In Skullgirls, only a pure-hearted woman can make a purely selfless wish on the Skullheart without being turned into a Humanoid Abomination. One character was close, who wished for another to have a good life, but the skull noted that the wish was driven by guilt, so was slightly impure. The wisher didn't immediately turn into a Humanoid Abomination but was slowly turning into one. - In Harry the Handsome Executive, you must prove that you are "pure of spirit and blameless of heart" by \|\|emptying your weapons before proceeding, leading to a No-Gear Level\|\|. - In Watcher's Keep in Baldur's Gate II, there is a pillar on the third floor that gives, when touched, a warning that only the pure may uncover the secret. Any Lawful Good characters then touching the pillar get a powerful sword, put there by a righteous hero who infused his essence into it. Anyone else gets an Abi Dhalzim's Horrid Wilting thrown at them, this being a powerful spell that can decimate entire parties, especially those of a low level. - In Dragon Quest VII, Kiefer initially believes that the path to the Shrine of Awakening is opened by The Power of the Sun, and nicks various sun-related artifacts to try to open the gate to no avail. He is later told by a wise hermit that the way to open the shrine has nothing to do with sunlight whatsoever, but that it actually requires a pure-hearted soul to present itself before the statue outside. Using this knowledge, he and the protagonist return to the shrine and pray in front of the statue, which then uses a mystical light from its torch to open the gate, allowing them to enter. - Epic Battle Fantasy 4: Kate of Greenwood Village refers to Slime Bunnies as "magical creatures who reveal themselves to those with pure hearts" - In Shuyan Saga, calling on the full power of each kingdom's guardian spirit is partly down to Royal Blood, but partly down to purity of heart. As such, Ganbaatar considers Shuyan to be potentially more dangerous than her father — and therefore in need of being "broken". - In Pokémon Masters, it's explained that only the pure of heart can even see Ho-Oh, and he'll only choose those that are exceptionally worthy. He chooses \|\|Silver\|\|. The Chosen One in question is extremely surprised, and thinks he's unworthy because he has a rather checkered past. Lance sets him straight. - Divinity: Original Sin II: The Path of Blood is a test of character left by Lucian the Divine. A player character who has never stolen, killed, sworn to the God-King, or taken souls wins angel wings, a holy glow, and access to the endgame level without the usual quest. One who has gets death by Bolt of Divine Retribution. Meeting those prerequisites is a grueling Challenge Run. - The potential player characters of Darkstone are the only ones capable of assembling the Dismantled MacGuffin needed to defeat the evil Draak for this reason. Bonus points for fulfilling this trope literally, as they are members of a group called the Pure of Heart owing to their Incorruptible Pure Pureness. - What's also worth mentioning is that even the manual itself comments on the fact that your character may be a slightly unscrupulous rogue or a mage whose magic arouses suspicion from everyone else yet STILL be one of the Pure of Heart, waving it off as being a good person even if your methods are a bit shady. - According to the Moon Goddess in Goldilocks and the Fallen Star, the Fairytale Detective of the Dark Parables franchise can succeed in her various quests because of her unusually pure heart. - In The Adventures of Wiglaf and Mordred, only Wiglaf could get the magic sword from the lake because he is good, and only those who are "pure" can wield it (pure evil seems to work too). - In City of Reality, one of the Alternate Universes is the World of Magic, where magical power is the dominant force. One of the rules of magic is that it must be consensual; therefore a strong enough will can resist any spell. Todo, as the embodiment of all that is idealistic and noble in Reality, surprises a Hierarchy mage by being completely immune to his attacks. - In Sluggy Freelance the Goddess of Goodness is left pitifully weak because her home dimension has been overrun by demons and turned into a wasteland with barely a scrap of purity or goodness in it. So Torg takes her to the Dimension of Lame, a world where everyone is almost unbearably sweet, kind, and innocent, and suddenly the Goddess has got herself a massive power boost. - In 8-Bit Theater, Fighter is the only Light Warrior capable of wielding the Infinity Plus One Swords of the Real Light Warriors. Red Mage and Thief experience intense pain and discomfort and Black Mage is instantly set on fire upon contact. - In The Order of the Stick, only the pure of heart can activate the gate Xykon is after, so he lures the heroes there to activate it for him. This is foreshadowed in their dealings with the Linear Guild, who similarly manipulate them into accessing Dorukan's Talisman — Haley puts the two together just in time to stop Elan from activating the gate. - In Draconis Wicked only the pure of heart can get at the dead king's treasure, owing to the magical barrier he put up. - To Prevent World Peace: In multiple forms: - Parodied in Val and Isaac: Space Dread recovers and sells a chalice that kills any impure soul who touches it by carrying around a pure soul in her coat and using him like an oven mitt. - In Erma, the titular character's father Sam befriends a bar full of hostile yokai by drinking a wine that would have killed him if he had been anything less than pure.	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/OnlyThePureInHeart
Only the Chosen May Wield - TV Tropes "Whosoever holds this hammer, if he be worthy, shall possess the power of... THOR." In a fantasy story, or sometimes even a sci-fi series, there will be certain special items, such as a Magical Weapon, that only an attuned person can use. The most famous of these is the Sword in the Stone: Only King Arthur could remove the sword from the stone in which it was lodged, and thus proved that he was the true king of England. note : Naturally enough, this is often assumed to be the same sword as Arthurs famous blade Excalibur; see below for multiple examples. However, as it isn't the only story about how Arthur acquired Excalibur, this isnt certain. Depending on the Writer is Older Than Print, after all. That being said, in some cases anyone could wield Excalibur, but only Arthur could remove it. May be the first evidence of Because Destiny Says So or The Chosen One. Such an item may also be The Chooser of the One. If the wielder also happens to be The Chosen Zero they might also be The Team Benefactor by virtue of providing access to it. A Sister Trope to Only the Worthy May Pass. Compare Situational Sword, Finders Rulers (which this trope can result in). See also Only the Chosen May Ride. ## Examples: - In Reincarnated as a Sword, weapons that are sufficiently powerful, sentient, or both, are very, very choosy about who wields them. The gods of the world agree with this philosophy and eventually the Goddess of Chaos puts a curse on "Shisou" that anyone who tries to wield him, without her consent, will receive a Cruel and Unusual Death if knowing about the curse but tries anyway. Those that try but don't know about the curse will just receive a nasty electric shock. - Digimon: - How the Digidestined received their Digimon and powerups (in the form of eggs on stone pillars) in Digimon Adventure 02. Also used at least once in Digimon Frontier. - Digimon Adventure episode "Evil Shows His Face" reveals a variation when Leomon tells Tai that only the Digidestined can get the Digivices to work, which is how the former concluded that the latter and his friends were just that. - In an episode of Ranma ½, Kunō pulls the magic sword Wishbringer out of a stone. Subverted, as he was only able to pull the sword out because he was the one-millionth to try. However, once he claims ownership, Wishbringer will only listen to his voice. - The Escudo weapons from Magic Knight Rayearth. If anyone else tries to hold them, even each other, Umi's turns to water, Fuu's gets incredibly heavy, and whoever grabs Hikaru's is set ablaze. - Inuyasha: - Tessaiga was meant for Inuyasha and only allows Inuyasha to wield it. If its power is stolen that power will find its way back to Inuyasha as quickly as possible. Although it possesses a barrier that prevents full youkai from touching it, that barrier is a magical addition to determine who cannot wield the sword rather than who can. - Tenseiga was given to Sesshoumaru and it only allows him to wield it. Even though he doesn't want the sword, the sword wants him. He even tried breaking the sword and throwing it away once. Tenseiga promptly reforged itself and returned to him — he can't get rid of this weapon even when he tries. - Toukijin was an Evil Weapon so powerful it could even possess its own creator, and the Ultimate Blacksmith Toutousai couldn't even approach. Sesshoumaru was so powerful, it couldn't possess him, so it accepted Sesshoumaru as its wielder and true master. At least until Sesshoumaru's compassion finally became too powerful for the sword's hate and shattered the sword, that is. - Ikki Tousen has five swords - the "Hyakuhekitou" - that were stuck in one stone. One Big Bad manages to free several of them at once by destroying the stone. - In Soul Eater, all weapons are assigned to a particular partner upon enrollment in Shibusen, based on the interlocking personalities of the weapon and meister. Generally speaking, it is impossible for a weapon to be wielded by someone who isn't their partner because their inner natures tend to clash. Adult Meisters/Weapons appear to be free of this restriction, which is said to have something to do with the fact that wielding a Weapon is about how the souls of both meister and Weapon react to one another, and seems to rely on some level of mutual understanding and compromise - too much conflict spoils the resonance and people get hurt, or even fall flat on the ground if they happen to be up in the air when you start arguing. As such, it's implied that the Adults are much better at handling their composure, allowing for a wider range of partners. This isn't to say if an Adult pair start to argue they'll stop resonating, or that there are pairs that would never be able to work, just that that's never been depicted in the series. The fact that most Adults seem to have a preferred/assigned partner supports this. - Excalibur is also present in the series and is the only weapon who averts this trope by being potentially able to be wielded by anyone: His numerous powers include the ability to adjust his soul wavelength to go along perfectly with anyone... Except his personality is so extremely obnoxious that no-one wants to get within two leagues of him. - In Magical Circle Guru-Guru, the magic sword of light, Kira Kira, can only be called upon by a true Hero. - Several weapons in Silent Möbius are bound to specific bloodlines. Grosspoliner's connexion to the Liqueur blood is a plot point. - Hero Tales has the Kenkaranpu, which can only be drawn by a "true hero". In the first chapter Taito was able to draw it \|\|but it was promptly stolen...\|\| - Meta Knight's legendary sword Galaxia in Kirby: Right Back at Ya! will shock (sometimes to death) anyone not powerful enough to wield it if they so much as touch it. It will also demand to know who they are and what they think they're doing. - The Z Sword from the Buu Saga of Dragon Ball is suggested to be such a weapon in Kai legend, but in reality it just seems that it's really, really heavy. It's stuck in a stone pillar on a planet in the afterlife, and Gohan has to go Super Saiyan 2 before he can pull it out. It's still incredibly heavy once it's removed, too - he can barely lift it without transforming. \|\|Then the good guys break it by accident while training, releasing the old Kaioshin sealed within it, who turns out to be a lot more helpful than the sword itself.\|\| - In Rosario + Vampire, Moka's Power Limiter rosary can only be properly removed by Tsukune. - In Pokémon: The Series, it is stated that the Pokemon will only obey the original person that caught, trained, and raised it (and only if it considers him/her worthy). So care must be taken when loaning other people your Pokemon, or gifting them to others, or trading them to instruct the creature to "do whatever so-and-so tells you to do." The best example of this being Ash's Charmander, which becomes rebellious when it evolves to a Charmeleon/Charizard, as it belonged to another trainer before joining him. Charizard only starts obeying him when he saves it from being frozen in ice. - This is averted, however, if the Pokémon are familiar enough with the individuals in the group. For example, Ash's Pokémon have no issues with obeying Misty or Brock when separated from Ash, even without permission. It can also be averted with certain Pokémon that are loaned to trainers and trained to (temporarily) obey whoever is controlling them; even so, their original trainers can reassert control if it's necessary (such as when Team Rocket tried to steal some of them). - Ash's Froakie from the XY saga is an interesting case, as it has a history of ditching trainers who don't measure up. Ash is the first trainer it considers worthy and the only one who unlocks its Super Mode. - SD Gundam Force gives us Musha Daishinshou, a semi-sentient Humongous Mecha that can only be controlled by The Dai-Shogun, surpeme ruler of Ark. It's stated that without the Dai-Shogun, Daishinshou would go on a rampage, so it spends most of the series locked up in a castle. Villain Kibaomaru thinks he can use Daishinshou, and looks for a means of releasing it. It's revealed that the one to use Daishinshou is the one who has the power to release it; \|\|his son, Genkimaru.\|\| - One appears in UQ Holder!, where Touta is naturally the one to pull it out. Turns out it was a gravity-controlling sword, and Touta was the only one to notice it had a switch to make it light enough to pull out. - In Yu-Gi-Oh!, certain cards can only be wielded by a chosen duelist, including the Egyptian Gods, the Legendary Dragons/Knights of Atlantis, the Earthbound Gods, and the Signer Dragons. And then there are the Millennium Items. - Yu-Gi-Oh!: - The Millennium Items tend to kill holders they don't deem worthy. - People who try to use counterfeit versions of the Egyptian God Cards get hit with a Bolt of Divine Retribution. - Marik Ishtar has Strings duel Yugi with the Egyptian God Card Saint Dragon of Osiris/Slifer The Sky Dragon. They get around the restrictions because Strings is an Empty Shell and Marik, who is worthy, is controlling him, so in reality, Marik is the one wielding it. - Gurimo steals the Egyptian God Card, Obelisk The Tormentor, and uses it against Yugi. He gets around the restrictions with The Seal of Orichalcos, which is powerful enough to control Obelisk. Even then, Obelisk struggles and the strain of controlling him takes its toll on Gurimo. - After the Pharaoh gives into temptation and uses The Seal of Orichalcos, his Legendary Dragon, The Eye of Timaeus, deems him unworthy and disappears from the duel, then disappears whenever he tries to play it. He eventually redeems himself and regains Timaeus' trust. - Strangely, despite using the Seal of Orichalcos, Valon is able to use his Data Brain card to copy Rocket Hermos Cannon, which was created by the Legendary Dragon, The Claw of Hermos, and wield it without any ill effects. - Offscreen, Mai Valentine took Joey Wheeler's Legendary Dragon, The Claw of Hermos, and tried to duel Rafael. Since she had previously used The Seal of Orichalcos, Hermos deemed her unworthy and disappeared when she tried to play it, leading to her loss. - Yu-Gi-Oh! GX: Franz uses a counterfeit version of the Egyptian God Card, The Winged Dragon of Ra. He gets around the restrictions with a card called Mound of the Bound Creator, which binds Ra to his will, though Ra struggles and cries. Judai frees Ra and takes control of it, and shocks Franz by being able to control Ra without Mound of the Bound Creator, hinting at Judai's specialness. - In Yu-Gi-Oh!: Capsule Monsters, a sword in the village of the fifth trial is like this. Yami has to lure the five dragons to said village before he's capable of lifting it. - In the Sailor Moon manga and Sailor Moon Crystal, although the other Senshi can wield the Holy Sword, only Sailor Venus, as the destined leader of the Sailor Senshi, can actually free it from the rock that it's embedded in. - In Is It Wrong to Try to Pick Up Girls in a Dungeon?, Lilliluka steals Bell's "Hestia Knife" and attempts to sell it. However, the pawnshop will only give her about 30 vals for it, when a typical generic weapon is worth several hundred or thousands. He tells her the knife is dull and won't cut. After the knife is returned to Bell, the hieroglyphs inscribed on it immediately light back up, making her realize the weapon is only useful in his hands. Technically speaking, the knife is enchanted to work for anyone who is a member of the Hestia Familia, it's just that Bell was the only member at the time. Later, the new member Mikoto Yamato is able to wield it effectively. - In the movie Arrow of the Orion, Bell is the only one who can free Artemis' spear from a crystal, with Artemis saying it is because of his pure heart. Afterwards, anyone can carry it, but Bell is the only one who can invoke its powers. - In Tenchi Muyo!, only those of royal Juraian blood can hold Sword Tenchi. Those who aren't are given a PAINFUL shock. It confuses Ayeka as to why Tenchi, a boy from Earth, could wield it and it isn't until Tenchi's grandfather Katsuhito spells out everything \|\|(namely, that Katsuhito's her long-lost brother Yosho)\|\| that she understands why. It's unknown if Ayeka's tiara or other royal Juraian devices have the same defense, though. - This is a side effect of the Armed Virus in Valkyrie Drive: Mermaid The weapons on which its carriers transform after being aroused can only be wield by a special set of infected denominated as Liberators. - In Pretty Cure All Stars - Spring Carnival, the main villain, having stolen the heroine's collective Transformation Trinket, tries to use them to turn into a so-called "Cure Thief". However, it's pointed out by one of the fairies that only the "Legendary Hero Precure" (re: our heroines) can use them. He laughs it off and claims he knew that. - In Mobile Suit Gundam: Iron-Blooded Orphans' second season, the Gundam Bael is essentially treated as Excalibur in the form of a Humongous Mecha, with claims that it possesses the soul of Gjallarhorn founder Agnika Kaieru and whomever can pilot it is the organization's rightful leader. \|\|McGillis Fareed, who obsessively studied Kaieru since his childhood, discovered its secret (it was made to use the Ālaya-Vijñāna System, which Gjallarhorn later declared taboo), allowing him to claim it. The "rightful leader" part is then subverted when McGillis tries to take charge of Gjallarhorn and the vast majority of the organization stays loyal to their current leadership.\|\| - In Rurouni Kenshin: the Hokkaido Arc, this seems to be the case with Mugenjin, the sword formerly wielded by Shishio. The only person after Shishio's passing who has been able to draw it out of its sheath is Ashitaro Hasegawa. His friend Alan Inoue actually makes the comparison with the Excalibur when explaining why it couldn't be drawn, though this only when he was trying to sell it to someone (they all thought that the sword had warped in its scabbard, causing it to get stuck), before Ashitaro had drawn it out. - A variation from Rave Master occurred with the tenth form of the Ten Powers sword. It was a sword specifically made for Shiba, the first Rave Master, so its final and tenth form could only be wielded by him. When Haru became the second Rave Master, Musica had to make a new tenth form of the sword specifically for him just before the final battle. - Excalibur in The Seven Deadly Sins can only be wielded by a worthy hero of its own choosing. Currently, only King Arthur himself can wield it. \|\|This is used against him when Cusack uses his Resonant magic to brainwash Arthur into impaling himself with Excalibur. Since only Arthur can lift Excalibur, no one else can save him by removing the sword from his chest, preventing Elizabeth from using her healing magic on him. Eventually, Merlin takes his body to a magic lake that brings him back to life, allowing him to pull the sword out.\|\| - Nadia: The Secret of Blue Water has the titular Blue Water, which can only be wielded by Atlanteans. \|\|When Gargoyle tries, he disintegrates into salt\|\|. - The Cloths of Saint Seiya have to be earned for the right to be worn. Sometimes, a specific cloth can be allowed to be worn by someone else other than their proper owner (such as Seiya wearing the Sagitarius Cloth and Odin's Robe at different points), and also, a cloth could deem its owner unworthy and abandon them voluntarily (happens to Cancer Deathmask). - In Black Clover, four-leaf clover grimoires, which are said to bestow good luck, only choose mages with exceptional potential, with Yuno being blessed with one. - In Kill la Kill, only Ryuko Matoi can fully synchronize with Senketsu and hear what he's saying. \|\|Satsuki and Mako\|\| both wear him, but are unable to understand what he's saying. Justified, since Ryuko's father designed Senketsu specifically for her to wear. - In That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime, Mythical/God-class weapons and equipment can only be used to their full potential by wielders they deem worthy. For example, while in theory anyone strong enough could use Rimuru's Hihi'irokane black katana, only Rimuru can unleash its full power by channeling his magical energy into it to reveal its rainbow form since it's attuned to his magical energy. The few times a God-class weapon/armor changed owners was when the user was on their death bed and passing it to the successor directly \|\|such as with Tatsuya Kondou giving Carrera his golden revolver\|\| or when the previous user had not yet "acclimated" to it \|\|as was the case when Caliguro Awakened into a Saint and unlocked his God-class gear's power, but was slain shortly afterwards due to his inexperience (and subsequently revived Brought Down to Normal) and the armaments instead went to Albert.\|\| - Zatch Bell!: Each of the 100 demons/mamodos has a Spell Book written in unintelligible demon characters. It can take months, even years of searching before any given demon finds their human partner, whose heart has just the correct wavelength to resonate with the demon's so the human can read and cast the spells. - The Rising of the Shield Hero: The Legendary Weapons and the Vassal Weapons can only be used by their chosen wielder. When Kazuki tries to claim the Vassal Katana, it repels him and teleports into Raphtalia's hands. However, some of the villains have devices that can fool the Vassal Weapons and allow anyone to use them. - High School D×D: - Holy swords like Excalibur and Durandal can only be wielded by people with a lot of light attribute in their bodies. The evil Archbishop Valper Galilei developed a means of harvesting light attribute from people who naturally had it, which killed them in the process, so he could endow others with the ability to use them. The Church later develops a method of producing artificial light attribute so many more wielders are created. - Siegfried, actually a clone of the original mythological Siegfried, wields the swords Gram, Balmung, Nothung, Dáinsleif, and Tyrfing. Since he doesn't train to actually master them and just wields them carelessly, the swords start to get fed up with him, with Gram forcing him to give up his lifespan to use it. During a fight against Yuuto Kiba, Gram senses that Kiba is more worthy and jumps into his hand, allowing him to use it to kill Siegfried. Afterwards, the other swords choose Kiba as their master and he trains to master Gram so it doesn't drain him. - In the light novel version, Issei Hyoudou is given a replica of Mjölnir, but he is unable to lift it until the goddess Chimune Chipaoti blesses him. In the anime version, he can lift the real one with no problem after Odin personally handed it to him and gave him permission. - In World Trigger, Trigger users with high Trion can sacrifice themselves to create powerful one of a kind Triggers called Black Triggers. However, each one can only be used by a select few, potentially influenced by the personality of the creator. - In Reborn to Master the Blade, Hieral Menaces are Equippable Allies that are extremely choosy about who gets to use them in their weapons forms. In-universe, you need a Rune to wield magical Artifact weapons, getting one is rare, and even rarer still to have the top-tier Special-class Rune that's needed to even start wielding them, let alone use them effectively. Hence, most of the time, they fight in their humanoid forms with weapons themselves. - In the manga version of Kingdom Hearts, Sora passes his Keyblade to Donald before performing his Heroic Sacrifice. Unfortunately, Donald wasn't worthy as it disappears from his hands. Fortunately, Sora came back. - The Legendary Hero Is Dead!: When the legendary hero Shion is killed, the necromancer Anri inserts Touka's soul into his body so that he can play the role of Shion. Unfortunately, Touka quickly gets outed as an imposter because he cannot wield Shion's holy sword (he can lift it, but when he tries to attack with it, the blade turns limp and dull). After Touka develops into a true hero, the sword accepts him and allows him to use it. - In addition to the Master Sword, The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess (2016) features the Gaurof Sword, an ancient blade in a pedestal that leads to the Twilight Realm, but can only be pulled by Link. - In Season 10 of Happy Heroes, one of the characters finds a trident possessed by evil and somehow manages to wield it, when Big M. and Little M. are incapable as seen in their previous attempts. Similarly, Careful S. finds the Sword of Justice to combat this evil, and it is revealed only those empowered by justness can wield the sword. - In Prince Valiant only a member of the royal family of Thule can wield the Singing Sword and make it sing. - In the Pony POV Series: - The Elements of Harmony, naturally, but also their Chaotic counterparts, the Elements of Chaos. However, there's a bit of a twist: worthiness is embodying the attribute, not necessarily embodying it positively, but the Element can only be used to their fullest potential if they do. Further more, following being turned into their current form, the Elements of Harmony draw power directly from Fauna Luster, who can withhold her power and render the combined form of them unusable unless replaced with something else, such as sheer extremism. The corrupted versions also have different names, such as the corrupted Element of Magic/Friendship being called Domination and the corrupted Element of Fantasy being called Deceit. - \|\|After retrieving Cupid's bow, Lovestruck (Cupid's successor and Reincarnation) is instructed to bring it to her adopted mother Venus. Due to it previously being used for evil by the False Princesses, Venus and several of her siblings put an enchantment on it so that only someone worthy of it can so much as move it to prevent this from happening again.\|\| - The Alicorn Amulet in this verse is an evil version, as it will only allow those it chooses to use it. As \|\|Sonata\|\| found out the hard way, trying to use it otherwise can end badly if you're not strong enough to forcibly subjugate it. Trixie is considered such because \|\|she's descended from its creator\|\|, and it'd actively tried to bring her to it for years. - Child of the Storm has Mjolnir, which is primarily wielded by Thor, but others are noted as being Worthy. The first of these is Steve... who apparently had absolutely no idea of the significance and ended up using it as a doorstop. During the story itself, two others wield the hammer when Thor's either out of commission or not around: \|\|Diana\|\|, during the Battle of London, and \|\|Maddie\|\| at the Red Room facility after a HeelFace Turn. It speaks volumes of the significance of being judged Worthy that when she appears with Mjolnir in hand, before handing it back to Thor, everyone takes it for granted that she's telling the truth about her HeelFace Turn. - Intriguingly, \|\|Maddie's\|\| case demonstrates both the fact that Mjolnir has some kind of mind of its own and the Character Development from Unworthy to Worthy - when \|\|Maddie\|\| investigates it with her Psychic Powers, she's initially immediately rebuffed as Unworthy, but when she inquires further, Mjolnir shows her images of prior wielders, how they were Worthy, and how in one crucial instant wiped from her memory, she showed that she could be Worthy too. - The Green Lantern Ring is also sentient, to an unknown extent, and picky about wielders, requiring insane strength of will - for instance, it doesn't usually take teenagers, but it's willing to relax its rules in that specific regard where necessary (i.e. where the wielder meets every other requirement and the fate of the universe is at stake). - The Swords of the Cross (including Amoracchius, the sword most people think of as Excalibur) are also choosy. At best, they simply won't do anything more than an ordinary sword, or be anything more than an ordinary sword. At worst, they will bite. Hard. - The original Excalibur actually subverts this trope. Which only the Chosen is meant to wield it, it's based on the Merlin (2008) version, which is more like the Sword in the Stone - it started out as an ordinary but excellent sword, got reforged/enchanted in the flames of a dragon, leaving it able to (among other things) kill the undead. However, anyone who got their hands on it could theoretically wield it, which is exactly why it got stuffed in a rock by Merlin in the first place, to prevent anyone he didn't allow from removing it. As mentioned, the second Excalibur, Amoracchius, plays it straight. - Related to that, Harry's sword follows a very similar path: it's forged by Uhtred, a very talented but otherwise ordinary young warrior and blacksmith out of ordinary materials... or their Asgardian versions, anyway. Then, it gets reforged/enchanted by the connivance of Doctor Strange, \|\|who grew up in Camelot and witnessed the original at work,\|\| under similar circumstances. Doctor Strange's enchantments wove these together, and ensured they had lasting effects. No one's entirely sure what all of those are yet, but one of the things that Loki immediately identifies is that Harry should be very careful who he lets touch it, as it might... bite. - In A different weasel makes a difference Lightbringer can only be wielded by Azor Ahai. Anyone else who tries... - Daenerys Targaryen is able to grab it, but doing so nearly kills her and causes a small eruption from the Dragonstone volcano. - Undeterred by this, another seventy-nine random people try and all die horribly. - In the final battle, \|\|King Stannis Baratheon, Thoros of Myr, and and an unknown knight\|\| all wield it. All three die, but each wields it long enough to give humanity a fighting chance. - Shortly after the above, the true Azor Ahai is revealed to be \|\|Ygritte, kissed by fire\|\|. - In a non Lightbringer example, Black Dawn one of the two swords made by melting down Ice, develops a (seemingly justified) reputation that any non Stark to wield it will die. Stannis may or may not have deliberatley given it to \|\|Loras Tyrell\|\| in the hopes this would kill him (it did). - In Avengers: Infinite Wars, as well a Wenwu passing on the Ten Rings to his son, the Rings are later revealed to be part of the sequence necessary to unlock the Infinity Gate that sent the Avengers to the other galaxy. While Hydra's agents used Tesseract energy to activate the Gate, the spirit of a Kwa sorcerer is able to adapt the Rings to trigger the Gate when used by ten different people, each of whom represents some aspect of each individual Ring rather than one person using them all at once (Shang-Chi is still the only one able to wield all ten Rings as weapons, but these other nine are able to activate the Gate). - In Imaginary Seas, Percy Jackson is able to activate machines that would normally only be accessible to the Olympians or those working for them thanks to being gifted his father Poseidon's Divine Core. He gets numerous doses of nanomachines (Klironomia) this way. He's also been bestowed with Poseidon's armor and trident, enhancing Percy's already immense powers. His Savior of Olympus skill also grants him the right to use any of the Mysteries of Ancient Greece and Rome, which lets him draw upon any Noble Phantasm he's ever owned through his other Noble Phantasm, Perseus Khresmos. This is also implied to be what makes him compatible with any of the gods' nanomachines, which Athena warns would tear him apart if they rejected him. - Robb Returns: - This seems to be the schtick of the Thunderbolt Iron Ancestral Weapons made by the First Men: - Dawn quivers in the hand of anyone that is not meant to wield it. \|\|It's revealed that during Ned's battle at the Tower of Joy, the sword had rejected Arthur Dayne and "failed" him when he needed it the most, which may have been a factor in his loss.\|\| - \|\|When Mace Tyrell tries to take Otherbane from his son Willas, his hand is burned by the spear.\|\| - \|\|Joffrey tries to wield Stormbreaker while Robert is busy training, and the sword shocks him, burns his hand, and throws him across the room.\|\| - In spite of these examples, Ser Barristan notes that his ancestors could act as Sword Bearers to the Storm Kings, just like he does for King Robert now; and Jory Cassel acts as a Mace Bearer to Lord Stark. Ser Barristan believes this is because they made no claim to owning it, nor viewed themselves as worthy of owning it, and carried it with the permission of the true owners. Whether or not only certain families can be the bearer for the true owner is unclear. - \|\|In the depths of the Nightfort lies the original Throne of Winter, which is inscribed with runes that say that anyone who isn't a Stark that sits in it will be driven insane.\|\| - The Sword of Sin and the Sword of Salvation in the Batman Dusk to Dawn series: - The first book features the Sword of Sin, which requires its wielder be pure or touching it will be burn them. Not necessarily pure good, just someone who has no doubt or hesitation in what they're using the sword for. Same as in canon, it is the signature weapon of Azrael, the Order of St. Dumas' enforcer trained to be fanatically devout and therefore pure enough to use it. \|\|When the last Azrael stops the Order from executing her sister as a demon, she loses the ability to use the sword, and Batman locks it up in the Batcave's vault.\|\| - The Sword of Salvation appears four books later in Grudge Match. Unlike its twin, it's an Empathic Weapon possessed by \|\|Siavash/Matthieu, Ra's al-Ghul's former Blood Brother\|\|. It was in a cave for centuries, protected by a magic test of worthiness. \|\|Only Damian passes the test and takes the sword out its pedestal, and it recognizes him as its master from then on. He can summon it to him, and it becomes too heavy to use when anyone takes it from him.\|\| - Subverted in Second Chances when Loki reveals that Tony Stark's belief that Mjolnir was keyed specifically to Thor was actually correct. Odin's spell of "only the worthy may wield" was actually bullshit and the spell simply kept Thor from wielding Mjolnir for a few days until he'd reflected on his actions (Loki compares it to sending Thor to his room). The reason Vision could wield it is because the Mind Stone made him an Outside-Context Problem. - When Harry forges his sons' weapons in A Discordant Note, he includes a spell that combines this with Loyal Phlebotinum. Their weapons can only be wielded by them or someone worthy of the weapon with a preference for family. Harry considered tying the weapons to his sons' bloodlines but decided against it in case their descendants "prove troublesome". - In the sequel Metagaming?, the Holy Moonlight Greatsword (and presumably Holy Moonlight Greatbow) cannot be used in service of the Old Gods. When Arko'narin is mind controlled by Prophet Skeram, she immediately drops her sword as it becomes "heavier than a mountain" due to Elune's disapproval of her actions. Once Luna removes the mind control, Arko can use her sword like normal. - In the Lone Wolf fic Nexus of Light, a villain tricks Lone Wolf into spilling innocent blood. This causes the Sommerswerd to deem him unworthy and shatter. Fortunately, it gets reforged and accepts him again. - RWBY Zero: - Jaune Arc and Mordred are deemed unworthy to wield Excalibur, so they cannot draw it from its sheath. Eventually, when Mordred develops into a more compassionate person, she becomes worthy and is able to draw it. - Gilgamesh is the only person worthy to wield Ea. Not even Lancelot's Knight of Owner ability or Salem's magic and Black Mud can get around this. \|\|Of course, Ea becoming its own person and gaining free will, on the other hand...\|\| - Oogway's Little Owl explains the invisible Trident Of Destiny (which was just a throwaway gag in the movie). It can only be seen by the person destined to wield it who, according to Oogway, will use it to save all of China. It's been waiting a long time with no apparent wielder having come, but Oogway is confident that the Chosen One will come one day. Maybe. Unless he was just screwing with people. - "Unlikely Heroine" adds Carrie White to the ranks of the Avengers, and she is shown to be capable of wielding Mjolnir when she joins the initial confrontation between Captain America, Iron Man and Thor, which Thor attributes to the fact that she sought to end that fight to protect others rather than to win anything. - In Crimson Rising, only the Phoenix Ranger can wield the Phoenix Saber, to the extent that Hunter Bradley (the heir to the Phoenix power) once dropped the weapon on a beach before he was captured by the villains, and nobody else could pick the blade up until he escaped captivity and returned to retrieve his weapon. - The Kim Possible fic "Other Side of the Mirror" features a variation on this when evil versions of Kim and Ron arrive in this world; while only someone with a pure heart can wield the Lotus Blade, Ron's counterpart can summon the Blade as he is pure evil, observing that Sensei should have checked the fine print on that particular detail. - In the Marvel Cinematic Universe/ Harry Potter crossover "Strange Potter", Doctor Strange creates a wand for Harry Potter, with the wand at least partially made of vibranium and with a hair from Thor as its core. A particular trait of the wand is that no one with ill intent can pick it up, and it will react if it is touched by someone it doesn't already "know"; the wand gave Ollivander a mild shock when he just picked it up out of idle curiosity, but it seriously burnt Snape's hand when he tried to take it away from Harry. - Infinity Crisis; - While Hela has Thanos recreate Mjolnir for her, she is unaware of the worthiness enchantment, which prevents her from using it against Thor. By contrast, when Jane Foster touches the hammer after Hela stabbed Jane through the chest, her determination allows Jane to become the hammer's new wielder, Thor allowing her to keep his old weapon. - In chapter 8 of Counterpart Conferences, \|\|Morgana tries and fails to claim Excalibur and ends up with a hand that looks like it's been dunked in acid\|\|. - During Brothers of Thunder, \|\|the various Thors develop the 'habit' of testing their counterparts' identities by allowing the other Thor to lift their version of Mjolnir\|\|. - The Vasto of White: - Shirou is able to create a copy of Aizen's Zanpakuto, Kyoka Suigetsu, but even after he learns the sword's True Name, he is unable to use it. The sword's spirit only respects Aizen and says he is the only one worthy of wielding her. The only benefit Shirou gets is that he is immune to Aizen's illusions. - Ayon picks up a copy of the stone axe-sword of Heracles. The spirit of the sword judges him for a few minutes before deciding he is worthy of wielding it. - Fate Genesis: Sonic the Hedgehog once played the role of King Arthur. Because of this, he is able to use Saber's Noble Phantasms, like Avalon. - One fan comic has Fred Rogers meeting Thor and wielding Mjolnir. Mr. Rogers, in a beautifully heartwarming way, then talks to Thor about how different people are good at different things, and there might be people who can do things that he and Thor can't even imagine. Thor thanks him for his counsel, and Mr. Rogers thanks Thor for visiting. - A daughter and a legend: The Servant version of Charles-Henri Sanson runs into his counterpart from the High School D×D universe. Even though the DxD version is an ordinary person with no powers, he can pick up and wield the Servant's weapons because they are technically the same person. - God Slaying Blade Works: As in canon, any Noble Phantasm Shirou Emiya creates belongs to him so he can use them. He loans Beautiful Head Taker, the naginata of Tomoe Gozen, to Illya because of a story where Gozen loaned it to one of her female servants, which allows any woman to wield it. He loans the Halberd of Lu Bu Fengxian to Luo Hao, Gae Dearg to John Pluto Smith, and Trap of Argalia to Godou because their powers are always active, allowing anyone to use them. Guinevere and Lancelot can use Rhongomyniad and Excalibur because they are part of King Arthur's legend. Shirou is able to give Arondight to Lancelot because Lancelot is the alternate universe counterpart of its original owner. - Fate Crazy Knights: Played for Laughs when Gilgamesh punishes Kirei, Risei, and Hassan of the Hundred Faces by using his Gate of Babylon to plant Mjolnir on the toilet seat lid of the church's only toilet. Since they are not worthy and can't lift it, they are forced to find another toilet. Later, Gilgamesh is subjected to a Laxative Prank and rushes to the restroom of Tokiomi's house, only to discover that one of Hassan's split personalities was worthy and earlier moved Mjolnir to this toilet seat lid. Since Gilgamesh isn't worthy, he can't even put it back into the Gate of Babylon and is forced to find another toilet. - The Last Son: - Superman's ancestor Von-El, founder of the House of El, created a sword and designed it so only himself and his bloodline descendants would be able to pull it out of the scabbard. It was one of the first known instances of Kryptonian technology being DNA codified to prevent its misuse. - Excalibur also appears in Book Four, following the classical mythology as having been created by Merlin himself and wielded by King Arthur in the past. In the present time, Brian Braddock/Captain Britain pulls it out of the stone and uses it to inflict a wound on Apocalypse. - Fate Azure Destiny: Ritsuka Fujimaru wields Mashu Kyrielight's shield, Lord Camelot, after her death. He can lift it like it was as light as a feather, but other people cannot budge it. - Kabbalah: The Passive Conqueror: Circe has the Noble Phantasm Rule Breaker, which normally belongs to her niece Medea. She says she has it because she taught Medea how to make it. - Fate: Kill: - Only members of the royal family can touch an emblem of the Empire because they burn anyone else. - When Shirou is knocked out and captured, no one can pick up his sword Caliburn. Esdeath gets around this by covering it with a layer of ice so she isn't touching it directly. - When Shirou sends everyone into Unlimited Blade Works, Kurome curiously tries to examine the sword Balmung, but it burns her hand. Several of Esdeath's forces are similarly rejected by the Noble Phantasms. - Birth of a Legend V2: Shirou loans Arturia a copy of Caliburn. Though she is an ordinary human, she can wield it because she is either the reincarnation or Alternate Self of Saber. Later, when Alec Gascoigne tries to steal the sword, it blasts him with lightning. - Kingdom Hearts: Grand Order: - While fighting Saber Alter, Sora shocks everyone by stealing Excalibur Morgan and being able to wield it, even purifying it back to Excalibur. This is likely due to Sora's pure heart, inner light, and heroic tendencies that made him worthy of the Keyblade. - EMIYA attempts to Trace a copy of the Keyblade, but fails because it does not consider him worthy. - In one of the Queens of Mewni Spinoffs, Future of Mewni, the last spell Helena the Persistent created before passing the wand to Nova the Cosmic was a spell that enforced this trope by only allowing the Queen, her heiress, or anyone pure of heart to wield it. This stems from the beginning of her reign, when she found out her sister Solia stole the wand and used it to usurp the throne from Helena. - Quest for Camelot plays with this. The Big Bad Ruber is able to wield Excalibur and he even magically merges his hand with it in the final battle. Then the heroes trick the villain into thrusting Excalibur back into the stone. Since King Arthur is the only one able to pull the sword from the stone, Ruber is stuck. Then the stone's power obliterates Ruber, leaving Excalibur free for Arthur to reclaim. - In Minions, Bob is crowned king when he pulls Excalibur from the stone while being chased by the police. - In Justice League: Throne of Atlantis, only Atlantean royalty can wield the Trident of Poseidon. Anyone else who tries to hold it gets electrocuted. - This is implied to be the case with the demigod Maui's magical fishhook in Moana. It was a gift from the gods that grants Maui great powers, including Voluntary Shapeshifting but he loses it during his first battle with Te Ka, the fire demon. To help Moana on her quest, they go to recover the fishhook from the monstrous giant crab, Tamatoa. We are shown that both Tamatoa and Moana are capable of picking up the fishhook, but neither are shown being able to tap into its magic. - Hulk Vs.: In "Hulk vs. Thor", Loki possesses the Hulk's body and beats up Thor. Loki arrogantly thinks that since his new body is stronger than Thor, he'll be able to lift Mjölnir. He fails to budge it, since worthiness has nothing to do with physical strength. - Ultimate Avengers: Though the Hulk is unworthy, he is strong enough (with effort) to lift Mjölnir with pure brute force, much to Thor's utter shock. Hulk noticeably struggles to keep it aloft for the short time he's using it (nor can he use its electricity), but he's able to do so long enough to hurl it at Thor with enough strength to knock him out and then pick it up again to try and decapitate Thor with the ax-end before Captain America knocks him away and gets the weapon out of his hands for the remainder of the fight. - Puss in Boots: The Last Wish: Big Jack Horner has Excalibur as part of his collection of magic items from various stories. However, since he can't pull it from the stone, the stone is still attached to the end of it. He just uses it as a giant blunt weapon. - Aquaman (2018): When Arthur Curry/Aquaman attempts to claim the Trident of Atlan, its guardian, Karathen, warns him that if he isn't the true heir of Atlan, he won't be able to lift it. Fortunately, he qualifies. - Beauty and the Beast (1946): Belle's necklace will only remain a necklace if she wears it. It turns into rotting/smoking rope when in her sisters' hands. Perhaps similar to The Mirror Shows Your True Self as this could also be viewed as a reflection of the sisters' inner hearts. - Dracula: The Dark Prince: The Lightbringer is the only weapon capable of destroying Count Dracula. At first glance and in the hands of anyone else, its just a simple staff. But when held by a descendant of Cain, it turns into a scythe. As such, Lucien is the only one that can kill Dracula. \|\|Renfield is able to bypass this issue entirely when he bites Lucien and spits his blood on the staff, activating it and allowing him to wield it\|\|. - Dredd: The Lawgivers are biometrically locked to the judges they are assigned to, and any unauthorized attempt at using a Lawgiver will result in the weapon blowing up \|\|as Kay finds out the hard way when he tried to use Anderson's Lawgiver to shoot her\|\|. - Excalibur: Not only was Arthur the only one who could draw the titular sword from the stone, he pulled it from the stone again just to prove he could, since no one was around the first time. When he did something unworthy (using the sword's power to defeat Lancelot, who should rightly have won their duel), the sword broke, and when he repented it was fixed. - The Fellowship of the Ring: Explicitly stated during the Council of Elrond. Boromir: "Give Gondor the weapon of the enemy. Let us use it against him!" Aragorn: "You cannot wield it, none of us can. The One Ring answers to Sauron alone. It has no other master." - King Arthur: Legend of the Sword - Having been warned that the Rightful King Returns, King Vortigern has his soldiers bring everyone in his kingdom of the right age to be his missing nephew to where the sword is in the stone to attempt to pull it out, branding them after the test. Arthur is brought in when he's questioned and discovered not to have the brand. In a subversion, Arthur is knocked out and easily captured after removing the sword because he can't handle the power and memories that overwhelm him when he grasps the hilt. \|\|The stone is later revealed to be Arthur's father Taken for Granite after deliberately impaling himself on Excalibur so his evil brother couldn't take it.\|\| - Invoked later \|\|when Vortigern uses Excalibur to kill a mage-controlled snake as it leaps at him from a pillar, but the sword gets stuck in the stone pillar so he can't remove it to defend himself when a much bigger magical snake attacks.\|\| - Marvel Cinematic Universe: Thor's hammer, Mjölnir, arguably goes on as much of a journey as any of the characters throughout the franachise. - Thor: Thor is exiled to Midgard (Earth) and stripped of his power, and his hammer Mjölnir is given an enchantment from Odin that allows only those who are worthy to wield it. Thor initially tracks the hammer down, intending to regain his power, but is shocked to discover that he isn't worthy. After Character Development and a Heroic Sacrifice, the magic judges him worthy, and the hammer flies to him and restores his powers. Thor would also weaponize the hammer's worthiness in this and later films. - Thor: Towards the end, he pins Loki to the ground by putting the unliftable hammer on his chest. - The Avengers: He momentarily distracts The Hulk by having him catch the hammer but be unable to move it. - Avengers: Age of Ultron: Pietro Maximoff catches it in midair but is sent flying until he lets go. - Thor: Ragnarok: At the start, he casually stops a dragon by putting Mjölnir in its mouth. - Avengers: Age of Ultron: - The Avengers try to lift Mjölnir in a drunken party game. In a nod to his worthiness in the comics, Steve is able to shift it slightly, which causes Thor to look nervous for a second. Tony, in his traditional snark, tries to shoot down the idea: Tony: It's biometrics, right? Like a security code? "Whoever is carrying Thor's fingerprints" is, I think, the literal translation. Thor: Yes, well, that's a very, very interesting theory. I have a simpler one: ( lifts Mjölnir) You're all not worthy. - \|\|After coming to life, Vision innocently, casually, and single-handedly passes Thor his hammer, instantly proving to the team (and the audience) that he's one of the good guys. Though Steve and Tony later ponder whether it was because Vision is a machine\|\|. At the end of the movie, Tony and Steve have a discussion about worthiness, noting they've seen Thor rest the hammer on the floor of an ascending elevator and it continued to rise, snarking that the elevator was worthy. - Thor: Ragnarok: - Thor uses the worthiness clause to expose the fact that Loki is posing as Odin. Thor throws Mjölnir into the distance, grabs "Odin" by the neck and holds him in the hammer's return path. The real Odin, who is worthy, would be able to catch the weapon himself and avoid injury. Loki, who isn't worthy, has to yield and drop the charade so he doesn't get hit in the face. - As a signal to the audience how strong Hela is, she catches Mjölnir in midair, holds it up, then effortlessly destroys it. - Avengers: Endgame: - After spending the last five years wallowing in misery, Thor borrows Mjölnir from the past during the group's time travel mission, and is beyond estatic to discover that he's still worthy. \|\|Later on, Steve wields it to save Thor's life during the final battle. Cue a Knew It All Along from Thor.\|\| - A person not being chosen to wield is being played with in the final battle - \|\|Spider-Man is cornered by enemies, so Steve throws Mjölnir overhead towards him, Spider-Man grabs on to it and is promptly dragged along with it and out of immediate danger, since being unable to lift it off the ground and being unable to stop its momentum is the same thing.\|\| - Thor: Love and Thunder: Following it's destruction by Hela, it turns out nobody could move the shattered pieces of Mjölnir, so they dug out the ground and turned it into an exhibit. When Jane Foster passes by the shattered hammer, the pieces sense her worthiness and the weapon comes back together for her to wield. In flashbacks, it's shown that Thor asked Mjölnir to always watch over Jane, unintentionally enchanting it to respond to her as a wielder. To Thor's shock, though he can still lift it, the hammer seems to reject him and prefer Jane as its wielder. \|\|He only regains the hammer when Jane dies. Thor's adopted daughter, Love, can evidently lift Mjölnir as well, since she moved it offscreen to a different spot from where it was resting.\|\| - Prince Valiant (1997): Only the rightful king of any nation (regardless of morality) can wield Excalibur. If anyone else tries to use it, it will embed itself into the ground and refuse to come out. King Arthur (Camelot) and Prince Valiant (Thule) can use it. Sadly, Sir Gawain is surrounded by enemies at one point and attempts to pull out the sword to defend himself, but fails and is killed. The Viking King is unable to use it, much to his surprise. His second-in-command, who was unable to use it earlier, says it's because he's weak and incompetent, making him unworthy. He kills him, making him the new Viking King through Klingon Promotion, and gains the ability to use it. - The Matrix Reloaded: It's a matter of this trope combined with Only the Worthy May Pass. Neo and friends follow The Prophecy of the Oracle to end the Man/Machine war by way of a stack of living and non-living Plot Coupons and Plot Devices that must be first discovered or destroyed, culminating with a minor character dying, passing on a key for Neo to open a door to the source of the Machines. \|\|It was all for nearly nothing, as all the protagonist's work is yet another way for the Machines to keep control.\|\| Despite that, Neo figures out another option in time. - Shredder Orpheus: Has Orpheus learn of a mysterious parking garage that can only be traversed with the right kind of skateboard. \|\|Hades' network is more than willing to provide said board.\|\| - Siege of the Saxons: Excalibur in the Stone can only be drawn from its scabbard by the rightful King or Queen of England. - Stardust: On his deathbed, the king of Stormhold drains the color from an ancestral ruby and casts it out into the realm. As only a male of royal blood can restore the color, his four surviving sons set out to find the gem, all of them dying along the way. In the end, protagonist Tristan Thorne - the king's unknown grandson - is the last one left alive, thus restoring the ruby by his touch and becoming king. - Super Mario Bros. (1993): Only Daisy can withstand the force of the meteorite. When Lena uses it to merge the dimensions, its power disintegrates her. - War God have the trusty Green Dragon Saber of Guan Yu (yes, this Guan Yu) which can only be used by the deity himself. In the climatic battle, one of the Martian villains tries stealing the saber for himself, only to receive a painful electric shock after touching the weapon. - In the Lone Wolf series, the Sommerswerd can only be used to its full potential by a Kai Lord. If wielded in combat by anyone else, it is said that its power will fade and be lost forever. Being the last of the Kai Lords at the beginning of the series, Lone Wolf is naturally The Chosen One. - In Journey to the West, the Dragon King of the Eastern Ocean has in his armory a piece of magic iron that was used to measure the depth of the Milky Way. It is 20 feet long and as thick as a barrel. No dragon can lift it. Then one day it begins to glow, and soon Monkey arrives seeking a weapon. He picks up the rod and tells it to become smaller: it shrinks to fit him (but is still as thick as a rice bowl and weighs many thousand pounds — Monkey is quite a hero). He can get it to be any size he wants, and when not in use, he reduces it to the size of a needle and stores it in his ear. - Harry Potter: - Only Gryffindors can draw Gryffindor's sword from the Sorting Hat. Or more precisely, someone with Gryffindor "qualities" such as bravery and valor. It has to be a true Gryffindor to summon the Sword through the hat, however. Not just someone who got Sorted into the house, but someone who truly upholds the ideals that Godric himself prized. In all the series, only Harry and Neville were confirmed to be able to summon the blade to their side. They needed to uphold these ideals and, in addition, still have the humility to ask the Hat for help. - "The wand chooses the wizard". A wizard can use a wand not their own; wands are stolen, borrowed, or inherited fairly frequently. But magic channeled through another's wand will never be as easy or as powerful as when the wizard uses his own. On the other hand, a wizard who defeats/kills another in a Wizard Duel will often be able to command the obedience of his vanquished opponent's wand. Willingly returning the wand to its owner will cancel this transfer of magical ownership, though. Meaning that wizards who duel for practice or sport aren't going to be at constant risk of losing command of their wand. \|\|After Professor Snape kills Albus Dumbledore, Lord Voldemort claims Dumbledore's wand, the Elder Wand, the most powerful wand in the world. Because he is not the true owner, he cannot use it to its full potential. Thinking that since Snape killed Dumbledore, he is the true owner, Voldemort kills him. What he didn't know was that shortly before Dumbledore died, Draco Malfoy disarmed him, making Malfoy the true owner unknowingly. Harry later beats Malfoy in a physical fight, making Harry the true owner. In the final battle, Voldemort tries to use the Elder Wand to kill Harry. The Elder Wand refuses to harm its true owner, foreshadowed in an earlier scene where Voldemort used Crucio on Harry to test if he was playing dead, but it did nothing to him, so it backfires and kills Voldemort.\|\| - If a basilisk counts as a weapon, only the rightful Heir of Slytherin could command it, meaning it wouldn't have listened if Harry tried to use Parseltongue to communicate with it. - Earth Abides, possibly the first viral apocalypse story, developed this well. At the start, Ish (the protagonist) finds a hammer left by miners in the mountains he's walking in, researching his thesis and missing the end of the world. He takes it as an artifact of that time. It comes in handy, but he thinks little of it. Years later, when he's met other survivors and formed a tribe, he asks his son to get the hammer to fix something, and the son is shocked: he couldn't possibly touch such a holy object. At the end, as Ish dies, the younger tribesmen are pressing him to tell them who to pass the hammer to, and with it leadership of the tribe. - Lloyd Alexander's The Chronicles of Prydain: - The story makes use of the Welsh sword Dyrnwyn. In the first book the protagonist is told it should only be drawn by someone of "royal blood". He arrogantly tries to draw it anyway and the flash of lightning from the blade burns him and knocks him out. At the end of the series, in desperation and without thinking, he draws it again and this time it responds to him. It turns out that "royal blood" was a poor translation (which Eilonwy, the translator, had actually said from the very beginning), and it should be better rendered as "noble worth", which the sword now recognizes in him. - Only the "rightful" Ruler of Annuvin can wear the Iron Crown of Annuvin, and the only way to be proved worthy is to defeat the previous Ruler. \|\|When someone who hasn't defeated the previous Ruler puts it on, it heats up like a poker and becomes impossibly tight and cannot be removed, burning through his skull.\|\| - Subverted in Terry Pratchett's Discworld: It's mentioned that pulling a sword from a stone is not all that difficult, but someone who can put the sword through stone in the first place, now there's someone special. And of course, Carrot does just that at one point. The characters also theorize that the original example was a setup. Someone decided ahead of time who the rightful king was and had a dwarf inside the stone holding onto it with pliers. When the right bloke comes along he pulls the sword and all the peasants are suitably impressed. - See also Pratchett's short story "Once and Future", in which time traveler and supposed wizard Mervin has placed the sword in an electromagnet, which he can switch off without anyone noticing. - In The Blue Sword (and the prequel, The Hero and the Crown), you have Gonturan, the titular Blue Sword, which can only be safely wielded by women and boys younger than 20. - The hero of The Iron Dream is able to wield a large truncheon so constructed that only someone with the right genetic pedigree can even pick it up. - In William King's Warhammer 40,000 Space Wolf novel Wolfblade, when Haegr tells Ragnor that he is marked for greatness, Ragnor is dismissive, saying he has brought great catatrosphe on the Chapter, losing the Spear of Russ. Haegr says that he wielded the Spear of Russ, which is evidence enough of greatness. - In a later book, this becomes a subversion. Russ actually hated the spear and was constantly losing it - often while drunk. To him, it was an embarrassing gift from his dad, not a symbol of worthiness from the God-Emperor. - In Graham McNeill's Warhammer 40,000 Horus Heresy novel Fulgrim, invading the temple of the Laer turns up a literal sword in the stone. Fulgrim draws it out. Justin "hears" a voice tell him to let Fulgrim take it, though it feels quite wrong. - The Dresden Files: - The three holy Swords used by Knights of the Cross are named Fidelacchius, Esperacchius, and Amoracchius. note : In Ghost Story reveals their other historical monikers to be \|\|Kusanagi, Durandal and Excalibur\|\|. Each Sword responds strongly to powerful faith, hope, and love, respectively. Holding to that ideal is key in allowing the Sword to draw out its full strength on behalf of the bearer. note : Note that none of these feelings need be towards God, just focusing on the base feeling. A man who believes in right overcoming wrong, that one person can make a difference, can wield the Sword of Faith, while a supernatural-monster mother defending her daughter from the forces of evil can draw out the Sword of Love's power even if she is tainted by evil herself. Sanya, Knight of Hope, doesn't even believe in God, taking an agnostic view, but has never had trouble drawing out his Sword's power. Further, it's revealed in Small Favor that several of the most recent Knights have royalty in their ancestry note : Shiro was descended from the last king of Okinawa, Michael is descended from Charlemagne, and Sanya's ancestry links him to Saladin, \|\|which strongly implies that Butters has royal ancestry as well\|\|. It is also important to note not every wielder is meant to be a life-long Knight. Many Knights are one-timers, who take up the Sword during some crisis, wield it to victory, and leave it aside once the danger has past. Note that unworthy mortals can still pick up and fight with the Swords, but the weapons don't provide them with any particular advantage over plain steel. Moreover, if a treacherous person is given authority over the blade, say the Knight gives a thief the Sword to defend himself when the Knight is out of commission, wielding a Sword in a treacherous or unjust manner renders the holy blade vulnerable to destruction, either physical or (if used to kill an innocent) spiritual. - In the Fae Courts, there are the respective Mantles of the Summer and Winter Knights. Each Knight is selected for the position by one of the court's three Queens. In order of strongest to weakest, they are The Queen Who Was, The Queen Who Is, and The Queen Who Will Be. Now, while a Knight could be considered suitable by one of the Queens, if an older one deems the Knight unworthy, they can kill the Knight and claim the mantle to select a new knight. - Of the strongest of holy magics, Soulfire, the thing He and His angels used to make Reality, can be given to a mortal to wield, but can only be done when Lucifer has acted first with giving his agents Super-Hellfire. Soulfire, when invoked, makes the magic or action have more substance, making it able to break through some mystical defenses that a foe might have. However, it eats at the soul of the user and if one uses too much, the person will not recover. Fortunately, souls regenerate fairly quickly in this setting - even faster if you do something positive, like hang out with friends and have fun. - Callandor in The Wheel of Time could only be taken from the Heart of the Stone of Tear by the Dragon Reborn. - The jivatma in Jennifer Roberson's Sword Dancer series are attuned blades with magic powers which can only be used by the one who knows the blade's name. - The Sword of Shannara of the Shannara series is an unintentional example of this. It was created with the intent of anyone being able to wield it, but everyone had come to believe that only a member of the Shannara bloodline could use it. Due to the changing, unpredictable nature of magic in the series, that genuinely became the case. - Inverted in Secret of the Sixth Magic by Lyndon Hardy, in which Jemidon is the one person who can't handle an enchanted sword or pull it out of the ground. \|\|Turns out that this is a clue Jemidon is a metamagician: someone who can't personally use magic, but can enhance magical abilities in others and manipulate the rules governing magical effects.\|\| - In the Deltora Quest series, only the true king of Deltora can use the full power of the Belt of Deltora, though others can still benefit from the magical properties of its seven gems. The Belt glows when first worn \|\|in its correct configuration\|\| by the true heir to the throne, clearly indicating who is worthy of it. The Belt will also reject a living ruler in favor of the next in line if it deems them unworthy, as it did with King Endon. It only shone for Endon after his father's death, but after the gems were stolen while it was supposed to be under Endon's care, the Belt shone for \|\|his son, Lief\|\| while Endon was still alive. - The Royal Blood requirement is exploited in the sequel series: \|\|to ensure Deltora will be safe should anything happen to him, Lief tracks down his distant cousin Marilen in Tora, who is also a descendant of the first king Adin. Presumably some of the Masked Ones, being descended from a later king's brother, are also eligible.\|\| - In The Odyssey, Penelope's suitors have to pass the test of bending Odysseus' bow in order to get her. They all fail. A beggar comes and request to try bending the bow, in which he succeeds, revealing himself as Odysseus. - In Septimus Heap, the Dragon Ring grows and contracts and glows only for Boy 412. - The Orb of Aldur in The Belgariad can only be touched by a purely innocent person or by the true heir of Riva. It's even more impressive when it's fused to the Sword of Riva Irongrip, which was forged from a fallen star. - Light And Dark The Awakening Of The Mageknight: The sword of the original mageknight can only be grasped by his successor. \|\|This is because only his successor has Ghost Sight, which is necessary to by-pass the optical illusion protecting it.\|\| - The Adversary Cycle. In Nightworld the protagonists reforge a magic sword that's their last chance to defeat the Greater-Scope Villain who's causing The End of the World as We Know It. Repairman Jack is the obvious candidate to replace the aging Glaeken who's wielded it in the past, but Jack balks at an eternity of servitude to the Ally, and so offers everyone else in the room a chance. \|\|The sword fails to respond to them, so Jack bites the bullet and grasps it... only for it to fail to respond to him either. Turn out only the original hero (who hasn't died and therefore can't expect Jack to Take Up My Sword) is acceptable. After a millennia or so of service Glaeken definitely doesn't want to start all over again, but the sword rejuvenates him as the young warrior he was, and so Glaeken gets a chance to take out his frustrations on the Big Bad.\|\| - In the Enchanted Forest Chronicles, the sword of the king of the Enchanted Forest is instrumental in choosing the next king, and only the rightful king can access its quite formidable magic, while to anyone else it's just an unusually durable and sharp sword. And because the king also has some influence over the magic of the Enchanted Forest, in a sense the sword also chooses who has the right to wield the kingdom itself. Furthermore, if the sword is taken out of the Forest, it will burn anyone who isn't a member of the royal family, or married into said family. - In the Griffin's Daughter series, it isn't said whether or not only the Elf royal bloodline can wear the White Griffin (a ring that is the symbol of the royal family), but it will only glow when worn by someone of royal blood. It's how Jelena is confirmed as being \|\|King Keizo's\|\| daughter. - In Please Don't Tell My Parents I'm a Supervillain the two Pure Fist scrolls grant a superpower to a true master of their martial arts school, but will kill anyone else who touches them. Until Marcia grabs both of them at once and somehow manages to get the opposing forces within each scroll to fight each other instead of devouring her. No one else had been suicidal enough to try such a thing, and a little while later she destroys both scrolls to prevent anyone from replicating this exploit. - Parodied in Too Many Curses with the Sword In The Cabbage. Forged many centuries ago, the Sword's enchantment ensures that when one worthy wielder, on the brink of death, jabs it into a rock, tree, or other object, only another worthy warrior can draw it forth. It got its current title because the last wielder didn't actually look to see what object he was aiming it at into until after he'd jabbed it in.... - The Arisian-built Lenses in the Lensman series are each specifically created for an intended Lensman, and will not only fail to work if someone else tries to use it, but will kill someone touching with bare skin it if it's not being worn by its user. This even extends to other Lensmen. When Clarissa received her Lens, Kinnison takes it out of its shipping container by using an insulated cloth to not touch it directly. - Wings of Fire: The Eye of Onyx will kill anyone besides the SandWing queen who tries to use it. During the civil war for the throne, Blister tries to take it believing it will choose her as queen \|\|but after Sunny gives it to Thorn, it chooses her and kills Blister.\|\| - In The Divine Cities, Voortya was the Divinity of War, and having reached the Vooryashtani afterlife, Mulaghesh ends up having to wield Voortya's Sword, which is only given to her because of her long and bloody history as a career soldier. - Fablehaven features Vasilis, the Sword of Light and Darkness, which can only be given to a new wielder if the old one voluntarily does so. Additionally, if the wielder falls in battle, only a friend can take it up, not an enemy. The sword magnifies the wielder's emotions. - Togetherly Long: The magic spear of the great hero Yushii, which he planted in the ground 100 years ago and which every boy from the village tries to pull free on their tenth birthday. The legends say that whoever pulls the spear will gain Yuushi's great power and is one day destined to lead the villagers to a new land. - Pahua Moua: Only the legendary shaman Shee Yee can wield the lightning axe. As his reincarnation, Pahua can use it too. - The short story The Baker King includes a prophecy that only a true member of the royal family of Monemvassia may sit on the Kingdom's throne, and any usurper who take the seat will be struck down by a terrible curse. When Spiro the Bandit invades the kingdom and declares himself king he falls dead the moment he sits upon the throne. \|\|Whether or not the curse is real is up to debate, as Spiro was bitten on the rear by the venomous cliff snake hidden in the chair cushions by the disguised crown prince.\|\| - Goblins in the Castle: The light-providing amulet that Granny Pinchbottom gave William. It only works in his hands, as evidenced when it doesn't glow for Herky and even stops when William hands it to Fauna. Once it's back in his hands, it comes back on with no problem. - Too Many Curses: The Sword in the Cabbage, which can only be removed from whatever it is thrust into by a true hero. Unfortunately, its last wielder was going blind when he decided to retire and accidentally stabbed it into a leafy vegetable, much to the swords embarrassment. Sir Thedeus discovers that he can pull it out, and the sword can even suppress his curse, for a few minutes per day, after which he transforms back into a tiny bat with nowhere near the strength to lift, much less wield the sword and drops it into something else it has to be pulled from. \|\|By the end of the book its the Sword in the Hellhound skeleton, a much worthier resting place in its opinion.\|\| - Buffy the Vampire Slayer: In season seven the Scythe is embedded in stone, and only a Slayer can pull it free. When Caleb tried to steal it, massacring the guards and priests of what he assumed was its hiding place, he found only a message that came very close to quoting the trope: It is not for thee. It is for Her alone to wield. He tries to get around this by having his Bringers chip away the rock around the Scythe, but fortunately Buffy finds it first and "King Arthurs" it from the stone. - Camelot: Subverted Trope in the Showtime series. The sword is indeed stuck in a stone, but the problem with removing it is that it's at the top of a waterfall, covered in moss, and the ground is naturally wet (since it's, you know, submerged). It is indeed stuck, and anyone that tried to remove it previously inevitably loses their grip and falls off the waterfall to their death. However, Arthur (thanks to some contrary advice from Merlin) realizes that in order to free the sword, it must first be pushed into the rock, adjusted so that it won't catch, and then pulled out. It's heavily implied that anyone could have done this, they just didn't know it. \|\|Arthur also falls off the waterfall, but he gets better.\|\| - Played With in the Charmed (1998) episode "Sword and the City". In this version anyone can wield Excalibur, but it will corrupt anyone but its destined master. The sisters, sent to help the Lady of the Lake, arrive just in time for her to put it in a stone before being killed. Piper is able to draw it out, making her believe that she's its new master...except no, it makes her start turning evil. It turns out that Wyatt is the sword's real master; Piper can draw it out because she's the new Lady of the Lake, meant to give it to him when he's older. - Galavant: There is a legend of a king who will come and bring all the kingdoms under his reign in peace. The mythical sword is even in a stump with a sign engraved on the stump telling people this is the real sword. The titular hero Galavant even comes across it \|\|but doesn't try pulling it out. He doesn't even read the sign. Neither does his companion, the former evil King Richard, who pulls the blade out of the stump, realize the meaning of this event\|\|. Later in the series finale, the True King loses the sword, it landing in a rock but the Big Bad cannot pull it out. After he is defeated, the True King shows off his ability to put the blade in any rock or ground and be able to pull it out. - House of Anubis: The locket. Despite everyone being able to actually wear it, only the Chosen One or the Osirian can actually use it for its real purpose. Also the Mask of Anubis, and the Cup of Ankh, two treasures that only the Chosen One can actually use. If someone who isn't Chosen or at least pure of heart wears the mask they get \|\|sucked into the underworld\|\| and only the Chosen One can put the Cup together. - The Man from U.N.C.L.E.: Subverted Trope in one episode: a small European country had a legendary sword stuck in a stone, and the leader of a coalition of criminals arranged for a safecracker to secretly apply modern lubricants so he could pull the sword out and claim the throne. Amusingly, another criminal, who did a HeelFace Turn and fought the leader, was named Artie King. - Merlin: In the BBC series, Merlin magically embeds Excalibur in a stone, to keep it safe until Arthur is meant to wield it. In a subversion of the norm, Merlin's magic isn't empathic in any sense: the sword is impossible to remove by hand, and Merlin simply tricks Arthur into thinking he is the only person able to do it. Merlin loosens the blade with magic once Arthur is in the right mindset. - On Once Upon a Time, Charming can't pull Excalibur out of its stone, but Snow White, the rightful queen, can. Subverted when Rumplestiltskin reveals it to be just a normal sword; Charming stuck the sword in the stone himself and pretended to be unable to get it out. (The whole thing is a Magic Feather plot to convince Snow she can stand up to and defeat Regina.) - Power Rangers has various examples of this with the Rangers themselves. In most cases other parties choose the Rangers, most commonly when dealing with the Rangers who more explicitly get their powers from technology ( Power Rangers Lightspeed Rescue, Power Rangers S.P.D., Power Rangers Operation Overdrive, etc.). However, when dealing with those Rangers who are at least potentially powered by Magitek, their mentors often affirm that the power chooses the Rangers rather than it just being random, such as the animal crystals of Power Rangers Wild Force and the Dino Gems of Power Rangers: Dino Thunder only "activating" once they are brought into contact with the relevant future Ranger. Only a few cases have explicitly discussed the idea of the Rangers alone being able to wield their powers; - Power Rangers Lost Galaxy: The five Quasar Sabers from the planet Mirinoi, which like Caliburn/Excalibur are firmly planted inside a stone until the chosen ones finally pull them. The only Ranger born on Mirinoi, Maya, had already tried to remove one as a kid, so either she spent all that time trying to free the wrong saber or the sabers themselves have some say in when they're released. They're not one-to-one, either, as two of the sabers are passed on during the series; Mike Corbett drew the Red Saber originally but passed it on to his brother Leo before he apparently died, and after \|\|Pink Ranger Kendrix was killed in battle, her spirit appeared to pass her saber on to former villain Astronema/Karone\|\|. The question of 'why don't you just smash the rocks' is also addressed: Furio's first instinct upon his failure to pull the sword out is to try that...and he can't even scratch the rocks, something he himself remarks is insane, implying the magical spell protecting the swords is also protecting the rock. - The thirtieth-anniversary special * Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: Once & Always* explicitly acknowledges that the Rangers' power sources choose them in some way. When original Yellow Ranger Trini Kwan is killed in battle, her daughter Minh attempts to use the Yellow Sabretooth Tiger coin for herself, but is initially unable to use the coin as she only wants to fight out of a desire for revenge for her mother's death. \|\|After Minh risks her life to save Billy- the original Blue Ranger- from another attack, the Yellow Coin responds to Minh and allows her to morph. The other Rangers speculate that this is because Minh acted to save a life rather than to punish an enemy, with fellow Yellow Ranger Aisha Campbell assuring Minh that she is now a worthy Ranger\|\|. - Revolution: In "The Night the Lights Went Out in Georgia", Miles' "lucky" Bowie knife, which proved to be less-than-lucky for Alec Penner (to whom Miles had gifted it some years earlier). So far it's credited with having saved the lives of three generations of Mathesons over a 75-year period. What are the odds Charlie will end up with it? - Sliders: One episode has the heroes end up in a world where magic is real. At the end of the episode, they are facing off an Evil Sorcerer, who has previously wiped out the Mallory clan of druids, as they are the only ones with the power to stop him. Guess what? Despite being from a non-magical world, Quinn Mallory can fulfill the prophecy just as well. A local woman (the sorcerer's former apprentice) tells the heroes that the sword hanging on the wall is the only weapon that can harm the sorcerer (who has turned into a dragon). Rembrandt runs after it, dodging flaming breath, but is unable to take the sword. She explains that the sword can only be wielded by a Mallory, which prompts an angry look from Rembrandt. Quinn is able to grab the sword and kill the sorcerer/dragon. - Stargate SG-1: In the episode "Avalon", Merlin's cavern has a sword in the stone (which probably inspired the Arthurian legend in-universe), unable to be removed. After the team completes the tests, Mitchell is able to pull it out, and he discovers that it's a hologram. Only he can interact with it as if it was physical, and when he throws it to Teal'c, it just passes through him. It's also the only thing that can defeat the knight guarding the place. A second is later found on the planet Camelot, outside Merlin's house. This one is a physical object, but otherwise has the same rules. - Supernatural: - The Goodies. Spoofed in the King Arthur episode; faced with the Sword In The Stone problem, the Goodies just pick up the whole lot and thump the villains with the rock on the end. - Ultraman Orb: The Origin Saga: The power of Ultraman Orb only will allow someone it believes is worthy to obtain its power. Jugglus Juggler was not worthy. Gai Kurenai was. - Arthur of the Britons has a "realistic" twist on the tale: Arthur calls all the other Briton chiefs together and shows them a sword wedged under a stone. Whoever pulls the sword from under the stone shall lead them. All the other chiefs get to pushing and lifting the stone, and Arthur quickly grabs it before anyone else does. He also points out that he couldn't have retrieved it if they hadn't worked as one, but the lesson is lost among the squabbling chiefs. The sword itself is never named. - Wynonna Earp has Peacemaker, the demon-slaying magic gun passed on to the heirs of Wyatt Earp. The gun is in some ways semi-sentient, burning any demons that touch it and sometimes lightly burning good beings if it doesn't want to be held by them any longer. It can typically be held by anyone who isn't a demon, but it doesn't fire at all - it only works for the Chosen One Earp heir, the oldest Earp currently available. \|\|Since the Earp sisters are the first generation to contain more than one child, it's not clear whether the stipulation is actually 'oldest' or if any Earp can wield it, because the only sister unable to is Waverly, who is not an Earp by blood.\|\| - Norse Mythology: - In the Old Norse Völsunga saga, Odin plunges a sword into a tree inside a king's hall, and only the young prince Sigmund is able to pull the weapon out. The sword was called Gram (from Old Norse "Gramr", meaning "wrath"), and Sigmund's son, Sigurd would eventually kill the dragon Fafnir with it. - In The Saga of Hrolf Kraki, the prince Bjorn leaves his three sons three weapons struck into a wall of rock. When the sons later arrive to retrieve the weapons, everyone of them can only take the one weapon intended for him. - In the Ramayana, the hero Rama wins a princess's hand in marriage by lifting a supernatural bow that no other man can lift. - Arthurian Legend: - After the death of Uther Pendragon the Britons cannot agree on who should be the next king, as Uther's only son Arthur has been taken away by Merlin to be raised in secret. When the nobles turn to Merlin for advice, Merlin shows them a sword lodged in an anvil or rock placed in a churchyard at Westminster and prophesies that only the true king of Britain will be able to pull the blade out. When Arthur has grown, his kingship is revealed when he succeeds in pulling the sword out, after many others have tried to do so in vain. The tale of the Sword in the Stone first appears in Robert de Boron's Merlin and later also in Le Morte d'Arthur. - The Siege Perilous is the only unlabeled seat Merlin places at the Round Table, and it incinerates anyone who sits in it except "He who shall surpass all other Knights", and according to Merlin only this knight is able to find the Holy Grail. The Siege Perilous appeared first in the Queste del Saint Graal, when the knight destined to occupy the seat was Perceval; but in Le Morte d'Arthur it is instead Sir Galahad. - The Hammer Of Peace in Chikara, which has only been successfully wielded by The Estonian Thunderfrog and by Icarus. The weapon is powerful, however, as it was used to finally defeat Deucalion. - Pili Fantasy: War of Dragons: The divine Dragon Bone Sacred Sword can only be wielded by it's chosen, anyone else touching it dies. So far only three people have wielded it, and one other touched it. - Dungeons & Dragons has its share of magical items (even without their own minds) that will help only "worthy" users and usually are dangerous for everyone else. - Intelligent swords in general tend to act like this. They will only fully function for characters of the same alignment as the sword and working toward the weapon's special purpose (if any). Some weapons and magic items only work in the hands of certain races or certain sexes or some other criteria. And usually try to harm and/or dominate any would-be wielders they don't approve. - Blade-rite of Forgotten Realms elves, including two prominent groups of artifacts bonded with their wielders. - Elfblades are regalia of high offices and prevent anyone who isn't up to the task or whom they don't appreciate from wielding them and thus from holding an office: "unworthy" claimants suffer harm, curse or instant death, depending on the blade and failed condition. Since claiming the Ruler's Blade was the only legitimate way to the throne, in Myth Drannor it caused a morbidly hilarious scene when hundreds of elves waited in the queue for their chance to raise on top of the tower, grab the pommel and get blasted into ashes in full view of the crowd... and then started a fight to get there faster. - Moonblades were designed as a means to choose the single "best" clan as the royal family of their new realm. They kill all claimants who aren't "worthy" and of proper blood (namely, moon elves, hence the name—their creator was a moon elf, can you tell?), while growing both in powers and requirements with each generation until they're practically impossible to both claim and wield. Until they ended up with the King Sword that stayed unclaimed for years after the king's death, while members of the royal family were inexplicably plagued by either lethal accidents or sudden calls of adventure carrying them far away from the line to the throne. - The Holy Avenger, Carsomyr, is an extremely powerful +5 two-handed sword that dispel magic with every hit. It can only be wielded by paladins. - One chapter in a Changeling: The Lost sourcebook deals with legendary items infused with the magic of the Wyrd (such as the shears of the Fates or Bran the Blessed's cauldron). The fiction for the chapter has a lone changeling finding a magical sword and being somewhat disenchanted that it's still just a magic sword after all these years — mind you, in one concession to modernity, it's embedded in an engine block. - In Heroes Unlimited, anyone can pick up an Enchanted Weapon and swing it around, but unless the wielder's alignment matches that of the weapon, the weapon will not grant them its mystical powers. So heroic characters cannot use the powers of an evil weapon, and supervillains cannot use the powers of a good weapon. - The Matrix of Leadership from Transformers can only be opened and wielded by a Prime or his chosen successor, like Optimus Prime and Rodimus Prime. Galvatron and Ultra Magnus, who are roughly equal in strength to Optimus Prime, cannot budge it. - And it's not a Prime who chooses his successor, it's the Matrix itself who chooses a Prime's successor, what makes it a quasi/sort of Empathic Weapon. Ultra Magnus was chosen by a Prime to be his successor, but he wasn't able to use it. - Though just because it choses someone doesn't necessarily mean they're a good choice, as Nova Prime, Sentinel Prime, and Zeta Prime can attest. Not to mention the time Thunderwing, an extremely powerful Decepticon, got his mitts on it in The Transformers (Marvel). Or Starscream, though at least in his case it soon started making Starscream good. - In BIONICLE, the Kanohi Ignika has a mind of its own, and only chooses to grant its power over life to those with no hesitation or fear in their hearts. While previous Toa had been able to wield its power for its primary purpose \|\|of restoring Mata Nui's failing life with their own\|\|, the hesitation they always had in their hearts kept them from being able to tap into its true ability. Matoro was the first who ever wielded its power with no fear for his own death, which is what prompted the Ignika to give him full control of its power \|\|in order to save his friends before he sacrificed his own life to resurrect the dead Mata Nui\|\|. - Riffing off a mythological example given above, Richard Wagner in Die Walküre has Sieglinde tell Siegmund how an old man, whom she recognized as her father Wälse (who is really the god Wotan), thrust a sword into an ash-tree, declaring it would belong to the one who could pull it out. Siegmund proceeds to do this, naming it Nothung (from German Noth, "need, travail"); however, Wotan, convinced by his wife Fricka, betrays Siegmund and shatters the sword. It can only be reforged by a hero without fear — Siegmund and Sieglinde's son, Siegfried. - EXTRAPOWER: Giant Fist: The bracelet unearthed at the start of the game. Though sought after by many, only an ancient Latour warrior or their descendant are able to safely use it. Anyone else who tries to wear the ring finds their body forcibly transformed until they die a bloody death. - The Master Sword in The Legend of Zelda games. Whenever the sword appears in the series, Link is invariably the only person who can pull it out of its pedestal. - In some games, Link has to prove that he is the ancient legends' prophesied Hero before he is able to draw the sword. Before winning the Pendants of Virtue in A Link to the Past, Link will not be able to pull the Master Sword. In Ocarina of Time, the sword sits on the other side of a massive stone door that only opens with the gathering of the three Spiritual Stones. - In other cases, the game prevents Link from finding it (and the plot usually doesn't even make mention of it) until a certain point. In Twilight Princess, for example, Link is chosen from the get-go, being a descendant of the Hero of Time and the bearer of the Triforce of Courage (which is explained when he's granted the clothes of the hero). When he goes to get the Master Sword, it's simply a matter of finding it; it did not require any kind of proof of the gods (other than possibly having to solve their puzzle, which itself may only have required his lineage to complete). A similar circumstance transpires in Hyrule Warriors, where the primary difficulty in getting the sword is the army of ghost soldiers who are being manipulated to stop him from reaching it. It should be noted that in both of the above cases, Link has already accomplished a number of heroic feats by the time he goes for the Master Sword, which may be proof enough for the gods without the need for additional tests. - Skyward Sword, as the chronologically first Zelda game, serves as something of an origin story for the Master Sword. It starts off as the Goddess Sword, which doesn't have the chosen-hero-exclusive circumstances; during his first battle, Ghirahim will catch your sword if you telegraph your attacks, rip it out of your hands, and wield it himself. However, once it is reforged in the flames of the Golden Goddesses and bathed in the power to repel evil, Ghirahim is reduced to trying to stop the blade from even touching him. (Phantom rematches with the first fight courtesy of the Thunder Dragon's Lightning Round still allow him to catch and wield it, but nobody takes that as having story impact.) The text box that appears after \|\|Zelda/Hylia\|\| blesses the sword, finally unlocking its full power, even specifically says that Link is now the only one who can wield it. - This leads to some tension between Link and Zelda in Breath of the Wild. In preparation for the coming of Calamity Ganon, Link is quickly found to be the true wielder of the Master Sword and is made Zelda's bodyguard in response. Zelda, on the other hand, is unable to unlock her "Sealing Power" necessary to defeat Ganon; she thus finds Link's presence a constant reminder of her own failure to fulfill her destiny. Only by gradually opening up to her protector does she find out that Link is just as nervous as she is about the upcoming fight against Ganon. \|\|And when Link goes to reclaim the sword after the Great Calamity, he has to prove himself worthy to wield it again despite having done so in the past and in numerous past lives. The process of pulling the Master Sword from its pedestal slowly drains Link's life, and should the player fail to have the necessary hearts (or have taken sufficient damage when they go for the attempt) then Link dies attempting to pull it out (although the Deku Tree will stop him at a quarter-heart the first time he tries). TotK indicates that this second proving is a consequence of the damage that the sword took during the Great Calamity; when Link draws it again in a flashback shortly before the events of the sequel, the Deku Tree claims that it has fully recovered, and he pulls it from the pedestal without struggle or fanfare.\|\| - In BotW's sequel, Tears of the Kingdom, the corrupted and broken Master Sword is placed in a pedestal made of \|\|the headfur on the Divine Light Dragon to be repaired and healed. In order to extract the sword this time, Link has to have two full rings on his Stamina Wheel (so five additional stamina vessels on top of his default) - not because of any trial posed by the sword itself, but because the Light Dragon starts to writhe when he pulls on it, and he needs to be able to hold on long enough to get a good grip\|\|. - Wind Waker puts a twist in this; since the Link from this game is The Unchosen One, he must first collect three MacGuffins and fight his way through a massive dungeon just to reach the Master Sword, and then \|\|fight his way out again once he has it in his hands\|\|. And then it turns out \|\|that it wasn't at full power anyway, and Link must put in even more effort to restore it before it can serve its intended purpose\|\|. - Neverwinter Nights 2: - The Hammer of Ironfist, which can only be wielded by a member of Clan Ironfist. To top it off, it only allows the use of its full power when the user is wearing The Belt of Ironfist and The Gauntlet of Ironfist, so it is also a reference to Mjǫllnir. \|\|Most players will have helped Khelgar with his personal quest to become a Monk by the time the Hammer is found, and a Monk cannot use hammers, making it a Power Up Let Down.\|\| - The Sword of Gith can only be used by the Kalach-Cha for a different reason. It will only work if all the shards are together, and one of them is embedded in the KC's chest. - Keyblades in the Kingdom Hearts series. In the first game, it looked as though Sora was the only chosen one, with a brief tug-of-war for control with Rival Turned Evil Riku. Then King Mickey was revealed to have one at the end, and it's become The Chosen Many since then. While key bearers can borrow or inherit each others' weapons, anyone trying to use one without its permission can expect it to disappear. Interestingly enough, Sora alone is considered to be The Unchosen One, as his Keyblade was rightfully meant for Riku, and he was otherwise never chosen to have one in the first place, making him the only known key bearer to prove his worthiness of the weapon after wielding it. - Commonly seen in Fire Emblem: - In Fire Emblem Gaiden, the Royal Sword can only be wielded by one of royal blood. Tobin (an ordinary commoner) finds it unwieldably heavy, while Alm (\|\|the hidden prince of Rigel\|\|) finds it as light as a feather. - The Holy Weapons of Fire Emblem: Genealogy of the Holy War are tied to specific bloodlines and require "major" Holy Blood to wield. - The Mani Katti blade from Fire Emblem: The Blazing Blade. It's sort of an Arthurian thing... Lyn successfully removed it from its scabbard after the level boss failed. Of course, she had to kill him to get it done. That said, the trope is played with since the priest guarding it had specifically put a spell to keep it from being drawn and dispelled it after the boss was killed. That said, the Mani Katti glowing in Lyn's hands as it chose her is its own doing. - Fire Emblem: Awakening: - The Falchion is tied to the Ylissian royal family and is fairly picky even among them, \|\|even if Lucina has Grimleal blood\|\|. It's an interesting example because, technically, anybody can use it. The blade just becomes too dull to be any good for fighting if it's not in the hands of a royal family member. This also becomes a plot point in Lucina's supports with her sibling note : who can possibly be Brady, Inigo, Kjelle, Cynthia, or a male Morgan, when she ponders if he/she can wield it too, especially if he/she ended up needing to because Lucina died in battle. After some angst over the subject (because the sibling didn't want to think of his/her sister dying), they finally test it against a log. \|\|Lucina ends up leaving before finding out, the sibling walks away thinking he/she can't, but a line of dialogue from Chrom reveals he/she can.\|\| - Walhart has a battleaxe known as the Wolf Berg, which only he can wield. - Fire Emblem Fates: - The Avatar's Yato, Xander's Siegfried sword, Ryoma's Raijinto katana, Takumi's Fujin Yumi and Leo's Brynhildr tome, among others. \|\|The only time these weapons are used by others is during the Heirs of Fate DLC, where their owners are dead, and the new wielders were their children\|\|. - Ophelia has a tome named Mysteltainn (a Call-Back to the similarly named sword from Genealogy of the Holy War \|\|and her dad Odin's unrelated blade\|\|), and no one but her can use it either. - The Heroes' Relics in Fire Emblem: Three Houses are a downplayed case. Anyone with a Crest, a special power in certain bloodlines, can use most Heroes' Relics, but only people with a Crest that matches the Relic's will be able to use its combat art or gain additional benefits. Anyone who uses a Heroes' Relic with no Crest at all will either be injured by it or \|\|be turned into a Demonic Beast.\|\| - In Fire Emblem Heroes there are a number of weapons that are only exclusive to the unit it's attached to, and can't be inherited by another unit using Inherit Skill. - In Granblue Fantasy, The Society installs fail-safes into their weapons because they're far too dangerous for anyone without the proper training to wield since they're dormant Moon-dweller Automagods. The Spear of Arvess burns anyone who tries to steal it to a crisp. Given it's a really fancy spear made of gold and magical crystals, it happens a lot. - In a variation, the Rusty Sword in Secret of Mana can only be pulled free from its resting place by the Hero, who in this case is Randy. However, once it's pulled free, anyone can wield it, which is how it earned so many names (Excalibur, Durandal, etc). At the end of the game, however, Randy is the only one that can wield the empowered sword when it is converted to the Sword of Mana by the power of Dryad's magic: if the Girl or the Sprite are wielding the sword, the spell will fail. - The Elder Scrolls: - Throughout the series and in the backstory, one of the most important items to the Empire of Tamriel is the Amulet of Kings. According to legend, it was created as the "Chim-el Adabal" by the Ayleids out of the crystallized blood of the "dead" creator god Lorkhan (also known by many other names), which was collected after falling from his heart as it flew across Tamriel, having been cut out by the Aedra (in vengeance for Lorkhan supposedly tricking them into sacrificing large parts of their divine power to create Mundus, the mortal plane), tied to an arrow, and fired across the continent. Following the Alessian Revolt, in which St. Alessia and her Nedic peoples (precursors to most of the modern races of Men) overthrew the (primarily) Daedra-worshiping Ayleids with the aid of the Nordic Empire, rebel Ayleid lords, and the Aedra themselves, Alessia made covenant with Akatosh, the draconic Top God of the Aedra. Akatosh imbued Alessia with his "dragon's blood" and placed her soul in the central stone of what is now known as the Amulet of Kings, symbolizing his pact with mankind. The Amulet of Kings can only be worn by those of royal blood, recognizing them as Alessia's (and Akatosh's) metaphysical heirs to the Ruby Throne of Cyrodiil and confirming those who can wear it as The Chosen One. - Morrowind The Moon-And-Star ring is said to be blessed by Azura to kill anyone trying to wear it other than Nerevar (or his reincarnation, the Nerevarine). Whether this is for real or a story made up to scare off pretenders is never discovered. One popular theory is that being the Nerevarine is more a matter of becoming than something you are born as — if you fulfill the requirements to be the Nerevarine, and follow what the prophecy says the Nerevarine is supposed to do, then you are the Nerevarine, and so can wear Moon-and-Star. In other words, only the Chosen may wield, but the Chosen is partly self-chosen. - Oblivion - The Crusader's Relics (and weapons) can only be wielded by the Divine Crusader in the expansion Knights of the Nine. In addition, if the wielder gains two points in infamy then the artifacts cannot be used until the pilgrimage is undertaken again. - The Amulet of Kings makes its first in-game appearance, passing from the Emperor to the Player Character in the early stages of the game. True to lore, the player character cannot wear it, getting a message that it simply "slips off" your neck if you try. \|\|It eventually makes its way into the hands of the Emperor's Hidden Backup Prince, Martin, who performs a Heroic Sacrifice at the end of the main quest with it. The Amulet is destroyed, but it summons an avatar of Akatosh who banishes Mehrunes Dagon and saves the world\|\|. - Skyrim reveals that Deadric artifacts function this way. While the artifacts themselves aren't sentient, the Daedric Princes who created them can be really picky about who uses them. For example, Hircine, not liking a werewolf who uses his ring removes all control the man has over his transformations (though if you attempt to help the werewolf Hircine will make the ring work correctly for you) while one necromancer spent decades working defects into Azura's star to remove her control over it so he could live forever using it. - A Creation Club event adds the Crusader's Relics to the game. Again, if youve been doing evil things, you wont be able to wear them until you pray to the gods. - Subverted in Fable. The Sword of Hewn doesn't need any special requirements, you just have to be physically strong enough to get it out of that rock - a hard feat indeed. \|\|This is then beautifully subverted again in the fact that you don't actually pull the sword out of the rock; you actually pull the sword out of the ground.\|\| and the rock - In the extended cut version, The Lost Chapters, this is how \|\|you get the sword Avo's Tear. In the core game's original ending, if you opt to forsake the evil option and cast aside the Sword of Aeons, you are deemed worthy and noble enough to wield Avo's Tear.\|\| - Castlevania: - Parodied in Aria of Sorrow. Soma can find the Sword in the Stone, but he's not destined to rule, so he can't pull it out. However, by this point he has enough strength to wield it anyway, stone and all. - More importantly, the iconic weapon of the series, the magical whip known as Vampire Killer, can only be used by members of the Belmont clan or their close relatives. In anyone else's hands it's just an ordinary old whip, and even though relatives of the Belmonts can make use of its magical power, doing so will kill them or at least noticeably shorten their lifespan. - Something similar happens in Shadow Hearts: From The New World, Frank can obtain the Legend Saber, a mystical sword still sealed in its stone, with an extra hilt stuck on it to match all the other Improbable Weapons in his collection. - In the Divine Divinity series: - Divine Divinity has a sword in a stone in northern area of Dark Forest. \|\|The sword is sealing a demon, and if you get that sword out, the demon will come out and attack you. Killing it will only send it back to the stone, which it would come out again. Not sealing the demon away after it retreated and left the map will result in the demon killing all NPC in the map. Don't take the sword!\|\|. - Divinity: Original Sin II: The Blackroot ritual is essential for Godwoken to commune with their gods and awaken their Source powers. If any non-Godwoken attempts it, the drug is deadly. - Althena's Sword in Lunar, weapon of the Dragonmaster, which can only be claimed by the strong and pure of heart. \|\|Spends most of the first game as a decoration in a stone monument.\|\| - In Warcraft III, the crazy-powerful sword Frostmourne can only be broken out of its floating chunk of ice by someone who promises to bear any curse it can throw at him/her. - Good news: Once you get it, Frostmourne is indeed the thing that can turn the tide and drive out the invaders, etc. - Bad news: Frostmourne is excellent at coming up with curses, which may include killing your best friend, literally eating your soul, and making it so you don't even WANT to repel the invaders anymore and end up joining them instead. Just go with a regular drop. Way safer. - Uther Pendragon from Fate/Nuovo Guerra uses a sword that is technically the Trope Namer before he put it in the stone. - Subverted in Wild ARMs 2 with the Argetlahm, which was used to save the world from a great evil in ancient times. There's even a ceremony near the beginning of the game where newly recruited "heroes" take a shot at drawing the sword. Sure enough, the main character fails his first attempt... But after being possessed by a demon shortly afterward, touching it causes them to cancel each other out and seal the demon inside of him. The sword itself disappears, and he was still never "chosen" \|\|until the final battle, when he's trapped inside his own soul and uses The Power of Friendship to draw the sword and kill the demon.\|\| - Humorously parodied in the fourth installment of Heroes of Might and Magic. Upon locating a giant slayer sword on the world map and picking it up, a message comes up concerning its completely unrelated to the game play recovery. A hero stumbles upon a sword in a stone, and having heard the legend of weapons of such power being lodged in rocks, yanks at it with all his strength. This results in the sword not budging an inch. So he spends the next hour or so with a hammer and chisel to retrieve it. Played straight in the campaign "The True Blade". The Gryphonheart blade can only be drawn by a member of the Gryphonheart lineage. Sir Worton tries to wrest control over the little kingdom of Palaedra from its founder Lord Lysander (who had previously refused to be king because of his loyalty to the Gryphonheart line) by drawing a forgery of the blade from its scabbard. Lysander did not trust Worton and went on a quest to seek the true blade. \|\|During the final battle, Lysander without thinking draws the true Gryphonheart blade from its scabbard, proving that he is actually a descendant of the Gryphonhearts.\|\| - In Magicka, this is a possible weapon. However, since your character is not the true King, you end up taking the stone along with the sword, which functions as a hammer now. - Suggested, but not altogether proven, for the Shield of Albion in Puzzle Quest: Challenge of the Warlords, which is an heirloom of the player character's family. - Played with in many ways in Solatorobo: - The amulet chooses who may use it in the next Rite of Forfeit to seal Lares. Naturally, Red blunders upon it and it picks him. \|\|Poor Red.\|\| - Escaping the \|\|Human Sacrifice that the amulet tries to pull when sealing or super-powering Lares\|\| is only possible for Hybrids. \|\|Lucky for Red, he happens to be one even though he never knew it.\|\| - While anyone could presumably use Dahak as a normal Mini-Mecha, only Red is capable of wielding its full potential \|\|by using his Hybrid abilities to fuse with it.\|\| - Lares \|\|and Lemures\|\| can be controlled from the inside, but at the cost of the wielder's Life Energy. However, if you're \|\|immortal like Elh and Béluga\|\|, the Titanomachina won't kill you; it'll just \|\|take your immortality away. Ah, well, Who Wants to Live Forever?\|\| - In the "Zenithian Trilogy" of Dragon Quest, only the chosen hero can wield the legendary equipment required to advance the plot. In V's case, you are not the chosen hero, but \|\|your son is.\|\| - Dual Blade in Lufia resonates with spiritual power. Sufficiently powerful beings can make it ring, unleashing its full power, and all of these beings are gods, until Maxim comes along. - Aegislash (a Steel/Ghost royal sword pokemon) from Pokémon X and Y can detect the qualities of leadership. According to legend, it can recognize those destined to become king. Pokémon in general will only obey a trainer they respect, this is reflected by traded Pokémon only obeying you up to a certain level unless you have the right gym badge (otherwise they might act randomly in battle). - In Overwatch, the Shimada brothers, Genji and Hanzo can use mystical-seeming Asian dragons as part of their ultimate abilities. In the Dragons cinematic, after Genji reveals his ability to summon a dragon, Hanzo declares that only a Shimada can control the dragons in disbelief, suggesting that only their family has this power. - Several of the artifact weapons in the Legion expansion of World of Warcraft work this way. - The Extars from Valkyrie Drive -Bhikkhuni- work in this way. - The Staff of Ages from Shadowgate can only be used by the bloodline of kings, starting with Lord Jair, the hero of the original game. \|\|This comes up later in Shadowgate 64, where civilian Del Cottonwood must wear a ring owned by said bloodline in order to even carry the Staff safely. And when the time comes to defeat the Warlock Lord with it, he has to give the Staff to a statue of Lord Jair, then put the ring on it, whereupon it comes to life and kills the Warlock Lord.\|\| - In Nexus Clash only Angels can wield Holy weapons and only Demons can wield Unholy ones. Anyone else gets hit with a nasty backlash of the damage type they were trying to use...not that that stops some people from trying. - In Final Fantasy XV, anyone who tries to wield the Ring of the Lucii better be of the Lucian royal family, or else they're going to get it. Trying to wield it for selfish reasons costs Ravus his arm. \|\|Ignis\|\| managed to negotiate sixty seconds of power in exchange for his eyesight. \|\|Nyx\|\| gets until sunrise to use its power, and loses his life on the dawn. - Shining Resonance: The Armonics are sacred weapons that also function as musical instruments. Each was formed from the Shining Dragon's body and bestowed to his most devoted followers. An Armonic chooses its wielder by resonating when the one it deems worthy to possess it draws near, which is first seen when Barmonium begins to resonate within the vault of the Imperial treasury the moment Marion is brought to Astoria's Capitol. This causes Sonia some level of angst since the Armonic that belongs to her father still hasn't resonated with herself, \|\|though when King Albert is injured against Excella it finally does deem her a worthy bearer.\|\| - Downplayed in the Soul Series; anyone can hold and swing Soul Calibur and Soul Edge, but only someone that Elysium and Inferno, the spirit of each sword respectively, decides are capable of fulfilling their own personal goals can unleash their full-power. For instance, Soul Edge in the hands of Cervantes was able to be shattered by weapons that, while augmented, were relatively ordinary compared to itself, but Siegfried/Nightmare merely grabbing the hilt caused the worldwide cataclysm of the Evil Seed. - Xenoblade Chronicles 1: The Monado can't be wielded by just anyone, and may temporarily take over anyone who tries. It can be wielded by someone with sufficient willpower even if they aren't the chosen one, as seen with Dunban. But this comes at the cost of increasingly severe damage to his body to the point of permanently paralyzing his right arm and nearly killing him when he starts using it with his left. The only one who can properly wield it unharmed is Shulk. This is because \|\|its a Living Weapon (and not a nice one), containing the soul of an Evil God, Zanza. Shulk can use it freely only because he's said God's chosen vessel, and he's unwittingly been doing exactly what Zanza wanted.\|\| - The Core Crystals that give Blades their form in Xenoblade Chronicles 2 require a sort of aptitude or potential to manifest the entity and the weapon it carries. Those found inadequate are harmed, or even killed, on mere contact with the Core Crystal. A small, scrawny Gormotti (who is a viable Driver) is shoved aside by a larger, bulkier man who grabs the crystal, cries out in pain, and passes out with blue particle effects bursting from his body; the way the other characters talk about it, it's not a pretty sight. From there, only that Driver can fully bring out that Blade's power and effectively use its weapon; there are some cases of a Driver grabbing the weapon of another's Blade to use, but those are usually extremely desperate moments when their own Blade isn't fighting for some reason. There's also nothing stopping a Driver from resonating with multiple Blades. \|\|Rex and Amalthus can resonate with and use any Blade, even ones awakened by someone else, due to being designated as the "Master Drivers" due to their links to the Aegises\|\|. - Party member Tora ended up with a three-day-long nosebleed after failing to resonate with a crystal, but luckily for him, him and similarly lacking in aptitude father and grandfather are all brilliant engineers who decided to just make Artificial Blades that anyone can use even without Driver aptitude. Such results include Tora's Blade Poppi, Lila, Poppibuster and his "pilot" Poppi Mk. II (who sure enough can be equipped to any Driver in the party aside from Tora himself without needing to use an Overdrive Protocol to transfer ownership), \|\|and the fully mechanical ones Tora's father was forced to build under threat of death.\|\| - It should be noted that the proper aptitude for wielding a Blade is fairly arbitrary. Ever so often, you'll find a Boss in Mook's Clothing that is a monster that has happened to come across and resonate with a Blade, which now follows it around and defends it. Such is the case for the story fight with an Elder Arachno who bonded with the Rare Blade Wulfric, with the party claiming his Core Crystal after killing the monster. \|\|Even Blades can become the Drivers of other Blades, though all the cases shown of these Driver-Blades were also Flesh Eaters, Blades who integrated human cells to gain independence from needing a link with a Driver to survive in the first place, or an Aegis, aka the original Blades who have the ability to directly link with any Core Crystal since they're the overseers of the whole system.\|\| - The Ring of the Tyrant, the Amplifier Artifact that gives someone enough power to pretend they have a chance against the titular Trillion: God of Destruction, can only be used by an Overlord currently holding the crest of a deadly sin. While there are actually nine sins, two are out of commission by the end of the Hopeless Boss Fight and one belongs to a ghost, leaving only six candidates. \|\|Three more are found when Elma inherits Gloom from her died-during-the-prologue brother, Cerberus claims Wrath since Zeabolos is now Great Overlord and doesn't actually need it, and Lillith passes on so Faust can take the crest of Vanity. If they all die, the Ring itself bends the rules to give Zeabolos one last chance to end things under his own power.\|\| - The Biometals in Mega Man ZX can only be wielded by The Chosen Many, but no one not on the villain's side is entirely certain what the criteria for being a "Chosen One" is at first. The creator of Models X, Z, H, L, F, and P \|\|(aka Ciel from Mega Man Zero)\|\| notes in her reports viewable in full in Aile's story that she was only able to make them by using the data obtained from studying the original Biometal Model W and thus anyone who can use them also fulfills the unknown criteria for using Model W. This quietly disturbs Aile since it makes her wonder if she's really not that different from Serpent, especially once she learns one common thread she, he, and Giro all have is that they were survivors of Maverick raids at a young age. Advent reveals that \|\|Master Albert designed Model W (and later his back-up system Model A) to only be usable by someone with his DNA, which played into his seeding of various candidates by genetically tampering with various humans and Reploids with his DNA through his connections as one of Legion's Sage Trinity and then using Maverick raids to hunt those people down and turn them into the driven/damaged people that would be suspectible to Model W's influence.\|\| - Dragon Age: Origins: A random encounter has the Warden approach of group of commoners, all staring at an ax lodged in a stump. One says whoever pulls it from the stump will be king of all Thedas. Another dismissively says that pulling an ax from a stump is hardly the basis of government. Then they notice you and say you look fairly regal, since you're not covered in dung. - In Heroine's Quest, the sword Balmung is stuck in a tree, which is straight from the Nordic myth that formed the inspiration for Excalibur in the Stone. The titular heroine can draw it out, but only if her honor score is near its maximum; otherwise she's not worthy and it doesn't budge. - Zamzeed's ultimate attack in 2nd Super Robot Wars: Original Generation parodies this. Zamzeed summons a katana from the earth, then tries to pull it out. After repeated pulling, the sword doesn't come out of the ground, but a mountain does. Mio, the Zamzeed's pilot, breaks off the top of the mountain, leaving the sword stuck in a giant boulder several times the size of her mecha. Then she runs down the hill and shatters the bolder on her target's head before using the now-freed sword to finish the attack. The attack also has a hidden animation when the attack misses: on the initial swing, the sword slips out of the rock, causing it to fall on top of Zamzeed instead. - Parodied in Yakuza: Like a Dragon, where Ichiban and his friends find a baseball bat stuck in the pavement. After being the only one able to pull it out (likely after the others loosened it when they tried pulling it), Ichiban's overactive imagination and delusions of grandeur begin to run wild as he sees the bat as the weapon of the RPG Hero he was always destined to be, thus unlocking his "Hero" class. - Love of Magic: The protagonist is unable to pull Excalibur from the stone, but Emily (as Arthur's heir) is able to help him. This was a safety valve created by Merlin - for the protagonist to come into his full power without Emily's moderating influence could doom the world. - League of Legends has a complicated twist on this with a sub-race of "chosen ones" and the magical element "True Ice". True Ice is a god-formed, unmelting version of ice that can and has been made into weapons, but it's so pure that any normal living being attempting to touch it will perish. The only exceptions are Iceborn, a hereditary lineage of humans and other races that are immune to the cold and can thus withstand and manipulate their power. Perhaps the most significant Iceborn of the game — Ashe the Frost Archer, Sejuani the Fury of the North, and Lissandra the Ice Witch — are the most tied to the Three Sisters, the source of the Iceborn heritage (Ashe and Sejuani are believed to be reincarnations of Avarosa and Serylda, Lissandra herself is the third sister). - Rimworld has Biocoded weapons — weapons with a system that blocks anyone except the weapon's owner from wielding it. Absolutely noone but the designated wielder can use a Biocoded weapon; if their owner dies, they can only be scrapped for their materials, thrown away, or given away in the market. Persona weapons without the Freewielding trait will form a similar bond with whoever equips them first and will refuse to be wielded by anyone else, and this bond will only break if its wielder dies. - Control has the Service Weapon and the Hotline, which can only be used by the Director. Anyone else who tries suffers severe injury or death by [REDACTED]. Notes you can find speculate that this isn't something inherent to the objects themselves, but a condition actively enforced by the Board, because trying and failing to bind other Objects of Power only results in minor psychic backlash or nothing happening at all. - In Pizza Tower, the level "Pizzascape" is a medieval-themed level featuring the Knight transformation as its primary gimmick, initiated when Peppino grabs a sword out of a stone in an homage to the legend of King Arthur. \|\|The other half of this trope is shown during the final boss fight, where Pizzahead attempting to pull a sword up to the battlefield upheaves an entire chunk of the tower with the sword in the stone still attached, flinging hapless Forknights onto the battlefield as a temporary hazard.\|\| - Nasuverse: Heroic Spirits possess "Noble Phantasms": Weapons, armour, or other tools that are as much a part of their legends as they are, and which only they know how to use properly (which includes the Trope Namer, as King Arthur is a Heroic Spirit). Word of God has it that if a Servant's Noble Phantasm were to be stolen, the thief would find the stolen Noble Phantasm unwieldy and be unable to invoke its powers. Of course, there are a myriad of exceptions, each with a justification of their own. - Fate/Zero: - Gilgamesh has the Noble Phantasm Gate of Babylon, a pocket dimension that holds, in addition to his own unique Phantasms, a copy of the "prototype" of nearly every legendary weapon in existence. Because he is considered their original "owner" he is able to wield them, though far less effectively since while he has some swordsmanship skill, he is not an expert and he doesn't know how to use his weapons' abilities efficiently. Gate of Babylon doesn't have certain items like Excalibur, Rhongomyniad, Avalon, Knight of Owner, God Hand, Kavacha and Kundala, and Vasavi Shakti, because they were either created after Gilgamesh's time, or were created by fairies and not distributed to mankind. In the alternate universe of Fate/kaleid liner PRISMA☆ILLYA, Gilgamesh discovers to his chagrin that Gate of Babylon doesn't have any of Julian Ainsworth or Darius Ainsworth's Noble Phantasms like Authoritarian Personalism, Apneic Beauty, and Shadow Hand of Code. \|\|This is because Darius created these Noble Phantasms recently with a combination of his powers and Pandora's Box, another item not in Gate of Babylon, meaning they had never existed before and only he or those with his permission can use them.\|\| - Berserker has a Noble Phantasm called Knight of Owner that allows him to become an Instant Expert for any weapon he takes into his hands - including an enemy's Noble Phantasm, should he wrest it from their grasp. - Kiritsugu Emiya had acquired Saber's Noble Phantasm, Avalon, which heals its holder's injuries and works for any holder, but it only responds to Saber's mana, so it only works when Saber is near the holder. Kiritsugu and his wife Irisviel both make use of it. At the end, he plants it into Shirou, and though Saber is gone, it had stored enough of Saber's mana to heal him. It then goes inert until Saber is summoned again in Fate/stay night. Even then, Saber (\|\|and Shirou when he projects it\|\|) are the only ones who can use Avalon's true function as an absolute defense against attacks. - Fate/stay night: - Archer \|\|and his past self Shirou Emiya\|\| have Unlimited Blade Works, a Mental World that makes them able to copy any weapon they see, including Noble Phantasms. Due to the nature of their magecraft, they are also considered an "owner" and are able to mimic the original wielder's skills to a degree. They are unable to copy divine weapons like Excalibur because they lack divinity and cannot copy it. \|\|In the Fate route, though Avalon is divine, Shirou is able to copy and use it because he holds the original inside his body and he has a spiritual connection to Saber. He loses the ability in the ending when he returns the original Avalon to Saber and then she disappears back to her time. In one of the Heaven's Feel route's endings, Shirou goes beyond his limits to copy Excalibur, but using it kills him\|\|. However, Archer's counterpart in the Fate/EXTRA series is able to copy Excalibur because it takes place in Cyberspace, allowing him to bend the rules. - While noncanon, the 2006 anime has Caster put Sakura Matou under mind control and pass her Caster's Noble Phantasm, the dagger Rule Breaker, to ambush Saber. After Sakura stabs Saber, Caster comments that since it wasn't actually her wielding Rule Breaker, its power was weakened. Instead of being able to steal Saber's Servant Contract, the stab simply weakened her. - In both Fate/hollow ataraxia and Fate/kaleid liner PRISMA☆ILLYA: Bazett Fraga McRemitz, a human, is able to use the Noble Phantasm Fragarach. Its original owner, the god Manannán mac Lir, gifted it to the god Lugh, who in turn gifted to her ancestor. Her family possesses a Sorcery Trait known as Traditional Carriers God's Holders, which allows them to pass on their abilities through bloodline rather than teachings, so she inherited her ancestor's ability to wield it. - Fate/kaleid liner PRISMA☆ILLYA: Several human magi can use Class Cards to take on the powers and skills of Servants, allowing them access to their Noble Phantasms. Since Chloe von Einzbern and the Miyuverse version of Shirou Emiya bonded with the Class Card for the Archer of stay night, they inherited his ability to copy Noble Phantasms. In this alternate universe, they are able to copy divine weapons at the cost of them becoming hollow and brittle. Beatrice Flowerchild wields Mjölnir itself, which makes everyone assume that her Class Card is Thor, since only Thor can wield Mjölnir, but it turns out to actually be Magni, the son of Thor who inherited Mjölnir after his death. Magni and thus Beatrice also inherited Thor's belt Megingjörð and iron glove Járngreipr. - Fate/EXTRA CCC: Karna gives his armor and earring, Kavacha and Kundala, to his Master Jinako Carigiri to protect her. In his legend, he traded Kavacha and Kundala to Indra for the spear Vasavi Shakti, so he cannot use Vasavi Shakti unless he removes his protections. Since Kavacha and Kundala's protective powers are always active, Jinako doesn't have to do anything to benefit from them. - Fate/Extella: The Umbral Star: Altera wields the Sword of Mars, Photon Ray, because her original self, Sefar, defeated Ares in combat and took it as a trophy. Ares is really pissed off about this, and no matter where or when she is, when she invokes the sword's powers, Ares senses it and tries to reclaim it by trying to smite her with a Kill Sat-like strike, which she cleverly redirects into her opponents. When Ares is briefly summoned in Fate/Grand Order, he uses a different sword since he never got Photon Ray back. - Fate/Extra Last Encore: Rin Tohsaka and Rani VIII were granted the powers of their Servants Cu Chulainn and Lu Bu respectively, so they can use their Noble Phantasms Gae Bolg and God Force. - Fate/Prototype: Perseus shares two Noble Phantasms with Medusa. Harpe: The Immortal Slaying Scythe used to belong to Medusa back when she was human, but it was confiscated by the gods when she was cursed into the Gorgon and exiled to the Shapeless Isle. The gods then armed Perseus with it when he was tasked to slay her. Medusa had Bellerophon: The Bridle of Chivalry, which allows her to summon and control Pegasus, because Pegasus is her son. In this version of the story, Perseus tamed and rode Pegasus after slaying Medusa. - Fate/Apocrypha: - Saber of Red has an interesting example in her sword Clarent. While legend makes it Saber's Noble Phantasm, Mordred stole the sword from her father in life. As it was created to represent the rightful rule of the king, its theft and use against Arthur weakened the sword. When Mordred uses her ultimate attack, Clarent Blood Arthur, she channels her anger of her father and her energy into Clarent to force it to obey her and perform at its full potential. - It is mentioned that the Hanging Gardens of Babylon rightfully belong to Nebuchadnezzar II, the man who built them, but because so many people believe Semiramis built them, Assassin of Red has them as one of her Noble Phantasms. Even then, she cannot naturally conjure them up; she has to construct the Hanging Gardens herself out of stone from her home country in order to use them. - Saber of Black/Siegfried sacrifices himself to save Sieg's life by transplanting his heart into him. This causes Sieg to inherit his powers and Noble Phantasms, Balmung and the Armor of Fafnir. \|\|Near the end, it is revealed that when Berserker of Black/Frankenstein inadvertently revived Sieg with her lightning, some of her life force merged with him, causing him to inherit her powers and Noble Phantasms, Bridal Chest and Blasted Tree, as well.\|\| - \|\|Rider of Black\|\| is able to successfully use \|\|Rider of Red\|\|'s shield Noble Phantasm, \|\|Akhilleus Kosmos\|\|, but this is only possible because the shield was freely offered. Furthermore, \|\|Rider of Red/Achilles\|\| is known for donating arms to others in his legend while \|\|Rider of Black/Astolfo\|\| is known for borrowing others' armaments; if neither of these had been true, the shield could not have been lent. - \|\|Gilles de Rais\|\| is able to wield Ruler's Noble Phantasm, \|\|Luminosité Eternelle\|\|, because they knew and trusted each other in life. - Fate/Koha-Ace: - Toyotomi Hideyoshi is mentioned to have a Noble Phantasm called Blade Taker: Sword Hunt. This allows him to steal and use his opponent's weapons if he wins a Luck Check, based on how in life, Hideyoshi organized sword hunts where he confiscated his enemies' weapons. - Tokugawa Ieyasu, who is actually one of Ieyasu's body doubles, has the ability to switch between all seven of the regular Classes. Whenever he does this, he can use a Noble Phantasm associated with one of Ieyasu's vassals who fits the Class. For example, if he is Saber, he uses Yagyuu Tajima-no-Kami Munenori's sword, Daitengu Masaie. If he is Lancer, he uses Honda Tadakatsu's spear, Tonbokiri. If he is Berserker, he uses one of Senji Muramasa's swords. If he is Archer, Rider, Caster, or Assassin, he uses a breech-loading swivel gun, red armor, one of the Seven Jewels of Chakravarti, and a kunai, respectively, but these weapon's names and owners are not yet revealed. - Lord El-Melloi II Case Files: - Gray is able to wield King Arthur's lance, Rhongomyniad, because she was Raised as a Host to house King Arthur's spirit. Theoretically, she should be able to wield Caliburn, Excalibur, and Avalon as well. - Servant Faker is able to use Iskandar's Skills and Noble Phantasms due to being his Body Double in life to the point she doesn't actually have a name of her own, simply being called "Iskandar's Shadow", represented by her own Skill "For He is Another Iskandar (Fake)". \|\|As revealed in Grand Order, this includes the Reality Marble Ionian Hetaroi, but due to who she is and its specific requirements she'll die after invoking it.\|\| - Ergo can use Sun Wukong's extending staff Ruyi Jingu Bang because he was infused with some of Sun Wukong's power. Ergo was also infused with some of Set's power, allowing him to use his Noble Phantasm, Per Djet. Per Djet allows him to paralyze an enemy, and when he releases them, he can copy their Noble Phantasm. - Typhon stole Harpe and Nega-Keraunos, the thunderbolts of Zeus, in life. Bai Ruolong was infused with some of Typhon's power, giving him access to these and Typhon's personal Noble Phantasm, Blaze of Etna. - Fate/strange fake: - False Assassin was a member of The Hashshashin who diligently studied the Zabaniya, or killing techiniques, of her order's leaders, Hassan-i-Sabbah. Her Noble Phantasm, Zabaniya: Phantasmal Pedigree, allows her to copy 18 of the 19 Zabaniyas (she can't use Hassan of the Hundred Faces' Zabaniya because he was her contemporary and she didn't have an opportunity to study him). - True Archer has a Noble Phantasm called Reincarnation Pandora that allows him to steal enemy Noble Phantasms, gaining the ability to use them. Notably, he can steal Noble Phantasms that are conceptual in nature, as shown when he stole \|\|False Berserker's From Hell, a Noble Phantasm that allows False Berserker to transform into a demon\|\|. He also has a copy of True Rider's magic strength-enhancing sash, Goddess of War, because in life, he killed her and took it. It is mentioned that since True Rider is the true owner of Goddess of War, her version of the sash is more powerful than his. - Saber has a Noble Phantasm called Excalibur: Sword of Forever Distant Victory, which gives him the ability to turn anything he holds into a copy of the legendary blade Excalibur, based on his sincere belief that anything he holds is Excalibur. This includes enemy Noble Phantasms. However, since they are copies, they are not as powerful as the real one, and it is mentioned that if he were holding the real one, while he would be able to use it, he would not be able to bring out its full potential. - True Caster shares a Noble Phantasm with the Caster from Fate/Zero, Prelati's Spellbook. This is because True Caster is Francois Prelati, the man who created the Spellbook, and the Caster from Fate/Zero is Gilles de Rais, his student whom he gave the Spellbook to in life as a present. However, in the story, Prelati doesn't have the Spellbook with him when he is summoned because he gave it to Gilles and he wasn't able to recreate it in life, and it is mentioned Gilles needs to return it to him on a spiritual level for him to use it. - Gilgamesh arrogantly throws away the spare key to his Gate of Babylon, saying it is useless in the hands of humans. This backfires when Ishtar obtains it. Due to being a goddess and deeply connected to his legend, she is able to control his Gate of Babylon and forcefully shut it down. - The Godfelling Crossbow belonged to Qin Shi Huangdi. It is used as a catalyst to summon the spirit Jiao, who says the crossbow killed it, so it has a connection to it. Jiao hands the crossbow to the human Sigma and gives him permission to use it. - Fate/Grand Order: - Cu Chulainn and Scathach are both able to use the spear Gae Bolg because in life, Scathach was the one who made it and she gave it to Cu Chulainn as a present when he finished his training. - One of Lancer Karna's Noble Phantasms, Brahmastra, is shared by the Saber Rama. In this case, it's because this particular weapon was capable of being wielded by multiple people across the various epics of their legends. - Parvati borrowed her husband Shiva's trident, Trishula Shakti, but it is mentioned that since she is not the true owner, she cannot bring out its full potential. Meanwhile, Rama has a Noble Phantasm called "Vishnu Bājū: Arms of the Great One", which grants him access to several divine weapons gifted by the sage Vishwamitra. This plus the fact Rama is an avatar of the god Vishnu allows him to wield Trishula Shakti. - Sita was never a warrior in life, but as an Archer, she wields the bow Haradhanu Janaka, which belongs to her husband Rama, because Rama granted her his powers and permission. - One of Queen Medb's Noble Phantasms, Fergus My Love, allows her to summon and wield Fergus' Noble Phantasm, Caladbolg: The Rainbow Sword. This is because Fergus was her lover in life and they shared many gifts. She has another Noble Phantasm called Conchobar My Love, which lets her borrow her other lover Conchobar's ability to see the future. - One of King David's Noble Phantasms is Hamesh Avanim, the sling and stones he used to defeat Goliath. Lore-wise, because of how he used it to knock Goliath out and then steal his sword, if he uses it to knock out a Servant, he can swipe their Noble Phantasm and use it. Even better, the Noble Phantasm becomes David's by God's Divine Authority, so the Servant will be unable to take it back. David also has the Ark of the Covenant, which kills anyone not authorized by God who touches it. Besides David, only people deemed worthy by God like Moses can touch it safely. It overrides other divine protection, as it killed \|\|Heracles, Zeus' chosen one protected by God Hand\|\| when he touched it. - Xuanzang Sanzang wields Sun Wukong's extending staff Ruyi Jingu Bang, Zhu Bajie's Nine-toothed Rake, and Sha Wujing's Monk's Spade because her three disciples loved her so much that they granted them to her when she was summoned. Ironically, she doesn't even recognize the weapons, so she cannot use them to their full potential. - Lore-wise, Sir Gawain can wield Excalibur because there were times King Arthur loaned it to him in life, plus he had proven himself worthy of its sister sword Galatine. - In life, King Arthur gave Excalibur to Sir Bedivere so he could return it to the Lady of the Lake, but in this verse, he kept the sword and Merlin eventually modified it into an artificial arm for him. He has a Noble Phantasm called "Switch On - Airgetlám", his artificial arm, which he can eventually turn into Excalibur to wield. - Merlin is able to use Caliburn, the Sword in the Stone itself, since he created and gave it to King Arthur in the first place. - The Lady of Lake herself \|\|who is actually a Split Personality of Morgan le Fay\|\| would logically be able to use Excalibur. - Ishtar's Noble Phantasm, "An Gal Tā Kigal Shē", has her use her authority as a goddess of Venus to use planet Venus itself as a weapon. However, other deities with Venus in their domain like Quetzalcoatl can catch the attack and even take control of it to use it against her. - Rider Mordred wields Prydwen, a shield that can turn into a ship or surfboard. It belonged to King Arthur, but just like with Clarent, she stole it from her father in life. - Lore-wise, one of Musashibou Benkei's Noble Phantasms, called Eighth Implement, like True Archer in strange fake, is the ability to steal and use his enemies' Noble Phantasms against them. Also this man is actually Hitachibou Kaison, one of Benkei's comrades who fled in fear while he was being killed. To repent for his cowardice, he took on Benkei's identity to spread his story. Due to taking his identity, Kaison has his skills and Noble Phantasms. - Penthesilea has the strength-enhancing sash Goddess of War because she is the sister of True Rider from strange fake. - Senji Muramasa is able to forge Tsumukari Muramasa, a recreation of the legendary sword Kusanagi-no-Tachi. Since he isn't a god or demigod, using the sword kills him. However, when he gets properly summoned as a Servant, he can use Tsumukari Muramasa as many times as he wants, likely because he is creating slightly weaker versions to mitigate the backlash. He expresses awe for Ibuki-Douji, a wielder of the actual Kusanagi. - Minamoto no Raikou was the leader of the Four Heavenly Kings, so in her Berserker form, her Noble Phantasm, Ox-King Storm Call - The Inescapable Net of Heaven, allows her to create duplicates of herself that wield her subordinates' weapons. These include Sakata Kintoki's axe, Watanabe no Tsuna's sword, Urabe no Suetake's bow, and Usui Sadamitsu's naginata. - The Lancer version of Minamoto no Raikou has the spear Vajra. Arjuna is shocked and points out that Vajra belongs to his father, the Hindu god Indra, so he wonders how the Japanese Raikou has it. It turns out that Raikou's father Gozu Tennou was actually Indra under an alias, so she is Arjuna's half-sister and one of Indra's heirs. When she prayed to her father for aid, he gave her Vajra. Kama also wields Vajra because of an incident where she did Indra a favor and Indra allowed her to borrow Vajra as thanks. Vritra also wields Vajra because when Indra stabbed her with it, Vajra was lodged in her mouth, so she pulled it out and used it. - The sword Usumidori originally belonged to Minamoto no Raikou, but Ushiwakamaru has it because she is Raikou's descendant and inherited it. - The Rider Mandricardo is able to wield the Lancer Hektor's spear Durindana. This is due to the connection of their legends, as Mandricardo is able to wield the sword Durandal, which was repurposed by Hektor into Durindana and was restored to its original form some time after his death. Since the sword and spear are simply two forms of the same weapon, they can wield either one without issue. Particularly notable since Mandricardo isn't summoned with Durandal because he lost it and never got it back before his death in legend, and in fact has a Noble Phantasm called Serment de Durandal that lets him give Durandal's power to any weapon he possesses, even another Noble Phantasm. His second Noble Phantasm, Rêve de Durandal, is what allows him to wield Durandal and Durindana, but it only works if Mandricardo truly believes he is worthy. By extension, this also means Roland, the man most famous for wielding Durandal, would also be able to wield Durindana without issue. Mandricardo's skill, Armor of the Nine Worthies, allows him to use Hektor's armor, having acquired it in life. - Lore-wise, Astolfo's Hippogriff originally belonged to Bradamante, and he traded his spear Trap of Argalia to her for it, which means she would be able to use them too. - Goetia has King Solomon's Noble Phantasms because he possessed Solomon's corpse. \|\|When the real Solomon shows up as a Servant, he is able to reclaim his Noble Phantasms and then sacrifice himself, cutting off Goetia's access to them.\|\| - Mash Kyrielight is able to wield Galahad's shield, Lord Camelot, because she was Raised as a Host to house Galahad's spirit. After Goetia is defeated, Galahad decides to stop helping the heroes and revokes the powers he gave to Mash. Mash finds herself unable to use Lord Camelot anymore. Ritsuka Fujimaru uses a Command Spell to order Galahad to help them, but he resists, leaving Mash with only a fraction of his power. Even with the Ortenaus device augmenting her powers, Mash is only able to use a degraded version called Mold Camelot. However, Da Vinci suspects that it was the shock of Galahad saying he revoked her powers that made her unable to use them. This is seemingly proven in the British Lostbelt when Mash loses her memories, including of Galahad, and gains full access to her powers and Noble Phantasm. She keeps her powers when she gets her memories back. - In the second Lostbelt, Gotterdammerung, \|\|Surtr the Fire Giant is able to use all of Sigurd's Noble Phantasms, most notably his Cool Sword Gram, because he's currently possessing Sigurd's body and Spirit Origin. When his spirit is freed from Sigurd's body he loses access to them, but that was fine by him because it allowed him to unseal his real body.\|\| - Odin gave the Valkyries his blessing to wield his spear, Gungnir, so they all have a copy of it when they perform their Noble Phantasm, "Ragnarök Lífþrasir". It is said that their copies are weaker than the original. - During the third Summer event, Robin Hood lends his Noble Phantasm No Face May King: Faceless King to Edmond Dantes to help the latter in \|\|investigating the "Groundhog Day" Loop they've been trapped in without BB catching him\|\|. In this case, it's because "Robin Hood" is technically a Composite Character of numerous rogues who assumed the title, which allows him to lend it to anyone of his choosing. - For some reason, Ashwatthama has Sudarshan Chakra Yamaraj, a divine chakram owned by Krishna, even though he had never used it in life and in his myth was unworthy of it. The others are baffled and even he doesn't know why he can use it. - Lu Bu's Noble Phantasm is God Force, his halberd that can shape-shift into different forms. His beloved horse Red Hare eventually becomes a Servant, turning into a Centaur-like creature. Red Hare's Noble Phantasm is Imitation God Force, which uses a bow to fire the halberd like an arrow. - Jason and his former wife Medea both have the Golden Fleece since they had both owned it. - Poseidon granted Caenis his Divine Authority, allowing her to use his Trident. - Romulus-Quirinus has access to a version of Heracles' Noble Phantasm, Nine Lives. This is because of a version of his legend that says Heracles is his father. Although this is not true, enough people believe this that it comes true, giving Romulus-Quirinus the benefits of being raised and trained by Heracles, including inheriting his techniques. - The Berserker version of Brynhildr has the Noble Phantasm, Brynhildr Sigurutein, a sword which requires her husband Sigurd to use. "Only Brynhildr can summon it and only Sigurd can swing it." The sword is a replica of one that Odin gave to Tyr that Brynhildr imitates with her Primordial Rune magic. Since Odin and Tyr are both Gods of War, this is presumably why Sigurd, the King of Warriors, is required to use it. - The Lancer version of Yu Mei-ren wields a spear from her husband, Xiang Yu, by recalling the sword dance she performed at the end of his life and refining it into a spear dance. - Professor James Moriarty and Erice Utsumi both have Freikugel, the magic bullets from Der Freischütz. Moriarty made a Fusion Dance with Max, who wielded the bullets, while Erice has the spirit of Samiel, who forged the bullets, inside her. - Erice Utsumi has Ame-no-Sakahoko, a replica of the goddess Izanami's spear Ame-no-Nuboko with most of the same powers. A few characters are confused at how she is able to wield it. Fate/Requiem eventually reveals that \|\|Erice is Izanami's daughter.\|\| Sakamoto Ryouma can wield Ame-no-Sakahoko as well because in his backstory, he discovered the dragon Oryou sealed by being pierced by the spear, and he was effortlessly able to remove it. Indeed, his Lancer version wields it, but when he is indisposed, his Rider version steals it and is able to use it. - The Caster version of Altria wields Marmyadose, a sword that originally belonged to Heracles. She says she acquired it at some point during her travels in life. \|\|Something that we never get to see, though\|\|. - Ibuki-Douji wields the Kusanagi-no-Tachi, the sacred sword and Imperial Treasure that the god Susanoo found within the body of Yamata-no-Orochi after slaying the multi-headed dragon god. She is able to do this because she is the daughter/avatar of Orochi, \|\|and in "Hell Realm Mandala", she is able to give Kintoki the Kusanagi to use against Ashiya Douman. This is most likely due to how Susanoo was able to claim the sword from Orochi and gave it to his sister Amaterasu, as well as due to Kintoki's own natural divine nature (and even he has to use it via his Golden Bear Noble Phantasm).\|\| - One of Siegfried's Noble Phantasms is Das Rheingold, the cursed Dragon Hoard he claimed when he slew the dragon Fafnir. After his original death, the treasure was eventually claimed by the Einzbern family. Because of this, Sitonai, who uses Illya von Einzbern as a host body, can control the treasure and pacify it when the gold turns sentient and attacks people, and free people who have been cursed by it, though her control is still trumped by Moshirechik Kotanechik, the actual embodiment and spirit in control of the hoard. - In the British Lostbelt, the fae spirits Barghest, Baobhan Sith, and Melusine were granted the identities and powers of Sir Gawain, Sir Tristan, and Sir Lancelot by Morgan Le Fay. They are able to use variations of their Noble Phantasms Galatine, Failnaught, and Arondight respectively called Black Dog Galatine, Fetch Failnaught, and Innocence Arondight. \|\|Notably, Gawain and Lancelot's powers actually weaken Barghest and Melusine to an extent, as Barghest is a nocturnal fairy who doesn't receive as much benefit from the sun boost and Melusine is so naturally strong Lancelot's peerless combat skill doesn't actually help her much. It's implied this was even intentional on Morgan's part to inhibit their growths as Calamities. Also, the Morgan Le Fay native to this timeline, who ruled Camelot instead of Arthur, is the owner of several copies of Rhongomyniad. These Rhongomyniads are unique to her and she is the only one who can wield them, forcing Chaldea to negotiate with her instead of just taking them. When Altria Caster tries to use them, she notably fails and only succeeds when she converts the system into copies outputting Excalibur's power.\|\| - Sir Percival wields Lucius Longinus' Spear of Longinus because he and Kundry found it during his quest for the Holy Grail. In the British Lostbelt, Morgan Le Fay used to wield the Spear of Selection, but discarded it when she felt she was no longer worthy of it. This eventually allows the Lostbelt version of Percival to take it and it transforms into the Spear of Longinus in his hands. - In the Arcade version of the game, Nebuchadnezzar II's spirit possesses a clone of Gilgamesh. This grants him Gate of Babylon, but he cannot access Gilgamesh's real treasures like Ea, Enkidu, and the Holy Grail. - The god Manannán mac Lir possesses Bazett Fraga McRemitz's body to be summoned as a Servant. They naturally use Fragarach. Since in legend, Manannán mac Lir originally owned and gave Diarmuid Ua Duibhne his weapons Gae Buidhe, Moraltach, and Beagaltach, they would be able to use them too. - Kriemhild wields her husband Siegfried's sword Balmung because in life, she used it to avenge his murder. Notably, while Siegfried manifests Balmung's holy side, Kriemhild manifests its demonic side. - The Saber version of Sir Gareth wields Robigus Ironside, the sword of Sir Ironside the Red Knight, because in life she defeated him and confiscated it. - The Avenger version of Erice Utsumi has Ame-no-Kagaminofune, the boat of the god Sukunabikona. She says he let her rent it due to her divine heritage. - Mori Ranmaru's Noble Phantasm is the severed head of Oda Nobunaga, which has the power to alter history. In his event, he gets mortally wounded, but prays for someone to recover the head. His prayers are answered by Mysterious Ranmaru X, a female counterpart of himself from another dimension. Since they are basically the same person, she is able to use the head to save the day. - The Britomart who appears here is actually the daughter of the original hero. She inherited two Noble Phantasms from her mother: the lance Penetrate Blaiddyd and the suit of armor Fortress Angela. In turn, her mother got these in life from the Briton King Bladud (Blaiddyd) and the Saxon Queen Angela, respectively. - Taira no Kagekiyo possessed Kiichi Hougen's student Ushiwakamaru, steals Hougen's Mallet of Fortune, and goes on a rampage with it. After Kagekiyo is stopped, the heroes point out that since Hougen is the Mallet of Fortune's true owner, she could have called it to her hand at any time. Embarrassed, she tries to save face by saying she wanted them to prove their strength. - Ozmandias' Noble Phantasm, Ramesseum Tentyris, lets him summon a temple with many divine beasts from Egyptian mythology like Ammit the Devourer, which he can do since he's an incarnation of Ra. Nitocris Alter can also summon Ammit since she is being possessed by her master, Anubis. Of course, the Anubis seen in Fate/Requiem can summon Ammit. - Ishtar can summon Gugalanna, the Bull of Heaven. Ereskigal Alter can use the Authority "Boundary Gorge, Heaven's Thunder Palace" to mass produce Gugalanna's legs for a stomping attack. - The Saber version of Medusa wields the golden sword of her son, Chrysaor. When she is killed, she gives the sword to the heroes and gives them permission to use it, allowing Ritsuka to wield it and use its powers. - Fate/Extella Link: Charlemagne's Noble Phantasm "Joyeuse Ordre: Exemplify the Heroic King, O' Twelve Radiant Swords That Travel the Wide World", derived from his sword, Joyeuse, allows him to summon and use the weapons of his Paladins, which includes Astolfo's Trap of Argalia. Karl der Große, an Alternate Self of Charlemagne, also has Joyeuse, but since he is based on the mundane, real life version of Charlemagne and not the one from the myths, he cannot use Joyeuse Ordre, so he only wields it as a sword. - Fate/Requiem: - Lucius Longinus is the original owner of the Spear of Longinus and naturally has it. Kundry can create and wield a copy of the Spear of Longinus because her legend involved her helping Sir Percival find it. - Galahad Alter has the Sword of the Strange Hangings, a holy sword that originally belonged to King David. In life, he found the sword during his adventures and was worthy of drawing it from its resting place. - Longinuslanze Testament from Dies Irae can only be wielded by the most charismatic being in the world, and the main Big Bad Reinhard Heydrich fits the lance's requirements. Anyone else who tries to even look at the lance will have their minds burned and their souls erased. Even those who are part of Reinhard's legion who have innate resistance to soul damage have trouble keeping consciousness in its presence. And should anyone unworthy touch the lance then it will erode their existence as long as they remain in contact with it. This last trait have Reinhard weaponized, usually just resting the lance against his victim while he himself holds them still. - In Red vs. Blue, only Tucker can wield the Great Weapon. If anybody else holds it, it turns off and won't turn on until it is returned to Tucker. Later in the series, another of these weapons shows up. It is revealed that these weapons only respond to the first person to find them, until they die, then they transfer to the next person who finds them. - No Evil has the four Tezcatlipoca and Tlaloc's Tuning Fork (which he'd used to break the original Tezcatlipoca mirror). - The Black Tezcatlipoca had to be sealed in the second episode using the Red one because it was enveloping the countryside and forcing everyone it touched into an endless sleep without a wielder. Unfortunately a bitter child raised in the land of the dead proves to be the kind of person it wanted. - The Red Tezcatlipoca, or Judgement Scythe, can only be wielded by one with a strong will and sense of justice. It incinerated a selfish village chief who wanted to use it to gain an advantage over the local spirit, Murder, and then would have swamped the village in lava if Murder hadn't been willing to sacrifice herself to tame it. \|\|In episode 35 it tries to destroy another city after Murder loses her powers and the seal she placed on it is broken. But Kitty essentially scolds it into letting her wield it.\|\| - The Blue, Liberation Machete, neutralizes magic and thus rejects spirits, but it's also too much for mortals to handle. Potentially it could free those caught in the Black, but it's useless without a wielder. - The White Bow of Mercy has yet to choose a wielder, though many have tried. Its' true wielder should be able to use it as a Healing Shiv, but in anyone else's hands it generates Annoying Arrows. - Calamity came to possess the Tuning Fork after passing the Secret Test of Character Tlaloc had set up, but while Tlaloc could use it to cast multiple spells she can only use the hydrokinesis spell. Ichabod can produce lightning while Huey has the tracking spell. - Arthur, King of Time and Space, obviously. In the baseline arc, it's done straight (and straight out of T.H. White); in the space arc the Excalibur is the flagship of the British fleet and can only be activated by a Pendragon bioprint. - In Dragon Mango, the condition, according to the sign is Royal Blood. - This is a core plot element in Erfworld. The Arkentools, powerful magical artifacts, only dislay their full powers when they 'attune' to a character. Possessing an Arkentool does not mean that it will attune, but many characters want to try. - Girl Genius: Only one of the eponymous family can control Castle Heterodyne. The castle itself mentions that many times over history, the Heterodynes have disappeared, and many people have laid claim to the family name. Some were delusional, some were puppets of greater men, and some were honestly wrong. But all non-Heterodynes that were tested for control of the Castle were summarily executed, and their skulls are used to pave a floor in the Castle chapel. There are three tests that one needs to fulfill in order to claim the seat of Heterodyne: Did you inherit the distinctive voice of the previous Heterodynes, the blood of the previous Heterodynes, and the temperament of the previous Heterodynes? If the answer to all these things is "yes," then the Castle will orchestrate the ringing of the Doom Bell to usher in your reign of terror. If the answer to any of them is "no," the Castle at worst will kill you, and at best will refuse to listen (with much the same effect). - Heroine Chic has the literal Excalibur, which can only be wielded by King Arthur — except a loophole in the rules means that the Lady of the Lake (who bestowed the sword on Arthur, and therefore had to be able to wield it) is borrowing the blade and using it to fight crime as the modern superhero Avalon. When Zoe tries to move Avalon's sword in Chapter 2, she finds it is impossible for anyone but Avalon to lift it. - Homestuck has Caledfwlch in it - but it isn't drawn from the stone, but instead snapped out by Dave. - In Kubera, the Sword of Return sits in the Temple of Chaos, waiting for people to attempt to draw it. In fact, the temple was built around the sword. The thing is, the sword has been successfully drawn before, multiple times. There is an annual test where hundreds of people arrive from across the world to try and pull it out; the temple had to institute various tests of strength just to try and weed out the crowds and make the process go faster. Once the sword has bonded to an owner, only that individual may use it, and the only way to give it up is to die (at which point it returns to its resting place in the Temple of Chaos). While the sword was designed to fight sura, ironically most sura can draw it out quite easily. The problem is, the same properties that make it a nightmare against sura (it inhibits Healing Factor) apply to the owner as well, whether they are currently holding the sword or not. - A guy in Oglaf finds a sword in the stone with a sign that reads "Draw the Sword from the Stone and be a King". This being Oglaf: guess why the sign changes to "Draw the King from the Stone and win a Sword". - Parodied in Rusty and Co.. Maddie is told that only the worthy can draw the "enchanted weapon" (a pitchfork) from its haystack. It is however magical — because Maddie can make a weapon magical by thinking it is. - There are several Excaliburs in Sinfest, only one so far has actually been a sword. One was a Legendary Pimp Cane. - Shelly of Wapsi Square is able to pull a literal sword from a stone. What qualifications she has that allowed her to do it have not been revealed yet, but it is implied that many people have failed in the past. - xkcd: - Played with in Yet Another Fantasy Gamer Comic. The wizard proposes a variant of this with an axe, as an alternative to the tourney open to all nobles. Beat Panel ensues. - Open Blue's Back Story has Belramus, a sword said to have been forged from a tooth of the Iormunean Imperium's goddess, Iormunea. Only the leader of the Imperium's Praetorian Guard (who in turn must be descended from the original leader) can/is allowed to wield this. The other blessed weapons used by the Imperial Templar also count. - The Sword of Good instantly kills anything evil it touches. The Ork Wizard slowly bleeding to death should have been a clue. In the end \|\|the so called Big Bad touches the sword to make sure he really deserves ultimate power. However, it is a Subversion - the Sword can only be used by those who truly wish to do good, without taking their actions into account. As The Hero warns the Big Bad, the sword is not an absolute judge of a course of action, simply a judge of character.\|\| - There have been attempts to implement something like this in real life, with the creation of so-called "smart guns". A smart gun will only fire if it recognizes the person holding it as its owner — the thinking is that they would prevent or reduce deaths from stolen firearms and/or misuse. Legal issues, poor reliability, security flaws, and rejection from the military, law enforcement and civilian gun owners alike have kept them from catching on.	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/OnlyTheChosenMayWield
On One Condition - TV Tropes "If I leave a man in my will ten talking elephants and a hundred winged horses, he cannot complain if the conditions partake of the slight eccentricity of the gift. He must not look a winged horse in the mouth." A character learns that a distant relative has passed and bequeathed to them a substantial fortune/estate. There is, of course, a catch in the will that must be obeyed. Should it be violated, everything will pass to another person. The catch is usually one of the following: - The character must spend the night in the deceased's impossibly large mansion, which may or may not be a Haunted House. Either way, expect someone in the will to adopt a transparent ghost disguise (perhaps a bedsheet) and try to disqualify everyone else by scaring them off. - The character is explicitly warned they must not harm "X" — which prompts "X" to move in with them and become a shameless moocher. - The character must marry, either a specific person, or simply marry someone. - The character simply must stay alive, because the will stipulates another will inherit all if anything "unforeseen" happens to the main character. This is usually a setup for said secondary character to try and kill off the primary beneficiary and Make It Look Like an Accident. The catch is essentially a foreshadowed Reset Button to quickly restore the status quo, since making the characters of a show extremely wealthy will almost always kill the inherent drama or central premise of the show by implying that they could simply buy their way out of whatever Zany Scheme they got into. Thus, unless an inheritance is part of the plot from the start, whatever the character inherits, they're going to blow it by the end. They may do so by accident or purposely after deciding Celebrity Is Overrated and no amount of wealth is worth the humiliating restrictions. A common subversion is for the characters to not blow the catch, but end up with nothing because the estate is heavily in debt and is promptly seized by a bank or the IRS for back taxes. Another way to play it is to make the inheritance "worthless", as in a promised collection of "priceless" artwork turns out to be a pile of incomprehensible impressionist scribbles that are only "priceless" in that no one could ever be found who actually wanted to buy them. Or, it could simply be "worth-less", as in they get Great Uncle Beaureguard's $1 million fortune, but it's Confederate money. In Real Life, it would actually be worth a pretty penny to collectors, but obviously no longer worth face value. Another possible ending is for the supposedly dead relative to show up alive, and reveal that the whole affair was a Secret Test of Character. Very likely to overlap with A Fool and His New Money Are Soon Parted. See Also: Never Win the Lottery, Bury Me Not on the Lone Prairie, Scarpia Ultimatum, Game Between Heirs, Prestige Peril, some cases of Divorce Assets Conflict (especially those involving a wacky prenup), and Silly Will. ## Examples: - An ad for a men's clothing store had an old woman's video will bequeath a substantial fortune to her grandson, but only if he starts to dress nicer. He goes to the store being advertised and buys a stylish new wardrobe and returns to the lawyer's office \|\|to find his still-living grandmother waiting for him. She just wanted him to improve his fashion sense.\|\| - The (male) protagonist of Otoboku - Maidens Are Falling For Me is required to attend an all-girls' boarding school to inherit his grandfather's estate. - In episode nineteen of Excel♡Saga, the heir to the gigantic company Atlas Group must go around the world in 80 hours in order to successfully inherit it. And planes are specifically off-limits. - Which is just about impossible, given that this would require traveling at roughly 300 mph, which most land or sea vehicles can't do, and even those that can have to do it in controlled conditions where they won't be crashing into people who aren't driving vehicles that go that fast. - A Japanese variant found in a number of anime series involves the heir to some sort of unwanted family business needing to fulfill the condition to avoid having to devote their life to a career that they hate, or an unwanted arranged marriage. Examples of this include: - W Juliet: Makoto's father is set to inherit the Narita family dojo unless he lives as a girl and successfully hides his true gender until his high school graduation. Only then will he be allowed to become an actor like he wants, instead of running the dojo. - Chou Kuse ni Narisou: Nagisa actually enjoys the martial arts, but also wishes to be free to continue as an Idol Singer. - In Umineko: When They Cry, the weird head of the wealthy Ushiromiya family leaves an enormous fortune in gold to anyone who can solve a strange riddle. The catch is that the riddle describes the ritual to revive the witch who supposedly gave him the gold, and someone's killing off everyone on the island in accordance with it. - In Hanaukyō Maid Team (both series), Ryuuka Jihiyou's grandfather told her she'd succeed him as the head of the Jihiyou family if she marries the head of the Hanaukyo family, Taro Hanaukyo. Despite not (initially) liking Taro, she has no qualms about fulfilling said condition. However, Taro told her he didn't know her enough to know if he'd like to be her husband or not. In order to get him to know her, she decides to become one of his several maids. - The Pokémon: The Original Series episode "Holy Matrimony!" has Jessie, Meowth, and the "twerps" learning that James came from a wealthy family. Not wanting to marry the woman they wanted him to (who happens to look exactly like Jessie), he ran away from home and joined Team Rocket. In that episode, James' parents have mysteriously died and their butler states that, unless James gets married within the next 24 hours, their fortune would go to charity... which he is completely fine with, since he figures it's all an elaborate ruse anyway. It's Jessie and Meowth that force him into the marriage before it's revealed that he was right, and that his parents faked their deaths in order to coerce him. - The setup for The Mystic Archives of Dantalian is this. The protagonist inherits a huge mansion and everything in it from his father; naturally, "everything in it" includes Dalian, who is a talented Doom Magnet (and also a bit of a pest). - Captive Hearts: Suzuka's father made a will stating that, if he died and left no heirs, his estate should be split between his wife and Yoshimi (the butler). While Suzuka and her parents were all officially declared dead, Yoshimi got the whole money until Suzuka was found. - In NAKAIMO - My Little Sister is Among Them!, Shougo Mikadono's father was the leader of a large business conglomerate but has now died and left in his will that Shougo inherits the fortune left behind. The catch is that he has to go to a certain school to meet a suitable wife. While that in itself isn't a big deal, in the first episode a girl talks to him through a high window and claims to be his biological sister. She says she's going to marry him, also attends the same school, and to make matters worse, she won't reveal who she is! So poor Shougo has to figure out which of the many girls clamoring over him is his sister, so as to avoid marrying her. \|\|It's ultimately revealed in the light novels (the anime ended before that point since the novels had yet to finish) that they're Not Blood Siblings — while Konoe, the girl who'd spoken to him, is indeed Kumagoro Mikadono's biological daughter, Shougo is not Kumagoro's biological son. Consequently, they can safely have a relationship.\|\| - Discussed in The Tale of the Three Bears. A character brings up a scenario where a man bequeaths $10 million to be split between his two sons on the condition the sons agree on how much each one will receive otherwise they don't get anything. The eldest son suggests getting $8 million while the youngest gets the remaining two. The character who brings it up asks another character what he'd do in the youngest's place. He answers that he'd rather get nothing than let his brother get more. - One Silver Age Jimmy Olsen story used the Brewster's Millions plot with Jimmy being required to squander a certain amount of money in a limited amount of time, only for all of his attempts to do so just ending up increasing his wealth. - Another story in Action Comics revolves around this. Naturally, there's a twist to it... - World's Finest Comics Issue #99: In "Batman's Super-Spending Spree", Batman suddenly decided to invest one million dollars on seemingly bad ideas; Superman's interference leads to him not only getting his investments back but making a profit, to Batman's dismay. After preventing some crooks' attempt to steal the money, their leader finally explains what's really happening: an eccentric millionaire named Carl Verril, in an effort to get his son Vincent to learn to respect money, bequeathed one million dollars to him on the condition that he spend it all in four days without investing more than one hundred thousand dollars on any one purchase and without making any money. If he does so, he gets ten million dollars. If he doesn't, Carl's nephew Larry gets the ten million. Unfortunately, the very night Vincent was informed of the terms of his father's will, he needed an emergency operation and couldn't spend the money by himself, so he made a deal with Batman: Batman does the spending for him and, in return, Vincent will donate nine million dollars for charity and keep only one million for himself. The lawyer accepted the idea on the condition that Batman never tells anyone why he needs to spend the million dollars. Larry then hired some thugs to steal the money so it won't be spent. After learning all of this, Superman helps Batman by selling him ten trophies of Superman's past adventures for one hundred thousand dollars each — receiving the full million in total. Which he promptly donates to charity. - Disney Ducks Comic Universe: - One Carl Barks Donald Duck story featured Donald learning he's going to inherit one thousand dollars from a relative he never heard about before if he earns another thousand dollars. However, it was a plot by Scrooge McDuck. Donald had previously located a sunken yacht belonging to Scrooge and offered to salvage it for fifty thousand dollars but Scrooge refused to pay more than two thousand dollars for it. \|\|After Scrooge sabotaged Donald's other attempts to earn that money, Donald accepted Scrooge's proposition. To further antagonize Donald, Scrooge saw to it that all conventional means to salvage the yacht would cost Donald three thousand dollars. Donald and his nephews then tried to outsmart Scrooge by buying several loads of ping-pong balls to float the yacht back to the surface. When Donald collected the inheritance, he also learned that it came from Scrooge. For a while, Donald believed he would keep the three thousand dollars but the company that manufactured the ping-pong balls collected the money as payment for them and the collector told them that the company belongs to Scrooge.\|\| - In another Carl Barks story, Scrooge had a pocket watch that happened to be a family heirloom. When one of his relatives died, he was required to present the pocket watch when claiming the inheritance. Scrooge then took it to Gyro Gearloose for repairs (The terms of the will also stated that the pocket watch must be working perfectly when presented to the executors of the will). Gyro noticed that a small stone that used to be encrusted to the watch seemed to be missing but it didn't worry Scrooge, who was used to the empty spot. \|\|The inheritance consisted solely of the stone\|\|. - An Italian Donald Duck story revolves around Donald Duck, Fethry Duck, and Gladstone Gander receiving an inheritance from a distant uncle, who has a secret condition for who will be given his estate, which will be revealed after spending the night in his old castle. Donald and Fethry agree to team up and share the estate to try and offset Gladstone's infuriating luck. After several misadventures during the night, the executor of the will reveals that the uncle wanted his inheritor to be like him; lazy and plagued with bad luck. Donald has bad luck but works hard. Gladstone is lazy but is extremely lucky. So, the inheritance goes to Fethry, who is both lazy and has bad luck. Unfortunately for Fethry and Donald, the estate consists mostly of a massive debt, which won't be covered by selling off its assets, meaning that Gladstone's luck saved him by having him lose the inheritance. - In Die 13 Trilliarden Erbschaft, Scrooge has been missing for so long he's been declared dead. As soon as Donald and Gladstone are informed Scrooge left his fortune to them, they hurry to spend it without listening to the rest of the will. Huey, Dewey, and Louie read it and find out Scrooge, not wanting his nephews to squander his fortune, set a condition preventing them from inheriting his estate until they add one million dollars to it. By the time Donald and Gladstone are informed of that condition, they've already spent nearly that amount. Gladstone \|\|decides to earn that money by selling lottery tickets, offering Scrooge's fortune as the first prize and buying a ticket so he can win. He does win but Scrooge turns out to be alive and is upset that the extra money caused the money bin to collapse. He's entertaining the idea of changing the will to include Huey, Dewey, and Louie as beneficiaries.\|\| - One story of The Cavern Clan featured Pitheco (Piteco) learning his uncle died and left him ten million bucks (Which was unexpected since Pitheco didn't even know his uncle became rich) on the condition that he gets married. He then decided to marry Tooga (Thuga), since the other options were not so attractive. When he was about to get married, the will's executors showed up to tell him that they found out his uncle had secretly got married and left a widow and three kids. Pitheco would only inherit twenty bucks, provided he still gets married. Pitheco promptly declared he'd never change his life for so little. Hurt by this, Tooga hit him and left in tears. The executors then gave Pitheco a letter where his uncle told him he made that will hoping Pitheco would get married and enjoy the life of a family man. Pitheco then commented that now he knew the biggest prize he lost. - In one Archie Comics story, a wealthy alumnus of Riverdale High dies and leaves the school a large sum—provided they win a baseball game with Central. The alumnus was never able to beat the team during his time, and he wanted to 'inspire a victory'. The executor of the will, his granddaughter, even remarked on how stupid the whole thing was, but there you were. While the boys' team loses to Central, Betty points out that the will doesn't say which team needs to beat Central, and Riverdale gets its money when the girls' team wins. - In one story, Pete has to commit no crimes for a year in a row to collect an inheritance. Mickey tries to get him some honest job but there's nothing Pete can do without feeling like taking advantage of the job to pull a scam. In desperation, he turns himself in for a past crime he got away with so he'll spend a whole year in prison, where he'll be unable to commit any crimes. - Wonder Woman Vol 1: In "Andy Gorilla — Prize Pupil", a man's will requires his son, a Mr. Scragg, to have his school meet Ms. Gate's school in a winner-take-all baseball game wherein the losing school must close its doors forever and merge with the other. In order to even compete (since all her school's students are out with the measles), Ms. Gate has to call on her friend Wonder Woman to aid her in the game. - In The Troll's Daughter, the troll's daughter makes a plan to allow her suitor to free her. She advises the hero to enter the service of a king who owes her father money. When the debt is almost due, he is to offer to lend his master the sum on the condition that he goes on the visit dressed as a jester and does anything he wants. Having no recourse, the king is happy to agree. - Fate/Gamers Only: Rikku requests for d'Eon to teach her how to use a rapier, and they agree but have Rikku wear a maid outfit during the training session. - Harry Potter fanfic - In "Harry Prongs Tatum", James Potter's father only allowed James to inherit a part of the Potter fortune. Most of it would only be released if James fulfilled several conditions. Since Voldemort didn't allow James to live long enough, Harry will inherit that money if he fulfills the conditions. - "Heir of Prince": Eileen Prince (Severus Snape's mother) disappointed her family for marrying a muggle. Her father then left the Prince Family's fortune (and the title of Head of the Prince Family) to her son with the stipulation that, if Severus sires a son whose mother is a pureblood, the son will inherit once he becomes seventeen years old. - Sirius Black's will in Harry Breaks Free. - All properties that are no longer on his possession or part of his estate by the time of his death will no longer be part of his will. - All properties bequeathed to beneficiaries who fail to outlive him by 30 days will become part of the remainder of his estate. In cases where said beneficiary is the victim of foul play, the inheritance will instead be dissolved and go to charity. - Any properties encumbered by debts the respective beneficiaries don't want to assume liability for will revert to the remainder of his estate. - Severus Snape stands to inherit 10 books of his choosing from the Black Library but only after Hermione Granger, who stands to inherit 25 books of her choosing, gets her pick. - In Chapter 2 of "Breaking Binds and Living Free", it's revealed that James and Lily bequeathed Albus Dumbledore 300,000 galleons on the condition that Dumbledore didn't send Harry to the Dursleys. Because Dumbledore sent Harry to the Dursleys, he won't inherit more than 30 knuts. - A Naruto fanfic featured a villain who built a hotel in Konoha as cover for his activities. To make sure no guest would find out, he put up prices so high nobody would check in. When a ninja showed up to investigate, said villain (falsely) claimed he'd received an inheritance but has to set up a business to keep it. He explains that he put up high prices because he doesn't want to deal with guests and the will does not specify how good or bad the business must be. - In Coco when a human is being blessed by a dead relative in order to return to the living world, it's possible for the relative to add any condition they want. In Imelda's case, she first insists Miguel go home, put her photo back on the ofrenda, and never play music again; he instantly breaks that. Later, she tries to bless him with the same conditions, but with the alteration to put up Héctor's photo as well, and instead of never playing music again, to never forget how much his family loves him, but is interrupted by Ernesto. She tries one last time with a dying Héctor's assistance just before sunrise, only she gives no conditions this time, and she's successful and Miguel returns home. - In Lucky Luke and the Ballad of the Daltons, the Dalton Brothers (Joe, William, Jack, and Averell) were informed that their Uncle Henry Dalton left them their money on the condition that they kill the judge and the jury that sentenced him to be hanged. Unfortunately, for the Daltons, Uncle Henry also demanded that the Daltons brought Lucky Luke as a witness to confirm the fulfillment of the condition. While the other Daltons were trying to contain the enraged Joe Dalton upon hearing this, the lawyer who informed them of Uncle Henry's death told them that, if they fail, the money will go to charity. \|\|The Daltons agreed to offer Lucky Luke a share of the inheritance in exchange from his help (they were planning to kill him afterwards). Lucky Luke tricked the Daltons into thinking he'd agreed while he actually helped their targets to fake their deaths. At the end, when the Daltons thought they were about to get the money, they actually met the judge and the jurors ready to convict them for the murder attempts with Lucky Luke as witness. The Daltons were sent back to prison and Uncle Henry's money went to the Henry Dalton Foundation, which took care of orphans\|\|. - Millionaire Dogs: Subverted. The pets lose the inheritance if they leave Miss Lily's house for more than 48 hours in a row but the condition was imposed by the law rather than her will. - A variant of this is what provides the conflict for the plot of Toy Story 2. Woody is stolen by a greedy toy collector named Al, discovering that he was once the main character of a popular 1950s western-puppet TV series called Woody's Roundup, and Al plans on selling him and the rest of the collection of dolls based on the main characters (Jessie the cowgirl, Stinky Pete the prospector, and Bullseye the horse) to a famous toy museum in Tokyo, Japan for a huge profit. Woody originally wishes to escape back to Andy immediately, but the only problem is that the museum is only willing to buy the collection if he, the main character and most valuable piece, is in it. Therefore if Woody leaves, not only will the other pieces of the collection not be able to get into the museum, but also will be returned into storage, likely forever. Woody finally comes up with an alternative, \|\|bringing Jessie and Bullseye home with him, while Stinky Pete ends up in a different home, finding himself to be much happier now that he's being loved and played with.\|\| - In Turning Red, Mei and her friends only agree to go to Tyler's birthday party for the money he promises to pay for Mei's panda form to be the entertainment. - Brewster's Millions (1985): Monty Brewster will inherit $300 million only if he can spend $30 million within a single month — without accumulating anything that might be considered as an asset. He can hire anybody and pay them whatever he wants but has to receive actual value in return. He can't give away more than 5% and he can't lose more than 5% gambling. (Which backfires, as one of his insane long-shot bets intended to just squander money ends up winning.) He can't destroy anything inherently valuable (no buying a dozen Picassos and using them as firewood, though he does buy a valuable stamp and use it as actual postage, getting it stamped as canceled). Ultimately, he decides on \|\|running a political campaign... encouraging voters to vote "None of the Above", since winning the actual office would be an asset, and both the other candidates were jackasses. The campaign succeeds (and the jackasses he was running against, seeing the writing on the wall, decide not to stand for the follow-up election), but he comes up short by $100,000. Right before the time limit runs out, one of his relatives contests the will. Monty hires his love interest to defend him in the case... paying her a $100,000 retainer.\|\| - In the rom-com The Bachelor, Jimmie Shannon will inherit his cynical, progeny-obsessed grandfather's $100 million if he gets married before his 30th birthday, which will arrive in less than 24 hours from the reading of the will. So that he should remain an admirable romantic lead and not motivated by greed, it is made clear that if he doesn't fulfill the condition, the sporting-goods factory where he works will be shut down and its assets sold off, throwing hundreds of people he knows out of work. - This is the plot of the Rodney Dangerfield movie, Easy Money. Working-class hedonist Rodney's ultra-wealthy mother-in-law leaves all of her money to him — so long as he cleans up his act, giving up drugs, drinking, smoking, gambling, overeating and sleeping around. Since it's a movie, again, no need for the Reset Button, permitting him to succeed at meeting the challenge. Then his MIL turns up alive, saying that he gets to keep the money, anyway, so long as he remains on the straight and narrow; he ends up living a double life of smoking and drinking while playing poker with his buddies in the basement. - William Castle's "B" horror film House on Haunted Hill (1959) has the spending-the-night-in-a-haunted-house version. However, in this case, the millionaire in question (played by Vincent Price) isn't dead or dying, just highly eccentric. \|\|And it's all part of an Evil Plan to murder his wife.\|\| - \|\|His wife is also using the party as part of her own Evil Plan to murder him.\|\| - Dave Coulier in the Christmas movie The Family Holiday. His uncle leaves him ten million dollars on the condition that Dave must prove that he is married, has a family, and is working a legitimate job. He scams his best friend into getting him a job at a novelty toy factory, hires a brother/sister pair of runaways, and tricks a recently laid-off tutor into working for him but doesn't tell her that she's supposed to be his "wife" or the kids' "mom". Hilarity Ensues. \|\|Of course, Dave earns his inheritance. However, his uncle knew that Dave would lie to get the money, and so the executor of the estate—his uncle's 2nd wife, set up this elaborate ruse complete with social workers and cops, to make sure that Dave really cared about others. He is given the check but he rips it up. Only after he marries the tutor, gets the kids formally adopted, and keeps his job at the factory, his step-aunt gives him the money.\|\| - The Buster Keaton movie Seven Chances (1925) has Buster inheriting seven million dollars if he marries before 7 p.m. on his 27th birthday — which just happens to be that very day... - In The Richest Cat in the World, a millionaire named Oscar Kohlmeyer left his cat five million dollars and, in a failed attempt to discourage his nephew from contesting the will, left the nephew twenty-five thousand dollars on the condition the nephew doesn't contest it. Unfortunately, the nephew was a pushover whose wife forced him to contest \|\|and blamed him for losing the twenty-five thousand dollars\|\|. - Kevin Manley, the protagonist of Kevin of the North, was named his Grandfather's sole heir on the condition that he enters the yearly Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race and makes it to the finish line, all of it before one year has passed from his Grandfather's death. Interested in the Grandfather's gold, Clive Thornton, the lawyer who read the will, tried to make sure Kevin would fail. \|\|Kevin not only made it to the finish but also won the race.\|\| - A Three Stooges short, Brideless Groom, featured Shemp trying to get married on short notice to satisfy the must-be-married clause in an inheritance. Hilarity Ensues when the ceremony is crashed in unison by his ex-girlfriends when they hear about the money. - A condensed version of Brideless Groom, complete with footage, was reused in Husbands Beware, except this time, there was no relative and no will and the whole thing was revenge by Larry and Moe on Shemp for getting them married to his sisters. - The Hudsucker Proxy: Mr. Hudsucker made a will leaving his shares of Hudsucker Industries (81% of the company) to the first person who replaces him as the company's CEO. - Occurs in Laughter in Paradise (later remade in 1970 as Some Will, Some Won't). Wealthy, well-known practical joker Henry Russell dies, leaving considerable sums of money to four relatives...provided they commit acts completely contrary to their natures. A law-abider has to get himself arrested and jailed for 28 days, a snob has to find work as a maid and keep her job long enough to qualify, a womanizing cad has to marry the first single woman he meets, and a meek and submissive coward has to hold up the bank where he works with a toy pistol. \|\|All of them fulfilled their respective conditions but learned Henry Russell wasn't so wealthy and just hoped their experiences from this would change them for the better\|\|. - Occurs in Disney Channel movie Rip Girls. A girl named Sydney Miller inherited a valuable piece of land on a Hawaiian island. According to the terms of the will, she must go to that island to claim her inheritance in person and stay in there for two whole weeks before being allowed to do anything with the land. - Young Frankenstein: A deleted scene (kept intact in the novelization) explains how Frederick inherited the estate of his very distant and disliked great-grandfather: said Baron Frankenstein had left his estate to his much closer relatives, naming each of them specifically, to be divided up evenly, unless Frederick had of his own choosing become a doctor and achieved some esteem in his field. As this had indeed happened, all the money and property went to him. The idea was that the Baron wanted to give his inheritance to someone who would have some chance of erasing the stain on his family name. Baron Frankenstein left instructions to prevent his will's contents from being disclosed until a hundred years after he was born, meaning Frederick had until then to fulfill the condition. - The 1973 Black Comedy Arnold has a Gold Digger who marries the eponymous man — despite his being dead — and inherits his money as a stipend provided she stays by the corpse (embalmed, in an open coffin). Much of the film is taken up with Arnold's greedy relatives being killed off in... creative ways. - In The Old Dark House (1963), the Femm family's pirate ancestor, wanting to make sure that no one in his family would turn to piracy like he did, deemed in his will that each member his family is required return to their ancestral home by midnight, or they'll forfeit their share of their ancestor's fortune. The will also forbids the house's sale; the only way to break its conditions without losing the money is for the house to be destroyed, and it was specifically constructed to make this impossible (the walls are built of basalt, so nothing short of a volcanic eruption could bring the place down). - In the 2016 Brazilian comedy Tô Ryca! note : Another adaptation of Brewster's Millions, the plot is centered on Selminha attempting to fulfill the challenge of her dead relative's will in order to get the fortune: spending 30 million in 30 days, without accumulating any and not telling anyone. After the ending, we see a recording from said dead relative, in which he brings up "the reason behind that challenge". But then he starts a coughing fit before he can say it, and then the actress just breaks character. - Gleahan and the Knaves of Industry: A variant. Nathaniel \|\|promises the Johnson Brewing and Mining Company to Derek if he can capture Gleahan.\|\| - The Invisible Man (2020): According to promotional material, Cecelia must prove herself mentally sane in order to inherit the money her ex-boyfriend Adrian Griffin left her. \|\|A condition she cannot fulfill because Griffin, the titular invisible man and a manipulative Yandere, makes her look paranoid with his relentless campaign of terror in the hopes that if she is legally declared crazy and penniless she will have no choice but to depend on him again.\|\| - In Curse of the Headless Horseman, there is a codicil to Uncle Callahan's will that says Mark must make the ranch financially successful with six months in order for him to retain possession of it. - Robert A. Heinlein's The Number of the Beast had a character named Zebadiah Carter. It turns out his grandfather Zachariah had left a large inheritance, with two conditions: (for the males, at least) They had to have a name starting with Z, and they had to hold assets equal to the amount they would receive. (So if you got wealthy, it'd make you twice as wealthy. If you didn't get wealthy, you got nothing) - In Doorways in the Sand by Roger Zelazny, the protagonist's uncle has set up a fund that will pay for his living as long as he remains a full-time undergraduate—anything left from the fund after he graduates will be donated to the Irish Republican Army. The book opens when he's in his early thirties, having been in college for thirteen years. - The 1969 British TV series Doctor in the House also has an eternal student like this. In his case, it was a poorly worded clause in his aunt's that provided him with an income while he was studying medicine. However, there was no time limit placed upon it, and he quickly worked out that so long as he remained at university studying medicine, he would receive a guaranteed income. - Last to Die by James Grippando features a millionaire who left his considerable fortune in trust with the stipulation that the last surviving member of a particular group of people would inherit the entire amount (in short, a Tontine). He did it because he hated all of the prospective heirs and wanted them to fight one another for the money. - The Isaac Asimov Black Widowers story "To the Barest". The founder of the Black Widowers, Ralph Ottur, dies and leaves a will requiring them to solve a pun riddle. They must determine which of them is the "barest", and that person gets $10,000. solution : The solution turns out to be a pun on barest as "most bear like". Using the archaic term bruin for bear, this means the money goes to a character called Rubin. If they fail, the money will go to the American Nazi Party. (The kicker here is that Ralph Ottur hated the American Nazi Party. He picked them as the next-in-line heir to make sure the living Black Widowers put enough effort into solving the riddle.) - Another case shows up in The Curious Omission, where one of the group must discover "the curious omission in Alice" to inherit $10,000. The answer is \|\|found in Through the Looking Glass, and What Alice Found There - of all the different types of chess piece, there are no bishops\|\|. - Lord Peter Wimsey: - One Lord Peter Wimsey story turned on a will by which The Unfavorite son inherited until his father was buried, whereupon it would all pass to the other son. Friends of The Un-Favorite stole the body to prevent burial, Lord Peter discovers the will in a book, family disputes erupt, and the final touch is Lord Peter's deducing that from the water stain in the book but not the will, that the other son had hidden the will so The Unfavorite would not find out about the condition in time. - Another Peter Wimsey story featured an old man who disapproved of his niece's seriousness and so wrote a will disinheriting her unless she solved a crossword puzzle to find the location of his final will leaving everything to her. - The Cat Who... Series: - In book #4 ( The Cat Who Saw Red), when Qwill learns the origins of Maus Haus, he finds it was a result of this trope. Hugh Penniman conceived the building as an arts center and, in his will, said that under its new owner, it must continue to serve the arts. After Penniman's sons declined it based on the condition, it passed to Hugh's niece and subsequently to her husband, Hugh's nephew-in-law Robert Maus, who solved this by renting the studios to gourmets (gastronomy being considered an art by its practitioner) and reactivating the old pottery operation. However, as demonstrated in the start of The Cat Who Played Brahms, the clause didn't forbid him from eventually selling the property to a developer who wanted to tear it down and build a high-rise apartment on the spot. - In book #5 ( The Cat Who Played Brahms), when his Aunt Fanny dies, Qwill finds he can only inherit the Klingenschoen money if he remains a resident of Moose County for five years. The next book clarifies that leaving sooner than that would mean that the money would be turned over to a syndicate in New Jersey. "Leaving" also includes his death, which makes him a potential target. When he makes it to the five-year benchmark in book 13, he throws a celebration. - Played dead serious in Iron Fist, where one of the provisions of \|\|Phanan\|\|'s will is that \|\|Face has to get his scar removed\|\|. Also, interestingly enough, it is explained in complete detail why this is necessary: \|\|The scar was a key part of Face's backstory, and Phanan was trying to force him to move on from his past.\|\| - One of O. Henry's stories featured a young man addicted to gambling who was granted his inheritance on the condition that he does not gamble for a set period. On the last day of his abstinence, he learns that the inheritance will instead go to a pretty young female relative should he fail. Of course, his next action is to go into the lawyer's office and solemnly proclaim that he just finished betting on the horses and that he was yielding the inheritance. - Discworld: - In Making Money, Mrs. Lavish, the primary stakeholder of the Royal Bank of Ankh-Morpork dies and leaves all her shares to her dog, Mr. Fusspot — and leaves the dog to Moist von Lipwig, with a retainer of ten thousand dollars a year "for being so kind as to look after her poor little doggie" — oh, and if the dog dies in any untoward way, a contract with the Guild of Assassins on Moist's life immediately goes into effect. This wouldn't be such a big deal if not for the fact that Mrs. Lavish's horrible stepchildren inherit the shares if Mr. Fusspot dies... note : There's another advantage — the Assassin's Guild will not take a second contract out on someone, technically granting Moist some slight degree of safety. Also, no self-respecting Assassin would even consider accepting a contract on a dog, so Mr. Fusspot is safe on that end, too. - Moving Pictures possibly as a reference to Doorways in the Sand (see above). Victor is left a large yearly sum while he is at the Unseen University studying to become a wizard with the caveat that he never scores under 80% on his exams, to ensure that he actually tries. However, Victor very carefully scores above 80 but too low to pass, to avoid having to deal with the stress and danger of being a full wizard (and the fact that the bequest ends once he graduates). The wizards eventually catch on (the time he passed and told the university he'd actually got a question wrong was a hint), and give him an exam with only one question: What is your name? \|\|Victor winds up leaving the university and not taking the test anyway; he heads off to Holy Wood instead\|\|, so when fellow student Ponder Stibbons needs a new exam paper the examiner just gives him the one from Victor's desk. - Unseen Academicals begins with one of these, with the variant that the money is left to a university rather than an individual. The bequest from the Bigger estate will revert to the family unless the university plays in a game of Foot-the-Ball, or Poore Boys' Funne, within a specified time, and Ponder notices that they haven't played a game in so long that they're nearly out of time to play one before the bequest reverts. It's paying for a lot of the food budget, so the wizards have to take it seriously. - It's revealed in one of the Edgar & Ellen books that Augustus Nod, the founder of Nod's Limbs, left his entire fortune to whoever finds the original limbs of the statue erected to him. (\|\| Nod stole them himself.\|\|) They're eventually found by \|\|Edgar and Ellen\|\|, who will inherit it \|\|once he dies.\|\| - Sam the Cat: Detective: Prior to The Great Catsby, enthusiastic amateur musician JJ Smythington inherited billions from his uncle on the condition that he live in the countryside and host fundraisers for a charity foundation. Instead, JJ went on tour with a rock band and hired Ted Parker (Catsby's owner) to assume his identity while JJ uses Ted's name. This lets JJ follow his musical dreams while Ted raises money for the worthy causes JJ's uncle supported. - Sidney Sheldon book Bloodline features a pharmaceutical company named Roffe & Sons, which founder saw to it that his heirs wouldn't be able to sell their shares of the company unless all of them agreed to do it. - Brewster's Millions: Montgomery Brewster must be penniless by the day he becomes 26 years old in order to inherit his uncle James T. Sedgwick's seven-million-dollar estate. And he can't simply give away whatever he had before. Even while attempting to become penniless, Montgomery must show some business skills. Donations to charity mustn't go far beyond the usually donated by other rich people. It doesn't help things that, by the time Montgomery Brewster was informed of his uncle's death and wealth, it was a little less than one year from the deadline and he had already inherited one million dollars from his paternal grandfather Edwin P. Brewster, who was the reason of Uncle James' unusual set of conditions — James Sedgwick hated Edwin Brewster to the point of not wanting his heir to have anything that came from Edwin in any way. This was also the reason Sedgwick wouldn't allow his nephew to simply donate Edwin's inheritance away: he believed Edwin Brewster would be remembered and praised for this. - One of the short stories in Steve Aylett's Crime Studio is based around and plays with this: a venerable spinster with a significant fortune dies, and several of Beerlight's criminal artistes are known to be (potential) beneficiaries of her will. In the run-up to the will being read, all of them, independently, break into her lawyer's offices and alter the will in their favour. The lawyer sees through all the forgeries and alterations with ease (one was written in crayon), and reads the original, unaltered version: everyone was verbally abused, and her entire estate was to be shared equally between any beneficiaries still alive after a week from the reading. A large battle ensues; \|\|by the time the week is up, none of the named beneficiaries has died, and the lawyer has absconded with everything, and not as legal fees\|\|. - The Dandee Diamond Mystery: The benefactor leaves the diamond to whoever deserves it the most. As this is an interactive book, it has several endings. \|\|Some of them have a note with the diamond stating the one who found it was the one who deserved it the most. One states the benefactor's parrot deserves the diamond. One shows that the benefactor faked his death to see how far his relatives would go for the diamond and he stated he's the only one who deserves the diamond. The other endings simply don't have it stated\|\|. - In the Sherlock Holmes story "The Three Garridebs", a will stipulates that a man with the extremely rare surname Garrideb will inherit a property provided that he can find two other people with the same surname. The property will be split between the three of them. However, just two Garridebs would get nothing. \|\|The trope is subverted when it turns out that the villain made the entire thing up.\|\| - In the Harlequin novel Will and a Way by Nora Roberts, the two main characters are cousins (though not by blood, of course) who have never gotten along. When an extremely wealthy and beloved great uncle of theirs dies he leaves them everything, because they were the only ones in the family who ever cared about him before he died. The only condition is that they have to live together in his house for six months and try to get along. If they fail, his estate will be evenly divided upon the rest of the family, who are all very unpleasant people. The uncle's main goal with this, apart from making sure his estate was in good hands, was of course to get them together. - Oliver Twist: It is revealed that Oliver's father had left him an enormous fortune which he would only inherit if he maintained a clean record throughout his youth, or else it would go to his half-brother Monks. \|\|This is why Monks had pressured Fagin to take Oliver in as one of his thieves.\|\| Because Oliver's mother was still pregnant with him by the time his father wrote that will, he added a clause that would exempt Oliver from that condition had Oliver been a girl instead of a boy. - In the teen novel The V Club, a wealthy woman leaves money that would provide a full scholarship to one lucky high school student, on the condition that this student be "pure," which everyone interprets as "must be a virgin." (Neither the deceased woman herself nor her attorney specified what exactly she meant by "pure;" everyone just assumed she meant virginal.) The students who are vying for the scholarship join a club (and losing one's virginity means being kicked out) and take a pledge to abstain from sex. \|\|Not everyone competing for the scholarship actually is a virgin, however.\|\| - Kiki Strike: Ananka received an inheritance she's not allowed to spend on anything other than educational fees. - In the twentieth Tantei Team KZ Jiken Note novel The Youkai Computer Knows, Shinobu Nanaki is the heir apparent of an old family and will inherit the family fortune at 20, on the condition that he doesn't leave his house before that point. He doesn't mind this arrangement, but Aya, recalling her Friendless Background, finds this appalling. \|\|Rendered completely moot at the end of that novel, due to the bankruptcy of the family.\|\| - A few Georgette Heyer novels involve a marriage/inheritance condition. In Fridays Child, the hero can't touch his fortune until he turns 25— or until he marries. He responds by marrying the first woman he sees. In Cotillion, the heroine will inherit her miserly foster fathers entire fortune—but only if she marries one of his great-nephews. note : Since the dramatic date is long before the Married Womens Property act, this really means that whichever of the grand-nephews marries the girl will inherit everything. - Bag of Bones: In an attempt to keep his daughter-in-law Mattie, and thus his granddaughter Kyra, on the TR after his death, Devore leaves Mattie 80 million dollars on the condition that she remains on the TR for one year after Devore's passing. She is allowed to go on day trips but has to make sure she spends every single night on the TR. Lawyer John Storrow assures Mattie's friend Mike however that such a condition can never legally be enforced. - Johnny Dixon series: In The Chessmen of Doom, Professor Childermass will only inherit his late brother Perry's estate (and 10 million dollars) if he stays there for the summer (June 15 to Labor Day) and keeps the place in shape without any paid help (though apparently hiring someone to fix the furnace doesn't count). He winds up violating the terms of the will by going home early, stating that the money isn't worth the risk of sticking around and possibly getting killed by the Evil Wizard Edmund Stallybrass. However, he does get twenty thousand dollars as a consolation prize. The Hand of the Necromancer adds that Perry also bequeathed him some magical items once owned by the wizard Esdrias Blackleach, with no conditions attached, though the items came with their own set of dangers. - Commonly seen in retellings of Around the World in Eighty Days, which changes the purpose of the titular journey from The Bet to this trope. - Family Skeleton Mysteries: In book 3, the origin of McQuaid University is revealed — after Persephone McQuaid died, attendance at the school she'd founded (the McQuaid School of Art) had dropped off to the point where the family gave the building and land to the town of Pennycross to use for a university with two conditions: first, both the building and university kept the McQuaid name. Second, the land they gave to Pennycross has to remain in use as part of the university, and if it doesn't, McQuaid Hall, the university's entrance, most of the quad and parts of two other buildings will all revert to the McQuaid family. Using McQuaid Hall for their annual haunted house event has kept the property from reverting, but if the haunted house doesn't reopen in a timely manner, the McQuaid family can reclaim it all, which would be a massive problem for the university. \|\|Eventually, the rightful heir to the property does reclaim it... but then donates it to the university permanently, with the conditions that it's renamed the Dana Fenton Building (after his wife) and is converted into office space for the college's adjunct professors.\|\| - In Chelsea M. Cameron's Marriage of Unconvenience, Lauren "Lo" Bowman needs money fast because she can't make ends meet at the moment. Fortunately, her grandmother left her a grand inheritance in her will. Unfortunately, grammy left the stipulation that Lo needed to be married before being eligible to collect. The will didn't specify that the suitor needed to be male, though, so enter Lo's best friend from childhood Cara Simms, who is also in need of money (for grad school in her case), so the two decide to enter a Marriage of Convenience so Lo can get the money, split it, and get the marriage annulled. Guess what happens. - The Cat in the Stacks Mysteries: - In book 2 ( Classified As Murder), James Delacorte's will leaves a sum to his sister Daphne on the condition that she use it to move into an assisted-living facility. Otherwise she gets nothing. - In book 2 of the Southern Ladies Mysteries spinoff series, it's explained that Sondra Delevan's late father left her a large sum of money, which she'll receive when she marries (but only if she's 20 or older at the time — if she marries before she turns twenty, she gets nothing) or when she turns 25, whichever comes first. Having gotten pregnant at the age of seventeen, she refused to marry the child's father, being more interested in making sure she'd get the money. \|\|She never does get it, seeing as she's the main murder victim of the book.\|\| - In Medusa's Web, Scott and Madeline Madden return to the strange house where they were raised by their Aunt Amity after she unexpectedly leaves her property to them on condition they live there for a week. That means dealing with their cousins Claimayne and Ariel, who aren't happy about having their home unexpectedly willed away to the relatives who left years ago and never came to visit. \|\|It turns out that Aunt Amity had an unpleasant ulterior motive, and there are various supernatural shenanigans that culminate in the house burning to the ground before the week is up. By that point, the surviving members of the family are not at all sorry to see it go.\|\| - Twilight Where Darkness Begins: In book #6 ( Voices in the Dark), Christie Moncrieff's grandfather leaves her family his land in Iowa, but on the condition that they have to live there. Naturally, supernatural happenings begin soon afterward and have to be dealt with. - In order for Avery Grumbs from The Inheritance Games to inherit Tobias Hawthorne's fortune (in the neighborhood of billions of dollars) she is required to move into and live at Hawthorne House for one year. With the family he basically disinherited and left what amounts to bread crumbs in comparison. The problem is that Avery would rather not be stuck in this situation to begin with and only agrees as otherwise the entire fortune, including what the family members got, would go to charity. \|\|Then one of the family members discovers a Loophole Abuse that would leave them the family foundation if Avery dies before the year is up and tries to invoke it.\|\| - In "Million-Dollar Somersaults" (from the collection In Mexico They Say), a Marquis adopts one of his poor relatives, a little girl named Paz, and spends a lot of time worrying about her pride and standoffishness as she grows up. By the time he dies, he's come up with a plan he thinks will work: in order to inherit his wealth, Paz has to dress her finest, drive to the square, where everyone will be having a party, and turn three somersaults. Despite her humiliation, Paz doesn't want to return to poverty and goes to do as her uncle asks. \|\|She does realize how silly and obnoxious she's been and the town's other young ladies forgive her.\|\| - James Bond: In the John Gardner novel Role of Honour, as part of his sudden quarter-million pound inheritance, Bond is required to spend at least one hundred thousand pounds of it in a "frivolous and extravagant manner" within the first four months of getting it (apparently Uncle Bruce had a sense of humor). He spends most of the required sum on a new Bentley Mulsanne Turbo, and the remaining thirty thousand on friends (mostly female) and himself, including on gambling sprees. - "Mr. Bovey's Unexpected Will", by Elizabeth Thomasina Meade Smith (writing as L. T. Meade), has Miss Florence Cusack witnessing an unusual one — there are three potential claimants, and whomever's weight is closest to the weight of the dead man's fortune in gold sovereigns (180 pounds) will receive the whole amount. - Aunt Dimity: In the series opener, Lori Shepherd learns that her "Aunt" Dimity, whom she'd always thought was a character her mother made up for her stories, was a real person — Dimity Westwood, who's recently died and left Lori a bequest of $10,000. However, in order to inherit, she must go to Dimity's old home (a honey-coloured stone cottage near the village of Finch, said to be in the Cotswolds), search through Dimity's decades-long correspondence with Lori's mother, and write an introduction to a soon-to-be-published collection of the "Aunt Dimity" stories, with attorney Willis Sr. checking up on her progress via phone and his son Bill accompanying her to England. The condition isn't particularly onerous, since Lori has help and her expenses are fully covered, including anything that might distract her (like her credit card bills). - Live-action variant: the one-off Fast Show special "Ted and Ralph" concerned a previously-unknown legal stipulation coming to light that Ralph will lose his entire fortune if he is unmarried by a certain age (which, of course, is almost upon him). The variation here is that Ralph already had vast wealth, and the episode detailed his attempts to not lose it. - Muppets Tonight - Parodied in one episode in which the guest star's character will inherit a "fortune" of "eighty-five dollars" provided that he is married to a beautiful woman. Miss Piggy happens to walk in the door at that point... - In one "The Tubmans of Porksmith" sketch, Howard Tubman learns that his great-aunt has left him a ten million dollar inheritance on the condition that he loses a large amount of weight by a certain date... which happens to be the exact same day he hears about her death. Cue Howard rushing to his treadmill and desperately trying to burn off the pounds, only to destroy the machine and be thrown off instead. His butler Carter then enters and reveals that his aunt somehow recovered from being dead (she was apparently very stubborn), which cancels the deal — but Howard shrugs it off and requests that Carter prepare chicken and dumplings to appease his exercise-driven appetite. - It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia — Dennis & Dee's mother dies and leaves Dennis her mansion under the condition that their assumed father Frank never be allowed on the property. But because all the money was left to Dennis & Dee's biological father Bruce, Dee and Frank try to scheme him out of it. He sees through their scheme immediately, and the resultant game of Zany Scheme Chicken eventually results in Frank ending up at the mansion. - Rose on The Golden Girls was bequeathed $100,000 to take care of her late uncle's favorite pig for the rest of his (the pig's) life. When the pig fell ill, the vet believed he was just homesick, so the girls gave up the money and passed him on to another relative back in Minnesota, only to have the pig die of old age 36 hours later. - On The Drew Carey Show, the episode "Drew's Inheritance" saw his Uncle Cecil setting the prerequisite of Drew getting married in 72 hours from the reading of the will, purely because in life he was a big fan of movie plots in general. He and Kate would have gotten away with either a fake marriage or a real one if it weren't for their two meddling idiot-friends. - Father Ted — Father Jack has left IR£500,000 to Ted and Dougal providing they spend the night before the funeral with Jack, owing to Jack's fear of being buried alive. \|\|Turns out Jack was justified in his fear as he was Not Quite Dead. Although, he could have fooled a lot of people due to lack of pulse, Rigor Mortis, decomposition... There was no guarantee that the Reset Button would be pressed as it was broadcast as the last of that series and was filmed as the pilot.\|\| This could count as a subversion as it wasn't the 'one condition' that Ted and Dougal failed on, it was the 'priority condition': \|\|the author of the will wasn't dead!\|\| - After Aunt Fran dies on Mama's Family, Thelma learns that she possessed a secret fortune, which she has willed to Thelma. The catch? The notoriously cantankerous Thelma must avoid losing her temper for two weeks, or else the money will go to Fran's favorite charity. - The Twilight Zone (1959): - The episode "The Masks" has a dying millionaire inviting his greedy relatives to a Mardi Gras party and stipulating that in order to inherit his money, each will have to don a hideously grotesque mask revealing his or her true character. Despite some moaning and groaning, the family makes it through the night. \|\|Only to discover that the masks have warped their faces to be perfect replicas of the masks, leaving them very rich but having to live in shadow for the rest of their lives.\|\| - "Uncle Simon" was even more vicious. The titular character is looked after by his niece, who comes to resent his gruffness toward her and eventually kills him by making him fall down the stairs. Uncle Simon, apparently aware that she was interested only in his money, names the young woman the sole beneficiary of his large estate — with the condition that she look after his last project: a robot. As time passes, the robot takes on more and more of Uncle Simon's old habits, prompting the niece to try to destroy it... only to discover that it can't be done. She realizes that she's now stuck with a functionally immortal (24/7, in fact) version of her uncle — and if she doesn't want to forfeit to his alma mater, she'll have to stay with him forever. As far as she's concerned, it's well Worth It. - After one of Al's relatives died on Married... with Children, his will stated that whoever bears a baby boy (in wedlock) and names it after him will get half a million dollars. Unfortunately for Al, Peggy was taking birth control behind his back and the inheritance goes to the lawyer and Al's imprisoned relative. \|\|Al got his revenge by altering the results of a pregnancy test to trick Peggy into thinking she got pregnant anyway. He claimed half a million dollars wouldn't pay that fun.\|\| - Casseta&Planeta segment "O Diário de Um Macho" (A Macho Man's Diary) had an episode where the protagonist (Carlos Maçaranduba) and his twin brother learned their father left his fortune to the first one of them to get married. \|\|The protagonist's brother got the inheritance\|\|. - One sketch of Os Trapalhoes featured a woman who could only claim the inheritance her Grandfather left her if her husband were with her while she claimed it. Because he was missing and the lawyer knows what he looks like, she tried to deceive the lawyer with someone who looks like her husband. - In Brazilian soap-opera Caras e Bocas, the founder of a prosperous diamond-mining company left 31% of the company's shares to his granddaughter on the condition that she got married and 10% to whoever she marries. He also stipulated that, if she never got married, the 10% would go to her illegitimate daughter. - In one episode of El Chapulín Colorado, a man and his wife went to his late grandfather's house because there was a clause in the will stating that he must spend a night there to claim it. The grandfather had a butler and a maid, both of whom tried to scare away the couple to get the house. \|\|The plan failed but the couple, feeling they didn't need the house, let the butler and the maid keep it\|\|. - In one episode of The Nanny, Maxwell Sheffield learned that his brother Nigel bought a nightclub. Because of that, Maxwell commented that Nigel shouldn't have been allowed to use his inheritance before becoming 30 years old. Overhearing this, Maxwell's son Brighton becomes sad at the prospect of not receiving his inheritance before turning 30. To comfort him, Fran pointed out that, once he's 30 years old, he'll be rich while, once she's 30 years old, she'll be 40. - In the Community episode "Digital Estate Planning", Pierce Hawthorne and seven of his friends had to play and win a multiplayer game developed by his father or Pierce would lose the inheritance. Whoever wins gets the entire fortune, even if it isn't Pierce. The group subverts the dead man's agenda by agreeing that whoever wins will just hand it over to Pierce of course. However, since Pierce only has six friends, that leaves an empty seat for his late father's personal assistant, Gilbert Lawson, to sneak into the game with the intent of stealing the inheritance (because he was secretly Pierce's illegitimate, mixed-race, half-brother). Unfortunately for Gilbert, their father anticipated this turn of events and prepared an additional clause just for him, requiring that he signs a document agreeing not to reveal he's Cornelius Hawthorne's son. If Lawson doesn't, it goes back to Pierce anyway. In the end, Pierce and his half-brother share the fortune and discover they are happy to be brothers. - \|\|Pierce\|\| leaves millions of dollars to Troy on the condition that he circumnavigate the globe in his yacht. Additionally, all of the study group is required to answer a series of questions while hooked up to lie detectors to receive their part of the inheritance without knowing what they'll receive, ostensibly to ensure they had no part in his death. - Inverted in The Bleak Old Shop Of Stuff, where Jederington desperately tries to fulfill the one condition that will prevent him being his grandfather's heir since the inheritance is a huge debt. - In Brazilian soap opera Guerra dos Sexos, Otávio and his cousin Charlô inherited a mansion and a store chain from their Uncle Enrico on the condition they do not sell or otherwise negotiate the mansion or the store chain unless all parties involved are family, which basically forced Charlô and Otávio to become business partners. The problem: Charlô and Otávio were Kissing Cousins until it ended in an unfriendly way. Decades later, a remake of the soap opera was produced. Instead of inheriting from Uncle Enrico, they inherited from an uncle and an aunt portrayed by the actor and the actress who portrayed Otávio and Charlô in the original soap opera. The condition is the same and Charlô commented about their uncle and aunt imposing the same condition as their Uncle Enrico. - An episode of Los Espookys is centered on an inheritance scare, wherein five strangers have to survive the night in a "haunted" mansion to receive a millionaire's inheritance while the titular group try to scare them away. - The Broad City episode "Jews on a Plane" has an openly and proudly gay man who's looking for a nice Jewish girl to marry so he can access his trust fund. - The Millionaire, episode "The Uncle Robby Story": Robert Chesley's will leaves all his money to his niece and her husband with a condition that any portion of it they don't spend on their honeymoon will instead go to another relative they both dislike. It's not meant unkindly; Uncle Robby isn't rich and expects to leave his favorite relatives just enough for a nice time, with the penalty only included because he knows that otherwise they're likely to donate a windfall to charity instead of treating themselves. Then he's given a million dollars by an eccentric philanthropist (the millionaire of the title) and promptly dies before he has a chance to change the will... - The Twilight Zone (1985): In "A Game of Pool", Jesse Cardiff laments that he will never be regarded as the greatest pool player as long as people compare him to the deceased Fats Brown and wishes that he could play a game against him to settle the question once and for all. Fats' ghost then appears and agrees to play one game of pool with Jesse on condition that Jesse will die if he loses. Although he is initially reluctant, Jesse accepts. \|\|Jesse loses the game and expects to die immediately. However, Fats reveals that he meant that Jesse would die forgotten, as is the destiny of all second-raters.\|\| - The video for "Are You Ready For Freddy" by the Fat Boys begins with Prince Markie Dee inheriting a mansion from his Uncle Frederick (a.k.a. Freddy Krueger) on the condition that he spend one night inside the building. - The musical Lucky Stiff focuses on Harry Witherspoon, an English shoe salesman who will inherit six million if he meets the terms of his dead uncle's will. Of course, the terms aren't ordinary: Harry must take his dead uncle's preserved corpse around Monte Carlo for a week. And if Harry fails to get one little condition right, the money defaults to his uncle's favorite charity. - In The Cat and the Canary, a codicil in Cyrus West's will stipulates that another stands to inherit if the heir "be proved of unsound mind." The identity of the next heir is kept secret, which leaves it a mystery just who is determined to drive the favored heir insane. - The Pajama Party Murders has a twofer in that the inheritance is to be split among all heirs who spend the evening in the Cosmo manor. The Video Will than clarifies that it is to be split among the survivors. - In The Music Man, "Old Miser" Madison, the richest man in River City, wills all of his extensive land holdings (which include the local park, gymnasium, etc.) to the town after his death. One of the properties he donates is the library, but the will explicitly points out that he's only giving the city the building itself. The books inside the library are instead bequeathed to Marion Paroo, who was the only person who showed Madison any kindness during his life; it's implied that Madison did this because everyone in River City thinks that Marion is an uppity snob, so he shrewdly arranged the deal to make sure that she would always have a job there. - Hollywood Hijinx is a quest for 10 treasures hidden in and around your aunt and uncle's sprawling in order to inherit their estate. - In the NES game Wall Street Kid, you play as the one surviving heir to a rich uncle, who stands to inherit his fortune, provided you can prove you can live the wealthy life. You are given $500,000 and have to play the stock market to turn that into enough money to buy a $1,000,000 house and a yacht, marry your sweetheart, win an auction of a castle that used to be in your family, and then pay for said castle. If you fail any one of these steps, or neglect your sweetheart or your health, you lose the inheritance. - The plot of SunDog: Frozen Legacy boils down to "You've inherited your uncle's spaceship. And the contract he took on. You need to fulfill the contract, or you can't keep the spaceship." - In Lily's Garden Lily will inherit her Great-Aunt Mary's estate if she can restore the sadly-neglected grounds within thirty days. - In Daughter for Dessert, Amanda is only offered her mothers inheritance on the condition that she cut ties with her father. - In Melody, if the player is off the title character's romantic path by the confrontation with Steve and Bethany, \|\|Bethany offers Melody her guitar back on the condition that the protagonist agrees to come back home to her. As insurance, she insists that he submit a resignation in writing to Hank before she returns the instrument.\|\| - The first version is used in this PartiallyClips strip. - Dinosaur Comics had it debated here and here. - Bug deconstructed it here. - Kevin & Kell: A December 1998 arc reveals that Franklin Dewclaw had a clause in his will that Kell would only inherit their family heirlooms if she divorced Kevin. If not, they'd go to Ralph... who promptly starts listing them for sale online, until Kevin takes up a temp job as a mall Santa to earn the money needed to buy them himself. Franklin's spirit soon returns to apologize for his actions after seeing Ralph and Kevin's respective actions. - A rich Toronto lawyer, financier and practical joker named Charles Vance Millar, wrote in his will that he wanted the bulk of his estate to be given to the Toronto woman who birthed the most legitimate children in the 10 years after his death. The money he left was well invested and grew significantly over the ten years. During the same time, the Great Depression hit, which made a lot of people more desperate for money. This sparked the Great Stork Derby that went the full length of time with 4 winners and two runners-up despite frantic efforts to kill the will in the courts. - That's not the end of it: he also bequeathed joint possession of his summer cottage to three men who loathed each other and a very profitable Catholic distillery to several (Protestant) prominent temperance advocates in the Orange Order (on the condition that they take active part in running the brewery). - The Rule Against Perpetuities exists in the UK, the US, and other countries that inherited the Common Law. In its most common form, it simply states "No conditional bequest is valid unless it must vest, if at all, within a life in being plus 21 years." It works to prevent somebody from controlling their assets from beyond the grave forever (i.e. "in perpetuity"). Certain relevant reasonable-but-ridiculous legal illustrations showing why you don't want to be in arms reach include: - The "fertile octogenarian". The will leaves land to person A, aged 85, for her life, then to the first of her natural-born children to reach age 25. Since theoretically she could have a new child at 86 note : this pre-dated the law treating adopted children as legally equivalent to biological children, have her other children die at 87, then die herself at 88, it is possible for the second part to be unfulfilled for 21 years after all the relevant people died. Thus, the second part is completely invalid, and the old lady inherits the land absolutely (it's up to her what happens to it after her death). - The "unborn widow". The will leaves the property to person A for life, then their widow for life, and then any of their children still living at the time of the widow's death. If person A marries a person born after the will was executed, and the widow lives more than 21 years after person A dies, then the last condition would not activate within 21 years after person A dies; thus, the last condition is rendered invalid. Alternately, A might not be married when he dies, in which case there is no person who could become his widow, or A might divorce and remarry, in which case the widow at the time the will activates is not the widow referred to by the person who wrote the original will. The will might not prescribe A's children still living and instead simply refer to A's children, in which case it would refer to those children alive at the time of the will's activation and still be valid. - Some jurisdictions specify that if a deceased person is named as the heir, and the will does not contain a legitimate second-to-die clause, the named heir's children stand to inherit that property. So, if A had three children, and one of those children died before A, leaving two children of his own, A's two surviving children would each get 1/3 of the estate, while the two grandchildren by the deceased sibling would each get 1/6. - Many U.S. jurisdictions now take a "wait and see" approach; if the will vests or fails within 90 years of the descendant's death, it's valid, even if a circumstance could have arisen (but didn't) that would have made the waiting period longer. Incidentally, the Rule Against Perpetuities applies not only to bequeathments in wills but also to property placed into a Trust (including a trust created while the Grantor was still alive). - There is a case in California involving legal malpractice due to a lawyer's failure to apprehend the rule against perpetuities. The California high court ruled that "no reasonable lawyer" can understand the rule. To prove the complexity and often inanity of the rule, the above description isn't entirely correct. - This trope is Truth in Television in the USA with regards to religion. Courts in Oregon (National Bank of Portland v. Snodgrass) and Illinois (Feinberg v. Feinberg) upheld heirs being stripped of their inheritances for marrying outside their religions or, in the case of the former, marrying a Catholic. - This trope is also Truth in Television for heirs of a certain age. Some will not allow a teen or person in their 20s to inherit money on the grounds that they will spend it all quickly and/or foolishly. It is legal to bar an heir from inheriting until they reach a certain age where they are (hopefully) wise enough to manage money.	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/OnOneCondition
Onscreen Chapter Titles - TV Tropes Chapters are convenient. They divide stories into bite-sized chunks. They might tell readers what to expect next. They can set the atmosphere with a neat font. It's a shame there are only chapters in books. Right? A writer decides to include chapters, regardless of the work's medium. Chapters may or may not be numbered. If they are numbered, some numbers may be skipped. Sometimes this is done similar to a Storybook Opening, displaying an open book with literal chapter titles. Sometimes the movie preserves the original chapter titles from its source material (if it is an adaptation). Some chapter titles indicate a progression of time, such as days of the week or months of the year. In other cases, the chapter titles merely serve to separate and foreshadow different plot arcs or bring Idiosyncratic Episode Naming to a film. This may be done in the style of a Title Card. Sub-Trope of Title In. ## Examples: - Tekkonkinkreet is split into five chapters (Summer/Fall/Winter/Spring/Summer), each introduced by a title card. - April Showers has "Monday", "Tuesday", and so on. - Argentinian movie The Aura is broken down in chapters for each weekday, displayed as as Title In. - In Casino Royale (1954) note : The first screen adaptation of a James Bond novel, released in 1954 as a television movie/episode of the anthology series Climax!, each of the three acts is preceded with text showing up on screening stating the title and the act number. - In Clerks, there are frequent chapter titles which appear in white font on a plain black screen briefly. Most of the chapter titles are single obscure vocabulary words, like "Perspicacity" or "Dénouement." - Donnie Darko creates suspense by counting down the time to Donnie's death with the use of title cards throughout the movie, e.g. "October 10 1988 (Twenty Days Remain)". - Gus Van Sant's Elephant (2003) comes in twelve chapters each named after and focusing on a different character. - Gone Girl has the days counting up on screen as the search for the missing wife progresses, e.g. "July 9th (four days gone)" - The Hunt (2012) has a Title In for each new month as the story progresses. - Independence Day has its three acts introduced with the dates of "July 2," "July 3," and "July 4." - Each day in Jeepers Creepers 2 gets its own Title In. - The Number 23 labels each new day on screen. - Requiem for a Dream: Title cards announce the three chapters of the film: Summer, Fall, and Winter. - Each new day in Se7en gets its own Title In with the name of the weekday. - Kubrick's The Shining is loosely divided by chapter screens for each new day of the week. - Sisu: Title cards announce a total of seven chapters over the course of the film. - Southland Tales actually starts with Chapter IV, as the first three chapters were covered in a tie-in graphic novel. - The Three Stooges: The 2012 film has its three acts introduced with episode titles in the vein of the origjnal shorts: "More Orphan Than Not", "The Bananas Split" and "No Moe Mister Nice Guy" - Ugly chapters each new the day of the week. Directors - Wes Anderson favors chaptering. - Rushmore is broken down into chapters for each month passing. Opening curtains are used to get into each new chapter. - The Grand Budapest Hotel has chapter screens for each of the five parts. - The Royal Tenenbaums is split into many chapter numbers, including a prologue. - Not only do many Quentin Tarantino films have chapter titles—they even share the same style: Title In with white font on a black screen. - In Pulp Fiction, there are three chapter titles throughout the movie shown in underlined white font on a black screen, such as "THE BONNIE SITUATION" and "THE GOLD WATCH." - In Kill Bill, there are ten numbered and titled chapters throughout Vol. 1 & 2 (five in each), appearing in white font on a black screen, such as "Chapter Nine: ELLE and I." - In Inglourious Basterds, there are five numbered and titled chapters, appearing in white font on a black screen, such as "Chapter Four: OPERATION KINO." - In The Hateful Eight, there are six numbered and titled chapters, appearing in white font on a black screen, such as "Chapter Four: Domergue's Got a Secret." - Director Lars von Trier loves this trope: - CSI: NY: The series' next-to-last episode, "Blood Actually," is the only one to do either of these things: three cases are shown sequentially instead of interwoven throughout, and the chapter titles are shown onscreen. They are "Love for Sale," "Love Is Blind," and "In the Name of Love." - DROD: The Second Sky is divided into ten chapters, plus an optional Chapter 11 that contains the levels needed to unlock the Golden Ending. - Eternal Sonata is divided into eight chapters which are displayed on-screen. Each is titled after the name of a Fryderyk Chopin piece featured in the chapter, such as "Chapter 3: Fantaisie-Impromptu" and "Chapter 6: Tristesse." "Final Chapter: Heaven's Mirror" actually features a piece which was created for the game as a piece that the fictional Chopin featured in the game composed. In the original Xbox 360 version, the chapter number and title were all featured on one line. For the PlayStation 3 version, the names of the compositions were displayed beneath the chapter numbers. - Final Fantasy XIII-2 displays its chapter titles, or "episodes," on-screen accompanied by the location where they take place, accompanied by narration from Lightning. See here for an example. - Each game in the Trails Series, or The Legend of Heroes: Trails... as it's known in its English language releases has this, beginning with The Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky and its opening "Prologue: A Father's Love, A New Beginning." They are shown both at the beginning and end of each chapter, with the ones shown at the end generally accompanied by both an achievement/trophy and the option to the save the game before moving to the next, as cutscenes at both the end and beginning of chapters tend to be fairly lengthy. - Lunar: Walking School and its remake Magic School Lunar! are both divided into 12 individually titled chapters, though the names of the chapters and their contents can vary significantly. - Max Payne and Max Payne 2 both divide their story into three acts, each with several chapters and each chapter mostly serving as a single level (in a few cases on platforms with limited hardware like the Playstation 2 longer levels could be further broken up). Each chapter's loading screen has a graphical illustration of a scene from the upcoming chapter's plot as well as the title of the act and chapter to go along with the graphic novel motif of the games.	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/OnscreenChapterTitles
Only the Chosen May Ride - TV Tropes "Only a truly skilled rider can train, or even catch, this beast of a mount. This is a horse that chooses its rider." The Cool Horse is a mainstay in fantasy works everywhere. They may be normal, or of a different color but you'd be hard pressed to find a fantasy world without it. They are proud and noble beasts, carrying their masters into battle, or off into the sunset once their work is done. Many times they are a character in their own right, with as much praise and respect as their human (or non-human) rider. However, some steeds are not content with just any master. These beasts, be they horses, dragon, giant yellow birds or what have you, decide for themselves who is worthy enough to ride them and who is not. They may be a Unicorn, a Hellish Horse, a Sapient Steed or just extremely proud. Whatever the reason, these horses simply cannot be broken by just anyone. In short, the only ones who can ride such steeds are those that they choose themselves. Not always a sign of The Chosen One but it often is. If multiple people can in fact ride them, then it is only because the steed has decided that each of them are worthy. In most cases such steeds will allow others to ride them should their master wish it. However, in the most extreme cases, this steed's chosen rider really is the only one who can. If they're a normal horse (or the equivalent), they often have a reputation for being stubborn and difficult. If they are a magical or mythical creature, expect their choosiness in riders to be a staple in the legends surrounding them. Please note that this trope refers to a steed that specfically chooses, or at least seems to choose a rider of its own accord. Examples that would fall under this trope include: - A single unique creature that only Alice can ride - A group of such creatures exist but Alice can only ride the one that chose her - Alice or Bob could ride the steed in question, but only because it finds both worthy to do so. Examples such as a steed that is particularly stubborn but could be "broken" by anyone, or the Proud Warrior Race being the only ones who know the "secret" to taming the creatures would not fall under this trope. Please be mindful of this when adding examples. Subtrope of Cool Horse and sister trope to Only the Chosen May Wield. Related to Sapient Steed which often goes hand in hand with this trope. Compare Only I Can Make It Go, which has to do with cars. Compare/Contrast Bond Creatures and Familiar for creatures with a similar bond that is created through more magical or psychic means. Not to be confused with You Must Be This Tall to Ride. ## Examples: - In Dragon Ball, the kinto'un is a semi-sentient magic cloud that Only the Pure of Heart may ride. (That trope was originally called Nimbus Privileges, after a common dub name for the kinto'un.) Goku, Chi-chi, and Gohan are its most common riders. - The Fruit of Evolution: While searching for a steed, Seiichi comes across a talking female donkey named Rurune who is extremely violent and won't let anyone ride her. He manages to tame her by grabbing her by the hind legs when she tries to kick him, throwing her up in the air and putting her back into her pen like a helpless baby, making Rurune accept him as her master. - Eureka Seven: Renton and Eureka are the only ones who can pilot the Nirvash. In one of the video game tie-ins, Nirvash allows Sumner to pilot it so that it can be reunited with Eureka. - Likewise, the only person who can pilot TheEND, is a girl named Anemone. - Kokuo, Ken-oh/Raoh's steed in Fist of the North Star, is portrayed as being very selective in who it lets try to ride him. That it is also huge also doesn't help matters. Only two other people earned enough of his respect to ride him: Juza and Kenshiro, the latter having defeated Raoh/inherited his legacy. - Overlord (2012): Albedo tries to ride a Hellish Horse called a bicorn, the Evil Counterpart to a unicorn: two horns instead of one, black instead of white, and as it turns out, can only be ridden by non-virgins (it just trembles and refuses to move). Particularly embarrassing for her because she's a succubus. - Pokémon: In the episode "The Flame Pokemon-athon!", it is stated that Ponyta's (and most probably also Rapidash's) fiery mane burns anyone who he/she does not trust. Ash (who's supposed to be riding Lara's Ponyta in a race) gets burned the first (and second) time he tries to touch Ponyta, but eventually the two learn to work together. - Although not a mount, Ash's Froakie is said to leave any trainer that doesn't live up to its standards, and had done so multiple times before it finally met Ash. - In Zoids: New Century, Liger Zero is stated to go beserk when any other warrior (save Bit Cloud) tries to pilot it. - Lucky Luke has Jolly Jumper, who will do painful or embarrassing things to anyone trying to steal him. Once an annoying mountie tried to confiscate him, but Luke tells Jolly to "take him to the end of the world". Jolly gladly does so, and in the next scene the confused mountie is in an icy field, asking a penguin "Have you seen a horse?" - Thorgal's horse, Fural. In the second volume, after getting rid of Thorgal, the chieftain of the Viking village holds a contest for who can keep himself on the horse's back for at least a few seconds, and of course all challengers end up tossed off immediately. Then Thorgal himself (in disguise) participates in the contest, and Fural becomes calm. Since Thorgal specifically wishes to lose, he stealthily wounds Fural with a sharp flint stone to get the horse agitated. - Wonder Woman Vol 1: Rainbow and Stardust are a pair of horses with intelligence that gets them compared to humans and they run as wild horses and refuse to be captured or ridden most of the time, but allow Diana and Etta to ride them after the women save Rainbow after the stallion was shot by criminals. - Hope for the Heartless: Avalina's horse Mitternacht used to be ridden only by the knight who owned him. After the knight died, the horse refused to allow anyone to approach him. When Avalina slowly got through to him, he accepted only her as his rider afterwards, allowing others to ride him only by her will. - Avatar: The Ikran are dragon-like creatures that the Na'vi use as mounts. Every Ikran chooses its own master, and only then if the one they choose can best them in combat and tame them. - Worth special mention is Toruk, who is said to be untameable by even the strongest of Na'vi. Jake manages to do so. - In The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, the traumatic events which lead to the death of Prince Théodred cause his horse Brego to become completely wild and possibly mad. Only Aragorn is able to soothe the beast and ease his troubled mind; he then turns Brego loose, but the horse finds him later and serves as his mount for the rest of the series. - An interesting take occurs in the first The Love Bug movie. Herbie, the titular vehicle is a living car that moves on its own, has emotions, and even speaks to some degree (albeit only through use of his horn). He decides for himself who he'll let drive him, and anyone he doesn't like could just as easily be thrown out of the seat. - Transformers: While Sam Witwicky is looking for a car to buy for his birthday at a used car dealership, the dealer explains to him that the driver doesnt choose the car, the car chooses the driver. Though in this case, its because the car in question is a sapient Transforming Mecha, named Bumblebee, who was tasked with protecting Sam. - Gib the Water Horse in the Arcia Chronicles is less of a horse and more of a sentient force of nature, so he is extremely picky about whom he allows to ride him. Specifically, the only human he has ever allowed close to him is Rene Arroy, who just happens to be an old seadog as well as an experienced horseman. - The Black Stallion series has both the Black and an island horse named Flame who are so wild that only the two young men they've formed a bond with can ride them. In The Black Stallion and the Girl, the Black accepts gentle Pam Athena as his jockey, but even then he doesn't give her full control. - In Taran Wanderer, the fourth book in The Chronicles of Prydain, this trope comes into play when Taran's beloved horse Melynlas is stolen. He's able to prove that the horse is his when Melynlas refuses to cooperate for any rider except Taran. - In The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Ranyhyn are horses with enhanced intelligence, speed and endurance. A person can go to the Plains of Ra where they live and offer himself to them. If a Ranyhyn considers that person to be worthy it will allow him to ride it. - Dinotopia: Only a Skybax's rider can even get close, and the creature itself chooses when the rider has proven himself or herself as worthy to be made an apprentice and later a master rider. - The titular Dragonriders of Pern are chosen this way. The dragons form an empathic bond with a particular human, who is then shanghaied into the life of a dragonrider. The bond is so strong that riders of dragons who mate often wind up having sex as well whether they have a relationship or not. There are some cases (such as Holth and Moreta) in which a dragon will temporarily allow someone other than the rider they are attached to to ride him/her, which usually requires approval from that dragon's usual rider (and possibly from the temporary rider's usual dragon) and for the dragon involved to either like the temporary rider (such as Ruth agreeing to let Brekke or Sharra ride him without usual rider Jaxom being along on that trip) or be convinced that the situation requires it. This is rarely undertaken lightly, as substituting dragons and riders carries an extreme risk: because dragons never outlive their riders and riders rarely outlive their dragons, any misfortune that befalls a mismatched dragon/rider pair will result in four casualties rather than the usual two. - Inverted in Everworld — no horse, whether normal or sapient, will allow a witch like Senna to ride it. - The Gandalara Cycle by Randall Garrett. Sha'um are giant ligers that select one person to bond with telepathically, and typically only carry that one person. One additional passenger can be carried, however it depends on both the bonded's rider mood and the sha'um itself, (If you're a rival to the rider, or the sha'um doesn't outright like you personally, then you're outta luck). The protagonist sha'um will willingly allow his rider's love interest, (being somewhat of a Shipper on Deck for the two), as well as a close personal friend to ride, and even carries the friend without his bonded in an emergency situation. Also, if you're already a rider, you better not even think of riding another sha'um but your own without permission. - Early in the Gor series it is established that only natural tarnsmen are able to ride war tarns (giant birds used as cavalry), and even then if a tarn doesn't like a particular tarnsman it could just as easily rip him to shreds. In later stories the craft of tarn domestication is further advanced such that any trained rider can ride any tarn. - Harry Potter: Hippogriffs choose who they will allow to ride them. As Malfoy finds out, insulting one is a good way to get sent to the hospital. - The Companions of the Heralds of Valdemar series are magical white horselike beings which bond to a particular human rider. The Companion always chooses the human, never vice versa. Being Chosen by a Companion makes someone one of the titular Heralds, who have Psychic Powers and serve as a combination of Mounties, rapid messengers, Circuit Judges, military scouts and special forces, and Search and Rescue service, among other things. Heralds are considered to be intrinsically incorruptible, because the Companions don't Choose people who would take bribes or the like. Because of this, it is required that the ruler of the country be a Herald, and no one who has not been Chosen by a Companion is eligible to be ruler or heir. - In Exile's Valor, Prince Karathanelan assumes the Companions are just distinctively-colored horses and heads off to Companions' Field to break one of them to saddle. The only reason he survives to the novel's final fight scene is because Caryo goes easy on him. - Companions will only bear someone other than their Chosen in an emergency, or if that person is a very great friend of their Herald. They also only Mindspeak with each other and their own Chosen, even though most can make their thoughts heard by anyone. Companions who habitually break these rules are rare, and are considered somewhat eccentric. - Shin'a'in warsteeds from the same universe may be outright dangerous to strangers approaching, let alone trying to ride, them. There's no magic to that, though; it's merely a combination of selective breeding (giving them a desired, breed-typical temperament) and training. For practicality reasons Tarma and Kethry have their horses, Hellsbane and Ironheart, trained so that each will accept either of them to ride it. - In the Hurog duology, the protagonist's love interest is given a horse. She mounts it, and suddenly everyone cheers. She is then told that this horse has only been ridden by the protagonist and his little sister, and usually accepts no other rider. The horse seems to be entirely unmagical, and the woman in question is rather embarrassed, because everyone takes her to be the chosen one ... which in this case means the one destined to marry the protagonist. She likes him, but she is a fighter and spy, and marriage is not on her to-do list. She feels she has to refuse him so that he can marry a proper housewife. - The Lord of the Rings has Shadowfax of the Mearas. Even the Rohirrim were not able to tame him. Gandalf however, was able to subdue him quite easily, and Shadowfax served as his steed from then on. - The Messenger Series: Only the current Messenger is allowed to ride Favour, and only because he permits it. The first time Rose approached Favour, she didn't realise what was going on and she speculated about whether he belonged to someone or whether he could be tamed. She is driven to her knees before him in fear and shame for having such thoughts about him. He, not his riders, is the one in control. - Protector of the Small has a mundane example in Peachblossom. He's a gelding with a foul temper and generalized misanthropy after having been abused, and Daine has to persuade him to let Kel ride him. Kel is the only person who can do so (he'll kick or bite anyone else) until Tobe, who has horse magic and can communicate with him like Daine does. - In Romance of the Three Kingdoms, Red Hare, a huge Cool Horse so named because "it can run fast as a hare and is colored red", only ever allowed Lu Bu and later — after the Lu Bu's disposal — Guan Yu to ride him, as no one else could tame him. - This seems to be how dragon riding works in A Song of Ice and Fire: - While not as intimately connected as the Starks' direwolves, each dragon is connected to a specific driver, who has to qualify to some nebulous criteria which aren't fully established, although various theories are advanced involving legendary bloodlines, magical dragonbinding horns, and more mundane bonding rituals. Also, if you are a rider of a specific dragon, you'd better not try to approach another one: the criteria are not interchangeable. Dragons also bond for life; until that dragon's rider dies, it will not follow other people's commands. - A plot point is how Daenerys Targaryen struggles to rein in her three dragons. By A Dance with Dragons, she has successfully mastered Drogon, but because one person can only command one dragon, this means that the rest of her dragons (Rhaegal and Viserion) will always be wild if she keeps them to herself. A vision in A Clash of Kings suggests that Daenerys must find two other riders to tame them ("The dragon has three heads"). - The original reason why the Targaryens, and the Valyrians before them, practiced incest is because they believed it would preserve their ability to ride dragons. However, having Valyrian blood is not a guarantee for a successful bonding, as Quentyn Martell (whose ancestor was a Targaryen princess) finds out the hard way. - The Stormlight Archive: The Ryshadium, a breed of horses that pick their riders. Dalinar and Adolin each have a Ryshadium mount, larger and smarter than other horses. Their antagonist, Sadeas is frustrated that he is unable to have a horse as fine, despite his great wealth. An offhand mention in the second book implies that the Ryshadium originally belonged to the Knights Radiant, and millennia-old worldhopper Hoid is pleasantly surprised when he discovers them. There's a scene in Words of Radiance where for plot reasons Dalinar's Ryshadium needs to carry Adolin for a short while and it apparently took a lot of convincing. - The War Gods has the Sothoii Coursers, the descendants of magically altered horses. They are as intelligent as humans as well as being larger, stronger, faster and having more endurance than any natural horse. Some of them will enter into a psychic bond with a human (who are called Windriders). Like the Heralds and their Companions, the Windriders are respected by all Sothoii, and are guaranteed to be honorable (as the Sothoii see it anyway). Coursers won't associate with anyone who isn't. - Played straight in "Wildwood Boys" by James Carlos Blake — Quantrill rides the most meanest horse in whole regiment. And he is quite fond of that dog-killing and people-biting big roan. Even names him "Charley". - This was a big part of Fury. None of the men who tried could tame the black horse, though they usually were abusive, but the orphan boy could ride him. - In Dinotopia, the Skybax played this up more than in the books, choosing their riders after training was finished. - Only Xena could ride the second Argo, although the horse did allow Joxer to keep her in his corral, because he had taken care of her dam, and presumably her as a filly. - The Unicorn is a magical horse-like creature depicted in various mythologies. It is said that only a maiden is capable of capturing and taming it. - Centaurs, horselike creatures but fully sentient, do not like being ridden on by people but will, when the situation requires it, carry a human on its back to safety or to alert others, etc. - Pegasus could only be tamed by use of a magic bridle provided to Bellerophon. Even this was not enough to prevent Pegasus from throwing Bellerophon off when he tried to fly to Olympus (although in one version Zeus sent a horsefly to bite Pegasus midair, causing him to buck and throw off his rider). No one else ever rode him note : Some versions of the myth of Perseus say he rode it, arriving so to save Andromeda from Cetus, the Sea Monster. - Dungeons & Dragons: - Early editions had Warhorses which a Paladin could befriend. Each Warhorse/other mount (often they were some kind of Cool Steed) is specifically bonded to a particular Paladin, and won't respond to others without their master's order. - Dragon magazine #149 "Dragon's Bestiary" article. The Kiita is a horse-like creature that chooses its rider based on specific criteria. The rider has to be one of the Good alignments (Lawful Good, Neutral Good, Chaotic Good), more intelligent than the kiita, and a member of the monk, cleric or ranger class (chosen in that order if there is more than one potential rider). - 2nd Edition Forgotten Realms Elves of Evermeet supplement. Moon-horses live on the Isle of Evermeet with the elves. A moon-horse decides for itself if it will act as a mount for a particular elf. - Exalted has demigod horses (sired by Hiparkes, the god of their species) who, on top of being stronger and faster than any ordinary horse, have magic with which they can throw off unwanted riders. If a God-Blooded horse is being ridden, it is because they have accepted that rider as a partner, not a master. Even Rhianna, one of the Solar Exalted, had to diplomatically convince one to serve as her mount (mostly by arguing, "Look, if you don't let this happen, the horsebreakers will kill you for being useless to them"). - Final Fantasy XIV has themed mounts which drop from each expansion's Extreme trials bosses. By the final patch of the expansion (X.5 or so), if the Warrior of Light has collected all of them in a set, they can go to take on a quest that allows them to meet the Wandering Minstrel who gifts them that expansion's biggest mount. - Lightning Returns: Final Fantasy XIII has the Angel of Valhalla, a white Chocobo spoken of in legend in the Wildlands that can only be tamed by its one true master. This of course turns out to be Lightning. Justified since \|\|the angel is actually the reincarnation of her Eidolon, Odin.\|\| - Aloy is the only person in Horizon Zero Dawn who can ride Machines. This is because she's figured out how to override their code with a device she scavenged off a dead Corruptor, effectively taming them. Since no one else knows how to do this, no one else can ride. - By the time of the sequel, this is no longer true, as there is a tribe of reel Tenakth who also have access to machines. The developed the skill from Sylens, who learned it from Aloy by watching her focus. Aloy also gives mounts to some of her allies. - It is revealed in The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel II that only the Awakener can pilot a Divine Knight. However, secondary contractors are allowed inside the Divine Knight but cannot operate it as Alisa finds out in her bonding event. - Link's steed Epona in several incarnations of The Legend of Zelda may be this. - In The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, she is described by Ingo as being a "wild horse". The only ones she seems to be friendly with are Malon, who raised her, and Link. - In The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess, Epona is empathic with Link from the very beginning. Link loses her after entering the twilight the first time, but when she returns in Kakariko village she is seen bucking off several bokoblins who try to capture her, only calming down when Link captures her. - In The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, the Giant Horse (a dark, aggressive horse that is hinted to be a descendant of Ganondorf's stallion) is described like this. And it is very difficult to tame and ride, yet Link can prove his worth to do so (which is also necessary to complete a sidequest). - Ninja: Shadow of Darkness: The Sky City level ends with a boss battle against a winged T-Rex, which you have to whittle his health down to a small fraction... at which point a cutscene will show you taming the beast and riding it to escape the city. - Exiern has Tiffany's unicorn. It will only allow Tiffany to ride it; whether this is due to her status as The Chosen One (although chosen for what, no one quite knows) — as revealed in The Wild North story-arc — or whether it is due to the traditional qualification for unicorns (something that would definitely disqualify Princess Peonie), we just do not know. - Dora the Explorer: Don Quixote's horse Rocinante will only let knights ride him; therefor Dora the lady knight is the only one who can ride. When Boots tried to ride with him, he is harshly knocked off. - In Spirit: Riding Free, Spirit (like his eponymous sire) is too rebellious to be broken by any methods available to Miradero's settlers. In typical Intelligent Animal fashion, he allows Lucky to ride him, because they established a rapport before he was caught and he knows she had nothing to do with his capture. Of course, any sort of saddle or paddock is out of the question — they ride together, because they're kindred spirits, but Lucky knows she does not own him. - Voltron: Legendary Defender: When the Paladins arrive at the Castle of the Lions and awaken Princess Allura, she explains to them that only the Lions may choose their paladins. While the Green and Yellow lions stick to their chosen paladin throughout the whole series, the Black, Red, and Blue lions each choose a different paladin at one point in the series. - The Black Lion at first chooses Shiro to pilot it. But in Season 3, after Shiro disappeared in the Season 2 finale, the Black Lion then chooses Keith to pilot it. - The Blue Lion, which was the first lion that the paladins discovered, only allowed Lance to pilot it, before choosing Princess Allura as its new Paladin, when the Red Lion chose Lance as its new paladin. - Zarkon was the original paladin of the Black Lion 10,000 years before the events of the show. But after having a Battle in the Center of the Mind with Shiro, the Black Lion rejects him, which severs his connection to the Black Lion, preventing him from tracking it. - Bucephalus was a stallion of excellent breeding, being sold for a rather exorbitant price despite being considered largely untameable. A young Alexander the Great was able to tame and ride him, but no one else ever could. - Which he supposedly could do by noticing the horse was afraid of his own shadow, and riding it directly into the sunlight. - The joint German/American MBT-70 was a deconstruction of this trope: It was the most advanced tank in the world for a long time after it was produced, but the complications regarding its intricate control scheme meant that the only people qualified to operate it were educated Engineers and COs, certainly not enough for a weapon intended to replace the entirety of the two armies' prior models. - There was apparently a way to get your horse to do this in ancient times. Basically it involved beating the horse whenever someone tried to ride it, unless a 'code word' was given. Eventually the animal would not let anyone ride without the 'code word', for fear of being beaten. Thankfully, this practice has fallen into disuse.	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/OnlyTheChosenMayRide
On Stranger Tides - TV Tropes On Stranger Tides is an ambiguous name which may refer to: If an internal wick led you to this page, please correct it to point to the correct page.	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/OnStrangerTides
Written Sound Effect - TV Tropes "Okay, Robin. Together, we're gonna punch these guys so hard, words describing the impact are gonna spontaneously materialize out of thin air!" We've all experienced it: We're reading a book, or a comic, or a website, when all of a sudden: *POW!* You get hit by an onomatopoeia. Sound effects written out as onomatopoeia can be used in many media, but they play a special role in Sequential Art. Comics are highly visual media that show a scene in pictures instead of describing it in words. Without written sound effects, those scenes would live in a peculiarly silent space in the reader's head, where the only imagined sounds would be the dialogue, if any. Some very creative things can be done with fonts, sizes, colors, shadows or glow, placement, spatial orientations, and curvatures to make a Written Sound Effect more evocative and fit it with the art. The Written Roar is one specific kind of Written Sound Effect. Contrast the Unsound Effect, which is a written effect that is not onomatopoeia. A particularly common form of Editorial Synaesthesia. Can be used for Sound-Effect Bleep with Speechbubbles Interruption. See also Saying Sound Effects Out Loud. Sometimes combines with a Hit Flash. A fundamental tool of the trade, widely used in Sequential Art in general. Called kakimoji in the Manga industry. Light Novels tend to have these a lot, probably since they are closely related to manga. Especially romantic novels tend to be filled with sound effects ranging from falling petals, the rain, wind to the fast beating of the human heart. ## Examples - Doraemon: - There's a drink that makes your sound solid, turned it into letters. The size is according to how loud you speak it. - In "A World Without Sound", the characters write various sound effects on paper, such as "Whistle" and "CLAP CLAP". - Happens in "Soap Bubbles". When Big G punches Sneech, Sneech's scream is written out as text. - Hirohiko Araki (known best for JoJo's Bizarre Adventure) takes this trope very seriously. Very notable written sound effects are one of the notable traits of his style and he considers them an integral part of his artwork. Two characters in his series even utilize onomatopoeia as their weapon. The onomatopoeia are even retained to a degree in anime adaptations of the story. Notably, the English localization of JoJo's Bizarre Adventure is one of the few manga released by Viz Media that doesn't replace the Japanese SFX with the English equivalent, instead subtitling it. - The opening for the second season of The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya uses this in the same way American comics do it. One could argue that "Tug" and "Stop" are the Unsound Effect, but everything else fits this. - An early chapter in Tsubasa features a battle where the opponent is a singer, who can literally use her voice as a weapon. The art features HUGE words written out which physically attack the main characters and stretch the frames of the comic. - A bizarre example is in Sayonara, Zetsubou-Sensei, particularly the third season. The sound effects are actually written on the frame, and they are voiced by the actors. - Gainax's newest Widget Series Panty & Stocking with Garterbelt goes so far as to also include a few Written Unsound Effects, as if it were a deranged comic. - Doctor Slump - Arale (unknowingly) weaponizes the Written Sound Effect; her boisterously loud "N'CHA!" comes out as solid words and is capable of knocking people off their feet. In another chapter, Akane does this deliberately after getting heckled by one of a flock of Idiot Crows; she calls him a "JERK!", and uses the enormous exclamation point produced to knock the crow out of the sky. - Used occasionally in Hetalia: Axis Powers, most noticeably in the "United States of Hetalia" strips and episode, which imitates American-style comic books. All of them are written in English/Romaji, though some are a little odd (like "spam spam spam" for patting someone on the shoulder) and others Unsound Effects (a cat appearing sounds like "Neko!"). - This was used extensively in a 1970s anime Hajime Ningen Gyatoruzu (or Giatrus). Whenever the characters scream, the word appears on screen as (usually red) rocks, sometimes even hitting the characters physically. Not only that, this trope is how the show's logo appears on-screen in the title sequence, where the character screams "Gya!" really loud, eventually morphing into "Gyatoruzu". - In Gintama, these are normally played straight, but on one occasion, Gintoki tries to save Otae during a universe wide time stop by editing the sound of her being hit in the head with a rocket punch (Gossu). He initially just removes a "s" from it to make it sound less painful, but ultimately decides to turn it into a stick figure he calls "Gossan", who's trying to save her from the rocket punch by holding it back. It works...then the two of them end up getting married. - Happy Heroes: In Season 10 episode 23, Smart S.'s laugh after he defeats one of the game's enemies is written in Chinese text above him. - In Pleasant Goat and Big Big Wolf, sounds such as Wolffy getting hit or a character yelling often have written sound effects. - The Doctor Who comics represented the TARDIS's instantly recognisable phasing-in effect with the equally distinctive "VWOOOOORP! VWOOOOOORP''. - In a classic Uncle Scrooge tale by Carl Barks, Gyro Gearloose invented an "implosion bomb" that sucked up material in a certain radius and compacted it into a neat pile. Intended for litter collection, the Written Sound Effect was "MOOB" — explicitly stated to be "BOOM" backwards. - Notable aversion: Many of comics writer Alan Moore's works have no sound effects at all ( The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen remains silent even when people are being beheaded or airships are blowing up). This is lampshaded in Watchmen with this exchange between two police detectives. Joe: Incidentally, the phone's ringing. Steve: Sure. Y'know, all today I've had this funny feeling. It's like there's something in the air... Joe: That's sound waves, man. They're coming from the phone. - Memorably subverted in The Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck: The Cowboy Captain Of The Cutty Sark when the space where the sound effect should have been written is left blank with the explanation: - A Marvel Adventures comic featuring French Boisterous Bruiser Bartroc ze Lepair had all of his sound effects made French. "LeBOK!" - Speaking of Marvel, they even have trademarked onomatopoeiae, like SNIKT (Wolverine sheathing his claws - temporarily changed to SCHLIKT when he had the adamantium sucked out of his bones), THWIP (Spider-Man casting his webbing) or BAMF (Nightcrawler teleporting). - The Incredible Hercules especially as written by Greg Pak employed this with GUSTO. When Hercules, dressed as Thor, was fighting Thor, dressed as Hercules, and Hercules grabbed Thor by the nipples. The effect? "NURP!" (In purple, yet.) - The entire fight was like this. Prime examples are: - "Captain America!, I command you to-" WANK! - Excalibur once gave us the memorable sound of a bathroom exploding: BA- THROOM! - Green Arrow fought a serial killer named Onomatopoeia, who only spoke to describe the sounds he heard (or anticipated hearing.) He'd usually say 'CLICK, BLAM!' before shooting his victims. - Warrior #1 treats us to " SKRONK," which supposedly represents the Ultimate Warrior's snarling/coughing-up-phlegm. He does it underwater. - EPA is the sound of Green Lantern punching Sinestro, according to the Comic Book Guy of The Simpsons. Became an Ascended Meme with The Sinestro Corps War. - MAD: - Issue #20 had a story told almost entirely in pictures with sound effects, simply called "Sound Effects!" Harvey Kurtzman wrote the installment and Wally Wood drew it. - Far more well-known was writer/artist Don Martin, who used very odd words like Sizafitz, Blort and Oot Greet. [1] - Youngblood uses "eepBeep" for the sound of a beeping wrist communicator. - 19th century German artist/writer Wilhelm Busch invented many written sound effects for his picture stories. Max and Moritz (1865), for example, uses "Ritzeratze!" for sawing wood, "Kracks!" and "Knacks!" for wood breaking, "Rums!" for an explosion, and "Rickeracke!" for a grinding mill. Pious Helene (1872) uses "Klickeradoms!" for the sound of a statuette falling and breaking, and "Klingelings!" when a chandelier crashes to the floor. The dogs Plisch and Plum (1882) are even named after the sounds they made when the bad guy Schlich threw them into a pond. - In one Achille Talon album, a villain has the (dis)ability to produce sounds completely inappropriate, like a grenade detonating with a klaxon sound. - Tiny Titans had a lot of fun with this. In addition to the classics such as "Bam" and the like, it included such sound effects as "Run", "Swing", and "Milk". - John Workman Jr. is well-known for creating impressive sound effects, such as the mighty "DOOM!" of Surtur's forge in Walt Simonson's The Mighty Thor. - The Impaler, the cool-as-hell stake gun issued to Vampire Knights in the graphic novel series Requiem Vampire Knight, goes "TEPES!" when it's fired. - A very interesting subversion, from a "Heavy Metal" mag probably (source needed too): A fight between two barbarians, one is disarmed, but grabs the "T" of a "THUD!" sound effect and kills his opponent with it. - And another memorable parody sound effect: the gun which went BLAM! BLAM! EMPT! EMPT!. (Again, sauce needed.) - Averted by Warren Ellis, who has stated that he hates sound effects and will employ all kinds of workarounds to avoid using them. - The same double for Steve Gallacci, the creator of Albedo: Erma Felna EDF, Dog House, Alone, Together, etc, as he avoids using them as much as he can in his works. - In Druid City, whenever Ryan Alex Rasheed, aka DJ Onomatopoeia, says an onomatopoeic verb out loud, it is accompanied by a visual sound effect. This ability has been used to confuse and startle people who are unaware of this unique ability. Oddly enough, Ryan appears to be completely aware that he is capable of doing this. - Ultimate Fantastic Four: - One example is when an explosion goes FWAAASH. Sue Storm: Why didn't you tell me there'd be a FWAAASH ? - And later; SCHRAMMMM. Ben: That's the noise I make when I rip a steel door off its hinges. Reed: That's more of a KROOOOM this was more of a SCHRAMMMM . - Diabolik has a "Swiisss" whenever the title character throws a knife at someone or something. It's used so much that the second reprint collection is titled "Diabolik SWIISSS", and at least one parody had the Diabolik replacement say it whenever he throws a knife. - The brazillian Comic Monica's Gang has this all over the place like when someone is hit or on fights obscured by a Big Ball of Violence. Usally combined with a Hit Flash. This also happens on it's Animated Adaptation and it's teen spinoff manga. - Norby: While the comic doesn't use sound effects often, Norby's hyperspace teleportation is given the sound effect ZTT or ZZT and his punches are written with a WAP. - The Warrior Cats graphic novels use written sound effects pretty frequently. One notable example is in Graystripe's Adventure, after he steps outside for the first time in moons and is overwhelmed by the scents and sounds: it features a two-page spread covered in various sound effects alongside oversized flowers. - "SPLUT!", for the sound a pie makes when it hits Garfield's face. - Peanuts, of course, has "AUUGHH!" - Calvin and Hobbes. Paraphrased: Hobbes: Are you sure this is such a good idea? Calvin: Brother! You doubting Thomases get in the way of more scientific advances with your stupid ethical questions. This is a brilliant idea! Hit the button, will ya? Hobbes: I'd hate to be accused of inhibiting scientific progress... Here you go. The button: BOINK! Hobbes: [staring right at the fourth wall] Scientific progress goes 'boink'? - In the first mid-credits scene in The Peanuts Movie, Lucy pulls away the football from Charlie Brown and a "WHAM!" appears when he lands on his back. - Invoked in The LEGO Batman Movie as an homage to the original 1966 Batman TV Series. (see quote above.) - Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse has these all over the place. Some such as "Boom!" and "Ponk" appear in appropriately comic book-style big letters in some action scenes. Others are small, such as little "THWIP"s coming out of the Spiders wrists when web-slinging in some scenes. In one scene, a small "Bagel!" appears when a bagel gets thrown at someone's head. - Pleasant Goat and Big Big Wolf: Dunk for Future: A sound effect bubble reading "嘭!!" - meaning "Bang!!" - appears when Tiger Wing's dad accidentally crashes his motorcycle near Wolffy, and twice later during the training montage when Sparky hits (or tries to hit) the basketball hoop. - The Fall of the House of Usher is an experimental 13-minute 1928 short film adapting the Edgar Allan Poe story. This very weird silent film has letters that spell out "CRACK", "RIPPED", and "SCREAM" pop up onscreen when Madeline exits her coffin. - Night of the Dribbler: The film occasionally has words show up on the screen, such as "Bzzzzzzzz" when one of the players gets shocked when the Dribbler drops a TV into the hot tub he's in, and "Bang" when \|\|Stan's dad\|\| is shot before he can hurt Stan's girlfriend. - Scott Pilgrim vs. The World is a rare live action movie to have this. - The movie Sssssss. Yes, that's the title. Obviously, it's about snakes. - One of the most famous examples in classic literature is the word "Bababadalgharaghtakamminarronnkonnbronntonnerronntuonnthunntrovarrhounawnskawntoohoohoordenenthurnuk" from James Joyce's Finnegans Wake. It's supposed to represent the thunderclap that occurred in the Garden of Eden at the Fall. - The Star Wars Expanded Universe's "Jedi Prince" cycle ( The Glove of Darth Vader et al) makes extensive use of these, never describing a sound when something like "GRONG!" would suffice. - The Baby-Sitters Club ghostwriter Peter Lerangis LOVES omnomatopoeia. - James Joyce's Ulysses had a cat say "Mrkgnao", which he felt a better approximation than "miaow". - In a literary example, L.E. Modesitt, Jr. likes to use those in his novels, notably in the Saga of Recluce series. By far the most prevalent is the explosive CRRRRRUMMMMMPTTTTT. - A Song of Ice and Fire does this a few times for warhorns in the distance. Aaaaarrrrrroooooooooooo! - If the original cover art for Doctor Who and the Dinosaur Invasion is anything to go by, a pterodactyl's jaws go "K-KLAK!" - The Animorphs books are fond of TSEEEEWWW! for Yeerk Dracon beams (not to be confused with TSEEEER! for red-tailed hawk calls), and FWAPP! for Andalite tail-blade strikes. - MARZENA: Tick.Tock.Tick.Tock.Tick.Tock.TACK The Author must be in love with this trope, it's everywhere. - The Parafaith War: Tends to be used most commonly for explosions, static, and weapons. - Imager Portfolio: Tends to be used most commonly for explosions, and occasionally things breaking. - Hammer's Slammers: Features this off and on, typically for effect. - Despite being an entirely serious work, the World War II novel The Naked and the Dead uses these to describe the sounds of battle. BEE-YOWWW, BEE-YOWWWW! BAA-ROWWMM, BAA-ROWWMM. - In the That '70s Show episode "Cat Fight Club", Jackie's fight with Laurie is illustrated by Batman-style Hit Flashes and written sound effects like "Meow" and "Scratch!". - "Skronk"—an onomatopoetic rendering of the skreeching h onk made by a deliberately-mistreated saxophone—has become a recognized genre classification, though you might be more likely to encounter terms like "free improv" or "avant-noise". As performances by Arto Lindsay or Oren Ambarchi might attest, a string- and ear-damaging guitarist can skronk in as great a manner as, say: John Zorn, Kenta Tsugami (or both) on tenor or alto. - The first words to appear in "Music Non Stop" by Kraftwerk are "Boing", "Bumm", "Tschak" and "Peng". - Comic Strip by Serge Gainsbourg and Brigitte Bardot is a song full of onomatopeia: Clip! Crap! Bang! Vlop! Zip! Shebam! Pow! Blop! Wizz! - The characteristic dubstep bass sound (hear it e.g. here at 4:17) is sometimes written as "wub wub wub". - "Din Da Da" by George Kranz is just this trope (he imitates drums). - Chrissie Hynde dopplers a sportscar across the Middle Of The Road: Brrrr-wheyong! - The playfield and cabinet for Tee'd Off show golf balls ricocheting all over the place, accompanied by assorted BONK!s and ZONK!s. - In WHO dunnit (1995), starting "Midnight Madness" will result in every hit causing the display to show "BOOM", "BLAM", "DOH!", etc. - The playfield for Magic Girl includes various onomatopoeia such as "Poof!", "Mix!", and "Tesla!" - Deadpool: The artwork depicts a number of these, as befitting a game based on the Marvel Comics universe, such as the "Snikt!" target which increases the playfield Score Multiplier. - Mousin' Around!: The playfield is littered with comic book-style sound effects. - The two main ramps are named after the onomatopoeia written on them: "SWOOSH" and "ZIP!" - There's a "ZAP!" in front of the Mouse Hole. - The drop-targets necessary to open the loop shot ramp are each labeled with one letter in "POW!". - The BIONICLE comics all use this. Probably the most famous sound among fans is the Bohrok's distinctive "Chik Chik Chik Chik". Amusingly, a Translation Train Wreck fan-video of one of the movies subtitles the slashing sound effects as "Hurting Noises!". - Champions Online, with its comic book-based style, uses this with NPCs, having written sound effects appear over their heads that correspond with the attack they are currently using(with different sound effects for differing types of attacks, such as cone AOE, melee AOE, targeted attacks, etc.) - Coryoon lets out a "BOM!" with each onscreen enemy vanquished. Bosses in particular leaves behind at least a dozen. - Dyna Gear has "BOOM!" and "BAM!" accopanying most onscreen mook deaths. - The first video game for the 2003 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles uses sound effects show up when someone or even objects like cars take damage. Thok - The boss fights and cutscenes of HarmoKnight contain these, usually loud sounds coming from none other than the Noizoids themselves. There are even sounds like BOOM! and BAAAAAAAAAAAAM! - Tembo the Badass Elephant, a game with the same art director as HarmoKnight, takes this to the extreme by having just about every sound effect accompanied by one of these. Among them are "BOOM" for explosions, "OUCH!" for taking damage, "BADABADABADABADA" for running, and "HRAAAANH!" for the protagonist's battle cry. - Kingdom of Loathing uses these whenever someone takes damage. If you're dealing it, it's blue ZAP!s, POW!s, and BARF!s; while if you're taking damage, you see red Ouch!es and Ow!s. - The Legend of Tian-ding have its sound effects written in Mandarin, given the game's manhua-inspired graphics. 碰！ ( peng, or bang!) being the most common. - Persona 3, Persona 4 and Persona 5 use this both in and out of combat. Persona 5 especially uses them a lot more liberally, in keeping with the stylish comic book-esque aesthetic. A few examples include groups of chatting people having "Whisper" or "Murmur" written above their heads, Morgana's dialogue in his housecat form being accompanied by "Nya~"s (changed to "Meow~" for the English version), "BANG!"s filling the screen when Joker uses his Down Shot skill, and even "Pi pi pi"s accompanying Joker's phone ringing. - Being beaned in the head with a baseball in Team Fortress 2 results in a flashing, neon sign above your head, reading "BONK!", which is a fairly accurate description of what just happened. And when being scared by a ghost in the Halloween event, it reads, "YIKES!". - XIII actually uses them to enhance gameplay, allowing the player to tell which direction sounds are coming from (like seeing the "tap, tap, tap" of patrolling guards' footsteps over some foliage.) - Elite Beat Agents and Osu! Tatakae! Ouendan use this a lot, mainly because the stories are told using manga panels. Special mention goes to the ending of Elite Beat Agents, where combined music and goodwill of the world blow up the alien mother ship with a "KA-LAPOWABOOOM!" - Various sound effects in the black and white (except for blood) game MadWorld appear as yellow text onscreen. - Sega Genesis game Comix Zone, happening inside a comic book, is filled with this. - Unbound Saga have sound effects coming up with every hit you scored, with your punches and kicks accompanied by a THWACK or BLAM. It's also set inside a comic book. - Many of She-Hulk's attacks in Marvel vs. Capcom 3 produce one of these, as does Deadpool's 4th Wall Crisis Hyper Combo (you know, the one where he hits you with his health bar). - In the 1989 Arcade Game Violence Fight, every time somebody got knocked to the floor a written sound effects as "BOGON" or "DOGOON" would pop up. - In Captain America and the Avengers, comicbook-style fight noises such as "KRAK!" and "WABOOM!" appear on screen. - Another Marvel game with onomatopoeiae during fights is Spider-Man and Venom: Maximum Carnage. - Mario Kart 64 has sound effects such as "POOMP!" when hitting the ground hard (like from a long jump), and "WHIRRRR" when sliding over a banana peel. - Rayman 3: Hoodlum Havoc has sound effects appearing on-screen when punching enemies, such as "KOPN". - Saints Row: The Third's DLC mission pack "Strange Science" includes a sequence where the protagonist, high on irradiated energy drink, gains the ability to instagib opponents with a punch, complete with these. - The credits of Rock Man 4 Minus Infinity track your deaths under "tiwns", which is supposed to be onomatopoeia for Mega Man's death sound. - Astro Marine Corps has "GRONF GRONF" for getting swallowed whole, and also "GLU GLU GLU" for falling into water. - Star Wars: Battlefront II has these in the cheat-activated Party Mode. - Super Bonk has Bonk able to launch the word "RAGE!" out when he's small. The word actually travels forward and bounces off of walls, allowing the player to use it as a makeshift platform (in fact, certain sections require this.) - Since sounds in JauntTrooper provide useful cues about offscreen events, there's the option of textual sound effects for players who can't or don't want to hear them. - Growl has "SHBROOM" for Stuff Blowing Up. - Plants vs. Zombies has a few for plants that explode - "SPUDOW!" for the Potato Mine, and "POWIE!" for the Cherry Bomb. - In Super Smash Bros., dealing enough damage to the Starman Assist Trophy causes a pixelated "SMAAAAAASH!" to appear above its head, taken directly from Earthbound. - In Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake guards go "yaaaaawwwn" and when Snake sneezes a little textbox going "Achoo!" pops up (more hilariously transliterated as "Choow!" in the fan translation.) - In Xenoblade Chronicles X, all of the weapons sold by Nopon Commerce Guild are named after the sound they make or is associated with them: this means that their sniper rifles are called "thwippers", dual guns are "bangbangs", gattling guns are "ratatattas", shields are "thudclangs", knives are "pokepokes" and psycho launchers are "fwooshers". - In Fist of the North Star: Lost Paradise, these will occasionally pop up after killing enemies, quickly turning into either powerups or just drop to the ground upon which they can be picked up and used to beat enemies to death. One of these is "HIDEBU!", which is what Fat Bastard Heart says when he dies in most adaptations (though other villains said it when they died in the anime as well). Which ones pop up depend on the exact nature of the enemy, the attacks used to kill them, and the location of the fight; there's an achievement for finding all of them. - Cuphead being a giant love letter to the old cartoons from the thirties, it naturally has a couple examples, like the "HONK"s from oncoming toy cars or "BWAAAAAAAH!"s from animated tubas. - The word "POW!" appears whenever someone is hit in Fight Of Animals. - The superhero-themed Earth and Sky series uses such effects throughout, becoming more visually impressive over the course of successive episodes as the game engine becomes more sophisticated. - Naruto: Ultimate Ninja: Written sound effects are present throughout the games, mainly when characters hit each other, as a way to imitate the manga. However, the English releases do not translate them. - An addon for World of Warcraft named (appropriately enough) Comix! adds these to the game. When you get a Critical Hit (incoming or outgoing) "Pow!" "Baff!" and so on appear in midair. - In The Adventures of Shan Shan, WHAM! into the gate. - In American Barbarian, numerous during the fight, quite often elsewhere. - In Blue Yonder, both RUMBLE! and BEEP! - In Bob and George, the author was introduced with a sound effect. Followed by a more suitable one. - Used alongside UnsoundEffects in Charby the Vampirate, especially during fights like the one starting here. - Daisy Owl uses these liberally, and epically. - Digger: - Occasionally has oddly specific ones with the meaning described in a footnote. For example: "SQUITHMPGLUGH note : The sound of a large gourd committing a kamikaze assault. Difficult to render phonetically at the best of times. - The comic also makes a Running Gag of footnotes explaining what the proper sound effect is, why they couldn't use it, and going with the Unsound Effect version instead. Ex: "The correct sound of a wombat being hit in the shoulder with a crossbow bolt is a squishy sound followed by 'thud', but we found that lacked a certain pithiness." - In Doodze, numerous, as they fall. - Driftbreak uses these often. BWAAAAAA, BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP and CLICK. CLICK again. - El Goonish Shive has used these since the beginning strips along with Unsound Effect. Thwump in particular seems to be a favorite. - Occasionally used/lampshaded in Everyday Heroes: - In Freefall, running in galoshes through mud: G'LOSH, G'LOSH, G'LOSH - In Galactic Maximum, GZAT! - Game Destroyers uses this all the time, usually with a particular color surrounding the text to make it stand out from the background. Typically, the sound is placed near the thing generating the sound, but it is occasionally placed elsewhere to make sense with the timing of the dialogue. - Geist Panik uses these in combination with Unsound Effect. - Girl Genius's Agatha making coffee. - And Gil's Hand-Cranked Runcible Gun goes 'spork! spork! spork!' - Hilariously, the sound effects associated with the Jägers is written in the same Funetik Aksent in which they speak. What's the sound of a Jäger clapping? Klep! Klep! Klep! - Gone Astray [2] uses onomatopoeia by occasionally incorporating them into the art. - In Impure Blood During this fight scene — and this one as well. - This strip of Irregular Webcomic! provides a subversion. "You can stop making those silly sword noises". - Sound of a heavy metal air vent cover falling on a human skull in The Omega Key: CLONG! ONG ONG - In Our Little Adventure, BOP for a collision, and WHAMP for letting her fall as he started to help her up — she apologizes, because that was a stupid time to insult him. - In Parallels, launching the pod. In outer space. (Perhaps the POV is still in contact with the ship, though; that would transmit sound.) - Parallel Dementia has some good examples of the written sound effect at work. Strip #32 shows how the basic choices make a difference. Strip #97 shows how to simulate echoes with layered lettering and connect the action across panels with an extended effect. The next link is rather spoilery if you haven't read the comic yet, but in addition to another example of how written sound effects can give more dynamism to panels frozen in time, strip #341 also has an example of how they can be used with creative panel arrangements to show causality and simultaneity of events in different places. - The Perry Bible Fellowship parodies this with Slur, a Luke Cage parody who creates Unsound Effects that sound like ethnic slurs based on who he's he fights (punching a Mafia goon creates "WOP!", stabbing a Mexican stereotype creates "SPIK!"). When the Iron Fist parody tells him that his fighting style is "problematic", Slur proceeds to break his back Bane-style, creating the Unsound Effect "CCRRCKKKRRR!" - Project0 started with more traditional words and sounds showing up, but more recent pages tend to make them as integrated as possible. - In Red's Planet, a character falling over the Inevitable Waterfall lands in a pool: SPLOOOSHH!!! - Rip Haywire, an Affectionate Parody of action-adventure strips, regularly creates new sound effects by adding "KA-" before an appropriate word. - In Rusty and Co., - In Question Duck, during (claimed) underwater comic book style adventures. - Sexy Losers created, or at least popularized, the sound effect "fap fap fap" for a character masturbating. - In Sinfest, - Sluggy Freelance: ka-click usually means someone is having or will soon have a really, really, really bad day, thanks to a certain lop-ear. - Tapiseri Soujourn: Onomatopoeia is used extensively throughout the story. For example; Crunch, Wham, Swipe, and Slice. - In Thistil Mistil Kistil, as the ship goes to sea. - Due to its vertical strip format, Tower of God can have long-lasting sound effects written in one continuous string over entire sections of a chapter. - The Wotch uses this frequently, especially when one of Anne's (male) friends gets transformed into a girl. "Ka-GIRL!" - Many episodes of Cartoon Network's Courage the Cowardly Dog had these, along with the Unsound Effect at times. - In the Van Beuren Studios Tom & Jerry short "Polar Pals", Tom calls to Jerry for help this way when he falls underwater. - The French animated series Enigma used them from time to time. - Sometimes used in Ren & Stimpy. One example is when Ren throws the Cheese-o-Phone at Stimpy and the word "Splat!" appears in the splattered cheese. - Whenever Batfink uses his Supersonic Sonar Radar, it manifests as the word "BEEP". - Every time Cosmo and Wanda grant a wish in The Fairly OddParents!, a magic cloud that reads "Poof" appears. A lot of times a nonsound-effect word appears relating to what Timmy wished for. - It happens a lot in fight scenes in Butch's other series, Danny Phantom. They are always followed by comic book-like freeze frames. - Some of the Grim and Evil shorts of The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy. - Used in the Henry and June sketches on KaBlam. - This was a staple of Roger Ramjet, particularly during fight scenes. - Futurama featured this when Fry, Leela, and Bender became superheroes and fought The Zookeeper and his minions. It parodies the Batman TV show when Fry punching a yak is covered with "YAK!" Bender getting decked results in "01101010101!" - The Peanuts animated special, "You're In Love, Charlie Brown," had a couple. When Charlie Brown's alarm clock rings, an "RRRRRRR" appears above it. When he accidentally closes the school doors loudly (as he was trying to enter quietly due to being late), "CLICK-CLACK" accompanies it. - Doubles as a Title Drop in Crac, when a woodsman is chopping down a tree and "CRAC" appears onscreen as the tree tips over. - Grojband loves using these, with every episode featuring onomatopeias and other visual sound effects. - Used in-universe in the animated short Shhhhhh, in the hotel lodge where they take quietness so seriously that all objects display a sign with a written sound effect: The desk bell extends a "Ding" sign, the clock displays "Tick, Tock" and the bed lamp's switch shows "Click". - An episode of Duckman features Ajax going off to college as part of a plot by \|\|King Chicken\|\|. While visiting him at school, Duckman and his family are treated to Ajax giving a lecture on onomatopoeia. This becomes a Brick Joke later when Duckman and \|\|King Chicken\|\| fight. The battle spills over to the lecture hall, and they smash through a series of signs with various onomatopoeia written on them while the appropriate sound effect plays for each one. - Strange as it seems, Wile E. Coyote and the Road Runner had such an instance. In "War and Pieces," the grenade tossed by the coyote hit the arm of a cactus and was returned straight to him. The explosion was punctuated by a clear "POW." - "Christopher Crumpet": A "CRASH" appears onscreen when Christopher's toy rocket flies straight through a window. Later there's a "BAM" when the father's co-worker slaps a door forcefully on leaving. STING!	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/Onomatopoeia
One Hero, Hold the Weaksauce - TV Tropes "You got the best of both worlds, don't you? All of our strengths, none of our weaknesses." In a World where superpowers are commonplace, or at least common enough to be common knowledge, it tends to be the case that these powers come with certain drawbacks. Maybe there's a price that has to be paid, or a ritual that must be performed, or they're correspondingly bad at a different skill, or some other caveat that can make having these powers a pain, or using them annoyingly cumbersome. Then you have this character. They were born under the right stars or to the right combination of parents, blessed with the protection of a supernatural entity, armed with certain unique talents or just plain lucky: he happens to be the only one in the whole world (or one of a small minority) who is exempt from this ironclad rule. A wizard who can cast magic without a wand, for instance, or a superhuman immune to the local flavor of Kryptonite. A more "fair" treatment may make holding the sauce a trade-off for reduced powers such as with the Dhampyr or other Half-Human Hybrid characters. Ultimately this is not required though and all the trope concerns are heroes who are special because they can flout the physical, magical, etc. rules that all other metanormals in the setting are chained by. The name is a play on a phrase commonly used for making a special order at a restaurant: "Hold the X" means "This dish normally includes X, but I would like it without X." This is a pun because "hero" is also a kind of sandwich, so it's like you're ordering a Hero sandwich, but without the Weaksauce Weakness. A Sub-Trope of Conditional Powers and Wrong Context Magic. Often a Unique Protagonist Asset. In a world where Competitive Balance is in effect, a Lightning Bruiser or Master of All can be considered a form of this trope. Normal supers can invoke this trope with a Kryptonite-Proof Suit. Not to be confused with one hero holding another hero's weaksauce. ## Examples: - Fullmetal Alchemist: Edward Elric is, unlike most other Alchemists, able to do alchemy without using a circle. This, of course, came with its own problems. Several other alchemists can also do this, though they paid their price as well. The wiser alchemists without this power have circles on their clothing or tattooed on their body, making it even easier for them to use their powers than for Edward who still needs to clap his hands together, but most alchemists who carry their transmutation circles around with them are powerless if those circles get disturbed and can only do specialized alchemy—Mustang can only create fire, Kimblee can only blow stuff up, etc. Alchemy without an array is far more versatile, to the point that Ed can actually cancel out others' alchemic reactions. His alchemy is only limited by his knowledge and creativity, which means that he and other alchemists who have seen the Truth have a massive advantage even over alchemists with array tattoos. - Darker than Black's Hei doesn't appear to have a Remuneration. It's explained some Contractors can lose their Renumeration but retain their powers, specifically if they lose their original bodies (such as the case with Mao). \|\|This turns out to be the reason for Hei's lack of renumeration as well — since they're technically his sister's powers obtained via Fusion Dance, he's not obliged to fulfill the renumeration.\|\| He does, however, have one HELL of an appetite to fulfill because of it since he's basically \|\|eating for two\|\|. - In Medaka Box, the protagonist is the only Abnormal who isn't psychopathic by default. - My Hero Academia: - There's a minor example- Izuku's Quirk One for All is the only quirk immune to villain All for One's Power Parasite abilities, as it cannot be transferred to another without the user's consent. Later events in the series reveal that Izuku had another unexpected advantage. \|\|One For All is revealed to stockpile not only raw energy, but the individual Quirks of each of its holders. Normally, a human body can only handle one Quirk and suffers grave physical and psychological damage if another is somehow artificially added. One For All makes it even worse as each Quirk in its collection is enhanced by its stockpile of energy. All its prior holders suffered accelerated aging that severely cut their lifespans. It took over a century for anyone to become aware of this side-effect because all but one of the prior wielders of One For All died in battle before they displayed symptoms. All Might and Izuku were both immune to this effect because neither of them had Quirks to begin with, making them the ideal empty vessels to house One For All.\|\| - Todoroki is also immune to the logical side-effects of overusing his elemental Quirks (creating ice causing the liquids in his body to freeze and creating fire causing him to overheat) by switching between them... Or he would be, if he didn't refuse to use his fire Quirk due to childhood trauma. Once he starts coming to terms with his issues, he uses both and starts combining them for effects far greater than either side could do alone. - Clare, the protagonist of Claymore, seems to be \|\|completely immune to Awakening (even when she is deliberately trying to!), which threatens every other Claymore\|\|. The main reason for that is believed to be \|\|Jean's sacrifice to bring her back from the brink of Awakening before, which left Clare with a psychological block that prevents her from transforming\|\|, though this may also have something to do with her being only quarter-yoma. \|\|When Clare finally does Awaken, it is nowhere near as monstrous or horrifying as the other Awakened, and is essentially Teresa of the Faint Smile reborn\|\|. - \|\|The Organization caught on and mass-produced quarter-yoma, with general success. While they're generally weaker than regular Claymores, the probability of a frenzied Awakening is next to nil, while lesser Awakenings give them the powers of various Yoma with conscious control. The senior Claymores outright claim the quarter-yoma Claymores are the future.\|\| - In addition to physical deformities, the other Borners in the anime Canaan have to take regular shots of medication to avoid death from their virus-originated superpowers. The eponymous protagonist has neither of these problems (though her hair did go white because of them). For comparison, another character who received an internal and therefore invisible physical mutation, in her case two appendixes. Not exactly super-powered synthesia. It does bring up the question of if she'd still have to take the medication if she got them removed, too... - Shakugan no Shana: Yuji Sakai isn't doomed to vanish from existence like other Torches thanks to a special artifact called the Midnight Lost Child that periodically replenishes his energy. - Rosario + Vampire: After a series of near-death instances, Tsukune gains vampire powers from various blood transfusions. Unlike the female lead Moka, this comes without the Weaksauce Weakness. He effectively has no weaknesses (well, other than the potential to go berserk and Crucifixes), which gives him an advantage. - Fate/Prototype: Rider has a special mask that allows him to exist even though his Master died. It is not perfect because he has to regularly kill people and eat their souls to sustain himself. - Fate/Zero: - Heroes summoned as the The Berserker in the Holy Grail War normally lose their skills in exchange for raw power, but Berserker, \|\|aka Lancelot,\|\| has an ability called Eternal Arms Mastership that allows him to retain his combat abilities even in the grip of madness. It makes him incredibly overpowered. - Caster has a Noble Phantasm called Prelati's Spellbook, which gives him an infinite supply of Mana. This means he is not handicapped by having a non-magus as a Master and doesn't immediately die when said Master is killed, since the Spellbook was what was sustaining him. Also, unlike regular Noble Phantasms, Prelati's Spellbook can regenerate itself when damaged. - Fate/stay night [Unlimited Blade Works]: Normally, a Servant would be handicapped by a poor Mana supply. However, not only does Gilgamesh have a massive innate reservoir of Mana, his Gate of Babylon only requires minimal amounts of Mana to be used. Shirou and Rin discuss this when they realize this is why Gilgamesh can fight at full power even when he has Shinji Matou for a Master. - Fate/Apocrypha: Berserker of Black/Frankenstein's Monster has a skill called Galvanism that allows her to absorb Mana from her surroundings. This means she is not handicapped by having a weakling like Caules for a Master and she can fight indefinitely. \|\|Sieg absorbs her powers after her death, which allows him to spam Balmung's Sword Beam and fight evenly with Amakusa Shiro.\|\| - Fate/strange fake: True Assassin has a skill called Shadow Lantern that lets him absorb Mana from darkness itself, allowing him to function without draining his Master. - In Bleach, mastering the Bankai can take a Shinigami as long as ten years. This is because, even though the Bankai is in most cases essentially only a bigger version of the Shikai, the amount of power can be 5 to 10 times greater and thus much more difficult to control. Enter The Hero, Ichigo, whose Bankai actually compresses his spiritual power, circumventing the above problem, and actually giving him more speed and control. \|\|It should be noted Yamamoto's bankai "Zanka no Tachi" also seems to follow this.\|\| - Kill la Kill: Ryuko's Kamui Senketsu turns out to be the only \|\|non-malevolent life fiber\|\|. - In Dragon Ball, it's inverted. Saiyans Goku and Raditz both become extremely weak when their tails are grabbed — but when the heroes try this tactic against Vegeta and Nappa, the two explain that they've trained away that specific weakness. Vegeta also demonstrates that unlike Goku or Gohan, he can keep full control when he turns into a giant ape. - Inuyasha: Half-yokai like the titular character have superhuman yokai abilities, the more complex and less animalistic personality of a human, and they can't be directly killed by spiritual attacks like full-blooded yokai can. The one downside is that they have a unique Weaksauce Weakness of their own, which involves a periodic time of weakness when they temporarily become fully human. - JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Battle Tendency: The Pillar Men are immortal, incredibly tough, and can regenerate essentially endlessly. Their only problem is their Weaksauce Weakness of sunlight, which both petrifies their bodies and halts their regeneration (which also applies to the solar-channeling martial art of Hamon and ultraviolet radiation). The motivation of the main villain is to use a ritual to become the Ultimate Life Form, which would give him the genes and abilities of every creature on the planet, which would naturally include the ability of everything but Pillar Men and vampires to withstand sunlight. \|\|Once he'd achieved his goal, he was so powerful that the narration claimed nothing on the planet could kill him permanently.\|\| - Dragon Slayers in Fairy Tail are humans imbued with the physiology of dragons, though this comes with the risk of permanently turning into dragons if they overuse their power. By the time Natsu and his fellow Dragon Slayers learn this, they aren't aware that their dragons have already made them immune by \|\|magically sealing themselves within their bodies\|\|. However, this is downplayed by the fact that they still suffer from an even bigger Weaksauce Weakness: incapacitating motion sickness. - Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba: Nezuko is a mixed case of sorts. Other demons refresh their power by eating human flesh. She resists the urge by sheer force of will and sleeps for weeks at a time instead to recharge. - Brynhildr in the Darkness: Witches in this setting risk death via melting if they overuse their powers or if the Harness device in their neck is ejected. They also risk a monster called a Drassil hatching from the Harness, which will also kill them. Hatsuna Wakabayashi's main powers are Healing Hands and a Healing Factor. Her ability to heal herself is so powerful that she can recover even from melting, and she is also the only character to survive and recover from her Drassil hatching. - In Mobile Suit Gundam: The Witch from Mercury, Gundams in the world of the series are distinguished from their fellow mobile suits by their pilots being able to use the GUND Format technology to link their bodies directly into the suit's systems. This allows them to accomplish feats that would be impossible for any other mobile suit and enables the use of highly dangerous Attack Drones, but also creates a backlash in the pilot that wreaks havoc on their body and puts them in serious pain, to the point that it can be outright lethal if taken too far. However, the suit of the main character, the Aerial, lacks this weakness entirely for mysterious reasons—placing it in a legal gray area for a normally-banned technology, and spurring on other characters to try to discern why it lacks that weakness. \|\|What no one knows is that the Aerial holds the brain patterns of Prospera Mercury's eldest daughter Ericht Samaya and she easily takes up the burden without any side effects\|\|. - Superman: - Kryptonians can only be hurt by Kryptonite from their own universe meaning that Batman couldn't hurt Superman from Earth-2 with his Kryptonite Ring during Infinite Crisis. Power Girl is supposed to be immune to Kryptonite because she hails from another universe but it depends whether the writers remember this or not. - During the Bronze Age even the mainstream Superman got in on the act for a little while after the Kryptonite Nevermore storyline after all kryptonite in the world was converted to iron. - In several Silver Age stories, Supergirl became immune to Kryptonite for a short while. - In The Unknown Supergirl, Mr. Mxyzptlk turns Supergirl temporarily invulnerable to Green Kryptonite as part of one prank. As invulnerable, Supergirl took Superman away from one Kryptonite meteor, and then she caught the radioactive rock with her bare hands and buried it deep underground. - While most Kryptonians are susceptible to magic, Superboy-Prime ended up being altered just enough that being slugged by a lightning-infused Black Adam did zilch to him. - "Imaginary" stories depicting Kryptonian-human offspring tend to depict them as being half as powerful as their kryptonian parents but also half as weak to kryptonite. - Last Son: Superman and Lois Lane's foster son, Chris Kent, lacked the kryptonite weakness due to be conceived in the Phantom Zone. The drawback was occasional Rapid Aging. - In All-Star Superman, flying up close to the sun has vastly increased Superman's powers and made him immune to green Kryptonite. Black K can still affect him though. - The older, stronger Superman of Kingdom Come can't be hurt by Kryptonite due to absorbing more sunlight over the years. - The Hunt for Reactron: Thara Ak-Var cannot be harmed by Kryptonite when she transforms into Flamebird, which she shows when she contemptuously grabs and crushes Reactron's piece of Golden Kryptonite. - In Green Lantern: Emerald Knights Kyle Rayner finds himself sent to the time when Hal Jordan was still a rookie having trouble with Sinestro. While helping resolve the situation, Kyle lampshades this trope. - Aquaman, as an Atlantean, could always breathe underwater indefinitely, but could only stay on the surface for up to an hour tops. That is, until Geoff Johns took over and made it so that all prominent, or at least high blooded Atlanteans such as Aquaman, Mera and Tula were effectively amphibious. What's more, being adapted to living fathoms under the ocean made them super-durable and powerful on land and gave them the nice little bonus of being able to leap great distances. Cue the shocked faces of every person who once laughed at them in the opening issues of the New 52 run. - Godzilla Junior from The Bridge was born with his radiation based mutation and powers because he mutated in his egg rather than as an adult, meaning he has far better control and regulation over them than his father did. This gives the bonus that he can recharge based off just solar radiation rather than needing to raid power plants for fuel. - Code Prime: Cybertronian Combiners are a rare subspecies of Cybertronians that have the ability to combine into a larger and more powerful Cybertronian. The downside to this ability, is that the combined form also combines the minds of the Cybertronians, which reduces the combined form into a Dumb Muscle. The Black Wyverns however, do not have this weakness when they form the Hercules, a Combining Knightmare that was created by the Enigma of Combination, as their minds are instead synched together thanks to Leilas Geass. - Fate/Parallel Fantasia: False Caster has the Dragon Blood Talismans, which give her unlimited mana, meaning she can survive without a Master and fight indefinitely. Of course, she has a limit on how much mana she can process at one time, so she can still wear herself out. - In Neither a Bird nor a Plane, it's Deku!, Izuku is Kryptonian. While this means he has weaknesses to magic, intense sound, kryptonite, and red sunlight that he didn't have in canon, he has a huge draw over Quirk users: his powers are not tied to his vital biological functions. As a result, he doesn't suffer from side effects like Uraraka's nausea or Bakugou's arm strain when using his powers. - In Origin Story, the Kryptonian Alex Harris retains her species' normal weakness against kryptonite. The thing is, she lives in the Marvel Universe, where there is no kryptonite. Averted in that she also retains her species' weakness against magic, which is found in abundance in the Marvel Universe. - Puella Magi Adfligo Systema: In the source material, Puella Magi Madoka Magica, use of a magical girl's powers cause Grief to build up in their Soul Gems, and if they don't kill Witches and harvest Grief Seeds to cleanse their Soul Gems, the buildup of Grief can eventually turn them into the Witches they fight. Enter the quest hero Sabrina, whose magical girl powers specifically allow her to control Grief - allowing her to cleanse Soul Gems and Grief Seeds herself (including her own), tear apart the Grief that make up a Witch's form, and use the collected Grief as a weapon. - The Paragon protagonist of With This Ring undergoes a Fusion Dance with the universal embodiment of avarice, and comes away from the experience with "orange enlightenment" — constant total awareness of his own desires. This allows him to use an orange power ring without the usual risk of becoming lost in short-term obsession, and even wield the orange light at the same time as feeling other emotions (the necessary level of emotional focus normally makes this impractical without enlightenment). - WonderShock: Alice possesses what's known as an ADAM-Gene, or A-Gene for short. This allows her to inject herself with and utilize Plasmids as much as she desires without the risk of becoming a Splicer. - Blade Trilogy: Blade (the "Daywalker") is a half-vampire with "all of their strengths, and none of their weaknesses." The slogan is mostly accurate: He isn't harmed by things like silver, sunlight or garlic, but he still feels blood hunger and he ages normally. - In Happy Gilmore, Happy uses a running start for his golf swing. This actually can add distance in real life, but no one uses it seriously because it's impossible to drive accurately this way. Happy, on the other hand, is able to drive so accurately with a running start that he makes a par 4 hole-in-one. - Many vampire hunter series with a half-breed protagonist, like Vampire Hunter D, have a theme of being immune to vampire weakness. Even then they aren't immune; they are just so powerful that they resist the effects. In D's case, it's because of his father. - Sonja Blue is the heroine of a daywalker vampire hunter series. - Jane from The Iron Dragon's Daughter has this nice passive skill of being immune to regular defensive in-world charms. Most of those charms are made with specific magical species in mind. Being a human, Jane is too rare a creature in this world for the charms to account for. - Bella doesn't suffer from the typical uncontrollable vampire hunger in Breaking Dawn. - The intentional creation of one of these by eugenic planning is the goal of the Bene Gesserit order in Dune: the Kwisatz Haderach, a man possessing the normally Gender Restricted Abilities of a Bene Gesserit sister, while also capable of accessing parts of the mind a woman could not. Paul Atreides is the culmination of this effort, albeit a generation early, and he exceeds every expectation. Being the Kwisatz Haderach grants him unparalleled prescience with the ability to see all possible futures, and even \|\|to use this prescience in place of sight after he is blinded\|\|, on top of virtually unmatched fighting prowess and the human computer abilities of a Mentat. - Most of the human population in Codex Alera can use one or two types of elemental fury, which invariably leaves them vulnerable to other types. The exception are powerful noble families, particularly the High Lords, which generally have access to all six types of furies, making them incredibly powerful and without obvious weaknesses. This is most prominent with Watercrafters, compared to Watercrafter-Metalcrafters. Watercrafting has a constant disadvantage (an empathic sense that cannot be shut off) and not just deficiencies in the furycrafting that can be exploited. Metalcrafting can compensate for that by artificially repressing the wielder's emotions. - In The Dresden Files, Outsiders, being literal alien demons, are so heavily resistant to magic which means that only the oldest, most experienced wizards have a chance of defeating them. The protagonist, despite being a relatively young wizard, can bypass this resistance instinctively to attack them effectively. This is because \|\|he is a Starborn\|\|. It doesn't do him much good though, because 99% of the creatures he fights are from his own universe, and Outsiders are extremely difficult to fight even with this ability. - In the Elemental Masters series... - Elemental Mages and Masters are usually unable to contact elementals of the opposing element, but Earth Master Rosamund von Schwarzvald is able to speak with and even command Air elementals. In her own book, Blood Red, this is because she's working with a pagan god to deal with a terrible evil, while in From a High Tower, it's because the Great Air Elementals choose to speak with her when she's mentoring Giselle. - In The Serpent's Shadow, it's mentioned that Earth Masters are extremely sensitive to pollution and can't stand living in London. Maya is a special case, going about her daily life in London with no difficulty. This is at least partly because she has a cleansed sanctuary to live in, but she doesn't even really notice the pollution when she's outside (she's more likely to complain about the heat). - Eli Monpress in The Spirit Thief has the ability to simply talk to spirits and convince them to do his bidding, as opposed to the other wizards in the world who need to make pacts with spirits in order to access their power. - In the Magister Trilogy, all human magic is Cast from Lifespan. While this means that most witches must be very careful with their magic, because they have a very strictly finite amount, there exist a handful of men known as Magisters who deliberately burn up their own lifespan and latch onto someone else's. This makes them effectively immortal and thus grants near-infinite power. A Magister can only be killed if you catch them by surprise and kill them before they can defend or heal themselves with magic, or if you catch them during Transition, the few seconds between when one consort dies and when they bond another. - In The Warded Man, sunlight destroys magic. Demons burn in sunlight, and humans who are Invested with power lose it when the sun touches them. Three of the major protagonists are notable as the exceptions to this rule. - Arlen and Renna got around this by eating demonflesh, which eventually altered their biology to the point where they could hold Investiture within themselves where the sunlight couldn't touch it. - Jardir, on the other hand, uses the Spear and Crown of the Deliverer, artifacts made of demonbone wrapped in electrum. As with Arlen and Renna, the demonbone core can hold a magical charge, while the electrum coating protects the demonbone from sunlight and lets Jardir draw out the power. - Worm: - Eidolon's power is that he has all the powers. No matter what power you bring against him, he has several perfect counters to it on hand. And he can ignore the Manton Effect. The only limitation is he can only access three powers at once, but considering that one of those powers can be invincibility... - Contessa \|\|is one of two Thinkers on the planet whose powers aren't disrupted by other Thinkers, and the specific nature of her Combat Clairvoyance means that without this weakness she's essentially unbeatable. Unfortunately, the other is the Simurgh, who is immune to all precog abilities including Contessa's.\|\| - Weld, as a parahuman made of living metal, is in the unique position of being immune both to powers that only work on metal and powers that only work on flesh. - More generally, people who can ignore the Manton Effect (the tendency of powers to be unable to directly affect people) are very rare and valuable. - WandaVision: As \|\|Agatha Harkness\|\| tells Wanda, most witches need a coven to teach them magic, and then rely on incantations to work said magic. Wanda, on the other hand, had no coven and does not speak aloud when using her magic, and is able to work spells beyond most other witches in spite of that. \|\|Agatha uses this lack of weaksauce as evidence that Wanda is the fabled Scarlet Witch.\|\| - Downplayed in Planescape: Torment: The Nameless One is the only character capable of changing classes, meaning he can become a Fighter, Mage or Thief as the needs require, but unlike some of his companions cannot play a hybrid class, meaning his stats grow slower. - Alucard of the Castlevania series reaps many benefits from his status as a Dhampyr, such as resistance to sunlight and holy symbols along with the ability to survive without feeding on blood. However, he does play more fair than many other examples by logically being only half as powerful as a full-blooded vampire. Not that this stops him from inheriting his father's magic... - The main characters of Persona 3 and 4 are both special cases who can have multiple Personas, avoiding the set weaknesses of every other Persona user. In 4, while everyone else has to own up to their own darker thoughts, the main character doesn't have a hidden dark side to face. - In contrast the anime OVA does make him face his fears to \|\|break out of a Lotus-Eater Machine and unlock his Super Mode\|\|. - Notably, this doesn't apply to Persona and 2, where the characters gain their Personae in different fashion. - Much of Elizabeth's story in Persona 4: Arena revolves around her trying to learn more about the nature of this "Wild Card" ability that the P3 and P4 protagonists possess. She can already do pretty much anything, but even to her it remains something special and mysterious. - In the Fable series, the main character's bloodline is unique in that it results in heroes that can access all three disciplines (Strength, Skill, and Will), while most heroes are only able to access one. - In The World Ends with You, Neku is one of the few players who has access to multiple powers/pins (most of his partners just have one ability that they make use of, e.g. Shiki's ability to animate her stuffed animal). - In Deus Ex: Human Revolution, Adam Jenson turns out not to need the anti-rejection drug other cyborgs do (thus allowing him to avoid the side effects, as well as have fairly extensive upgrades). \|\|In a sidequest you can discover this was a result of experiments he was a part of as a child. His girlfriend reverse-engineering this trait is the breakthrough discovery she was about to announce to the world at the start of the game as well as what leads to the creation of JC and his brother in the original Deus Ex.\|\| - A minor example, but over the main questline of The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind you contract the deadly Corprus, which causes your stats to be wildly upset while giving you immunity to other disease. You eventually cure the negative symptoms, but keep the immunity. - The power of the Thu'um in The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim is normally reserved for (a) Dragons or (b) those willing to devote years of training to "the Way of the Voice". Not so for the prophesied "Dragonborn", who can use any Thu'um after merely seeing the word written down, provided s/he's consumed a healthy breakfast of dragon souls. - Exaggerated by Asellus in SaGa Frontier. Humans and mystics normally have separate kinds of abilities, strengths and weaknesses; humans learn skills and increase their stats by using them in combat, while Mystics increase their stats and get combat skills by absorbing monsters with their Mystic Weapons, and are also usually equipped with unremovable Mystic armors (which are normally fairly weak) in their gear slots. The Half-Mystic Asellus is essentially a human who can train like a human and use the Mystical Weapons to empower herself, making her a human with all the advantages of mystics and none of their disadvantages. The combination of powers allows her to easily break the stat cap that almost everyone else has to adhere to; other Mystics can theoretically do this, but it's impractical because their base stats can't improve. - In The Young Protectors, a side effect of the mysterious "Grey Working" causes everyone with magical power to go completely insane. Spooky Jones, the Protectors' resident spellcaster, shows no signs of this, which might have something to do with why a Demon Lord calls him an "abomination". - Straylight Tiger takes place in a world where mages and were-beasts are beaten back from supremacist ambitions by muggles who can safely handle magic-disrupting Unobtainium. The protagonist is a Half-Human Hybrid who has been genetically engineered by her parents to have magic powers and a were-tiger form with no Kryptonite factor. - In the universe of Avatar: The Last Airbender benders (people who can potentially manipulate water, earth, fire, or air) are born with the ability to be control a single element, meaning an earthbender can never learn waterbending (for example). Except the Avatar, who can learn to use all four elements. This is enhanced even further by the Avatar State in which the Avatar can access the knowledge of all his/her past lives, resulting in powers akin to a Physical God. A fully realised Avatar is quite literally a nigh-unstoppable force of nature. This is helped by something Iroh demonstrated, since while normal benders are locked into one element they can learn the styles of other benders note : since each element is bent using different martial art stances and disciplines so they can learn different applications of their native element with benders of different elements. Which is yet another reason why the Avatar is so powerful given his or her collective knowledge can be used across all four elements. - Generator Rex: - In a world where every living thing is infected with nanomachines, Rex is one of the few people able to control them. He still has to deal with Laser-Guided Amnesia and the occasional Body Horror, but that's miniscule compared to what the average EVO is subjected to. - Bobo Haha. All the nanites did to him was make him smarter. Granted, he also lacks any Lovecraftian Superpower that is typically dished out, but the monkey dodged all the downsides of being an EVO. - My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic: While all unicorns are capable of magic, most of them only learn magic that is related to their special talent, aside from general telekinesis. Twilight Sparkle's special talent is an affinity for magic in general, which, combined with her being a massive bookworm, allows her to learn a larger variety of spells than most unicorns. Other unicorns with similar power levels and versatility (such as Sunset Shimmer note : although Sunset is confined to the Equestria Girls spinoffs, and as such moatly appears in human form, locking off her powers aside from empathy and Starlight Glimmer) appear later, but by that point Twilight has become an alicorn, giving her the abilities of all three major pony races. - She-Ra and the Princesses of Power: Most of the princesses have to regularly recharge their magic with their runestones, with the exception of some princesses who don't use runestones like Scorpia and Entrapta and thus don't have magic. Since most of the runestones are quite large and non-portable, the princesses cannot stay away from their realms for too long. Adora/She-Ra's runestone is her Sword of Protection, meaning she is empowered anywhere. In addition, She-Ra can use the Sword of Protection to recharge the other princesses. She has a different weakness in that she can be separated from her sword and rendered unable to transform. In the final season, \|\|the Sword of Protection is destroyed, rendering her unable to transform for a while. She eventually manages to transform on her own and summon a new sword with her innate magic, meaning she can't be depowered anymore.\|\| - Things like breeding, genetic engineering, medicine, and eventually transhumanism are about stripping the Weaksauce from either ourselves or other living things we interact with. - In a geopolitical sense, the United States of America. It spans an entire continent, like Russia, but isn't so huge as to be cumbersome. And unlike Russia, its two neighboring nations haven't been serious threats for 200 years, and they haven't even been mild threats for about as long. It also has a massive internal navigable waterway for shipping that needed only minor maintenance and a small handful of cheap and easy canals to link them all together, the first of which was done without engineers! So it's nearly an island, like Britain, and any power capable of fighting its army would need to sail to get there, like Britain. But unlike Britain, all its power and resources were within its starting borders and not overseas. The USA has the geopolitical strengths of Britain, Russia, and the old Roman Empire rolled into one, with almost none of the weaknesses. Almost. What this means is that the American military has next to no defensive mandate and exists entirely as an offensive and forward deployable tool. It has never garrisoned foreign lands for its own security, only for extra power.	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/OnlyTheHeroIsImmune
"On the Next Episode of..." Catch-Phrase Usually, a TV series will will try to find a way to distinguish itself from the rest of the crowd. One of the ways is to build audience anticipation for the next episode. But how do they keep it? Add a Catchphrase, of course. Usually after the preview of the show's next episode, we're treated with somewhere along the line "Next! On (insert show name here)! (insert episode title here)!". Afterward, there's that one phrase that this show keeps repeating in the end of every preview just once. And it's this trope. Sometimes, they pick a certain character to say the phrase, though sometimes the speaker changes. A Sister Trope to Signing-Off Catchphrase. See also On the Next. Compare Previously on ## Examples with their own pages: <!—index—> <!—/index—> ## Other examples: - Arrested Development: Most episodes ended with the narrator, Ron Howard, saying, "On the next Arrested Development." Seasons ended with, "On the next season of Arrested Development." The last Fox episode ended with "On the epilogue." - Of course, none of the scenes shown actually appear in the next episode or season, making the catchphrase itself a gag. - Batman (1966) ('60s series): "Same bat-time... same bat-channel!" This was also used in the animated series, but in the Cartoon Network shorts, rather than in the show itself, which was more serious. - The Beverly Hillbillies: "Y'all come back now, y'hear?" - Chōjinki Metalder: "Koitsu wa Sugoize!" ("He's amazing!") - Hawaii Five-O: "Be there. Aloha." - Kaiketsu Zubat: "Zubat's stunts are very dangerous, so do not try them at home!" - Kamen Rider: - Quantum Leap: "Oh boy!" - "These questions and many others will be answered in the next episode of Soap." - Also, each episode begins with an often long-winded explanation of events so far, ending with the line "Confused? You won't be, after this week's episode of...Soap" - In the Snuff Box next time... [X]... [Y].. and... pleasurrrrre. - Super Sentai: - Dengeki Sentai Changeman: "Let's Change! Dengeki Sentai Changeman!" - Choushinsei Flashman: "Prism Flash! Chōshinsei Flashman!" - Chikyuu Sentai Fiveman: "Watch next week or you'll (super) regret it!" if Galactic Merchant Dongoros narrates the next episode preview, and variations of "Cheer for us" if it's Gaku or the Five-kun Dolls, depending on who narrates that preview. - Chouriki Sentai Ohranger: "Chouriki Henshin! Olé!" - Seijuu Sentai Gingaman: "And now, another page of the legend will be revealed." - The final episode preview says "And now, the last page of the legend will be revealed." - Rescue Sentai GoGoFive: "Emergency Signal!" This one's said at the beginning of the next episode preview. - Mirai Sentai Timeranger: "Next... Timeranger!" Also said at the beginning of the next episode preview, with the exception of the preview for Case File 36. The cast would also say this line too in some of the next episode previews (And once for Tac). - The final episode preview says "Timeranger, Final!" and on the episode looking back at the Sentai before them (As well as the one next after them), "Timeranger Special!" - Tokusou Sentai Dekaranger: "Aiming for your heart, target lock!" - Engine Sentai Go-onger: "GO-ON!" (Said mostly by Speedor after the next episode's title.) - Samurai Sentai Shinkenger: "It's time, go forth!" (Usually the narrator) - Tensou Sentai Goseiger: "Protecting the planet is an angel's duty!" - Tokumei Sentai Go-Busters: "Busters, ready...go!" - Ressha Sentai ToQger: "All passengers, please be careful." - Hikonin Sentai Akibaranger: "Good little kids, don't watch." - Power Rangers Dino Force Brave: "Brave In!" - Kikai Sentai Zenkaiger: "On the next Zenkaiger." Of note is that in Japanese, the "次回" is replaced with "次カイ", as if to mean "Next Kai". - Avataro Sentai Donbrothers: "... will be the title of our story." - A Show Within a Show example: On The Muppet Show, every episode of "Veterinarian's Hospital" ended with the announcer saying "Tune in next time to hear Dr Bob say..." - Ultraman Taro and Ultraman Leo (which share a narrator) end their next episode previews with "Saa! Minna de miyou!" (roughly translates as "All right! Let's all watch it!") - Speaking of Ultraman, Ultraman Trigger: New Generation Tiga end theirs with "Smile, Smile!" - "Gokutai Kudasai" (Please don't miss it) or "Otanoshimi (ni)" (Look forward to it) is a phrase that is commonly used in anime or Japanese live action previews, the former more prominent in the 70's. The alternate would be "Jikai (Next time on), (Show title), (Episode name)!", and most anime and toku will use this. - The Lone Ranger: "Will the Lone Ranger triumph as he fights on for justice, law and order? Tune in next week when General Mills brings you another exciting episode of The Lone Ranger!" - Yours Truly Johnny Dollar: During the serialized period of the show, star Bob Bailey would give a brief, one-sentence preview of the next part of that week's story. He'd end with, "Join us, won't you? Yours truly, Johnny Dollar." - Parodied with the Liquid Generation series Masterpiece Movie Reviews. Each episode ends with Professor Butterhands saying, "Thank you for watching Masterpiece Movie Reviews. Join us next time/week when I [insert lewd activity here]." - Epic Meal Time used to end its episodes with "Next time, we eat [strange thing]!" This stopped after the five-year anniversary episode, because several episodes before that, Harley admitted that he only had a few unused "Next times" left and couldn't think of any new ones. - Game Grumps: Where either Egoraptor or JonTron scream "NEXT TIME ON GAME GRUMPS!", only to either mumble incomprehensibly or spout a Non Sequitur, never really describing what might happen on the next episode. In-fact, when they actually do have something to say for the next episode, they point it out. Since he took on the role of Not-so-grump, Danny's been using this to express his increasingly large amount of pessimism at Arin's skill at games. - Achievement Hunter: "LLLLLLLets Stop!"	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/OnTheNextEpisodeOfCatchPhrase
Only Useful as Toilet Paper - TV Tropes George: You can't deny that this fine newspaper is good for the morale of the men! Edmund: Certainly not. I just think that more could be achieved by giving them some real toilet-paper. This trope is when literary writing is seen as such poor quality that it's only fit to be used as toilet paper or campfire tinder, (or similar undignified uses). Sometimes it really is that bad, but a common variation is an illiterate or less cultured person using a book for toilet paper or kindling because he genuinely can't see any other use for it. In this version, don't be surprised if the book was a gift from an intellectual character. This is often a comedy trope, but not always. Saying another person treats a given text like toilet paper can be serious, depending on how serious the text in question is. A politician who says a rival "may as well be wiping his rear with the Constitution" is asking for a fight. If the text in question is real, there's often an element of Take That! present. Before the availability of cheap purpose-made toilet paper, people commonly used old paper for wiping purposes. The rural outhouse with last year's mail-order catalog hanging next to the seat is Truth in Television, but not this trope because the catalog had value, it's just on its final cycle of usefulness. Compare to Extruded Book Product, Phony Degree, and Priceless Paperweight. See also Toilet Paper Substitute. ## Examples: - Implied in a joke from Sayonara, Zetsubou-Sensei, showing a bookstore next to a pet store with the comment that you don't want to know where unsold manga ends up. - Pugad Baboy, at the end of the "Feminist" arc, Dagul is reading a book on how to deal with women. Debbie, resolving their issues throught the arc, puts away that book, saying that he doesn't need to do that, rips it and she considers the book as tinder. - The Storybook Opening of Shrek ends with the title character tearing off a page of the book. The next shot is him coming out of an outhouse, making the implication clear. - Airheads: A disgruntled band is holding a radio station hostage, and one of their demands is a record contract. Once they get one, the leader realizes the terms are pretty poor and shows his displeasure by wiping his ass with the contract. - Dances with Wolves: After Dunbar goes native, his journal is found by some illiterate soldiers and used for toilet paper. - In The Day After Tomorrow some survivors are trapped in a library and need a fire to stave off the lethal cold. Although hesitant to burn books, they decide to start with the tax code as it's quite large and no one's going to miss it anyway. - Demolition Man: John Spartan can't figure out how to use the Three Seashells that have replaced toilet paper in the future. So he goes to have a little chat with a machine that dispenses citations for foul language. - Dunkirk starts with a group of British troops walking through a blizzard of German propaganda leaflets declaring "YOU ARE SURROUNDED". One of the soldiers grabs one and goes to find a place to take a dump. - The Belgariad: As part of her Obfuscating Stupidity act, Queen Layla subtly invokes this trope when she uses a draft treaty to wipe jam off the face of her youngest child. (The ambassador gets the message, but can't call her out on it.) - CHERUB: In one book, two CHERUBs on a training mission in the wilderness are given knapsacks filled with seemingly random supplies, including an apparently useless copy of The Complete Works of Shakespeare, which they leave on the beach they were dropped off at. It's only later, in the jungle, that they realize the book was included with the intent for the pages to serve as toilet paper. - Discworld: - It's indicated that the only book Cohen the Barbarian had ended up as toilet paper. - The Discworld Almanac indicates that the work, existing in-series, is used as toilet paper by the people of Lancre- basically, they don't have a lot of use for a book recounting their superstitions and farming techniques. - In The Truth, waste-management magnate Harry King considers William's newspaper useful for this reason—not only does he use it as toilet paper himself, he pulps it (and other "Low-Grade Paper Waste") into toilet paper for the rest of the city. Though in this case, he actually can't use the newspaper for its intended purpose. - In The Royal Changeling by John Whitbourn, the hero's wife tells her eldest son to take a particular letter and place it where it will do the most good, i.e. in the privy. - Inverted in A Series of Unfortunate Events: The Penultimate Peril. Seeking to convict greedy injustice causers, Jerome Squalor writes a book documenting the crimes he uncovered, titled Odious Lusting After Finance. However, the greedy Count Olaf shows how little he cares about books when he uses it for kindling to start a hotel fire. He remarks that it's the only way it's useful, but the Lemony Narrator laments watching the words burn. - In the Sven Hassel novels: - Tiny's mother ends up using the Your Fuhrer Thanks You card she got notifying her that one of her sons had died 'fighting bravely' for Nazi Germany. Not out of contempt but because nothing else was available. Her thoughts towards the Fuhrer were rather unpleasant given how hard and rough the card was. - This is the reaction of the men when they're parachuted a cargo container while starving in Stalingrad, only to find it only contains hundreds of photos of Der Fuhrer. - In H. Beam Piper's novel The Cosmic Computer, a banker comments that the local currency is even less useful: "Toilet paper can be used for something, and this paper money's too stiff." - Blackadder Goes Forth has the "inspirational" magazine for the British troops, King and Country, that Blackadder calls "soft, strong and thoroughly absorbent." - Referenced in Malcolm in the Middle when Hal enlists uber-nerd Craig to help him pick out a comic book for Malcolm's birthday gift. He dismisses one the shopkeeper recommended by saying "I'd keep this in the bathroom... but not for reading." - Salute Your Shorts: One episode has Sponge trying to hand out issues of his camp newspaper. Donkeylips asks for one, then blows his nose on it. Another episode has Deena signing (unwanted) autographs on anything handy after finding out she's gotten the lead in the camp's play, including Donkeylips' napkin. He just shrugs and blows his nose on it anyway. - Space: Above and Beyond: In at least one episode, a character takes a copy of Stars and Stripes (a US military newspaper) with him to the latrine, with a jokey tone strongly implying they're not planning to read it. - Monsignor Renard. The title character is found with German propaganda leaflets on his person and is accused of being a subversive. He explains he kept them for toilet purposes. "It seemed appropriate." - Not toilet paper, but one episode of The Navy Lark reveals that most of the memos from London get treated as drinks coasters because the things they are declaring are so useless. One example given was that London decreed that "when approaching harbour, pilot vessels should fly at no less than 2,000 feet", prompting Admiral Ffontbittocks to declare that he'd never seen an airborne tugboat yet. - Super Paper Mario does this with an "Ancient Clue". - World of Warcraft: A quest in Theramore has you trying to discredit some dissidents undermining Lady Proudmoore with "creatively edited" versions of their flyers. One of the reactions you can get handing them out is that it might be useful in the latrine. - Referenced in Fallout: New Vegas, should the Courier help Mr. House take over Hoover Dam. General Lee Oliver of the New California Republic is handed the order of withdrawal and is outraged at the demand they should withdraw their forces immediately even though they held the dam and intended to take it for the NCR. General Oliver finds these terms so unacceptable that he deems the order of withdrawal unfit to even wipe his ass. - Discussed in-universe in Daughter for Dessert. According to Heidi, the stories \|\|supposedly\|\| written by Kathy dont actually have a good literary quality; they just play on the fantasies of the readers (she herself being one). - Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal discusses this trope here, where a character asks if it's a coincidence that art degrees are put next to particularly low-quality toilet paper. - Subnormality presents the No-Bullshit Emporium, which sells copies of L. Ron Hubbard's Dianetics pre-printed on rolls of toilet paper, available in both regular and quilted. - Jacksfilms has a variant at the end of YIAY #389 during the promo for the new YIAY Book, when Jack's dad remarks that the book is garbage, but makes a good coaster for his glass. - In The Spoony Experiment: Spoony needs to go to the bathroom after a lunch of several Taco Bell meals. The last scene of the video is him grabbing the Demolition Man licensed game, which sums up perfectly what he thinks of the game. - The Angry Video Game Nerd video on the infamously awful Tiger Electronics LCD games has him state "You might as well save that toilet paper, it's worth a whole lot more!" - On Family Guy, Peter discovers that there's no toilet paper, but is then relieved that there are some Entertainment Weekly issues nearby. (At the time, Entertainment Weekly had Family Guy in its list of worse TV series of the year.) - In one episode of Futurama, Professor Farnsworth mentions that the stock of Planet Express is so cheap that it's literally not worth the paper it's printed on, so he gave it away to Dr. Zoidberg whenever he needed toilet paper. He mentions this right after The Reveal that this made Zoidberg the majority stockholder up until a few minutes ago when he sold the stock to "That Guy". - In one episode of The Simpsons, Millhouse and Bart are running a comic book store. Millhouse is suckered into buying thousands of copies of Biclops, a comic book so crappy that birds won't even use it in their nests and can't even be used for smacking people. - Spongebob Squarepants: In the live-action segment of the episode "Party Pooper Pants", Patchy the Pirate tried to invite Spongebob and Patrick to his party via invitation. The problem is that they can't read it because the ink smears underwater, so they threw it in the campfire. Underwater.	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/OnlyUsefulAsToiletPaper
On Three - TV Tropes Chandler: Okay, on three. One... Two... Joey: Why don't we just go on two? Chandler: Why two? Joey: Because it's faster. Chandler: Yeah, I coulda counted to three like four times without all this "two" talk. — Friends , when the gang is lifting a heavy entertainment center into place Any time precise timing is called for, you're likely to hear the phrase "On three: One, two, THREE!" Since this has been heard countless times before, variations are common. A common parody is: "WAIT! Do we go on three, or do we say 'One, two, three' and then go?" This usually results in an awkward conversation about how best to count or the characters becoming even more confused and going at the wrong time or missing their opportunity entirely. (Genre Savvy characters may avoid this by counting down from three instead: "Three, two, one, GO!") Another common joke is to have someone simply go "Three" without counting to one or two first. If the action which the count builds up to is a painful one (e.g. ripping duct tape off a bound captive's mouth), then the action may be taken before reaching the promised "three", to get it over and done with before the subject of said action realizes it's started. The reason why "three" is the usual number is because it's the smallest number of points you can use to establish a regular time interval. If you only count to one, nobody can react fast enough to the person saying "one". If you only count to two, you don't know how long the time is supposed to be between numbers, so nobody knows when to listen for the "two" either. Counting to three establishes both the point in time and interval between numbers, so everyone can figure out when the "three" will happen. Sub-Trope of Rule of Three. Not to be confused with Counting to Three, which is when you don't want the person counting to get to three, or with One, Two, Three, Four, Go! (in which the "go" is the Japanese word for "five"). Not to be confused with the film On the Count of Three, although this trope is mentioned and parodied in there. ## Examples - Happy Feet Two: On two occasions when Ramon is about to jump into something, he tells those near him, "I count to three you push me on two. But don't tell me, okay?" - The Road to El Dorado: - The LEGO Movie: the robot cowboys trying to catch Emmet, Wyldstyle, and Vitruvius plant some dynamite outside their room, and they try this trope, but decide to ignite the bomb before they could even get to "two": - In The Mitchells vs. the Machines, Rick prepares for the family to put their hands in and declare "Mitchell family!" on three. His family gets confused and throws their hands up early because he counts down from three. - Yellow Submarine, as The Beatles are about to sing Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. John: Okay, on the beat...A-one, a-two, a-three, a-four, a-five, a-six... Ringo: Hey! Can't you make it three? John: Oh, alright! On the beat...A-one, a-two, a-three... - Done by the crows Brooks and Elwyn in Charlotte's Web whenever they are about to attack Templeton. - The Three Stooges has the titular trio counting to three, but this goes like this... "What comes after one?" "Two!" [accidentally spitting] "Ooh!" - Lethal Weapon makes a running gag out of this joke. - Averted in Robin Hood: Men in Tights with "On the count of 'Kick'!" - Later it was "On the count of 'Jump'! Wait for it..." - Monty Python and the Holy Grail: - It's a Running Gag that King Arthur can't say the word "three", substituting "five" for it until corrected by one of his subordinates. When it comes time to toss the Holy Hand Grenade, he miscounts again. Fortunately, the grenade didn't go off until it was thrown next to the desired target. - The instructions for the Holy Hand Grenade turn this into an Overly-Long Gag, making it even funnier when Arthur immediately flubs it: First shalt thou take out the holy pin. Then shalt thou count to three, no more, no less. Three is the number thou shalt count, and the number of the counting shall be three. Four shalt thou not count, nor either count thou two, except that thou then proceed to three. Five is right out! Once the number three, being the third number, be reached, lobbest thou the Holy Hand Grenade toward thy foe, who, being naughty in My sight, shall snuff it. - In Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome, Max has to yank an arrow out of another character's leg, says they'll do it on the count of three, and of course does it on one. Pigkiller: ...what happened to two? - Shows up near the end of Sister Act, when Vince's goons are getting ready to off Deloris: Joey: Okay, we go one, two, three, shoot. Willy: Wait. We don't go one, two, and shoot on three? Joey: Get over there! - Snow White & the Huntsman. Although no counting to three is involved, there's an amusing scene when the dwarves are sneaking into the castle through the sewer system. "We move as one. (try to move, then realise there's not enough room) After you." - Spaceballs: The Spaceballs are closing on Lone Starr's ship Dark Helmet: Prepare to attack. Sandurz: Prepare to attack. Helmet: On the count of three. One, two... Helmet: Wait! What happened? Where are they? - X-Men: Apocalypse: Nightcrawler messes up the countdown for Cyclops to use his powers because the former gets distracted when he realizes that he only has two fingers (not counting his thumb). - Subverted (and very sensibly) in I Survived A Zombie Holocaust, when Wesley's hand is bitten and Susan needs to chop it off to stop the infection. He sets his wrist on the chopping block, but barely has time to start suggesting a count of three before she brings the ax down, not allowing him time to flinch or chicken out. - Scarface (1983). The gangland soldiers about to kick down Tony Montana's door can be seen doing a silent version, right before Tony's "little friend" blows open the door in their faces. - Comes up a few times in the Harry Potter films: - The Suicide Squad is about to charge in and rescue Harley Quinn, not knowing she's just rescued herself. She interrupts to ask what they're doing here, just as Rick Flag is counting down this trope. - Played with in Feed. George and Shaun agree to activate their mandatory zombie-infection blood tests on three, as loss of speech function is an additional warning sign of infection. \|\|But they have a prior standing agreement to actually go on two, as loss of memory is also a warning sign.\|\| - Animorphs: While giving first aid to a Yeerk-controlled little girl named Karen, Cassie warns her that she's going to pull on three, but goes on two, explaining that Karen would have tensed up on three. - Buffy the Vampire Slayer: - That Mitchell and Webb Look in a sketch about a hostage negotiator. - Friends: The cast attempts to move a heavy piece of furniture and Joey asks why it has to be a count of three instead of two. - In All in the Family, Gloria and Mike are fighting; Mike locks himself in the bathroom. Gloria says she's going to break the door open "on three". Mike opens the door as she says three (because he assumed it was "one, two, three, then hit")—and Gloria slams into him (she started running at "two" to hit on "three"). - Played with in Hercules: The Legendary Journeys. Herc and Iolas agree to jump on three......then say three and jump. - Iron Fist (2017) shows us that even mystical kung fu masters from another dimension know the "On One" trick. In "Eight Diagram Dragon Palm", Danny Rand has to reduce a dislocated finger on Colleen Wing. Danny: Back in K'un-Lun my shifu would make me count to three in Mandarin before he would fix it. Colleen: Yee— (Danny snaps joint back into place) Shhhit! - Played with in the Supernatural episode "I Know What You Did Last Summer", when Sam is resetting Dean's dislocated shoulder: Sam: Okay, on three. One, *CLRK* Dean: AUGH! - MASH: In "There Is Nothing Like A Nurse," the nurses are vacated due to an impending enemy attack. Frank manages to telephone Hot Lips, and like schoolkids, they say to count to three before hanging up. Only Hawkeye and Trapper, who have been eavesdropping, finish it. - In one episode of NUMB3RS, Reeves gives a three-count for a team to ram the suspect's door (as is quite common in police procedural shows). Unfortunately, she realizes the door is wired just after finishing the countdown, and her warning comes too late to avert catastrophe. - In another episode, David and Colby are cornered by an armed suspect. Using hand signals to indicate to Colby what he's doing, David manages to work the count into his dialogue with the suspect. David:* Give us one good reason why you're doing this. Okay? Give us two reasons. ( Beat ) Three! ( David and Colby spin around and start firing. ) - The Big Bang Theory: When Howard, Raj, and Sheldon have a "last one touching the ring wins" contest and nature calls: Raj: On the count of three. One, two... Sheldon: Wait! Just to clarify, when you get to three, do we stand up, or do we pee? - The "counting down from three" variant is combined with Hand Signals on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine when Captain Sisko and Major Kira prepare to burst into a room where a changeling may be hiding. - Harry Kim introduces newly de-assimilated Seven Of Nine to this in Star Trek: Voyager. Her response: "Crude, but effective." - In Life (2007), Detectives Crews and Reese want to arrest a coke-dealer in an ice-cream truck (who has an armed partner hiding behind the counter): Crews: ... but I'm going to count to three and then I plan on shooting [ the partner]. One... two... [ fade to commercial and BANG] [ after break] 2nd Perp [ on gurney]: You didn't say "three"! You didn't even get to three! You shot me on two! You didn't get to three.... Reese: He's right, you know you didn't get to three. Crews: I rounded up. - Combined with Two Scenes, One Dialogue in Person of Interest. In "If-Then-Else", Martine and a squad of Samaritan agents are getting ready to burst into a room to kill Team Machine, who are about to escape through another door to the elevator room. Martine: Shots to the head and center mass. On my mark, one— Reese: (peering through door window) —two, three! - Agent Carter: Edwin Jarvis and Peggy Carter are cuffed to the desk in an interrogation room, so decide to use it to break the glass. Jarvis keeps interrupting to ask questions, but as per the Rule of Three they succeed on the third try. - Dark Matter (2015): - In the second episode several of the protagonists are pinned down by corporate soldiers while Six is being held hostage for their surrender. Figuring they going to get shot even if they do surrender, they decide to come up shooting on the count of three, only to find the soldiers have vanished and left Six behind still alive, as they've been ordered to withdraw. - In episode 4, One and Three have been captured and tied to a chair, and realise they have to stop squabbling and work together to move in unison over to the door. On the count of three they move...and topple sideways onto the floor. It works better the next time because they work out which movement they want to make On Three. - The Goodies discover this trope is not a good idea when you want to open a parachute. They hit the ground on three, whereupon the parachute belatedly opens. - The studio version of Electric Light Orchestra's Four Little Diamonds starts with "After four. FOUR!", then the music immediately begins. - Portal 2 has Wheatley disengaging himself from his management rail "on three", only to chicken out thinking Chell won't grab him (he thinks she's brain damaged, after all) and back up. Then he decides to let go on "one" so as not to psyche himself out. Wheatley: Get ready to catch me, alright? On the off-chance that I'm not dead the moment I pop off this thing. On three. Ready? One. Two. THREE — that's high, it's too high, isn't it, really. Okay, going on three just gives you way too much time to think about it. Let's... go on one this time, okay ready? - In Dragon Quest VI, the Hero and Carver agree to surround and try to catch a wild mare "on count of three" Carver: Alright, Hero, ya ready? Count of three, we'll grab her. - On Red vs. Blue, once Grif and Simmons note a tank is targeting them, they decide to run back to the Warthog on three. If only Grif didn't start running as soon as Simmons says "One". Although right as he approaches the jeep, he narrowly misses being blasted by cannon fire. - During Soviet Womble's "Random Portal 2 Bullshittery", he and his co-op partner Cyanide end up spending an inordinate amount of time trying and failing to coordinate pulling two levers in sync by counting down from 3 to 1, due to them not being on the same terms of what "on 1" means. It somehow devolves into utter chaos, especially when Cyanide then suggests they instead start from 4 then count down to 1, \|\|and when that doesn't work, from 5 to 2.\|\| - Danger Mouse: In The Good, The Bad And The Motionless, DM realizes that whatever he says controls what happens (as he's at Stonehenge and his evil alter ego is manipulating things). As he's confronted by three blue demons and flanked by his evil self: DM: Demons, you're just a figment of his imagination, so after three, vanish. Three. ( the demons vanish) - The Extreme Ghostbusters came up with a solution to the "Should we go on two or three?" dilemaa; their Battle Cry was "On Three! THREE!" - Used by 625 in Lilo & Stitch: The Series to avoid work. - My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic: Done by the chimera in "Somepony to Watch Over Me" prior to attacking Apple Bloom in the woods. - Applied with the heroes' Literal-Minded baby logic on Rugrats: Tommy: (to Chuckie) When I say "three," run at the cooler, okay? (they get into position) THREE! - Code Lyoko: In "Sabotage", Ulrich, Aelita and Odd are in Lyoko and need to get out. Ulrich comes up with a plan: they'll stand in a circle and each will simultaneously hit one of the others with an attack, so that they'll all devirtualize. But first, Odd asks if they're going on three or after three. - Similarly in "Replika", Ulrich is about to devirtualize Aelita and counts to three so she can prepare. She closes her eyes and Ulrich strikes on two. - In BoJack Horseman, Diane proposes that she counts to three and then she and Mr. Peanutbutter will simultaneously say what they want to do about \|\|her unexpected pregnancy\|\|. Diane: One, two... Mr. Peanutbutter: On three or after three? Diane: How can it be on three? I'm going to be saying three. - Fish Hooks: Subverted in "Unresolved Fishues". Milo prepares to drop Oscar from a plane. Oscar: On the count of three! Three... [Milo drops Oscar] I was counting backwards!	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/OnThree
On Patrol Montage - TV Tropes Narration: He dumps Margot and the helicopter and goes off on a SUPERHERO MONTAGE! He nearly kills a JEWEL THIEF, blocks a STREET with a BOAT, and gets a little girl SLAPPED IN THE FACE. Super-Chris: I'm sure that all the chaos, panic and confusion that's bound to result from this sudden spate of alien sightings won't cancel out the benefit of me catching a few burglars! There is a scene where a hero, or Superhero, has just passed his first trial by fire, usually pulling off a spectacular rescue in costume and is feeling exhilarated and raring for more. On that note, since he is dressed for the occasion and has nothing better to do for the night, he decides he might as well go on patrol. This is where the On Patrol Montage comes in: we see a series of relatively small incidents where we see the hero strut their stuff running rings around minor crooks and menaces, and perhaps some more rescues, as the public looks on with astonishment at what the new hero can do. As a variant if the hero in question works on assignment, he could have a rush of small assignments or dispatches where he deals with mundane felons or menaces with ease. This can also include public events where he gets initial accolades by the public for his good deeds. This soon ends and then the plot deals the buildup to the climatic battle with the Big Bad. Contrast Crime Spree Montage. It may overlap with Good-Times Montage and Lock-and-Load Montage. ## Examples: - Pokémon Origins: Due to being a 4-Episode series focusing on specific events, all of the events in Pokémon Red and Blue from getting the Boulder Badge to Pokemon Tower get this treatment. This includes the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th Gym Battles. - Hercules: Done as a musical number, "Zero To Hero". - Superman: The Movie: After saving Lois from a crashed helicopter, he goes to stop a cat burglar, gets a cat out of a tree, stops a gang of crooks and saves Air Force One in one night. - Ghostbusters (1984): After their first hunt at the Sedgewick Hotel, the Busters have a slew of calls to capture ghosts and become a media sensation. - Spider-Man: After his big goof, we see a montage of Spidey stopping crimes around New York and becoming quite a topic of conversation. - RoboCop (1987): On his first night on patrol, Robo stops a convenience store robbery, rescues a woman from Attempted Rape and saves the mayor who's being held hostage in city hall. The next day, the media are abuzz about this new superhero in town, wondering where he came from. - After Harry Griswald masters his ability to transform in Sgt. Kabukiman N.Y.P.D., he proceeds to go on a crime-fighting spree, ranging from turning pimps, whores and drug-dealers into sushi (which, given this is Troma film, is okay for a police-officer superhero to do), to helping old ladies across the street and becoming New York's #1 superhero in the process - Marvel Cinematic Universe: - In Captain America: The First Avenger, once Cap goes on his first mission, there is a montage of him and the Howling Commandos attacking Hydra bases. - The first third of Spider-Man: Homecoming has a scene of Spidey going around the city and helping out various random people, such as catching a bike thief and helping a lost old woman with directions. - Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice: While people on TV debate over "Must there be a superman?", Superman is seen saving people in various places (a little girl from a burning building during Día de los Muertos, the crew of an exploding Russian space rocket, people on roofs during a flood and a whole ship stranded in ice). - In The Adventures of Robin Hood, Robin and his Merry Men get to work terrorizing Prince John's Mooks by shooting them dead for their villainous deeds. - Downplayed in Inspector Gadget (1999): Gadget solves case after case and becomes a newspaper darling, but it's just because he's being sent on trivial assignments like rescuing cats stuck in trees, and he himself ends the montage by confronting the police chief and stating that this kind of work is a waste of his powers. - The sequence in Protector of the Small during which Kel declares war on hazing and goes on patrol through the halls every night, beating up (or getting beat up by) senior pages who are having fun with the newcomers. - This is used at the start of the Robin of Sherwood episode "The Power of Albion" to show the outlaws getting back to normal robbing-the-rich-and-giving-to-the-poor under the new Robin Hood. - What If ? (2021): In What If ? S1E1 "What If Captain Carter Were the First Avenger?", following Captain Carter's and HYDRA Stomper's successful mission to liberate the 107th from the Austrian HYDRA Weapons Facility, a montage of them and the now-Howling Commandos fighting both HYDRA troops and German forces is shown, including the former two destroying a flight of Luftwaffe bombers and fighters.	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/OnPatrolMontage
It Only Works Once - TV Tropes Flash: [to J'onn] What's the big problem? Can't you just whip up another batch of that nerve gas? J'onn: Unfortunately, no. The gas can only be made from a rare Martian plant. I brought a sample with me, but it was destroyed when I was captured. Flash: Uh, what's Plan B? ...and if it fails, too bad. You only get the one shot. It Only Works Once is a trick or technique which is completely useless in the following episodes. It could be something where you literally have only one shot, like a Forgotten Superweapon or other Applied Phlebotinum that cannot be replaced once it's used up. It might be a tactic that relies on the element of surprise, like an attempt to exploit an Achilles' Heel vulnerability that the enemy will correct or at least guard more carefully once it's brought to his attention. Reversed, it is a common trope of cartoon series. The Big Bad will come up with some undefeatable plan that almost works save for some streak of luck on the part of the heroes (see the Road Runner shorts for some especially lucky breaks), but will never think of trying it again after being foiled the first time. Occasionally a special attack that Only Works Once will end up being used in The Worf Barrage. When you're getting near the end of a show or film and you know the trope will be averted because it's near the end and not a tragedy work, you're being Spoiled by the Format. Never Recycle Your Schemes is a subtrope. Compare So Last Season, Forgotten Phlebotinum, Holding Back the Phlebotinum, No Plans, No Prototype, No Backup, and Won't Get Fooled Again. Contrast Uniqueness Rule for when a game only allows you to use a mechanic once per battle. See also Adaptive Ability, Reed Richards Is Useless, and the Disposable Superhero Maker. Most Wave Motion Guns apply a limited form of this trope by making its use prohibitively slow and energy-intensive, but the usual dramatic application is rather different. Often overlaps with Death or Glory Attack. See also Limited-Use Magical Device, which involves a magical object or magic spells that can only be used a limited amount of times, often just once. ## Examples - Discussed in "Always a Ranger", an AU of the confrontation with Thrax where he attacked the SPD B-Squad rather than the Operation Overdrive team. After Thrax depowers the current SPD Rangers (minus the Omega Ranger, who was dealing with another situation at the time), the Sentinel Knight cannot repair the Morphing Grid to restore SPD's powers, but he is able to reach back through time and draw five past Rangers into the present while restoring their abilities as a substitute team. When Thrax is asked why he can't just depower these Rangers as well, Thrax acknowledges that he could do that, but since the Sentinel Knight would just repeat what he's just done and draw a new team of past Rangers in as a substitute group, there wouldn't be any point to that approach, so it's best that they focus on finding a way to stop the Sentinel Knight before worrying about depowering the Rangers again. - Downplayed in Amazing Fantasy. Izuku can only use his Venom Strike once a day, limiting him to one usage of it in any given fight, but he'll be able to use it again after a full night's rest. - Squirtle in Ashes of the Past \|\|decided to one up Gary's Blastoise and his Mega Evolution and created Squirtlite, a Mega Stone for Squirtles. That's right, Squirtle created his own Mega Evolution. However, upon reverting back to normal the Squirtilite explodes in a massive burst of water. Averted as Squirtle can simply create another one until he figures out how to stop the Squirtlite from destroying itself after use\|\|. - Invoked in Avenger of Steel when X-23, Rogue and Kitty Pryde had to fight a group of Silver Samurai; X-23 notes at one point that any strategy she uses against one won't work on others as they'll anticipate what she's doing. - Basically applies in The Corrupted Innocent when Bela learns that her status as an unbroken Seal means that she is essential "immune" to Lucifer's powers; just as he couldn't break the Seals himself, Bela is basically immune to direct assault from Lucifer's powers (he can throw things at her but he can't attack her directly), and he's also unable to read her mind or sense her presence with anything but his human senses. However, Castiel warns Bela that Lucifer will be on his guard once he knows about her immunity, so Bela decides to take care when confronting Lucifer, waiting for the right moment when being able to take action against Lucifer and catch him by surprise will be genuinely useful, as opposed to just buying them the advantage for that moment and never again. - Facing the Future Series: - This was actually the trigger for the whole series. Clockwork knew that when Dark Danny eventually escaped his imprisonment in the Fenton Thermos, since he now existed outside of time and didn't have to worry about harming his existence while fighting Danny, Danny wouldn't have the edge he had against him the last time they fought, requiring Clockwork to bring in someone who could do the job. \|\|Namely Danny and Sam's future selves from the current timeline, the latter of which is now half ghost\|\|. - In "Trial By Fire", Undergrowth attempted to invoke this by bringing in evergreen trees that could withstand Danny's ice powers. It only partially works. - As shown in "Laws of Attraction", Walker clearly learned from his past experiences of humans being intangible in his prison, so he had a special wing constructed for human prisoners. \|\|The only thing that messed it up was Sam's new ghost powers\|\|. - Fallout: Equestria: Alicorns have a whole suite of powerful magical abilities, plus a Hive Mind. Therefore, any time Littlepip finds a way to trick around their impregnable shields, next time they're ready for it. Stealth is the preferred method of dealing with them, but it's not always an option since they're often the ones ambushing her. - It's essentially right there in the title of Lightning Only Strikes Once, which opens with Clarke climbing to the top of Polis Tower after Lexa's death, being struck by purple lightning, and finding herself back on the day when the dropship landed, with Lexa also awakening with her memory of the future intact. At the fic's conclusion, \|\|Clarke and Lexa climb to the top of the tower on the date when Clarke was struck by lightning in the original timeline and make plans regarding how they'll use their third chance, but when nothing happens they accept the whole experience as a one-off event and continue their current lives\|\|. - In Luminosity, Elspeth's Exposition Beam power can be weaponized by sending a massive amount of memories to someone at once (specifically, \|\|all the memories Aro has ever read\|\|), but this can only be used on any given target once. Future attempts do essentially nothing, because the person receiving the memories would have already received them. - Marionettes: The first time Trixie faces Gear Shift and Cover Story, she covers the floor with ice to make them slip. In their second encounter, when she tries it again, they're wearing winter horseshoes that allow them to walk on ice. - Pokémon Reset Bloodlines: - During the Melemele Grand Trial, Gladion notes that Kahuna Hala, while taken off-guard by Velvet's planned strategies against him, quickly adapts to them and finds ways to counter them. - Ash finds himself on both ends of this trope at different points. During his gym battle against Giovanni, the latter's Steelix uses Block to prevent Ash's Yanma from switching out. By the Indigo League, Ash has taught Yanma U-Turn, a move that allows the user to hit the opponent and switch out with a partner, allowing it to bypass Block during the second round. However, in the next round his opponent has several Pokémon who know the move Pursuit, which doubles damage on retreating Pokémon, including switching moves like U-Turn, preventing Ash from using this strategy again. - Similarly, in both his battles against Paul, Gary Oak finds himself confronting Paul's Jynx who tries to use Mean Look to prevent switching. The first time it works against his Pidgeot, but the second when he uses it against Porygon, the latter is able to escape using Teleport. - Pikachu reflects at one point that he and Swellow often tried to recreate "Thunder Armor" after that move helped them achieve victory over Tate and Liza, but those two could never make it work again, Staraptor couldn't master it either, Unfeazant wasn't interested in trying it, and he didn't have the chance to try it with Fletchling before the reality reset. - Rosario Vampire: Brightest Darkness Act III: While the group is fighting Kuyou in chapter 41, Mizore and Kurumu manage to land a blow on him with their duet. In chapter 42, when they try the attack again, Kuyou isn't about to let it happen twice and disrupts the attack by throwing Moka at them. - In the Merlin fic "Shades of Destiny", Merlin \|\|is able to bring Arthur back to life after the Battle of Camlann by pleading with the Goddess that he and Arthur need to form Albion and there has been enough death to justify restoring this one life, but Merlin senses a warning from the Goddess even as Arthur is restored that he'll only be able to get away with such a resurrection this once\|\|. - In the Marvel Cinematic Universe/ Harry Potter crossover "Strange Potter", when Doctor Strange purges the horcrux from the infant Harry Potter, he soon realises that his actions have granted Harry the ability to wield chaos magic similar to the Scarlet Witch. Wong observes that such a feat should be impossible as nobody can wield all those magics at once without exploding, but Strange speculates that it was due to a combination of factors such as Lily's protection still being fresh, Harry's natural magic, the dark energy of the horcrux, Strange's own powers, and the natural significance of Halloween to their culture. Strange also explicitly notes that he doubts he could do such a thing again without it being fatal to the subject, as all those events coming together so perfectly was essentially a fluke. - On a smaller scale, after Natasha Romanoff marries Sirius Black, an extensive treatment of potions and spells allows her to give birth to a son, Regulus, but the healers all state that it's unlikely she'll be able to have another child as healing organ damage like that is very difficult. - In The Weaver Option Taylor's forces are able to successfully kill \|\|Slaanesh\|\| during the razing of \|\|Commorragh\|\|. Afterwards Taylor is warned that they only succeeded due to the very unique relationship between \|\|Slaanesh and Commorragh\|\|. The other \|\|Chaos Gods\|\| are both better protected and now on-guard against similar strategies. - In an AU retelling of the ending of My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic episode "Bats!" entitled "You Look So Sexy This Way", it's revealed that the spell Twilight used on the vampire fruit bats can only affect a subject once. However, the attempt to return Flutterbat to normal only restored Fluttershy's senses, with her body still being that of a batpony, and because Fluttershy receiving the rebound from the bats counted as being cast, the spell would no longer work on her, leaving her a batpony permanently. - The omniscient Oracle from Aladdin and the King of Thieves is "bound by the Rule of One: one question, one answer". She knows everything and will answer one question to any person who asks. After, she will never answer another of their questions (much to Iago's frustration). Jasmine : What were they after, the gifts? Aladdin : Not all the gifts. This is what the King of Thieves wanted. ( Holds up the mysterious scepter he wrestled from the King of Thieves during the chaos ) Iago : With all the other great stuff in here, why go for this thing? ( Suddenly, a blinding light emerges from the staff and it floats out of Al's hand. A voice rings out as a visage of a woman appears in the air ) Oracle : Your question is mine to answer! The King of Thieves sought my sight to find the Ultimate Treasure. Iago : Did someone say "treasure?" Aladdin : Genie? Genie : Hmm...Looks like an Oracle. Oracle : I see all that has been, and all that will be. Genie : Uh oh, uh oh, definitely an Oracle, tells the future, uh oh. ( back to normal ) Girlfriend, where were you registered? Iago : Okay, you know all, so tell all. Where is the treasure? You know, the ultimate one? Oracle : I am bound by the rule of one. One question, one answer. Iago : I only want one answer! WHERE IS THE ULTIMATE TREASURE?! Oracle : You have already asked your question. Iago : You mean before? Oh, uh, that wasn't a question! That was uh...thinking out loud! Genie : ( grabs Iago ) VERY loud! - In Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children Complete, Cloud Strife uses Omnislash in an attempt to finish off Sephiroth the same way as he did in the original Final Fantasy VII. \|\|Unfortunately for him, it backfires spectacularly, because Sephiroth is more than ready this time. Instead, Sephiroth's the one who makes a repeat performance by skewering Cloud through the stomach like he did during their skirmish in Nibelheim years before when Cloud goes in for the final slash. Sephiroth even takes the time to mock him for it, before showing his wing and stabbing Cloud multiple times in mid-air with Octaslash.\|\| Sephiroth: "Is this the pain you felt before, Cloud? Allow me to remind you. This time you won't forget." - Hotel Transylvania: The monsters of Transylvania can only "zing" once in their whole life. \|\|Subverted in the third film however.\|\| - In The Incredibles, The Omnidroid is a learning robot, and combined with Syndrome's constant upgrades, it's able to defeat superhero after superhero, with anyone who defeats it getting killed by the next model. We even see Mr. Incredible attempting a "jump over the robot" avoidance maneuver twice and being completely thwarted on the second attempt. His Improvised Weapon of the Omnidroid's own detached claw only gives him one chance to take it out. Bob: What are you waiting for? Helen: A closer target! You've got one shot! - Suicide Squad: Hell to Pay features a 'Get out of Hell' card as the main plot point, hinted to be the only one in existence and sought after by multiple dying and concerned about death parties to bypass punishment in death. \|\|It ends up being used up by Bronze Tiger when Deadshot leaves it on his dying body, though Amanda Waller is initially unaware of this when Deadshot gives it to her, she finds out in the tie-in comic that she had been duped. The comic focuses on her attempt at finding the second best thing available, a Key that also bypasses eternal damnation but doesn't necessarily sends someone to Heaven like the Card, and its also even harder to find.\|\| - In Turning Red, the ritual to seal the panda spirit only works during the first red moon after it manifests, and the change is permanent if that opportunity is missed. \|\|There is a slight loophole for those have previously sealed their spirit, allowing them to do so again under the same conditions if the spirit is released.\|\| - The Amazing Spider-Man 2: During his first battle against Electro, Spider-Man hits him with water, defeating him. By the time Spidey uses the trick again, Electro had already figured out a way to create a barrier to protect himself. - In Back to the Future Part II, to prevent Jennifer from asking too many questions about her future, Doc uses a sleep-inducing device to tranquilize her. Unfortunately, this causes a minor crimp in his plan to have Marty take his son's place at a meeting with Griff as the inducer didn't have enough power left to knock Marty Jr. out for a full hour, resulting in him showing up. - Back to the Future Part III: - Buford Tannen has a gun hidden in his hat, but it's so small that it can only carry a single bullet, \|\|and it's foiled when Marty uses a Frisbee Pie Pan to deflect his one and only shot\|\|. - The plan to get the DeLorean up to 88 MPH with the train. They have only one shot, and Doc clearly states that after they pass a certain designated point, "it's the future or bust". - Deadpool 2: Deadpool asks Cable why he can't use his time travel device to just keep bouncing around time until he gets everything right. Cable says his device only has enough charge left for one more jump, which he needs to get back home. - In Gamera vs. Barugon, the humans goad Barugon into firing his rainbow beam at a giant mirror, which bounces back and knocks him down. When the humans try it again, Barugon realizes what is going on and instead attacks them physically. He doesn't use his rainbow beam for the remainder of the film, except once out of desperation when Gamera kills him. - Godzilla: - In Gojira, the Oxygen Destroyer is a one-shot weapon used to kill Godzilla, and its creator ensures that it can never be reproduced by destroying his notes and killing himself. In Godzilla vs. Destoroyah, the device turns out to have mutated dormant Precambrian organisms into another Kaiju, leading the humans to come up with an elaborate plan to lure Godzilla into a fight with it. - In the first of the films featuring Mechagodzilla, Godzilla was able to defeat his Evil Knockoff by tearing off his head, removing the controls and cameras that let the mechanical monster keep moving. The second time they faced off, Godzilla repeated the move and was shocked when a second, smaller head emerged from the gap and blasted him with lasers. - In Godzilla (1998), the military first manage to lure Godzilla out of hiding by using a huge pile of fish as bait. After they bungle this attempt at killing Godzilla, they try again, but place the bait in the middle of Central Park this time, where Godzilla will be completely exposed. Unfortunately for them, Godzilla doesn't fall for it twice and stops short before turning back and running away. - Tony's badass \|\|wrist-lasers\|\| in Iron Man 2. Justified when we see \|\|Tony eject a pair of smoking doohickies from his gauntlets after firing the lasers. The single shot clearly burns the doohickies out, leaving him physically unable to use the weapon again at the time. Since he doesn't grab a new pair of doohickies out of a storage compartment, we can assume that re-readying the lasers requires more than a simple doohicky swap. Doohicky\|\|. Lampshaded by Tony himself when Rhodey says he should have led with that: "It's a one-off." - The aptly-named "Henshin One-Shot" from the Non-Serial Movie of Kamen Rider Faiz lets a normal human henshin into Kamen Rider Kaixa exactly once. And that is because \|\|instead of the user suffering the after-effects, it dissolves the Kaixa Gear by overclocking.\|\| - In Krull the seer known as the Widow Of The Web can protect vision seekers trying to enter her domain, in the center of a giant spider web, by turning over a large hourglass which immobilizes the giant spider guardian while the sands fall. We learn that leaving is impossible, because "it can be turned only once. That is the lure of the web." - In Man of Steel, the first time Superman and Zod fight, Zod's helmet gets broken and subjects him to Sensory Overload. By the time they have their rematch, Zod has learned to focus his senses. - In the 1999 Horror Comedy film Monster!, a town is trapped by a curse so that the title creature of a popular in-universe movie franchise that somehow escaped into the real world and every three years, it resurrects. As it runs on horror movie logic, it can't be killed the same way twice and thus a new way of killing it is needed each year. - Mentioned in Mud. Mud was bitten by a snake as a child and had his life saved by having an antidote administered in time. Unfortunately since the antidote is made of horse blood, it's something the body will recognize as a foreign material after being administered once and reject...meaning if bitten again there will be no way to save him and he will die. - Pacific Rim: This is actually the main reason \|\|Gypsy Danger's Armsword is used as a secret weapon. The Kaiju are all connected, with information one wave learns during their attacks sent back to the Kaiju leaders while designing the next waves. This allows them to analyze the earth tech and lets them come up with ways to neutralize them\|\|. It is this, combined with the increased number of attacks, that puts humanity in the bind that it is in by the movie's start. - Jack Sparrow's pistol in Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl. When he was marooned, his former crew gave him a gun with one bullet to kill himself with. Indeed, he only fires the gun once in the film. - Brought up in Species II with Sil/Eve's alien race. If they survive being exposed to a disease, after healing, they immediately develop an immunity to it, leaving it ineffective later on. - Star Trek: Insurrection features a perfectly justified and logical case. The Sona's subspace weapons create a subspace tear that threatens to destroy the Enterprise. Riker and Geordi conclude that ejecting the warp core and detonating it in the tear will seal it. It works perfectly, but as Geordi points out they don't have another warp core, and the Sona can always do it again. Fortunately, Riker thinks of a way to keep them from doing so. - Dodged around like an Old-School Dogfight in Star Wars, when the Empire makes a new Death Star that, when completed, will be immune to the tactics that allowed the destruction of the previous one — unfortunately, it's only half-finished when the heroes get to it, and they simply have to repeat the same "single ship in a tight corridor" tactic inside the weapon to launch torpedoes into the core. That goes out the window when they find that the villains put up a force field around it. And the force field projector was heavily guarded. Sure, the Rebellion would have a shot if they destroyed the shield generator... but they weren't in very good shape. There's the indigenous population of the moon it's on, but they're just Ewoks, what could they...shit. - Richard Donner's cut of Superman II averted this trope by applying the same time travel reset button as the first movie, only in an even stupider way. More to the point, it links the freeing of the Phantom Zone criminals to Superman's use of this in the first movie tying into a warning Jor-El had given him about playing god with time. Superman did it the second time to fix the original mistake. - In Tremors, each trick used to defeat a graboid will not work on the next one, because the creatures are too smart and adapt just too damn fast. For example, they kill one by tricking it to swallow a pipe-bomb, but when they try on a second one, it spits the explosive back at them. The trend continues to reappear throughout the sequels. - Aesop's Fables: In "The Dog and the Wolf," a dog is caught by a wolf and about to be eaten. The dog tells the wolf that while he's too skinny at the moment and won't taste good, in a few days his master will hold a feast and give him all the scraps, and the wolf can then eat him while he's nice and fat. The wolf agrees. When he comes back a few days later, he finds the dog sitting on the roof of his master's house. The wolf says, "Come down, my friend, don't you remember our agreement?" The dog says, "My friend, if you ever catch me on the ground again, don't wait for any feast." - The Beyonders: If Maldor sends out a torivor to duel, it's all but guaranteed to kill whoever he sent it after. However, once the torivor has killed its mark, it is freed from the bindings on it and can return to its native realm. Since Maldor has neither the power nor the knowledge to summon more torivors, he usually sticks to sending them out to spy. - Biggles found himself fighting Sky Pirates targeting bullion shipments in Biggles and Co. The first time they hit his aircraft, he thwarted them with a false floor in the aircraft and some decoy crates full of lead... with some explosives wired to go off when the lid was lifted. The second time it happened, the air pirates immediately went for the secret compartment... And got another load of lead ingots because he'd put the real gold in the main cargo hold. The third time, the now very annoyed air pirates discovered they'd forced down an unloaded decoy aircraft. \|\|That didn't work quite so well because the air pirates had an inside source who'd hidden a smoke bomb in the latest consignment.\|\| - Book of Swords: Throw Farslayer with a target in mind, and it will strike down that target no matter where they are... and it will then stay there in their corpse for someone else to pick up. - Bruce Coville's Book of... Spine Tinglers: The gate in One Chance only works once for each person; if they don't go through, they can never summon it again. - In the ninth Ciaphas Cain book, an Imperium astropath discovers how to project a psychic field that jams the Tyranid Hive Mind, turning the tide of a major battle. Unfortunately, the strain burned out the captured Tyranid cortical node that was generating the jamming signal, and it will be very hard to find another one so nearly intact. - In Dragon Bones, the heroes defeat the villains by \|\|killing Oreg, who is sort of a Genius Loci to castle Hurog, while the villains are inside castle Hurog. The castle collapses\|\|. This obviously only works once, as \|\|Oreg is no longer bound to the castle, so even after it's rebuilt, it can't be repeated\|\|. - Ender's Game has a strategy winning a training battle that is discussed to Only Work Once (it is technically an exploit of the battleroom rules). It works. A similar strategy comes into play in the end battle, recalling that moment. - Ender is constantly challenged by the teachers, who keep putting him in situations that prevent the use of old tactics, necessitating him to come up with new ones on the fly. Not only that, but the other armies keep adopting his tactics, so he can't use the same ones anyway. - Leprechauns in the Fablehaven series cannot be caught by the same trap twice. Patton Burgess not only caught one five times with five different traps, he had more traps ready for anyone who wanted to try it. - In the Honor Harrington novel On Basilisk Station, we are introduced to the grav lance, which allows even a light cruiser to take down a superdreadnought's sidewall, but has a very short range, a quarter that of standard energy weapons. Getting it to work requires immense sneakiness and the enemy not looking out for it. It works the first time because the OpFor was not expecting it, but in subsequent exercises the other side knows how to look out for its attempted use. It is these repeated failures that get Honor the eponymous Reassigned to Antarctica. \|\|In the final battle against a Havenite Q-ship that outmasses even a super-dreadnought, she manages to pull off another successful use.\|\| - This is stated by Harrington to her students concerning her escape from Hades: the stunt she pulled to take out the State Sec convoy coming to retake the planet had so much that could have conceivably gone wrong, depended on the enemy being extremely sloppy in monitoring their sensors, relied on having detailed information regarding their approach that would be near-impossible to have in any other situation, and she had absolutely no other choice except to try it. - Subverted in Storm From the Shadows, as the Mesan plan involving New Tuscany is, and is lampshaded as, a repeat of the plan used in Shadow of Saganami. However, the second attempt succeeds in its intended goal of \|\|provoking a war between Manticore and the Solarian League\|\|. - In I Shall Wear Midnight, Tiffany is told that while the Cunning Man has been defeated before, learning how it was done won't help her and she'll need to devise her own strategy against him. The reason is that he won't fall for the same trick twice — he's cunning, after all. - A version of a bluff that only works once in Harry Harrison's Invasion: Earth. When the crew of an alien ship threatens to drop radiation bombs on Earth cities, the military replies that they have a secretly-developed laser weapon trained on the ship. The aliens try to call their bluff, but their ship promptly explodes. Turns out there is no laser weapon after all, but the soldiers simply planted charges on it earlier (interestingly, no one mentions the problem of a ship filled with radioactive material exploding in Earth's orbit). The remaining alien ship, after a few more words, wisely decides to leave and not challenge the bluff. - In Edgar Rice Burroughs' John Carter of Mars novel A Fighting Man of Mars, the hero obtains invisible items from the villain for some effect. However, they lose them. You see, the invisibility was always in effect. - This is a matter of some contention among The Lord of the Rings fandom, among whom there is a vocal minority that considers Aragorn's use of a seemingly invincible undead army in only one battle (rather than throughout the war) to be a Headscratcher verging on a Wall Banger. Debates about whether the Exact Words of their oath would have allowed him to demand longer service from them can go (and have gone) on for dozens of pages in various internet fora. The popular consensus is that the undead army was not magically compelled to obey Aragorn, but did so voluntarily as he was the only one who could release them to pass on to a more standard afterlife. If they'd gotten it into their heads that he did not intend to release them, they could very well have gone over to the other side, so he decided that it was better to be safe than sorry. YMMV on whether this explanation makes this a legit example or is merely a convenient bit of Fan Wank. It should also be noted that it is never made clear (in the books at least) if the army of the dead can physically hurt people, as the only army they deal with they simply terrify into fleeing. If they could not actually attack people, once the psychological impact of them wore off, their usefulness would be greatly reduced. Regardless, they demanded to be released after a single battle, and he complied. - In William R. Forstchen's The Lost Regiment novel Union Forever, a large naval battle between \|\|the Cartha led by Cromwell's ironclad Ogunquit\|\| and \|\|the Roumans led by Keane's hastily-constructed ironclads\|\| is ultimately won by the latter despite the former seemingly winning moments before. Why? Because reinforcements arrive for the latter in the form of what appears to be \|\|a gigantic ironclad with three long-range guns that look like they could turn the Ogunquit into wreckage. In fact, it's a barely-working small single-cannon ironclad with bits of metal and wood attached to the front and sides to make it look larger and wooden logs sticking out to make them look like cannons\|\|. It's specifically stated that this trick will not work again. - The Marvellous Land of Snergs: Subverted. Gorbo is given one invisibility cap, one stick which transforms into a sword capable of cutting anything, and a pair of shoes which grant super-running speed. He is warned that the cap loses power after ten minutes, and the stick and the shoes after one use. The subversion comes when \|\|it is revealed that Gorbo was tricked: those objects are not magic at all\|\|. - In John Varley's novel Millennium (1983), once a time traveler visits a time, that specific time period from arrival there to return to your own time can never be accessed again. - In Romance of the Three Kingdoms Zhuge Liang's use of the "Empty Fort Strategy". Specifically, he orders his few hundred soldiers to dress as civilians and all the city gates to be thrown open. Sima Yi is wary of Zhuge Liang's strategic brilliance and assumes it to be a triple bluff as Zhuge Liang's plans never leave his army open to this kind of risk. Afterward, Zhuge Liang remarks that the only reason the trick worked is that Sima Yi never imagined that he would try a bluff like that, and now that he has, Sima Yi's too smart to fall for it ever again. - Early in the Shannara series, Allanon mentions that certain powerful works of magic can only be performed once and then never again. This is the reason why the heroes of the various books have to spend so much time hunting down or protecting one MacGuffin or another — if, e.g., the Sword of Shannara goes missing, you can't just forge a new one to replace it. - Near the end of Starsight, Spensa is able to cause a delver to stop its attack by cytonically linking to it and showing it that the creatures of the somewhere are people with thoughts and feelings and value. In Cytonic, she tries to do the same to other delvers, only to find out that they have rewritten their minds to make themselves incapable of developing empathy towards the denizens of the somewhere. - In the New Jedi Order series of Star Wars novels, someone comes up with the brilliant idea of using the Centerpoint Station superweapon to destroy a Yuuzhan Vong fleet. Unfortunately the heroes get righteous on the guy trying to fire the weapon, and cause him to misfire. The weapon destroys a major Galactic Alliance fleet, and Centerpoint powers down, unable to be used ever again. - A milder version in the same series, Jedi Knight Corran Horn has a "dual-phase" lightsaber, which allows the blade to extend in length. At one point, he surprises one of a pair of Yuuzhan Vong warriors by suddenly extending the blade, impaling him. He monologues to the other warrior (who may or may not have been able to understand him) that he knew he'd only be able to use the trick once, and chose to use it on the obviously less-skilled warrior, since he'd be more likely to fall for it. - Piers Anthony's Xanth series had the character Surprise Golem that had the magic talent of all magic talents. Her talent is to have whatever talent she wants at the moment. It was soon discovered she could only use each talent once, but she could achieve the same results by using variations. Which makes it not much of a limitation at all, though some specific effects she might want to produce will naturally have more variations available than others. - In The Dastard Surprise finds out that she can perform the same spell twice with a significant period of time between the two only to have her discovery erased from time by The Dastard. - Talents themselves are a form of this in Xanth. Each person has a unique magical talent, and it's strongly implied (if not outright stated) that talents will never reoccur. Once a person with a specific talent dies, no one else will ever have that specific talent ever again. Talents can overlap in their effects (with Surprise's talent, by definition, overlapping with everyone else's), but no two are ever exactly the same. note : Again, we find out later that talents do repeat, but several generations minimum will pass before a talent reappears. - This is how all of the Adepts' spells work in Anthony's Apprentice Adept series, with the same variation loophole. - In Godfather Death, Death gives his godson a magical herb to make him a famous physician. If Death is standing at the head of a patients bed, the physician can cure any illness they have with the herb. When the physician sees that the king is destined to die because Death is standing at the foot of the bed, he turns the bed around so that Death is standing at the head of the bed, letting the physician save the king's life with the magic herb. Death is outraged at this betrayal but spares his godson's life out of love, warning him that if he ever pulled that stunt a second time, he would pay the consequences. \|\|When the physician does the same trick to save the life of the king's daughter, Death makes good on his threat and takes the physician's life\|\|. - In an episode of Andromeda, the Nietzscheans are trying to erase the AIs of captured High Guard warships. They have finally created a device that can do that without any physical damage, and manage to delete the AI of the Wrath of Achilles. Dylan captures the device and keeps it in storage. A year later, a rogue AI named Gabriel hijacks a newly-built sister-ship of the Wrath of Achilles ( Siege Perilous class), and Dylan uses the device again. However, Gabriel has been aware of the device's existence for this whole year ("For an AI, it's an eternity") and has managed to devise a countermeasure. To be fair, though, it would still probably work on any AI not aware of the device's existence. - Some particularly gutsy BattleBots competitors have chosen to equip their bots with weapons that can only be used once per match: - Chrome Fly has an otherwise fairly standard design, but it has a companion drone that drops a cylindrical weight. As the drone cannot retrieve this weight and can only carry one at a time, it can only use it once. As luck would have it, the one time it dropped the weight in its entire career, it missed. - Double Jeopardy has a cannon as its main weapon that shoots a similarly shaped, sized weight, though at about 190 miles per hour (or about 305 kilometers per hour). Like Chrome Fly's drone, it can only shoot it once, as it's not equipped to reload another slug. Unlike Chrome Fly, it managed to hit its opponent Gamma 9 on its initial match, though Gamma 9's operators were never directly in front of Double Jeopardy whenever possible, which meant it didn't fire that cannon until right before it was knocked out. - Doctor Who: - "Bad Wolf"/"The Parting of the Ways": - Jack jury-rigs a BFG from the Defabricator and his Compact Laser Deluxe. However, it only has enough power to kill one Dalek, due to the makeshift nature of the weapon. When it returns in "The Stolen Earth"/"Journey's End", Jack's had the time to upgrade and fine-tune it so it no longer dies after one shot. - Rose absorbs the Time Vortex, effectively making her a God, allowing her to reduce the Daleks to dust with a wave of her hand and bring Jack back to life (forever, as it turns out). However, the side effect is that it very nearly kills her, and causes the Doctor to regenerate after he absorbs the energy from her. In the subsquent Christmas special, Rose tells Mickey she has the feeling it would break the universe if she tried it again. - The power the Doctor gains over the Carrionites in "The Shakespeare Code" when he uses the species' name to banish one of them only works once. Oddly, though, it only works once AT ALL, rather than only working once on each member of the species. - "Resolution": It's implied the reason the villain evades \|\|the Doctor's attempt to roast it inside its own casing with repurposed microwave parts\|\| is because this is basically the same way it was first defeated on Earth in the ninth century. - The Good Place: - After Eleanor works out that "The Good Place" is \|\|actually a psychological Hell for her and three other humans\|\|, she thwarts \|\|Michael's\|\| plan to reset their memories by writing herself a note and hiding it in Janet's mouth. While this allows her to uncover the truth much quicker without her old memories, \|\|Michael\|\| simply reboots their memories again, and checks Janet's mouth as he restarts the neighbourhood. - Partway through Season 2, Jason prevents demons from capturing him and his friends using a quick Molotov Cocktail and a Battle Cry. Next season, he tries the same thing to defeat another group of demons — only for one demon to clamp a hand over Jason's mouth while another douses the Molotov. - iCarly: In his first episode, Carly, Sam, and Freddie realize that all they really need to do to stop Nevel is tattle on him to his mom (since he is only 11). This is handwaved in his next appearance where they mention that his mom is going out of town and will be unreachable for a while. After this, it is never brought up again. - Kamen Rider Ex-Aid sees the villainous Masamune Dan/Kamen Rider Cronus unlock the Reset function of the Gashacon Bugvisor II when the Master Gashat for Kamen Rider Chronicle is destroyed, allowing him to undo its destruction and Ret-Gone Emu's Hyper Muteki Gashat, costing the Doctor Riders the one power that can counter his Pause. When the Riders manage to beat Graphite, allowing them to summon Gamedeus so they can defeat it and clear Rider Chronicle, he tries to use Reset again...and Emu, thanks to Kuroto's tireless work, counters with a second copy of Hyper Muteki and the Save Energy Item, which saves the progress of the Riders, making Reset completely useless exactly one episode after its debut. - Kamen Rider Wizard has the Phantom Phoenix who, through a combination of Resurrective Immortality and Came Back Strong, No Sells the Finishing Moves which previously destroyed him. Unable to truly kill Phoenix, Wizard only neutralizes him permanently by kicking him into the Sun, where he is contained in a state of being perpetually incinerated then reconstituting instantly over and over again. However, bonus material does suggest that Phoenix may eventually overcome even that fate, though it may take a million years for him to surpass the Sun's intense heat and gravity. - In an early episode of Pee-wee's Playhouse involving a thunderstorm, Randy shows Pee-Wee how to prank call someone by calling up a woman on the picture phone and asking "Is your refrigerator running?". When it's Pee-Wee's turn to do a prank call, he calls up the exact same person with the exact same joke. She obviously doesn't fall for it the second time. - Power Rangers/ Super Sentai - Power Rangers S.P.D.: Kat Manx is given a special Morpher that allows her to transform, but only has one charge, and it only lasts an hour of transformation time. She takes it and goes into battle as the Kat Ranger for the first and only time. - Subverted with her Tokusou Sentai Dekaranger counterpart Swan Shiratori, who can use her DekaSwan form whenever she wants, but makes a policy of only doing so once every four years (except in emergencies, as when she tried to transform in the finale only to be interrupted before she could do so). She transforms again in Kaizoku Sentai Gokaiger. - Juken Sentai Gekiranger has the Tenchi Tenben Da, or Heaven and Earth Disaster Strike. Heralded as the ultimate skill of Bruce E, Juken's creator, and called a technique that defies the very laws of nature. GekiViolet managed to recreate the technique through Training from Hell and managed to use it to land a One-Hit Kill on Genjuken warrior Gouyo, but when he attempted to use the same technique against Rio, who was the reason he learned the technique in the first place, Rio managed to easily counter the technique, having already seen it in action. - In Tensou Sentai Goseiger, Robogog's ultimate weapon was a world ending Wave-Motion Gun called Calamity Destruction, but it could be used once, and thanks to \|\|Buredoran, who intentionally didn't seal Gosei Knight's morpher completely\|\|, Gosei Knight was able to block the blast and stop it from destroying the world, leaving Robogog furious that his ultimate weapon had been wasted. - In Power Rangers Dino Fury, Ollie and Solon use the Legendary Ranger Database to read up on \|\|Lord Zedd, who was revived as The Heartless after the original had been purified\|\| and having captured the rest of the Rangers. Upon learning of Zordon's Heroic Sacrifice, the two quickly realize there's no way they could recreate such a World-Healing Wave. - Reaper had Sam, the main character, use vessels to catch escaped souls from hell. Each week's vessel was different, being an item related to what the escaped person had been sent to hell for. - Salem: For some reason, after Mercy's snake familiar is exorcised from her, she's now capable of staying in control of herself after Mary Sibley tries to put it back. - In the Star Trek: The Original Series episode "Let That Be Your Last Battlefield", Kirk, Spock, and Scotty initially manage to get Bele to give control of the Enterprise back by activating the ship's Self-Destruct Mechanism, which he complies with before the sequence is complete. Towards the end of the episode, after hijacking the ship again, Bele manages to burn out the mechanism, preventing them from using it again. - In Star Trek: The Next Generation, the Borg have the ability to adapt to phaser frequencies after a few shots. The obvious workaround for this is changing the phaser frequency to something they haven't adapted to. The Star Trek: Elite Force games explicitly addressed this issue by introducing the Infinity Modulator (or I-Mod) gun, which changes frequencies too quickly for Borg to adapt. - In the first level of the second game (based on the last episode of Star Trek: Voyager), the Borg adapt to the I-Mod as well by using a jamming field specifically designed to stop the I-Mod from firing. The player is forced to do the mission with regular weapons, using shots sparingly. - The I-Mod actually infinitely randomizes the frequency to such an extent that the Borg can't even adapt to the randomization algorithm normally used by phasers. - In the series itself, much is made of this trope when anyone is simply planning on fighting the Borg. They know that any possible advantage they can come up with will result in the Borg adapting to render it ineffective quickly afterward. Thus, they often hold back the advantage until it is most likely to be needed. - Discussed in the Star Trek: Deep Space Nine episodes "The House of Quark" and "Looking for par'Mach in All the Wrong Places", both of which feature Ferengi Quark forced to duel a Klingon warrior. When he was challenged by D'Ghor in front of the High Council, Quark was able to get out of the duel by throwing away his weapon and daring his opponent to kill him anyway, thus proving that D'Ghor was a dishonorable Klingon in front of the High Council and thus confirming Quark's allegations against him (he had accused D'Ghor of trying to dismantle a rival house through financial manipulation rather than open challenge). When he's subsequently challenged to a private duel against a Klingon bodyguard, Quark contemplates using the same strategy, but Worf points out this only worked last time because it was a public display of dishonor in front of the High Council; in the case of a private duel there's nothing to stop Quark's opponent from simply executing him anyway. - Stranger Things: In the second season finale, in order to free Will from the influence of the Mind Flayer they lock him in Hopper's cabin and turn the heat up to sweltering levels, as puppets of the Mind Flayer prefer cooler temperatures. Will's body goes insane, breaking his bonds and almost overpowering Joyce before finally burning out of his body. In the third season, the characters realize that Billy was similarly possessed by the Mind Flayer, and try a similar tactic tricking him into a sauna and even have Eleven with them as muscle. Billy, however, is naturally bigger and stronger than the adolescent Will, which made the process take longer, and being enhanced by the Mind Flayer made him a threat even to Eleven, which allowed him to escape. This was a sign that the growing Mind Flayer army was both especially dangerous and there weren't going to be easy solutions. - Supergirl (2015): Shortly after Kara arrived on Earth, she used her powers to save someone from a car accident. Her foster father Jeremiah covered by claiming she got lucky, but warns her that excuse is only going to work once. It's almost fifteen years before she finally becomes a hero, starting when she has to save her sister's crashing plane. \|\|As it turns out, the explanation didn't even work perfectly that one time. Rick Malverne, a friend Kara's age, was always suspicious after that incident and quickly put two and two together when Supergirl saved a plane with Kara's sister on it.\|\| - Supernatural: In Season 7, Sam and Dean eventually acquire a Villain-Beating Artifact that can be used to kill an otherwise Nigh-Invulnerable Leviathan, but it can only be used once. They decide to target their leader Dick Roman, hoping that his army will collapse without him. \|\|When the weapon is finally used, it sucks both Dean and Castiel along with Roman into the monster afterlife.\|\| - Obfuscating Stupidity as a strategy in social game shows like Survivor. Part of the reason it only works once is that it relies on people not knowing who you are and only seeing the mask you put on in front of them. If say, you do this, get to the end or win, then return for an all-stars season a year or so later, your fellow players would know that you're not as dumb as you look. If you jump from one season directly to the next (such as Amanda&James, Rupert, Russell Hantz), then you'll still have the advantage of being unknown to your fellow players. That is, however, assuming the players are smart enough to see through it all. (Part of why Rob was able to get an easy victory in Redemption Island was because all his tribe members except himself and Kristina left their brains at home and thought Rob was going to take them to the finals.) - This was also Russell's downfall in said season. The first two times he played, he was unknown to the rest of the players. When he returned for Redemption Island, he wasn't put on the "Stupid" tribe and they saw him doing exactly the same thing. - In Tomica Hero Rescue Force the team combine all their vehicles into Great God Striker and use it's Super Final Rescue to destroy the Big Bad Batsu. Unfortunately it fails. - In UFO (1970), the invading aliens use a new superweapon in each attack. It fails not necessarily because it is flawed but also through bad luck. However, they never try it again although it still exists and might be devastating in another attempt. - The television series V (1983) was premised on this. The red dust which was all-powerful in stopping the Visitors at the end of the V miniseries was suddenly found to be ineffective in warmer climates. Also, re-application of the red dust wasn't an option since it was found that repeated exposures to the virus could be deadly to Earth lifeforms too over time (as opposed to instant death for the Visitors). - In the first season finale of Witchblade, Sara chooses to \|\|go back in time to the first episode, thus undoing everything that happened in the series so far\|\|. She is specifically informed that this will only be possible to do once, presumably to stop that ability from being a Game-Breaker. - In Wizards of Waverly Place, Alex defeats Franken Girl, the monster Justin created to guard his bedroom, after finding out that Justin installed his own laptop as brain and tricking the monster into shutting itself down with the "Control", "Alt" and "Delete" keys. Unfortunately for Alex, Justin brings Franken Girl back to life and adds a spell lock preventing Alex from using the same trick. - In the first season of Workaholics, the guys got rehired after threatening to expose their boss' illegal business practices. This is never, ever brought up again, even in the numerous following episodes where she bullies them or makes their lives difficult in some way. - In The Bible, Satan's Eden ploy was this. Yes, it struck an incredible blow against humanity, but it also exposed Satan as a deceiver who is Always Chaotic Evil. This is a big reason why Christianity's tone is so triumphant: there is nothing Satan can do to us that will be as bad as what he's already done, and even that didn't erase our intrinsic worth in the eyes of God. Notably, the next time Satan tried to tempt a representative of humanity, he was shut down hard. - Bryan Danielson ended his best of five series against Homicide to get a shot at the Ring of Honor World Champion with a 100 rotation air plane spin. When he tried to use it again during the title match, Austin Aries slipped out of it after 30 rotations. Danielson's inability to take the title from Aries led to him going into voluntary exile from ROH until he knew he could do it. note : CM Punk ended up beating Aries during this time, but Danielson's time off still paid off with a World Title reign of his own. - Almost every RPG is open to this trope. The GM probably had a pretty good idea of how you are supposed to get past a bad guy but either hinted at it too subtly, the players were point blank oblivious to anything other than violence or hilariously botched rolls while trying to figure it out, they just don't get there. And that means that the GM either has to murder all the PCs or let them lash together a plan between themselves to leapfrog this particular station on the plot railroad. But only this time. - Alternatively players being what they are, they may put in WAY more time and effort into working out how to defeat the bad guy from a Rules Lawyer perspective than the GM hoped, and thus arrive at a fait-accompli that is irrefutable from a rules standpoint but not what he had in mind. Given the effort involved, the GM has to let it pass this time, but threats (or possibly rocks) are likely to be passed should they ignore the plot and focus on breaking the system in future. - Champions. The villainous robot Mechanon has automated factories around the world. Whenever he's destroyed, one of the factories creates him again, this time with defenses against whatever destroyed him. This makes it much more difficult or even impossible to destroy him the same way again. - In Chuubo's Marvelous Wish-Granting Engine, which has plenty of powers that are very draining if you use them more than once in a chapter or even once in a book, and a few (such as some forms of Reality Syndrome) that simply cannot be used more than once per chapter, the Salvation power from the Wounded Angel arc works once per campaign. It is the only power in the entire corebook with this limitation. To be fair, it's a strong power, enabling you to reshape the world to save someone for whom all is lost, but still! - Most of a PC's powers in 4th Edition Dungeons & Dragons only work once per encounter or once per day. At least they can be recharged between fights, though... - For arcane or divine spells, this is justified by encounter and daily spells requiring a minute or two or longer of memorization, preparation, and/or prayer to prepare. For physical powers, it's explained that they are so physically demanding or reliant on surprise tactics that your character can only perform (or get away with them) once. This is one of the main reasons why there's a Broken Base over this edition: some players find that it's not airtight, but in most cases it works under Rule of Cool; other players find this a ridiculous case of Fridge Logic. - The GURPS Player Handbook suggests the DM should reward a clever player who comes up with a new gambit by letting the trick work ... but only once. The example given is throwing sand in an opponent's eyes to blind him — might work once, but if it were really that effective all the time, "fighters would leave their weapons at home and carry bags of sand instead." Thus to keep the game balance, creative gambits should only work once. - In one of his Pyramid editiorials, Steven Marsh said that he'd tried giving his players awesome abilities that could only ever be used once, and they never got used at all. Partly because players were always thinking that if they used it now, they might need it later, until not using it became a habit, and partly because it's just so much cooler to be the guy who could at any moment unleash their Ultimate Power than it is to be the guy who did that three adventures ago. - Yu-Gi-Oh! has a few cards whose effects can only be activated once per game, a step up from the usual once per turn restrictions found on many cards. Though there are very few "once per Duel" effects, this restriction dates all the way back to 2003 with Twin-Headed Behemoth. - In Wicked, Elphaba's control over her magic is limited, often gives unexpected results, and she can't undo a spell once it's been cast. This leads to problems throughout the story. - In Ace Combat 7: Skies Unknown, in order to try to shoot down one of the Arsenal Birds, the Oseans sneak a team of engineers into Stonehenge deep within Erusean occupied territory to repair the remaining railgun that was spared by the ISAF in Shattered Skies, due to it having been knocked out by a meteor. However, because it had been rotting away in the desert for a decade an a half, combined with the fact that they power it up with a fleet of generator trucks, theyre only able to get one shot in. \|\|Fortunately, thanks to the LRSSG damaging the Arsenal Bird, theyre able use the railgun to hit and destroy the Arsenal Bird, which turns the tide of war into Oseas favor.\|\| - Batman: Arkham City: - The console-only game (later ported to mobiles) Civilization Revolution only has one nuke in any single game. It's given to the player who builds the Manhattan Project wonder. It can hit any city or square on the map but leaves no fallout. Doesn't stop enemies from declaring war on you at the drop of a hat. - Command & Conquer series: - In the original game, NOD only had the capability to launch a single nuke (it was a lot more powerful than nukes in the later C&C games though). GDI's counterpart, the Ion Cannon had no such limitations. - In the Yuri's Revenge expansion of Red Alert 2, partway through the fourth Allied mission in Egypt you get one free use of the Psychic Dominator after you rescue Einstein from Yuri's clutches — he managed to sabotage it under Yuri's nose before your forces rescue him. He states it is unstable, though, and will self-destruct before you get a second use. - The call-in supertanks in Company of Heroes for the Axis factions, the King Tiger and the Jagdpanther. You get one per game, and God help you if Allied AT guns knock them out (and you don't have a Bergetiger to revive them). Then again, if the Allied players are still putting up a defense as opposed to screaming like a little girl, there's something wrong... - Disgaea: In the second chapter, Flonne summons a dragon to attack you, announcing that because she has to use a special item, she can only do it once — thus, after she joins your party, there will be no dragon-summoning. - This can be partially averted... by capturing the dragon she summons, allowing YOU to summon the dragon whenever you want! - And then it's entirely averted... In Disgaea 4, where both Archeangel Flonne and Fallen Angel Flonne have it as a move, with the same incantation. The former summons a normal dragon while the latter summons a zombie dragon. - For a more literal interpretation of this trope, Superboss Pringer X is this trope. Any special attack used against him will only damage him once. If you're fighting multiple Pringers, they all become to immune to the special move. - Tyrant Overlord Baal, in his battle in Dimension 2. Even normal attacks can be no-sold by him after he takes a hit, thus demanding your character(s) to have all of the weapon skills in order to win. - Fate/stay night: A problem when facing Servant Berserker. He's incredibly powerful, so to manage to damage him at all is quite an effort... but he has the God Hand Noble Phantasm, which allows him to revive himself 11 times, so you'll have to kill him twelve times to finally finish him off. Worse, he becomes immune to whatever it was that killed him last time, so you have to do it twelve different ways. \|\|Of course, there's nothing saying a sufficiently powerful attack can't take away more than one of his lives at once.\|\| - Fate/EXTRA CCC: Karna has access to one of the most powerful Noble Phantasms seen in the franchise: Vasavi Shakti, the spear granted to him by the god Indra. The spear has sufficient power to quite literally kill a god, and its raw destructive power far exceeds nearly all others. However, unlike most Noble Phantasms, Karna can only ever use this ability once, and he has to permanently give up his Armor of Invincibility to do it. - Fate/Grand Order: In her original life, Queen Medb from Celtic Mythology was assassinated by having a hunk of cheese hurled at her with a slingshot while she was bathing. During the Summer 2017 event, the heroes attempt to have Enkidu hurl a hunk of cheese at her while she is taking a shower. She deflects it and says she's developed a Spider-Sense for cheese. - Owing to a programming error, the Dragon Zombie of Final Fantasy VII will cast its ultimate spell "Pandora's Box" at you only once — after that, no enemy will ever attempt the spell on you again (unless you start the game over). Your party can learn the attack for themselves, but if you didn't have an Enemy Skill material on them at the time, it's gone for good. - Final Fantasy XV has a retroactive version as of the release of Episode Ardyn. \|\|Two years before Noctis was born, Ardyn and Ifrit attacked Insomnia; after the playable happenings, Ifrit is watching as Ardyn tries to strike down King Regis, and gets impaled on Bahamut's Ultima Sword when the Bladekeeper interrupts. Thirty-two years later, when Noctis comes to Insomnia for the Final Bosses, he fights Ifrit again; this is the only time when Noctis is able to summon Bahamut to perform Ultima Sword, and Ifrit dodges every one.\|\| - Gems of War: One-Shot spells can only be used once per battle. - GOHOME: The griffin who will give you a lift back to your house will only do it at the beginning of the game. If you try and find it during the night, it will take off, meaning you have to get to the shrine by yourself. - Granblue Fantasy: Quite a few characters have skills that can only be used once per battle. Most notably, each one of the ten Eternal characters has an incredibly powerfull skill with an extremely long 10 turn cooldown before it can be used. In addition, some other characters have skills that grant them massive buffs but knock themselves out after a few turns, meaning anything you do with them until then will only have one chance to work in each battle. - In Guild Wars 2 the Pact is able to kill the Elder Dragon Zhaitan with a massed air fleet assault. Using the same tactic against Mordremoth sees the entire fleet destroyed in minutes. Discussed when Taimi later explains that each Elder Dragon has a unique weakness, meaning a new method will need to be used for each one. - Homeworld Cataclysm: The huge cannon you weld to your mining-vessel-turned-mothership has the problem of only working once before requiring major repair. The ship it's attached to is initially civilian, and energy conductors and heatsink systems suitable to power a cannon about a third of its entire size were not included in the original designs. Searching for them is a major plot point taking up several missions — though it does, eventually, give you a cannon whose reload rate doesn't include an inter-mission cinematic. - League of Legends features a purchasable item known as the "Stopwatch". Most items in the game are meant to permanently upgrade your stats, and others are consumable items like potions and vision wards for general utility, and the Stopwatch rests between both types — it carries no stats on its own, but activating it puts its user in the "Stasis" effect, making themselves completely invulnerable for a few seconds while also making them unable to move or attack. Once it's used, the item becomes a "Broken Stopwatch" and can't be used normally for the rest of the game (not even purchasing new Stopwatches will help), so you better make the one use count. This can be somewhat mitigated if you're a mage as a Stopwatch/Broken Stopwatch can be built into the more impressive Zhonya's Hourglass, which provides better stats and puts the "Stasis" ability on a resettable cooldown, but like most items, how useful it is is very context-dependent. - The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild: - Played with and zig-zagged when it comes to the plan of taking Calamity Ganon down. In the distant past, Calamity Ganon appeared and the Guardians and Divine Beasts played a vital role in defeating him, with the Hyrulian princess and a heroic knight eventually sealing him away. When a prophecy foretold the return of Calamity Ganon, King Rhoam had the Guardians and Divine Beasts excavated to recreate the circumstances of the ancient battle. Unfortunately, Calamity Ganon had learned how he was previously defeated and corrupted the Guardians and Divine Beasts with malice and turned them against Hyrule. But since Calamity Ganon is defeated by Link fighting him and Zelda sealing him away with her divine power, the plan does end up working more than once. - During the fight with Maz Koshia at the end of "The Champions' Ballad" DLC, Link can use some Mighty Bananas as a Delicious Distraction, though the boss will only fall for it once per fight. - In Marathon 2, Durandal gets frustrated by this trope. He has a clever plan to introduce a virus into Pfhor war machines and turn them against their masters. It works... for about twenty minutes, before the Pfhor render it ineffective. Turns out another alien race called the Nar had that same idea twenty years ago, and the Pfhor have set up countermeasures against such tactics. - In Mega Man X3, you have the ability to swap out with Zero. It can only be used once per stage and if he dies, you lose him for the rest of the game. He's also needed to get his saber near the end of the game. - Metal Gear: - In the original Metal Gear Solid, feel free to hide in a cardboard box right in front of the enemy. If they see you, they'll look at the box in confusion, then move on. However, if the same enemy sees that same box in the same place, he'll pick it up. Apparently, it's more suspicious for the box to still be there than for it to suddenly disappear. - In Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater, you can use the mask given to you at the start of your mission during Colonel Volgin's first bossfight to stall him, making him believe you're his lover, Ivan Raikov. Whether you choose to get in a free hit or just wait too long, he will eventually wise up and aggressively charge at Snake, never being fooled by that ploy again. - In NieR: Automata, during the endgame, 9S buys some relief from the Logic Virus by hacking himself to fight it off. However since it adapts very quickly, it won't work the second time and when he becomes infected once more at the end, he takes on Red Eyes, Take Warning. - Paper Mario 64: To some degree, this happens in the first (non-hopeless) fight with Bowser; his invincibility can be canceled out with the Star Beam you've spent the entire game earning. In the second a short time later, the move is now useless and you must get one better to win. - In Persona 5, this applies to the Phantom Thieves, who force a change of heart onto a person by stealing the root of their distorted desires, their "Treasure", from that person's Mental World. To make the Treasure take physical form so that they can steal it, the Thieves have to send their target a Calling Card in the real world. The shock and paranoia from the warning are what make the Treasure manifest, but those emotions won't last long and the Thieves can't repeat the process; they only get one day to steal the Treasure. - Pokémon: - The Master Ball, which has a 100% chance of capturing any Pokémon, but you're only guaranteed a single one in each game, which becomes especially frustrating in later generations as the number of stupidly difficult-to-catch Pokémon increases. You can get more through the lottery in most games, but the default odds are 1 in 100,000. - There is an item called the Sacred Ash, which revives all fainted Pokémon in your party AND fully restores their HP. The catch is that it appears almost exclusively in the presence of wild Ho-Oh, so there's only one in the game. The Festival Plaza in Sun & Moon, however, lets you purchase it. - Technical Machines (TMs) were initially one-use items and often limited to one per-game, so you only had one opportunity to teach Blizzard to a Pokémon. Pokémon Black and White onwards, however, made them have infinite uses. - Some TMs were buyable in the first four generations, so the player technically could teach certain TM moves to multiple members of their party. However, the TMs could still only be used once apiece, so players would have to repeatedly buy them to do so. - Generation VIII mixes up the formula; TMs remain infinite in usage, but the moves that they teach are often on the weaker side. TRs (Technical Records), on the other hand, are single-use variants that generally teach much stronger moves. - T Ms are back to being single-use in Generation IX, though players are now able to create more whenever they want as long as they have the materials for it. - There are a few moves like Overheat and Draco Meteor that, while very powerful, cut the user's Special Attack stat in half. Naturally, this means that it should wipe out whatever it attacks because the Pokémon will be effectively useless for the remainder of its time out of the ball. This can be remedied by recalling it, but as that's the obvious move, the opponent will be able to predict you doing that. - A more extreme version would be sacrificial moves which cause the user to faint. These range from support (such as the stat-lowering Memento and the healing Lunar Dance) to attacks (such as the high-power Explosion or the damage-equal-to-lost-HP Final Gambit). - The move Fake Out is a high priority attack that makes the target flinch 100% of the time, but it only works on the first turn the user is sent out. - The same goes for First Impression, a Bug-Type variant more than twice as powerful that was introduced in Generation VII. - Z-Moves are devastatingly powerful and always accurate, but can only be used once per battle. Not per Pokémon, but for the whole battle. - Mega Evolution and Dynamaxing are the same as Z-Moves: extremely powerful, but only one Pokémon can use it per battle. And while Mega Evolution lasts until the user faints, Dynamaxing only lasts for three turns. - Terastalizing in Gen IX works like Mega Evolution; can only be done once per battle (after which the player must visit a Pokemon Center to recharge the ability), but it's active until the Pokemon faints. - Burn Up requires the user to be a Fire-type to use, and causes them to stop being Fire-type when used. - In Quest for Glory IV, the ultimate joke is this. Anyone who hears it will laugh, no matter how little a sense of humor they have, but only the first time. \|\|You use it to distract the Big Bad long enough for you to kill him.\|\| - In Resident Evil: Outbreak: File #2, you find an Explosive Leash control for the rampaging tyrant, which you can use to skip one fight with him. It doesn't kill him, though, and if you use it early he will return. - In Sheep, Dog 'n' Wolf, Ralph Wolf uses a magic flute to hypnotize Sam Sheepdog and lure him away from the flock of sheep. It works so well, it's available to use in the next level. However, it's revealed that it won't work anymore as Sam now has earplugs. - Silent Hill 3: The \|\|Seal of Metatron from the first game. Granted, Alessa knew how to use it (having been Dahlia's daughter and all), and she only sought to contain "God" and the Otherworld within her area. Alessa's next incarnation though she may be, Heather is ignorant on how it works; and it is reportedly "difficult to control," indeed making it "just a piece of junk"... in her hands. Presumably Vincent doesn't know either, seeing as he would've told her how to use it otherwise. Leonard was only appointed its guardian, expecting a member of "the order" to be The Chosen One to use it, so it's also doubtful that he knew how to use it. Claudia may or may not have known the required ritual, but denies its efficacy. Oh, well... at least Harry left Heather a little present\|\|. - In Star Ocean: The Second Story, Claude uses his phaser beam (which the planet's locals call a "sword of light") to dispose of a beast attacking Rena. When he gets to the second town, he uses the phaser to break down a door, and it promptly (and inconveniently) runs out of power, and can never be used again. - In Tales of Symphonia: Dawn of the New World, Emil's Mystic Arte Ain Soph Aur can be used on Richter the first time, but if you try using it again, he will counter it with a Mystic Arte of his own, magnifying its damage output and targeting your entire party. - Twisted Wonderland: Jade's unique magic cannot be used more than once on the same person. - The final boss of Undertale's Neutral Route empowers himself by \|\|absorbing the six human souls the monsters had collected by that point\|\|. As the battle progresses, you call for aid and \|\|the souls answer, rebelling against the one using them\|\| and eventually enabling you to win. This character also \|\|possesses a Ripple-Effect-Proof Memory of your gameplay\|\|, so on subsequent playthroughs, if you reach the Neutral route's final boss again he'll opt not to go through with it since he knows \|\|the souls will simply revolt against him again and the end result will be the same\|\|. - We Happy Few: When a person remembers the past and refuses to take their Joy for long enough, they become a "downer"; in other words, they're a perfectly normal person in a world gone insane. Joy no long has quite the same intoxicating effects for them as it once did. It wears off very quickly, and leaves the individual extremely depressed, hungry and thirsty. - In Wing Commander: Prophecy, the protagonists capture an alien plasma weapon capable of destroying a fleet with one shot, install it to their carrier and successfully use it to destroy an enemy blockade. They then determine it would be too dangerous to try recharging it for a second shot. - Humorously described by one of the characters as "Fire and Forget. We fired it once, now we can forget about ever using it again." - XCOM: Enemy Unknown - Rockets. Since the Heavy Class is carrying a light machine gun (the heaviest weapon in the game), he is already very burdened, so he can only carry one rocket, with no way to resupply during a battle. Well, technically, if he takes the right promotion perks, he can use two rockets and a special shredder rocket (which causes less damage but inflict a Damage-Increasing Debuff), still, with a maximum of three rockets, make them count. - All active items work similarly. The medikit gets one use (three with a Field Medic Support), four when he gets Deep Pocket in Enemy Within), grenades can only be used once (twice with the Grenadier Perk from the Heavy, or the Deep Pocket support ability in Enemy Within), the Arc Thrower can only be used twice (thrice with the Support ability Deep Pockets), the support Smoke Grenade can only be used once, twice with the Smoke And Mirrors ability (thrice in Enemy Within). It had to be noted it applies only during missions, as the squad gets resupplied for free between missions. - In XCOM: Enemy Within, there is a scripted event involving an alien attack on your base (if you lose this mission, it's Non Standard Game Over for you). The means the Mind Control the aliens use on some of your techs to get them to sabotage your base defenses is stated to be a one-off. - XCOM 2: War of the Chosen: Each of the Chosen's bases can only be raided once, so you only have one chance to take each of the Chosen out permanently. If you fail to defeat the Chosen in their base, you will not get another chance, and that Chosen will continue to haunt you for the remainder of the campaign. - Yandere Simulator: Certain actions (mostly murder) you can only get away with once, because everyone will be on the alert the next time. Go on a masked murder spree? Masks are banned from school. Kill a student council president? The School Atmosphere will drop to its lowest (making everyone more watchful), and metal detectors and security cameras will be there to cause problems. Each rival also has a person-specific murder method, that you only get one chance at as they won't be in position at any other time (i.e. Kizana is killed at the play she's acting in). - In Ace Academy, it turns out that the overdrive function of the main character's GEAR only activated once because it was a one-time debug mode feature. After finding this out, Valerie decides to program it so that the main character can activate it on demand. - RWBY: - Velvet Scarlatina's weapon is a camera named Anesidora. By taking a picture of a weapon, Anesidora can use the photo as a schematic to create a copy of the weapon from Hard Light Dust. Combined with her Photographic Memory Semblance, and Velvet is a phenomenal Ditto Fighter. Unfortunately, the weapon copies only last for a short amount of time before disintegrating and the picture used to make them is deleted as well. - When Ruby summons Jinn to exploit her Time Stands Still ability to buy time in battle instead of asking a question, Jinn admonishes Ruby's misuse. She warns Ruby that she'll never allow herself to be summoned again unless it's to ask for knowledge, but permitted it this one time because she thought it was clever. - In Volume 8, Oscar is able to employ an ability no-one knew he had to buy the heroes time against the Big Bad. However, he warns them afterwards that it was a one-shot power, and they won't be able to do that again. \|\|Ozpin spent many lifetimes storing kinetic energy in his cane. Oscar unleashes it as a Fantastic Nuke that takes out both Salem and most of her Grimm army, but without harming people and buildings. It buys them the few hours they need to evacuate the kingdom before Salem can regenerate, but at the cost of most of the cane's power.\|\| - The Adventures of Dr. McNinja: - In Chapter 3, Dan McNinja defeats Frans Rayner by punching him in the right butt cheek and exposing his neckbeard. Years later, when Dr. McNinja fights him, Frans \|\|has moved his weak spot to a different location\|\| and taken extreme precautions to keep his beard from ever being noticeable. - Also applies to holy weapons throughout the series: it's one banishment per weapon, and if the numbers suddenly change on you, you'd better have another trick up your sleeve. - In Cwen's Quest mysterious life slave Riddly Lancer defeats a huge dragon with an equally huge DBZ style blast. Next chapter when asked to do it again to defeat the next bad guy he simply reports he can't. Luckily he apparently has a few other skills. - The Treasure Juju in Homestuck can only ever be used twice, but each use is so drastically different that they could technically be different items. The first time, \|\|it can only be used by Caliborn as a weapon against his enemies (by sealing them away inside it forever)\|\|. The second time, \|\|it can only be used by Caliborn's enemies against him (by unleashing their power in one concentrated blast)\|\|. - The Order of the Stick: Vaarsuvius tells Durkon that \|\|their brief period of unimaginable magical power was "a singular event" that can't be repeated and doesn't disagree when Durkon asks if it had a heavy Cast from Experience Points cost. It's true that it almost certainly can't be repeated... because the power came from a Deal with the Devil that the Fiends almost never grant, and comes with a debt that Vaarsuvius hadn't even started to pay off\|\|. - Schlock Mercenary - The comic had a Time Travel storyline; but the particular method could only work once due to some of the equipment being destroyed in the process (and before the effective start of the conditions that made it useable in that way), meaning only one shot... - And in Book 20: Ennesby is 'hiding' in the Pa'anuri's long gun software, and is asked to "jiggle their aim." In the midst of complaining that it would work just once, since the enemy would figure out what happened, he realizes he could jiggle the targeting data feed... \|\|to make the long gun fire on itself.\|\| - In the Counter Monkey episode "The Bardic Knock Spell", Spoony discusses this in relation to RPGs, saying that if you can impress the Game Master, he'll let you get away with doing something really audacious, but he'll only give it to you once. The example he gives, the titular "spell", involves gaining access to the villains' stronghold by just knocking on the front door, then punching out whomever answers. - In Dream's "3 Hunters Finale" video (the third of the 3 Hunters series), Dream sets up an escape route leading to an End Crystal he intends to use to blow up the hunters (as their gear is too good for him to win in a straight-up fight) — and he succeeds. Two Manhunts later, in the "3 Hunters Grand Finale" video, Dream sets up an escape route leading to another End Crystal for the exact same purpose — but the hunters, knowing to be on-guard, realize they're in a trap quickly. Bad also spots the End Crystal when he's out of range, and the hunters are able to avoid the trap. - Typically, Dream only uses the various kinds of traps and trickery once. On the one hand, it's definitely more fun to see newer ways to outsmart the hunters, but on the other hand it's quite clear that some tricks just don't work twice. - An explicit theme of Fine Structure. Any given superscience technique will only work briefly before the Imprisoning God notices and changes the physical laws of the Universe to make it impossible. - In the Overwatch League 2018, Los Angeles Gladiators pull off the "Great Bamboozle" stradegy by pretend to be a GOATS comp to trick the London Spitfire to engage while their defense wide open for Gladiator's sniper to pick off crucial DPS and support wins the first game. 9 hours later in Overwatch Contender, GC Busan Wave tries to replicate the Gladiator's stradegy, but their enemy team Seven immedetly predit this and counter accordingly. Even the commentators sums up this plan only works once. - Draugr, from The Saints, like other undead, have specific weaknesses. Unlike other undead, the quickly adapt and overcome those weaknesses. - In the Supermarioglitchy4's Super Mario 64 Bloopers episode "Mario and the T-Pose Virus", the T-Pose Virus \|\|caused by Waluigi\|\| is undone by \|\|using 1-up Mushrooms\|\|. In \|\|"The Mario Convention", Waluigi creates another T-Pose Mushroom, which turns Meggy (and others) into T-Pose zombies. Mario tries using a 1-up Mushroom on Meggy, only for it to have no effect due to Waluigi becoming an Invincible Villain thanks to his Rejection Powers being stronger this time around\|\|. The only way it was eventually undone was because Waluigi's staff was destroyed during War of the Fat Italians 2018. - According to Things Mr. Welch Is No Longer Allowed to Do in an RPG, sending a stripper to the guard office follows this principle. - Whateley Universe: A few devices work like that. The Psi-grenade, cannot be recharged after it's been detonated and Mega-Death's Force Field Disruptor burns itself out after it's been used. But multiples of each can be made. - This is a semi-common trait of devisor items. They specifically cannot be replicated, because they depend upon the mutant's reality-warping power. So each individual black hole grenade is its own unique item. This has led to a kind of disconnect between Devisors and Gadgeteers. The former sells you an ultra-powerful weapon you can use precisely once. The latter sells you a slightly less powerful weapon you can actually reproduce. - Worm: - Leet has this as an explicit part of his superpower. He can invent a machine to fulfill any function... once. If he tries to make a second one, it just explodes in his face. - Crawler, a cape with an adaptive healing factor, becomes resistant and eventually immune to any form of damage he sustains and from which he regenerates. - On an episode of The Adventures of Jimmy Neutron, Boy Genius, the title character builds nanobots in a flying saucer to defend him from bullies. They malfunction and begin to threaten everyone who comes within 5 feet of him. He defeats them Logic Bomb style by beating himself up. Take 2: Jimmy re-hires the Nanobots as Beta Readers for his homework assignments, and they take their "correcting errors" to extremes, going so far as to start correcting human error (bad posture, fashion, etc.) He tries to Logic Bomb them again by saying that flaws indicate that humans are functioning perfectly, but they stop trying to puzzle it out, call it "extreme error" and just start deleting people off the face of the earth. Somewhat subverted, though, in that he still uses their programming to overload them; he purposefully miscalculates a number on his homework, and asks the nanobots to correct it. The number in question? Pi, which no computer could calculate to perfection. - In The Adventures of Puss in Boots, this is how all magical fountains work. You can only benefit from the effects of a fountain once, and if you say "release" to negate the effects, you don't get a second chance. - The Lich from Adventure Time is a master of this. If it's beaten him once, he'll make sure the heroes don't get a chance to use it again. First off by destroying Billy's Gauntlet before Finn can use it against him. Followed by swatting Finn away while \|\|possessing Princess Bubblegum\|\| before he can use his \|\|"Like-Like Sweater"\|\| to destroy him. And as of the Season 4 finale, \|\|killing Billy, the one who imprisoned him in amber.\|\| Notably, it's not because he gets stronger in-between attempts, he's just really good at planning and manipulation. - Both used and subverted in The Batman episode "Meltdown". Batman first defeats Clayface by throwing a freeze-bomb at him. When he tries it later, Clayface said he saw it coming and just made his body hard so it bounced off. Then Detective Yin does this after pretending she was going to shoot him which prompted the line: Clayface: Didn't expect that from you Yin. I guess you do have... a new partner. - Something similar happens in Batman Beyond. Inque was vulnerable to freezing and water in her first appearance, but in later appearances learned to curl herself into a ball, protecting the bulk of her mass from being frozen and breaking free in short order, or modifying her chemical makeup to resist water. Batman himself uses this against Inque, protecting himself from being enveloped by her with electricity based contact defenses. - After Optimus Primal's death in the first season finale of Beast Wars, the first few episodes of the second season see Rhinox manage to bring Primal back to life by using a recently-created rift into transwarp space and a blank stasis pod (essentially a Transformer body without its own soul) to bring Optimus back to life. The show itself explicitly states that the rift Rhinox is using will close soon and it was by relative chance that the Maximals found the blank pod when they did, and even then Rhinox experiences considerable strain and puts his own life at risk trying to retrieve Optimus's spark before the rift closes. - In Ben 10: Ultimate Alien episode "Solitary Alignment", Ben questions why \|\|they cant simply let George use Ascalon to defeat Dagon a second time. Azmuth explains that Dagon underestimated George the first time they fought and is unlikely to make the same mistake twice.\|\| - Subverted in Family Guy. Peter and Brian get rid of James Woods by leading him along with pieces of candy and trapping him in a crate. When he comes back later, he steals Peter's identity and they go through a long ordeal, but then Peter and Brian eventually get rid of him in the exact same way with Peter pointing out that they should have tried this again from the beginning. Peter: Okay, Brian, next time let's remember this right away because he's done this twice. - The Quantum Destabilizer gun from Gravity Falls zig-zags this trope. Dipper and \|\|Ford\|\| try to use this against \|\|Bill Cipher\|\| in \|\|Weirdmageddon Part 1. Ford directly acknowledges that they only have one shot, and while the shot does damage Bill, it fails to kill him. Ford is captured, and the weapon is never able to be used again\|\|. - A Gumby cartoon had Gumby returning a wand to a magician who left it behind at Gumby's lemonade stand. The magician rewards Gumby with a wand that will perform a single trick. Gumby uses it to repair his mother's pitcher that got broken at the start of the cartoon. - In an episode of Hot Wheels: Battle Force 5, the team needs to head to a nanotech stabilizer and can't afford to go through a Battle Zone first, so Saige reveals a crystal that lets them skip the Battle Zone and go straight to their destination. When asked why they don't always use such a crystal, she reveals that she only managed to obtain one, thus limiting its use. - Hulk and the Agents of S.M.A.S.H.: "Banner Day" has the Hulk willingly depower himself so he can go back to being Bruce Banner all the time. Naturally, this is when the Kree show up and demand Hulk turn himself over to them or they'll blow up Earth. Bruce re-exposes himself to Gamma, with Betty Ross telling him that due to the way it works, he'll never be able to use this method again. They still think it's Worth It. - Justice League Unlimited: - In Kim Possible episode "Queen Bebe", Kim encounters the Bebe robots she had faced in "Attack of the Killer Bebes", which she managed to defeat by disabling them with a high-pitched frequency. Unfortunately, when she tries to use it again, she found it had no affect. - Looney Tunes: - A straightforward example would be the Bugs Bunny / Daffy Duck cartoon "Show Biz Bugs" in which he is trying to go one-up on Bugs in their stage act. When none of his tricks impress the audience, he desperately tries his ultimate trick: downing several kinds of volatile explosives and then swallowing a lit match ("Girls...better hold onto your boyfriends!"). It works so well that everyone, including Bugs, are impressed, and call for more. There is just one problem: Daffy is dead and his ghost says he could only do it once. The trope title is obviously the punchline to this gag. The same gag was also used in "Curtain Razor" with a wolf trying to impress Porky Pig (who is a talent impresario in this short) with his act. In the end, the wolf gets his chance after several attempts, then doing the trick aforementioned, and as expected, the same punchline (kinda) is delivered. - In the short "The Unmentionables", after agent Elegant Mess (Bugs) blasts Rocky and Mugsy with a loaded carrot and it empties, he quips "That's the trouble with carrots. They're only good once." - John Dread from Max Steel pulls this one on Max. The first time around when Max tricked Dread into punching his claw into magma it was quickly melted off and he was defeated. The second time it happens, Dread lampshades that he fell for the same trick twice, but this time around his claw is made of an alloy that won't melt at that temperature. Cue Oh, Crap! face from Max as he's now facing Dread with a red hot glowing claw. Dread: Same old trick. Too bad it's not the same old claw. - My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic: - The Elements of Harmony against Discord. This time they're dangling the elements over his head as leverage to force him to play along while they try and reform him, but the first two things Discord does is destroy all of Twilight Sparkle's "reform spells" and sweet-talk Fluttershy into promising to never use her element against him, rendering the rest completely useless. Of course, he ends up pulling a legitimate HeelFace Turn, so it's rendered moot. - Word of God is that this is why Celestia never used the Elements in the show. She and Luna originally used them to seal Discord, but then Luna turned into Nightmare Moon. Even Celestia wasn't powerful enough to use the Elements on her own, so she had to use a spell to be able to wield them by herself against Nightmare Moon — but the cost was that she'd never be able to use the Elements again. - The Powerpuff Girls (1998): - Mojo Jojo tries to avert this in one episode by trying an old plan a second time, thinking he's taken precautions against what ruined the plan the first time. The girls defeat him anyway, showing that maybe it's best to turn your back on plans that have already failed once after all. Considering that his precaution was to not turn the girls into dogs, thus preventing them from biting his butt (now protected by a metal plate, one would think that doing either of those things cancels out the usefulness of doing the other, but whatever) and making him break the magic idol he was using, they weren't very good precautions. He forgot that, since the girls aren't transformed, they can foil his plans in the same way they foil all his plans; by beating him up. - In the episode "The Boys Are Back In Town", when the Rowdy Ruff Boys are brought back by Him, the girls try to defeat them the same way they did before, with cootie-filled kisses. Unfortunately, thanks to Him, they were now immune to cooties. Even worse, they ended up becoming giants instead of exploding. - In Samurai Jack, Aku manages to fool Jack by transforming into a beautiful woman named Ikra and feeding him a sob story to gain his trust, which results in Aku trashing a portal to the past and taunting Jack about it. The second time Aku tries this trick, however (this time as a Yoda-ish old master), Jack immediately sees through it: he Bluffs The Imposter, turns the plan against Aku, and nearly takes him out once and for all. - Scooby-Doo and Guess Who?: Invoked in "The Hot Dog Dog!". Big Eddy Eats admits he cheated his way into winning the previous year's hot dog eating competition by giving Joey Chestnut a basket of muffins so Chestnut would be too stuffed to eat hot dogs and says he \|\|used the monster costume\|\| this time because nobody would fall for the muffin trick twice. - The Simpsons: - Subverted when the family try to get Maggie out of a locked bathroom. Homer tries a coat hanger then gives up. Lisa tries it again and successfully unlocks the door. - Played straight in a Treehouse of Horror parody of Death Note, where one of the rules is that you can't use the same kill more than once. This forces Lisa to be more contrived in her kills, such as parachute accidents, toilet alligators and eventually toilet lions. - The Spectacular Spider-Man: In the Villain Team-Up episode, Doc Ock explicitly points out that none of the methods Spider-Man used to stop his foes last time will work: Doc Ock's arms are powered by Electro, the power pack on Vulture's back is better armored, Electro has much better control of his power (such that he can safely contact water), Shocker and Rhino know better than to confront him in an enclosed space, and um...there aren't any concrete mixers around to trap Sand-Man. It goes both ways, though, since Spidey's also been upgraded since the last time he fought them. - SpongeBob SquarePants: - One episode has a very picky customer named Bubble Bass invoke an Achilles in His Tent by making SpongeBob doubt his skills as a fry cook by claiming he forgot the pickles. When SpongeBob returns and confronts Bubble Bass again, he pulls the same trick, but SpongeBob quickly realizes how he got away with it when he starts laughing. - Another episode has a giant clam snatch Mr. Krabs' millionth dollar, with Mr. Krabs sobbing until SpongeBob and Squidward decide to help him get it back. After trying to fool him with a different dollar, Mr. Krabs starts sobbing again, only for Squidward to say that it won't work again (Mr. Krabs decides to resort to more drastic measures instead). - Star Trek: Lower Decks: - Superman: The Animated Series saw the Man of Steel use this trope frequently. When his foes escaped from Cardboard Prison, they'd usually find Superman wearing a suit designed to be proof against their powers. Somewhat subverted, though, in that these suits were not foolproof and the villains found ways around them (or just ripped them off). - Teen Titans (2003): - In "Divide and Conquer", when Cinderblock puts Starfire in a bearhug, she knocks him back by kicking him in the face. In "Aftershock Part 1", this scenario happens again, but this time, he blocks her kick. - In "Titans East Part 2", Cyborg is the only Titan left who can resist Brother Blood's Mind Control. Blood has effortlessly torn Cyborg's limbs off, paralyzed the other Titans, and is ripping Cyborg's circuitry apart, trying to find the component that makes Cyborg immune. Cyborg announces "It's my SPIRIT!", instantly rebuilds himself, ignores Blood's energy blasts (the ones that blew his limbs off 15 seconds ago) and takes Blood out with one punch. They at least lampshade it this time. Beast Boy : So are you, like, magic now? Cyborg : Pretty sure that was a one-time deal. Blood was trying so hard to hack into my brain, I guess I sorta hacked into his. - In Titan Maximum, Palmer believes that his favorite move, the Sucker Punch, works every time. However his brother Billy points out that attack can only work once in each fight because it is quite impossible to catch the guy off guard again. - The Kairosect from Trollhunters is an artifact that allows its user to step outside of time, and while it actually only works three times, Blinky wastes the first two uses demonstrating it. - Winx Club: The final Gift of Destiny, the black gift, which can resurrect the dead, can only be used once. - Early firearms (prior to the mid-18th century or so) worked like this in ground battles. Sure, you could reload them... but it took so darned long (1-3 minutes) and the ranges of the weapons were so short (50-100 yards) that you'd be lucky to get off two (somewhat inaccurate) shots in the time it took for an enemy (on foot) to come within range, charge and attack you with something sharp and/or pointy. Bayonets were developed so that muskets could double as melee weapons, eliminating the need for pikemen. Contemporary hand grenades (thus Grenadier units) and rockets — like those used in China — only work once. - Still musketeers and other gunmen usually carried somewhere between 8 and 16 reloads on their person (their flasks with gunpowder were known as "12 apostles", despite there not always being 12 of them). On top of this, there would be carts with more powder and bullets behind the lines. While some generals really liked charging to within range, having to run through the salvos of bullets usually meant the charging formation was in worse shape than the one being attacked by the time they arrived, and stood a big chance of losing the subsequent "push of pike". So it was more common to try and destabilize the enemy formation by firing at them yourselves and by sending loose skirmishers, cavalry charges and cannon fire at them, before actually going in for the melee. So most of the time, this trope was averted. There is a reason these firearms were used. Still, a rush could succeed if performed so fast that the enemy had no time to get ready for the hand to hand. This tactic saw a short period in the limelight after the invention of the plug bayonet, which had to be plugged into the barrel of the gun, and could therefore not be mounted before going into battle. - Teamwork allowed it to be averted. The Spanish, for example, developed a formation called the tercio, while in pike and shot warfare the pikes were there to hold the enemy just outside pike range while the muskets were used nearly at point-blank range. The shooters would fire then countermarch, allowing them to reload while fresh shooters were brought forward to take their shot. The pikemen and swordsmen were there to cover the shooters and fix the enemy at point-blank range so the gunners could destroy them. - The Liberator handgun. It was possible to reload them, it just took a long time. They were nearly useless as weapons, the lack of rifling meant that the bullets would sometimes strike sideways and bounce off of people if fired from more than a few feet away. The were good for super-short range kills, though — if the attacker could get within a couple feet they could be effective. The general idea was to use it to take out an occupying soldier and take his gun, which would invariably be bigger, hold more bullets, and in general be more effective than a Liberator. And more importantly from the Allied perspective, to demoralize the enemy with the fact that they had no idea just how many were out there, and how many of the seemingly helpless civilians in conquered nations were actually armed and just waiting for a chance to cap them. - The same applies to The Vietnam War-era replacement, the Deer gun, though its effectiveness as a weapon was never determined; when the war escalated, plans to hand the gun out to civilians in the same manner as the Liberator were abandoned. - The "Punch Gun", made famous in Inglourious Basterds, is a real gun that only works once in concept. Because you have to hit your opponent to "pull" the trigger, it would be hard to not kill him. But if he has buddies around, you will be in for a rough time. - The tactics the 9/11 hijackers used to seize control of the planes fall into this category, even if you're not counting increased paranoia around airports making it unlikely that any repeat performances would even make it to the plane (several of the hijackers had been flagged as suspicious, but lax security meant they got through anyway). - Generally speaking, since most passengers in previously hijacked airliners did in fact survive, there was no reason for passengers and crew not to cooperate. note : Standard operating procedure for most hijackers in the past was "Take over the plane, then land it somewhere and use the passengers as bargaining chips for political concessions," which often allowed governments the chance to neutralize the hijackers with minimal collateral damage. Now that using the plane as a kamikaze weapon has been firmly established as a possibility, trying to take over a plane with knives will likely not work because the passengers and crew will fight back and overpower the hijackers. In fact it is a commonly cited theory that the passengers of United Flight 93 knew what had happened to the other flights hijacked that day and either risked their lives because they had nothing left to lose or went on an outright suicide mission to subvert the attackers. - Secondly there are standing orders that the cockpit will rarely be opened during the flight and never during an attempted hijacking. Even if the cockpit is open someone will be posted on guard to prevent access. - Finally military pilots are trained to shoot down commercial aircraft if necessary and will do so if they consider the plane will probably be used as a missile against a strategic target. - The M72 Light Anti-tank Weapon, its modern successor the AT-4 and various similar designs based on the same concept play the trope both ways, as they have the reverse effect in practice; instead of having a dedicated RPG fireteam, who have to spend quite a long time reloading after taking a shot and can't carry very else besides the launch tube and its ammunition, every man in the squad can carry a one-use launcher as part of their regular gear. If one of them misses, another steps up and takes their own shot. - Successful suicide bombing. Likewise, if you botch the bombing such that you don't die but the target knows your intentions, they'll likely try their damnedest to kill you. - The Trojan Horse gambit — anyone with even the most cursory knowledge of military history will know better than to fall for it. It even spawned the phrase "beware Greeks bearing gifts". - One of the poetic metaphors for a woman's maidenhood (or, more generally, virginity) is "the rose that can be given only once". Considering what we know now about the hymen (i.e. it can regrow or even not break during intercourse), this is not necessarily the case, but it remains a truism. - Medical examples: - The arsenical medicine melarsoprol, used against African sleeping sickness, is extremely toxic. So toxic, in fact, that it can't be administered to someone who's already been dosed with it. - The precordial thump is a sharp punch to the sternum sometimes attempted during CPR, as a form of mechanical defibrillation in the event you don't have an AED. In real life, it's never done more than once. The thump has to be performed within 60 seconds of the onset of symptoms, making it useless in all but immediately witnessed arrest. In fact, according to one study, all reported successes have been within ten seconds! Basic CPR training no longer includes it at all, and Advanced Cardiac Life Support only mentions it in passing. - Cats do not have antibodies for dog blood cells, so if no feline blood is available, an injured cat can receive canine blood instead. However, within four days the cat will have developed said antibodies and can never receive dog blood again without suffering a severe (likely fatal) reaction. - Some diseases only affect each person once, since the next time they get infected the body already knows how to deal with the problem. In fact, this is the idea behind vaccines: get infected with a harmless version of a microbe so your body is ready when you have to face the real one. But this also works the other way, since some diseases evolve too quickly for immunity to last very long. This is why new flu shots are issued each year to keep up with new strains. - Ceramic trauma plates for body armor can work this way. When struck with significant energy (by a bullet, hammer, fragment, splinter or by being dropped), it will crack and the effectiveness of the plate degrades, but isn't automatically rendered useless. However, a second hit in the same general area will typically go through, making this trope true for hits in the same location. With luck, subsequent hits will be far enough away from the damaged areas to be stopped as well. This won't work forever, but has been seen in the field. note : Perhaps one of the most poignant examples would be of SFC Paul Ray Smith, who served with the US Army's 3rd Infantry Division, 11th Engineer Battalion. On April 4, 2003, SFC Smith's position came under fire from insurgents in Baghdad. Heavily outgunned and with over 100 combat casualties awaiting evacuation, SFC Smith took control of the M2 machine gun on a damaged M113 APC and returned fire from the unprotected turret mount. SFC Smith died in the action, although not before repelling enemy forces. Once friendly forces were able to get to him, his body armor was found to have taken at least 13 hits, none of which penetrated; the killing shot passed through his neck, severing his spine, and killing him instantly. An acceptable account of the incident can be found here and the military citation here. Though heavier, the ballistic value of ceramic plates is generally much higher than traditional metal trauma plates. - This is also the case behind Explosive Reactive Armor (ERA) for tanks and armored personnel vehicles. When touched by an EFP (Explosively-Formed Projectile, the most common form of anti-armor round in use today, which essentially is a bolt of molten metal), the ERA plate explodes, disrupting the jet and preventing it from penetrating the vehicle's armor. Once an ERA plate detonates, that section is unprotected from further hits until it is replaced. While it's very hard to hit the same spot twice, especially from far away, it's not impossible. ERA-protected vehicles have been destroyed by such unlucky double strikes. Newer armor-defeat munitions actually stack multiple shape-charge warheads that fire in sequence, burning through ERA and armor and allowing the hindmost EFP to penetrate to do damage. - Occasionally, video game developers will give out game copies or extra content to dedicated fans with emphasis on the fact that they're rewarding their passion or ingenuity, so anyone trying to do the same thing with the expectation of a prize can't piggyback off someone else's ideas or effort. - Before the release of Fallout 4, an excited fan sent Bethesda a box of real-life bottle caps weighing over 11 pounds with a tongue-in-cheek letter asking Bethesda if this would be an acceptable substitute for payment (bottle caps being currency in the Fallout universe). To his surprise, Bethesda then sent him an email accepting the "payment", and agreeing to send him a copy with the understanding that they were not opening the door for any copycats to try and pay for the game in a similar way. - Similarly, Psyonix gave one dedicated player a special "Pigeon Man" tag for collecting one thousand pigeon head toppers in Rocket League. However, they made clear that they would not give the tag out to anyone else for collecting any number of pigeon head toppers, nor would they make tags for any other player who collected a bunch of any in-game item. - A "zero-day" vulnerability is a computer security hole that is not yet generally known, named for the fact that nobody has had time to develop defenses "zero days" after someone discovers and exploits the vulnerability. Once a zero-day exploit is used and noticed, cybersecurity experts will study it and develop countermeasures to be distributed in future security patches. - In Sports, particularly American Football, trick plays tend to fall in one of three categories: Either they're so ingenious, they become part of the game, or they work based on being illogical and not what the opponent would expect (in which case they will remain rare and often only used in desperate situations) and the third category are those that make use of Loophole Abuse, in which case there is likely to be an Obvious Rule Patch right after it's been used the first time. The first category is often not even considered a "trick" any more and includes stuff like play action passes, the second includes stuff like fake punts and the third includes stuff that is usually subject to quite a bit of controversy afterwards. - The "Holy Roller" was a controversial play in a 1978 Raiders v Chargers football game where the Raiders' quarterback, upon being tackled, "fumbled" the ball up the field towards the end zone. Another player then also tried to grab it, "fumbling" it as well to a third player, who "struggled" to get ahold of the ball until it was in the end-zone, at which point they fell on it for a touchdown. After the play, the rules were changed so that forward fumbles could not be recovered by the offense for a gain, and years later, the players involved admitted that they had deliberately fumbled the ball forward, which would have made the whole play illegal even under the rules at the time. - In 2015, the Patriots ran a trick play against the Ravens in a playoff game which relied on confusing the Ravens about which players were eligible receivers. Per the rules at the time, the offense was required to inform the referee which of their linesmen were eligible or ineligible receivers, and the referee was required to inform the defending team that one of the linesmen was an ineligible receiver. However, more information wasn't required, making it unclear to the Ravens who exactly was and was not an eligible receiver, making it much harder for the Ravens to defend against passing plays. After the game, new requirements were put in place for identifying ineligible receivers at a glance based on where they lined up. - One of the problems at dealing with the Roman Army was that they learned from their defeats, and the next battle they were liable to show up with a counter or even having adapted the enemy gamebreaker for their own purposes: - Possibly the earliest example is their uncanny ability to trounce war chariots. They first met them at the Allia river, where the Senone Gauls used theirs (small and only able to carry one man) to surprise and crush a portion of the Roman army deployed on a hill, sending the rest in panic and achieving such a victory the Senones thought it was a ruse; when the Romans faced again the Gauls in open field at Pedum their troops carried caltrops precisely to deal with the Gaulish charioteers by wounding their horses, and even mimicked the deployment at the Allia river just so they could lure them in and deal with the Gauls' best troops early. After that engagement the Gauls on the continent quickly abandoned the use of chariots, and the Romans would only meet war chariots when invading Britannia (whose inhabitants had never faced caltrops before and so had not abandoned their chariots) and when expanding in the Middle East, whose powers had maintained the use of large chariots with archers and Spiked Wheels until the Romans started deploying caltrops - and then coming up with other methods because to them dealing with war chariots had become a game. - Another example, where they countered one enemy gamebreaker and hijacked the other, is how the three battles fought against the Epirote army led by Pyrrhus went: at Heraclea the Romans were easily matching the Epirotes and even started gaining the upper hand after overcoming the enemy cavalry, only to be routed when Pyrrhus sent his War Elephants in, a beast the Romans had never met; at Asculum the Romans showed up with anti-elephant wagons, contraptions equipped with large polearms, fire-bearing grapnels, and all sort of projectile weapons, and while they were defeated they retreated in good order after killing many irreplaceable veterans and even sacking and destroying the Epirote camp (in particular stealing their famed molossoid dogs), prompting Pyrrhus to quip "If we are victorious in one more battle with the Romans, we shall be utterly ruined"; and at Maleventum the Romans, after repulsing a night attack thanks to guard dogs bred from the ones stolen at Asculum, answered the elephant charge with enough projectiles aimed to their weak trunks that they killed two, captured eight, and routed the rest through the enemy army.	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/OnlyWorksOnce
On-Ride/On-Foot Combat - TV Tropes Having a cool ride is awesome. Be it a Humongous Mecha, a dragon, or some other great beast/giant vehicle, you get yourself a cool armament (or several), the feeling of being big and protected, a personal ride you can call your own (partner, if the ride is sentient), all that cool stuff. However, there might come a time where you'll have to do things on foot. Hope you have the gear to be awesome off your ride too. This trope is about gameplay where fighting on foot and fighting in your ride takes place in the same level/stage/open world, and where changing between the two phases is common enough. It does not count if the times riding and not riding are in separate stages or segments of a stage, which therefore discounts most military FPS games like Call of Duty since you're often forced to abandon your ride or otherwise lose it for plot reasons. ## Examples - In Borderlands 3, Moze has this as an action skill (compared to the previous soldier class characters, who summon a stationary turret). She can summon her mech Iron Bear and ride it around, though it has a limited fuel supply. Later skills allow her to leave the mech and have it stand around providing fire support. The DLC gave her further options, by allowing her to stay on foot and summon a smaller mech called Iron Cub instead. - In the Drakan series, you play as the Action Girl Rynn, but when exploring open areas, she can also call upon and ride a large red dragon named Arokh, who has much greater firepower and can fly. Due to his size, however, Arokh cannot enter buildings or caves, forcing Rynn to dismount multiple times per level. - Technically, Leonard turns into his White Knight Wizel, but White Knight Chronicles still counts since you can switch to your "mecha" in battle whenever you like, and there are giant enemies you'll encounter (including Random Encounters) that makes this necessary (or not, given the many issues the game has). - Drakengard: Most open-air segments let you fight as Caim on the ground or from the skies on his Pact-bonded dragon \|\|Angelus\|\|. While the dragon can wreak devastation on ground units, Caim's weapons won't level up unless he's killing things in melee, and some units (notably archers and some units which actually reflect dragonfire back at you) can do a lot more damage to the dragon than to Caim, and Caim can only regain health for their Shared Life-Meter while on foot. - The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim: Played with, bizarrely. While the Dragonborn is capable of using ranged and melee weapons against their enemies while riding on horseback, they cannot use any of their spells or Shouts; as such, a Dragonborn with a mage-focused build must always dismount before fighting. Ironically, the inverse is true instead if the Dragonborn is riding a dragon (courtesy of the Bend Will shout); while they cannot use their ranged or melee weapons, they can use their spells and Shouts, with the dragon using its own abilities as well against any targeted enemies. - In Xenoblade Chronicles X, players first start off the game on foot, but later can obtain humongous mecha called "Skells" to fight and explore in. There's no restriction in what enemies you fight in and out of Skell, so it's entirely possible to take on gigantic megafauna on foot or step all over enemy grunts in your mech, though a Skell-loving NPC finds the latter behaviour to be dishonourable. - In The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, Geralt can call his mount to ride it whenever he is wandering outside. While riding Roach, he may attack with his sword, bombs or crossbow. Although on-ride combat may be useful for hit-and-run tactics, one might find it less effective than on-foot combat as it is pretty hard to aim accurately while moving. Also, Roach has a "fear" bar which increases as it gets hit or moves too close to ennemies. As the fear bar rises, Roach may become harder to control and will even throw Geralt off its back when reaching its peak value. - Halo: Combat Evolved is the popularizer of this kind of gameplay. Early stages of any of the games usually provide you with the UNSC equivalent of an machine gun mounted Jeep called the Warthog, in which you usually drive while your marine friends shoot, to traverse the large but linear open space of the mission. Later missions will have you commandeer various vehicles ranging from tanks to alien hovercraft and airplanes. - Battlefield popularize this in context of Player Versus Player Multiplayer. Both sides can use various vehicles from fast reconaissance ones to armored one for combat, and then there's the airplanes, which is usually Difficult, but Awesome due to the difficulty to control it but at the hands of skilled player it can turn the tide of the battle. - Ravenfield is the same as Battlefield above, however unless using a custom mod launcher, the game is purely singleplayer with computer-controlled bots serving as the other players. - Overwatch: This trope is in effect if you play as D.Va. You start off in her MEKA, which is packed with a pair of Fusion Cannons, Boosters for flight, a Defense Matrix, and Micro Missiles. It also comes with D.Va's Ultimate, Self-Destruct, which is Exactly What It Says on the Tin, and can do massive damage. Of course, after the uses that (or takes too much damage and has to eject), D.Va herself fights on foot with melee, a Light Gun, and the option to call down another MEKA to get into once the Ult gauge is filled (either through combat, or immediately after scoring an elimination with the Self-Destruct). - Titanfall has you play as a Pilot to begin with, equipped with a Jump Jet Pack and Le Parkour skills that let you engage in Wall Running and Video Game Sliding. Pilots can also call upon the setting's resident Mini-Mecha, the Titans, to gain an edge in battle, trampling over Grunts and other Pilots while battling other Titans. While Titans can't engage in the fancy maneuvers that Pilots can, they can still move fairly fast and hit really hard. The transition between Pilot and Titan gameplay is seamless and fast, allowing for little interruptions. - Similar to Titanfall, Borderlands 3 has Moze, the Gunner, who plays like any other Vault Hunter normally... but her Action Skill, Iron Bear, lets her summon the eponymous mech and go to town with a myriad of weapons, whether it be chainguns (exploding bullets optional), a Grenade Launcher or a missile salvo, railguns, or good ol' massive metal fists. - League of Legends has a few champions that play with this style: - Kled, the Cantankerous Cavalier, rides on an indestructible, but cowardly bipedal lizard creature named Skaarl. They spend most of their combat charging into enemies with Kled mindlessly hacking at them to pieces with an ax, but if Skaarl takes too much damage, she'll get spooked and run away, leaving Kled to hack at them on foot. Losing Skaarl leaves Kled without access to some abilities, but he can get Skaarl to return if he can deal enough damage to regain her trust. - Rell, the Iron Maiden, rides on an artificial "horse" comprised out of large pieces of heavy armor held together by her metal magic. Her gameplay trades between speedily trampling over enemies with her steed and equipping the armor herself to turn her into a slow, but near-indestructible foot soldier. - The Adventures of Star Saver (or Rubble Saver in Japan) is one of the earliest examples of this trope in effect. Here, you play as Kevin (or his sister Connie, depending on the version) and the mecha Tom Wolf as you platform your way across stages to defeat aliens trying to invade the galaxy. That said, the mecha only serves as an extra life and is lost upon taking a hit (though reaching "P" power-ups gives you back your mecha). Mechanically speaking however, they operate identically, Tom Wolf merely serving the same purpose as Arthur's armor. - The Blaster Master games has you switch between taking control of a Cool Tank in a 2D side scroller format, and going on foot to go through small spaces and inside rooms, turning the game into a top-down shooter. - In Metal Warriors, there are several sequences in which the player must exit their mecha in order to access a narrow space (usually a control panel which unlocks a door or controls a spaceship). - Metal Slug: You're on foot most of the time, but there are times where you get a Slug you can ride in/on, and they come in all sorts (tank, plane, Mini-Mecha, camel, etc.) and you can (usually) ride them all the way to the end of the stage (if you can make it last that long). That said, there are also cases where you're forced to leave your ride behind, so this has cases of this trope both played straight and averted. - Panzer Paladin features the last Paladin unit Grit and his pilot the rescue operations android Flame. Grit uses Spirit Weapons scattered by Ravenous against his demonic forces since humans run the risk of getting corrupted by their evil energy. He also has a shield for protection and his fist if he's out of weapons. Out of the mecha, Flame has a laser whip that doubles as a grappling hook. She's also just as capable of destroying demons as Grit is, though is naturally not as durable. - In Cannon Fodder, many phases deeper into the game require you to load your soldiers into vehicles: first just jeeps, then tanks and helicopters. A large proportion of these phases fall into "fight your way through to the tank, then jump into it and slaughter everything", but some require you to leave the vehicle to accomplish other tasks. - Warcraft III: Night Elf archers can learn the Mount Hippogryph ability, which lets them use their ranged attack from the air (but loses the hippogryph's powerful melee Anti-Air attack). Careful timing of the Dismount ability lets you slaughter flying enemies by suddenly doubling the amount of units they have to face. - Xenogears alternates between hand-to-hand combat on foot, and battles using Gears. You can usually get in and out of Gears at any time, and call them into battle in places where it makes sense to be able to do so (for example, on the world map or in very large open dungeons, but not in small enclosed spaces). Switching back and forth between riding Gears and walking is necessary in some dungeons, such as when the characters need to enter a place where Gears can't fit. The characters level up and learn skills as expected in an RPG but Gears can only be improved by purchasing upgrades for their components, by buying or finding equipable items for them, and via certain plot events. - In Chaos, wizards can ride suitable steeds, either dismounting voluntarily or being unhorsed when the steed is killed. The sequel Lords of Chaos extends this to other humanoid units. The ability was not retained for the 32-bit Magic and Mayhem games that followed. - Some Fire Emblem games include an option for mounted units (who ride horses, pegasai, or wyverns) to dismount. Perks include not being vulnerable to weapons with an advantage against mounted units (such as bows for flying units), the ability to use Gauntlets in Fire Emblem: Three Houses, and in early games, the ability to fight indoors. Drawbacks include lower movement speed and sometimes lowered stats. Fire Emblem: Thracia 776 had the most drawbacks; besides the stat drop, many units used different weapons mounted and dismounted. Lance users got the worst of this; all but two lance users are mounted, making lances nigh-useless indoors. - The obscure MechWarrior clone G-Nome quite literally had its selling point the fact that you have combat on mechas and on foot without the odds being explicitly against the latter. - Interstate '82, the sequel to Interstate '76, added the ability to get out of your car and switch vehicles. Given that doing so left you defenseless against the Weaponized Cars you were fighting, however, it was not recommended except in an emergency, providing an Ironic Echo to Skeeter's line "never get out of the car" from the first game. - MechAssault 2 featured this gameplay — you could go about in Battle Armor, hijack a mech, and gain control of it. - Titanfall and its sequel use this as their main hook. The Player Character is the pilot of a Humongous Mecha (whose AI allows it to also function as a Robot Buddy), and gameplay of the main campaigns involves switching between the mecha, and the more manoeuvrable pilot (with some levels forcing you to stay inside, some forcing you to explore on foot, and others letting you decide what works best). The multiplayer treats riding a mecha as more of a powerup (albeit with some tradeoffs) granted by achieving enough kills. - Grand Theft Auto, of course. The very title alludes to the fact that you will be switching between different cars in many missions, going from car chases in city streets to shootouts in back alleys. Ditto for the many Wide-Open Sandbox games that followed in its footsteps. Grand Theft Auto IV onwards introduces the ability to aim while driving a car or riding a bike, and to balance the game, the enemies can do that too. - Mercenaries: Both Playground of Destruction and World In Flames featured this very heavily, as stealing tanks, helicopter gunships, or a wide variety of other vehicles and using them to take out your enemies was an option for every mission, as was sneaking on foot and using man-portable weapons or airstrikes (which you couldn't call in while driving a vehicle). - Along with grappling hook, Just Cause has the same kind of on ride on foot combat as Mercenaries above, although for the second game, it's balanced by the usually awkward vehicle controls.	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/OnRideOnFootCombat
On-Set Injury - TV Tropes Filmmaking is a very difficult process to work with. It is extremely taxing to the physical and mental well-being of the cast and crew, as they fight against Executive Meddling, tight deadlines, arguments with the director and various mishaps on-set that occur regularly. And these are the moments that actually cause physical or emotional harm to the cast and crew such as actors injured during stunts or being completely traumatized by scenes involving emotional trickery. This can sometimes lead to Enforced Method Acting, Throw It In and Written-In Infirmity if the cast and crew try to make the best of the injuries. It's a serious sign of a Troubled Production, which can be aggravated if several of these incidents continue to occur or causes death during production. These incidents can lead to delays in the production or worse, the production forced to shut down for safety reasons. If it's especially bad, it can be a Career-Ending Injury. There is a reason why safety guidelines and protocols exist to prevent these types of incidents from occurring regularly, as well as actor labor unions such as SAG-AFTRA protecting the well-being of actors. In Professional Wrestling, because of its live action pseudofighting nature and the high risk of injuries due to mistimings, botches, or plain ol' shoot fighting, injuries are very common among wrestlers. It's not uncommon for promotions to have most of their roster on the shelf due to injuries. Because of this, no pro wrestling examples are allowed, as we would need more than one page to cover all the examples. ## Example subpages: <!—index—> <!—/index—> ## Other examples: - Ophelia (Millais): The model for the dead Ophelia became extremely ill while posing in icy water. It was often blamed for her chronic illnesses afterwards. - Jackie Chan has suffered multiple injuries while filming stunts throughout his career. These include: - Enter the Dragon: Bruce Lee accidentally struck him in the face with one of his fighting sticks. He immediately apologized and insisted that Chan could work on all of his movies after that. Unfortunately, Lee died before he could keep his promise. - Hand of Death: Chan wrote in his memoir that he was knocked unconscious while doing stunts for the film. - Drunken Master: He nearly lost an eye when Jang Lee Hwang kicked him in the head during the final fight scene. When Hwang became aware of this, he refused to do more takes for the shot. - Snake in the Eagle's Shadow: During a sword fight scene, Chan's co-star slashed him across the arm with what was supposed to be a prop sword with a blunted edge, but was actually sharp. Chan screamed in pain but continued acting, the camera kept rolling and the injury, with real blood spraying everywhere, ended up in the final cut. - The Young Master: He nearly suffocated when he injured his throat while performing a stunt. - Dragon Lord: He injured his chin during a stunt, making it difficult to say his lines and direct. - Project A: Chan injured his neck while filming the bicycle chase. - Police Story: Chan slid down a pole that peeled the skin off his hands, leaving him with injuries similar to second-degree burns, then crashed through a glass ceiling and landed on his back, dislocating his pelvis and pushing his vertebrae into nearby organs causing internal bleeding. Chan claims it's one of the only times in his career when he's been afraid that injuries he sustained on set would kill him. - Wheels on Meals: Keith Vitali accidentally kicked Chan in the throat after numerous takes for a particular fight scene. When Keith hit Jackie, he realized the danger of the situation and broke character by concern for Jackie's health. By doing this, Keith was yelled at by the entire crew as he was supposed to wait for the director to yell "Cut!", no matter what had happened in the scene. - Armour of God: Chan attempted to jump onto a tree branch, but missed and fell headfirst to the ground below, suffering multiple injuries including a brain haemorrhage, a broken skull, jaw and nose, and losing several teeth. He was rushed to hospital for emergency brain surgery and now has a plastic plug covering a hole in his skull, hidden beneath his hair. This incident is probably the closest Chan actually came to dying. - Police Story 2: He smashed into the wrong glass pane, causing severe cuts to his wrist and head. This scene is actually used in the movie, and the outtakes show the pain. - Supercop: He jumped from the top of a building onto a rope ladder suspended beneath a helicopter. The ladder then crashed into a billboard, breaking his shoulder. - Police Story 4 First Strike: During a stunt that involved Chan jumping through an extension ladder, he got tangled in the rungs and was unable to escape before it fell to the ground, knocking him unconscious and breaking his nose. - Miracles: He sustained a deep cut over his left eye while performing a stunt in which he flipped backwards onto a rickshaw. - Armour of God II: Operation Condor: While filming the underground base chase scene, he was supposed to swing to a platform with a long chain, but he lost balance and fell to the ground face-first, dislocating his sternum. - Mr. Nice Guy: Chan took a two storey fall as part of a stunt - he was supposed to land on some safety mats out of camera range, but missed them, tearing some ligaments and dislocating some of his neck vertebrae. - Crime Story: His legs were crushed between two cars during the opening scene. - Rumble in the Bronx: Chan broke an ankle while jumping from a bridge onto the deck of a hovercraft. He tried to turn his body to stop himself hitting a wall as he landed, but didn't take into account the non-slip surface of the deck, and his foot didn't turn with the rest of him. Although his doctor advised him not to do any more stunts until the ankle healed, Chan finished the movie, wearing a plaster cast painted to look like a sneaker. - Rush Hour 3: He had a cracked sternum and bruises to his shins from the third movie's stunts. In the credits, there is an outtake where he throws a table backwards with his legs into himself, accidentally, in Genevieve's suite. - Tom Cruise has a penchant for doing his own stunts in movies, leading to several injuries over the years: - He crashed a race car into a wall while filming Days of Thunder, resulting in minor injuries to his neck and shoulder. - He went all out for the bare-knuckle boxing scenes in Far and Away, resulting in him receiving bruises to the chest and face from being punched. - Mission: Impossible Film Series: - In Mission: Impossible (1996), he twisted his ankle and received cuts on his legs from broken glass during the scene where the fish tank is blown up. - In Mission: Impossible Fallout, he broke his ankle filming a scene where Ethan jumps the gap between two buildings, resulting in production being delayed for a few weeks so he could heal. - He got into a very real car accident on-set while filming Collateral; Jamie Foxx was supposed to crash into Cruise's vehicle but slammed into the car a little too hard, causing him to crash into a wall, with Cruise getting a concussion and a gash on his head. - During a fight scene in Jack Reacher, Cruise had to kick an opponent. It took nearly fifty takes to get right and by the end Cruise's foot was extremely swollen, to the point he had to have his boot cut off to remove it. - He got into yet another car crash filming a car chase with Emily Blunt for Edge of Tomorrow. Blunt - who was driving - accidentally crashed the car into a tree. Cruise suffered some bad bruises though luckily didn't receive more serious injuries, although Blunt joked about the time she "nearly killed Tom Cruise". - Harrison Ford: - On Raiders of the Lost Ark, his knee was run over by the plane. Rather than trust the Tunisian medics, he put some ice on it. He also suffered bruised ribs being dragged behind the truck. - He herniated a disc in his back filming a fight scene in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, forcing him to fly back to Los Angeles for an operation. He returned six weeks later, and during the period the priorities were stunts, specially as Ford's double looked very much like him. - He damaged some ligaments in his leg during the filming of the scenes in the woods for The Fugitive. He refused to take surgery until the end of filming so that his character would keep the limp. The limp can be seen in any subsequent scene where Richard Kimble is running. - While filming The Force Awakens, the remote-operated door for the Millennium Falcon was accidentally shut early, causing it to break his leg. To work around him needing to sit while healing, the bar scene on Takodana was pushed up in the schedule, resulting in the plans for an animatronic Maz Kanata being shelved for a CG depiction. (An animatronic Maz would eventually appear two films later). - Michael Jackson narrowly avoided death twice in his lifetime, but both accidents would permanently affect his career and health: - In 1984, his hair caught fire as he was filming a commercial for Pepsi. He suffered second-degree burns to his scalp and he had to undergo treatment for his injuries; the general consensus is that this was the beginning of the prescription drug dependency problems that ultimately cost him his life in 2009. - In 1999, during a charity concert in Munich, Jackson was performing "Earth Song" on a suspended bridge over the stage. The stage split apart as part of the routine, and the portion Jackson was standing on was raised up high above the stage. However, the wires holding the bridge piece gave out, and Jackson plummeted fifty feet to the ground, holding on for dear life. Jackson severely messed up his back from the fall, which would end up hamstringing his dancing for the rest of his life, and worsened his already severe Demerol addiction. - Sir Christopher Lee was no stranger on on-set injuries and accidents during his long and prolific career: - During a scene in the 1951 adaptation of Quo Vadis, he was thrown from a chariot he was driving. - In The Curse of Frankenstein, he got his eyes burned by fake blood in a scene where the Creature gets shot. The scream of pain used in the final film is quite real. - While filming a swordfight for The Dark Avenger, Errol Flynn accidentally cut Lee's hand so badly that his finger nearly came off and was permanently injured. Later, Lee cut off Flynn's wig while Flynn was still wearing it. - On the set of The Three Musketeers, he was one of many who suffered accidents, getting off with just a sprained knee and a pulled shoulder muscle. - He really suffered making The Mummy: - A door through which he was supposed to crash was accidentally bolted by a grip before the scene was shot. Lee's shoulder was dislocated when he broke down the door, but the shot remains in the movie. - He was burned by squib marks and threw out his back carrying the girl. - He also injured his knees and shins while doing scenes in the studio-tank "swamp". He couldn't see where the various pipes and fittings under the swampy water were. - He tripped over power cables and injured his back while filming the 2011 movie The Resident. - Sylvester Stallone: - He and Carl Weathers really hit each other in Rocky. Stallone got cracked ribs, while Weathers got a broken nose — the opposite of their injuries in the movie. - He did the stunt in First Blood where he leaps from a cliffside to a tree himself. The look of pain is real, as he cracked several ribs doing the stunt. Also, while filming for the scene where Rambo first runs into the abandoned mine shaft to elude the guards firing at him, Stallone seriously injured his hand after failing to realize that his hand was on the top of a gunfire squib that went off after. The injury was so severe that he almost lost his thumb. After performing for a stunt in a deleted scene, the stunt driver for Brian Dennehy, Bennie E. Dobbins, suffered a lumbar compression fracture. - He once dared Dolph Lundgren on the set of Rocky IV to punch him at full force. Long story short, he wound up in the intensive care unit for several days. He sustained bruising of the heart muscle, which normally only occurs to people hit by cars. - He sustained fourteen injuries making The Expendables, including breaking a tooth, rupturing his ankle, and getting a hairline fracture in his neck that required the surgical insertion of a metal plate. He also had bronchitis and shingles during the shoot. - Both he and Arnold Schwarzenegger had to have shoulder surgery after filming The Expendables 2. - On The Expendables 3, he suffered a serious back injury from a bad fall, requiring surgery that involved adding metal plates to his spine. In a separate scene, Antonio Banderas sustained a knee injury. - David Boreanaz injured his knee filming the final season of Angel. This required surgery, so some episodes were amended (most notably "Smile Time", where Angel is turned into a puppet and Boreanaz only has to do voiceovers). - The Avengers' episode "Mandrake" featured Honor Blackman having a fight scene with wrestler Jackie Pallo. In one take, she accidentally knocked him out for four minutes (she forgot to feint first, then kick, and simply kicked him in the head, knocking him onto the concrete floor of the studio). The incident garnered plenty of publicity in the British press. Blackman was in tears when it happened and sat by him until he recovered. - Babylon 5 had a few incidents but these stand out: - Claudia Christian (Ivanova) broke her ankle during "The Geometry of Shadows" but, thanks to a hasty rewrite (Susan getting trampled by the Drazi), was able to work through it. Though she might have wished she hadn't, since filming the 'injury' scene aggravated her real-life injury, generating such a blood-curdling scream that it was rumored she actually broke her ankle on-camera. - Jerry Doyle broke his arm for real during the filming of "Severed Dreams". Unfortunately the scene showing him with a broken ankle was filmed BEFORE the accident and later episodes ignored the broken ankle and show Garibaldi with an arm cast, explaining that this was the injury sustained in the fight. - Batwoman: - Ruby Rose was injured doing a stunt, causing two herniated disks near her spinal cord. She had to undergo emergency surgery to avoid paralysis. - Amanda Smith, a production assistant, was struck on the head by a bucket of a lift while on a location setup shoot and was paralyzed from the waist down. - John Cho tore his ACL (anterior cruciate ligament) filming a Cowboy Bebop night scene, which caused months-long delay in filming before they could resume. - CSI NY had at least three instances. - While filming episode 1.21, "On the Job," Gary Sinise tore a leg muscle running down some subway entrance stairs. He was taken to the hospital, given morphine and driven home. The incident occurred on his 50th birthday, and he spent the evening on the couch feeling a bit loopy. - Mr. Sinise suffered the exact same injury to his other leg filming a fight scene in a cemetery for episode 8.06, "Get Me Out of Here!" His character, Mac Taylor, spent the rest of that episode and most of the next one either seated or leaning on things due to Sinise's recovery. - Melina Kanakaredes has a scar on her left leg from tripping while running up a fire escape during the filming of episode 5.01, "Veritas." - Charlie's Angels: While filming "Angel in a Box", stuntman Bobby Bass was high on cocaine and drove a car that the stuntwomen Julie Ann Johnson and Jeannie Coultar were supposed to jump out of faster than instructed. Coultar suffered multiple injuries and a concussion. Johnson was injured far worse; though knocked out, Johnson was writhing on the ground. Stunt coordinator Ronnie Rondell had to pin her down to stop the chance of her further injuring herself. - While filming an episode of Chips, Erik Estrada lost control of his motorcycle and was hurled into a parked car before the 900-pound motorcycle landed on him. Estrada sustained fractured ribs, partially collapsed lungs, a fractured right wrist, and a cracked sternum and clavicle. - One sketch on The Dangerous Brothers required Adrian Edmondson to be set on fire. Unfortunately, in the heat of the moment, he forgot the safety word and as he rolled around on the floor screaming to be put out, one crewmember commented on his professionalism — because he didn't need the safety word! - Lita suffered three cracks in her vertebrae rehearsing with a stunt double while filming a fight scene for Dark Angel. She attempted a hurricanrana but the stunt double dropped her on her head and shoulders. She would finish and film the scene, but the neck injury kept her out of the wrestling ring for a year. - Doctor Who: - William Hartnell cut his hand on one of the Dalek casings in "The Daleks". - In "The Dalek Invasion of Earth", Hartnell injured his back when a prop ramp malfunctioned. Following discussions between Hartnell's solicitors and The BBC's, the BBC denied liability and paid for an X-ray. Hartnell was given a week off to recover, and the fourth episode underwent minor rewrites - During the scene in "The Rescue" where Barbara fires a flare gun at Vicki's pet, Jacqueline Hill was injured, suffering shock and a sore face. This occurred when the explosive connected to the wooden prop gun went off with more force than expected. - "Terror of the Autons": While filming the Doctor and Jo's escape from the Auton policemen in the quarry, on location, which was virtually Katy Manning's first scene, the short-sighted Katy tripped and sprained her ankle. Production assistant Nicholas John took her to hospital, and joked about the producer having to replace her. Manning took this seriously and when Jon Pertwee found out he told off John for upsetting his new co-star. - On "The Sea Devils", Pertwee injured his ribs during recording when he dived forward and fell on the sonic screwdriver prop, which was stowed in his breast pocket. - While filming "The Sontaran Experiment", Tom Baker broke his collarbone; depending on who you ask, he either slipped on wet grass or tripped on his own scarf, the large size of which came in handy for covering up his neckbrace. - Peter Davison would later jokingly claim that the staff were actually attempting to kill him while taping "The Caves of Androzani". Among these accidents are two notable instances: - During a scene in which Sharaz Jek backhands the Doctor, the mask Christopher Gable was wearing impaired his vision enough to make him legitimately strike Davison by mistake. - As the Doctor carries Peri back into the TARDIS at the end of the story, he flinches at a nearby mud burst. This is because the explosion was prematurely triggered by the technicians, shooting sand into Davison's eyes and forcing him to recoil in pain. - Anthony Ainley recalled that for the Doctor and the Master's final confrontation in "Survival", Sylvester McCoy found the contact lenses he had to wear painful. Ainley accidentally struck him in the wrist with the bone and apologised. McCoy quipped that thanks to the pain in his wrist he couldn't feel the pain in his eyes. - The cane Matt Smith uses in "The Time of the Doctor" was actually necessitated by Smith injuring himself on set. - Andrew Sachs was injured a couple of times on Fawlty Towers: - In "The Wedding Party", John Cleese nearly knocked him out with a heavy saucepan when he made an unexpected move during filming after five days of rehearsals. He had a headache for two days. - In "The Germans", when Manuel attempts to put out a fire in the kitchen, firemen were on standby to put out the flames. However in the next shot where Manuel walks out to alert Basil of the fire, two chemicals were added to Sachs' arm, to create smoke. During rehearsal and filming these chemicals soaked into his clothing causing him second degree chemical burns on his arm and back. - In the Friends episode "The One Where No One's Ready", Joey quickly leaps into a chair as part of a plot where he and Chandler fight over said chair. While Matt Le Blanc was able to leap into the chair without issue for three takes, upon shooting a fourth take, he tripped over a coffee table and hit the chair in such a way that he dislocated his shoulder. The injury required him to wear a sling, temporarily postponing production of the episode and requiring the injury to be written into the show for the following two episodes, humorously explained as an injury Joey received while jumping on his bed. - Game of Thrones: - Rory McCann sustained a knee injury while filming the Season 7 episode, "Beyond the Wall" where he's carrying the actor who played the wight on his shoulders. According to him, a dummy wouldn't work so they have to use a real person. - Kristian Nairn got back problems due to carrying his co-star, Isaac Hempstead-Wright, for six seasons. After leaving the show, he had to undergo six months of physical therapy. - The Good Wife: Kristin Chenoweth (who played a political reporter on the show) received a skull fracture, broken nose, spinal and rib injuries, and cracked teeth when a piece of the lighting rig fell on top of her, which led to years of physical therapy. - The Grand Tour: - While filming in Mozambique for the second season, Richard Hammond was seriously injured after falling off his motorbike. - While filming another segment, Hammond was hospitalized after crashing a Rimac Concept One during a hill climbing event in Switzerland. He was able to escape the accident with a fractured knee, despite the car flipping and catching fire shortly afterwards. The crash footage was shown in the first episode of the second season, and the hosts would rib at it in later episodes. - While filming in Scandinavia, James May broke a rib and gashed his head after crashing his car into the wall of a tunnel during a speed test. Since this happened in the middle of filming the special, the footage and May's recovery were incorporated into the finished product. - Matt Smith injured a disc in his neck while filming for House of the Dragon during a stunt. - iCarly: - "iGet Pranky" has a scene where Gibby falls from the ceiling of the electrical room due to a failed prank, resulting in Gibby breaking his arm. The stunt double in this scene actually broke his ribs filming this scene, according to Gibby's actor Noah Munck. They kept that take in the episode. - Katina Waters, another stunt double, severely injured her leg during a high-wire stunt, where she was dropped to the floor without warning. Reportedly, she sued the production company over this. - Jackass is no stranger to injuries since it has the cast doing dangerous stunts under supervision. But some have been more serious then others, especially during the films. Examples include concussions, blood clots, fractured bones and ribs, nasty gashes from being pierced or gored, losing teeth and a lot of near fatal misses. A lot of this portrayed directly on-screen after a stunt. - While filming the original Kamen Rider, the actor behind the protagonist, Hiroshi Fujioka, initially did his own stunts in the suit. However, this came back to bite him when filming a motorcycle scene, as his leg got stuck on a wire, followed by the bike coming back and hitting him, shattering his leg. This necessitated Fujioka's character being written out and replaced with someone else taking up the mantle of Kamen Rider. Although Fujioka got better and returned to the show as the second half of the Double Riders, with few exceptions, no actor for Kamen Rider has done their own stunts since. - The reason Kung Fu (1972) ended after three years was because David Carradine sustained too many injuries. - While filming an action scene for Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, Mariska Hargitay suffered a collapsed lung after landing wrongly, requiring multiple surgeries to correct the injury. - Leverage Christian Kane shows up in "The Inside Job" with a bandage over his nose, due to an on-set injury. The writers decided that it fit his character of Eliot Spencer as "The Hitter", and that they'd already agreed that the audience only saw 1:3 of the Leverage team's adventures, so they wouldn't need to film a scene to explain the injury. - The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power: No less than 3 stunt actors suffered severe injuries while filming for the show. - Stunt performer Dana Grunt suffered serious head injury that developed into a brain aneurysm. Rumors are that she accidented herself after being forced to make stunts she was not comfortable with, probably because they were not safe enough. Thankfully, she got a brain-surgery and is fine is present. - Another one, Alyssa Cadwell ended up with a head injury after striking a bolt while filming for Galadriel's water scenes. She was paid 500,000 dollars by Amazon for her hospital expenses. - And the last stunt double was Thomas Kiwi, who got his right shoulder seriously injured after performing backflips with an improper support wire system. After his injury, he retired from the production and warned them to be more careful with the safety of the stunt performers. - While filming the final episode of Lost, Terry O'Quinn mistakenly stabbed Matthew Fox with a real knife instead of a collapsible one. Fox's life was saved by the kevlar vest underneath his shirt. - The Mandalorian: On the filming day for the scene in Chapter 8 where Mando's helmet is removed to reveal his severely injured face, Pedro Pascal actually did seriously injure his face and had to get stitches across his nose (which caused a hell of a time for the poor hospital staff having to pick out which wounds were real or makeup). - In spite of the lack of danger based around the show, a few singers on The Masked Singer have reported accidents on the show. Note that this has never stopped any of them from performing. - In season two, shortly after her first song, Black Widow/\|\|Raven-Symoné\|\| broke her arm, as shown by the sling she wears in her next two performances. - From the same season as the above, Butterfly/\|\|Michelle Williams\|\| was electrocuted by an exploding carbon dioxide canister. - The Masked Dancer: Cotton Candy/\|\|Gabby Douglas\|\| fell off a hoop she was latched onto at the beginning of a rehearsal. - During the first season of Miami Vice, Phillip Michael Thomas was injured during a stunt in "Made for Each Other". As a result, he doesn't appear in the following episode, "The Home Invaders". - Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers: - In "Switching Places", the pyrotechnics used in Billy's brain-switching machine had caused both Amy Jo Johnson and David Yost to accidentally catch on fire while filming the scene. Amy Jo would later be wary of being too close to such special effects equipment because of the accident. - Thuy Trang filmed the second season for about eight weeks with a high ankle sprain. In one episode, she sits on the bench while the others play football. - Dominic Purcell suffered a broken nose and a head injury while filming Prison Break in Morocco after an iron bar used as a set piece had fallen onto his head. He was immediately airlifted from Marrakesh to Casablanca for treatment where he recovered. - Jon Bernthal broke his hand, tore ligaments and dislocated the same hand doing action scenes for The Punisher (2017). - Red Dwarf: Craig Charles nearly drowned whilst filming "Backwards", which featured a scene where he had to walk backward into a lake. This may have been referenced in the book "Last Human", in which we learn that Lister has a lifelong fear of drowning. - Rizzoli & Isles: Angie Harmon sprained her ankle badly while filming an episode, and the injury (and her character wearing a medical boot) had to be incorporated into a few Season 4 episodes. - The BBC's Robin Hood suffered multiple examples: - Harry Lloyd (Will Scarlett) was running through the Nottingham Market set when his cloak caught on the edge of a stall, he tried to wrench it out to avoid ruining the take and the entire stall fell over, causing an extra carrying a bucket of water to drop it on Harry's eye. Lloyd carried on running round the corner, unaware of how badly he'd been injured until Joe Armstrong (Allan a Dale) caught sight of him and he saw his reaction. - Gordon Kennedy (Little John) tore his hamstring and was taken to a hospital whilst still in full costume (minus his trousers, which had been removed to pack ice onto the injury), resulting in the hospital mistaking him for a vagrant, and he was about to be deloused before a producer arrived to explain. Kennedy then sprained his ankle ligament on his first day back filming. - Keith Allen (the Sheriff of Nottingham) lost a tooth during an action scene on the last episode of the first series. This was written into the script as the Sheriff losing a tooth and getting a bejewelled fake tooth, which actually become a minor plot point in one or two later episodes. - Jonas Armstrong (Robin) broke a metatarsal bone in his foot during a fight scene on the second series. - Russell Howard's Good News: Russell Howard was actually injured during filming after absent-mindedly doing a press-up on a breakable stool. Russell broke his hand (specifically one of his fingers) and had to receive first aid. The next episode he appeared in a cast and saw it as a very stupid thing to do. - Saturday Night Live: - Chevy Chase suffered a groin injury doing a pratfall with a podium in the first episode of Saturday Night Live. This caused him to miss the second and third episodes. - During the "Samurai Stockbroker" sketch from the October 30, 1976 episode, John Belushi accidentally slashed host Buck Henry's forehead with the katana he was using. Henry spent the rest of the show with his forehead bandaged. - Star Trek: - While filming "Arena", William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy both suffered permanent hearing damage and tinnitus from a special effects explosion that they were too close to. - William Campbell dislocated his shoulder while filming the climactic chase in "The Squire Of Gothos". Fortunately, his instinctive reaction of throwing his arms back in pain caused the shoulder to pop back into place. - Marina Sirtis asked to perform her own stunt of being knocked backward in "Power Play", only for her to land wrong and badly bruise her tailbone, leaving her unable to walk for 3 weeks. Worst of all, according to Sirtis, was that the shot ended up being from so far away "it could have been Worf in Troi's costume and you couldn't tell the difference!" - Patricia Tallman, a stunt double for several of the female leads in the series, was injured while doubling for Nana Visitor when Tim Russ slugged her for real in "Invasive Procedures". Russ wanted to stop so she could be treated, but Tallman told him to finish the fight so they could get it on film. - Doug Jones suffered a serious shoulder injury while filming the first season of Star Trek: Discovery, which required surgery and sidelined him from a cameo role in the Hellboy reboot. - Top Gear: - Richard Hammond crashed a dragster at 288 mph, seriously injuring his brain. His front-right tire failed on the seventh run that caused him to hit the grass and roll the Vampire he was driving. During the roll, his helmet had embedded itself into the ground, flipping the visor up and forcing dirt into his mouth and left eye, damaging the eye. Rescuers felt a pulse and heard the unconscious Hammond breathing before the car was turned upright. - Hammond also hurt his neck in the "Cheap Car Challenge" when his Suzuki Super Carry rolled over. - James May suffered a severe concussion in Syria and had to be hospitalized when he was knocked down by a tow rope and cut his head on a rock. This ended up being incorporated into the episode, with Jeremy and Hammond incorporating some levity by greeting him in full-body veils once he got out. - During the Burma special, Hammond fell off a horse (after Jeremy's horse tried to mate with it) and had to be rushed to a hospital, which was incorporated into the finished episode. - In the Patagonia Special, May cracked three ribs while attempting to mount a horse. - Jeremy Clarkson injured his neck during the Lorry Challenge episode when he intentionally crashed a semi-truck into a makeshift brick wall note : The other 2 presenters also had to wreck their trucks into makeshift structures. Clarkson's was just mistakenly overbuilt compared to the other two . He also injured his neck test driving the Nissan GT-R, not from crashing it but simply from not being used to the sort of G-forces that car can pull. - Torchwood: A last-minute rewrite had to be undertaken on "Ghost Machine"'s opening chase sequence. Originally, Jack, Owen and Gwen were to pursue Bernie Harris through the streets of Cardiff. However, John Barrowman twisted his ankle while filming on the Hub set just a few days before, preventing him from running. The scene was therefore rewritten to have Jack show up partway through in the Torchwood vehicle. - Norman Reedus was injured three times during filming The Walking Dead. First in 2015, while filming the episode "Them" where he suffered a nasty cut on his arm that spilled. It was captured by the cameras, but didn't make the final cut. Then while filming the 11th and final season he suffered a cut on his face during a fight scene. In March 2022, while filming the final episodes, he suffered a concussion, though it is not known if it was during filming. - Henry Cavill tore his hamstring while filming The Witcher (2019) Season 2. He admits that an injury like this could have ended his acting career. - Britney Spears received four stitches after a piece of the camera hit the back of her head while filming the music video for "Oops..I Did It Again". - Chanwoo of IKON injured his ankle while his group's music video. While his doctors stated that it was not a serious injury, his agency YG Entertainment caution him not to do some heavy dancing during his group's Yokohama concert. - Kiseop of U-KISS got second-degree burns and many fragments lodged into his body after a product he was holding exploded during the filming of his group's music video. - As seen in the behind-the-scenes of Linkin Park's "New Divide" music video, bassist Dave Farrell injured his wrist during the first day of filming. This explains why he doesn't appear much in the music video except in the special effects scene. - Mariah Carey got a shoulder injury while filming the music video for the remix version of "Beautiful". - A planned stage play based on Attack on Titan was cancelled after an acrobat died in rehearsal. - Some of the live shows based on Bottom were so violent that Rik Mayall and Adrian Edmondson were hospitalized afterwards. - Groundhog Day: Andy Karl, the original Phil Connors, famously tore his ACL in Broadway previews while leapfrogging over another performer during "Philanthropy", finishing the performance on a walking stick. He missed several performances, but returned for opening night, performing with a knee brace. Some theorize that this, plus the production's technical difficulties, were what lead to the show's early closing, despite a successful West End run and great reviews. - Starlight Express: The original production, performed on roller skates at speeds of up to 40 MPH, was widely known as one of the most dangerous plays on the West End, with the 21 actors averaging three injuries per run each, and one actress later suing the company. The Broadway production, which was faster and on a larger set, was just as bad, if not worse, with one actor snapping his ankle in rehearsals and another blowing out his knee after falling 15 feet. Wait in the Wings would later title his retrospective on the musical "The Painful Spectacle of Starlight Express" for this reason. - Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark was such a Troubled Production that the play's page in The Other Wiki has a subsection dedicated exclusively to cast injuries: - Natalie Mendoza had a concussion on November 28, 2010. Against medical advice, she went back a couple of days later, even though her role of Arachne entailed flying sequences. She felt sick and her understudy had to take over her part for about two weeks. Mendoza ended up withdrawing from the show on December 30, 2010. - Stunt performer Christopher Tierney fell 21 feet (6.4 m) off a piece of scenery, through the stage and into the orchestra pit. His harness was not connected to the safety cord. - Actor and stunt performer Daniel Curry was pinned under a piece of equipment, injuring his leg. - The Tsukiuta stage play series has has a few: - During the run of the fifth stage play, Rabbits Kingdom, Shuuto Washio (You) suffered an injury, after which he did not appear in the dance live segment of the second act. - During the run of the twelfth stage play, Ura-Zanshin, Tatsuki Jonin (Aoi) hurt his ankle. Several performances were cancelled, and when they resumed, they performed most of the sword action scenes in the play (of which there are many) without him, and he did not dance in the dance live. - Wicked: Original Elphaba Idina Menzel suffered an accident during her second-to-last performance on January 8, 2005, when the trapdoor for the melting scene partially descended without her, causing her to misstep and break her ribs. While this meant she had to miss her final performance, she did, however, make a surprise appearance at the curtain call as a farewell. - Channel Awesome: - Almost everyone involved with Kickassia was injured somehow, the worst being cameraman Rob Walker getting a nasty leg injury on the first day, but he still kept cramming himself into tight places and waiting until filming was over to seek any medical attention. Also, LordKaT twisted both his ankles, which forced his role to be severely reduced. Ironically, the only one who didn't get injured was Noah Antwiler, who was infamous for his fragile health. - On Suburban Knights, Elisa Hansen was duct-taped to a wall and began to feel light headed, requiring them to take her down and just wrap her in a blanket secured with tape for the scene. (Elisa later debunked rumours she passed out on set.) Bennett the Sage, Iron Liz and Orlando all suffered stunt-related injuries which Allison Pregler later blamed on a lack of safety precautions. After Liz's knee was stomped in by Orlando, she alleged that Rob withheld ice from her unless she signed a contract absolving the site of liability for the injury. - At the start of Bennett the Sage's Elfen Lied review, Sage has a skit where he was lured into a hotel conference room and being "beaten" severely note : (they were using wiffle ball bats and other harmless Improvised Weapons) by his fellow (at the time) co-creators, which culminated on someone breaking a pool cue stick on his back. This was supposed to be faked, but the cue was broken several inches below the break spot. This ended up with Bennet actually taking the hit, which ended up leaving a long welt across his back. - During the first broadcast of Generation Loss, one of the wires supplying power to Ranboo's mask came loose when he laid down, and ended up pressed against his back. He did not break character and finished the show, but had to go to the ER afterwards for what turned out to be second-degree electrical burns.	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/OnSetInjury
Only the Leads Get a Happy Ending - TV Tropes Fox News Commentator: You had the two animals walking in side-by-side, and then you had the rainbow, and the dove comes, and then the sun comes out, and everyone lives happily ever after. Jon Stewart: EVERYBODY? The story ends on a happy, upbeat note, with all the problems resolved and everyone getting back to leading happy, fulfilling lives... but only if they're main characters. The characters the audience know and care about get their happy ending, but it comes at the expense of minor characters who get stuck with a Downer Ending. Note that the term "minor characters" does not include villains, even of the Mook variety, since we expect them to wind up worse off in the end (and it is considered more shocking if they get away, are Easily Forgiven or win). Related to Protagonist-Centered Morality, Inferred Holocaust, Esoteric Happy Ending, Everybody's Dead, Dave, Dwindling Party. If an Adam and Eve Plot is both apocalyptic and presented as having an upbeat ending, it's also this. See also What Happened to the Mouse?, where minor characters are forgotten about entirely. Contrast Win-Win Ending where everyone gets a happy ending. This is a Spoilered Rotten trope, which means that Note: EVERY SINGLE EXAMPLE on this list is a spoiler by default and most of them will be unmarked. This is your last warning, only proceed if you really believe you can handle this list. ## Examples: - The first series of Hungry Days ends with a couple confessing to each other and reciprocating, blissfully unaware of the apocalypse happening around them and the meteor about to claim their lives. While the two are at least soon to be Together in Death, they're the only two still standing at the end. Even worse, the cameos from some of the couples from previous commercials during this sequence imply their stories end in fiery demise. - Inverted in Mobile Suit Gundam: Iron-Blooded Orphans. The main members of Tekkadan (Mikazuki, Orga, Akihiro and Shino) all die one-by-one in the final episodes, but everyone else still alive (and that includes Rustal Elion and his entourage, Julieta Juris) get happy endings. Kudelia gets elected leader of a newly independent Mars, Eugene and Chad survive the final battle and become her aides, most of the other surviving Tekkadan members all get jobs at the repair shop Nadi and Merribit open up, Atra becomes a farmer and raises her new child with Kudelia, Azee sets up a new Teiwaz subsidiary with the surviving Turbines, and Rustal uses his new position as the undisputed leader of Gjallarhorn to enact some reforms, including signing a treaty banning the use of Human Debris, while setting Julieta up to be his successor. - GoLion, with all the death and destruction, and Princess Amue losing her love in a Senseless Sacrifice. - Inverted in Code Geass, where Lelouch vi Britannia orchestrates his own assassination. Suzaku Kururugi, who fakes his own death to forever take on the identity of Zero, is the one to kill Lelouch and must now forever remain Lonely at the Top. The surviving main characters move on with their lives; Kallen Kozuki gets to finish school without having to hide her identity, Kaname Ohgi and Villetta Nu have Babies Ever After (and probably both go back to teaching school after Ohgi's term as prime minister), Shinichiro Tamaki opens a bar, and Empress Nunnally vi Britannia, Chairman Kaguya Sumeragi, and Empress Tianzi Lihua rule over a peaceful world. And C.C. rides off in a cart to who-knows-where... and no, Lelouch wasn't driving it. - Fushigi Yuugi. Yeah, Miaka and Tamahome get their happy ending... Too bad the other Guardians of Suzaku are either trapped in a book or dead. Ultimately subverted in Eiko Den with the Suzaku warriors being reincarnated into the modern world. - In Wolf's Rain, the only characters shown reincarnated after the "Everybody Dies" Ending are the wolves (sans Blue) and Cheza. The implication is that human characters do not get to be reincarnated in the future. - The Elfen Lied anime ends with the director of the facility laughing hysterically and the fate of the other diclonius isn't made clear. However, Kouta, Yuka, Mayu, and Nana all survive to the end and there is a chance that Lucy may have survived also. - Depending on your perspective, it's either inverted, averted or played straight in Bokurano. The pilots' home universe survives, but all of them die, except for Kana and Seki in the anime. It's also discussed when Kirie talks with Tanaka about how it bothers him that people can consider a movie as having a happy ending if many unnamed characters suffer but the hero gets a happy ending, and he seems to consider such stories as having Esoteric Happy Endings unless the hero acknowledges the suffering of others. - More or less inverted in Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann. While humanity progresses and moves forward, the protagonists take big hits. The supporting section of the group survives but must deal with the deaths of the gunman pilots (especially the Black sisters with Kittan's death and Leyte and her children with Makken). They do rescue Nia, only for her to die a week later, after her marriage with Simon. Simon ends up Walking the Earth with Boota and Yoko returns to her isolated life as a teacher and later principal. Considering the overall messages, this is pretty jarring. - The movies aren't as bad. While Kittan still dies, the other pilots still live. Nia's death still occurs and Simon's and Yoko's fates are still the same, if not played out mildly more optimistically. - At the end of Episode: Hope of Danganronpa 3, Makoto and the survivors of class 78's killing game (plus Komaru) all survive the final killing game, and restart Hope's Peak Academy. Meanwhile, the former Remnants of Despair, while all alive and cured of the effects of Junko's Brainwashing Despair Video, are unlikely to be able to return to society ever again, due to their actions as Junko's lackeys and the fact that they helped to cover up the Final Killing Game, and due to the fact that Mitarai is now associating himself with them, he's in the same boat. Literally. Meanwhile, Munakata's off to do who knows what all alone, with the knowledge that the woman he loved was a member of the movement he hated so much, and that his best friend's death is partially his fault. And everyone else is dead. - The "Military Uniform Princess" Altair of Re:CREATORS is pretty unusual because she's both the Big Bad and an In-Universe invocation of this trope, meaning it's also a case of The Bad Guy Wins. The titular Creators bring back her own Creator as a fictional character and have the two talk out her Suicidal Cosmic Temper Tantrum that is impossible to stop otherwise because she has become an in-universe Villain Sue, and they both walk away into the sunset as the only couple of people unambiguously happy and untraumatized from the Curb-Stomp Battle massacre that was the Elimination Chamber Festival. - Weathering With You ends with Hodaka saving Hina so he can be together with her... except that doing this resulted in her powers flooding all of Tokyo, and possibly the entire world will follow suit. - In some Chick Tracts, the main Christian will talk to one non-believer, who gets more focus than the rest of the cast and goes to heaven in the end, while the other non-Christians are implied to go to Hell. One example is "The Trial"; the twist is that the plaintiff's daughter accepted Jesus when her friend, the defendant, told her, and the girl's mother and the witnesses called in to testify (authorities from other religions) go to Hell. Then again, it's just as common to invert this, as in "Busted" the main prosecutor goes to hell while his secretary gets converted (however, we don't hear whether the suspect at the beginning was convicted, much less whether he deserved the outcome). - Mutopia X has a happy ending for Ortega and Armena. Thanks to the ending of House of M, Armena is no longer a mutant, does not project a forcefield around her when she sleeps, and the happily married couple can finally share a bed and sleep together. Oh, that's so sweet... if we forget about the death of their daughter and the mass depowering of the mutants in Mutant Town that we had seen in the previous pages. - Watchmen is about halfway between this trope and a full "Everybody Dies" Ending: of the five main characters, only Rorschach dies, while Dr. Manhattan reaches an epiphany that convinces him life can have value, Veidt's plan goes just as he wanted, and Dan and Laurie start a new life together. The supporting cast basically all died as part of Veidt's Genghis Gambit or had met some terrible fate long before that. And how good an ending this is for Veidt, Dan, Laurie or the rest of the world depends on how well said plan works out in the long run. Doomsday Clock eventually showcases that the public found out about Veidt's scheme and things went From Bad to Worse in a hurry for him, but Dan and Laurie are never seen so the assumption the audience normally has is that they had (and still have) a better ending. - Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow?: Nearly the entire supporting cast of Superman die (including Lana Lang, Jimmy Olsen, Pete Ross, Supergirl, and Krypto), but with his entire Rogues Gallery permanently dealt with in one way or another, Clark is able to willingly De-power himself to retire with Lois under an assumed identity. - Inverted in Runaways (Rainbow Rowell), where the only Runaway who is guaranteed a happy ending is Klara, who quit the team prior to the beginning of the series and got adopted into a loving family. Meanwhile, her former teammates are stuck dealing with the ramifications of their various previously-dead members all being resurrected, which has included the rise of a new generation of the Gibborim and the activation of Victorious, Gert's future mortal nemesis. - Inverted in Black Science, where everybody except the lead characters earn their happy ending; the Multiverse is restored to health, everybody who died is revived, the bad guys are defeated, all of the supporting cast gets to ride off into the proverbial sunset, and Earth becomes a peaceful utopia where almost everyone is happy... but the Stable Time Loop that makes this possible requires that the central-most cast (the McKays, Kadir, and Chandra) all meet a horrible end that render their struggles pointless; the Kids and Chandra die, Kadir goes completely insane, and Grant and Sara go back in time to try and get their children back, becoming the evil alternates of themselves that appeared back near the start of the series and are obviously Doomed by Canon. - The Undertale fic Betrayed has two mutually exclusive endings, one of which plays this straight (for a given value of only the leads) and the other inverts it. In the first ending, Chara and Asriel are both brought back to life and reensouled, and Frisk and Chara have gotten together as a couple and redeemed themselves after the events of the Soulless Pacifist Ending, bringing everyone else that Chara had killed before her ensoulment back as well, and stopped Gasters scheme to become the god of all timelines and Ret-Gone the Frisks of all possible worlds, but the inhabitants of Ebott Village were all killed beyond all hope of revival and all the other Neutral and Soulless Pacifist timelines are as bad off as they were before, all of which we see were worse off than the storys main timeline from the beginning. Its implied that none of this would have happened if Frisk had refrained from the Genocide Route at the beginning and just accepted that Chara was stuck as a disembodied spirit. In the second ending, all of the above is still true, but all of the other characters (except Toriel, Asgore, and Asriel) tell Frisk and Chara that they can never forgive their actions, and that the devastation was all their fault, and that they deserve to never be happy again. Frisk and Chara agree with them and commit suicide under Mount Ebott together. - The Little Mermaid fic Poor Twisted Soul walks the line of this trope as the lead in question is only the lead for the final chapter. However, it otherwise plays this trope extremely strait. Basically, instead of turning her human, Ursula makes a deal with Ariel to give her a potion to make it so she won't feel guilty for doing what ever she wants. When Ariel drinks it, all kindness is removed from her heart and she is turned into a Cecelia (that is what Ursula is). Afterward, Ariel, having had all her positive aspects removed, goes along with Ursula's plan to overthrow King Triton. However, as Ariel predicted Ursula would betray her, she takes the trident for herself, kills Ursula, Triton, Sebastian, and Flounder, and transforms her sisters into mindless carnivorous monsters. The final chapter cuts to sometime later where Ariel has succeeded in taking over Atlantica, having killed everyone who revolted against her. However one family who defied her escape to Ursula's old home to turn human to escape Ariel. Unfortunately, there is only enough for one, so the two parents give the potion to their daughter Jobi, who escapes to the surface just before Ariel catches and kills them as well. This leaves Atlantica pretty much doomed, as no one is left to stop Ariel's now fully in control Superpowered Evil Side and any survivors must now follow her law to the letter or die. Jobi, however, is found and cared for by Prince Eric, and after two years, the pair wed and become king and queen where Jobi is a Universally Beloved Leader. - At the end of Cats Don't Dance, Danny and the other prominent animals succeed in becoming Hollywood stars. Unfortunately, the same can't be said for all the other animals who were also thrown out due to the studio flood, and were last seen standing in line for warmth at a barrel fire. Granted, the success of Danny and the others does open the door for other animals to become stars, so there's still a chance they'll make it. - Cars 3 ends with Lightning McQueen winning the bet against Sterling and getting to keep his job, Cruz becoming a Piston Cup rookie and everyone in Radiator Springs has their Happily Ever After, but we never find out what happens to Bobby Swift, Brick Yardley, and all the other veteran racers who got replaced by the next-gens, and it's likely we'll never see them again. - As seen in the page image, Pinocchio ends with the titular character being returned to Geppetto and transformed into a real boy like he always wanted. However, over the course of the film during his trip to Pleasure Island, he narrowly escapes being turned into a donkey with several other boys. We never hear of the island again, leaving us to assume the countless other boys were transformed, sold into slavery (unable to even call for help), and (like Lampwick in the original story) worked to death. - Believe it or not, the original ending of Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer (1964) went this way, with the Misfit Toys still stuck on their island. Fans didn't like that and sent letters to NBC asking them to fix that. The station listened, leading to the ending people are more familiar with. - Cabin In The Woods: Because the main characters refused to kill each other in order to give the dark gods their required sacrifice, those vengeful forces will likely destroy the world (including the main characters) in retaliation, but the two leads are at peace with that because at least they stood by their principles and didn't perpetuate the evil sacrificial cycle. - Saturday Night Fever: Tony heads to the big city to dance on Broadway and gets the girl, but the other one was treated like dirt, raped, and then forgotten about. And let's just forget Tony's friend Bobby C, who falls (whether accidentally or on purpose) off the Verrazanno-Narrows Bridge during an act of depressed recklessness. - The 1998 movie version of Les Miserables ended the story before Jean Valjean dies, making it a happy ending as long as you're Jean Valjean, Marius, or Cosette and not any of the rest of the revolutionaries, who all died on the barricades. - The Ring: Rachel and Aiden make a copy of the cursed videotape, thus passing on the evil. Someone else will certainly watch the video and die, but it's OK because the main characters are safe! Then again, it's a horror movie. The only way to survive is to doom other people, and the only way to get out of the movie alive is to harden yourself to that. (Note that in the original, the person being set up to die is the lead's father.) - The end of The Birth of a Nation, with the main characters Happily Married and the Klan firmly in control of the South, is this, with heavy Values Dissonance. - Invoked and ultimately subverted in Saving Private Ryan; the members of the squad who are Saving Private Ryan discuss and express discontent over the fact that their lives are being risked to save the life of one man who, from their frame of reference, is no more important than they. Subverted in that, while James Ryan is saved at the expense of nearly every man in the squad, he is left with a mere bittersweet ending as a result of this, being stuck with survivor's guilt for the rest of his life due to his saviors' deaths. - In Hellboy II: The Golden Army the movie ends with Liz and Hellboy planning on their future together with their children. Abe Sapien, on the other hand, gets to mourn the death of his lost love, Princess Nuala, who killed herself to stop her brother from destroying the human world, and Hellboy is still destined to destroy the world. - Avatar: Jake Sully and his alien catgirlfriend Neytiri get to live happily ever after. The last two humans on the planet (both friends of Jake's, remember) are likely going to starve or suffocate soon, and there's the fact that thousands of Na'vi are now dead (including Neytiri's father and former boyfriend), but at least the love-birds are together, right? - Not to mention what will happen in a few years when the RDA returns, this time with modern weapons and a real army... - The Mist is an inversion: humanity has turned the tide against the titular mist with the aid of its military and looks to be making good progress in driving it back, which is precisely what makes the fate of the main character so utterly cruel, as he had just killed his family under the belief that there was no hope and that doing so was a mercy. - In Memoirs of a Geisha, Chiyo manages to unite with her beloved Chairman. Pumpkin is never heard from again, Mameha lives alone and continues her work as a geisha, and General Nobu just stays away because "he can't forgive [Chiyo/Sayuri]". - Red Riding Hood: The village continues to live in fear even though the Wolf never returned. Valerie's mother has no one left, except Valerie who now lives in her dead grandmother's house and it's unknown if they see each other. Peter, after being bitten by the Wolf on a Blood Moon and thus becoming one every full moon returns to Valerie at the end of the movie after running away for some time to learn to control his werewolf power and the end credits show them being happy together. - 2012: The main characters and several thousand others survive - the entire rest of the world (except, it's revealed, Africa) drowned. - Knowing actually one-ups the above. Aliens save two children (not the leads, but significant characters) and transport them to another planet before a solar flare wipes out every living creature on Earth. - In the Film of the Book of War Horse, only Joey and Albert (and his family as well) get a happy ending. The other characters die or are left with nothing to live for (Like Emilie's grandfather) - At the end of 12 Years a Slave, Solomon is freed and reunited with his family in New York, but the other slaves owned by Edwin Epps are no better off than before. In fact, more than one historian has wondered what became of Patsy after the events of the movie but couldn't find any solid answers. - Things didn't end particularly happily for the real-world Solomon Northup either. Around four and a half years after he regained his freedom, he disappeared without a trace. To this day, historians can only speculate as to what happened to him. - Killer Klowns from Outer Space: All of the five main characters survive, Dave and the Terenzi brothers even get a Disney Death when they're shown to have survived the explosion of the Klown spaceship after all. At the same time, their entire hometown (or a very good portion at least) has been wiped out by the Klown invasion, which is ignored with a pre-credits pie gag. While in the ship, Dave does suggest trying to free the people trapped in the other balloons, but then the Klowns show up and they have no time to save anyone but themselves. - The Internship, the main characters' team wins and is the only one to get hired at Google. As this article points out, "in no previous America would it be considered a victory if 95 percent of your fellows were still left on the street." - TRON: Legacy: It's somewhere between this and Downer Ending. Sure, Sam and Quorra escape The Grid alive, Quorra sees her first sunrise, and Sam is taking charge of Encom, hopefully driving the Pointy Haired Bosses and Corrupt Corporate Executives out. But The Grid (and all the wonders the "digital frontier" promised) are in ruins, two-thirds of the named characters in the entire franchise are confirmed dead or de-rezzed, most of the remaining third have dim survival odds at best. Alan and Roy's work in trying to find Flynn Senior was All for Nothing, and they essentially gave up the best years of their lives. Quorra has no analog world skills or identity. Sam is pretty much seen as a proxy for his father. Oh, and that Sequel Hook - looks like Master Control isn't dead after all and Dillinger Junior is in its back pocket, meaning Here We Go Again!. - Not Easily Broken has the main characters, a married couple that was previously going through marriage problems that were exacerbated by a devastating car accident that severely injured her, learning that they were having a baby and both being excited by it. However, this does nothing to work out the issues of the mother-in-law, whose misandry and disapproval of her apparently flawless son-in-law will linger on, impeding new grandchild or not, or the physical therapist that the husband developed feelings for whose own son received an out-of-the-blue traumatic brain injury during a swim meet and who was shortly afterwards taken off of life-support by the doctors over the desperate crying and pleas of his mother. note : Legally, this can never be done without a lengthy civil process and there is no precedent of whom they would rule in favor for. Even if the medical staff resorts to outright bullying a family member to withdraw a critically-injured or ill patient from life-support, the latter will always have the final say on the matter. - Done uniquely in The Big Short. The protagonists all make millions of dollars from the 2007 economic crash, but of course millions of people are going to be dead or broke in the coming years. The unique bit is that the protagonists are all aware of how many people got hurt while they got off scot-free, and with the exception of Vennett are all various levels of horrified about it. - The Fighting Fantasy adventure, ''Slaves of the Abyss', has the protagonist being one of several heroes on a quest to save the Kingdom of Kallamehr from destruction, but halfway through the story, the other adventurers ends up being betrayed and killed, and the protagonist's benefactor, Lady Carolina, being assassinated. The player ultimately confronts the story's true antagonist, Bythos the Dimension Lord, whom they slay, and is then rewarded as being the new Lord, never mind the rest of the heroes who died for nothing. This was due to a case of Executive Meddling; the protagonist's fate is to pull a Heroic Sacrifice in the final battle, with the conclusion being that they can die peacefully knowing Kallamehr is saved, but the ending gets re-written in the last minute into the A God Am I ending. - In Masques, the protagonist Aralorn gets a somewhat happy ending, but slavery is still commonplace, and of course Miss "I don't hate men, I just don't want the oppressive rules they make for women to apply to me" doesn't waste a thought on those women whose daddy didn't give them a sword, a horse, and a pat on the back when they told him that they want to be adventurers. - Subverted and Lampshaded in Red Dragon. A family called the Leads is murdered, and Will definitely doesn't get a happy ending. - In Pride and Prejudice, Elizabeth and Darcy are happily married, but Charlotte and Lydia not nearly as lucky in their marriages, and then there is the fact that there are lots and lots of women who had to marry for safety and a roof over their heads, just like Charlotte, who gets off easy because she at least had the opportunity to pick a husband who was merely stupid rather than abusive or financially irresponsible. - In Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. Elizabeth marries Darcy. Nothing happens to stop the zombie apocalypse, though... - Alexander McCall Smith's book The Careful Use of Compliments ends with the independently wealthy Isabel using her money to buy the journal she edits, firing the editorial board, and replacing it with her friends, all so she won't lose her editing job. Good for her, but sucky for the editorial board, the guy who was going to be the new editor, and all the journal's readers, since the journal will undoubtedly suffer a precipitous decline in quality. - Juliet Marillier's Daughter of the Forest. The sorceress is defeated. Sorcha and Red finally get together, are completely content with their lives and get a Babies Ever After ending, but Simon is left out in the cold, Margary is left alone with a baby, Liam's one true love is dead, Colum has lost his self-confidence and Finbar is stuck with a swan's wing. Quite a Downer Ending for most of the cast. - In Shadowleague all the main characters are pictured as looking at a bright future that they'll build together with everyone they met during the story, so everything must be going good... unless you're one of the many who died of the invading vampire-creatures, the plague or various other causes throughout the upheaval up until the main characters fix most of it. - Maggie Furey seems to have a thing for pulling this off quite well. At the end of her Artefacts of Power series, if you're not a friend of Aurian, you're looking at a bleak life... and even then, two of her friends are stuck ruling a province for someone they don't like ruling under, too many people simply die, the Nightrunners don't really have a home anymore (and if Faerie rule has a bad effect on trade they might not have of a living either), and the three Xandim protagonists are outcasts of the to-be-brought-back-in-chains variant. Let's just say it's reasonable that Aurian wants to take some time off with her child, lover, and a couple of big black cats. - In Breaking Dawn, Bella and Edward (and Nessie) get a ridiculously happy ending. Meanwhile, all of the other Cullens still have their original problems (Jasper still has bloodlust, Rose still can't have kids, etc.) and every other secondary character goes back to a nomadic life, presumably on the Volturi's target list for standing with the Cullens. We're supposed to believe that Jacob also got a happy ending but, as he was someone who hated imprinting, it sure doesn't feel like that. - The epilogue of Lois McMaster Bujold's Shards of Honor starkly emphasizes that the leads may have gotten their happy ending, but a lot of innocent people died along the way. - Discussed in Witches Abroad, where a voodoo priestess fights a fairy godmother who's manipulating the Theory of Narrative Causality for her own ends; the priestess thinks to herself at one point that she's fighting for all the exploited and down-trodden everyday people who "never got a happy ending" because they're just extras and side characters. - In Worm, the heroes are victorious at the price of trillions of deaths and of civilization across most of the multiverse being destroyed. Taylor gets to retire to normal life in one of the few pockets of civilization and the rest of the heroes go on to happy lives heroically rebuilding civilization wherever they are, but if you're one of the few people who survived and you don't happen to live on a part of the world near the protagonists, your life is going to be nasty, brutal and short. - Very common in the novels of Paula Volsky. Her settings are grim and dangerous, and many characters wind up dead or with other bleak fates. The protagonists tend to turn out OK—alive at the end, and often with romance as well. - Completely inverted in Animorphs, where a Time Skip reveals a world which is brighter and kinder than is usual for the series, and lead characters who've all but fallen apart. The long-enslaved Hork-Bajir are free and living in Yellowstone, the Yeerks and Taxxons have escaped their bodies and live in other forms, there is peace and trade between humans and Andalites. Eva, Alloran, and other hosts get to live free. But Rachel is dead, Jake is mired in depression and self-hatred, Tobias lives as a hawk in isolation, Ax has gone Blood Knight and recklessly pursues trouble, and Marco keeps himself busy and claims happiness but jumps to throw it all away for a suicide mission. Cassie calls herself and Marco the "only two survivors" among the Animorphs, but she's the only one who's managed to move on and make a new life and find love. The last several books in the series feature these characters looking at their options and choosing again and again to work for that world above their own personal interests, so perhaps it's not surprising. - An extremely dark example in Things We Have In Common, crossing over with Esoteric Happy Ending due to an Unreliable Narrator. The object of Yasmin's obsession, Alice, gets raped and murdered, and her body is probably never going to be found. Yasmin's family is destroyed by the accusation that Gary is a murderer, which is probably never going to lift. However, Yasmin and Sam get away with everything and the story ends with them getting together romantically and probably planning to abduct a victim together. - 24 frequently inverts the trope by having Jack Bauer save the day while refusing to grant him a measure of peace. Day 1 ends with the murder of his wife and Live Another Day ends with him surrendering himself to the Russians. He loses another three significant women in his life along the way. - Doctor Who, in Horror of Fang Rock. The Doctor and Leela have killed the alien Rutan that was threatening a lighthouse and destroyed its mother ship. They leave safely in the TARDIS, but the Rutan managed to kill all the other characters first. - The finale of Season 3 in The Good Doctor is a perfect example of this trope: Morgan ends up damaging her hands, ruining her career as a surgeon; Park fails to save a teenager's life, and is so traumatized by the tragedy that he decides to leave the city and have more contact with his family; and Melendez ends up dying due to the injuries he got during an earthquake, much to the horror of his ex Lim and his co-worker Claire, who had just realized that she was in love with him. The only ones who end up having a happy ending are none other than the protagonist Shaun and his Love Interest Lea, who survive the earthquake and finally take the courage to start a love relationship with him. The final scene of the episode shows the two kissing in the sunrise, without having the slightest idea of the tragedies that occurred to their friends. - At the end of the second season première of It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, Frank very conspicuously says "The important thing is that nobody important got seriously hurt'' after the gang got in a car accident. The camera then pans over to an unnamed character who was with the group at the time lying in a full body cast in a hospital bed calling them jerks. - This helped lead to a Broken Base for the ending of Lost. After everything that had happened and a final confrontation that isn't fully explained, only a handful of the most popular lead characters manage to survive and escape. The creators claim the ending was supposed to be about the characters and not the unexplained mythology, but pretty much every character that appeared, from recurring characters to background extras, were killed, including another plane-full of people that never mattered and were mass-murdered off-screen near the end of the series. Meanwhile, what they all died for is never really explained, but the ending still tries to be uplifting and hopeful because the popular leads made it out. - This sort-of happens in Robin Hood. Both Robin Hood and Marian end up dead, but they are given a Together in Death scene that suggests that they have an eternity in Heaven to share. Everyone else? Shot, stabbed, dead, buried, abandoned, forgotten, or stuck with Kate. - In Salem the Official Couple (John and Mary) get to leave the township for a better life together, whilst every other main cast member has either been murdered (Mercy), sold into slavery (Tituba), damned to hell (Cotton), corrupted beyond recognition (Anne), or not mentioned at all (Isaac). - The play Life Is A Dream by Pedro Calderon de la Barca ends with the main couple having a beautiful wedding! Never mind the pointless war the protagonist and his father were having. - Older Than Steam Shakespearean examples: - Henry V ends with the wedding of the eponymous King and Princess Katherine of France after Henry fights a bloody war of conquest against his soon-to-be father-in-law. However, Shakespeare lampshades the trope by pointing out in the epilogue that Henry's conquests will be short-lived and his premature death will lead to a bloody civil war. - In A Midsummer Night's Dream, Demetrius is given the love-in-idleness, thus forcing him to fall in love with Helena. While this is definitely good for Helena, it's not really a happy ending for Demetrius, given that he doesn't have a choice in the matter. He doesn't even seem to be aware that anything's out of the ordinary, making this a subversion. note : This, however, depends on your interpretation of the whole love spell thing. A common interpretation now is to see it as incredibly squicky mind control quasi-rape, but a number of older works seem to view magically induced love as being just as valid as naturally occurring love. This is particularly prominent once you get back to Classical Mythology, where all love is the result of the gods going, "Okay, you hook up with that person, and you hook up with that person, and ... oh, how about we give that guy a donkey fetish?" - Some interpretations of Twelfth Night play the ending this way. Viola and Sebastian are reunited and happily married to the Duke Orsino and the Countess Olivia, respectively. However, Olivia's whole marriage is based on the fact that she actually fell in love with her husband's twin sister, Sir Andrew leaves Illyria in disgrace and heartbreak, Anthony the pirate has lost the young man he loved and has been arrested while trying to help him, Toby Belch and Maria are trapped in a loveless marriage, and Malvolio has sworn revenge on the whole cast. Feste's sad song "For the rain it raineth every day" doesn't help. - Agatha Christie's theatre adaptation of her own novel And Then There Were None has Vera and Lombard, the closest people the story has in the role of the protagonist, survive the murder spree and escape the island. - Zig-zagged in Les Misérables. By the end of the show, most of the main characters are dead, including the lead, Jean Valjean. However, most of them (barring Javert) are living happily in heaven, which in the film version is portrayed as is an idealized version of Paris where their dreams have been realized. Likewise, in the real Paris, the poor are still as downtrodden and oppressed as before. Of the four main characters who do survive the show, the despicable Thénardiers get away with all their crimes scot-free, while Marius and Cosette are Happily Married but probably scarred for life after witnessing the deaths of various friends and family. - The Takarazuka Revue production of Elisabeth gives this to the leads (Death and Sisi). They are Together in Death (well, when one's love interest/Stalker with a Crush is Death...), and the show ends with Death showing Sisi the underworld that she will (implicitly) be queen of, and he having gotten the girl. How do the other major characters fare? Franz Joseph outlives his wife (who he loved unconditionally, but she eventually ceased to return his affection) by decades. Sophie dies without much fanfare. The Hungarian revolutionaries are arrested. Rudolf has been Driven to Suicide. - Fable II: - The "Needs of the Few" ending resurrects your dog, sister, spouse (if you married), and children (if you had any). The countless hundreds of people who perished over the twenty years of the Spire's creation? Still goners. - In the "Needs of the One" ending, you get a mountain of gold, but everyone who died stays dead. - In The Secret of Monkey Island, if you sink your ship with the catapultic rock thing, Herman Toothrot will take you back to Melee island instead of your crew, and in the ending you'll get a nice sequence about how they're trapped in the cannibal hut. Escape from Monkey Island also treats this as canon and plays the trauma for laughs. - Star Ocean and Star Ocean: The Second Story both have Multiple Endings based on hidden relationship meters between the characters, the Main Characters, of course, get their happy ending no matter what, but... for those who have bad scores the endings can edge on Tear Jerkers. - Dragon Age: Origins: - Inverted for a non-human noble female Warden who was in a relationship with Alistair and didn't harden him, or for a male Warden who was in a relationship with Morrigan. Everyone but the leads (in your party anyway) gets a happy ending. - A male Warden who romanced Morrigan has the opportunity to disappear with her into the Eluvian in the DLC Witch Hunt, and a female Human Noble who romanced and didn't harden Alistair can marry him at the Landsmeet and accept Morrigan's ritual, meaning they do get a happy ending... for now. - Among all potential Grey Warden Player Characters, only the main Human Noble can get an unambiguously happy ending. They don't deal with deeply ingrained and inescapable societal racism like most other Wardens (mage, elf, casteless dwarf), and unlike the dwarf noble they're allowed to kill the traitorous bastard who destroyed their family without consequence. The Human Noble is also the only Warden allowed to marry Alistair or Anora and become King or Queen. Even the Dwarf Noble is not allowed to marry the Ferelden monarch because of their race, OR clear their name and become King/Queen of Orzammar. A Dwarf Commoner can also get an unambiguously good ending if they made Bhelen king, becoming a Paragon and noble in their own right and also in-laws with the king who reforms the oppressive caste system. - Appears in Dragon Age II in the Templar ending, where Kirkwall has been devastated, Thedas is rapidly approaching its first world war, and the entire band of heroes has been split up...except for Hawke and his/her Love Interest. If you side with the mages you end up fleeing your home. Again. Even in the Templar ending it's clear from the framing scenes that Hawke had to flee the city anyway; that they can't be found in the "present" is one of the first things you learn about them.. - The best ending of Valkyrie Profile: Covenant of the Plume has Wylfred finally find peace, his mother regain her sanity, and Tilte learning about Ancel's death and being able to grieve him properly instead of just sensing that something's plain wrong. The rest of the cast, however, don't get featured at all in the ending and most of the characters that don't you meet but don't recruit get rather depressing ends. It doesn't help that the two other endings are Downer Endings. - Downplayed in Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords. The Exile's team goes off to found the new Jedi Order, fix the damaged Republic, and shut down the HK-50's while she is condemned to flying off to die at the hands of the True Sith. It's implied in The Old Republic MMO that she did manage to do enough to set back the invasion for almost 300 years, but she still misses out on the opportunity to see all of her actions come to fruition or pursue a relationship with Atton or the Disciple. - Inverted in Final Fantasy X: Sin is destroyed and the people of Spira are finally freed from the cycle of death and suffering that had dominated their lives for a thousand years, but Tidus fades away into nothingness as the power of the spirits who created him vanishes, leaving his friends saddened and his Love Interest Yuna heartbroken. However, this can be subverted in the sequel if you get the Golden Ending, in which he returns after all. - Final Fantasy XIII: - Split fifty-fifty for the main characters: Lightning and Snow get Serah back (though the sequel takes Lightning away from Serah immediately thereafter), Sazh has his son back, but Hope's mother is dead and Fang and Vanille are turned into crystals for all eternity. The fact they're effectively Together in Death and shown to not have any regrets about their Heroic Sacrifice in XIII-2 may dull this for some players, however. - Also split fifty-fifty for the rest of humanity (or rather, the handful of survivors). They lost their homes and are forced to live under the harsh conditions of Gran Pulse and are no longer protected by the Fal'cie. Then again the Fal'cie were trying to kill all of them. The main characters' final act plan was to stop the Fal'cie and, failing at that, to mitigate the damage. - Averted by the end of Lightning Returns, where all of humanity gets to move on and be happy in a new world. - Xenogears: Hooray, the two leads have finally found each other and reunited with the rest of the party, after killing Deus and freeing everyone from its control, making them able to lead their own lives! Unfortunately, "everyone" doesn't include the approximately 95% of the human race who either got turned into mutants and absorbed into Deus or straight-up killed. - Played very darkly in The Last of Us: Joel and Ellie both survive and seemingly find a stable place to live together. The rest of the cast besides Bill, Tommy, and Maria die. Humanity lost its biggest hope at recovering from the Zombie Apocalypse because Joel refused to let Ellie be sacrificed to make a cure. The writers' stated intention for the ending subverts this trope: Ellie hated that Joel made that decision for her so that she lost all respect for him and would inevitably leave him. So not even the leads got a happy ending. And then the sequel crushes out what little bits of light were still there. - To the Moon gives a "happy ending" in the form of a Dying Dream to the main character Johnny, in which he re-lives another version of his life in which his twin brother, Joey, never died and where he travels to the Moon with his soulmate River, but there's the fact that this never happened in reality, and that the real world counterparts died after suffering great pain for years. - This may happen in Star Control 2 depending on how well you do. It's possible to win the game with every single planet except Earth wiped out. - In Zero Time Dilemma, not only do only the leads get a happy ending, but only one dimension's version of the leads gets a happy ending. They do not succeed in stopping the end of the world. They only succeeded in transferring themselves into the consciousnesses of themselves in a dimension where the plague that causes the apocalypse never happens. The other versions of themselves die in other dimensions or watch helplessly as humanity is brought to its knees, and the people in the dimension the leads end up in weren't "saved" since they were never in any danger in the first place. - Seraphic Blue inverts this. Vene, the main party member, is still struggling with nihilism and barely survives a rare disease in the ending while the other party members seem to have found far more peace of mind. - Pikmin 3 ends with Koppai's food shortage remedied, but Hocotate Freight is back in debt with a missing ship (thus losing more money) and Louie seems to have gone insane. - Fate/stay night's Central Theme is that a hero has to choose who he wants to save, and illustrates it during its three main scenarios. In each scenario Shirou gets a little more selective and selfish about who he chooses to save, giving the main characters a bit more self-realization but also increasing the collateral damage to the city and its inhabitants. In Fate, the trope is inverted as Shirou gives up his own happiness and is (potentially) set down a very self-destructive path, but no innocent people die. Meanwhile, in Heaven's Feel, the main human characters get a happy ending while several hundred innocents die (off-screen) during the scenario. - Red Dead Redemption II inverts this trope. Arthur Morgan dies. John Marston is able to settle down with his family, but anyone who played the first game knows it won't last long. Meanwhile, though some gang members like Strauss and Karen come to bad endings, some of the others are able to move on and lead successful lives. - Namely: Pearson ends up getting married and owning the general shop in Rhodes. Mary-Beth moves away and becomes a writer of some repute. Charles leaves the gang to seek a new life in Canada as a family man. Tilly marries a lawyer in Saint Denis and lives in a beautiful estate house with him and their daughter. Swanson drops his drinking habit and moves to New York where he becomes a preacher. And Sadie cools down her Ax-Crazy tendencies and moves to South America in search of a quiet life. - The Neutral Endings of Undertale. Frisk returns to the surface, but the Underground is in shambles, and depending on how murderous the player was, any number of innocents could be dead. The Pacifist Ending is a straight happy ending, and the Genocide Ending an unambiguous Downer Ending for all involved. - The Evil ending of The Bard's Tale plays this for laughs. The Bard frees the Princess from the Druids, but it turns out that she's a demon princess and the cause of the ongoing Zombie Apocalypse. She marries The Bard and they live happily ever after, fulfilling her promises of wealth, power, and lots of sex while the rest of the world gets overrun by her zombie armies. - When the Taiwanese server for SINoALICE shut down, players were given the chance to complete one final chapter to end the story - and how does it end? Alice wakes up from her dream and greets her friend with a cheerful smile, running out of her classroom to live her life. But everyone else in Reality? May suffer the same unpleasant fates they already had, just offscreen. And the world of Library? It's gone. Forever. But at least Alice is happy... right? - MarshSMT's playthrough of Peret em Heru: For the Prisoners ended up in a downplayed case of this: Ayuto, Kyosuke, Yoko and Nei, the only pre-established friend group in the game, all survive the experience and are last described as "heading off to enjoy the rest of their vacation under the clear blue sky". Every stranger in the tour group that Ayuto didn't personally know (with the sole exception of Rin) wound up dead. - Parodied in the 2nd episode of Monster Lab (2021). Uno was able to save the life of Katz, but he (indirectly mind you) hurt a massive portion of the town's citizens. Katz is overjoyed that Uno saved his life and applauds him as a hero - all the while Uno is lamenting the destruction he caused. Uno: I created a creature that resulted in the assault of an entire neighborhood and three people's deaths. Katz: Well, I see. Well, this whole experience has taught me that sometimes you need to help yourself before you can truly help others. Uno: (sobbing) Katz: Uno, you have proven today that you can take care of a situation all by yourself. We'll have to have you spearhead these missions more often. Uno: (sobbing) ... sure ... - Family Guy: - Lois is targeted for assassination by the Mafia by putting a bomb in her car. But Peter convinces the kingpin to spare her life; and the episode ends with Peter saying "all that matters is that nobody important got hurt." (As the parking valet's clothes come floating down from the sky in little pieces.) - In another episode: Peter: I guess being a hero isn't always about saving lives. Sometimes it's just about caring for the people you love. Random Woman: Help! Someone just stole my purse! Peter: Who cares? I don't even know you! - In Season 15, "Hot Shot": Brian: Well, it's a relief that everyone's been vaccinated, and the quarantine has been lifted. Lois: Well, I'm just happy that Stewie is healthy, and only 150 people died, but not anyone we knew personally. - Harley Quinn (2019): The first season ends with Harley defeating the Joker and finally breaking free of her toxic relationship with him. She reconciles with her crew and Ivy (who was killed during the previous episode) is resurrected. However, the Justice League is also presumably still stuck in the Queen of Fables' book, Batman has disappeared, and Gotham has been ravaged by the mutated trees' rampage then by an earthquake caused by the Joker, presumably killing countless civilians. The episode (barring the cliffhanger) ends with Harley, Ivy, and their friends watching Gotham in flames. Since the main characters are Villain Protagonists, they consider it a happy ending. - My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic: - TaleSpin: Baloo is declared the heir to a rich family and inherits their fortune. The reason he is the sole heir is that all the others were killed by the cook and the butler in a scheme to inherit the fortune, but all their attempts on Baloo's life fail and the cook and the butler are arrested. So all live happily...except for the rest of the family members, who were murdered. - Futurama: Done several times where the main characters resolve their issues while the city gets destroyed in the background. One episode has Fry and Leela making up after Fry puts a humiliating video of her on the Internet, meanwhile all of Bender's and Fry's Twitcher subscribers get brainwashed by M.O.M.. Thankfully, they're brainwashed into buying more of her products. Another has Bender being saved from execution by going on a murderous rampage with Santa Claus. (It Makes Sense in Context.) In yet another, Bender goes into witness protection after angering the Robot Mafia, and an identical robot his friends assume to be him is targeted and killed in his place, prompting this exchange when the real Bender reveals himself: Leela: So that moon hillbilly who got murdered was just an innocent husband and father! (Beat, then everyone cheers.) - Star vs. the Forces of Evil ends with the protagonists destroying magic to neutralize the threat of Mina's army of Solarians (and future abuses of magic), even if it will leave Star, Marco, and others stuck in their respective dimensions of The Multiverse. Then, Earth, Mewni, and possibly all other dimensions become one Merged Reality for an unexplained reason, letting Star and Marco stay together, but drastically altering both worlds in ways that will be difficult to adjust to, especially for all of the people (mostly on Earth) who aren't already familiar with other dimensions. Also with no magic, all beings that were made of magic were erased from existence, including the entire Magic High Commission, and who knows how many others. - Tangled: The Series: In "Queen for a Day", Rapunzel manages to end the deadly blizzard curse that would destroy Corona and reunites with her parents, and Eugene comforts her when she doubts becoming queen and will be with her when the time comes. However, her friend Varian's father got frozen in amber thanks to a failed attempt to get rid of the black rocks, and since she couldn't come to help him because of the blizzard, he undergoes a Start of Darkness and vows revenge on her (and by extension, all of Corona) for turning away from him.	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/OnlyTheLeadsGetAHappyEnding
On the Next - TV Tropes "A new evil has revealed its face. Who are these mysterious enemies, and do Gohan and Krillin stand a chance? The answer to these questions will be revealed... [Beat ] * ...Right now: Zarbon, Dodoria, Freeza, and oh my, no."* A montage at the end of an episode to entice the viewer into watching the next week's episode. Often used in conjunction with a To Be Continued, and often implies that loose end plotlines will be tied up. Usually done by the network, rather than being bundled with the episode itself. As with other promos, the scenes and quotes are often taken out of context to mislead the viewer. This is especially true of daytime soap operas, which as a rule drag stories out longer than their fans would like. On the Next used to be fairly common, but it's been largely phased out in favor of placing a commercial for the next episode over the credits. It's still going strong in Japan though, mainly in Tokusatsu. Anime also makes extensive use of this trope, where it's become increasingly common to add omake gags, chitchat between the characters, and other nonsense which doesn't really tell you anything "serious" about the next episode. They can also become a good excuse for No Fourth Wall jokes. This may explain why shows tend to have very short trailers nowadays. If a trailer shows much less than normal and has no dialogue, or just one word, be warned that it's probably going to be a disturbing episode. However, some shows' next episode previews have been believed to spoil too much... Contrast Previously on . Compare Precap, Find Out Next Time. Sometimes comes with a catchphrase. ## Examples: - Jack of Fables ends each issue with a summary of the next issue told by the titular main character. But since he's a Small Name, Big Ego, the summaries are gratuitously self-indulgent and completely false. In one issue, he doesn't even bother with a preview, instead bragging about how perfect his hair is. In another, he tells off the reader for expecting one of these when he's just been impaled with a sword. - Most comics will have something akin to this on the last page. "Next: [something happens]!" - A Running Gag from What's New? With Phil And Dixie was that they'd always proclaim that they'd be discussing "Sex in D&D" next issue. And the issue after that. And the one after that... - Valiant Entertainment has been doing this with their Archer & Armstrong reboot, providing the first page of the next issue at the end of the current one. - Subverted in Dragonball Abridged, Episode 13: Narrator: A new evil has revealed its face. Who are these mysterious enemies, and do Gohan and Krillin stand a chance? The answer to these questions will be revealed... Right now! Zarbon, Dodoria, Frieza, and Oh my, no. - Each episode of Super Therapy! end with a glimpse of the next superhero/supervillain patient(s). The dialogue is usually unique to this ending and not repeated the next episode. - The Differentverse: A Quest for Harmony ends with an author's note stating that "The Bearers will return in... Different Bearers: A Case of Family", and confirms it will be centered around Scootaloo's family. (It's a reference to the below-mentioned James Bond version of the same thing.) - Each chapter of The New Adventures of Invader Zim is built like a show episode, including closing with an author's note that gives a brief advertisement of what happens in the next one. - The author's note for Half Past Adventure always plays this for laughs with an out-of-context quote from the next chapter. - PMD: The Rogue Team features an anime-styled next episode preview as the last page of a chapter, complete with a catchphrase, panels from the following chapter and dialogue where characters discuss the chapter's content. - A Diplomatic Visit: The story ends with an announcement: " To be continued in " Diplomat at Large - The Parody Fic Captain Proton and the Planet of Lesbians is presented In the Style of a 1930's Radio Drama, with cliffhanger endings for each chapter followed by Parody Commercials and Large Ham promos of what's going to happen next. - Played with in Takashi Miike's live action Yatterman film, where The Stinger Sequel Hook is presented as a mock next episode preview. This follows on the various lines in the movie about things occurring once a week, which themselves are lampshade hangings over the 70s and 2008 Yatterman series being both broadcast weekly. - In a rare film example, Back to the Future Part II ends with a montage of clips from Part III, as well as a "To be continued..." This was included because Robert Zemeckis wanted to make it clear that the next installment was already well into production, and audiences wouldn't have to wait years for it to come out. - Captain America: The First Avenger, being the last Marvel Cinematic Universe film released before The Avengers, included a full-length trailer for The Avengers after its credits, in addition to the by-then-customary "[Hero Name] will return in The Avengers" line at the end of the credits. - Films in the James Bond franchise in the 1960s-1980s would promote the next film at the end of the current one. "James Bond will return...in [title of next film.]" - A Series of Unfortunate Events: Lemony's letters to his Kind Editor, which include the title of the next book and a few random details from it. As the series goes on, these letters become increasingly obscured, such as by tearing and water-stains, and so the information is increasingly elusive. In the case of the eleventh book, only half the title was known; the twelfth book's title was completely lost; the letter about the thirteenth book was just a single sentence written on a napkin with the title included, but nobody realized at the time as it deviated from the usual title pattern. - The Disgaea Novels pull this the same way as they do in the game section below, complete with a picture to further demonstrate the insanity. - Myth-O-Mania: In the epilogue of each book, narrator Hades tells one of his friends or relatives which story from Classical Mythology he will retell next. - Water Margin: Every chapter ends with enigmatic allusions to the events of the next, capping off with "Read our next chapter if you would know." This makes both tropes Older Than Print. In General: - A staple of network television programs — mostly dramas and action-oriented programs — since the early days. As the introduction suggests, the montage of clips were used to tease the following week's episode. Often, this was omitted if it were either the season finale or the final episode of the series. - In multi-part episodes that are "to be continued", teasers will sometimes be used to heighten the dramatic effect ... often by making it appear that one or more protagonists are receiving the worst of the episode's conflict, with things cutting off just before the dramatic climax. The opposite of this, then, is "Previously on ", which will sometimes open the following episode. Networks: - Bravo went through a long period of commissioning Magazine Shows, such as Game-Pad, with an eye to repeating them a few times concurrently, with a On the Next at the end. Savvy producers would end the last show in the series with a preview of the first episode. - In the 2005-06 season, shows on the WB abused On the Next egregiously. For example, on Gilmore Girls, all of the clips in the On the Next they show tonight will take place in the last three minutes of the next episode, which we will see next week. And so on. Series: - A Touch of Cloth: Parodied. The "next episode" montages feature completely non-existent plots. For instance, the one for the third series had an Alien Invasion and ghost banshees (in a show that spoofs gritty cop dramas). - Parodied in Two Guys, a Girl and a Pizza Place. At the end of the Halloween episode, all of the leads are killed off. Thus follows an 'On The Next' consisting entirely of shots of the abandoned Pizza Place. (The show continued next week as though nothing had happened). - Walt Disney Presents: Before the end credits, Walt would introduce a preview trailer for next week's show. - Analog: To fill space at the end of stories, early issues of the magazine would include self-advertisements, such as "Send your letters to Amazing Stories" or "IN THE NEXT ISSUE", to entice the readers to pick up the next issue with Taglines and personal investment. This type of self-advertising developed into a dedicated column called "In Times To Come", informing readers what would be included in upcoming issues. - The January 1930 issue advertises that the February issue will contain Part Two of Victor Rousseau's The Beetle Horde, as well as Charles Willard Diffin's "Spawn Of The Stars" and Sophie Wenzel Ellis's "Creatures Of The Light". - The February 1930 issue advertises that the March issue will contain Ray Cummings's Brigands Of The Moon, Will Smith and RJ Robbins's "The Soul Master", and Captain SP Meek's "Cold Light". On another page, it also advertises that Murray Leinster's Murder Madness will be in four future issues (it started appearing in May). - The March 1930 issue advertises that the April issue will contain Arthur J Burks's "Monsters Of Moyen", Captain SP Meek's "The Ray Of Madness", and the next segment of Ray Cummings's Brigands Of The Moon. On another page, it also advertises that Murray Leinster's Murder Madness will be in a future issue. - The April 1930 issue advertises that the May issue will contain Murray Leinster's Murder Madness, Victor Rousseau's "The Atom Smasher", Sewell Peaslee Wright's "Into The Oceans Depth", and the next segment of Ray Cummings's Brigands Of The Moon. - The July 1939 issue advertises the upcoming Lester del Rey's "Literature The Luck Of Ignatz", which will be represented on the magazine's cover with art by Virgil Finlay. Next issue will also contain EE Smith's "Gray Lensman", P Schuyler Miller's "Pleasure Trove", and new writers, Frederick Engelhardt and Lee Gregor. - The October 1939 issue advertises the continuation of E. E. "Doc" Smith's Gray Lensman, the appearance of Lester del Rey's story "Habit", Robert A. Heinlein's story "Misfit", and a Non-Fiction article by L. Sprague de Camp; There Ain't No Such!. - The April 1940 issue advertises the upcoming "Space Guards" by Phil Nowlan. - The September 1940 issue advertises the continuation of "Slan", as well as Harry Bates's "Farewell To The Master" and L. Sprague de Camp's "The Earth Savers". - The January 1941 issue advertises the upcoming continuation of Anson MacDonald's "Sixth Column", as well as shorter stories Nelson S Bond's "Magic City" and Robert A. Heinlein's "And He Built a Crooked House". - The February 1941 issue advertises Robert A. Heinlein's "Logic Of Empire", describing The 'Verse that it fits into. - The May 1941 issue advertises the upcoming Ross Rocklynne story, "Time Wants A Skeleton". A locked-room mystery where the murder victim is the unknown factor. - The March 1942 issue advertises the upcoming "Beyond This Horizon" by Anson MacDonald and the upcoming appearance of the "Probability Zero" column, a contest-based write-in where the first-place author gets $20, second place gets $10, and third place gets $5. - The April 1942 issue again stumps for amature writers to send in their stories for the "Probability Zero" column. - The May 1942 issue advertises the upcoming "Bridle and Saddle" as the conclusion to Foundation", as well as the upcoming Lester del Rey's "May Name Is Legion". - The June 1942 issue advertises the July issue by hinting at the unique cover, a L. Sprague de Camp story titled "The Contraband Cow", Will Stewert's first story, "Collision Orbit", name-dropping other author names in next month's issue as well as issues to come, and that "Probability Zero" would appear in July. - Parodied in the "Veterinarian's Hospital" sketches on The Muppet Show, which always end with the announcer saying "Tune in next week to hear Doctor Bob say..." and Doctor Bob making one last joke. This joke is, of course, never in next week's episode, because they've already made it. - At the end of every episode of Daughter for Dessert, there is a montage of pictures from sexy scenes to be included in the next episode. The same montage is shown regardless of whether the player cannot access certain scenes shown because of choices in previous episodes. - Each episode of Double Homework ends with a preview montage for the next one (or next couple). - DEATH BATTLE! does this at the end of each battle, with "Next time on Death Battle", which is then followed by the appearance of the next two fighters. - Deadly Space Action!: Parodied in season two; the episodes end with an "On The Next" with a horribly inaccurate description. - In the Youtube uploads of TOME, the second parts always end with one of these. They're all painfully awkward, but that's justified, since they're also meant to make fun of this trope. - Parodied in the final episode of Season One of Mega Man Dies at the End. Every previous episode has one of these, and it's usually played straight, but since Mega Man... well... dies at the end, the one in this episode is just the lifeless corpse of Mega Man. Parodied throughout the rest of the season as well, since the "teaser" is, for the most part, an short out-of-context clip of the next episode. \|\|This continues partway into season two before getting dropped until the multi-part finale. Parodied in the season two (and series) finale as well; since it really is the end this time, it cuts to a test screen.\|\| - The two current printed volumes of El Goonish Shive feature nonsensical "previews", courtesy of Justin. - Dub This has a character (Bandai Guy) who parodies the worst of this breed... - City of Reality used to show individual panels from the next chapter, as well as a character giving a very vague idea as to what the next chapter was about. It is uncertain whether they will keep this up under the new format. - T Campbell often does a strip made up of sans-dialogue panels which serve as teasers for the coming year of one of his comics. An exception is the 2011 preview for Fans!, which instead presents dialogue snippets sans images. - The print volumes of Housepets! have these, which always show panels from later strips - specifically ones which seem silly/bizarre when deprived of context. Max , wearing a paper bag on his head and holding an orange soda can : LIVE FAST! DIE YOUNG! LEAVE A PICKLED CORPSE! - Parodied as the concept of Next Time on Lonny - Dragonball Z Abridged would have characters do the "Like and subscribe" thing at the end of videos and occasionally comment on the next episode, though they'd typically do it via speculating on the current episode's reveals and wondering what would come next. - [adult swim] / Toonami occasionally does this for their shows in a bumper starting with "On the next episode of [title]". - One of The Simpsons Halloween episodes plays with this as well, lampshading the fact that the Treehouse of Horror are outside of the show's (already very loose) continuity. A Frankenstein parody ends with Mr. Burn's head sewed to Homer's body. The scene fades to black, and we're treated to a preview of "next week, on The Simpsons," where Homer and Burns' head have an argument over where to go for dinner: Homer wants to go to a spaghetti restaurant, while Burns insists on attending a reception for the Queen of Holland. Homer moans that he hates having two heads. In the REAL next episode everything is back to normal. - This sequence is made all the more funny by the fact that The Simpsons never actually does next episode previews. - On Frisky Dingo, one episode ended with reporter Grace Ryan hanging for her life from a 30+ story building. The episode's On the Next? "Oh, my God, she fell." - In a two-part episode of Harvey Birdman, Attorney at Law ("Deadomutt"), Birdman is facing the death penalty. During the credits, the next episode is previewed: the jury foreman reads the "not guilty" verdict, then a Jump Cut to Birdman being strapped into the electric chair. - He-Man and the Masters of the Universe (2021) provides a unique case of these, as each episode ends on an uniquely animated illustration of what's to come for the next episode, with a few small sigils also correlating to the upcoming episode's plot or focus characters. - In an interesting variation, Justice League Unlimited would sometimes feature scenes (usually Fight Scenes) from the next episode playing over the credits. - Phineas and Ferb: - Parodied on the episode "Chronicles of Meap." At the beginning of the episode, it makes it look like the episode is actually an episode of a show called "Chronicles of Meap" (and that the episode is actually called "More Than Meaps the Eye"). At the end of the episode, they do a fake preview for another episode of "Chronicles of Meap" called "Meapless in Seattle" featuring multiple action movie cliches such as Major Monogram ordering Agent P to turn in his hat, Perry throwing his chair at the screen in retort, Candace expressing shock at Jeremy attending something, and Suzy and Meap fighting. - The Credits gag was narrated by Don LaFontaine, who died shortly afterwards. The Credits include a tribute screen to him. - "Meapless in Seattle" was later made a real episode, which started with the narrators stating they were forced to make it. Almost every scene happens in the episode. Major Monogram orders Perry to turn his hat in \|\|because he's getting a new one\|\|. Perry throwing the chair at Monogram's viewscreen \|\|to test the screen's durability - it passes, but Monogram remarks the chairs need a similar upgrade\|\|. Candace expresses shock at Jeremy attending something \|\|as an example of a hypothetical situation that would take higher precedence than busting her brothers\|\|. Suzy fights Meap \|\|in another preview montage, instead of the episode proper - Doofenshmirtz lampshades this\|\|. - Clone High did this all the time; one episode even has the narrator 'accidentally' spoil the 'twist' ending of the next Very Special Episode. - From 1963 to 1968, ABC's Saturday morning cartoon shows featured scenes from the ensuing week's episodes. - Played for Laughs in the Teen Titans Go! episode "Let's Get Serious", in which the Titans put on their "serious faces" in order to be better respected as superheroes, which last for the entirety of the episode. The preview for the next episode has the Titans back to their usual goofy selves. - On Special Agent Oso, "The Living Holiday Lights" was presented in two parts overseas (in the US, it aired as a full hour special), this was used at the end of the first part. This special case was the only time it was used on the series. - The Venture Bros.: Parodied in "Return to the House of Mummies Part II", where the five minute Previously on is all that exists of Part I. Ends with an On the Next preview for a Part III which never happens. - The end credits for the first two seasons of Wakfu have a silent clip from the next episode playing in the background while a short sequence involving one or more characters that relates to the episode that just showed happens in the foreground. The finales of both seasons instead show what various characters are up to. - Winx Club uses this at the end of every episode in the current season to show what happens in the next, which is helpful since most end on cliffhangers due to the seasonal arc. It is bookended with Previously on .	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/OnTheNext
Concealed Customization - TV Tropes Many Video Games offer a wide range of customization options for character heads and faces, such as a palette of pre-made faces, or, like many newer games, being able to change single elements of the face with sliders, thereby making it theoretically possible to create thousands of different faces. However, this can be rendered useless the first time the player finds a helmet, as it will cover the character's face entirely. Of course, you can choose to ditch the helmet, but depending on the difficulty of the game and the usefulness of the helmet, this may be a bad idea. Averting this is one of the Acceptable Breaks from Reality (because not wearing a helm in real combat is pretty dumb); see Helmets Are Hardly Heroic. Note that this does not apply if there is no Character Customization. This is solely about wasted customization (because we can't see it). Also applies to hairstyle or anything else that's immediately covered by armor. Many games allow you to toggle your helmet showing up, so you can still gain the benefit, without obscuring your character. ## Examples: - Guild Wars suffered from this, but it was since changed so that displaying the headgear could be turned off, without losing its benefits. - Guild Wars 2 goes further, allowing players to selectively hide armor in the head, shoulder, hand and back slots. - World of Warcraft (almost only vanilla), although the player can choose not to display it or transmogrify it into a different helmet of the same armor class. - MapleStory has several face-obscuring helmets, but, graciously, they're limited to the lower levels. And there are still more helmets than there are faces. The most obvious example was an animal head mask in previous versions that you got at an early level and had great stats, but completely hid the character's face, making all characters of a certain class look alike. In later versions, the use of this helmet has become less widespread, though. One would believe this is done to encourage players to purchase more aesthetically pleasing premium NX equipment (including a set of invisible armor) that allows you to wear no helmet or a better looking helmet while still gaining the bonus stats of said equipment. - Dungeons & Dragons Online has a fairly wide selection of helmets, and most of them don't even cover your face. Sadly, all of them cover your hair, which comes in a variety of styles and colors, some of which are only available at the in-game store. Fortunately, there is a Slash Command that turns a character's helmet invisible. - Global Agenda, though there's something like 20 helmets per class per gender, and then colors you can layer on, but you undoubtedly spent a long time making your first character's face, and there are vastly more face-customizing options than helmets. Once you get your first helmet, you often never see your face again. - Some MMOs manage to get around this trope by allowing you to equip two different outfits: one that actually affects your stats, and one that shows on your character no matter what you have equipped in the other slot, allowing you to get the benefits of that huge suit of heavy armor while not having all that time you spent in the character creator go to waste. DC Universe Online is one example. - Optionally averted in Star Wars: The Old Republic, where face-concealing helmets are common, but one of the appearance options removes the head slot item from your character's appearance while still giving you the mechanical benefits. - Final Fantasy XIV allows you to toggle the appearance of the helmet on your character without losing the stat increases that the item gives. Certain helmets also act as a visor and using the /visor command lets you flip the visor up or down to reveal part of your face. Accessories like rings, bracelets, and necklaces can be hidden by your armor unless said armor doesn't cover up specific body parts. - Warframe offers a few armor pieces to wear on top of their own armored skin of sorts, though they're purely cosmetic. There are a few color palettes being sold as well to dye sections of their own armor, for a little bit of customization. - \|\|However, this trope comes in full force once the player goes through a sizeable chunk of the game's storyline. Why? Because until that specific moment the players have no clues that they are Human All Along, controlling an Animated Armor via Applied Phlebotinum. Who'd knew that having access to your Character Customization screen so late in a game could be such a spoiler?\|\| - \|\|A few more storyline missions ahead of that point, and controlling the squishy, soft-skinned humanlike Tenno (known as "Operator" in the midst) becomes a mechanic in this game. From this point, they can show off their carefully-customized face, clothings and such, almost everywhere, to everyone. note : Ironically, as of this day yet, you can't do that on the Relays, which are considered peaceful mingle points for the players, the perfect areas to show off this kind of thing. There are a few advantages granted by doing it mid-mission as well, mainly for stealth, for collecting a resource known as kuva, and for removing the acquired resistances of a particularly annoying enemy made entirely out of Adaptive Armor, but this also comes with the obvious weakness that they're out of their warframe. You know, the armor that actually can take a hit nonchalantly, and are also able to use their guns and melee weapons, which the Operator can't because of their combined weight, brutal recoil of almost all kinetic guns they've access to, or downright being exposed to the radioactive hazards of removing the limiters of their energy-fed weapons, enforcing this trope big time for their own safety.\|\| - The Elder Scrolls - Morrowind: All helmets erase the hair and most helmets cover the face as well. Especially glaring because your armor bonus depends on wearing armor over all parts of your body, so skipping the helmet because you want to show show your character's face means you're going to take a hit on your entire defense. - Oblivion: Pretty much the same, although there are more helmets that leave at least parts of the head visible. - Skyrim manages to make it worse since a lot of perks in the armor skill trees require wearing a full set: skip the helmet and you not only lose the helmet's protection you miss out on an additional 50% armor boost and some miscellaneous bonuses as well. However, there are several mods offering open-face helmets, circlets or crowns that offer all benefits of a helmet and none of the facelessness. Others split the difference and display helmets only during combat, leaving them equipped but invisible the rest of the time. - Fallout franchise: - Power Armor helmets and some additional headgear (ski masks, welding masks, raider wastehound helmets) in Fallout 3 cover the entire face. Some outfits, such as Radiation Suits or the Chinese Stealth Armor, cover the entire body including the head. - Zig-Zagged in Fallout 4. Power Armor helmets still cover the head, and both powered and non-powered armor still covers the body, but since the armor itself is also customizable, your character can still look unique. - Not even an hour into Dragon Age: Origins will pass before you procure your first helmet, wasting your hard-spent moments creating the perfect nose for your human noble. At least the game automatically removes helmets during conversations. A popular mod for the PC version allows helmets to appear unequipped only to be automatically equipped for combat and when you open the menu. Fortunately, Dragon Age II and Inquisition include a feature that allows the player to hide characters' helmets entirely while keeping their stats. - In the Siege of Avalon Anthology, you don't get much to customize—just hair color, hairstyle, and whether you have a beard, but every one of the three dozen or so hats, hoods, and helmets covers at least the hair, and usually the face (and beard) as well. However, the non-magical ones are practically useless anyway (giving only 1-2% damage reduction), so going without is perfectly plausible. - Hellgate: London has Only Six Faces, but out of the nine different helmets (18 if counting gender-specific models for each) all of the Templar and Hunter helms conceal some nicely modeled facial features. Going bareheaded isn't recommended, and the stat bonuses are too good to pass up. - In Mass Effect 2, you can procure several different types of headgear for Shepard to wear, all of which provide some sort of stat bonus, and almost all of which cover most (if not all) of the face you spent ages getting just right. note : This is in contrast to Mass Effect, where Shepard gets one helmet which provides no stat bonuses and, except in certain hazardous conditions, can be toggled on and off at any time. Luckily, the stat bonuses, while useful, aren't that big, and going helmet-less isn't a huge risk. However, during certain missions (unless Shepard is already wearing a full armor set), the game will force Shepard to wear the N7 Breather Helmet, which covers everything except his/her eyes. - Speaking of the full armor sets: the number one complaint about them is that they all have non-removable helmets which cover Shepard's face entirely. Since most of the game's cutscenes occur while (s)he's in his/her armor, you can spend a significant portion of the game's important plot events with your Shepard's face obscured. - Monster Hunter has a wide variety of customization options for faces, but helmets cover up all of that. You can slightly change the color of the helmets, but it is typically a small change. - The Temple of Elemental Evil; luckily, helms have no in-game effect, except for the magic ones (and most of them are headbands). - Played straight in Demon's Souls. The game features quite a robust face-customization, but helmets very often obscure them when you do get it. Thankfully, early helmets aren't all-obscuring, and later helmets are made of cool, so everybody wins. - In the case of Dark Souls however, the trope is turned on its head. While there are helmets to obscure your carefully crafted face, during the beginning of the game, your starting state is that of an Undead. Wrinkly and really ugly, you cannot wait to reach for that helmet as soon as you get one. Just to throw more insult, none of the starting class headgears fully conceal your Undead face (except for male Thief mask). The only way to see the face properly? Reverse the Hollow state and become Human. Which carries the risk of being invaded by another player if you choose to do so, not to mention lacking headgears hurts your defense. Fortunately, There is a half of a dozen nice hats to choose from, that usually are rather light. Most players feel that style is more important then effect, so you will be seeing a lot of these, especially since helmets have the least effect on stats compared to other gear slots. - Dragon's Dogma plays this mostly straight - you can spend forever making a good face for yourself and your main pawn, then put on a helmet and you can't see any of it, but only when you're out in the wild parts of the world; the vast majority of masks, hoods and helmets have the visor flip up so your face isn't covered when you're in a town. - South Park: The Stick of Truth has plastic surgery in town which allows you to change how your character physically looks. One of the options is to have your entire face look like David Hasslehoff. Having the 'hoff head is hilarious in its own right, but it overrides any customization and headgear that are applied to the head. - Divinity: Original Sin Has an interesting variation where along with showing or hiding the helmet, you may choose to have the helmet only show up in combat, implying the characters hastily don the extra armor as combat joins. - Dragon Quest IX: At one point during the game, the dragon Greygnarl tells you to equip a set of face-concealing legendary armor and leave all your companions behind so the kickass animated sequence featuring the hero riding the dragon can play without accounting for the hundreds of possible variations in hairstyle, skin color and equipment. - Terraria allows you to choose a hairstyle and hair color (sometimes with facial hair) for your character. It even lets you use the entire 24-bit color spectrum to do so. But, once you get that first helmet, kiss that hair goodbye (barring certain social helmets worn on top of it), including the facial hair, as there's only one sprite for each equipped helmet, and that sprite has no hair. - There is a wig you can wear, which you put over your helmet so you look hatless. It's really hard to get hold of it, though. You can also get a few social helmets that are practically nothing, like a flower in your hair; these will conceal your helmet if worn. There's also a set of social clothing that allows you to look like you're not wearing any armor, but it costs a pretty penny. - Minecraft gives you the ability to create a player skin in which every pixel is custom designed. While the helmets aren't full-face, a full suit of armor means your face and hands are the only part of that skin you worked so hard on that can be seen, and for many texture packs, not even that. And even when not fully covered (either because you don't have a full set or because the texture pack you're using drew the armor to cover less), the armor often clashes with the player skin, and it's entirely possible to have your character's eyes completely covered by the helmet if you don't take it into consideration when making it. It's inadvisable to fight monsters without armor, and certain resources can only be gained by killing monsters. - Mount & Blade offers lots of character customization, including sex, race, hair styles, age, and all manner of facial sliders. Many of the helmets will cover facial features, the ones with the best defenses are all-encompassing, and every hat in the game hides the player's hair. Compounding the problem is the fact that going without some kind of head protection is extremely unsafe, because the game averts Annoying Arrows to a hideously lethal degree. - Saints Row: The Third offers a fantastic character customization screen where you can adjust every detail of your character's face...and then you can promptly cover it up with unlockable bobblehead masks. - Retro City Rampage parodies this by giving you a large number of customization options such as barbers for different hairstyles, tattoo parlors for tattoos as well as different types of eyewear you can buy, but the only place they'll ever be visible in is in dialogue portraits because of the 8-bit aesthetic that lacks the necessary amount of detail to show any of it on the main character sprite during actual gameplay.	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/OnlySixHelmets
Out of Character - TV Tropes A Sub-Trope of Canon Defilement. In Derivative Works (especially Fanfiction), this term means that somebody is acting largely against his or her established personality. How and why this occurs has a pretty wide range: Generally viewed as a very negative trait (if a fanfic gets tagged as "OOC", it's usually not a good sign, though writers will often be honest enough to slap the tag on themselves up front). Compare Character Derailment, which is this applied to canon, and O.O.C. Is Serious Business in situations where characters are noted as acting out of the ordinary in particularly stressful circumstances. See also Out-of-Character Moment. Draco in Leather Pants, Ron the Death Eater and Ukefication can be considered subtropes. Not to be confused with In and Out of Character. In Role Playing Games, it is sometimes necessary to make a distinction between when a player is In Character and Out Of Character, to know if the person is speaking as the character or as the player. A player who uses Out of Character information (such as the presence of goblins in a room ahead) to make an in-character choice is said to be MetaGaming, which most dungeon-masters severely frown upon. Also not to be confused with the acronym for "Original Canon Character", another term for an O.C. Stand-in. An Adaptational Skill in a fanfic might be out-of-character if it's highly unlikely that the character would have it (e.g. The Ditz being able to do surgery).	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/OOC
On-Site Procurement - TV Tropes Don't mind me officer, I'm with the government and I'm here to help. note : Help myself to a sniper rifle, at least. Roy Campbell : As usual, this is a one-man infiltration mission. Solid Snake : Weapons and equipment OSP (on-site procurement)? Roy Campbell : Yes. This is a top-secret black op. Don't expect any official support. In several games, the player has to gain various upgrades (whether they are healing items, weapons, or other equipment) that are scattered throughout most of the game. Sometimes the item cannot actually be procured due to not being experienced yet, and requiring a backtrack to get it later. Although several of the weapons and equipment are required for the plot to advance, there are also things such as ammo upgrades or health bar upgrades that are not actually necessary for anything other than a 100% completion. The name for the trope comes from the Metal Gear series, where the action pertaining to getting most of these weapons and equipment upgrades was referred to as On Site Procurement. It's an easy justification for the hero getting sent out to save the world With This Herring. The official explanation is that any items given to the hero might be used to trace back to who sent them; because, of course, No Such Agency exists. Similarly, this also serves as a good justification for Bag of Spilling. Compare Plunder, the historical version. ## Examples: - The Metroid series has Samus trying to procure upgrades before attempting to fight the Big Bad. A notable aversion happens with Metroid: Other M, as Samus still has all the abilities she'd gained by the end of Super Metroid, but since she's working with regular people who could be instantly vaporized if she's not careful with them, she has to have her abilities authorized for use by Adam. - In order to advance through the dungeons in The Legend of Zelda series, and ultimately for the game, Link has to procure weapons that more often than not also act as the boss's weakness. This is averted in The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds, where your main equipment is largely not found, but leased, and then sold, by Ravio. - The Metal Gear series is the trope namer, as Snake has to procure enemy weapons on the enemy base/enemy territory as part of a sneaking mission. It's best justified in Metal Gear Solid, since Snake infiltrates the base in a submersible capsule with nothing on him but a pack of cigarettes (which even that was actually due to Snake smuggling the smokes in his stomach and not due to actually gaining permission to do so), and in Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater, where it's explicitly laid out that the U.S. government can't risk Naked Snake being captured on Soviet soil with American-made equipment and weapons (though, oddly enough, he finds American weapons almost as frequently as Soviet arms * : Sigint handwaves this by saying that the Soviets have been capturing American equipment from various conflict zones and through espionage. There's also a distinction made between the opening Virtuous Mission, which was purely an American op and thus only gave Snake his knife and tranquilizer gun, and the later Operation Snake Eater, which was in part a Clear My Name thing after the Virtuous Mission ended with Volgin destroying a Russian lab with an American-supplied nuclear weapon, where Snake is also given a regular lethal pistol so that there actually is some indication that an American is operating in Russia.). Jeremy Blaustein, the translator for the original PSX release of Metal Gear Solid into English, claims he made this terminology up to mimic actual soldier jargon; they have an acronym for everything, right? The DOD loves their TLAs. (source). Later games phase this trope out however as by Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots, the commonplace use of ID-locked weapons as well as the introduction of Drebin's shop (a shop that lets you buy and unlock ID guns and is accessible at almost any time via pause menu no less) has rendered OSP largely impractical (Otacon notes the difficulty he had in supplying Snake with a non-ID'd pistol after the opening sneaking segment), Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker has you start every mission with a weapon loadout of your making and lets you call for ammo supply drops at any time, and Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain not only includes those features but lets you request a different weapon drop mid-mission. As both of those games have you in charge of your own private military force, it makes sense not to play the trope too straight, although Phantom Pain has "Subsistence" missions that play the trope very straight. This concept is also referenced in Snake's Classic Mode path in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, under the title 'Weapons and Equipment OSP'. Here, the player is pitted against various fighters that use projectiles and explosive weaponry as part of their movesets, and projectile weapons and bomb items spawn in during these matches as well. - Max Payne, naturally enough given that he's an undercover cop and can only carry what he can conceal under that leather jacket of his. Which is about eighteen guns and several hundred rounds of ammunition in-game, admittedly, but that's Gameplay and Story Segregation for you. - Justified in Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine: Captain Titus starts the game by jumping onto an ork ship and then making planetfall onto a Forge World. From then on all his new weapons and ammo are found lying around or in shrines. - Half-Life series: - Justified in the first Half-Life, as Gordon is a civilian who's just trying to get out of a steadily worsening disaster alive. Notably, the first few chances you get at finding a real weapon involve either picking it up off a dead security guard, killing a surviving guard for his weapon, or escorting a scientist to a security office so he can unlock the door for you. - Somewhat less justified in the first Expansion Pack, Half-Life: Opposing Force, where you're playing a soldier whose unit was sent in to clean up the mess; apparently, whoever dragged your unconscious body from the wreck of the helicopter you were travelling in didn't think to grab your rifle. - Averted completely in Blue Shift, the second expansion pack, where you're a security guard given a sidearm and a reasonable amount of ammunition from the start. - Zig-zagged in Half-Life 2. Much of Gordon's arsenal is given to him by his allies, but some weapons, as usual, have to be scavenged from dead enemies or are simply found laying around. - Earlier Medal of Honor games like Allied Assault had missions set behind enemy lines that forced players to pickup and use a number of German weapons, in particular the MP 40 and STG 44. - GoldenEye (1997) and its remake has James Bond go through a similar situation for every mission he is sent on. Bond will always start every level with a pistol (plus another weapon if the mission requires it) and whatever gadgets that are suited for the mission. Bond will have to take weapons from enemies he killed or find weapons stored away somewhere in order to expand his arsenal. - Wolfenstein 3-D had this and a reason that actually made sense. You are a captured soldier breaking out of Castle Wolfenstein; all you start with is a knife that looks like a shank and a pistol stolen from the first guard you murdered with that shank before gameplay actually started. The only other guns available to you are submachine guns stolen off elite guards and chainguns found in secret areas. - Call of Duty: Black Ops II allows for a form of this in multiplayer thanks to its expansion of Create-a-Class. There's never been anything across the series before this game preventing you from stealing weapons from other players after they die in multiplayer, but this game makes it closer to this trope by allowing you to forego having weapons of your own and using the spare points you would have needed for them on things like more perks or equipment - it's entirely possible for someone to spawn in with nothing more than a knife and a single grenade while having six perks (where the normal maximum is three). - In Sonic Adventure 2, each of the six player characters has a power-up tucked away in each of his standard levels ( i.e. not the racing levels or Cannon's Core). Some are necessary for level completion, while others are necessary only to complete special missions. Because the number of levels is uneven, some of the characters will have a one-upgrade advantage over their rival; these extras are unnecessary, but make things easier. - Happens once in Fallout 3 with Broken Steel DLC installed. Once you leave Franklin Metro to \|\|infiltrate Nellis Air Force Base\|\|, you'll find a Tesla Cannon waiting for you in a Brotherhood of Steel box, the research of which was just completed after you found a vital piece for it the mission before. - A Self-Imposed Challenge in Deus Ex: Revision is On-Site Procurement, where the player must drop every single item before the beginning of every chapter. Performing this challenge gives the player a skill point bonus at the beginning of each new chapter, as well as an achievement for doing it throughout the entire game.	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/OnSiteProcurement
O.O.C. Is Serious Business - TV Tropes The long form of the trope title is "Out of Character Is Serious Business." Bart: Man, I thought Mom was gonna scream me stupid. She didn't even raise her voice. Lisa: I admit I haven't known Mom as long as you have, but I know when she's really upset, her heart won't just wipe clean like this bathroom countertop; it absorbs everything that touches it, like this bathroom rug. Bart: Really? You think this might be one of those forever-type things? Lisa: (shrugs) Some characters have strong traits that they are known by. This is for when characters momentarily break away from their normal habits to make a point about the seriousness of the situation. Often causes the other characters to do a Double Take and mention why this event is Serious Business. When most or all of these OoC moments happen at once, you can be sure that the Darkest Hour has arrived, leading characters to behave in ways they normally wouldn't, because they know they might not have another chance to do so. It's also a pretty good indication the Godzilla Threshold has been crossed. This is a trope for when a somewhat-Out-of-Character action is used to draw extra attention to the scene (similar to a Title Drop). It isn't Hidden Depths because it isn't telling us something about the character we didn't already know; it's similar to an Out-of-Character Moment in that this is specifically the usage of such a moment to draw attention to a scene. If they're doing this deliberately to make another character think something is amiss, see Out-of-Character Alert. Compare Let's Get Dangerous! and Weirder Than Usual. A Super-Trope of: <!—index—> Often overlaps with: <!—/index—> - Appetite Equals Health (OOC if someone who's usually a Big Eater rejects food, or if someone rejects a food they usually like.) - Captain Obvious (OOC if a character who is normally too smart and sophisticated to talk down to their peers or associates without looking unprofessional, foregoes the façade in order to get to the point immediately. The same can apply to a character who conversely starts of as too oblivious to figure something out until later on. This can also overlap with Punctuated! For! Emphasis! so that they are loud and clear with their point.) - Dangerous Drowsiness (OOC if the afflicted character is normally energetic.) - Even Evil Has Standards (not OOC if those standards pop up often enough that the character is established as a villain with a few objections, but it is OOC if that character previously didn't appear to have standards) - Everyone Has Standards (OOC if the persons call out someone else on a fault that's no different from their own vice) - Explain, Explain... Oh, Crap! (OOC if a character is explaining midway something that seems innocuous at first until putting it into words under a specific context, gives them a belated, shocking realization about the thing they were talking about, and changes the context and/or true weight of the issue from their perspective, thus leading to a change in attitude from apparent ignorance to Serious Business on the spot. - Forgets to Eat (OOC if they're normally a Big Eater) - It Makes Sense in Context (how circumstances are arranged for some people to do what they do) - Old Master (who doesn't break into fights for just anything) - Prayer Is a Last Resort (if its an atheist or agnostic doing the praying) - Precision F-Strike (OOC if the trope applies because the swear was unusual for the character, but not an example if it was just unusual for the work) - Prelude to Suicide (a character acts either unusually chipper or somber right before attempting suicide) - Sarcasm Failure (the Deadpan Snarker tries to make a dry quip, but can't; not OOC if someone who's not a deadpan snarker can't make a quip) - Silence of Sadness (Not OOC if they're usually quiet or talk an average amount, but OOC if they're talkative) - Suddenly Shouting (if the "sudden shouter" doesn't normally shout) - Suspicious Missed Messages (if the unresponsive character is normally addicted to their phone/computer) - Too Desperate to Be Picky (if characters violate their own set standards in an act of desperation) - Too Spicy for Yog-Sothoth (a potential victim is too much for the all-powerful being of darkness to consume or harm) - Too Unhappy to Be Hungry (Not OOC if they have a generic palate, but OOC if they're a Big Eater or they really like the food they reject (e.g Trademark Favourite Food, Sweet Tooth, etc)). - Too Upset to Create (if a normally highly-creative character is too upset to make anything for once) - Tranquil Fury (if the characters normally are not angry or express their anger) - When She Smiles (a character who usually doesn't smile starts smiling) - Working Out Their Emotions (for characters who aren't usually athletic) - You Are a Credit to Your Race (for racists) ## Examples subpages: <!—index—> <!—/index—> ## Other examples: - Burt from We're Alive usually can't resist an opportunity to quote from his favorite movies. But in Chapter 23, he and Angel are trapped in a hospital room with zombies at the door and their only escape, a Bedsheet Ladder, broken. Burt yells for the other two characters, who got out, to leave them and run for the helicopter on the roof of the hospital by saying "Get to the chopper!" Angel asks if that was a quote from Predator. When Burt "What?...Oh, no, it was just a coincidence." Angel goes into Oh, Crap! mode. - Calvin and Hobbes: In this strip, as Calvin is lying sick in bed, his mom tells him she's going to call the doctor — Calvin's response is "OK." She also adds that it's Saturday, so he won't miss school, and he responds with a weak, "I know." Since Calvin is a kid who is usually overjoyed at the thought of not going to school, always gets up at the crack of dawn on Saturdays, and despises visiting the doctor, his mother is convinced this is serious and races for the phone. - In an early For Better or for Worse. Michael complains of feeling sick, and when Elly tells him to go to bed, he says "okay" and goes right upstairs. She tucks him into bed, convinced that he's sick. - Garfield: - Peanuts: Whenever Charlie Brown breaks his Nice Guy attitude and gets genuinely angry at someone, he delivers a "The Reason You Suck" Speech and/or a What the Hell, Hero? speech, and it's always a Moment of Awesome for him. - This Pearls Before Swine strip, roughly one month after the Parkland school shooting. Larry is usually a Bumbling Dad with a Simpleton Voice who is at best benignly negligent towards his son. - Retail: Stuart is the typical browbeating, micromanaging district manager so when Marla hasn't heard from him in weeks she worries that it's a sign that Grumbel's is going under because he'd only not call if it didn't matter anymore. She worries even more when he does call and then completely brushes off that Marla's store won't make its sales goal, rather than berate her over it as usual. Marla was Properly Paranoid because it turns out Grumbel's is looking into filing for bankruptcy, and Stuart knew the whole time without telling any of his store managers. - In Safe Havens, even Jenny, usually eager for the chance to boss people around, agrees that Samantha should be the commander of the Mars mission because their lives could very well depend on it. \|\|Ironically enough, Jenny plays a key role in saving Earth by successfully negotiating with Mars to keep it from destroying Earth.\|\| - In the final week of dailies of U.S. Acres, Lovable Coward Wade achieves peace with the world... sending Orson, Roy, and Booker away screaming in terror. - Batman Beyond: Return of the Joker: The Joker usually loves to hear himself laugh even if others don't like it, but when Terry trolls him during their Final Battle by mocking his obsession with the original Batman lame and finding his jokes boring, the Monster Clown doesn't take Terry's disrespect lightly. Indeed, Terry managed to break the Clown Prince of Crime in a manner Bruce never did: openly jeer at him. After all, a comedian's enemy is The Heckler. The Joker's primary Berserk Button is being the butt of someone else's jokes. - BIONICLE 3: Web of Shadows: Matau, Jerkass Plucky Comic Relief whose bickering drove team-leader Vakama to a FaceHeel Turn, gives a serious "I Know You're in There Somewhere" Fight speech to try to win him back, even dropping the Chutespeek slang he always talks in. Vakama at first refuses to believe his sincerity, but eventually gives in and returns to the good side. - Brave: It becomes quite clear there is something wrong with Elinor when she gets out of the river and leaves her crown behind. - In An Extremely Goofy Movie, Max is convinced that he wants to transfer schools after being defeated by his own dad at his best event because there's "only room for one Goof." PJ is devastated at the news—temporarily relapsing to the insecure and worrisome personality he'd just broken out of— and Beret Girl tells Max that he can't admit defeat, but nothing helps... until Bobby, the Plucky Comic Relief, in a dead-serious, emotionally-charged tone, gives Max a Rousing Speech. - In the previous movie, Goofy is initially in catatonic shock when he discovers that Max had been manipulating him into going to Los Angeles, which gives way into legitimate anger when Max wastes a second chance to prove himself worthy of trust. - Frozen: - In Kung Fu Panda, Shifu, after learning that Po can be trained using his Big Eater tendencies, takes him through a series of exercises using food as a motivator, culminating in a long fight over a single dumpling. After Po bests him, he tosses the dumpling right back at Shifu and says, "I'm not hungry." - This is actually a very enjoyable example of one and counts as Character Development. Earlier, it has been established that Po binge-eats whenever he was upset (the second movie implying since the trauma with his mother) and thus, his refusal of the dumpling is a sign of his growth in the belief in himself. - The LEGO Movie 2: The Second Part: - Emmet realizes something's not right when he sees Superman being friendly with both Green Lantern (whom he previously couldn't stand to be around) and Lex Luthor. - When Wyldstyle accidentally knocks off Sweet Mayhem's mask and has her hanging off the edge, she drops the Darth Vader copycat act and is legitimately terrified. - Leroy & Stitch: Hamsterviel just laughs in amusement when Stitch calls him Gerbil Boy, indicating how confident he is that Leroy is about to defeat Stitch. - In The Lion King (1994), Ed is usually seen giggling and grinning insanely. After Scar turns on the hyenas and is defeated by Simba, Ed is not laughing or grinning. He is visibly pissed. The menacing laugh he DOES let out before the hyenas gang up on Scar only seals the deal. - The Lorax (2012): The forest creatures usually love sweet foods, so it becomes evident that things are serious when one of them, Pipsqueak the barbaloot, doesn't want a marshmallow because he's Too Unhappy to Be Hungry after the trees are cut down. - Mickey's Once Upon a Christmas: The short "Stuck on Christmas" has two examples: - After Huey, Dewey and Louie get fed up of celebrating Christmas Every Day after wishing for it, they decide to sabotage their family's Christmas celebration. While the boys expect Donald to scream his head off, fly into a rage, and/or punish them for it, he instead despondently lies on the floor, showing guilt for his actions. This, along with reading a Christmas card from him and Daisy, is what makes the boys realize that they took it too far. - After this, Huey, Dewey and Louie decide to make the next day the best Christmas they can by making breakfast, giving their relatives kisses (which they previously objected to), helping Daisy with setting the table, and joining in with singing carols with Uncle Scrooge. Donald suspects that they are up to something, and they give him a surprise - \|\|a wooden boat made out of the sleds that they received as presents\|\|. - Continuing a tradition from the show that they are based on, Phineas and Ferb movies Across the 2nd Dimension and Candace Against the Universe feature points where Phineas's normally optimistic demeanor breaks: - In Across the 2nd Dimension, he gets genuinely upset when he learns that Perry is an OWCA secret agent and briefly thinks that Perry didn't see the family as anything more than a cover for Perry's secret identity. - In Candace Against the Universe, when Phineas and the others reach Feebla-Oot to rescue Candace only to find that she doesn't want to go back home, he sounds genuinely on the verge of tears as they get shooed out of Super Super Big Doctor's palace. - Shrek isn't exactly known for crying, even during each movie's Darkest Hour where he's about to lose Fiona and/or is about to be executed. That said, after signing Rumpelstiltskin's contract in Shrek Forever After and inadvertently changing history for the chance to feel like a real ogre again, the gravity of the situation finally hits him. After taking a good, long look at his daughter's doll that he brought with him, he sheds a tear onscreen for the only time in the series. This is what gets this timeline's Donkey to finally trust Shrek. - Very notably in South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut, when Kenny takes off his hood to say goodbye after sacrificing himself to an eternity in Hell to Save the World, altering the past to avert a war. - Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse: Spider-Ham is considered the Plucky Comic Relief of the group, hailing from a cartoon Spider-Verse, which gives us many moments of him acting, well, just like a cartoon character would. After the team goes to comfort Miles about a recent tragedy and they start talking about similar ones that they've experienced, Spider-Ham is the one to deliver one of the film's most poignant lines, with complete sincerity and tears in his eyes. Spider-Ham: Miles, the hardest thing about this job is... you can't always save everybody. - The Tigger Movie: - Tigger spends much of the movie feeling incredibly sad about not having a family. Even his uniqueness, one of the things he most proud of, makes him realize that he's the only tigger. Needless to say, this makes Roo want to make Tigger feel better as soon as possible. - When Tigger finds out the others pretended to be his family, he vents a very uncharacteristic moment of Tranquil Fury before storming off, making it obvious to the others they've hurt him in a very big way. - Roo himself usually can surpass Tigger as the wood's Keet. After his Big Brother Mentor turns his back on him however, he spends most of the climax very morose, when not outright crying. - At the film's climax, Rabbit demands that Tigger come home and "forget this 'other tiggers' nonsense". Tigger usually takes Rabbit's scoldings in stride, but he's so fixated on finding his real family and offended by Rabbit's words that he outright snaps at him, making it clear that he's going to disobey him. This also applies to Rabbit, who normally hates being confronted or disobeyed, but is cowed by Tigger's refusal. - Treasure Planet: When Silver stops trying to sweet-talk The Captain, you know he's serious. She does, too. Silver: You heard the boy! Get this blasted heap turned 'round! - In The Transformers: The Movie, Kup has Seen It All and uses any situation as an excuse to mention some previous adventure of his. When the Autobots see Unicron standing astride the entire planet of Cybertron, Hot Rod asks if this reminds him of yet another one of his war stories. Kup's only response is a quiet, "Nope... Never seen anything like this before." - In Turning Red, Mei, who talks about respecting your family and ancestors, tries to tear apart the shrine of her ancestor on learning the truth about why she turned into a red panda. She screams "It's your fault!" at Sun Yee's portrait as her parents try to calm her down. - Up: - We have only seen Ellie sad once as an adult: when she was told she either miscarried or was unable to have children. She broke down sobbing in the doctor's office, and later sat in the front yard meditating. Even when she was dying, she was smiling and reassuring Carl. - Likewise, Ellie has always been able to outpace Carl walking on their favorite hill. When she falls behind and collapses, Carl immediately goes to her side, fearing the worst. It turns out she was dying. - In Vivo, Whenever Gabi is frowning or upset, that's a sign that things are bad. She begs the Sand Dollars to not destroy Tio Andres's music, saying she'll do anything if they leave it intact. Later, she uncharacteristically calls out her mother for being an oblivious parent, not seeing Gabi for who she really is. \|\|Vivo knows that she must be upset when she cries and says that she wishes she had told her dad that she loved him before he died, and comforts her\|\|. - Dancarino is a awkward and dork spoonbill who serves as a Plucky Comic Relief and the moments involving him are hilarious, but \|\|when the sheet music is destroyed and Vivo thinks he failed Andrés\|\|. Dancarino, quite sad and despondent, tries to comfort and encourage Vivo and tell him that he did his best. - Taskmaster had when Jessica Knappet fell from the stage during a challenge. Greg, who always plays up how much of a jerk the titular Taskmaster is and presents himself as a juggling act of Bad Boss, Troll, and Sadist Teacher, drops all pretences of this and runs to help her with a very genuinely panicked "oh shit!" He doesn't even attempt to get back into character, or even make a joke out of it, until she's assured him that she's okay. Once she has though, the gloves come right back off and he immediately begins mocking her for it — he even named the stage she fell from "The Knappet", plaque and all◊. - Is Anansi doing actual work? He's probably got some ulterior motive. You'd better watch that fish haul like a hawk, or he'll likely help himself to some of it. - The Bible: - There is even a saying about Buddha, the poster boy for patience, serenity, that goes like this: "Even the Buddha will get angry if slapped thrice in the face" for The Stoic finally snapping. Basically, the threshold is high, but if you are stupid enough to repeatedly annoy them, even a Saint is going to snap at you, and it's going to be Serious Business. - The Adventure Zone: When Taako \|\|regains his memories of Lup and her subsequent disappearance\|\|, he calmly points the Umbrastaff at \|\|Lucretia\|\| and begins to count down from ten. No jokes. No snark. No one-liners. He doesn't even let Griffin finish describing the scene. - In Gospels of the Flood, the narrator is impressively polite, which only makes his Precision F-Strike when he reveals the truth about \|\|John\|\| more jarring. - Interstitial: Actual Play: Criss snapping at Mewt after the latter starts fanboying over him shows how much Criss is effected by \|\|Roxanne's death\|\|. - The Phenomenon: Each episode opens and closes with Emergency Broadcasts. At the start of the series these are very dry, and while providing necessary instructions to survive the eponymous event, are also light on information. As the series wears on and it becomes clear that the U.S. government has no means of fighting off the threat, these broadcasts become increasingly transparent, even noting that \|\|97% of humanity has died\|\|, and increasingly compassionate ("You are not abandoned. You are not forgotten"). - Red Panda Adventures: One of Kit's many "Baxter's Laws" is that when a supervillain prone to Idiosyncrazy starts behaving out of character, something is up. For example, criminal mastermind the Poet is known for announcing his crimes with poems so good that universities teach by them, so when clues that are ostensibly from the Poet in "The Terrible Two" are ridiculously simplistic limericks, it's a sign that there's more going on. Specifically, the Mad Monkey and Jackrabbit are framing the Poet for their crimes. "The Case of the Missing Muse" features the Poet breaking into high security vaults, leaving behind crumpled up pieces of paper, and leaving without stealing a thing all because he's lost his inspiration. - RiffTrax: The weirdness of Santa and the Ice Cream Bunny is so palpable, it leaves the riffers speechless at one point. Mike Nelson : "Ladies and gentlemen, for the first time in 150+ movies, Rifftrax has nothing to say." - Welcome to Night Vale: - Cecil is always pleasant and smooth in his delivery. When he's not? Something is very wrong, like his on-air breakdown when he thought Carlos had died, or the terror in his voice upon seeing the gorefest in \|\|Kevin's studio\|\|; or very serious, like the sheer venom with which he wished that \|\|rebel leader Tamika would find StrexCorp before they found her\|\|. - When Cecil refers to Steve Carlsberg as "Steve," and acknowledges his love for Abby and Janice, it's a sign how frightened he is by the Shadow People's invasion. - Cecil is also known for his Skewed Priorities regarding what constitutes important news, and for alternating between mundane news stories and warnings of apocalyptic catastrophes without any discernible change in tone. So we know Night Vale has truly reached its Darkest Hour in "Matryoshka" when Cecil passive-aggressively mocks his listeners for expecting him to respond to complaints about subpar radio programs instead of focusing on the various catastrophes destroying the town. Later in the same episode, Cecil becomes so overwhelmed by the seeming hopelessness of the situation that for the first time ever, \|\|he almost signs off without bothering to give the Weather report or wish the listeners a good night\|\|. - In Wolf 359, the crew of the Hephaestus know to be concerned about Eiffel if he stops making pop culture references. - In one episode, after the other members of the crew call him out for his insensitive behavior, hes too ashamed to interact with anyone, and they mark a week without any pop culture references. - In the finale, the sign that Eiffel really has \|\|lost his memories\|\| is when he asks what Star Wars is. - MAD features the eternally grinning Alfred E. Neuman, whose Catchphrase is "What, me worry?" Except once. Alfred's reaction◊ to the Three Mile Island nuclear accident in 1979: A look of terror on his face, and the comment, "Yes... me worry!" - Since wrestling announcers are supposed to be loud and talking all the time, it was always a pretty safe bet that when they went completely silent, it was a sign that someone was legitimately hurt (instead of when they kept talking, which showed it was part of the show). However, that's not quite as accurate now, since the people behind the scenes have caught on to this, and have started to use dead air when trying to sell a Kayfabe injury. - Sometimes, when a real, serious injury or accident happens, announcers drop kayfabe and explicitly tell the audience it is not part of the show. Most infamously, this happened when Owen Hart died in an accident at Over the Edge 1999, and most recently when Jerry Lawler had a heart attack during an episode of WWE Raw. - Wrestlemania 7 featured a Retirement match between "Macho Man" Randy Savage and Ultimate Warrior. Color commentator Bobby "The Brain" Heenan pointed out something very strange about The Warrior's entrance: he was walking. The fact that Warrior eschewed his usual crazed full speed bolt towards the ring for a much more composed gait helped to underscore how much higher the stakes were for this match. - John Cena is almost always above everything, just laughing off anything resembling a threat. Until The Wyatt Family came after him. Thus far the Wyatts have proven to be the only thing that can make Cena show actual fear. - Lance Storm is adamant that people use his Kayfabe last name (Storm), and most of his commentaries are signed as Lance Storm. However, when he is truly serious about certain things, like the deaths of Chris Benoit or Road Warrior Hawk, he has been known to sign off using his real name: Lance Evers. - The Insane Clown Posse were supposed to face The Headbangers on the November 23 (taped November 17), 1998 WWE RAW, as part of the The Oddities-Headbangers feud, but Violent J said that they weren't ready. Luna Vachon, the manager of The Oddities, was so stunned by this that she actually spoke in her normal voice instead of the monster voice she'd been using for over a decade. - As a member of The Order Of The Neo-Solar Temple Delirious was not nearly as erratic or hyper active due to UltraMantis Black putting him under the control of the Eye of Tyr, a Norse Mythological artifact that can be used to control minds. Then Ares of Die Bruderschaft des Kreuzes used the Eye, after getting it from Tim Donst as part of the BDK's formation at the 2009 CHIKARA Season Finale Three-Fisted Tales, and used it to lure Delirious into the BDK. While on the one hand Delirious was more manic, Ares also tied a chain around his neck and made him the BDK's Team Pet. - During Jerry Lawler's tenure as a heel commentator, he would frequently crack jokes and insult the faces at every opportunity. If Lawler stopped joking — or even worse called the heels out for their behavior — the situation was indeed serious. - On the October 22, 2018 episode of WWE Raw, then-Universal Champion Roman Reigns broke character by introducing himself with his real name, before announcing that his leukemia had returned after 11 years of privately battling it and being in remission. - Lampshaded on episode 103 of AEW Dark (August 17, 2021). After Matt Hardy (accompanied by Private Party) defeated Wheeler Yuta (accompanied by Chuck Taylor), Hardy's stablemates laid a beatdown on Yuta and Taylor. Then came Yuta's then-stablemate Orange Cassidy, known for his "Sloth Style", walking to the ring at a normal pace for anyone else but extremely fast for his character. Announcer Excalibur said "And I'm seriousa spring in his step", and Taz followed, "I've never seen the man walk that fast ever!" Followed shortly thereafter by Cassidy laying Hardy out with an Orange Punch. Video here (the crowd pops for Cassidy's entrance at 26:09). - Triple H had made a reputation for himself as being an unstoppable, imperturbable monster heel. So it made things all the more astounding when Mankind \|\|revealed he was Cactus Jack\|\| and Hunter looked utterly terrified. Not for nothing, seeing as \|\|Cactus Jack had mopped the floor with him the last time they met\|\|. Foley himself credits Triple H for making the scene work; if he'd laughed it off, it would have flopped, but this was the most scared anyone had seen Hunter. - Big Finish Doctor Who: In "The Two Masters", the Seventh Doctor, when faced with two incarnations of his old friend-turned-enemy the Master, notices that each incarnation is acting out of character, but only realises when faced with both Masters that the reason for this change is that the two Masters have actually swapped bodies. - In Cabin Pressure, when the usually relentlessly cheery and overwhelmingly positive and optimistic Arthur tries to describe his father: Arthur: Oh, he's, uhhh... He's, uhhh... He's, uhhh... Douglas: Good Lord, Martin, I think you've broken him. Arthur: No-no-no - it's just that he's, uhhh... He's, uhhh... Douglas: I think — I think what we may be witnessing here is Arthur attempting to describe something with an adjective other than "brilliant". Arthur: Yeah, no-no, I-I wouldn't say he was br...I mean, obviously, everyone's br... [beat] No, he's not brilliant! He's, uhhh... He's alright. Martin: God! Douglas: Yes... Martin: He must be awful! - Dawn of a New Age: Oldport Blues: - Ciro is usually a level-headed Nice Guy, so when he panics (like when he realises his siblings are in danger) or gets angry (when he urges his friend to get out of a building laced with bombs) the other characters click immediately that something is wrong. - While normally upbeat and high-strung, Vivian's attitude when she's introduced is stoic. It becomes increasingly apparent that this isn't natural and her superpower has affected her emotions. - Yankees first baseman Lou Gehrig never missed a game ever since the day he filled in for Wally Pipp; not even injury stopped him from at least getting in an inning as a pinch hitter. So when he had his manager bench him for one game in 1939, it was a sign something was wrong, confirmed by an ALS diagnosis a short time later. - Former Pittsburgh Steeler wide receiver Hines Ward was notorious for always smiling on the field and sidelines. Dropped a pass (a rare event for him), smile and shake it off. Hospitalize someone with a block? Smile and wave the medics over. When he lost a fumble in easy field goal range in the final minutes of a tied game against the Tennessee Titans by trying to stretch for extra yards, thereby costing the Steelers a sure chance to win the game in regulation, and allowing the Titans to take a knee and take the game to overtime, he was visibly pissed off with himself on the sidelines. The television commentators noted that he must have been really mad to stop smiling. - You knew Joe Theismann's career-ending injury was serious when every single player on both teams, including crazy tough, crazy fearless linebacker Lawrence Taylor, who actually made the hit, were SCREAMING for medical attention. It was. - Years before this, Detroit Lions wide receiver Chuck Hughes collapsed on the field while returning to the huddle after a play late in a 1971 game against the Chicago Bears, clutching his chest. Bears linebacking legend Dick Butkus, who was nearby, immediately screamed for medical attention. Sadly, Hughes was pronounced dead within minutes; an autopsy revealed that he had suffered a massive heart attack and had most likely died on the field. - An example of this may have been the turning point for the 1994 San Francisco 49ers. During the 3rd quarter of their 5th game of the season against the Philadelphia Eagles (which the Eagles won 40-8), 49ers head coach George Seifert decided to pull battered starting quarterback Steve Young from the game in order to avoid risking injury in a lost cause. However, upon doing so, the normally even-tempered Young blew up at Seifert, a move which earned the respect of many of his teammates. In the end, the 49ers lost only one other game the rest of the season note : the final game of the regular-season, and the 49ers had rested their starters for that game; with Young taking the final steps out of predecessor Joe Montana's shadow (Young had succeeded Montana as 49ers quarterback in 1991 due to Montana being sidelined with a number of injuries) by not only leading the 49ers to Super Bowl XXIX but breaking Montana's single-game touchdown pass record by throwing for 6 touchdown passes in the 49ers' 49-26 rout of the San Diego Chargers. - A number of character-driven RPGs give characters compulsions to act in certain ways and require expending resources to ignore them, effectively making Out-of-Character a form of Heroic BSoD. For example, Exalted calls it "Limit Break" note : No relation to the trope and forces the Solars to either take their greatest Virtue to extremes or invert it, Lunars to act animalistic and Sidereals to stubbornly force Fate into a path dependant on their caste. Similarly, Scion has Virtues (such as Loyalty, Duty, or Courage); every pantheon reveres four of them, and their Scions are expected to uphold them. If a Scion resists his or her Virtues too hard, they can explode into Virtue Extremities, causing the Scion to burst into extreme behavior; a Loyal Scion will throw herself into the line of fire for her friends even if they beg her not to, a Courageous Scion goes into an Unstoppable Rage, an Expressive Scion will quite literally bleed for his art, and so on. - In Nomine: Yves, Archangel of Destiny, is well known for being calm, reflective and serene, unflappable and unfazed by even the most grievous of events — until Kronos, Prince of Fate, comes into the picture. Yves' dark mirror is the one being that he cannot predict or account for, and the moment he catches wind of Kronos' presence in a plot he sends in his own heavy hitters and does everything in his power to ensure that whatever the Prince is after does not come to fruition. Only those who know Yves very well pick up on the driven urgency that overtakes him in these situations, but they find it very unsettling. - On Mighty Thews: Characters have what is called a "D20 trait" since each skill is assigned a dice value. By acting in concert with your D20 character trait, you earn a reroll token in a scene; but if you act opposite to it, you can roll a D20 for one skill roll, which means quite a bit when D12 is the largest available die. - Warhammer 40,000: - Tyranids are such a threat to the galaxy that the Ultramarines, a chapter of Space Marines who religiously follow the Codex Astartes and take pride in fielding balanced, tactically-flexible forces, have started training cadres of Tyrannic War Veterans specializing in combating the menace that nearly devoured their homeworld. - When the vast, eternally hungry Hive Mind of the Tyranids leaves a certain light-years wide area of space alone, it's probably for a good reason. - The introduction of Primaris Marines and cooperation with Aeldari in 8th Edition. The Imperium of Man is so hidebound they're cocooned in leather and deeply xenophobic. Innovation, ESPECIALLY with one of the Emperors Great Works, and cooperation with aliens to boot? Uh-oh. The End of Days is nigh. - Factions that know the Orks well start getting very wary whenever the greenskins start to do anything that isn't either charging the closest enemy or getting ready to do so. Normally, it means they're about to try something unusual, unpredictable and dangerous. If you are terribly unlucky, it means they're getting clever. Millions tend to die when the orks try actual tactics because they're just not expected to do so, and it tends to be a sign that the Warboss in charge is getting dangerously competent from the sheer volume of WAAAGH energy the troops are dispensing. The smarter they're acting, the bigger the horde, and the bigger the Warboss. \|\|Once, this got bad enough that they had actual diplomats, people farms and technology that started outpacing the Imperium and the Eldar, and the resulting war nearly destroyed Terra, and with it the Imperium\|\|. - So, so many moments in Freewill in 2112: - Arguably the biggest one occurs near the end of Act Two, in which \|\|Amanda Genalsikoff, who for most of the musical has been an Extreme Doormat to the core, finally stands up to (and gives a huge What the Hell, Hero? to) her strict husband Samuel, who has retained his loyalty towards the oppressive, creativity-banning Motor Law. It's so shocking to Samuel that he immediately listens, which leads into "The Pass" and Samuel's My God, What Have I Done? realization.\|\| - The main antagonist of the show, NETECROF, is an arrogant Third-Person Person \|\|from the Solar Fed\|\| who pushes his Minion with an F in Evil KOKGNAB around like dirt and isn't afraid to admit it. In the middle of Act Two, however, having had enough of KOKGNAB's antics (and desperately wanting to see protagonists Thomas Genalsikoff, Barchy, and Marcia Alberts dead), he angrily demands KOKGNAB to take them away to his torture chamber by using a personal pronoun for the first and only time in the show. KOKGNAB, suitably terrified, listens... \|\|by taking them away to a remote bunker and offering them blankets, hot chocolate, and advice on how to defeat his awful superior.\|\| - In Hamilton, Alexander Hamilton is a Motor Mouth who never passes up an opportunity to pick up a pen and write out his thoughts. In One Last Time, he is so distraught over \|\|his boss George Washington's retirement\|\| that he goes into Stunned Silence and has to be urged into picking up a pen to write \|\|Washington's farewell address\|\|. - On a more heartwarming note, verbose non-stop Hamilton is so overwhelmed by emotions at the birth of his son that he reverts to the simplest structures, rhymes and vocabulary. \|\|This only gets worse in Act 2 when said son dies and Hamilton, again, loses much of his verbosity and finesse when describing "the unimaginable" — living on after the loss of a child.\|\| - Throughout most of My Fair Lady, linguistics professor Henry Higgins acts like a huge Jerkass to flower girl Eliza Doolittle. For days he puts her through torturous exercises in an attempt to get her to pronounce sounds correctly, deprives her of food, sleep, and drink, and stays up for hours in a desperate attempt to rid Eliza of her Cockney accent. However, during one scene, an exhausted Higgins gives Eliza a passionate speech on "the majesty and grandeur of the English language," in which he forgoes his usual routine for genuine tenderness and encouragement towards Eliza. It's a genuine Pet the Dog moment for him, and as a result of this, Eliza has her first big breakthrough in RP. Cue "The Rain In Spain" and a rapturous celebration exploding on the stage. - Alien Abduction Role Play: Both Acktreal and the rest of her crew note that it's extremely unusual for her to be behaving in the way she is with the human subjects. She is normally very cold and aloof with her subjects, not making things more difficult or unpleasant than they need to be for either party. It's extremely unusual that she would develop feelings for a subject, or threaten to eat anyone, including those of a species that her ancestors used to hunt for food. The crew concludes that there must be something genetic or hormonal in humanity that is causing Enxion species to potentially crave them as a food source, despite never encountering each other before. - Vixen of the DesuDesBrigade is very relaxed, informal and happy in most of her reviews, even in a lot of the shows that squick her out. Then came her Film Fox review of The Twilight Saga: New Moon, where she's in complete distress with no escape throughout and screams more than once. - YouTuber Robert Franzese's comedy series Grind My Gears, where he is in character as a real-life form of Peter Griffin. The first episode was about racism and towards the end breaks character entirely to conclude that racism is not acceptable. - SCP Foundation: - The Foundation very rarely actively attempts to kill supernatural entities, as they don't know what effect it might have. So SCP-682 must be a serious threat to warrant a file that begins with "SCP-682 must be destroyed as soon as possible." - The Foundation members are usually portrayed as Determinators who will go to any length to find a way to ensure that any entities that could pose a danger are safely contained. \|\|Except for SCP-2317, who they have explicitly given up on containing and what procedures they do have are merely to keep up morale.\|\| - SCP-682 ends up on the other end of this trope several times. It's an Omnicidal Maniac that tries to kill pretty much anything that gets left out in front of it. So something must be seriously, intrinsically wrong with SCP-173 (which it is too scared of to attack), SCP-053 (one of only two beings it has ever acted legitimately friendly towards (the other being 079)), and Dr. Alto Clef (whom it doesn't attack for some unknown reason). - SCP-682 has so far resisted all attempts to kill it, which means that SCP-2935, an alternate dimension where everything is dead, including 682, is no joke. - SCP-096 is a nigh-unstoppable killing machine that will travel thousands of miles to kill anything that sees even a pixel of its face (even if it is another SCP). The fact he didn't even attempt to attack SCP-049 once he saw his face is surprising to say the least.	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/OOCIsSeriousBusiness
Only Sane Man - TV Tropes "I began to get a feeling... of being the only sane man in a nut house. It doesn't make you feel superior but depressed and scared, because there is no one you can contact." When there is a group of characters who are all just totally weird, either in general or in a particular scenario, the Only Sane Man is the only one who, well, isn't. Picture this: Alice is the Stupid Evil Psycho for Hire, Bob is a Cloudcuckoolander, Henry is an Empty Shell, Charlotte is a Chaotic Stupid prankster, Karl is too nice for his own good, Daniel is Charlotte's Annoying Younger Sibling, Emily is a shallow sociopath, Maria often Rhymes on a Dime, Franklin is a Mad Scientist, Gardenia is a Lawful Stupid Fundamentalist, Jacob thinks he's a hero on a grand quest, and Lily is a Mad Artist who's obsessed with her wax "statues." Looks like your standard Dysfunction Junction. But then you have Isaac. Isaac is actually a very well-adjusted individual. He reacts with appropriate horror to things like Alice's finger and eyeball collection, Gardenia's tendency to attack anyone not believing in her religion, Franklin's experiments to revive the dead with science, and the crimes against nature that Franklin calls pets. Or reacts with either annoyance or bewilderment to things like Bob's warped logic, Karl's Honor Before Reason mindset (honor being always thought first in his case), Maria's insistence to rhyme all the time, and Jacob's delusions of being a hero. Isaac is the Only Sane Man and The Only Voice Of Reason in the room. The other variant is where the other characters aren't always that weird, but everyone save one character is acting weird in a particular situation. For example, they might regard something absurd as Serious Business, with the Only Sane Man the only one who notices how crazy that is. This latter variant also includes a standard comedy piece: something absolutely insane is going on, but only one person notices (or cares). There are usually three stages, with a rough correspondence to the Five Stages of Grief: Bewilderment (Shock and Anger), trying to get others to see or admit the weirdness (Bargaining and Denial), and bitter sarcasm (Acceptance). In the more extreme cases, the poor soul may be trapped in a World Gone Mad and/or wind up Giving Up on Logic in frustration. Sometimes, though, they are Not So Above It All. A character may also think of themselves as the Only Sane Man without proper justification. A Too Dumb to Fool character may be the Only Sane Man, although he is likely to be less worked up about the failures of others to see than in most cases. The Only Sane Man is often relied upon as the Only Sane Employee. This character often ends up a Knight in Sour Armor. For a more horrific version, see Through the Eyes of Madness. For the sci-fi version, the Ignored Expert is your go-to guy. The comedy version will often end up being either a Butt-Monkey or a Chew Toy. If all the other characters are otherwise sane, and really should see something, but only one guy does, he's an Einstein Sue. See also Cassandra Truth, Surrounded by Idiots, and Surrounded by Smart People; contrast with the Unfazed Everyman. May temporarily overlap with What the Hell, Hero?. If several characters take turns being the Only Sane Man, they're playing with a Sanity Ball. If it's a two-person show, with one person playing the Only Sane Man to the other's wackiness, it's a Straight Man and Wise Guy scenario. This trope is the savvy half of a Savvy Guy, Energetic Girl duo, one third of a Comic Trio, and part of the Four-Man Band. If they're only later proven right, it may be The Dissenter Is Always Right. Usually, but not always, a Cast Full of Crazy contains an Only Sane Man. Usually, he's prone to Sanity Slippage. Sometimes, he's Only Sane by Comparison, in which he's pretty crazy himself but not as crazy as the rest of his cohorts. The Wonka may well feel like this (or be this!) in a world that doesn't follow his thinking. Insanity is, after all, in the eye of the beholder, and The Wonka often has quite valid points. No Real Life Examples, Please! - Real Life does not have only one sane person. ## Example subpages: <!—index—> <!—/index—> ## Other examples: - The US Fire Emblem: The Blazing Blade commercial has several barbarian kings all eating and laughing around a table (the gist was that they'd all just agreed to be allies). One of the men suddenly keels over, dead. There were many confused faces and cries of alarm, prompting one of the kings to shrug and say, "I put poison in his mutton." After a pause, the kings laugh and continue eating... except for one, whose facial expression clearly communicates that he knows that he's the Only Sane Man in the room. - Exit Tunes Presents ACTORS: Hinata Mitsutsuka. Despite his character design and cheerful personality, he is in fact the one who reins in his fellow club members' more... unorthodox ideas. [talking to the Singing Club, about the cat the Singing Club had accidentally adopted] "Like I said, that kind of naming sense is no good!!" - In ACTORS2, Rei Ichijoudani. While he has his moments where he acts otherwise, for the most part, he acts like this. Especially when it comes to his former nanpa partner Takato... - In ACTORS3, Seijun Yuyama, mostly with regards to his Club President Kouya and friend Kaoru. Seijun: Don't drag me into this conversation, you perverts. Kaoru: I'm no pervert! I'm a Covert Pervert ! Seijun: Don't just say that so easily!! - Most comedians are trying to invoke this trope a lot of the time, particularly in observational material. - This is the schtick of Japanese comedian Jinnai Tomonori. His sketches involve him being placed in the middle of increasingly surreal situations where he's forced to point out just how ridiculous what he's dealing with is, and futilely try to enforce order on the situation. This is a fairly typical example. It's similar to a Boke and Tsukkomi Routine, except that the Boke is not an actual individual character, but anything from a video game, to an ATM, to someone we never see who's controlling the lights on a building. - The title character of Dilbert. He's about the least dysfunctional character in the comic and the closest to a genuinely good one. - Frank Mellish from Liberty Meadows gets flustered and dismayed at the animals' antics. - Sam from InSecurity may have his quirks, but compared to his wife Sedine and her cousin Roy, he's practically the voice of reason. - Conchy and Oom Paul split this role between them in Conchy, with Conchy being The Everyman and Oom Paul being a Deadpan Snarker. - Sara in Knights of the Dinner Table. - Nodwick frequently plays the role of Only Sane Man to his party, having by far the greatest amount of common sense of the lot and being less bound by the Contractual Genre Blindness that seems to come naturally to adventurers. This happens in almost every standalone story they're in, but by far the most noticeable is the comic's pastiche of The Lord of the Rings. - Franklin from the Peanuts comics: he is the only character not to have some sort of quirk or obsession. He is also the only person to point out exactly how weird everyone else in Charlie Brown's neighbourhood is. And — in a twist that was particularly ironic in the late 1960s - he is the only black character in the strip. Charlie Brown: Franklin! Where are you going? Franklin: I'm going home, Charlie Brown. This neighborhood has me shook. I didn't mind the girl in the booth or the beagle with the goggles, but that business about the "Great Pumpkin" - no, sir! Charlie Brown: But... Schroeder: Hi! Did you guys know there are only sixty more days until Beethoven's birthday? Charlie Brown: Oh, good grief ! Franklin: [under his breath] Like, wow! - Twisted Toyfare Theatre: - Spider-Man is basically the only person in the entire world with a single lick of common sense. However, this has caused him to become so jaded he flat-out refuses to participate in any kind of action if he can avoid it, for example immediately taking the blue pill to go back to sleep when Morpheus offered to take him to The Matrix. - Spider-Man might have company in the "not completely out of his mind" department in Doctor Doom, the series' other main character. Maybe. - In Bolt, Mittens the cat is the only one of the main characters who doesn't constantly have her head in the clouds, and is also the only one who is aware of the fact that Bolt is living in a fantasy world — Bolt believes that everything he's been in on his TV show is real, and Rhino would have the capacity to know what Mittens would know if he wasn't so cripplingly fanatical about Bolt and so off his rocker. - In El Arca, everyone seems to be totally in love with the female panther Panty, all of them singing and dancing to her song "I will Survive", none of them seeming to notice she's talking about murdering and eating them except for the pig, who is clearly uneasy and suspicious, while everyone else, including the other prey animals, is completely oblivious to the actual words of the song, only really seeming to pay attention to Panty's... um... assets. - Charlotte's Web: Edith Zuckerman is the only one to point out that the writing in the eponymous spiderweb ought to be taken as a sign that the spider is special. She is quickly dismissed. - The Nightmare Before Christmas: Sally seems to be the only denizen of Halloween Town who even approaches the realization that people don't want to be scared or attacked on Christmas. Santa himself later lampshades her wisdom: "The next time you get the urge to take over someone else's holiday, I'd listen to HER. She's the only one who makes any sense around this INSANE ASYLUM!" - Pocahontas: Pocahontas herself is the only character in the film, apart from Grandmother Willow, who knows right from the start that war and xenophobia will do absolutely nothing to help matters between the opposing English settlers and Powhatan tribe. She is the reason John Smith gains a greater appreciation for both the landscape around him and the people inhabiting it, and \|\|she is also the reason why the war at the end of the film comes to a peaceful resolve.\|\| - Deconstructed in Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse: Miguel O'Hara, Spider-Man 2099, is the leader of the Spider Society, which means that he's the unfunny and grounded one in a tower full of quippy, eccentric Spider-People, and the lone pragmatist in a group of idealists. It's played for laughs most of the time, but he complains to Gwen just after meeting her that he seems to be the only one taking the threat to the multiverse seriously. By the end of the movie, he's full-on ranting while slamming Miles Morales against a wall: - Sleeping Beauty: Merryweather proves to be the most realistic and grounded of the Three Good Fairies, often pointing out flaws in Flora's plans and correctly anticipating Maleficent's schemes. When Flora and Fauna attempt to make Aurora/Rose a new dress and cake for her sixteenth birthday, Merryweather is the only one who points out that they're doing an absolutely terrible job and insists on using their magic to fix the presents, saying that they have to put Aurora's happiness first. - Trolls: Branch gives off vibes of this, compared to the hyperactive Poppy and her happy-go-lucky brethren when dealing with the Bergen trying to eat them. - In Turning Red, Jin is the only one in the family who tries to approach Mei on her own terms. When Jin sees the video Mei made with her friends, he encourages her not to delete it. - In WALLE, Captain McCrea is the only human on board the Axiom that isn't entranced by the 700-year-long ennui of their existence. - The Beatles: "The Fool on the Hill". - The protagonist from Harry Chapin's "The Rock". - The singer in Tears for Fears' "Mad World" sees himself as this. It's arguable whether he actually is. - The Spine of Steam Powered Giraffe is arguably this, being much more calm and rational than his siblings. - Contessa of Emilie Autumn's Bloody Crumpets likes to see herself as this. Then again, seeing as how the Crumpets are supposed to be a group of asylum inmates, "sane" is relative. Contessa: I would like to make it very clear that I am not, I repeat, I am not, not, NOT insane! Everyone Else: [hysterical laughter] Emilie: [to the audience] ...She eats people! - Daniel Amos: The album ¡Alarma! includes a short story in the liner notes where the narrator winds up in a decrepit city, where he's the only one to notice that the religious leaders are all spouting nonsense. The narrator outright calls himself "the only sane mind in this mad world." - Drake is naturally this on the four-way collaboration "Forever" from the More Than A Game Soundtrack, since the other three are Eminem, Lil Wayne and Kanye West. - In the music video for Imagine Dragons' "On Top Of The World" has Stanley Kubrick, Richard Nixon and the band members faking the moon landing. Very badly. The whole thing is being broadcast live and everyone is watching with anticipation. Eventually, the ruse becomes obvious and people burst into the studio... so that they can cheer along with the fake astronauts, even laughing along as Richard Nixon does a cabaret line dance with the astronauts. Meanwhile, Stanley Kubrick is obviously humiliated by the entire event and the cosmonauts are watching with mixed confusion and irritation. - Caleb the medic from the Firefly game of Cool Kids Table is the only member of the Zelda's crew who isn't weird (Roc), bloodthirsty (Kimmy), or just plain thirsty (Mickey). - Kakos Industries has the company owner, Corin Deeth the III, act as this for the most part. He's a lot more logical to an almost pretentious degree though even he has had instances of becoming obsessed with inanimate objects and believes having a live baby implanted into someone's thigh is a good idea for a Halloween costume. - In Welcome to Night Vale, most Night Vale residents are so often exposed to Orwellian government surveillance, eldritch abominations, and supernatural disasters that they don't recognize such events as odd any more. Carlos, a recently-arrived scientist from the outside world, is the only person in the town who realizes just how WRONG all this is. Though even he doesn't seem to appreciate the full extent of just how weird Night Vale is - Georgie is this in Wooden Overcoats, being an easy-going Hyper-Competent Sidekick among a misanthropic jerkass (Rudyard), a shy, Covert Pervert mortician (Antigone), a talking mouse (Madeleine), and a Parody Sue (Eric). She's also Funn Funeral's Only Sane Employee. - Joey Styles was signed to play precisely this trope in ECW. Paul Heyman told him "In the midst of all the craziness, I want you to be the steady voice of reason" - In WWE, it's pretty common for play-by-play guys on commentary to do this (Especially if their were Face). Jim Ross did this on RAW while Michael Cole was the same on SmackDown!. - In a rare example of the colour commentator coming off as this, William Regal on WWE NXT - This is continuing now that he is the GM of NXT - Several heels tend to think they're this, including Chris Jericho, CM Punk, and Damien Sandow. They usually tend to drift into Not So Above It All. - Though Punk was the genuine sane one in the "love triangle...square" storyline, as Daniel Bryan was certifiably insane by that point, Kane's reputation spoke for itself while A.J. Lee, the object of all their "affections", was clearly off her rocker and three-fourths of the way to being committed. - Whenever WWE or TNA wrestlers venture out into the "real" world for skits, there is usually at least one bystander who fills this role. The "Special Guest Host" on Monday Night Raw (usually a non-wrestling-related celebrity) also tends to play this part, but there have been some exceptions - and, in at least one instance, the Special Guest Host turned out to be the heel of the show. - Jerry Springer filled this niche when he guest-starred on Monday Night Raw. Yes, that's right - Jerry Springer. (Double-subverted when he proved to be Not So Above It All, of course.) - Jonathan Coachman caught the Sanity Ball - temporarily, anyway - at the 2007 Royal Rumble. He, Theodore Long, and Kelly Kelly - representing Raw, SmackDown, and ECW, respectively - were backstage watching the Royal Rumble Match participants file in to choose their numbers from a bingo tumbler that Kelly was cranking. It wasn't long before Coachman was becoming visibly unnerved by the Carnival of Killers - including a pair of vampires (Kevin Thorn and Ariel) and a mentally-challenged Indian giant (The Great Khali) - lining up to take their numbers, as well as frustrated that Theodore Long and Kelly Kelly seemed completely unfazed by these frightening individuals. Finally, Coach lost his temper and - in a manner that made him look anything but sane - screamed at Long and Kelly that he had had all he could stand of "Your SmackDown freaks!" and "Your ECW degenerates!" As it happened, the final man to enter the room was Ric Flair - and this caused Coach to cheer up and become pleased that at last they had a classy, "normal" Superstar in their midst. Then Flair revealed that he was Not So Above It All by getting down with his bad self at an impromptu dance party thrown by Kelly's "Extreme Exposé." Talk about Playing with a Trope until its wheels fall off. - At Survivor Series 1999, wrestling porn star Val Venis led his team of "Sexual Chocolate" Mark Henry, wrestling vampire Gangrel and, filling this role, wrestling martial artist "The Lethal Weapon" Steve Blackman to victory over Davey Boy Smith and The Mean Street Posse. - CHIKARA 2009-2010: Crossbones played this role in UltraMantis Black's The Order of the Neo-Solar Temple, as a subtrope of The Un-Favourite. Mantis would fawn over Hydra and Delirious while belittling or dismissing Crossbones. - Nobody was better at being the eye of the storm while wrestlers were ranting and raving than Gordon Solie was. - On a late 1992 episode of WWF Prime Time Wrestling, Bret Hart teamed with THE ULTIMATE WARRIOR to defeat wrestling voodoo master PAPA SHANGO and KAMALA THE UGANDAN GIANT! - The Shield: Originally, Roman Reigns used to be this for the stable. Dean Ambrose was liable to fly off the handle at any time and Seth Rollins showed a startling lack of self-preservation during matches along with a sadistic streak after he ended the Shield to join The Authority. However, as the years went on, the actual Only Sane Man turned out to be Ambrose, at least in part because he was the only member to make peace with the end of the stable. Both Reigns and Rollins, meanwhile, underwent such severe Sanity Slippage that they made even Ambrose at his worst look sane in comparison. - Central to the style of comedy team Bob & Ray. As neither was a classic Straight Man, they played point/counterpoint between this and the Cloud Cuckoolander instead. - The Goon Show: Hercules Grytpype-Thynne fills this role, not that this is particularly difficult. - The Jack Benny Program: Mary was generally the most level-headed character on the show. Jack and the guest stars would fill this role often as well. - In The Men from the Ministry April essentially plays this role in Series 1. This might've been a factor to her disappearance in Series 2, since she doesn't get much material in the comedy (apart from the episode "Moderately Important Person", where she's the main focus of Prince Salim's lust). - Old Harry's Game: At the start of the show, The Professor is the only major character who isn't completely incompetent and/or a vicious sadist. \|\|After he leaves, Edith takes his place\|\|. - Karl Pilkington of The Ricky Gervais Show. While Ricky and Steven laugh about all his thoughts, a fair number of his questions and statements are perfectly logical: notably a thought experiment where he wondered if one would be able to confidently state that they are the original if they had a clone with all the same exact memories up to the point of their creation. - Dawn of a New Age: Oldport Blues: - Despite her mental illnesses that make her believe that she's unstable, Zia is shown to be one of the more dependable characters in tense situations. When she finds a group of students attempting to break out the school- without even bothering to check the emergency exits first- she calls them out for overreacting. She does so again when the group jump to killing Benjy now that he's hulked out, rather than seeking a non-violent solution. - Nurse Dini lacks the quirks of the other staff at Rogers High, and is instead a straight-talker who's sensible to her patients. - Ace Attorney: All playable lawyers (these being Phoenix Wright, Mia Fey, Apollo Justice, Miles Edgeworth, Gregory Edgeworth, and Athena Cykes) play this role. They live in a world full of wacky over-the-top personalities, and they are constantly reminded of that. Most of them seem to enjoy it most of the time though, constantly thinking on how ridiculous nearly everyone else is in the comfort of their minds. That said, there are a few other stable personalities besides them, but they are the exception. It's worth noting that even the main characters are only really stable by comparison: this is the agency that made its name for itself doing things like cross-examining a parrot and summoning ghosts whenever they ran out of ideas, after all. - Apollo deserves special mention, as he is consistently portrayed as the Only Sane Man, even when he is not the playable character. - The ultimate prize for Only Sane Attorney has to go to Gregory Edgeworth; when he's playable in a flashback, he proves laid-back, polite, and professional, with his only 'quirk' being how much he thinks about his young son Miles. He even admonishes his assistant for appearing to not take the crime scene seriously. - The Only Sane Prosecutor prize goes to Klavier Gavin (with post-timeskip Edgeworth as a runner-up). Yes, he has a second career as a rock star, and yes, he air guitars in court, which is kind of weird. He's also the only prosecutor you face to be a Graceful Loser with no baggage regarding his win record, completely non-corrupt, and have no grudge against any main characters. He's also fairly good at keeping quirky witnesses on-task (compare Edgeworth, who can never get them to even say their names on the first go) and is the only prosecutor to think of issuing a gag order surrounding a high-profile crime. Being called "Herr Forehead" and lightly teased/flirted with is tame compared to what other prosecutors get away with. The only times Klavier is remotely antagonistic is when he's an Unwitting Pawn to people he genuinely trusts, and he immediately about-faces when given reason to believe they've betrayed that trust. - In Code:Realize, Victor is not particularly any more normal than the rest of his companions — a group which includes a self-proclaimed gentleman thief with peculiar ideas about justice, an excitable and mishap-prone Gadgeteer Genius who plans to travel to the moon, the mysterious and eccentric Comte de Saint-Germain, the hero of the Vampire War who's known as a "human weapon," and an amnesiac girl who melts anything she touches — but he is the only one of them who seems to expect people to behave or events to occur in a reasonable manner. Cardia is also normally sensible but doesn't have a strong frame of reference for what's normal and what isn't, which means poor Victor is the one most often reacting in dismay and exasperation to the group's antics. - Danganronpa: - All of the 'Detective' characters (Kyoko, Chiaki, Shuichi) count, as they're the ones whose first reaction to a crime scene is to start solving the crime instead of freaking out or accusing random students- a very important trait when not solving crimes gets everyone but the perp killed. - The player characters (Makoto, Hajime, Kaede) embody the trope in a different way, since they're the ones most vocal about how mistrusting each other is playing into Monokuma's hands and focused on ending the game instead of playing it. Hajime gets special mention as the snarkiest protagonist and the one most likely to vocalize his observations. - As a general rule, the vast majority of Danganronpa characters are a massive Dysfunction Junction who seriously needs therapy note : especially the more unstable characters like Togami, Kyoko, Chihiro, Mondo, Mikan, Hiyoko, Nagito..., but outside of the painfully normal main protagonists, there are two exceptions overall: Leon Kuwata and Sonia Nevermind; Leon's Casanova Wannabe and Keet tendencies aside, the former had a pretty normal upbringing due to getting his talent through The Gift and implied to come from a rich family (his cousin, Kanon, is the daughter of a TV company executive) and thus is pretty quick to point out a lot of the cast's zanier behavior. Sonia is largely the same way, who's generally speaking a Spoiled Sweet Nice Girl who, outside of being a Nightmare Fetishist and Covert Pervert, doesn't have nearly as many issues as her friends do. Interestingly, \|\|Leon had the rotten luck of being attacked by Sayaka and killing her in impulse that he justified as self-defense, resulting in his execution. Meanwhile, Sonia had no such incidents and it's her friendly personality that helped her survive to the end of the game\|\|. - Jaehee Kang in Mystic Messenger is by far the most reasonable member of the RFA, the charity organization you join at the start of the game. This trait is made apparent in the choices necessary to enter her route: she likes a main character who is optimistic and hard-working, but sensible and cautious. She claims that nothing special has ever happened to her (downplaying the fact that she's lost both of her parents so young) and is the only one in RFA who is rightly wary of you the beginning of the main routes, which makes sense because you're a total stranger entering a locked, private server, and suddenly living in their dead friend's apartment under extremely suspicious and mysterious circumstances. Whereas everyone else warms to you pretty quickly, you have to put in a little work to get her to begin trusting you. - The protagonist is the only one in Dra+Koi who seems to actually be at all well balanced. His classmates are all crazy and his mother wants to rape him. The dragon herself indicate she'd like to eat him or sleep with him and sees little difference between the two options. - The Fruit of Grisaia: Makina believes that this is how Yumiko sees herself, and considering the quirky and wacky nature of her classmates, it' no wonder. - Kenji and Hisao both claim they're this in Katawa Shoujo. Kenji is quite offended at Hisao's claim: "There can't be two last sane men... There can only be one, like in that foreign movie where there could only be one, and in the end there is only one dude left, because that was the point." (In other words, Hisao is, Kenji only thinks he is.) - Doki Doki Literature Club! - Natsuki is the only member of the titular club who keeps her head throughout the entire game, even as \|\|the game starts to show its true psychological horror colors\|\|. She even writes a letter begging the player to help Yuri with her Self-Harm problem and is the only member of the group who \|\|doesn't commit suicide when she dies\|\|. - Subverted with Monika: In the first act, when everyone else's problems are still relatively normal (so Natsuki, for example, is suffering from lack of respect, poor self-esteem, and anger management issues), it seems Monika is the only one who's totally fine and stable. \|\|It turns out she's worse than any of the others and the cause of all the insanity going on since the end of the first act.\|\| - Shinrai: Broken Beyond Despair: Raiko, the Player Character, is a somewhat gloomy introvert, but she's by far the least eccentric of the ten teenagers who attend Rie's party. It's played seriously at the climax, when Raiko is the only surviving character who thinks rationally and \|\|doesn't immediately accuse Kamen of the murders.\|\| - Unlike Rire and Strade, Sano in Boyfriend To Death isn't as gung-ho to kickstart the Cold-Blooded Torture, and is considerably kinder if he warms up to you. It says something about how utterly fucked up in the head the "boyfriends" are when the Mad Doctor is the closest to a sane man. - Ab3, the Author Avatar in The Binder of Shame. He's kind of a jerk, but he's still leagues more moral and rational than the other players, and is the only one who calls out things like El Disgusto's obsession with ninjas and lack of personal hygiene, Psycho Dave's white supremacy, etc. - The Black Legion of the Dark Lord Sketch Melkor has Mac, who is a friend of the Dark Lord Sketch and holds the title of Plain Old Bilbo. She has, so far, basically been the only one to attempt talking reason to Sketch. Everyone else just goes along with everything she says. - Welshman in Englishman started out like this (and usually turned out to be wrong) while later on he seems to give up and accept the insanity of the Englishverse. - Oli White in Escape the Night is the only one who never loses focus of the groups original goal; escaping the house with as many people as possible. He never wastes time bickering and is always looking out for his fellow teammates. Hes also the least eccentric cast member in the entire show. His reactions to situations are also the most realistic.(usually exasperation) - Sasha Hunter in Greek Ninja finds herself rolling her eyes all the time at her comrades' antics. - Guy of Life in a Game, being the only "real" person in his video game world, is the only one who questions the insane video game logic that everyone else seems to take for granted. It comes and goes, but the best example of it is in Episode 6-2. - Rational Wiki: The category Right of Reason is for conservatives with enough reasonable viewpoints that they can be taken seriously note : Gerald Ford, Robert Taft, T.Boone Pickens, etc.. The leftist version is called Left of Reason note : Oscar Wilde, George Orwell, Bernie Sanders, etc.. - Algernon's characterization in the Something Awful: Dungeons & Dragons gaming sessions, being dragged into increasingly ridiculous situations with increasingly ridiculous people. - Whateley Universe: Both Lancer and She-Beast play this role for Team Kimba and the Bad Seeds, respectively. - Several in Farce of the Three Kingdoms, on different levels. Of the founders of the titular kingdoms, Sun Quan is the only one who could possibly be described as "sane." Zhou Yu is far from sane, but he's the only character to point out that the hero/villain premise is absurd, and the first to react appropriately to Liu Bei. - Survival of the Fittest: A common character trope that shows up, in particular in response to some of the more outlandish characters. A few examples of this include: Heather Pendegrast, Lyndi Thibodeaux, Huy Tran, Eddie Sullivan, Christopher Harlin, Melanie Beckett, Sean Leibowitz. - Hall of Sida in Njal Gets Burned. Though he certainly has his Cloud Cuckoo Lander moments (for instance, he thinks Christianity is based around worship of the Archangel Michael), he's the strongest advocate for peaceful resolutions and one of the few people respected enough by both sides to have a chance of pulling it off.	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/OnlySaneWoman
Only You Can Repopulate My Race - TV Tropes On my home planet, we can no longer breed I've been sent as a receptacle to store your seed Oh, boy. Normally, this would be a fantasy come true for some men out there. The fantasy of a beautiful girl actually wanting to have unprotected sex with you, with the explicit goal of becoming the mother of your child as a result. Be Careful What You Wish For, 'cause here's the catch: neither of you actually wants it, especially you, the bloke. Due to circumstances running the gamut of prophecies, genetics, curses, or just plain old writer viciousness, you, the bloke, are blessed (or, rather, cursed) to be the only man who can father the child of the female protagonist. But wait! It gets worse: she is amongst the last, if not the last, of her species/people (or at least the last who can bear children), and the whole race will die if you refuse. Therefore, she often has an "Entitled to Have You" attitude. And considering that the unfortunate aspiring young mother is more often than not a vampire, goddess, alien or equally super-powered being known for their short tempers, politely saying "no" alone would drastically shorten your lifespan... or maybe just your limbs. You don't need those, right? Of course, there is also a reasonable chance that said being's mating rituals might not conform to the human way of doing things. Even if she is reasonable enough to not get offended by refusal, there is always the good old guilt factor, especially if she is a True Companion or equally dear friend, making acceptance and refusal all the more awkward. Hilarity Ensues. Of course, a lot of these situations could be fixed using artificial insemination, not that that ever happens. (Please note that repopulating the human race is not Truth in Television. Repopulation with one man and one woman would involve too much incest to work; scientists estimate that you need a base population of at least 500 people to maintain proper genetic diversity.) If this trope is utilized in Fanfic, expect coitus to ensue. See also Gendercide; in these situations, the race in question is the human race, and it's never pretty for the last man or woman. Compare Endangered Species, Last of His Kind, Stalker with a Test Tube, What Measure Is a Non-Unique?. Sister Trope of Adam and Eve Plot. ## Examples: - Poor Aono Tsukune of Rosario + Vampire is the target of a Succubus and a Snow Girl, both species of which are well known for their poor responses to rejection. To make matters worse, Snow Girls are an endangered species note : And their extremely short ovulation periods aren't helping matters., and he's in love with a third girl. There's no biological reason that it has to be Tsukune (theoretically any other fertile man would be able to fill the role), it's just that he's the one they both fell in love with, and it comes off as Single-Target Sexuality for both girls. - Let's also not forget that in this world succubi gain their power by loving others, and a succubus who cannot love (read: consummate with the one they love) will eventually die. This succubus has fallen in love with Tsukune. - A rather disturbing adventure in Digimon Adventure 02: A group of borderline Eldritch Abomination Digimon summon 11-year-old (13-year-old in the dub) Hikari to the Dark Ocean with hopes that she can help them to resist the "Dark God who is not a god". Okay, that didn't sound too bad at first... Until they say how she'd be helping. In the dub, they ask her to be their bride; in the original, though, they explicitly say that they want her to bear their descendants so that they can fight the "Dark God". - This is what the Mina's cousins want to do to her (willing or not) in Dance in the Vampire Bund. Is it any wonder Mina would prefer the company of a teenage werewolf to these asshats? - Karin has a variation on this. Instead of being the only vampire capable of having children, \|\|Karin's blood can grant fertility to other vampires\|\|. - In DearS, male lead Takeya becomes this \|\|after leaving with Ren and the now fertile Dears on their fixed spaceship, and finding out this is going to be his main job\|\|. - This is how Kurama is introduced into Urusei Yatsura. Ataru was chosen and isn't very reluctant. - In Monster Musume, the Lamia race are all women and need human males to procreate. In the past, they would kidnap men to make them into village "husbands" to breed with. With the Broken Masquerade cracking down on this, they've become entirely dependent on the cultural exchange program to bring in more men. - Played for Horror in Goblin Slayer. The goblins are always male, and they can breed with women of other races. The children are always goblins and not hybrids. They cruelly abduct and rape female humans, elves, and members of other races so that new goblins are born. - Hoo boy. Knuckles from Sonic the Hedgehog could be the subject of this with either Julie-Su, Tikal or Shade depending on the shipper's preference. - In Dragon Ball, although not as common, either Goku and Fem!Vegeta or Vegeta and Fem!Goku fanfics do this. Even if Fem!Goku already has a child by Krillin or an Original Character. - A variation happens in Blessed with a Hero's Heart. When Izuku uses Reincarnation on Wiz, she ends up turning into an Avariel, a species of Winged Humanoid elves favored by Eris who went extinct in the last great war. Chris the thief witnesses this, and immediately makes no secret her intent to use Wiz as a baby factory to repopulate the species. Naturally, Izuku and his party vehemently refuse. - Introduced in the remakes of Pokémon Ruby and Sapphire, Zinnia is one of two members of the Draconid tribe seen in-game, and the other is Zinnia's grandmother. This has spawned various stories and fanart where Zinnia must 'continue her people'. This is not a universal concept though, as some adaptions like Pokémon Adventures feature more Draconids with no need for such measures. - Vic in A Boy and His Dog is lured from the nuclear-wasteland surface to "downunder" because the sterile men of the subterranean colony need him to inseminate their women. Unlucky for him, the insemination will be of the artificial sort, and he'll be killed after he's impregnated enough of them. - In Hell Comes to Frogtown, titular character Sam Hell is one of the rare fertile males after the nuclear war killed many and rendered most of the rest sterile. The government orders him to go to a city of froglike mutants and mate with a group of fertile females imprisoned there. (Which is, admittedly, not really how radiation works, but the title should have told you what to expect. - The very premise of Hundra. After her tribe is wiped out, the title character sets out in search of a man to impregnate her. - Played with in Waterworld, as not a means of repopulation but inbreeding prevention: inhabitants of atolls (floating settlements) provide nubile females to visitors, such as nomadic sailors coming to trade. This brings problems to the protagonist when he's not willing to take the offer. - There's something of a subplot in Immortal like this, at least as far as "rare person who can mate with gods." - In the 2011 All-CGI Cartoon Rio, Blu and Jewel are the last male and female blue macaws left respectively, and must mate in order to save the species. It would've been very easy if some complications didn't arise. - This is what the all-female Lubi-Dubi tribe intend to do with the men they abduct in Carry On Up the Jungle. Walter Bagley (known to them as King Tonka the Great) fulfilled the role for ten years all by himself! - The Postman is asked by a young husband to impregnate his wife after it is established the Postman doesn't have any inheritable diseases. - In Frankenstein Island, Sheila Frankenstein intends for the four captured balloonists to impregnate the Amazons so their lineage will continue. - Discworld: - Spoofed in Terry Pratchett's Interesting Times. Rincewind is stuck on a tropical island and is found by a tribe of lovely Amazons (a regional curiosity for their white skins and blonde hair) who have lost all their men to a highly specific plague and require him to repopulate their tribe. Sadly, Rincewind is magically "rescued" before he can obtain his greatest fantasy (potatoes). - Parodied in Eric, where Eric has typical adolescent male fantasies of all-female kingdoms in the jungle that regularly kidnap men and make them live with them for certain services only men can provide until they die of exhaustion. However, these "certain services" are more along the lines of mowing lawns, changing lightbulbs, killing spiders, and sorting out strange noises in the attic. - A female variant appears in Mercedes Lackey's Heralds of Valdemar "Oathbound" stories. An oath-sister of the last survivor of a Shin'a'in Clan agrees to physically reestablish the bloodline (with great success). Though she doesn't provide all the clanmembers - many were immigrants from other clans. They just needed a core of people from the original clan, and evidently unrelated oathsisters count. Since the oath itself is agreed to by the Shin'a'in goddess, it's probably a case of a goddess did it. Plus the fact that not only do other clans exist for the blood to be introduced, but the clans are bound as much by tradition as blood, not to mention that most are inter-married anyway. - Appears during a hilarious incident in Journey to the West. Slight subversion: while the women are still able to reproduce, Xuanzang was still the first man ever to come to their kingdom. Pity he's a monk. - In Garth Nix's Old Kingdom trilogy, it is revealed at the end of Lirael that Lirael's mother Saw her child in a prophetic vision, and knew two things: 1. The child had to be fathered by the Abhorsen, and 2. The entire world would end if this child did not exist. Fortunately, the Abhorsen seemed to be a rather... understanding gentleman about it all. - The Metamorphosis of Prime Intellect: \|\|Having just wiped out the rest of humanity\|\| by Logic Bombing the titular sufficiently advanced AI, there is only the female lead and one male left on Earth. After having a son and daughter, she implements her repopulation plan, which starts out with the father impregnating the daughter and her son impregnating her and somehow goes from there... - Also dealing with the Unfortunate Implications, in Octavia Butler's Lilith's Brood series, humanity has been basically sterilized by aliens who intend to interbreed with them. A small pocket of runaway humans is surprised when a young girl becomes pregnant after a sexual assault by a passing stranger. Deciding that this is the only way to perpetuate the pure-human species, the rest of the group \|\|separates the mother and child, raising the baby until puberty, when they then force him to impregnate his mother. By the time anyone finds this little colony, the resulting generations are suffering nasty mutations.\|\| - After killing off most of the members of his father's race, including all the men, Cal Leandros finds out that the only surviving Auphe are females, and guess what they want him for now... - Kurt Vonnegut's Galápagos isn't a completely straight example, but it is notable for averting both the lack of artificial insemination (done by hand, literally) and actually showing the effects of the implied incest and genetic bottleneck. - Saphira in Inheritance Cycle is painfully aware that she's one of the last dragons in the world, and the only male she's aware of is the partner of the Big Bad. \|\|When she finds out there's another surviving male dragon, she approaches him, but he refuses. She doesn't take it well.\|\| - The Alfred Bester short story "5,271,009" explores this scenario (and a few other cliched-even-in-1954 sf wish-fulfillment scenarios) for the sole purpose of poking holes in it. - In the sci-fi novella The Night Faces, the folklore of a Lost Colony attests that the planet's population descends from just one man and two women, one light-haired and one dark-haired, who survived a starship crash. Justified, in that the story turns out to be \|\|a metaphor for the colonists' Jekyll & Hyde nature, as they periodically change from peaceful to violent in response to a psychoactive spore in the atmosphere\|\|. - In Mikhail Akhmanov's Ash, a bomber pilot named Hadas Kewm crash-lands on Garuda, the colony Earth is bombing to hell for at least a decade. He is captured by a group of Garudan colonists, who live in a subterranean city. Most of their population has degraded due to radiation, underground living, and cannibalism. Hadas is told he'll be impregnating females in order to inject fresh, uncontaminated DNA into their gene pool. At first, Hadas thinks it may be fun, but he finds out that the brutally-efficient Garudans aren't about to leave such an important thing to chance. They artificially "stimulate" him with electricity and collect the semen for artificial insemination. Occasionally, to help him get excited, they bring in a naked woman without letting him touch her. Needless to say, he doesn't enjoy the experience much. - In David and Leigh Eddings's The Belgariad and Mallorean, the Marag people were wiped out long ago by their neighbors because of gold. Centuries later, the protagonists find a Marag woman as a slave in another neighboring country, referred to in prophecy as "The Mother of the Race That Died"; she becomes attracted (for several reasons) to a zealot sworn to celibacy, who returns the affection (despite himself) but holds to his vow... right up until his god tells him that isn't what the god had in mind. By the end of the series, it's mentioned they have a small army of children and counting. (Mara is implied to be giving it a push.) - Poul Anderson's After Apocalypse handles the need for a gene pool. A handful of women survive, and when they find a ship of men, discussion almost immediately begins about the way they will need to practice polyandry to maximize the number of genes they save for the next generation. - In Roger Zelazny's story "A Rose for Ecclesiastes", the protagonist falls in love with a woman of the dying Martian race; he doesn't learn until afterwards that the whole thing was this trope and that the woman was not happy about having to sleep with him (each of them fulfilled a described role in a Martian prophecy about the only way to save their race, even her not being in love with him was part of it). - At one point in Xanth history, the harpies had no men. Since harpies are half-human and half-vulture, they survived by capturing each of those species in alternate generations and breeding with them; however, the offspring were always female. Eventually one male harpy is found magically preserved with the Brain Coral, and he apparently manages to father sons by the main events of the series. - A very nice example from the The Witcher saga. Dryads are an elven subrace, and they need men, but they hate humans as a species. Geralt actually offers the kidnapped man some tips: "Don't think of yourself as a sex god, talk about trees and weather, when you are not needed, go away." - There is a race of witches in His Dark Materials. They enter into romantic or sexual relationships with human men in order to have children with them. Because there are no male witches, they need human men. If the child so born is a boy, it will be an ordinary human. On the other hand, if it is a girl, it will be a witch. - Later it turns out that there is a parallel world in which there are also male witches. However, they do not appear in the plot but are merely mentioned. - The fairies from The Shadowhunter Chronicles have to refresh their bloodlines regularly, otherwise their children will get sick and wither away. Because of this, they swap human toddlers for their own. Some fairies also lure humans into the fairy realm in order to seduce them there and have children with them. The shadowhunters don't like the fairies to do this, but they understand that if they don't, there is no way for them to survive. However, they prefer it when the fairies exchange small children than when they lure adult humans into the fairy realm and then no longer release them. - Some elements are averted in the Doctor Who episode "Delta and the Bannermen". Delta and her daughter are the last of her species but don't take any action to do anything about that. Billy secretly takes Chimeron royal jelly to transform himself into a Chimeron-Human hybrid without Delta's knowledge so that he can mate with Delta. The variation here is that he is perfectly willing to go through with all this, whereas Delta is reluctant — aside from Billy's sacrifice, the transformation is not entirely safe, and, as the Doctor points out, even in his new form, inter-species breeding could result in "the most terrible mutations". - Star Trek: The Original Series: - "Wink Of An Eye," where a species of Human Aliens has become hyperaccelerated until Time Stands Still for them, but it left their males infertile, and so they kidnap spacemen for breeding purposes. Their leader takes a shine to Captain Kirk, leading to a Duel of Seduction between the two. - And another episode had the inversion of this — A massively overpopulated planet that doesn't believe in suicide or contraception and is immune to sterilization tries to get Kirk to sleep with a local girl to spread a disease to her people and increase the death rate, no kidding. They even inexplicably build a huge copy of the Enterprise interior to make him feel "at home". Really, there are much less embarrassing ways to get help. Like actually asking for help. But Kirk's gotta get his recommended weekly allowance of poontang... - A slight variation in the original pilot "The Cage," where the Talosians were breeding a race of humans as slaves to rebuild their planet for them. When Captain Pike resisted mating with the only female available, they brought down two of his crewmates so he could choose from a blonde, a brunette, and a redhead (although logically they wouldn't have wanted him to pick just one; this was network television in 1965, after all). - Star Trek: Voyager. In "Favourite Son", a Lady Land convinces Harry Kim that he's a native of their world. Turns out there are very few men born among their species, so they infect passing spacemen with their DNA, lure them to their world and harvest it—that is all of their DNA. - On 3rd Rock from the Sun, when Sally saw snow for the first time, followed by a blackout, she became convinced the world was ending. She was alone with Dick's student Leon at the time, who explained that he would have to impregnate her in order for the human race to survive. Much to Leon's disappointment, the lights came back on just when they were about to go at it. - The Farscape three-part episode "Look At The Princess" hits most points of this trope, replacing "repopulate my species" with "continue the royal lineage". The Sebacean princess was the victim of "DNA poisoning" by her scheming brother, which made her incompatible with Sebaceans, but fully compatible with John. Drama and politics ensue. \|\|Although the original plan was to play it straight, what they ended up doing was using his genetics to get her pregnant and then just lying that her actual boyfriend was the father.\|\| - Played completely straight in one episode of Andromeda. This is complicated by the fact that the alien queen who successfully mates with Hunt also needs her planet to pass through a gas cloud which the crew, presuming it to be a bad thing, temporarily moved out of the planet's path. Oddly, the Nietzschean who is also present (from a society where being a father is considered the highest honor achievable) doesn't bring it up when she announces that choosing Hunt was essentially random. - In an episode of Sliders, the heroes land in a world where most of the male population of the world was wiped out during the Gulf War by a bio-weapon Saddam Hussein unleashed that attacks the Y chromosome. The remaining men have been put into forced "breeding camps" to repopulate the world. When Quinn, Arturo, and Rembrandt (with Wade) arrive and are seen walking down the street, they create quite a stir. Apparently, this world never developed artificial insemination, needing the act to be done the old-fashioned way. Arturo exclaims that he could get the population up to speed if they would care more about his IQ instead of his sperm count. - In the Red Dwarf episode, "Psirens", the titular GELFs attempt to lure Cat down to an asteroid by claiming that they are part of a dying race where only women are left and that they could only be saved if he made love to all of them. The others are incredulous that anyone other than the Cat would be dumb enough to fall for this line. - The Outer Limits (1995): In "Flower Child", a plant-based alien named Violet is driven to mate with a human male, namely Chris, so that her race can survive and take over the Earth. - Alien Worlds played with this trope in the episode "Seeds of Time", where the last survivor of an extinct alien race reconstitutes in a body that happens to be a genetic duplicate of Maura Cassidy's old flame and wishes to have Maura Cassidy help him repopulate his race, much to her disgust. Fortunately, the alien is content with creating a genetic duplicate of Maura so she doesn't have to come with him to his home planet. - Played totally straight Ride the Cyclone. Ricky Potts' signature song, "Space Aged Bachelor Man," recounts the seafood-induced fever dream of a hormone-addled nerd surrounded by his family's 14 felines. In his dream, he is approached by the sexy cat-people of the Zolarian Galaxy, who need his "seed" to save their race. During the course of the song, the female Zolarians (played by his classmates in Halloween masks) beg him to save their galaxy by making love to them, while the elderly male Zolarians (also played by his classmates, this time with vocoders/ autotune) graciously thank him for "laying with their daughters." - In Fans!, one character, a pudgy, hairy ubernerd-type, had a sort of what-if mini-arc where he was the last human being alive, and aliens asked him to re-sire humanity, using reproductions of his friends made using his memories. \|\|It skips to decades later, as the "Allfather" is managing the burgeoning human population, and taking steps to reduce the inevitable effects of inbreeding due to the limited gene pool.\|\| - Vampire Cheerleaders: After silently observing Stephanie for months, the \|\|mothen\|\| chose her as \|\|their new Queen\|\| and abducted her in order to replenish their dying race. By the time her sister and her friends found her, she had already begun breeding with \|\|them\|\|. Soon afterward, she learned she was pregnant \|\|and laid a moth egg to add to all the others she had already laid\|\|. - El Goonish Shive: Played for horror with Damien, a horrifically powerful seyunolu who believes himself a god, and is trying to capture fellow seyunolu Grace in order to breed an army with which to overthrow humanity. - Leela of Futurama met a fellow Cyclops and realizes she has to marry him to continue the species, even though he quickly turns out to be a coarse, egotistical jerk. It turns out to be a scam—the male Cyclops is actually a shapeshifting alien who pretended to be from her species, and actually had four other oddly-shaped fiancées he was tricking the same way. \|\|It later turns out that Leela's actually a human with a minor mutation, so this wouldn't apply anyway.\|\|	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/OnlyYouCanRepopulateMyRace
On the Money - TV Tropes An easy way to create conflict is to put characters in a situation where they need a certain amount of money. They may need to pay a fine or a bribe, pay back taxes to prevent their home from being foreclosed, make repairs, purchase a plane ticket, or what have you. The point is, they need a certain amount of money to resolve the conflict, and it is more than they could earn in a reasonable amount time through ordinary means. But they are in luck! A sudden windfall is available, often in the form of a prize for a contest or competition, but sometimes in the form of an inheritance, a hiring bonus for a new job, the price for selling off something the characters own, or some other such thing. And conveniently, this windfall is almost exactly as much as the characters need to resolve their conflict. While the windfall is usually cash, it can come as a MacGuffin or in some other form, as long as it just happens to be exactly what the characters need. The inverse, in which the characters first come into a sudden windfall and then have it taken away by an equally sudden expense of nearly the same amount, such as a fine incurred in the process of gaining that windfall, is commonly used as a Reset Button, especially when the characters are kept in Perpetual Poverty. Status Quo Is God, after all. A Sub-Trope of Contrived Coincidence. Often overlaps with Cash Gate. Compare and contrast A Fool and His New Money Are Soon Parted, when there's no specific expense in the plot, the character just loses their newfound fortune, and Taxman Takes the Winnings, where the expense that needs to be paid is the tax on the windfall itself. ## Examples: - Inverted in JoJo's Bizarre Adventure. In Part 7, Johnny and Gyro gain a lot of money through the Stand Sugar Mountain's Spring, but if they don't spend it all before the sun sets, they are turned into trees. - In the Black Cat manga, Sven was just talking with Train about how they have a $15 million debt when one of Chronos' leaders, Karl, asks Train to talk with him. Karl proceeds to tell Train that he wants him to catch Gyanza, and informs him that the bounty he's offering for people to catch him is... guess what? $15 million. - Inverted by Hayate the Combat Butler (at least in the manga), when Hayate is given 1,000,000 yen to go shopping with, then somehow manages to stumble into disaster after disaster, until he's left with just 12 yen: the same amount of money he had at the very start of the series, just before he met Nagi. - In Negima! Magister Negi Magi, the Magic World tournament prize is exactly how much the group need to \|\|buy back Ako, Akira and Natsumi from slavery\|\|. It's also the "more believable" variant as the prize is a very round 1 million. - This happens a lot in Liar Game, as the whole point of the series is for the characters to get out of the millions of yen debt that the organization had put them in in the first place. All the characters are actually required to compete and win the challenges in order to break even or come out with more money. - In Bowling King, Shautieh Ley needs to get 3 million Taiwan dollars to pay off his love interest's debt... and it just so happens that the prize money for the big bowling tournament is 3 million Taiwan dollars. This is, however, ultimately subverted; the company sponsoring the God's Hand Cup goes bankrupt while the tournament is underway, and the competition is cancelled indefinitely just after the semifinals were finished. Meaning he didn't get the money. - In Full Metal Panic!, there's the novel side story "Golden Days With Captain Amigo," where Kurz convinces Sousuke to go on a treasure hunt with him. They "borrow" without permission an M6 AS, and get into the cave. They actually end up having gold and jewels, which amount to being worth 10 million dollars. Both Kurz and Sousuke, seeing the possibility of a much nicer future (leaving Mithril and having an early retirement), get very excited, and take the treasure chests out of the cave. However, the cave ends up collapsing, causing the M6 AS to explode. Of course, it turns out that the M6 AS was worth 10 million dollars, and the treasure is taken from them to pay for it. (However, it is mentioned that the executives rounded the cost of the AS to be higher, so that they could take all the treasure from them.) - Eyeshield 21, at least in the manga. Upon completing the Death March, the Devil Bats need to get enough money to fly back to Japan (don't ask how some 16~ year old kids are permitted to gamble, even if one of them has blackmail on damn near everyone). Monta and Sena get extremely lucky, but eventually lose it all. Cue Hiruma playing blackjack and counting cards, winning the money they need and then some. - In D.Gray-Man, Allen had to pay off his master's debt as a child. He often spent the exact amount of money on food directly afterward. - Spider-Man does this around the time of Secret Wars II; he takes a notebook from a building that the Beyonder had turned to gold and he exactly uses up the notebook's value for Aunt May. - Justified in the Dallas Barr story Immortalité à Vendre, where Stileman knows exactly how much Barr needs for his next Longevity Treatment, and makes a point of offering exactly that amount (one million pounds) for the mission. In the end, Stileman skips the middleman and directly takes the dying Barr to the longevity clinic. - Drives the plot of Disney's Home on the Range. Patch of Heaven is about to go under unless the cows can come up with $750 in three days, and what do you know? That cattle rustler who displaced Maggie has a bounty of $750 on him. - In the first Spider-Man movie, Peter needs a certain amount of money to buy a new car and impress MJ. Luckily, that's exactly how much he can win by lasting three minutes with Bonesaw in the steel cage. Since he knocks Bonesaw out in less than that, the promoter decides to give him a fraction of the promised reward. - In German comedian Otto's first movie, he has to pay a loan shark exactly 9876.50 German marks. During the movie, there's not just one, but many opportunities presenting to him to get exactly that amount. - Averted, though confusingly, in the Israeli movie Ushpizin. The protagonist, a Torah scholar with no income, would need 1,000 shekels to buy a particularly beautiful etrog (a fruit used on the Jewish festival of Sukkot). He finds himself the surprise recipient of 1,000 dollars. Many viewers were mystified at how someone with no money could blow the entire sum he received on an etrog, when in fact 1,000 dollars is worth three to four times as much as 1,000 shekels. Same number, different currency. The dollar is used extensively in Israel, so it's not unrealistic, but it's still confusing. - Zig-Zagged in Nine Queens. The two heroes, Marcos and Juan, are setting up an elaborate con on a millionaire collector, that will end with him paying them $450,000 for a set of counterfeit postage stamps. After some plot twists, they lose the forgeries, but they suddenly get the possibility of buying the real stamps for only $250,000, thus making a large profit after selling them. It turns out that Marcos has exactly $200,000 saved, while Juan has exactly $50,000 saved. Juan finds it suspicious and accuses Marcos of trying to play a con on him, but Marcos denies it and convinces Juan, and they go on with the plan. \|\|It was Juan who was playing the con on Marcos.\|\| - In A Civil Action the protagonist is told how much money his law firm needs to stay in business. Later, he's offered exactly that amount to settle a big case, suggesting that the rival law firm had inside information. - Inverted in Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance. When Ryu tries to get a kidney for his sister on the black market, he's swindled out of $10,000 won. That happens to be the exact sum of money necessary for a transplant should an organ become available legally. - In Duct Tape Forever, a movie based on The Red Green Show, Possum Lodge is fined 10,000 dollars. Luckily, there is a duct tape competition and the third prize is 10,000 dollars. - In The Brady Bunch Movie, Mike and Carol owe $20,000 in back taxes that have to be paid by next week. And guess what the prize is at the big "Search for the Stars" contest? And guess whose kids turn out to be, um, a slightly talented pop group? - The male protagonist of Best Player was a Basement-Dweller until his parents decided to sell their house and move to Florida. Since his parents would no longer support him, he'd have to either cough up $175,000 to buy their house or find another place to live. He then entered a videogame competition where the first prize is $175,500.00 - In DodgeBall: A True Underdog Story, the plot kicks off when the heroes need $50,000 dollars to pay government fines, and there just so happens to be a Dodgeball tournament with a $50,000 cash prize. - Subverted in the end. \|\|Peter sold the gym the night before the championship match. Then double subverted, as he bet the entire sum on his team winning, and winds up a millionaire in the end, more than enough to buy back his gym and his nemesis' gym as well.\|\| - In Happy Gilmore, the titular character needs $275,000 to prevent his grandmother's home being seized by the IRS. He incurs a $25,000 fine after getting into a fistfight with Bob Barker, but is awarded a $300,000 endorsement contrast with Subway, leaving him with exactly enough to pay off her back taxes. Subverted when he arrives too late to pay the taxes off outright and is outbid when the house is put up for auction. - Lampshaded in The Night Angel Trilogy, when the protagonist takes the fact that a particular item intended to be comically overpriced to discourage buyers happens to be priced at exactly the amount he got by selling his magic sword as a sign he was meant to buy it. - Ascendance of a Bookworm: After finding out that Angelica, one of her guard knights, is one the verge of failing Wizarding School, the protagonist drags her three other guard knights into helping Angelica get better grades. She decides to give the three other knights a bonus for their trouble: one of her "creations" for each of the better off ones, a relatively large sum of money for the Impoverished Patrician among them. When the latter gets the money, it turns out to be just enough to cover a debt he incurred earlier in the story. Hearing this, the protagonist briefly considers giving him something else on top of the money because \|\|her poorest knight incurred that debt because he was involved in an incident that damaged a set of very expensive clothes needed for the protagonist's previous job and had to pay part of the cost of replacing them. However, after getting the new set of clothes, the protagonist ended up only keeping said previous job for half a year before her sudden adoption into nobility\|\|. - All in the Family: Season 3 saw the episode Mike Comes Into Money, where Mike receives an inheritance check for $200 after an uncle passed away. He announces plans to donate the entire sum to the George McGovern presidential campaign. Archie then declares that said amount is exactly what hes demanding for rent. - Happens a few times to cash-strapped Miss Brooks in Our Miss Brooks, i.e. "Easter Outfit", "Fischer's Pawn Shop", "The Festival", "School T.V. Set". - Parodied in an episode of Scrubs that was in itself a parody of traditional sitcoms where the gang can win the exact amount they need to not have to fire anyone in a singing competition and lookit, wouldn't you know that Clay Aiken just happens to be the new cafeteria worker. Unfortunately, this is one of the rare times that one of JD's fantasies is used for drama. - Sam & Max: The Telltale games have one of these in almost every episode for the first season. - Pikmin 2: The president of the company Captain Olimar works for took out a huge loan (10,100 pokos, to be exact) and is at a loss as to how to repay it. Luckily, the planet Olimar had just been stranded on happens to harbour trinkets which are VERY valuable (with the bottle cap he brought home as a souvenir being worth precisely 100 Pokos, no less)... - Nightmare Time: In the episode "Yellow Jacket," Hannah cuts off her finger in shop class, leading to a $24,000 medical bill that she and her sister can't afford. The episode has her joining an underground fighting ring in order to make enough money to pay for her healthcare. - Request Comics #26 has this here: a competition prize is exactly that needed to save the local library. - One of the emails in this exchange from 27b/6 mentions one of the potential benefits of homosexuality being "the gift of dance", which "would come in extremely useful if I needed five hundred dollars and saw a poster advertising a dance competition with a first prize of five hundred dollars."	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/OnTheMoney
Open and Shut - TV Tropes Essentially, the ability to open and close doors. Ooooh, scary. But picture this. The user in question seals you inside a door to another dimension for centuries, or perhaps opens a door to the infernal planes and fishes out a few monsters. Still think so? Open and Shut is one of the lesser known Stock Superpower, and a type of Yin Yang Magic. This power is commonly tied to a Cool Key. Thus, the favored weapon of this user is usually a giant vaguely (or not so vaguely) key-shaped staff. It is favored by exorcists since it is a quick way to deal with fearsome creatures without converting to the religion. All you need is to find a handy door to lock all your worst nightmares away behind. Just better hope they don't decide to team up to rush the door. In its most basic form, this is basically a combination of Barrier Warrior and Thinking Up Portals. That is, you can open/close doors to anywhere (and open any doors), or send incoming attacks into another place. But this is very much a Semantic Superpower (in fact, the ability to open doors is currently the quote for the page), so other applications of this power can be made. Because you can open any door, there might be some overlap with the various Elemental Powers. Most obviously is Space/Time in the form of dimensional travel, but you could conceivably use fire magic by opening a tiny hole into a volcano or something, or water by opening a hole into the middle of an ocean. If the definition of this power is vague enough, this becomes a Swiss-Army Superpower. Not to be confused with an Open-and-Shut Case. See also Thinking Up Portals, for a practical usage. Contrast Master of Unlocking which is about people with mundane, lock-picking abilities, rather than a superpower. ## Examples: - Cardcaptor Sakura, the title character uses a key as a tool to lock away or unlock spirits. The first episode she unseals them all by accident. - The Lock Card also has the ability to seal anything. - Doraemon staple gadget "The Anywhere Door" is just that, a door that takes you to a place of your choosing. You have to be pretty specific about where you're headed, though. (Saying "I wanna go high up", for example, opens a door in midair.) - Natsume's Book of Friends has a kid who ancestor sealed a bunch of monsters away in a book. He decides to release them. - CP9 agent Blueno of One Piece got this power from the "Door Door Fruit". He can use it to pass through any wall or obstacle, enter a pocket dimension by making a door in the air and even use it in combat by turning someone's face into a revolving door and spinning it. - In Hunter × Hunter, Knov has a limited version of this as his power: He can create a door anywhere that will take him to a special room in another dimension of his own creation that cannot be detected or accessed without him acting on it. Consequently, Knov can create doors out of this room to anywhere he wants. - JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Golden Wind: Bruno Bucciarati's Stand, Sticky Fingers, has an ability similar to this: it lets him attach zippers anywhere he wishes, from inanimate objects, to living people, to even his own body. Among other things, this lets him create portal holes, create holes in floor and walls, non-fatally dissect people (including himself), and, at one point, zipping someone's mouth shut so they won't talk. - The obscure Marvel Comics character Ariel had the power to open any door and make it connect to any other door. She claimed that anyone could do this "if they know hyperspacial geometry and have the right kind of hands." - In The Matrix, The Keymaker is a program able to access the key to anything, from locks to motorbike ignition switches. - The Adjustment Bureau: The men of the Adjustment Bureau have the power to open any door to any other door, allowing them to close in on any target rather swiftly. This ability is not innate to them but provided by their 1950s-style hats; one of them temporarily gives his hat to the hero so he can beat them at their own game. - Abhorsen in the Old Kingdom series can open gates to and between the nine levels of Death, and can also bind away spirits or undead using bells. In fact, their magical alphabet itself is constructed as a result of a major seal. - In Labyrinths of Echo, Numminorikh Kuta learned the art of finding and opening any kind of doors from his mother, who was the Master of Doorways for an ancient Magical Society. Also, Max can use doors of any kind to access the Corridor Between Worlds, and \|\|suffers major Power Incontinence in the final tome\|\|. - "The Lost Gate" of the Mither Mage series by Orson Scott Card has the main character seemingly having no power. He later turns out to be a Gatekeeper. - In Monday Begins on Saturday, a pair of Maxwell's demons work in the Extranormal Institute as the doorkeepers. - In Neverwhere, Door is a member of the family Portico, who all have this ability, and are highly regarded because of it. They live in a series of rooms that aren't physically accessible by ordinary means. The ability — now that the rest of her family is dead — makes her a MacGuffin Super-Person for the plot. - The Alohomora spell in Harry Potter (and its locking counterpart, Colloportus), although (understandably, in a world where a bright first-year student can unlock any ordinary door) there are magical locks which are able to resist it. Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them features one, but Jacob simply kicks it. - Evan Matthieu, in Pact, is the ghost of a child who becomes a wizard's Familiar, in the process gaining several powerful abilities from other ghosts in his vicinity. Since this vicinity was a police station, these abilities include a Five-Finger Discount and the ability to open doors by touching them. - One of the main uses of The Subtle Knife, which can cut through anything, including the walls between worlds. - Vainqueur The Dragon: Victor's [Skeleton Key] perk can open any lock and causes him to be counted as "invited" for the purpose of any magically protected location. \|\|It turns out to be capable of inadvertently defeating contraception.\|\| - Multiple villains on Angel have been able to open interdimensional portals. Sahjahn was able to open a door to any dimension. Fred's professor in Supersymmetry was a magic user with a penchant for exiling students who threatened to surpass him to other worlds. Illyria was also shown to be capable of opening interdimensional portals \|\|before Wesley de-powered her\|\|. - Kamen Rider Drive: One of the Monsters of the Week is the Open Roidmude, which has the power to telekinetically open things like doors, boxes, and the like. It ends up getting on Drive's nerves quite a bit, since it can shut down his Door Gun note : It's shaped like a car door, and needs to be manually opened and shut to reload; by opening the "door", it effectively jams the gun and Justice Hunter powers note : Which lets Drive create a cage around his enemies, obviously not very useful against an opponent who can just open the cage. - In the Book of Revelation from The Bible, Jesus declares to the church of Philadelphia that He is the One who holds "the key of David" (a reference to Isaiah 22:22), that He can open doors that no man can shut, and shut doors that no man can open. - The Great Grimoire of Honorius makes special mention of the demon Surgat as "he who opens all locks", and is the only demon the Pope in question could not shake. This coming from a guy who intentionally summoned demons explicitly to banish them back to hell as a workout for facing Satan. - Dungeons & Dragons has the gate spell. Sure, you can head to other dimensions. Or you can summon creatures from them (including elementals, enabling fire effects). Or you can suck/push creatures into other dimensions. Or you can block incoming spells. Or you can create two portals in close proximity, and mimic spell-turning (later versions likely patched this detail). - The Lore of Portals of the House of Neberu in Demon: The Fallen is a set of magical/divine abilities revolving around opening and closing doors of any kind. - Obviously, the stock power of the Keyblades in Kingdom Hearts series. Both are used to great effect over the course of the series. - Touhou: Yukari Yakumo's ill-defined but tremendously game-breaking power is over boundaries, which she can open and close at will. Usually this manifests as elongated Portal-style openings in reality (called gaps), but she can also manipulate conceptual boundaries, like the border of Gensokyo or the boundary between life and death. - The world of Fire Emblem Heroes centers around a war between two kingdoms with this power divided among them; the Kingdom of Askr has the power to open portals to other worlds, while the Kingdom of Embla has the power to close portals to other worlds. - Doorman from Paranatural is a Spirit with a doorknob for a face and a door in his chest; insert a key into the keyhole on the knob and the door will open into the room said key unlocks, wherever it is. \|\|It's even powerful enough to allow someone to bypass the barrier around Mayview.\|\| - Will from W.I.T.C.H. can not only call up dimensional portals, but she has the ability the sync up the rest of the team's powers to allow their transformation. - Maxwell's demon (in thermodynamics) is a hypothetical entity whose only powers is to open and close doors. - Fission and Fusion operate off the process of joining or splitting bonds, so yes, this can be very powerful.	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/OpenAndShut
Ontological Inertia - TV Tropes "Everything that happens stays * happened. You can't steer a train."* Ontological Inertia acts as a buffer against changes to the cosmic status quo: You cannot (well, not completely) undo something that already exists. Writer Fritz Leiber agreed with this trope in his Change War series of stories involving time travel, and devised the "Law of Reality Conservation" as a way to show how things couldn't just un-happen. In that context, it states that you can change the past (in fact he named one of the stories in the series, "Try and Change the Past"), but Fate will force a coincidental event to ensure that history proceeds down its intended path without paradox; every time you try to prevent one historical trend or event, a similar one will take its place in history. On the other hand, what can happen instead is if you do change something in history that is significant, the time line "fractures", a whole new universe is created at that point, and you and the new event are in a completely different reality with the change you caused. So either you go back to your universe where the change never happened, or you end up going forward to the equivalent time in the new universe with the change that you made propagating from that point. If you don't like the result, you can try to go back and change time again, in which case, guess what, time "fractures" again to compensate for that new incident, and the cycle starts all over again. Simon Hawke's Time Wars has a similar Law of Historical Inertia, and any change you make will be like a stone dropped in the river of time: History will simply flow around it and, for the most part, end up exactly where it was before (so if you wanted to actually change it, you'd essentially need a really big "stone" to divert the river, the consequences of which could be disastrous). As discussed in Analysis.Ontological Inertia, it's a particular case of You Can't Fight Fate. See also In Spite of a Nail. Contrast with (but not the exact opposite of note : In fact, this trope can in some cases serve as a justification for No Ontological Inertia if the consequences being undone are explicitly or implicitly against the way the universe "ought to be") No Ontological Inertia. May explain Hitler's Time Travel Exemption Act. ## Examples: - A defining trope of Shakugan no Shana. When a person's existence is eaten by a Rinne, it damages the fabric of really. So, the powers that be replace them with a "Torch" to act as a shock absorber. They look the same, and even have the original's memories. As their flame burns out over time, their presence and impact on the world lessens — they become apathetic and do little, people overlook them — until they disappear completely. When this happens, no-one remembers them, and it is as though they never had existed, ever. This happens all the time. - A key point in Vampire Princess Miyu is that Miyu fights against and defeats monsters but — as a curse she obtained by refusing to become a monster herself — is always unable to reverse any of the evil they have done. For example, when she defeats a ghost who has been luring women travelling on underground trains \|\|to an abandoned station where they are transformed into statues, she can seal the station, but can do nothing about the statues already created who remain imprisoned, petrified and weeping forever. \|\| - Dragon Ball goes with this during the Android Saga, when Future Trunks comes back to avert the Bad Future. He notes that anything he does in the past won't affect his future, just create an Alternate Timeline that has no bearing on his time. Among other things, despite Present Goku surviving the heart virus and Krillin and Trunks destroying Present Cell before he can be completed, Future Goku stays dead and the main Cell continues to exist. - Sonic the Hedgehog (Archie Comics): After defeating Dr. Eggman in issue 200, the citizens of New Mobotropolis take to celebrating as soon as they hear the news, believing the Eggman Empire is finally finished. They discover the hard way that just because Eggman's gone down doesn't mean his assets are, and his resources and technology are immediately seized by the Iron Queen, who wastes no time at all in coming to the city and taking it over. Monkey Khan chews Sonic and co. for thinking that it'd be that easy. - Paradoxus: Any given timeline is defined by certain key events that cannot be changed without branching the time-space continuity off. Id est, in timeline A, Bloom and Stella are assassinated, while in timeline B, they live for some reason (Eudora spares them, the Burning Legion invasion never happens, etc.). Thing is, B is an alternate version of A. If you somehow manage to prevent A's defining events (an impossible feat in itself), you are going to jump to/create B instead of staying in a modified version of A. When you travel back from when you came, you return to the same future you were trying to change (A's future). To get to B's future, you'll have to go the long way. Unfortunately, chances are you will first fade out from existence and the events there are totally random, meaning you lose any foreknowledge you got from time-traveling. All in all, A will keep existing as a separate timeline because its key events have ontological inertia — they cannot be undone. In this fic, there are two defining events for the timeline: the aforementioned deaths of Bloom and Stella and the Burning Legion invasion of Magix. Besides those two, things can be changed to varying extents, although it's not an easy task. For example, \|\|Daphne\|\| has to send back her memories so her past self can start planning how to change non-defining events that cana potentially save Magix from extinction. - Subverted in Fireside Tale. Unlike expected, the Endless Winter doesn't end with Elsa's death. - In Kingdom of Isolation, Kristoff kills Elsa to get the Endless Winter she's caused to end. - Brother on Brother, Daughter on Mother posits what the author describes as a "Grand Unified Theory of Star Trek Time Travel" that works like this. Reshek Taryn describes the multiverse using the analogy of a rope of infinite length, consisting of many strands composed of probabilistic outcomes that are all being pulled in the same direction. The pulling force means that smaller changes made by time travelers have a tendency to true up into Stable Time Loops over time and result in more-or-less the same outcome in the long run. Larger incursions, however, cause the "rope" to fray off vastly divergent timelines (among them the Mirror Universe), which weakens the overall timestream: Taryn briefly mentions a time war (implied to be the canon version of Star Trek: Enterprise) causing an entire strand to be erased. This in turn is the reason for her own job as part of Starfleet's "temporal SWAT team". - With This Ring: History can be altered, but it requires additional energy to come from somewhere. The bigger the changes, the more energy is required, and a paradox basically requires infinite energy, which is why the universe will always find some other way to resolve it. So, if someone you love dies in a car crash, inspiring you to go back in time and save them, you won't be able to, because if they were saved, then why would you go back? Inevitably, either your efforts will fail to stop the crash, or the person will die in some other way. (On the other hand, if you manage to set things up so your younger self still believes that they died in a car crash, and thus goes on to build a time machine, that may work.) - Explored in the 2002 version of The Time Machine, with the time traveler's fiancée Emma acting as fate bait. It's a singularly interesting example: if she doesn't die, he doesn't invest the time and effort into creating the time machine. Her death CANNOT be changed, or he CANNOT go back to change. Down to the particular time limit (read: that very night, no matter what he tries). It's not like going back in time and stepping on a mosquito, the flow of time CANNOT continue if she does not die. Paradox, anyone? Of course, all that's really important is that he believes she died. He could go back in time, fake her death and bring her into the present with him. - In the first three Terminator movies, good terminator androids, bad terminator androids, and one human are sent back in time to either prevent the upcoming apocalypse or kill off the future leader of the human rebellion. As each successive movie shows, attempts to change the future by either side will inevitably fail as long as there exists a demand for more Terminator movies. - Discussed in Avengers: Endgame when the heroes consider Time Travel to undo the Decimation from 5 years prior. One suggests going back in time and kill Thanos as a baby before he could start his mad conquest, only to be corrected that changing the past won't affect the present, it would only create an alternate reality that has absolutely no bearing to the current state of affairs. This bears out in the climax, where \|\|Past!Neubla is killed by Present!Nebula, who doesn't then cease to exist; and Past!Thanos and his army are all killed, but the Snap still happened.\|\| - Lost plays with this in Season 5. For example, when handling a nuke, Daniel assures them that it can't explode because the island still exists in the future they came from. - Hercules: The Legendary Journeys has an episode where they are worried about how their time travel might affect the present, but Hercules assures them that Time would correct itself, so nothing would change. - In the final episode of Kamen Rider Decade, when Big Bad Apollo Geist is defeated, his forcible merger and destruction of the multiverse continues unabated. In fact, if anything it actually speeds up. This leads to Decade receiving a What the Hell, Hero? speech from his predecessors. - FlashForward (2009) has elements of this. It is possible to change your future but very, very hard. In one case a character kills himself to prevent a future where he causes the death of a woman. In the altered timeline the person who replaces him on the team ends up causing the death instead. - Outlander: - The entire plot of Season 2 revolves around Jamie and Claire first trying to prevent The Rising from taking place, and then attempting to succeed against the British. No matter what they do, things still go the way Claire remembers them from history, with the Scottish being decimated at the Battle of Culloden. - Mary invokes this in season 4 as, now living in America, she knows the Revolution is coming and tells Jamie nothing they do can prevent it from happening. - The Twilight Zone (1959): - In "Back There", during a discussion about traveling back to time to the day before the Wall Street Crash, Peter Corrigan argues that history cannot be changed as the events of October 24, 1929 are a part of established history. When he is sent back in time himself, he learns that some things can be changed. Peter was unable to prevent Lincoln's assassination but inadvertently changes history in a more minor way. The police officer who believed his story made a name for himself for seemingly predicting the assassination. As a result, he became Chief of Police, a councilman and a millionaire after investing in real estate. In the original history, his great-grandson William was an attendant at the Potomac Club but a member of the club in the altered history. - In the episode "Of Late I Think of Cliffordville", when the protagonist realizes that he is still 70 years old (but looks like 30) and no one believes his ideas of "inventions" that he know will be coming, he asks Miss Devlin to return him to where he started. She says she can but that will be a time set in motion by events as they are now and there is a fee. He sells the only thing he has of worth to the guy who was sweeping the streets and returns to his "present." Only thing is, now that guy, who has been the janitor in his building now owns the company, and he is the janitor! - In the The Twilight Zone (2019) episode "The Comedian", Samir gains the ability to remove people from existence by making fun of them, but discovers that they are retroactively erased from the past, and everything they affected reverts to how it would have been if they hadn't been there. After wiping out his girlfriend's mentor in a bout of misplaced jealousy, her prestigious lawyer career is undone and she becomes a minimum wage waitress, because it was the mentor who motivated her to become something more. In the end, Samir makes jokes about himself to the audience and vanishes. Everyone he erased returns retroactively, because he was never around to erase them. - A fundamental part of Being Erica has the title character being able to go back in time to try to fix her regrets about her life. However, inevitably she will discover 1) she is unable to prevent the regrettable action from occurring 2) she is able to prevent the event from occurring, but something else happens that causes the same effect on her in the future or 3) she figures out that her regret had another fundamental cause. Instead, the point of the exercise is to gain perspective on what's going on in her current-timeline life. The few times she does manage to change a major event, the effect is usually erased by the end of the episode. - Doctor Who speaks of "fixed points in time" (also called "temporal nexuses" in the radio dramas), moments and individuals in the timeline which cannot be changed without causing catastrophic ripple effects. Even the Daleks don't mess with them. - The Orville: In "Lasting Impressions", Gordon falls in love with a 21st-century girl after using her extensive cell phone data to create a holo-simulation of her rich life. When her ex-boyfriend returns and she breaks off with Gordon to reunite, he erases the boyfriend from the simulation so he can have her for himself. Unfortunately, he was such a motivating factor for so many of her life decisions, that without her she's a completely different person. Gordon realizes that he fell in love with her because she felt genuine and real, and if he starts rewriting her to fit his desires, she'll lose that quality. - The Dragonlance Saga even uses the stone in a time-stream example. The world as created by the gods does not allow past events to be changed. Unfortunately, several races have come into existence that were not intended at the time of the world's birth. They more or less are fine in the present, but all the "you can't change anything" rules of time travel don't apply to kender, Dwarves, and Draconians. - Enforced in Continuum. Spanners have a saying: "the universe is". Time is stable, unchanging, and any attempts to change the known result in reality-rending paradoxes that must be repaired. \|\|This is not a natural law of the universe, but rather an artificial one that is strenuously enforced by the Inheritors, humanity's post-Singularity descendants that occupy all time from 2400 AD forward and do not take kindly to any change that might affect their own existence.\|\| - Spoilers for the Infocom Interactive Fiction game Trinity: \|\|After successfully stopping the Trinity test of the first A-bomb (which would apparently destroy most of New Mexico), a mysterious voice explains that since the history that produced your character depends on atomic weapons, reality will arrange for smaller explosions to occur every time a nuclear weapon is supposed to detonate from then on. Smaller meaning nukes as we know them.\|\| - Mentioned in Shadow of Destiny (aka Shadow of Memories). \|\|It's ultimately revealed to be the driving force behind the entire story.\|\| - The conclusion of Final Fantasy is a version of this: \|\|the Light Warriors shatter a Stable Time Loop by killing Chaos. In the process, they themselves are shunted into the newly-created time-line wherein Garland never abducted the princess and the Four Fiends never existed... and their memories are lost in the process.\|\| - In Command & Conquer: Red Alert, Einstein tries to erase Hitler from history to prevent World War II. He succeeds and an even worse war between Russia and the Allies takes the place of World War II. It's implied that the Einstein that did the erasing will not see any changes. All he has done is create a divergent timeline which exists simultaneously with ours. Otherwise, he wouldn't be able to go back to his lab in 1946. This is then thrown out the window in Red Alert 3, where Soviet time travelers kill Einstein in the same manner before he invents his time machine. When they go back, they immediately see changes. One change? No nuclear weapons. Another change? Japan is now a superpower to rival the Soviets and the Allies. Interestingly, many of Einstein's inventions are still made, but by other people, including the Chronosphere. - Ontological Inertia is such a strong force in the Legacy of Kain series that the titular vampire spends most of his immortal life looking for a way to thwart it at a key point in his past. It turns out the trick is to have time displaced versions of something interact, for instance the first example in the series involves him fighting an enemy when they're both using the same sword (and another character is completely immune to it because he carries a future version of his own soul around with him). This is the origin of Kain's memorable "edge of the coin" speech: But supposing you toss a coin enough times. Supposing one day, it lands on its edge... - Dragon Age: Origins: - The Dalish Keeper Zathrian summoned a spirit and bound it to a wolf in order to inflict a werewolf curse on the human barbarians who murdered his son and raped his daughter. Centuries later, when the curse has been passed down to the descendants of those who savaged Zathrian's children, the Warden is tasked with killing the wolf Witherfang who has spread the curse to Zathrian's clan. Killing Witherfang will not end the curse; it will only enable Zathrian to cure the Dalish elves who have been inflicted. Likewise, killing Zathrian will not end the curse, and those inflicted with it will remain as werewolves. Only persuading Zathrian to lift the curse himself will cure all those who have been turned into werewolves. - The Grey Wardens, once they commit to the Joining ritual, are forever tainted by the corruption of the Darkspawn Blight. Even if the Archdemon leading a Blight is eliminated, Grey Wardens will remain tainted until their Calling, a point at which the corruption threatens to consume their mind. Once a Warden experiences their Calling they will enter the Deep Roads to seek death fighting Darkspawn underground before the corruption completely overtakes them. - In The Messenger, the game world is under an enduring curse laid on the land by the Demon King that will create an endless cycle of demon invasions and Messenger quests. \|\|Killing him however, doesn't do anything about this curse, because he made sure to put the source onto the founder of the island's society Phantom, who is sealed in a magical music box. So in spite of the Demon King being the Big Bad, he's not the final boss and the endgame is focused on reaching and freeing Phantom.\|\| - BloodRayne 2: After Rayne defeats Kagan, she observes that his primary work, an alchemical cloud covering the land that allows vampires to walk under the sun, has not dissipated. Rayne mentions off-handedly to Severin that she expected the opposite: Rayne: I half-expected everything to go back to normal once he was dead. I guess that wasn't very realistic, huh? - Fate/Grand Order: During the Seventh Singularity, \|\|Gilgamesh reveals that while Chaldea's efforts will undo the Singularities that alter human history, they won't prevent any humans killed in a Singularity from dying in the proper timeline. The recollection of how they die gets changed to something more mundane, such as a person killed by a wyvern in the Orlean Singularity having history changed so they died by either natural causes or an accident\|\|. - Code Lyoko: - Strangely used: although there's a Reset Button that the heroes can use to travel into the immediate past and undo most of the damage the Big Bad causes, if anyone dies before they use it, they'll stay dead, even after the past is changed; their death still possesses ontological inertia in the new timeline. Presumably they'd just drop dead from no apparent cause, but since the heroes never allowed anyone to die in the course of their adventures, the viewer never really saw how it'd work. - Additionally, the heroes, (and only the heroes, even if someone else were brought into the fold of this whole "XANA" shenanigan for this particular problem of the week) would remember the events of the erased day, presumably so someone would know the world had been saved to begin with. One of the flashback episodes demonstrates that you retain your memory if you've been scanned into the supercomputer. - The Reset Button even becomes a plot point because they learn \|\|XANA grows more powerful each time they reset\|\|, showing just who can ignore it. - The Futurama movie Bender's Big Score relies heavily on this: the time travel in the film is "paradox-free", meaning that any issues created through time travel self-correct and don't significantly change the present. The most commonly-given example is the idea of two versions of a person existing due to time travel with no clear Stable Time Loop, which would cause one of the versions to simply die abruptly, "resolving" the paradox. Of course, the whole process has limits; if something massively, utterly irreconcilable were to occur, then it would cause the universe to simply give up and break open. - The first law of motion (an object tends to stay in motion unless acted on by another force) could be considered an example of this. In theory, an object moving in a frictionless environment such as outer space will keep moving at the same speed forever, unless it runs into something that influences it; for example, the Voyager space probes will continue on their current paths through space for thousands of years until they approach some of the nearest stars to the Sun, which may change the route they take from then on. On Earth, however, there is obviously friction, which tends to slow stuff down (you can still observe this law in effect however, for example, does your car stop moving the instant you take your foot off the gas pedal? of course not, hence the need for brakes). - The game of peekaboo helps infants learn the concept of object permanence by playing with it, making a person seem to disappear, then reappear. The reason is that very young children process the world through themselves and, thus, if something is out of the reach of their senses then it ceases to exist until further notice. In other words, for them, objects and people have no Ontological Inertia. - This is the basis for the Many worlds interpretation of time travel, and also as a means of explaining why there are no evidence of time paradoxes from people travelling back in time if time travel is possible in the future; each time travel event splits the timeline for the two choices; one timeline exists where the traveller doesn't go back in time and stays where they are (Timeline 1), and another for when they do go back (Timeline 2), effectively meaning that nothing is changed. The number of timelines then begins to grow exponentially when you consider all the other different variables that would create different outcomes.	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/OntologicalInertia
Ontological Mystery - TV Tropes "You may find yourself living in a shotgun shack And you may find yourself in another part of the world And you may find yourself behind the wheel of a large automobile And you may find yourself in a beautiful house, with a beautiful wife And you may ask yourself, 'Well, how did I get here?'" The characters are locked in a strange room, have no idea how they got there, why they're there, or how to get out, nor do they know exactly who is behind their predicament, if anyone. The main thrust of such stories is the investigation of the restricted environment in which the characters find themselves, with the goal of mastering it, revealing its secrets, and eventually escaping. Often those approaching the truth are sharply yanked back. The genre is usually a metaphor for the unknowns and Big Questions of Real Life: what is my purpose, why are we here, what can be done to solve the unsolvable? May overlap with Small, Secluded World, World Limited to the Plot, Alternate Universe, Planet of Hats, Adventure Towns or Lotus-Eater Machine. Almost always employs Failure Is the Only Option and a veritable swarm of Schrodinger's Butterflies to obfuscate issues. There's usually a Straw Nihilist in the cast saying it's all pointless. See also the Quest for Identity, where the main character doesn't even know who he is. A subtrope of the Driving Question. The simpler versions are You Wake Up in a Room. Often spawns an Escape from the Crazy Place. Some are examples of Beautiful Void. Some fans may want the various mysteries to be Left Hanging. See also Send in the Search Team, when the characters do know how they got there, and now they need to find out what happened. May have an Amnesiac Hero. Compare Epiphanic Prison. Contrast Eerily Out-of-Place Object, for non-personal ontological mysteries. The Journal Roleplay community calls this a "spooky jamjar". ## Examples: - Attack on Titan: Humanity has spent the last century holed up within three massive Walls, protected from the Titans that appeared seemingly out of nowhere and devoured mankind to the brink of extinction. No one knows where the Titans came from, or even how the Walls that protect them were constructed — the cult that worships them claims they were a divine gift. Information on the outside world is strictly controlled by the government, and people with interest in exploring outside the Walls are labeled as heretics. - Oh, and \|\|there are Titans in the freaking Walls, too\|\|. Which is a hint as to this whole business, but still... - The Big O Roger Smith is a negotiator in a domed city (implied to be \|\|a futuristic New York City\|\|) where everyone came down with a case of unexplained Laser-Guided Amnesia forty years ago. The outside world is seldom referred to, but it's implied to be largely an unexplored wasteland. - Drifting Classroom: A school building and the students inside find themselves transported to a barren desert world, with no clue how they got there. - Eden of the East: A naked man wakes up outside the White House, holding a gun. Good luck figuring out what happened, chief. - Ergo Proxy has plenty of these, though only in individual episodes (e.g. 11, 14, 15, and 19) - Gantz involves people dying, and then waking up in an empty apartment with several strangers. A mysterious sphere in the middle of the room commands them to go out wearing special equipment and hunt aliens. - Gargantia on the Verdurous Planet: A teenage boy has been fighting a brutal race of space mollusks for literally his whole life, when he finds himself flung through a wormhole to Earth...which is now largely flooded and was thought to be uninhabitable. After some Breather Episodes of him settling into a relaxed civilian lifestyle, things start get getting foreboding. - In Gosick, Kazuya and Victorique end up on a ship that's pretty mysterious. Although they DO know how they got there (from a ticket given to a dead woman they didn't want to let go to waste) in flashback scenes the original children sent to the ship 20 years earlier was very much an Ontological Mystery. For Victorique it's solving the mystery again in order to survive. - Haibane Renmei: the precise nature of the town of Glie is left mysterious throughout, and although there is a way for the Haibane to leave, it's never clear where they go or how, leading to speculation among fans that Glie is \|\|an allegory for Purgatory, or that it IS Purgatory.\|\| - In Judge, a bunch of people who are strangers to each other wake up in an abandoned building wearing animal masks. Every four hours, they're forced to vote to decide which one of them is going to die. - Kemono Friends starts with an amnesiac girl in a savannah. There are several other girls with animal traits. Also blob monsters, robots, and semi-functional machinery. Slowly uncovering just what's going on is much of the series' appeal. - Log Horizon is a more direct instance of this trope as unlike other 'trapped in an MMORPG' series's, the Elder Tale game didn't use any kind of special VR-Interface (just a standard keyboard/mouse/microphone setup), leaving the characters at a loss as to how they got transported into the game at all, or how they might get home. - Several of these drive the story in One Piece, the biggest of which is the nature of the "One Piece" treasure itself. There's also the "Void Century", a hundred-year gap in recorded history that ended with the World Government coming into power. - Princess Tutu features a small village where an old fairy tale seems to be coming to life. The world outside the village is rarely referenced, and people seem to take the odd happenings as completely normal. There's also an old legend about the author of said fairy tale, who left the tale incomplete after his untimely demise.... - The Promised Neverland starts in a peaceful orphanage that the children are only allowed to leave when they are sent to their "foster family" — i.e sent to be killed and eaten by monsters. The protagonists learn the truth about what their orphanage really is and they do have access to books and scientific knowledge, but they have no idea what those demons are, what happened to humanity, or what awaits them if they manage to escape. - Shadows House: Every shadow-doll pair starts their life at the mansion in their own rooms, with little to no knowledge of who they are and how they got there. Their rooms are connected but locked from the outside, and both of them have been provided with an instruction manual on how they are supposed to behave around each other. - Urusei Yatsura: Beautiful Dreamer is built entirely around figuring out why the world keeps changing into increasingly improbable forms. It has something to do with dreams and the story of Urashima Taro... - Final Crisis Aftermath: Escape has a number of characters from The DCU's espionage community trapped in a dreamlike "Electric City" with no idea how they got there. - The Bowl-Shaped World arc in Nexus sees Nexus, Judah, and the Badger trapped in a strange extra-dimensional realm they don't understand, trying to figure out how to escape. - In Asuka And Shinjis Infinite Playlist, the titular characters find themselves in a strange reality with no memories of their past life. Whenever someone asks Shinji and Asuka something about their lives or mentions some past event, no matter how trivial, they struggle to answer, since their minds are trying to remember something which never happened. Finally, Shinji discovers they are in a dream which only began existing when he bumped into Asuka at the station. - In the world of Hybrid Theory, there is a myth of Susano-o and Orochi. The fact that there are now at least three Orochis running around, each clearly the inspiration for the original myth which contained only one Orochi, means something has gone horribly wrong somewhere... Only Aaron has heard the voice of the one who set everything in motion, Chris being too dead at the time. There are many educated guesses, but no-one really has a clue as to what is going on. The lack of a cohesive universal backstory is bad enough on Earth where most of the societies appear 'normal' until their stories really get rolling. Washuu wakes up to find that the galaxy she's traveled end to end as a citizen of the peaceful Jurai Empire is now half-full of planets that have always been under the cruel thumb of warmongering Sailor Galaxia. - Home with the Fairies presents Maddie's insertion into The Lord of the Rings as a mystery. The readers know that Maddie fell into Middle-earth, but Maddie does not. She only knows that she is in a field and not in her apartment. Then she walks to civilization, but finds a medieval village, where none speak English, and none know of America. Maddie discovers this fairy-tale world, but not why it chose her to come here. - Psyche Ward: Someone or something either sends an unconscious Taylor into the Psychonauts universe in the path of Sasha or Milla, or alters her memories to create a false past on Earth Bet before putting her in their path, and not even Taylor is sure which is the truth, or who would do it and why. - The RWBY Loops: Thoroughly discussed and played with. Due to the nature of the loops, the characters themselves know nothing firm about their pasts that RWBY fans wouldn't know; this has a number of results, especially when the core series reveals some new factoid about their past, and feeds into the plot repeatedly. - Asylum (Daemon of Decay): Though the medical staff do explain why Twilight is in an asylum, whether or not they can be trusted, whether or not Twilight is insane, and whether or not there are more sinister things happening in the world in which she woke are left to the reader to decide. - Peace of Mind, Piece of Heart: Averted. Since this takes place after Book 1 of Infinity Train, Catra and Steven are fully aware of the train's purpose and the meaning of the numbers thanks to One-One's introductory videos. However, they're still at a complete loss as to how to accomplish the "fix their problems" part of the equation, and Steven is flustered about how the train functions in general. - Puella Magi Madoka Magica The Movie: Rebellion: It takes a few scenes, but Homura eventually realizes that the world she and the other Magical Girls are in doesn't make sense because Madoka and Sayaka are there, alive and well when they're not supposed to be there. Much of the middle portion of the movie is Homura trying to figure out how they all got there. - Waking Life revolves around attempts by the protagonist to \|\|wake up\|\| from a possibly \|\|terminal dreamstate\|\|. - Chariot: Seven passengers wake up on an airliner flying high above the United States. The door to the cockpit is locked and no-one responds when they knock on it. No-one has any idea how they got there, but it has something to do with an Operation Chariot, designed to protect crucial people in the event of a nuclear attack on the United States. - Circle: Fifty people regain consciousness in a dark room, arranged in a circle around a strange-looking mechanism that kills one of them every two minutes. The subjects range in age from single digits to near-centenarian, and not one of them knows how they got where they are. They quickly figure out the premise, however—not only must one of their number die every 120 seconds, but they are the ones who determine who gets whacked next. Zany—err, paranoid hijinks ensue. - Cube, its sequel Cube 2: Hypercube, and its prequel Cube Zero. A group of people of differing backgrounds and skill sets wake up in cubical rooms which connect to other cubical rooms (all of the rooms together forming a giant, you guessed it, cube). There are deathtraps. Have fun! - Dark City: The protagonist wakes up with Easy Amnesia and Telekinesis in a city with no exits and where day never dawns. Oh, and there's a dead hooker in the other room. - Eden Log. A man wakes up in the middle of a dark cave, does not know how he got there, and tries to find his way out. - Exam has the characters at a job interview in which they are presented with a 'test' that turns out to be a blank sheet of paper. They have to work out what the problem is and then solve it, and they're all rivals for a highly sought after job. If any of them leave the room, they lose the chance. Panic rises and things get violent... - The Fountain portrays Real Life as an ontological trap that can only be escaped through death. The Protagonist refuses to accept this and, having eaten from the bark of the mythical tree of life at the fountain of youth, becomes doomed to outlive the rest of humanity because he's trapped in a spaceship on the edge of a dying star. - Friend of the World: The protagonist wakes up in a chamber after a mass casualty event and is unsure who is behind it and how to get out. - Groundhog Day is less interested in why the loops started or ended and more interested in how its protagonist responds to it. The commentary notes the story is about him changing from 'a prisoner of the time and place to the master of the time and place'. - Horse Girl: The plot is driven by Sarah's quest to understand what is going on in the world around her, and why she has missing memories and keeps finding herself in strange places with no memory of how she got there. - For Inception, one of the clues that you're in a dream is when you can't remember how you got to where you are. - Mindhunters The characters know why they're on a secluded island: an FBI profiler training exercise. It doesn't take long before they're cut off from the outside world and it turns out that there's a killer amongst them who starts murdering them one by one. - Nine Dead. The protagonists all wake up in a cell chained to a wall. Their captor tells them that one of them will die every ten minutes unless they can tell him why they are there. - The first Saw movie. In later movies, it's already established who is behind all of it, but the trope still applies In-Universe to specific groups of characters. - Unknown (2006): A group of men wake up locked in a warehouse with amnesia, and their circumstances and injuries suggest that they've been fighting each other. They must figure out what's going on, who's on who's side and what's at stake. - The Castle. A surveyor is summoned to the town surrounding a tremendous castle of Obstructive Bureaucrats, and nobody is sure why; the protagonist thinks he knows who he needs to talk to so he can find out, but first he has to get an appointment with the undersecretary and convince him to give him an appointment with the regular secretary... and so on. He is inexplicably appointed two childish assistants that mostly just make fun of him. The book was never finished, so it's not clear if there ever was an ending. - Cordyceps Too Clever For Their Own Good opens with one of the main characters waking up in a hospital room with no idea how he got there and no idea who he is. As the story's summary puts it, "This turns out to be the ideal state of affairs, and is swiftly ruined." - The Divine Comedy begins with Dante lost in a dark forest with too little memory to explain how he got there beyond being extremely tired when he left the true path. He only escapes the forest thanks to the intercession of Beatrice, who reveals that Dante's deviations came as a result of seeking to replace his dead love with lesser, counterfeit goods. - Dungeon series: beings from all times and spaces are brought to a nine-leveled artificial prison called the Dungeon. At no point in the series is the Dungeon's origins, masters or purpose made clear, only speculated on. - Scott Sigler's The Generations Trilogy begins with a group of young adults who have no memory of their past waking up trapped in coffins engraved with their names. After breaking out of the coffins, they find themselves in dimly-lit and unimaginably vast ruins, full of skeletons and dust at every corner. - In the Fredric Brown short story Hall Of Mirrors, a 25-year-old man suddenly finds himself fifty years in the future. In a locked room, with a letter addressed to him on the desk. Reading it, he learns that he is actually 75 years old, but has just de-aged himself, which erased his memory of the last fifty years. The letter is from his older self, and it includes the horrifying explanation of why he has done this. And may have to do it again, fifty years from now. - The Helmet of Horror by Victor Pelevin. Several people wake up in rooms connected only by a chat-like computer system; each room opens into a labyrinth. Some labyrinths are real, some metaphorical, and one is accessible only through dreams. - One of the many themes in House of Leaves. It's also one of the less Mindscrewy themes, which should give you some idea of what the book is like. - William Sleator's House of Stairs: five teenagers wake up in the titular House of Stairs. It's a giant complex of interlocking stairs and platforms, but none of the stairs lead out; they only connect to other parts of the maze. - Illium: Spans three planets rather than a room. The mystery is just what has happened between our time and this imaginary far future to make the latter so bizarre. For a start, where did all those Greek gods using advanced technology and living on Mars come from? The characters on Earth in particular take their condition as a mystery to be solved and try to escape the definite confines that are set upon them even as they are able to teleport around the world freely. - Issola: A couple of people our protagonist considered completely indestructible have gone missing. Not even Sethra Lavode, who very much deserves her Shrouded in Myth status, can find them by herself. She knows how to get Vlad there, and he arrives to find his two friends stuck in unbreakable, seamless chains in an empty room with no exits that appears to be on another planet. The plot hinges on figuring out how the hell the bad guys managed it, and why. - The Maze Runner Trilogy: - The Maze Runner has the main protagonists trapped in a maze. - The Scorch Trials is about them trapped in the deserts of a future Earth. - Piers Anthony's Mercycle. The characters are not locked in a room, however, they are compelled into the task of riding bicycles under the ocean with no idea who hired them and for what purpose. It's pretty much Cube in the sea. - More Than This begins as the protagonist wakes up in an abandoned town after he dies and has no idea why. - In "The Outsider (1926)", a man has lived his whole life in a dark castle beneath an all-enclosing forest that blocks out the sky. Yet, he feels strangely that he has not always been there... - Piranesi, by Susanna Clarke, starts with the title character, an Amnesiac Hero, living essentially trapped in a gigantic, possibly infinite, house full of huge statues and only one other living person. References and small items suggest a connection to our world; Piranesi gradually discovers the truth, as best he can. - In the Robert Sheckley short story "Potential", the protagonist awakens to find himself alone on a spaceship that was apparently hastily constructed and launched at the last minute, just before Earth was destroyed. He has no memory of anything, even his own identity. The ship is automated and has no controls; it is searching for a planet, but the protagonist has no idea what kind of planet or what he's supposed to do when he gets there. A hastily scrawled note tells him where he can find a video recording that explains his mission. He finds that it's been destroyed. - Riverworld has apparently everyone ever born trapped between an unclimbable mountain range and a river, with their intact memories from birth to death in our real world. If you happen to die again, you wake up again in a different spot along the river. Later books provide an unconvincing rationale for this. - The Rollerskater chapter "Insider" opens with two characters, who resemble two members of the main Ensemble Cast, waking up in a strange white room with no memory of who they were before that moment. The instalment then goes on to explain how they came to be in that situation: \|\|Their physical bodies were separated from their souls, and given that their bodies only have cognizance of the present moment, they are effectively different people.\|\| - Six Wakes: Six clones wake up on a space ship in deep space, next to their original bodies, with only their memories up to the point when they got on the space ship. They have to figure out who murdered them and what has beocme of the mission they signed up for. - The Trial: "Someone must have been spreading lies about Josef K., for one morning, after having committed no real crime, he was arrested." \|\|In the end, he finds out that he is guilty of life and original sin. Once he realizes the nature of his crime, he submits willingly.\|\| - The "amnesia game" is one of the most common types of theatre-style live-action roleplaying games. Only the Decadent Court is more popular. - The 4400: In the fourth season episode "No Exit" Tom Baldwin, Diana Skouris, Meghan Doyle, Marco Pacella, Brady and P.J. wake up to find themselves locked into the NTAC offices in Seattle where they work joined by Tom's son Kyle and oldest nephew Shawn Farrell, Diana's adopted daughter Maia, as well as Jordan Collier and Isabelle Tyler. During the episode they have to fight the building itself as it turns on them, cooperate, find out why they're there and find a way out. - The characters in Beyond the Walls know how they got into the House, but that's about it. Julien has a vague idea about finding a red door to be able to leave, but he has been in there for the better part of a century, without much progress, despite mapping the place. As it turns out, the only way to leave is \|\|a rather difficult combination of interpretation of scripture, having a very specific epiphany and the balls to journey into the deepest bowels of the house, where the zombie-like inhabitants crawl around in the hundreds\|\|. - Black Mirror: - "White Bear", Victoria Skillane wakes up with amnesia in a room she does not recognise. She then starts to experience terrifying encounters in what appears to be some kind of strange post-apocalyptic world and an apocalypse she has missed. She later finds out that \|\|she is and has for an unknown amount of time been trapped in a creative method of punishment for crimes she committed before having her memory repeatedly wiped, with members of the public being invited to watch her be tortured and then paraded through the streets every day\|\|. - The series' Christmas special starts with two men in an isolated outpost and \|\|one of them has no idea how he got there\|\|... - Both Buffy and Angel did this in one episode each: "Tabula Rasa" for Buffy and "Spin the Bottle" for Angel. In both cases, a spell intended to affect memories went wrong and resulted in the entire main cast losing their memories. In "Tabula Rasa", they got complete Identity Amnesia. In "Spin the Bottle", they got Identity Amnesia removing all memories since their teenage years. In both cases, there were many logical but amusingly wrong deductions made about what was going on before they managed to undo the spell. - "Spin the Bottle" was particularly hilarious given that the dour, contemplative Angel was once the hard-drinking thug Liam. Oh, and he doesn't remember he's a vampire. - Castle: "Cuffed" opens with Castle and Beckett handcuffed together in a locked room with no memory of how they got there. - In 1969 NBC aired The Cube, an hour long teleplay about a man trapped in a cube, wondering what was real and what wasn't. It was written and directed by Jim Henson, of all people, in a very un-Muppety not-played-for-laughs kind of way. - Dark Matter (2015) is a paradigm of the trope: six people awaken from hypersleep aboard a spaceship with no idea who they are or what they are doing there, and the series' plot is driven by their attempts to find out. - Doctor Who: - Dollhouse plays with this trope in "Needs", in which the Actives wake up in their sleeping chambers with their original personalities before they were mind-wiped, but with no memory of how they came to be there. - The I-Land: Ten people wake up on a tropical island, with no memory of how they got there or who they are. Their only clue is a random sign saying "Find your way back". - Life on Mars has Sam Tyler... who is less concerned with investigating the world than he is with trying to adjust to it. He actually rather likes his new world. In fact, \|\|after weighing his options when he leaves, he commits suicide to return. \|\| - Life on Mars's sequel, Ashes to Ashes (2008): Modern day detective Alex Drake is transported to a strange new 1981 world when she is shot. Using her psychological training, she must examine if she is in her own mind, undergone time travel, etc. in order to return to her daughter back home. note : The writers knew what the world was from the start, so the ending didn't fall into a Lost trap of not being able to tie up loose ends. Clues are even in Life on Mars. The mystery is examined from every angle. - Lost: A plane crashes on an island and weird things start happening. Beyond that, what happens is a matter of debate within the fandom because the mystery about the nature of the island is mind screwy. - The Outer Limits (1963) offers two examples. - "Demon With a Glass Hand" opens with Amnesiac Hero Trent wandering through a city while fending off attackers. He reflect on his predicament in an Internal Monologue. Trent: I was born ten days ago, a full-grown man born ten days ago. I woke on a street of this city. I don't know who I am, where I've been or where I'm going. Someone wiped my memories clean, and they track me down and try to kill me. Why? Who are you? - "The Probe", the last episode of the original series. A group of plane crash survivors find themselves in a mysterious closed environment full of lab equipment, stalked by a grotesque monster, with no idea how they got there or how to get out. It turns out that \|\|they were brought aboard an alien space probe, the monster is a huge, mutated microbe, and they're released when they manage to communicate with the aliens\|\|. - The Prisoner (1967): Number Six woke up in The Village, with no idea why he's there, and who's really in charge. Even the very possibility of escaping it is an open question. - In Quantum Leap, each time Sam leaps into a new leapee, he has to figure out whom he has replaced, where he is, when he is, and why he is there. How much Sam can figure out by himself, and how much Al or Ziggy is needed to fill in the gaps, differs from episode to episode. - Red Dwarf: In "Thanks for the Memory", the characters wake up with no memory of the last four days. Lister and the Cat each have a foot in a cast. Four pages have been torn out of Lister's diary, the ship's black box is missing, and the jigsaw puzzle Lister had been working on is finished. They have to track down the black box and play back its recording to find out what happened. - Stargate Atlantis: "Tabula Rasa" begins with a confused, amnesiac Rodney McKay coming to in his lab to discover he's tied to the table he's sitting at, with a tablet in front of him displaying a picture of Teyla and the message "FIND THIS WOMAN". When he gets out of the lab, he discovers a situation where Atlantis' military personnel, led by Major Lorne, are rounding up the civilians, with repeated escapes. The fact that everyone seems to be having memory problems only makes McKay's quest to try and figure out what is going on that much harder. - Star Trek: The Next Generation: - "Clues": The Enterprise crew is revived by Data after having been rendered unconscious by a Negative Space Wedgie. It quickly becomes apparent that they were unconscious much longer than they had thought, that Worf has somehow sustained a major injury, ship's records have been tampered with, and that Data is desperately trying to cover up whatever happened during the lost time. - "Conundrum": The characters' memories are erased and they are left with no contact with the outside world. They need to figure out the purpose of the ship, their roles on it, and the validity of their apparent mission to destroy a planet. Their only initial clues are their positions on the bridge and the design of the ship. - The Twilight Zone (1959): "Five Characters in Search of an Exit": An Army major, a ballerina, a hobo, a clown, and a bagpiper wake up in a cylindrical grey room, with no memory of their lives before that moment, and a deafeningly loud, gonglike noise occasionally makes the room shake wildly. All make guesses about where they are and why. Limbo, a dream, space, and hell itself are mentioned. Where and what they are is revealed -and turns out to be entirely unexpected. Ballerina: We don't know who we are, we don't know where we are. Each of us woke up one moment, and here we were in the darkness. We're nameless things with no memory no knowledge of what went before, no understanding of what is now, no knowledge of what will be. - WandaVision: Wanda and Vision find themselves living in Westview, an idyllic sitcom world, a Stepford Suburbia. However, unlike most examples, it doesn't appear that either Wanda or Vision want to know how they got there or how to get out, being perfectly content to live (semi-)normal lives as part of a sitcom world. However, reality seems to be encroaching, showing that \|\|people outside of Westview want to know what's happening.\|\| - Cthulhu City, a setting for Trail of Cthulhu, is about a set of characters trapped in an impossible city which is best described as a mix of all of the fictional cities in H. P. Lovecraft's work, ruled by the forces of the Cthulhu Mythos. There are several possible explanations for this; figuring out which one is true in a given campaign and escaping the city are two of the main long-term goals for the PCs. - Christopher Stasheff's one-act play "The Actor's Nightmare" features a hapless accountant named George Spelvin waking up in the nightmare that all actors experience: No idea what play he's in, what character he plays, or what his lines are — and the curtain is about to go up. - The second half of the fourth Bottom Live show has Richie and Eddie inexplicably falling into a steel dome and thus the two of them have to figure out how to escape and get back to their show for the second act. - Jon Mandarin's one-act play "Self-Titled" features five contrasting characters with identical outward appearances and one disembodied voice interacting and philosophically pontificating inside a dark purgatorial environment (that may-or-may-not be a fourth wall breaking stageplay). - Waiting for Godot: While Vladimir and Estragon know where they are and why they're there, they don't know if it's the right place or even who they're waiting for is, other than his name is Godot. - BIONICLE. Although the characters themselves don't ask questions relating to how they, a bunch of sentient cyborgs, came to be living a primitive lifestyle on a tropical island, Word of God has stated that this was a major source of the series' appeal in the early years, as the viewer would be curious as to how this situation came about. The Matoran were unaware that they were suffering from mass amnesia, so they were just as surprised as the viewers were when their origins were slowly revealed over the next few years of storyline. - The Strangerhood: Everyone wakes with amnesia in a mysterious town, and only a scary faceless voice seems to know what's going on and won't tell anyone. This being a comedy series, we never find out either. - The framing device of Televoid! A man finds himself in a room with an old television set, dimly aware that he has to produce videos for an unseen audience for unknown purposes. - All three games on Addventure begin with the protagonist finding himself in a void or in a strange room. - The blog Ontological (part of The Fear Mythos) begins when the main character wakes up in a house without doors...instead all the windows and places where the doors should be are bricked up and he is unable to escape. - Stuart Ashen and the fictional "retro" video game (and board game) Vinnie Vole's Existential Nightmare. Vinnie the Vole is trapped in a bare empty room. What do you do? \|\|Nothing. The only way out is suicide, which Vinnie eventually opts for in spite of the player's protestations.\|\| - The SCP Foundation has the rewritten file for SCP-031. When checking the database, a researcher found that, unknown to her or her predecessors, the Ryugyong Hotel was not only hosting SCP-031, but also SCP-1427. Wondering if the Koreans were using the hotel as a detention facility, it soon transpired that any team sent in would only see evidence of the anomaly they were looking for, and absolutely no trace of the other, including other investigation teams. The Korean branch of the Foundation had no idea either SCP was being kept at the hotel, and they couldn't find traces of either SCP or either team. Just as soon as the researcher begins pushing for an explanation, she unceremoniously leaves her post due to health problems. - This happens a lot in Marble Hornets, what with the amnesia gotten from Slenderman and ToTheArk. - "Hi I'm Mary Mary" begins with the titular character awakening in her parents' house, or a copy thereof, with no memory of how she got there or who she is beyond her name. - The mystery plot of season two of Drawtectives is kicked off by all three player characters waking up on a strange train flying through space with no memory of how they got on or why. They still retain their memories of life before, just not the immediate time before boarding. The other passenger in the car, later dubbed Eugene, is not so lucky; he has no memories of his life before the train car, including what his name was, and barely remembers certain basic concepts like what the moon is. - 12 oz. Mouse: As near as can be said with any certainty, the character Mouse himself almost definitely realizes he is one when memories of appears to be a wife and family prompt him to reflect that he really doesn't remember anything from his own past much before the series. - The premise of Season 1 of The Hollow is that Adam, Kai, and Mira find themselves in a bizarre world full of monsters and strange people with no idea who they are or how they got there. \|\|It turns out that they're voluntary participants in a virtual reality game. Their memories being blocked is part of the challenge.\|\| - In Animaniacs (2020), the Pinky and the Brain segment "Reichenbrain Falls" opens with Brain waking up aboard the International Space Station, with no memory of how or why he came to be there. - Infinity Train follows a girl named Tulip, who finds herself trapped on a bizarre train full of puzzles and pocket dimensions, trying to find her way home with the help of a robot named One-One. By the start of the pilot episode, she'd already been stuck there for a week, with no idea how she got there or why there are glowing numbers on her hand. - In My Life as a Teenage Robot, the "Enclosure of Doom" episode starts with Jenny and Killgore regaining consciousness inside a high-tech structure, complete with Death Course, with no idea how they got there. \|\|It turns out they're trapped inside Armagedroid, Killgore's Humongous Mecha.\|\| - Over the Garden Wall opens with the two main characters already lost, and neither of them ever bring up the exact circumstances that got them lost, \|\|though the audience finds out in the penultimate episode.\|\| - The plot of the The Simpsons episode "Eternal Moonshine of the Simpson Mind." Homer spends the episode trying to regain his memories of the previous night. Invoked because \|\|he accidentally learned about a surprise party the town was holding for him, and asked Moe to concoct a Gargle Blaster that would un-spoil the surprise for him\|\|. - Congratulations. Whoever you are, wherever you are, you are part of the very, very large Ensemble Cast who was born into one of these.	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/OntologicalMystery
On the Rebound - TV Tropes "Do you know what rebound is? Trying to get over one love by bouncing into love with somebody else. It's fine, except the rebound is rarely the real thing. In fact, it's the bunk. There's the first bounce, the second, and ... well, look at me. You wind up like an old tennis ball." After going through a bad breakup, a character very quickly jumps into a new relationship. Often they're not emotionally prepared for the new relationship but go into one because they're hurting. The rebound lover is thus usually a Romantic False Lead. Oftentimes they are a Suspiciously Similar Substitute or a Replacement Goldfish. There are two common ways that characters deal with being in a rebound relationship. Either they are actively pursuing their Love Interest during a vulnerable time, or they are actively trying not to pursue the interest out of fear of being the rebound. The latter is often used to maintain UST when there is no other reason to keep the two from getting together. Note that this does NOT cover instances where a person leaves their significant other for someone new. They have to break up, then leap into the new relationship. Additionally, it's not just "the relationship after a big breakup." The emotional vulnerability is a large part of the trope. Sister trope to Comforting the Widow, which is about entering a relationship after a loved one dies. Often a large overlap with Sex for Solace. See also Rebound Best Friend for the platonic version. ## Examples: - Implied with Griffith from Berserk towards Guts. He was distraught after Guts defeated him and left the Band of the Hawks, so distraught he immediately sought out Princess Charlotte for sex in a desperate attempt to make himself feel better and regain control of the situation. It didnt work, and if anything it made everything worse for him, because the King (who has his own little issues regarding his daughter) would find out and have him put to the torture before declaring everyone he led outlaw. Made even more of an example in the movie where he is shown thinking of Guts the entire time he is having sex with Charlotte. - Digimon Adventure 02: 2 days after Tai learns it's Matt that Sora's interested in, Tai's hitting on a blonde French girl in Paris. - Rui Tachibana from Domestic Girlfriend: - She basically gets a shot at her love with Natsuo only after he & Hina Tachibana separate due to their teacher x student relationship being exposed. After Hina leaves home, Rui becomes Natsuo's crutch while also living together with him and every now & then initiating some physical contact despite him still hoping to get back together with Hina one day, which was also being his driving force for becoming an accomplished writer. - Despite that, once he sees Hina again on Izu Oshima island, it's still her that he pursues while leaving a crying & pleading Rui behind. It's only after Hina completely rejects his feelings(as a lie to protect his future), leaving Natsuo emotionally hurt, his resolve crushed, that Rui eventually gets to start a relationship with him. Of course, Hina eventually returns... - Mars (1996): The Casanova cum Ladykiller in Love Rei attempts to do this after \|\|he breaks up with Kira after he struggles to come to terms with her trauma-induced behavior\|\|. But it's ultimately subverted because he finds out that since he's in love, his body doesn't respond to other women anymore and he and Kira patch things up soon after. - Scott Pilgrim has a triple threat: - After the devastating break-up with Envy, Scott briefly gets with Knives at the first chance, before becoming obsessed with Ramona (at least he didn't take advantage of her). While a year has passed since the break-up, Scott is still hurting so much that a phone call from Envy left him near-comatose. - After being dumped by Scott, Knives throws herself at Young Neil, on the basis that he kind of looks like Scott. They don't last. It doesn't help that she's also going for Young Neil on the grounds that since he's around Scott a lot, so this lets her continue to hang around him; her not-quite-thing with Stephen Stills works the same way. - Once the whole truth about the break-up between Scott and Envy comes out, it becomes clear that Envy's relationship with Todd was this. She's still hurting out of the break-up and finding out Todd \|\|had been cheating on her with their band's drummer, had punched a hole in the moon for Ramona before doing the same for her and calling it a unique act, and was cheating on his Vegan diet, among other things\|\| when she throws herself at \|\|Gideon\|\|, and doesn't find closure until after Gideon's death. - Deconstructed in the Frozen (2013) fanfic The Torn Prince, which serves as a sequel to the original film. Kristoff discusses with Elsa \|\|en route to the Southern Isles\|\| how he feels like Anna only ended up with him as an afterthought after things went wrong with Hans and how he doubts she actually feels anything for him. \|\|His fears are actually quite justified. The chemistry between Anna and Hans never truly died, and while Anna does love Kristoff in her own way, she can't force herself to love him romantically no matter how much she wants. In the end, Anna chooses Hans over Kristoff, who is devastated but receives a Bittersweet Ending.\|\| - In Sparkling Shimmer, Twilight worries that this might be the only reason she's attracted to Sunset. Despite this, she agrees to a few test dates after Sunset confesses. - After finally realizing what a jerk Gendo is in Doing It Right This Time, Ritsuko swears off men and asks Maya if she wants to be her "torrid lesbian rebound fling". Maya immediately agrees and the following relationship actually works out pretty well. It helps that Maya convinced Ritsuko to make an effort in a genuine relationship rather than just make it a one-and-done thing. - In Lantern's Day, In Canary's Night: Felicity comes to the conclusion that any relationship Oliver has with another woman who isn't Laurel is this. Whether she's right or not is debatable, but at the very least her own relationship with Oliver was this, as one of the reasons Oliver even dated Felicity is because he thought he ruined whatever chances he had with Laurel. - Old Associations: During their first and only session of couple's counseling, Felicity accuses her relationship of Oliver being this once a Word Association Test reveals Oliver subconsciously considers his ex-girlfriend Laurel "Home", effectively confirming that he's still in love with her. She then Rage Quits the session early on and permanently ends their relationship, declaring she refuses to be a "consolation prize", the implication being Oliver only started pursuing her because he believed he had wrecked things so badly with Laurel that they had no chance of making a romantic relationship work again. The rest of the session, and later on his continuing therapy with the original therapist, has Oliver realize that she's right: every time Oliver suffers something bad, he always ends up going back to Laurel in the end, and whenever they hit a rocky patch in their relationship, instead of trying to make the effort to talk things out and fix things, he leaves and goes somewhere else for a while until the cycle repeats again. He admits this to Laurel towards the end of the story and tells her he's going to therapy to help him break the habit so he can stick with her for good, whether it's as a friend or as a lover. - In The Awful Truth, the aunt tries to warn the freshly separated female lead about going down this path. - In Drinking Buddies, after \|\|Kate gets dumped by Chris\|\|, she hooks up with a coworker that she doesn't even like that much. When a friend calls her out on it, she says she doesn't love him or anything, and just acted. - Parodied in Not Another Teen Movie. After Jake breaks up with Priscilla, his dad (who wants his son to emulate him in every way) approaches him with the "perfect rebound girl", which turns out to be his willing mother. No wonder Jake considers himself the Only Sane Man in the family. - Mr. Right has Martha meeting Francis immediately after breaking up with her creep of a boyfriend. The title actually comes from a sarcastic remark from her roommate about how quickly she falls for him. - In the movie Swingers, Mike is assured by a friend that his ex's current relationship won't last because it's a rebound relationship. But her relationship with Mike was also a rebound. - In Michael Connelly book The Lincoln Lawyer, the titular lawyer is a twice-divorced man and it's mentioned that his second marriage was the result of a rebound relationship. Somehow, he remains on friendly terms with both exes. - Red Dwarf: Infinity Welcomes Careful Drivers: Kristine Kochanski is on the rebound from her boyfriend of two years when she meets Lister. They rapidly end up in a wild relationship, but it doesn't last — her ex dumps the "brunette in Catering" he left her for, and she quickly goes back to him, leaving Lister heartbroken. - After breaking up with Isaac Clarke before the events of Dead Space 3, Ellie has taken up with Captain Robert Norton of the (remaining) military because unlike the traumatized Isaac Norton still wants to fight the Markers and save humanity. \|\|At first he does, anyway, later changing to protecting Ellie at the cost of his people's lives and trying to Murder the Hypotenuse, possibly under the Marker's influence but still\|\|. Norton is such a Jerkass, though, and his interactions with Ellie so emotionally lopsided that it's less What Does She See in Him? and more like he's Any Port In Storm due to her breakup with Isaac; at one point Norton sincerely tells Ellie that he loves her and Ellie's response is basically, "Oh, I'm aware of that" without any off the charm and affection that Han Solo used in The Empire Strikes Back. \|\|When Isaac has to kill Norton in self-defense, Ellie is naturally upset but rants mainly that Norton still believed in their cause as opposed to Isaac instead of, y'know, berating him for killing someone she loved.\|\| - Horizon Zero Dawn: After the death of his girlfriend Ersa, Sun-King Avad will flirt with Aloy a little, who has more than a passing resemblance to Ersa in temperament. Later, Avad apologizes for being too forward, and they move on. - Love & Pies: On the first day of her high school ex Joe's full-time job at Amelia's café, she struggles with her rekindled feelings for him because it has only been a week since she signed the divorce papers. She tells herself to focus on her work and try not to let romance distract her in the meantime and insists that she and Joe are in a Strictly Professional Relationship. She also worries about rushing into the relationship \|\|after nearly falling for Sam when he pretended to be his twin brother Joe.\|\| - Melody takes place right after the protagonist's breakup with Bethany. Because of this, he is hesitant, if not outright insecure, in his relationships with any of the girls. - If the protagonist opts for relationships with Melody and/or Isabella, he would also be a rebound for them (they both had breakups right before the beginning of the story). Isabella lampshades this at the beginning of her romantic path, and opts for a one-night stand... which turns into something more if the protagonist wants it. - In El Goonish Shive, Diane tries to take advantage of this trope (warning: link contains some spoilers) to enter a relationship with \|\|Elliot\|\| after she overhears his girlfriend at the time planning to break up with him. However, this plan ends up failing after, among other things, the breakup doesn't go quite the way Diane expected, resulting in our spoilered male character not actually being left in the expected emotionally vulnerable state. - Kevin & Kell has a surprisingly literal example (lampshaded in the punchline). George Fennec's girlfriend, Zerdra Zenith, decides to break up with him, having gotten over her disdain for her fellow fennec foxes. Since George had been seeing her while disguised as a rabbit, he takes the opportunity to reveal himself as a fennec fox, ignoring Danielle Kindle (who's posing as his daughter)'s warnings. Zerdra punches George so hard he lands in Danielle's arms. Before long, George and Danielle get into a relationship. - The Fairly OddParents!: The episode "The Secret Origin of Denzel Crocker" shows this is how Timmy's parents got together. Timmy's mom and Dinkleburg were dating at first, only for Dinkleburg to dump her when he got government funding and apparently decided to trade up. Timmy's dad was there for her in that moment and a genuine relationship formed from that. It helps that it was shown that Timmy's dad genuinely had feelings for her before then. - The Legend of Korra: Mako gets back together with his ex-girlfriend Asami after he breaks up with Korra. \|\|It doesn't last.\|\| - The Simpsons: After Edna breaks up with Skinner, she then hooks up with Comic Book Guy on the Rebound. Lampshaded by Marge: Marge: You meet the worst people on the rebound. That's how Jackie got her "O". - In The Venture Bros., after being dumped by The Monarch, Dr. Girlfriend then goes to Phantom Limb and begins dating him. She never seems to actually care for him that much, and comes across as distant to the audience. - Young Justice. Poor, poor La'gann was Miss Martian's "rebound guy" during her Offscreen Breakup with Superboy during the Time Skip. He even gets called such on the series. \|\|She eventually dumps La'gann because she realizes that he's just a rebound guy to her\|\|.	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/OnTheRebound
Open-and-Shut Case - TV Tropes "It seems like an open-and-shut case... or is it?" A line heard far too often in episode descriptions. To put it simply, an "open-and-shut case" describes a case so devoid of ambiguity that solving it is an absolute given; the case is opened, then just as quickly, it's shut. The banality of such cases don't make for great entertainment, which is why it sees more action as part of an ironic One-Liner. There's many variations of this ubiquitous Crime and Punishment trope, so we'll just give one: We've got a defense lawyer with blonde highlights. She's a hot, young version of Perry Mason. One day, she gets a call from her friends in the Deep South. A black guy is only a few weeks away from the ultimate vaccination, which will stop him from getting any illnesses ever again by virtue of being dead. It seemed like (here's those dreaded words again) an "open-and-shut case": Mr. Smith's wife and three children were found horribly murdered. Mr. Smith was arrested by the police, his shirt covered in his daughter's blood. He confessed, was tried and was sentenced to a permanent cure to his problems. The lawyer investigates the case. She finds out that the corrupt sheriff was responsible, the confession was obtained under duress and the blood was from him cradling his dying daughter. This one still gets going because forensic evidence, even today, is subject to interpretation.	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/OpenAndShutCase
Hot Springs Episode - TV Tropes Kamina: Simon, look! It's a hot spring! Ohh... Ohh, a hot spring! A veritable smorgasbord of everything a man's heart truly desires and craves! A building that's sole function is to accommodate to a man's passion, fiery spirit, and raging soul! Simon: Uh, Bro, what are you talking about? Kamina: Boobshots, boobshots, boobshots, boobshots, boooooooobshoooooots! The cast finds a reason to spend an episode at a hot spring ( onsen, [温泉]) — a popular type of Japanese resort/attraction similar to communal bathing. note : Japanese islands are a part of the Pacific Ring of Fire, more specifically, its most active, NW section, so various volcanic-induced phenomena, including this, are fairly common there. The same goes, to a lesser degree, for the adjacent lands in the Ring - Kamchatka and Philippines It's the Japanese equivalent of a European spa town. Naturally this provides an excusable opportunity for Fanservice if a show is so inclined, although some shows aimed at younger kids will use toweled characters. Some series that aren't geared towards younger viewers will broadcast with towels (and/or Censor Steam), but remove them from the DVD version as an incentive to buy the DVDs. In milder situations, this is merely equivalent to a bath scene where the episode slows down so the characters can relax and think about the events of the day. Often a trip to an onsen will lead to characters accidentally seeing each other in the nude. Or intentionally seeing each other in the nude. Or falling onto each other in the nude... whatever they want, really, as long as someone ends up naked. Occasionally, there may be a little ping-pong playing afterwards, and the characters will likely wear yukatas for added fanservice, and drinking some nice, cold milk. The low-budget version of this is the sento [銭湯] episode, where the characters go to the public bath house together. Usually, it's because there's a plumbing or other utility failure at home. This kind of scenario is so common in anime there is even a wiki that catalogues them. Cousin to the Beach Episode and Public Bathhouse Scene. Every anime more than two episodes long will include at least one of these scenes. ## Example subpages: <!—index—> <!—/index—> ## Other examples: - Episode 32 of Happy Heroes is about the heroes going to a newly-opened hot spring to warm up on a cold winter day after Big and Little M. cut the gas line to Doctor H.'s house. - At the very beginning of Issue #43 of IDW' My Little Pony comic main series, the protagonists find hot springs. It's a Non-Fanservice occurrence, which is later exploited: \|\|The Magical water later shifts those who touched with it, turning them into an evil version of themselves.\|\| - Ghosts of Evangelion: During a story arc set in 2021, Shinji and Asuka take a trip to Okinawa and take a bath in a hot spring. - Once More with Feeling: After fighting Sandalphon in episode 17, the cast spends the rest of the day at a hot springs resort. During that time, Misato apologizes to Asuka for risking her life during the battle and opens up to her about her parent issues. - One Piece: Parallel Works had Yuki-Rin, Kazuma, Heathcliffe, and Aki going to one during the Five Days of Fun Arc. It didn't really have any Fanservice, but Heathcliffe's backstory and Yuki-Rin's \|\|amnesia\|\| were discussed among the Capricorns. - The Berserk fanfic "Three Nights" pulls this off with Guts, Casca, Pippin, and Judeau finding a natural hot spring on their way to Wyndham to rescue Griffith. After Pippin and Judeau bathe off-screen, Casca aggressively but cleverly convinces Guts to take a bath by luring him to the hot spring - with her as the bait. The tone of the fic avoids this scene from turning into a lemon, but Guts and Casca do share a very intimate moment with each other. - Friendship Is Magical Girls has "Golden Week" the two-part episode about three-quarters of the way through the Magic Arc, wherein the team travels to a hot springs spa in the countryside to relax and bond as a team. Technically speaking, they're only in the hot springs in the first part, however. - Hotspring Souls! is a Soulsborne ( Demon's Souls, Dark Souls, Dark Souls II, and Bloodborne) crossover comedy fic that plays with the idea of the games' protagonists having a weekend vacation at an inn/hotspring in the countryside. - Pokémon Crossing has a chapter about the boys going to an onsen, but it leads to chaos (one of the men offers alcohol to the protagonists, while two Pokémon get into a fight in the Pokémon end of the springs). - Pokémon Reset Bloodlines had a hotspring scene in Chapter 37 in the story's version of the Cinnabar hotspring seen in anime. Unlike the canon version there is no destroyed wall and no main characters see or try to each other naked. There is a group of unnamed characters who tried or had tried though. - Son of the Sannin has the whole main cast (save for Jiraiya, Tsunade, and Itachi, who were heading to the Kage summit) going to Konoha's hotsprings, bringing along several friends from outside. The number of people forced the staff to temporarily remove the walls separating the men's and women's sides from the mixed baths in order to accommodate everyone since there were many couples who wanted to bathe together. - In Chapter 21 of The Home We Built Together, Astrid takes Hiccup to Berk's hot springs on Ruffnut's recommendation. - In the 1954 film The Bridges at Toko-Ri, Harry Brubaker (William Holden), an American fighter pilot stationed in Japan goes to a public bath with his wife Nancy (Grace Kelly) and their kids. No nudity is shown since it was 1954, but they seem to be nude and act very shy when a Japanese family enters and disrobes for the bath next to them. Later, they relax. Pretty daring for 1954. - In The Yakuza, Tanner enlists the aid of his old army buddy, Harry Kilmer, to go to Japan and rescue his child. Or, so it seems. There's a bit of tattooed knife violence and implied nudity in the bath house. - Memoirs of a Geisha has the titular character take some high-ranked American military men to an onsen resort. - In X-Cross, Shiyori and Aiko go to Ashikari village to use the hot springs and forget about Shiyori's ex, Asamiya. Unfortunately, Asamiya was the one who suggested the place to Aiko in the first place, and he runs the town. - Doom Valley Prep School which uses many tropes from manga and anime had an entire chapter devoted to relaxing in a hot spring. Petra, a boy turned unwillingly into a girl, gets to be embarrassed that she has a better figure than all of her friends. It gets worse for her as the conversation turns to her rather chaotic and unwanted love life. - A rare Western example, from Star Wars Legends: I, Jedi has a scene where Luke and his inaugural class go swimming in a grotto. Corran also discovers that Halcyons have to obey the laws of thermodynamics, as he absorbs the heat and then redirects it into psychokinesis. - Star Trek: The Next Generation, of all things, had one. Troi, Troi's mom, Worf, and his boy Alexander all hopped into mud baths on the holodeck a couple of times. - Xena: Warrior Princess had one in season 5 when they stopped by an Wild West-style town. - Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman when Preston decided to open a spa in his hotel resort. He thought he found a gold mine and an attraction for tourists, but it was most enjoyed by local ladies who went there to mess with him a bit. - The Dao of the Awakened had Hua Yin stumble across a Cultivation Font doubling as a hot springs bath. Occupied by three Cultivators too powerful to hide from... - Etrian Odyssey 2 Untold: The Fafnir Knight: Part of the DLC features the female characters enjoying a hot spring shower, and it's exactly as pervy as you'd expect. Especially when the girls' bath is interrupted by an FOE. - A recurring tradition of the Tales Series. - One of the inns in Tales of Symphonia is also a hot spring, and going there with Zelos in the party after a certain plot event results in a cutscene where Zelos tries to spy on the female party members while they're bathing. Lloyd shows up and chastises him, but the ladies hear him and Zelos runs off, leaving Lloyd to take the blame. The game even gives Lloyd the title of "Peeping Tom". - The same kind of situation happens in Dawn of the New World if the party goes to the hot spring at one point and have the ladies go in. Zelos tries to spy on the females (while Emil and Lloyd give him crap for it), and Lloyd gets blamed again as he's the only one who didn't run. When the males take their turn, Marta tricked everyone but Emil into not coming in so she could spend time with him. When Emil finds out he ends ups calling everyone else attention. Naturally, everyone but Lloyd decides that Emil must have planned this even though both claim otherwise (and them all knowing how openly affectionate Marta is towards Emil), and Emil also gets the title "Peeping Tom". - The original bathing scenes in Tales of Phantasia had peeping on both sides: Chester on the male side, and Arche on the female. Chester also gained the title of Muscleman, Mint the title "Boin~chan". Tales of Eternia had no wall-watching, although Reid did have to smuggle Chat into the men's dressing room to get one of her skills, which leads to a rather unfortunate scene between her and Keele. Also on a separate occasion, Meredy decided to bath near the man's side instead, and Hilarity Ensues. - They're at it again in Tales of Vesperia. - There are three different scenes. To get the first two, you need to pay 300,000 gald for the first and 600,000 gald for the second. During the first, Raven keeps trying to peek at the woman's side of the spring, with little success. The second time Raven manages to see Judith completely nude, and coerces Karol into being his accomplice. Judith appears to be aware of this, but utterly nonchalant. The third visit is free, During the third, the party winds up working there and at the end, they all get costume titles. - In the PS3 version, there were a few scenes added for the hot springs to accommodate Flynn and Patty being in the party. - Tales of the Abyss has it in two scenes: one gives you new outfits and another gives Guy the title Naughty Devil due to him groping both Tear and Natalia after being shoved by Luke and Jade for an experiment. - While absent from Tales of Xillia, the sequel made up for it by making the hot springs event an animated cutscene. The party gets treated to it as a reward for paying off Ludger's 20 million gald debt. However, the hot spring they go to ends up lacking a partition, forcing them to improvise by having the guys cram themselves into a water-filled, super-sized Tipo while the girls get to bathe comfortably. Hilarity and fanservice ensue. - Present in Tales of Berseria, with the added effect of a "Freaky Friday" Flip. - Riviera: The Promised Land and Yggdra Union both feature a hidden "hot springs scene" where the games' female characters appear naked. Bafflingly, the American version of both games' hot springs scenes actually shows MORE than the Japanese version. - One of the jokes about Riviera is that the only way to tell gender for some NPCs is whether or not they appear in the bathing scenes; they are female if they appear in one, and every female appears in one. - Lunar: The Silver Star features sex-segregated springs, with the male-only one much easier to reach than the female-only one. This is also a bit of a Guide Dang It! since you (naturally) need to bring soap. It's only available for a very short time at the very beginning of the game. Long before there is any hint either spring exists. Lunar: Eternal Blue features baths instead. The clueless Lucia walks into the male bath as well, much to Hiro's surprise - and Ruby's chagrin. - Part of the Mt. Gagazet sequence in Final Fantasy X-2. (But only as a reward if the player approaches the area in a particular, stealthy way. If they approach the Fem-Goons directly, then the scene is skipped.) Later on, as the Gullwings install cameras all over Spira, they get to watch nearly the entire cast of NPCs show up at the hot springs at various times. Subverted as all the NPCs keep all their clothes on (most probably due to budgeting). The PC sequence does provide briefer outfits for the three girls, although in Rikku's case it can be argued she ends up wearing more than she usually does. - Shin Megami Tensei Persona 3, Persona 4 and Persona 5 Strikers. The former involves a Stealth-Based Mission in the original version and FES while the Portable version involves a Choose Your Own Adventure based puzzle instead. - Averted in The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess, where there are two hot springs inhabited by Gorons, but there is not much focus on them other than for healing. - Pokémon: - The remakes of Pokémon Red and Blue ( FireRed and LeafGreen) feature a hot spring that heals Pokémon. This being a Pokémon game, no fanservice is involved. - Hot springs also appear in Pokémon Ruby and Sapphire/ Emerald, though there is no Fan Disservice here, either. (The NPCs in the Lavaridge hot spring are all elderly.) Just outside the spring, an elderly man is warming himself in some heated sand. Talk to him, and he'll remark on how good the sand feels—until a Pokemon bites him in the butt. Perhaps dampening the comedy: the primary sand-dwelling Pokemon around there is Trapinch, a giant antlion larva with bear trap-like jaws. - Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Explorers of Time/Darkness/Sky, too, but since all of the characters are Pokémon... yeah. - Harvest Moon: - The original Harvest Moon for SNES features a hot spring hidden in the mountains. Your character can relax there and you can even bathe with potential wives for relationship points. There's also a scene you can get with Eve where you accidentally come across her in the hot spring. - Harvest Moon: Back to Nature has a hot spring near one of the mines. - Stardew Valley has a hot spring, and though most of the time it remains unused by the general populace, Penny's final heart event takes place in the pool itself. - Present in all of the 5 generations of Record of Agarest War. The other present thing with this one is that Winfield gets beaten up by Borgnine every single time. - Whatever Agarest Senki has to offer at first, Agarest Senki 2 takes it up a notch when Janus goes full-blown Large Ham at peaking at the hot springs. Video found here. - There's a hot spring side-quest in Luminous Arc 2. And another in Luminous Arc 3. The reward for undertaking the quest is permission for your party to use the hot springs for a while. - Ōkami: In Sasa Sanctuary, Ameterasu tries to go to a hot spring to relax, but the spring isn't running. You have to go on a mini-quest in which you dig underground to get it flowing again. - In Breath of Fire IV there is a scene that was removed from the international releases of the game, featuring Nina and Ursula visiting a hot spring during the camping scene in the Tidal Flats. They ask Ryu to stand guard, Nina makes a comment along the lines of "Wow, I had no idea you were so big!" he gets curious, and Hilarity Ensues. - Stage three of Touhou Hisoutensoku ~ Choudokyuu Ginyoru no Nazo o Oe starts at the "The Geyser Underground Center Entrance" which Marisa describes as a hot spring. Considering this hot spring is directly a product of Touhou Chireiden ~ Subterranean Animism, and the next boss fight after Marisa takes place in the nuclear reactor powering the hot spring, this scene does not come out of nowhere at all. And no Fanservice. - Mother 3: - Hot springs are primary equivalent to the Trauma Inn. There's even a little sign by most of them with a haiku on it detailing the location (though the syllable count is rarely correct). It's played with on Tanetane Island, however; \|\|while the human protagonists are hallucinating after eating some strange mushrooms, what appears to be a lavishly decorated hot spring is actually a pool of toxic-looking sludge, which Boney will refuse to follow you into (should you choose to do so). The actual hot spring is right next to it, though inaccessible until you've 'sobered up'.\|\| - As for a Hot Spring Episode, there's Lucas's meeting with Ionia in a hot spring, wherein Lucas learns PSI from Ionia... somehow. - Present in Bleach: The 3rd Phantom. If you chose to play as a girl, you get more scenes than if you chose the boy. - In Asura's Wrath, Asura's old master brings him to a hot spring to recover from annihilating Kurow's airship fleet before he fights him. The goal is to get Asura drunk enough that he tries to grope the handmaiden he has serving him, before getting waylaid and knocked out cold by Augus. - Each game in the Suikoden series has an onsen built in the player's headquarters, and various optional scenes can be viewed by bringing the right combinations of characters. - In Muramasa: The Demon Blade, the male protagonist Kisuke and the female protagonist Momohime can have a series of humorous encounters with each other at a hot-spring. - On Chapter 16 in the Japan route of Super Robot Wars UX, the teams go into hot springs in the hidden ninja village. Sakura asks Sonshouku from SD Gundam Sangokuden if she will rust or not. No official art. - Fire Emblem: - In Fire Emblem: Awakening, there's the Hot Spring Scramble DLC scenario. Chrom and the Badass Crew stop by an onsen-like bath house, some charas \|\|(Lucina, Severa, Owain, and Inigo)\|\| get dolled up in yukatas, and then the monsters attack the onsen so the group must defeat them all before they have a chance to enjoy the springs. - Fire Emblem Fates goes a step further by allowing you to construct a hot spring in your personal castle, letting you experience this between each battle with a random group of your units and also gives you free control of the camera. As it's not gender-segregated, there's a chance the avatar might walk in on the opposite gender bathing, upon which Hilarity Ensues. - Fire Emblem Heroes has the paralogue "Hostile Springs", in which the Order of Heroes must free several Heroes from their contracts at a hot spring. Typically for Heroes, the plot is simply there to justify the accompanying summon banner, featuring some of the royal siblings from Fates in towels. - Project X Zone 2 features an optional cutscene that takes place in the hot springs in the New Game Plus. - One apparently volcanically active zone of Skyrim, near the Eldergleam Sanctuary, features steaming hot springs and water pools, as well as a Hunters' tent. When this one is occupied, hunters may be met clad only in the game's default underwear (unless you activated the appropriate mod, you pervert), comfortably bathing in a pool. Puzzlingly, if the player unclothes for the sake of roleplaying and tries to bathe with the hunters, they will still make amused comments on the Dragonborn's own nudity. - Upon reaching the Alba Cavanich inn on the Mor Ardanian Titan in Xenoblade Chronicles 2, the female party members elect to take a dip in the hot spring there; even Poppi. When Mythra enters in Pyra's place, Nia finds herself staring jealously at the former's body ( "...Nice bod you've got there."). Mythra then notices \|\|Nia's embedded core crystal, betraying her status as a Flesh Eater Blade; Nia dresses modestly to disguise this\|\|, and promises to keep her secret from the others. - Radiant Arc: Once the players return to Valeria after the boss fight with Miyuki, the party takes a break in the hot springs. Unsurprisingly, Richard tries to peek over the divider between the men and women sides while Linky tries to stop him, complete with a CG. When the divider falls, Richard tries to blame Linky, but all the men present are blamed, except for Ryder who bailed moments earlier. - Radiant Historia: Perfect Chronology has the "Bathing in Mana" DLC pack, where Aht convinces Stocke and company to relieve some stress by taking in a hot spring... once they defeat a monster that has been terrorizing the area. Once they do, Stocke has the option of bathing with the party member of his choice, male or female. - RealityMinds: In the epilogue, the party can return to the Cave of Silence and go to the deepest room to find a hot spring. \|\|This leads to a subevent where Silvana tries to inspect Astrake's body because of a wound she previously suffered while in his body, much to the latter's embarrassment.\|\| - Valkyria Chronicles 4: One is part of the Post-End Game Content. Features both Censor Steam and Hand-or-Object Underwear. - The allied beastmen quest during the Stormblood story in Final Fantasy XIV has the player character relaxing in a hot spring with some of their allies. The scene gets interrupted with the recurring Big Bad of the beastmen quests appears to kidnap one of your companions. After the issue is resolved, everyone returns to the hot springs to pick up where they left off. While everyone is dressed in the appropriate attire (excluding the beastmen since they wear very little in clothing, but none of the naughty bits are ever seen anyway), you can choose to wear similar attire or choose to stay dressed in your battle gear. - Fate/Grand Order: Half of the Setsubun event's story is this. The main objective is to climb up a 100-story padoga, with each floor you clear tiring out your party members, due to the magical (alcohol) effects of the pagoda. Archer Inferno releases an onsen full of magical energy that helps Servants to recover twice as fast from "fatique". Every time you clear a boss floor, the post-cutscene will then show the interactions between certain groups of Servants who aren't shown in the pagoda (kings, divas and beauty-obsessed women, young boys and young men, robot-like Servants, steeds, young girls and their caretakers, Peeping Toms, Hard Drinking Party Girls, and Japanese men). - In the Atelier series, it is quite common for there to be a scene of the party relaxing in a hot spring (if such a scene isn't there, chance's are there's a Beach Episode instead). A few examples: - Atelier Meruru: The Apprentice of Arland has a whole ending dedicated to opening a volcanic hot spring resort in Arls. After finding the hot spring, you're treated to a Fanservice-laden scene of the female characters enjoying a soak. The actual ending, however, \|\|focuses on the guys enjoying the bath, much to the dismay of Peter (who took a job there in hopes of getting to peep on women), while the ladies having a Skinship Grope gets hidden behind a black screen\|\|. - Atelier Ayesha: The Alchemist of Dusk: There is a hot spring in the Salt Desert, and after sharing it with Tanya, Ayesha gets an idea about how Tanya can sell more salt. The scene is a still picture with dialogue. - Atelier Firis The Alchemist Of The Mysterious Journey has a hot spring in the snowy village of Flocke. Taking a bath there will reward you with a picture of one of the party's ladies naked (albeit with Censor Steam). - In Atelier Sophie 2: The Alchemist of the Mysterious Dream, there's a hot spring in the volcano. In one scene, the party decides to take a dip there. - Atelier Ryza 3: Alchemist of the End & the Secret Key has a hot spring \|\|as the hidden treasure found at the end of a sidequest line in Nemed. Ryza helps the small, nameless mountain village build a resort around it, and the party is rewarded by being allowed to be the first ones to use it\|\|. - Spring Man's level in Rockman 7 EP, "Viva! Spring World!", takes place in a hot spring owned by Spring Man. Spring Man's boss battle intro even has him soaking in the hot spring before Mega Man rudely interrupts him. - Super Mario Sunshine ends with a particularly silly take on this. At the top of Corona Mountain, Bowser is simply relaxing in a hot tub with his son Jr., when Mario arrives to save Peach, who Bowser Jr. thinks is his mama. Bowser, in fully voiced English dialogue, yells at him for disturbing his family vacation, and the boss fight simply consists of Mario pounding 5 pillars to tip the hot tub over. Any fanservice is subverted (possibly because of the disturbing implications) since Peach stays fully clothed on a rubber duck, politely refusing to go in when Jr. asks her to. - The party's base in Code Vein actually contains a fully-functional Japanese-style hot spring, despite it being set up in a ruined church and the game being implied to take place somewhere in post-apocalyptic America. You can enter it whenever you're at home, usually finding some other members of your party there bathing in the hot water already (with others regularly walking in to join you if you wait long enough). Everyone wears a Modesty Towel, but notably this is the only time that Rin ever removes her gask mask. While you can't interact with anyone in there, it serves two gameplay purposes- letting you rewatch previously-viewed cutscenes again, and also giving you the option of automatically recovering half the Haze you dropped when you were killed if you're not confident of your ability to reach it without dying again. - One of the sequences where Ciri is controllable in The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt is a Breather Episode where the only objectives are going to a sauna, diving into chilly water, and taking a shot of booze to warm oneself up. While the player can decide if Ciri wears a Modesty Towel, the other attendees will all bear their breasts, and some will even remark that it's not much use wearing a towel there. - The Little Busters! Drama CD takes place at a hot springs \|\|which they go to after setting off on their own field trip at the end of the game.\|\| But since it's, y'know, audio only plus a couple of individual art pieces, there's not much fanservice. In fact, Kyousuke at one point tries to get the guys to peek at the girls' side - not because he himself is all that interested, just because it's a thing that happens in anime - but in the ensuing reluctance, the only one who ends up peeking is Kurugaya, who then gleefully tells the other girls about Masato's, um, assets, while he wails in horror. - There's a brief scene in Demonbane, during the Beach Episode. Whoever is Kurou's developing Love Interest walks in on him in the spring (it is explicitly described as a mixed bath), and all three have different reactions: Al covers her front with a towel but is otherwise nonchalant, Ruri (who is heavily drunk) is utterly shameless and makes advances, while Leica is embarrassed and requests Kurou turn away, and they sit back-to-back. - Minotaur Hotel: \|\|P and Storm\|\| have one of these, where they go skinny dipping and enjoy themselves. - In the common route of Shining Song Starnova, Mr. Producer books the girls a vacation at an onsen as a reward for their hard work. Hijinks ensue. Several of the heroines routes, and the bonus chapter unlocked by beating the game, see them return to the onsen for various reasons. - Alien Hand Syndrome: Initially a very brief one for our heroines Erin and Mina, because it turns out that two guys are already bathing in it. Shrinking Violet Mina is mortified even though she's wearing a Modesty Towel. They return to the spring the next day, even though by then it's raining. - In DevilBear, the Daivas recover from a fight by skinny dipping in a hot spring. - In one El Goonish Shive strip, the characters recapping the plot to each other is covered up by scenes from the "Lucky Bunny Bounty Show" — both of which involve the male character accidentally walking in on the female character in an onsen. - In the creators' commentary for A Miracle of Science, a Hot Springs Strip was repeatedly referenced, originally in an April Fools joke. - Housepets! ended up with five consecutive arcs set in a portable onsen that Keene ordered. The set of arcs would do some backstory building, and mercilessly parody tropes associated with this one. The beginning arc was titled "The Hot Springs Episode". - Not Quite Daily Comic has a fanserving Onsen arc that ends in a dramatic battle. - Red String, which faithfully uses all the tropes of shojo manga, features an entire chapter about the cast spending a few days at an onsen. One of the male characters sees more of the anatomy of three mothers than he intended to. - The Animesque animated series Totally Spies! has an episode where the girls take a vacation to a ski resort and relax in a hot tub. It's not long before a snow-and-ice gimmick villain shows up to ruin everything. - In the Futurama episode "Teenage Mutant Leela's Hurdles", the crew takes the Professor to a spa to get a tar bath because it makes the bather younger. - The Smurfs (1981) episode "Smurfs On Wheels" is basically three Smurfs on a hiking trip versus a group of Smurfs riding in Handy's new Smurf Wagon in order to get to Dreamy Steamy Springs. Naturally the hiking Smurfs get there first while the wagon-riding Smurfs only get there by way of Brainy's driving only for the vehicle to end up heading for the waterfall. - Avatar: The Last Airbender has Uncle Iroh in a hotspring, then spending most of the episode wearing a loincloth. - Star vs. the Forces of Evil: In the episode "Diaz Family Vacation", Marco Diaz's parents, Angie and Rafael, celebrating their wedding anniversary were found relaxing romantically and making kissy faces in a hot spring "only wearing the fanny packs", after he and Star thought they were eaten alive by a Hydra in its den in the Forest of Certain Death. Rafael asked Star Butterfly's dad, King Butterfly, to join in too, but denies it. - The Molly of Denali episode "Hot Springs Eternal" sees Molly, Tooey, Walter, and Nat going to a hot spring during a cold winter. - Dinosaur Train: In "Old Faithful," The Pteranodons and the Lambeosauruses visit a field of geysers. There's also a hot spring where Mrs. Pteranodon and Mrs. Lambeosaurus relax in. Later on, the kids play in the hot springs and get a good surprise out of Mr. Conductor.	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/OnsenEpisode
Stringy-Haired Ghost Girl - TV Tropes The split ends are the scariest part. Pat: Why is every Asian ghost exactly the same ghost... person? Matt: Well, the girl in The Ring is different. Pat: No, I mean, they're literally all ladies in white clothes with super-long black hair that's all tangled and stuff. Matt: What's scarier than a lady coming at you? An entity often seen in Japanese horror movies is a ghost, usually that of a young woman, with long, stringy black hair that covers her face, clad in a white burial kimono or shroud. Her face itself is often quite ghastly to look upon. She is commonly barefoot, if she has feet at all. In some cases, this type of ghost will appear with a pair of ghostly blue flames hovering around her. This is actually a type of ghost known as an onryō, the ghost of a young woman who was greatly wronged by a man in life and now seeks vengeance on the living. Usually, the man who actually did the wronging is left untouched by the onryō (unless he's a main character) and her anger tends to be directed more at anyone unlucky enough to run into her. While the onryō goes as far back as 729 A.D., the Trope Codifier was undoubtedly Sadako Yamamura from The Ring given how iconic she is to Japanese horror and the horror genre in general, to the point it's hard to find examples that do not reference her to some extent. While there are a few male onryō in kabuki, the vast majority are female. And while there are similarly a small number of exceptions with lighter and/or more colorful hair, and even a few with skin that isn't ghost-white, the overwhelming majority are Eerie Pale-Skinned Brunettes. In most media, the onryō has no one in particular to seek vengeance on, rather inflicting it on everyone in the area. This trope, while a staple in Asian media for a long time, also became insanely popular in Western media during The Noughties and early in The New '10s. Compare with Bedsheet Ghost, Undeathly Pallor, and Yuki-onna. Contrast with Cute Ghost Girl note : Though there can certainly be overlap. Usually comes with a side serving of Screamer Trailer. See also Undead Child and Vengeful Ghost, as well as the occasional Ghost Pirate who happens to be a girl. ## Examples: - The story that Doumeki tells about his grandfather's encounter with a ghost during the Hundred Ghost Story Ceremony in ×××HOLiC features one of these, albeit one wearing a simple dress as opposed to a burial kimono or shroud. - In Angel Densetsu, while the protagonist and his father combine Looks Like Cesare with Face of a Thug, his mother, while pretty, scares people because she looks like this. - Animal Crossing New Horizons Deserted Island Diary: In "The Ultimate Photoshoot!", when taking a photo at Harvey's photo studio, the human quartet set up a spooky scene involving a well, out of which a Stringy-Haired Transparent Ghost Girl comes. Harvey quickly befriends her, much to Benben's shock. - In Anne Freaks, Yuri's dead mother is shown as this in his hallucinations. The few flashbacks we see of her when she was alive also show her looking this way, which is likely to show her as unhinged since she's heavily implied to have sexually abused him. - Parodied in Attack on Titan, when Galliard arrives for an early-morning meeting and is greeted at the top of the stairs by one of these crawling around on all fours. He nearly falls back down the stairs in shock, before realizing that it's just Pieck just screwing with him. - Ayakashi: Samurai Horror Tales features Oiwa in an adaptation of Yotsuya Kaidan (see below in the Theater examples). - Ayakashi Triangle features a kubire oni, a Vengeful Ghost created by people who killed themselves that tries to subjects others to Psychic-Assisted Suicide. It's too emaciated to identify by gender, but wears a white robe and has long, stringy black hair. It is described as an onryō, but in-series, the term is used for Vengeful Ghosts in general (regardless of appearance). - Bleach: - Like Orochimaru, Äs Nödt looks like a Stringy-Haired Ghost Guy, with his long, straight black hair and white uniform. He wears a mask that covers his nose and mouth, so the "ghastly face" part might apply. - Similarly, 4th-Division captain \|\|Yachiru\|\| Unohana resembles this once The Gloves Come Off in her final fight with Zaraki Kenpachi. - Rare male example from Death Note. L haunts Light in this fashion right up until Light himself is killed. Though it's up for debate whether the entity Light is seeing is actually L's ghost, or whether he's merely hallucinating. - Miss Michiko from Den-noh Coil looks like this during her more corporeal moments. - Dusk Maiden of Amnesia: Yuuko Kanoe is an amnesiac ghost who wanders the halls of the school she died in. She's bubbly, flirty, and smitten with the protagonist, the first person who's seen her in the decades since her death. Then there's \|\|Shadow Yuuko, the embodied hatred and resentment she split off out of disgust with herself\|\|, who is a true onryō sporting a Slasher Smile with Scary Teeth and glowing crimson eyes. - Whenever Nyu from Elfen Lied turns back into Lucy she sports this appearance, despite having pink hair. - One of the "contestants" in Gantz is a young woman who looks like one of these. It's even lampshaded by the young model whom she is stalking, who calls her "Sadako". \|\|It turns out she's really beautiful under all the hair\|\|. - Great Teacher Onizuka: Fuyutsuki dresses as one (even calling herself Sadako) to scare the students for the Test of Courage in Okinawa. - Ghost Hunt naturally features a case centered around an onryō. - The 10th episode of Hanamaru Kindergarten has a horror-style ending song which features this. - Inugami Isuzu in Hayate X Blade resembles one in her initial appearance. However, after pairing up with her current shinyuu Kibi Momoka, she gets a makeover that makes her resemble Lenalee Lee. - Enma Ai from Hell Girl is definitely onryō-inspired (not to mention Sadako-inspired, particularly in her use of modern technology). She's less scary most of the time because she doesn't obscure her face (she goes for the Hime Cut instead), and being the protagonist, she's onscreen a lot. But beneath that unchanging, impassive expression, she's hiding deep bitterness and rage — when she loses her cool, it's the scariest thing you'll ever see. \|\|She began as a stringy haired ghost girl, and just after she got her revenge hell drafted her as a vengeance demon. So apparently hell has a dress code.\|\| - The "Wet Woman" from Hell Teacher Nube is an apparition that shows up during the rain, sopping wet, asking innocent passersby for shelter. Then she haunts her victims unto death, drawing so much humidity into their homes that they decay and rot within days. She's identical in appearance to Sadako. - In the Onisarashi-hen manga of Higurashi: When They Cry, there were one or two scenes in which the artist was definitely going for this effect. - In Hikiko Urban Legend Story, the titular character is an onryō that moves scary fast when she wants to. - Hunter × Hunter has Palm Siberia. She, on most occasions, sports this appearance because of scruffy long black hair and too much make-up, not to mention a frightening aura caused by stress. However, she is shown to be Beautiful All Along when she gets rid of that Sadako look, takes a shower and combs her hair to go on a date with Gon. - Inori in Hyakko has this look (complete with dark aura sometimes), but it's not her fault — she's just shy and doesn't know how to present herself. Her creepy smile really doesn't help. - Kimi ni Todoke deals with Sawako Kuronuma, a girl whose onryō-like appearance and intimidating manner of speaking leaves her alienated from her students. Many of her classmates even mistakenly call her Sadako. In truth, she's a very sweet girl whose attempts to overcome her shy nature are misread as threats or curses. - My Hero Academia: A male example. \|\|Yoichi Shigaraki\|\|, the first user of One For All looks like this. Except he is actually a very Nice Guy who guides the ninth user of One For All Midoriya. - A character very similar to Sadako, Urabe from Mysterious Girlfriend X, has short hair, but she is otherwise very clearly based on an onryō — although she is a (not) perfectly normal human girl. - Naruto: He's not a ghost and he's not a girl (well, at present), but Orochimaru's design is clearly based on this. - Negima! Magister Negi Magi plays around with this; Cute Ghost Girl Sayo just wants to make friends, but all her attempts to communicate with people are horribly misunderstood, and Asakura takes a Spooky Photograph of her, leading the class to assume that she's an onryō (although with white hair). It gets to the point that they even call in two professional exorcists to take care of the problem before they finally figure out that she doesn't want to hurt anyone. - Tamaki of Ouran High School Host Club dresses up as one in one episode. - Tomoka Kayahara from Ramen Fighter Miki is often mistaken for this, except when eating Onimaru Ramen. - In Re-Kan!, the characters make a haunted house for the School Festival, and Narumi is disguised as a onryō. Since she is terrified of ghosts, she is not too pleased about being dressed like one. - Sakura no Ichiban!: Whenever Tsukiko's hair is disheveled, her bangs go in her face, and when she is wearing a white kimono, people tend to get scared and mistake her for a ghost. - Kiri Komori of Sayonara, Zetsubou-Sensei looks the part, having ghost-white skin and long black hair that tends to obscure her eyes. While Kiri was mistaken for a spirit by the ever-cheerful Kafuka, however, she was instead identified as a 'zashiki warashi' or house goblin. Plus, her hair is beautifully straight and not stringy in the slightest once she moves into the school. Probably because Nietzsche starts washing it for her for fanservice purposes. - Sgt. Frog plays with this trope. The Hinata home is haunted by the ghost of a girl who was chained up there and died, but is very friendly - because it turns out she wasn't chained up there for long and died peacefully of an ailment at her own home. The only reason she stayed around was because she hoped to see her old friend, a kappa she had befriended (who, it's implied, was actually a visitor from Keroro's homeworld of Keron) one last time. - Sket Dance has Reiko Yuki, who has most of the mannerisms nailed down; pale skin, long black hair, a deep, particuarly haunting tone in her voice and (in most of her appearances) usually enters the Sket Dan's clubroom through the windows. The fact that she's a member of the school's occult club helps. - While onryō don't appear in Strawberry Marshmallow, Miu, who has a penchant for attempting improv playacting, pretends (badly) to be possessed, seemingly by this kind of spirit (confirmation from readers of Japanese?). She even puts most of her hair in front of her face, but she doesn't leave for a costume change and return in a white kimono. - Reiko from There's a Ghost Behind That Gal has the usual pale complexion, sunken eyes, and long, wiry hair, but she's also very friendly and ultimatley harmless. - Tomie may have the hairstyle down roughly, but subverts this otherwise by being one of the most unspeakably beautiful things you'll ever see. You'll love her, and hate her, and be driven to kill her... and freak out entirely when she keeps coming back... - The Unpopular Mangaka and the Helpful Onryo-san: Onryo-san's hair is usually pretty normal-looking, but she otherwise fits the description of an onryō. The horror movie she and Senai watch (and she's afraid of) has a more conventional one. - Sunako Nakahara from The Wallflower was originally portrayed as an onryō-like Hikikomori who hated going out in the light, but was really Beautiful All Along. - Chizuru from Wandering Son dresses up as one during a School Festival. - Kuroko in Yandere Kanojo is a fairly harmless one. The worst she'll do is steal your food and hurt your ears with her piano playing. - The Bell Witch in An American Haunting. - The Horror Host in Anthony Bourdain's Hungry Ghosts is an unnamed female youkai with scraggly black hair and an orange floral kimono, \|\|later revealed to have been one of the chefs as a human disguise\|\|. - Anya's Ghost: \|\|Once Emily's true colours of being a Control Freak and a Yandere are revealed, she transitions from being a Cute Ghost Girl into this, complete with malicious acts against Anya once the latter tries to oppose her.\|\| - The slasher from Cutter initially appears to be one of these, even wielding scissors and shears like the Kuchisake-onna, but then it's revealed that \|\|she isn't actually a ghost, she simply enjoys making the people who she is stalking and killing think that she's one\|\|. - Touhou Shinkai ~ Awakening Deep Mythos: Hayako Denki, the mid-boss of Stage 5 and the end-boss of the Extra Stage, is a young ghost girl appearing out of a floating TV screen, akin to her inspiration from The Ring. The revamped version of her song featuring her full color design furthers the connection by making her hair pure black, her outfit white, and her skin pale. - Coraline has the beldam, in her TRUE form. She appears as a normal woman with button eyes but transforms into a "grudge-like ghost". It's not confirmed that she is entirely a ghost. - ''Corpse Bride has Emily as this appearance. She's definitely a tragic Cute Ghost Girl more than a vengeful one. While her hair is a dark blue color, She sports a tattered white wedding dress which is a key part of this type of trope. - The Chinese equivalent is the main (vengeful) heroine of the 1974 Hong Kong film All in the Dim Cold Night. - Mary Hatchet from Blood Night: The Legend of Mary Hatchet. - The Japanese ritual site in The Cabin in the Woods featured a girl like this terrorising a classroom of Japanese schoolgirls, until they perform a song and dance to turn her into a happy frog. \|\|Sitterson and Lin both prove to be quite disappointed with how it went and knock the Japanese team for their failure, deciding that their "perfect record" and reputation for efficiency in their human sacrifices was all a sham.\|\| - Also riding the original wave of onryō-centric horror films is Dark Water (directed by Hideo Nakata, director of Ringu). - The Disappointments Room has one in the poster itself.◊ - The Ghost of Yotsuya (1959), being an adaptation of Trope Maker Yotsuya Kaidan (see Theater below) has this, as Oiwa returns as a stringy-haired corpse to haunt her murderous husband. Like the play it's based on and unlike many later instances of this trope, in this movie Stringy-Haired Ghost Girl Oiwa is not randomly murdering people, but is laser-focused on the man who killed her. - There are a few in the depths of Gonjiam: Haunted Asylum - Hair Extension — Yes, it's exactly what the title sounds like. All dedicated to haunted hair. It's like the film makers weren't even trying to hide it anymore! - Kayako from the Ju-on movies, and their remakes, The Grudge movies. \|\|Aubrey\|\| ends up as one by the end of the second movie, as well. \|\|Naoko\|\| turns into a Stringy-Haired Ghost Girl after she is murdered by a curse-possessed Max in The Grudge 3. - Kuntilanak: The titular Kuntilanak appears as a Stringy-Haired ghost woman when she makes on-screen appearances. - The short Japanese film Black Hair, from the anthology Kwaidan, is a classic example. - The eponymous spirit in The Legend of Black Annie is a bit an atypical example of this, in that she's (as the film's title suggests) black.◊ - In 1971's Let's Scare Jessica to Death, a pale young woman with long hair in a gauzy white dress frequently appears to Jessica, presumably as a warning of impending danger. - And crossover movie Sadako vs. Kayako features the two iconic onryō of J-Horror colliding. - AJ Annila's Sauna features a rare blonde example of the trope, though the black filth she oozes obscures this detail much of the time. - Parodied with Tabitha from Scary Movie 3. - Natre from the 2004 Thai horror film Shutter. Unlike the ghosts from Ring and Ju-on, \|\|the only people Natre ends up hurting or killing were the ones who deeply wronged her in life and drove her to depression and suicide\|\|. Heck, Natre \|\|even went out of her way to warn her ex-boyfriend's current girlfriend of his crimes\|\|, though this was probably motivated mostly by the desire for revenge against \|\|said ex\|\|. - The Thai film Sick Nurses plays with this trope when you find out \|\|the ghost is actually a MTF trans woman\|\|. - The Indonesian cult classic "Sundel Bolong" is about the title character taking her revenge on the gang who drove her to her death (in various creative ways) - Dark Alessa in the Silent Hill movie. - A Tale of Two Sisters has one. - The first part of the Japanese horror anthology Unholy Women, ''Rattle Rattle". Get past the scare factor, and you have absolutely no idea what's going on. Why do Japanese endings have to be so confusing? - "Bloody" Mary Banner from Urban Legends: Bloody Mary seems to be inspired by this type of spirit. - What Lies Beneath shows strong influence from the onryō genre. - ''The Whole Truth (2021)': When Putt and Pim look into the hole, they see a girl who fits this criteria in the house. \|\|She's actually Pinya, their older sister who died when Pim was a baby and Mai was pregnant with Putt, from consuming rat poison.\|\| - The Korean horror film White: The Melody of the Curse features one; in this case, the ghost in question has white hair, and is believed by the protagonists to be the vengeful spirit of a K-Pop idol who committed suicide, at least until the end, where it turns out to actually be \|\|the vengeful spirit of the backup dancer who actually wrote the song and committed suicide after being mutilated by the K-Pop idol, who lashes out at anyone who sings her song - oh, and the above-mentioned idol was her first kill.\|\| - The 2005 South Korean horror film, "The Wig". - In Zebraman the main character has his tv on while working on his costume. The show has a sentai hero called in the English dub Radiation Ranger who is battling a monster that looks like this who is calling out for her son George. The long-haired onryō isn't just seen in Japanese culture. Similar variations occur in other Asian countries as well, like China, Thailand, Vietnam, and Korea. - Traditionally in Korea, ghosts tend to follow the same archetype as the fiend in "The Ring". Female ghosts look bedraggled with hair in their face, and they are always clad in white (the color worn in funerals). This type of ghost, called a maiden ghost, is the most universally feared type of ghost in Korea. - Of all the ghosts in Thailand, the most famous is "Nang Naak". The story varies, but it's usually like this: An ordinary farm girl named Naak from a village falls in love with a handsome young man named Nai Maak. Despite their economical backgrounds, they eventually manage to be together. Shortly after marriage, Nai Maak is conscripted for military service and leaves Naak behind, who dies during labor along with her unborn child. Although they are buried according to local tradition, the spirit of Naak refuses to perish. When Nai Maak returns from the war, the ghost disguises herself and her child as humans to him. The revelation itself provides one of the most memorable scenes in the story when Maak sees his wife grotesquely stretching her arm through the floorboard of their elevated house to pick up a fallen lime, or a knife in another version, on the ground. The terrified husband runs away and the ghost follows him. There are many gory accounts of how Nang Naak chases, harasses, or even kills whoever comes between Maak and her. You're going to have to go on this link to learn what happens afterward - http://asiarecipe.com/thainangnak.html - In China, the classical image of a ghost is a young woman whose face is covered by long black hair, who dies due to misfortune, then comes back for revenge. http://gc.nuaa.edu.cn:8080/nanhangwy/zuopin/PPT/ppt/Culture.ppt#257,2,Slide 2 - Indonesian and Malay mythology has a lot: - The most famous example is pontianak (also known as kuntilanak, especially in Java), the ghost of a woman who died while pregnant. She is vampiric and fond of sucking the blood of young men. She is associated with banana trees, where she resides during the day, and plumeria flowers, the scent of which when they are not physically around indicates the ghost's presence. Other sign includes her voice: her Evil Laugh means she is far away, but if you hear a slow giggle, she is nearby. In almost all myths, the only way to defeat her is by nailing her in the head. The ghost is the namesake of a city in Indonesian Borneo. - A related entity is the langsuyar. While pontianak is the ghost of a pregnant woman, langsuyar is the ghost of a woman who died giving birth. She also prefers flying over walking, befitting her name ( lang means "eagle" in Malay). Otherwise, she is identical to pontianak. - The Sundel bolong from Javanese folklore. She is the ghost of a prostitute ( sundel means "prostitute") who died giving birth to her illegitimate child. Other than long black hair, a large patch of her back is not covered by skin. Some state that the part is hollow to the front, others say that only the skin is missing, exposing her rotten meat (complete with maggots). - La Llorona, the "weeping woman" of Latin American myth, has elements of this. - Brazilian Folklore has the Blonde Girl in the Bathroom (Loira do Banheiro in Portuguese), the ghost of a blonde girl who died at a young age and was buried in her house. A school was later built where her house used to be, so she still haunts it looking for proper burial. - From the same Folklore, the Comadre Fulozinha is basically a Nature Spirit combined with this trope. She is the ghost of a woman with long, black, and weaponizable hair who wanders the forests and kills those who defile nature. - In Jin Yong's The Book and the Sword, Yuanzhi disguises herself as one. Her disguise consists mostly of putting her hair over her face. It's effective enough to clear out a room full of mercenaries. - Stephen King's Duma Key has \|\|twin undead 6-year-olds Tessie and Laura\|\| appear with dripping wet hair hanging into their undead faces, and white dresses, in one of the scariest scenes in the book. - The protagonist of ghostgirl is presented as a girl with long, messy black hair, blank white eyes, and tattered clothes in artwork. Charlotte dies in the second chapter and spends the rest of the book in the afterlife. In contrast to other examples, she's the complete opposite of "scary". Charlotte is an awkward, unpopular teenage girl who died choking on a gummy bear. - In The Girl from the Well, the ghost Okiku is stated to be the in-universe origin of this trope and one of the most famous aside from Oiwa, being the subject of the folktale "Banchō Sarayashiki" and the inspiration for The Ring. - \|\|Kuyou Suou\|\| in Haruhi Suzumiya. \|\|An interface, similar to Nagato, but worse. Apart from being an onryō, she actually seems to be invisible to unimportant persons.\|\| - Juliet, David's dead sister, from Haunted (1988). - Sadako Yamamura from The Ring is singlehandedly responsible for making onryō popular again. While serving as the inspiration for the other works in the Ring franchise, the first book has a few major differences, while Spiral and Loop continue to expand the story. - The "creeping woman" from Charlotte Perkins Gilman's "The Yellow Wallpaper", who is actually a hallucination appearing to the narrator, who has been forced to stay in a room with no intellectual stimulation, or any exciting activity at all, to 'calm her nerves.' Liberal doses of nerve tonic were also prescribed, probably containing significant quantities of opium and alcohol. (Note, this was the prescribed remedy to women suffering "hysteria" in the 19th century.) \|\|The narrator eventually thinks there's a woman creeping behind the odd, vine-like pattern of the wallpaper, and eventually, sees her crawling about. Then she thinks she sees a lot of them. Then she thinks she's the creeping woman.\|\| - Death Trance by Graham Masterton is partly set in Bali, and draws on the folklore of this part of the Far East. The leyaks, a sort of vampire-ghost, appear this way, at least at first, with their faces completely covered in veils or long hair. - A Spanish candid camera show decided to test people's reactions to this trope in Real Life. Ditto for this Brazilian show. - Rosa's ghost takes this form in Alta Mar — \|\|or rather, the woman hired by Cassandra to play Rosa's ghost as part of an elaborate revenge plan\|\|. - The Chen Family from American Horror Story: Roanoke were a family of Taiwanese immigrants who lived in the Roanoke House during the early 1970's. They began experiencing supernatural phenomena during their stay so they attempted using ancestral folk magic to protect themselves, only to be killed by the Butcher and her ghostly minions. Due to the cursed nature of the property, they manifest as ghosts under the Butcher's power, killing all others that trespass on her land. Due to their heritage, the Chens all appear similar to the onryō from The Grudge, possessing long scraggly hair, clinging to the walls, walking on all fours and contorting in impossible ways. - Community: In the fourth season Halloween Episode "Paranormal Parentage", Jeff and Annie decide to pair up their costumes, with Jeff being a conveniently shirtless boxer and Annie being a sexy ring girl. Unfortunately, she thought he meant the girl from The Ring. - Game of Thrones. Arya Stark takes on this appearance when assassinating Ser Meryn Trant; her long tangled hair is initially obscuring her face, which when revealed is that of a girl who died earlier in the season, as the Faceless Man cult which is training Arya uses the faces of dead people as a glamor. Further continuing the association, Arya herself is long presumed dead by her victim. - Some of the Horrors in the Japanese series GARO. - The Haunting of Hill Houses most iconic and first-seen ghost the Bent-Neck Lady \|\|as well as most of the non-bent-necked iterations of Nells ghost\|\| match the look. \|\|presumably partly as a way of disguising the ghosts identity ahead of the reveal.\|\| - Kamen Rider: - Kamen Rider Double: The Virus Dopant is an onryō in all but name: a woman who was hit by a car and put into a coma, but took a dose of Psycho Serum at the very last moment that manifests her mental energy as a vengeful spirit capable of killing her victims with a Touch of Death. Her psychic manifestation has much stringier hair, pale skin, and conveniently she was already wearing white. - In the Kamen Rider Zi-O Hyper Battle DVD, the four main characters go through a haunted house. Tsukuyomi turns out to love pranking the others, because they mistake her for an onryō once and then she does it on purpose, again. Helps that she has really long black hair and is always wearing white. - The last episode in the Masters of Horror series, "Dream Cruise". - Mimpi Metropolitan: Alan mistakes a long-haired nurse for this kind of ghost while patrolling at night in episode 41. - Despite being based off of a spirit of Germanic folklore, Nyx from Once Upon a Time in Wonderland bares a stronger resemblance to Sadako if nothing else. She emerges out of a well, she has long, unkempt dark hair, she looks like a water-logged corpse, she wears a white dress, she curses people and she is probably the scariest thing in the franchise as a whole. - Supernatural: - The Young Ones has a "fifth roommate" hidden in the background of some scenes before this trope was popular. Word of God says she showed up to a house party and never went home. - The German techno-goth group E Nomine's music video for "Mitternacht" features one of these. - Disturbed's video for "The Animal" also feature one (technically a pontianak but still similar) with red cross-shaped make up. Who later paints a cross on top of a lamb and enjoys a bloody feast before sending her wolves in an attempt to kill the band. - In the video for Jason Derulo's song "Cheyenne," the titular woman is based on this, with a few notable differences in appearance: instead of a white dress and stringy hair, she wears a red dress and has long, thick braids. However, her mannerisms and motivations clearly invoke the image. - Olivia Hye of LOONA subverts this trope with her technically being alive by the end of love4eva, but she certainly looks the part. - Geist: The Sin-Eaters: - One of the geists in the first edition core (in the Forgotten splat write-up) manifests like this. - The geist See No Evil, from the 2e jumpstart One Foot in the Grave, also manifests like this, with hollow, bleeding eye-sockets and a permanent rictus grin. - The Tenth Edition version of Bog Wraith in Magic: The Gathering. Appropriately enough, the flavor text refers to a location in Kamigawa, the Japan-inspired part of Magic's multiverse. - First and foremost is the original onryō herself, Oiwa from Yotsuya Kaidan. And yes, it is just as bad as you can imagine it. - Alpha 13 of 7 Days to Die introduced the Screamer, an undead girl with long black hair in a white gown, whose screeching attracts other zombies. While most other zeds sport a quite gorn-y look and yell and groan like you'd expect out of the classic Romero zombie, the Screamer's intact but eerily pale complexion, tinny voice and lack of blood anywhere but on her waist and down (none of which appears to come from her) make her look far more like a ghost than a zombie. - Roblox with The Mimic. Almost all of the monsters surprisingly follow this trope. One of the remarkable ghosts that appear is either Hiachi Or Sama. While not authentic ghosts, they are inspired by this trope for sure. Considering the game being based off classic Japanese urban legends. - The Black Heart (which runs on the below mentioned M.U.G.E.N engine) has Noroko: she is a more traditional ghost girl, with the ability to crawl on the ceiling, spew blood from her wrists, and a complete lack of a face. She sometimes has a mouth, though. A mouth to scream loudly at you, when she's on idle mode, and during one of her fatalities. She also appears to have a mirrored body; instead of legs, she seems to have another torso, with a head and two arms, seeing as some of her attacks show a pair of hands and a head appearing from below her dress. - Noroko's story is also that of a traditional onryō; by completing her Story Mode, we learn that, in life, \|\|she was sacrificed (and possibly raped) by a man, that bathed a doll in her blood, for an unknown purpose (although it seems he was the leader of a cult). Her spirit was locked inside the doll, and it only awoke years later, when the heart of the King of the Other World was stolen. She now searches for the heart, hoping to use its power to find peace in death.\|\| - Reiko in Calling, a murderous ghost complete with the pale skin, white dress and black hair. - Castlevania added a screaming onryō to its menagerie of monsters in Castlevania: Order of Ecclesia. The English name for this enemy is "Banshee", which fits well enough. - Champions Online has Demoiselle Nocturne. After being murdered by her husband, she returned through his nightmares, turned his body inside-out... and then decided to stay in the mortal realm and become a supervillainess. She also began a romance with the evil sorcerer Luther Black, which is disturbing on many levels. - The subway level of Condemned: Criminal Origins (a game developed by the same people who made F.E.A.R.) has several female enemies that look like onryō, with black hair, pale skin, blank eyes, and tattered white dresses. They're not real ghosts-just victims of the Hate Plague affecting Metro City, and their appearance may simply be a result of living in the dark and filthy confines of the subway tunnels. - Sachiko Shinozaki from Corpse Party plays with this. In the original PC-98 version \|\|she was a pretty typical onryō spirit aside from being a child in red instead of a woman in white\|\|. In the Heavenly Host saga she was the Sole Survivor of a multiple-murder incident in the titular school. In-game shes a helpful, if distant, Cute Ghost Girl. \|\|Then it turns out she was the true murderer. And then it turns out she and her mother were killed long before by the principal, corrupting her with hatred. And then it turns out she split up into two halves, the good half wears the white dress, and the evil half is the vessel of the schools will...\|\| It only gets more complicated from there. - Cthulhu Mythos RPG: The Sleeping Girl of the Miasma Sea features such a monster, who will later in the game chase after you in the form of the Chaos Beast. \|\|Later on, it's revealed that it posses the body of a young girl.\|\| - Damned challenges four players to escape a monster controlled by a fifth player. One of those selectable monsters is Bloody Mary, a pale, stringy-haired ghost girl in a tattered white dress, who walks extremely slowly, teleports randomly around, and once in a while flies into a bloody frenzy, murdering anyone in the near vicinity. - Dead by Daylight: - Rin Yamaoka, "The Spirit", is a clear example of this trope. Originally an ordinary Japanese girl, Rin came home one day to find that her father, having suffered serious financial difficulties for some time, had finally snapped and butchered her mother with a sword. He then attacked her, cutting her to ribbons and throwing her through a glass partition. As she lay dying, the Entity offered her the chance to take out her rage on others, and she gladly took it. - Patch 5.6.0 brings in Sadako herself, of The Ring fame. Called "The Onryō", Sadako can be largely invisible, manifesting to attack. She can also teleport between scattered around the map. Survivors can lock Sadako out of these televisions, blocking them from her use, by moving video tapes between them. Survivors that hang on to tapes are potentially vulnerable to being killed outright rather than requiring being hooked. - Yurei, the final opponent in the Doom II mod Ghoul's Forest 3. - Faith in the video game Dreamfall: The Longest Journey is probably based on onryō. Though, to her defense, she never hurts anyone intentionally or knowingly, just wanting to live on. - The Evil Within: Laura, Ruvik's dead sister, is a homicidal spider version of this trope. It turns out that she's \|\|the memory of the real Laura, created from Ruvik's desire to revive his sister from her coma. Since she went brain-dead from immolation, the simulation projects her apparent fear of fire as a critical weakness, so the easiest way to kill her is to set her on fire and pump shotgun shells into her screaming undead carcass\|\|. - A number of the enemies in Fatal Frame are onryō. - Kirie, the Big Bad of the original game, is classic example. - The Box Woman from the second game, though she's an Ubume rather than an onryō. - Kyoka Kuze, from the third game, attacks with her long hair. - The fifth game has a recurring enemy in the form of an unnamed woman who is clad in a white dress, complete with a nice hat, and has long, stringy hair to go with it... but you're far more likely to notice her Slasher Smile and the fact that she's eight feet tall. A reference to the child snatching yokai Hachishakusama (Eight Foot Tall Woman). - Fancy Island has a wide variety of these. - F.E.A.R.'s Alma \|\|Wade\|\| is the ghost of a psychic left to die in the psychic blocking chamber after she was drugged into a coma and forced to give birth to children to be used in a clone army project. So understandably she is PISSED. She wipes out an ENTIRE Delta team squad in three seconds by turning them into bloody skeletons. So the player is kinda over his head there. - Oddly enough, the young Alma is somewhat benevolent towards the protagonist despite her penchant for scaring the absolute living piss out of him. She's often turned rooms filled with enemy Mooks into thin red gruel before the player character has a chance to. Alma's "current" self, however, is less interested in his survival. Helps that \|\|you're her son\|\|. - Sadly those games have been declared Canon Discontinuity, so don't expect any mercy from young Alma in future installments. - Alma does retain her merciful tendencies in F.E.A.R. 2: Project Origin; at one point, she saves Becket's life by killing an Abomination controlling a group of Replica soldiers. It isn't made clear why she does this until the very end, though. \|\|She "covets" Becket due to his modifications in Project Harbinger, and uses him to impregnate herself.\|\| - Also unlike most here she does get revenge on her killer (in fact the whole first game seems to be just her trying to get payback) - House of the Dead: Overkill features a boss named Screamer, which appears to be an homage to Alma, as it shares both Alma's appearance and mimics some of her appearances \|\|such as appearing briefly in windows or sitting in the corner of the elevator\|\|. - Ganbare Goemon has one of these as the first boss, though with Deadly Discs substituting for the usual flames. - The major enemy of GOHOME, Claudia, seems to be a mutation of this trope. While whether she's a dead woman or just a spirit is unclear, she has the aesthetic; she has long stringy black hair and wears a white dress, she haunts the player relentlessly to the point of following you to your house, and just has a generally frightening vibe. Her head is constantly swelling and shrinking, and she walks in a bizarre, hunched manner that puts her deep into the Uncanny Valley. - S-Ko, the leader of the ghosts possessing Zappa in Guilty Gear is an onryō as well as an obvious Shout-Out to Sadako. - These are one of the recurring enemies in The Haunted Mansion. - The secondary antagonist of Imscared is HER, who, while not the standard incarnation, certainly fits the trope. - In Katamari Damacy, ghost girls are one of the many things you can roll up in the game. When you roll one up, she moans "Yuurei desu" (which simply means "I'm a ghost" in Japanese) in a creepy voice. - The Killer Instinct reboot has DLC character Hisako, who is the ghost of a samurai's daughter who is reanimated after her grave was disturbed. She fights with a naginata and can do things such as possessing an opponent in order to make their bodies contort in painful ways. She's also rather unique as far as onryō go, as she's actually benevolent and serves as her village's Guardian Entity with her rage directed solely at those who threaten it or defile her grave. - Kuon. Several creepy female ghosts, most notably \|\|Utsuki's sister Kureha\|\|, who has long black hair, wears a red kimono and drags herself around killing anyone she comes across in a horrific fashion. - The Witch from Left 4 Dead appear at various points in the level curled up and crying (with a distinctive, creepy sound and Glowing Red Eyes) and resemble this trope with a pair of claws to boot. If a player startles one, (by shining their flashlight on her, getting too close or attacking her) she goes into a frenzy and knocks them into negative health. To make matters worse they're the fastest non-mook zombie and they have extremely high health (players are supposed to avoid them, indeed there's an achievement for avoiding provoking any of the witches you encounter in a campaign). The game intentionally spawns them in such ways that it is usually impossible to get around one without running over her and hoping you pass quick enough. There are also multiple achievements for ways to kill her, including fire, which slows her down to a survivor's running speed, and a single shotgun shell hitting her head, which will kill her even on Expert. For the record, though, they have white hair. - Wall Gazer of Lobotomy Corporation has a design based on the trope, with long black hair covering her face, a constant mourning pose, and a Jump Scare with a shriek. She is a horror-themed supernatural creature, but may not strictly be a "ghost," as her exact origins are unknown. - Misao: In one of many death trap endings one of these will pop up randomly on screen before it cuts out on the protagonist's screams. - M.U.G.E.N has Ella, whos is based on a ton of horror movies and is more comical than horrific. - Along with many other mythical creatures and monsters, Muramasa: The Demon Blade also has onryō. One in particular tells you that she watches over her son in death, and is particularly busty to boot. Another is too frightened of a dark path to her husband's new home to haunt him after he remarried. - In the second DLC chapter for the PS Vita rerelease, Gonbe's wife Otae comes back as an onryō to aid her husband on his quest. - The Nancy Drew game Shadow at the Water's Edge has such a ghost haunting the Ryokan Hiei. She tries to drown you. - The antagonist of the Mobile Phone Game Nowhere, \|\|Emily/Catherine\|\|, is a typical onryō with a grudge. - The Night Way Home: Rina spends the game being chased around by an onryō in a Japanese schoolgirl outfit with really long legs. - In Ōkami, the ghost ship features just a head that makes a pretty good effort at this trope by swooping right down into your face without warning. You can't even do anything about it, like you can with the other ghosts. It doesn't help that it has the Spider Queen's face, which has no features other than a big, toothy mouth. - OMORI has a recurring being that's only referred to in the game as Something, which appears to Omori as a floating eye with three black tendrills that sort of look like hair when looked at from a certain angle. \|\|That's because its true form is of the hanging body of Mari, the black-haired sister of true protagonist Sunny who accidentally killed her and hung her corpse from a tree to make it look like a suicide to hide his involvement. The whole purpose of the cheerful Headspace portions of the game is to repress the memories and guilt Sunny feels, but no matter how much he tells himself everything is going to be okay, Something will always follow him like a vengeful onryō unless he confronts the incident directly.\|\| There's also a more classic example of this trope in the form of \|\|Hellmari, a recurring monster that appears in Sunny's day-to-day hallucinations that looks like Mari with a disfigured face and an elongated neck.\|\| - The main enemy of Pacify is one of these that you have to pacify. - An indie horror game, Paranormal HK have you being pursued by one while roaming the streets of Hong Kong (what the title states) after dark. - One of the events in Pokémon: Magikarp Jump includes such a ghost coming at you after turning the TV on and off too many times. - The onryō is an enemy type in The Secret World's Tokyo area, though they don't necessarily fit the details (for one thing, many of them are male), instead serving as Tokyo's version of the spirit enemies found elsewhere in the game. However, Sachiko, a ghost you encounter in the Fear Nothing Foundation building, most definitely does. A member of the group, Sachiko was killed as part of their attempts to brainwash her into a loyal follower of the Morninglight, and she now haunts the building's third floor where most of the nasty stuff took place, killing everything in sight — including you if you don't run and hide in time. Any attempt to fight her ends swiftly with a One-Hit Kill attack from an enemy with a seven-figure health bar and resistance to all stun, impairment, and debuff attacks. - Oichi gains many traits similar to this in Sengoku Basara 3, after losing her mind. It's never made entirely clear whether she's dead or not, but she already looks the part, with white skin and long black hair. The way she totters around, swaying eerily, singing and moaning in that ghastly way and crushing victims with her demonic powers while giggling childishly is pure horror. - Early in Shadow Hearts 1, the party is briefly trapped in a village haunted by an onryō named Li Li. - In Silent Hill 4, the second trip to the Subway World features an onryō (specifically, the ghost of Cynthia Velasquez) that stalks the player throughout the level and can't be killed, only immobilized with one of a very limited number of items. - Spoofed in Skullgirls, Filia can be seen numerous times dressed as Sadako from The Ring in promotional artwork and on one of Peacock's blockbuster moves. Also invoked in one of the NPC girls from Lab 8. - In Spooky's House of Jump Scares has Specimen 4, which is hinted to be either the ghost of a girl named Matsuri, or a similar entity from an urban legend. Notable in that she eats the player if she kills them. - Super Mario Fusion Revival has onryōs all over the place in World 4 (Di Yu, the Chinese hell). They behave like Boos, except slower. - The evolved form of Toiletta, Foiletta, from Yo-Kai Watch has messy black hair (though it doesn't cover her face) and a blue tint under her eyes that resembles bags. She curses people often. Foiletta is a youkai, which also makes her an Undead Child. - Sorta visually invoked in Danganronpa 2: Goodbye Despair. \|\|When Ibuki Mioda is murdered by hanging, her body is found still hanging from a noose... and she's wearing a white robe, and her long black hair is down.\|\| - Hanako from Katawa Shoujo certainly evokes the image, what with her scarred face covered with long black hair, though it isn't commented upon in the game proper. - The Ghost from The Letter is one of these. \|\|However, while inspired by such Japanese horror films as The Ring and Ju-on, Takako herself is a Justified example. Takako was originally just a normal ghost, and the only person she hated was Charlotte. Takako does not become a traditional onryō note : who lashes out against everyone no matter how kind the ghost was in life until after she fuses with Charlotte.\|\| - Spirit Hunter: NG: - In Yuri's brief appearance before she attacks the protagonist, she can be seen with long black hair that falls over her face, obscuring her features but leaving some of her bluish skin on display. - The Urashima Woman's appearance is that of a pregnant woman with long, stringy black hair and a tattered white hospital gown. Her goal is revenge on the midwife that killed her and stole her newborn baby. - \|\|The Screaming Author\|\| appears as a young girl with long black hair and a tattered white dress, the remnants of her clothing before she was kidnapped and mutilated. - Several chain mail messages on various forums claim that one will come after you if you don't continue to spread the message. Snopes debunks a few of these on their site — including one that tries to pass off the DVD cover from a Korean horror film about a straight example of this trope as a real ghost photo. - This video series features a pretty classic example of this trope, complete with long black hair and a white dress, along with a Slendy-like tendency to disappear or teleport when the camera's not looking (thanks to well-done video effects). - The Creepypasta story Play with Me features the titular character Sally Williams in a very similar fashion. Even though she wears a pink dress and has dark brown hair, Her hair slightly obscures her face most of the time. - This short video features this spirit in a mirror making a gurgling sound. Sound familiar? - Getsuyoubi no Tawawa features one, Sada-chan, haunting the home of a video rental store worker, but, like every other woman in that setting, she has massive assets note : biggest of the cast, in fact that actually prevent her from getting out of the man's small screen. Initially treated as a parody of Sadako herself, we find out that \|\|she's anything but a malicious ghost, being nothing but a sweet girl with a tragic backstory and just wants to be loved again, even fulfilling her promise of having sex with the guy she haunts as a reward for getting her a bigger screen...though she finds the hard way that he's got a far bigger libido than she expected. Also, thanks to becoming Progressively Prettier since her first comic, her long hair is treated as beautiful and willowy\|\|. - One shows up frequently in the interactive game The House. - In 2019, there is a moral panic going on about something called the "Momo Challenge" which might be a distortion of this meme, given the icon associated with it. - Parodied in "Scary Girl" by Funny or Die, in which Chloë Grace Moretz plays an actress, Enid, who only ever plays such characters because that's what she's actually like. When Enid gets a part in a Sunny D commercial, she looks and behaves exactly like she does all the time, with the result that the sound recordist starts hearing scary whispers and growls through his headphones and even begins to bleed from his ears. Enid: [in a creepy whisper] My dream... is to transition... from Scary Girl roles... to Scary Woman roles. ...I wanna be Scary Meryl Streep . - SCP Foundation: - Adventure Time: The Blank-Eyed Girls from their eponymous episode. - Breach from Generator Rex has a character design that evokes this. - Parodied in a Halloween Episode of Kappa Mikey which was lampooning The Ring. Of course, in this case it's a little girl and her vengeance is based around losing candy. - The character design for Red Lotus villain Ming-Hua in Book 3 of The Legend of Korra hearkens to this trope. - Happily Ever After: Fairy Tales For Every Child: Parodied in "The Princess and the Pea". Princess Eu-la appears at the door of Queen Ah Moo-ni and King Abeugi's palace with her wet hair covering her face with a Scare Chord playing. - Phineas and Ferb: - In the Hiccup Hijinks episode, the Haunted House the title characters build for Isabella feature Stringy-Haired Ghost Girls. - The show went to the well with this one again in season 4's "Happy Birthday, Isabella", with Stacy watching a parody of The Grudge, and accidentally ending up looking like the "Grievance Girl". - Robot Chicken parodies The Ring, making her a friendly cute ghost goth girl in a dating video. - Robot Chicken would spoof it again by mocking Sadako's outdated media format in a running sketch throughout the episode. She's shown berating two college guys into watching a HQ upload of her video on YouTube only to get preempted by the cat video they switched to spontaneously taking on its properties (i.e. the cat comes out and mauls them). - The Strange Chores: Que, is a Cute Ghost Girl version of this, possessing a mischievous, playful, and spirited personality but otherwise being fairly harmless. However, unlike most examples on this page, she has blue hair rather than the traditional black. - Akiko from Wishfart is a Cute Ghost Girl version. She's (for the most part) pretty friendly, if something of a troublemaker and a major Deadpan Snarker.	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/Onryo
Opaque Nerd Glasses - TV Tropes Isn't wearing opaque glasses self-defeating? They're not coke-bottle glasses he's wearing, they're paperweights in a frame. Glasses in Comics, Manga and animated media usually come in four forms — there are tiny little things that don't get in the way (see Cool Mask), so-clear-they're-almost-not-there spectacles worn by pretty girls (a.k.a. meganekko) and handsome boys, lenses meant to hide the character's eyes from anyone who wants to get a glimpse at their soul (Scary Shiny Glasses), and then there are Opaque Nerd Glasses. Opaque Nerd Glasses are two 4-inch disks that hide the wearer's eyes behind blank white circles, that can be marked either with thin black spiraling lines, or, in the western variant, small or hazy dots denoting pupils. In some cases, the person's eyes will stay as tiny black dots even when the glasses are taken off, possibly to indicate how bad their eyesight is, or to make them look naked without their iconic glasses. They indicate that a character is painfully geeky, and is probably Blind Without 'Em. Female characters with Opaque Nerd Glasses often reveal that they were Beautiful All Along upon their removal. Male characters may be The Short Guy with Glasses. This trope is found more often in comedy than in drama. Subtrope of Nerd Glasses. Contrast with Meganekko. See also Opaque Lenses. Opaque Nerd Glasses often play a part in the Unwanted Glasses Plot. ## Examples - Arara Cocoa from the Lamune & 40 series, though this is mostly in the TV series as she doesn't wear them in later installments of the series. - Invoked by Sanae in * Love, Chunibyo & Other Delusions!* by putting them on only when she read a Book Of Doom \|\|that was likely written by Shinka\|\|. - Naru Narusegawa in her "nerd mode" in Love Hina. However, once Naru has obviously become the love interest in the story, The Glasses Gotta Go — and when they are seen afterward, they are no longer opaque and spiralled, but simple clear Meganekko circles. Also, in the manga, she gives her Opaque Nerd Glasses to Shinobu as a "good luck" token when the younger girl is taking exams; later, Motoko uses them for the same purpose while studying to get into Tokyo U. - Naru's Expy Chisame from Negima! Magister Negi Magi started with the same look, occasionally falling back into it during her moments of annoyance. - Makoto Takiya from Miss Kobayashi's Dragon Maid normally doesn't wear glasses, but he spontaneously gains the classic opaque spiral lenses when he enters "otaku mode". - Karin and Shiho from Naruto. Shiho's are coke-bottle glasses while Karin's have thick black frames. Interestingly, both are huge Fangirls of other characters who have yet to return their interest — Sasuke for Karin and Shikamaru for Shiho. And Udon, who loves factoring. - Saori of Oreimo uses them to provoke a stereotypical otaku image. \|\|Although she does like things like anime, she is more of an ojou and doesn't have much of stereotypical traits of an otaku.\|\| - Haruhi from Ouran High School Host Club is initially introduced wearing a pair of thick horn-rimmed glasses. The club members quickly replace them with contact lenses to show her beautiful eyes. Flashbacks show that she did not wear glasses in middle school, but this is explained — she'd lost her contacts and hadn't been able to replace them. - Leo from PandoraHearts. \|\|They're not there for correction, though. They're actually there for the opposite purpose and eventually, he loses them.\|\| - Ayaori of Penguin Revolution wears Opaque Nerd Glasses most of the time in order to keep from being recognized as Peacock's number one talent. - In The Prince of Tennis, characters like Sadaharu Inui and Hiroshi Yagyuu wear thick glasses that hide their eyes from sight (though Yagyuu's glasses are more Meganekko-type). In fact, a running gag in the anime is to have Inui's teammates and friends attempting to to take his glasses off and see his eyes. - Mousse from Ranma ½ is an odd case: He has the glasses, but he's not a nerd. He is, however, an obsessive Stalker with a Crush with no common sense. He's Blind Without 'Em, yet never puts them on until after he has, for example, spent five minutes talking to a tree under the assumption that it's actually Shampoo. He also has a habit of taking them off to attempt something dramatic, then doing something stupid because he can't see. And even when turning into a duck, he still wear a pair of duck-sized Nerd Glasses. - Inverted for Reborn! (2004)'s Koyo Aoba, who evidently can't see a damn thing through his glasses, but everyone can see his eyes. \|\|This is because they apparently work similarly to Cyclops' ruby quartz visor, except instead of lasers, Koyo's glasses simply hold back the true abilities he inherited.\|\| - Princess Dia from Sailor Moon. In the manga, this leads the girls to speculate how another nerd, Umino, might look without his own ever-present Opaque Nerd Glasses. Word of God states that \|\|yes, Umino is completely Bishōnen without them\|\|. - In a flashback, it is shown that Faust VIII from Shaman King used to wear these. - Ginnosuke from Tokyo Underground is a good example, with thick glasses complete with spirals. When he loses them for a short time, the main character (a longtime friend) doesn't even recognize him, and a few girls find him quite attractive. Chelsea, one of the other main characters, can never remember his name and defaults to "Megane-kun". He's also a rather proficient computer hacker, and ironically fights better with the glasses off. - In the anime version of Urusei Yatsura, the first New Year's Special has Momotaro, a legendary Japanese hero, wearing a set of these. In fact, he looks a lot like a somewhat younger Mousse. - Gadgeteer Genius Parfet from Vandread. They don't have the spirals, but they are extremely opaque. - In The Wallflower, Kyohei wears these when he really needs to study for an exam, which distresses his fangirls as the glasses make him look much less Bishōnen than usual. - Makoto Ariga from Wandering Son in her first few appearances. Later on you could see her eyes at all times. - Eddie Sukenari from You're My Pet. Results in Bishie Sparkle and women falling all over him when he takes them off. - Weevil Underwood from Yu-Gi-Oh! had some like these, thought they were only opaque whenever the light caught them. - Carly from Yu-Gi-Oh! 5Ds wears a pair of large spiral glasses, although they're seen through on occasion. Once, when they fall off, she's seen with lines for eyes, but when Misty removes them in a later episode, her eyes are normal, and actually quite attractive. \|\|She loses them after Divine murders her. Well, they wouldn't really go with the Superpowered Evil Side that came with the resurrection.\|\| \|\|After Episode 59, they were all that was left of her...\|\| Fortunately, \|\|as the heroes have Deus ex Machina on their side, Death Is Cheap.\|\| - Maruo-kun in Chibi Maruko-chan, who has the spiral swirls to match his neurotic personality. This is a trait he gets from his mom. - Comic artist Scott McCloud draws himself with these in his book, Understanding Comics, and the other books in the series. No spirals, though. Also playing with it on one occasion, when he makes the point that the character he's depicting himself as doesn't really look very much like a real human — and demonstrates this by taking off his glasses, \|\|revealing there really are no eyes behind them\|\|. - Perhaps on a borderline of Scary Shiny Glasses and Opaque Nerd Glasses — Jonas Harrow from the Marvel universe wears spiraly glasses. - Superman's Nerd Glasses are sometimes Opaque Nerd Glasses, Depending on the Artist. In comics, unlike real life, the blank white circles actually do mask his appearance. Medium Awareness, anyone? - The Incredible Hulk: Bruce Banner's most recognizable appearance is that of a short, scrawny, lab-coat-wearing geek with completely opaque nerd glasses.◊ - Spider-Man: This is true as well for Peter Parker, before his original transformation took away his defective eye sight. - Norby: The only characters drawn with glasses in the adaptation of Norby, the Mixed-Up Robot have just the white lenses instead of pupils or irises. For extra nerd points, they're all bird-watchers, too. - Dilbert: - Dilbert is this trope personified. - Wally too. AFAIK, all eyeglasses in that strip are drawn this way. - Jason from FoxTrot always has his eyes covered with his trademark glasses. Even when he takes them off, he often squints. - Rob from Get Fuzzy originally wore these, though they were gradually phased out. - Honey Huan in Doonesbury, who sometimes seems like a grown-up Marcie. - All glasses in The Far Side are drawn this way. Female characters are also typically depicted with "cat-eye" frames - in animal panels this becomes a Tertiary Sexual Characteristic. - Scary Gary: The glasses that grow with/on the lab-grown nerd are opaque, as seen in the picture on the box of store-bought "LAB NERD" mix. - Boldores And Boomsticks: Professor Cypress, an old man dedicated to researching doomsday prophecies whom many people view as a laughingstock, wears glasses so thick you cannot see his eyes. - In This Toon Round - the Funny Animal version of This Time Round, the pub outside Doctor Who continuity - the character of Daibhid Chelonidae is a geeky and nervous tortoise with nearly opaque glasses. Since he's totally not based on a real person, neither are the glasses. - In My Hero Playthrough Hikari wore these in the past to protect her eyes from her powers. The fact that she doesn't need them in the present is part of why Mikoto doesn't recognize her. - From Russia with Love has Rosa Klebb wearing particularly hideous thick-framed and thick-lensed glasses in many scenes. - In SLC Punk!, the toughest punk in Salt Lake City wears "square" clothing and a pair of nerd glasses. Other punks assume that he's a wimp and pay for it with a bloody nose. - Harry Potter: Moaning Myrtle's glasses have been described as this, including being so thick they hide her eyes sometimes. - Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Greg's mom is almost always drawn with these types of glasses. Without them, her eyes are black dots just like everyone else's. - One episode of Kids Incorporated has Renee getting several pairs of glasses. We see her Opaque Nerd Glasses, and it is mentioned that she has two other colours and also wears contacts for concerts. Kudos to them for at least mentioning the colour variety. - The Tonight Show: Ernie Kovacs' oddball poet character Percy Dovetonsils wears glasses with insanely thick lenses. The Character originated on Ernie Kovac's own show "Three to Get Ready" which had appeared on local TV station WPTZ (now KYW-TV) in Philadelphia in 1950. - The Twilight Zone (1959): - A.P. Bio: Heather wears outrageously thick far-sighted glasses, so they either magnify her eyes to huge size or completely obscure them based on the angle. - John Flansburgh of They Might Be Giants (the founders of nerdrock) is known for his spectacles. Bandmate John Linnell is also bespectacled, but he takes them off before going onstage. - The Muppet Show - Scooter has thick glasses with his eyes on the lenses. His eyes are on his glasses, not his face. His Distaff Counterpart Skeeter has an identical pair on Muppet Babies. - At the other end of the spectrum, Dr. Bunsen Honeydew has no eyes at all behind his glasses, which gives the effect of Opaque Lenses, even though the frames are empty. - Super Mario Bros.: - Some characters from the games have Nerd Glasses, such as Iggy Koopa, Professor E. Gadd from Luigi's Mansion and Professor Frankly from Paper Mario. These characters usually look (and sometimes sound) more Japanese than the others. - A few background characters in the Super Mario Adventures comic have these. - All Magikoopas wear these as well. - Fawful from the Mario & Luigi games sports these glasses, complete with spirals and crazy grin. - In Super Robot Wars Original Generation, Latooni wears these to begin with. But their size is actually functional, as they're used to help her collect an analyze data. When she finds herself undergoing a dramatic shift in appearance, she loses them altogether. In the remake for the Playstation 2, she is instead given a pair of Meganekko glasses. This was parodied (foreshadowed?) in a Yonkoma where several characters tried to get Ryusei to talk her into putting the glasses back on. - A fortune teller named Kalifa in Skies of Arcadia has a pair of the large, spiral variant. She joins your crew once you get your own ship. - Lucca from Chrono Trigger has these, but actually manages to be attractive despite it. Really, she's got the transparent Meganekko glasses — you can see this in all the official art and animations, as well as her character information screen. They're just opaque in-game because of sprite limitations — it's hard to denote "glasses" without them being opaque when the lenses need to be only two or three pixels wide. - Pokémon: - Modo's son in The Legendary Starfy wear some of these glasses to emphasize his genius trait. The guy built a space train all by himself, after all. - Mother: - Live Powerful Pro Baseball has the recurring Butt-Monkey Akio Yabe, the primary sidekick of the main character. Throughout the series he gets at least four identical strangers who wear the same gigantic glasses and an extended family of half-brothers who are vaguely distinguished by some kind of mark on the face, facial hair or the shape of their glasses. - One of the classmates in Yo-Kai Watch is a girl named Shelly with glasses like these. Her Japanese name, Shiori, can be translated as "bookmark". - The Fanboy smileys in Everybody Edits both come with thick white glasses. They were fairly rare, and could only be gotten by sending a creative letter to specific staff members or winning certain contests. - Galaxy Angel: Vermouth Matin, the youngest member of the Hell Hounds has them, adding up to the nasal voice and stereotypical nerd personality. - Seen on Thomas Lysander, the nerdy history professor at Thors Military Academy in the The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel games. \|\|They go away in favor of a more reasonable pair of spectacles when he drops this persona in favor of his more true position: Second Dominion of the Septian Church's Gralsritter knights.\|\| - In Scrub Club, Squeaks's eyes can't be seen through his glasses. - Trouble Busters: The green girl sports them, complete with the spiral swirl. She is also the nerd of the three protagonists. - Dr. Phage from Awful Hospital has these, complete with spirals. Turns out these actually are his eyes, and nothing is behind them. - Subverted in El Goonish Shive, in which one of the lead characters pretends to be Blind Without 'Em; in actuality, his glasses are high-tech espionage gear (including an X-Ray Vision feature which he removed to avoid temptation), and help hide the fact that he's so painfully girly that just looking into his eyes tends to cause Stupid Sexy Flanders moments in heterosexual males. - Jade and John in Homestuck both sport some. John's are rectangular spectacles, though they can be hard to see because the bridge isn't often drawn; Jade's are big and round. Several other characters also wear glasses, but the nerdiness of them are debatable: Sollux fits the nerdy archetype well, being an extremely good computer programmer, but his red-and-blue Cool Shades are used more to cover up his bizarre color-changing eyes than denote nerdiness; Vriska's big lenses match those requirements, but her personality really doesn't fit. - Ping from MegaTokyo starts wearing these in an effort to look Hollywood Homely and fit in with the jealous girls of her class. To her horror it pretty much ends up as meganekko, no matter how nerdy the glasses. - In Narbonic, Dave's glasses don't have the spirals, but function like Opaque Nerd Glasses in every other way — \|\|until he goes mad, and they suddenly become totally clear.\|\| - Piffany from Nodwick. The glasses seem only to get bigger as Art Evolution goes. - Thaddeus Euphemism from The Petri Dish wears glasses that you can't see his eyes through. - Chroma the First from Princess Chroma seems to have these, but it turns out the lenses are just amazingly dirty. Otherwise, they're just plain old Nerd Glasses. - Dave of Real Life Comics wears these. One strip even lampshades this trope when another character that wears normal glasses ask Dave why his glasses are opaque. It turns out that Dave's glasses are multifunctional displays with internet access. - Gwynn of Sluggy Freelance is a classic example of this trope, not only being Blind Without 'Em but also Beautiful All Along. - Mouse wears them in Squid Row, though his eyes are shown in close-up shots. - Goseng from Tower of God has such glasses. She has an unusual look for the context — few people in the Tower wear glasses at all, possibly because they're always improving themselves with Shinsu, and they're a part of how she's drawn a bit more simply than other characters. The glasses also highlight how she's unusually ordinary for a Regular climbing the Tower, not exactly a superhuman powerhouse. - In Triquetra Cats, Rain Soricha wore a pair of these in her adopted civilian life. When she becomes a super-powered magic user, she removes them, revealing her big sparkly doe eyes. - An episode of Goof Troop has Max have to temporarily wear nerd glasses because he'd messed up his eyes playing videogames. With Max despondent about it, Goofy told him a story about an ancestor of theirs in the wild west who stopped a bandit thanks to his own nerd glasses. - Arthur. Like Scooter on The Muppet Show, the title character's eyes are his glasses—the lenses are all white, with dots in them for his pupils. Most other characters end up this way when they end up wearing glasses. In earlier flashback episodes, his eyes sans spectacles were the same as everyone else's, but they soon gave him Peanuts-style floating dots instead. - Beth and Harold from Total Drama also have dotted eyes without their nerd glasses (although it's a bit more common in their universe). They are also considered to be the nerdiest of the contestants. - SpongeBob Squarepants wears these for safety when out jellyfishing. - Beavis And Butthead: Beavis gets an eye exam and when he can't read any of the letters, because, well, he can't read, is given a massively thick-lensed pair of glasses, making him functionally blind, and somehow even goofier-looking. - Became a major plot point in Hey Arnold! where Rich Bitch Rhonda (in karmic retribution for her earlier discriminatory attitude towards geeks by having them sit in the back of the bus) is forced to wear nerdy glasses when her school nurse and aunt reveals she is short-sighted. The humiliation in sitting in the last row prompts Rhonda to discard her glasses, but her short-sightedness causes her to get into embarrassing situations such as getting gum on her shirt and toilet paper on her shoe. Furious at the inequalities she and the geeks are forced to endure in school, she stages a revolution and gets back at one of the cool kids who forced her into the back row by refusing to budge from her first-row seat and convincing the kids to sit wherever they want (ending in the cool kid having to sit in the back row). In the end, as icing on the cake, Rhonda gets a better pair of glasses. - Cedric Sner in The Raccoons albeit his eyes are small like two dots to begin with. Due to this he was called Cegato (Blindy) in the Spanish dub. - Bifocals and glasses that correct for astigmatism.	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/OpaqueNerdGlasses
Dangerous Key Fumble - TV Tropes And they landed just out of her reach, too! "Sin #31: Panicked character struggles to use keys cliché." Whenever a character is in immediate danger, they will rarely just be able to run away from said threat. Usually, a locked door or gate will get in their way. But not to worry, the character always has the right keys and just enough time to open the door before they are killed. Except... Uh-oh! They just dropped the keys! The Dangerous Key Fumble trope refers to the often-used cliche (particularly in horror movies) where a character will always drop their keys if they are in a life-or-death situation. It doesn't matter if a killer is right behind them, or if a pack of wild and hungry animals is mere seconds from tearing them apart, the character will always fumble with and drop their keys at a crucial moment, thus giving the threat some much-needed time to catch up with them (and in some cases, actually kill them). This also happens often in car scenes too... If a character wants to escape from something in their car, they can never just put the key in the ignition and start the engine. First, they will drop the keys near the gas pedal and spend the next minute-or-so stumbling around to find them. (And then, of course, when they do get the keys in, the car won't start...but that's another trope.) See also Pet Gets the Keys. ## Examples: - There is a suspenseful moment in 10 Cloverfield Lane when Michelle tries to escape the bunker with Howard's keys. She has to open three locks at the main gate which takes her long enough for Howard to catch up. She manages to escape at the last second but not for long. - Assault on Precinct 13 (1976). When the gang first attacks, Bishop realises they're going to come in the back while he's busy at the front and sends the secretary to free a couple of prisoners in the lockup. She has the requisite 'trying to find the right key' scene, and the gangbangers actually break in and shoot her before she gets the cell open. Fortunately its Only a Flesh Wound and she's able to take down the man who shot her and retreat into the cell where the inmate takes down the other gangbanger. - Played with in the first film of Bridget Jones' Diary. When Bridget's friends take her away to Paris so she can forget about Mark Darcy, she struggles with the keys when locking her front door... giving Mark Darcy time to appear, and Bridget has to make the terrible decision of whether to go with him, or with her friends. - The Bravados: When the fake hangman stabs The Sheriff, the sheriff gets off a Last Breath Bullet that kills the hangman. As he falls, the sheriff drops the keys out of the reach of the cell: leaving the prisoners desperately trying to reach them. - In Cash on Demand, Fordyce fumbles desperately with the vault keys as he attempts to open the vault so he can close the inner door before it triggers the external alarm. - Deep in the Valley: While he and Carl are fleeing from Lance and Dick in the gymnasium, Lester attempts to unlock the door to escape but breaks the key off in the lock. - Happens to the protagonist in Dogma when she is attacked by the minions and drops her car keys, which the minions promptly knock underneath the car. - In Halloween H20: Twenty Years Later, Molly and John are being chased by Michael Myers and surprisingly manage to get a fair distance away from him, before locking themselves in a small courtyard. Unfortunately, Molly drops the keys outside the courtyard and spends a few minutes trying to reach them, thus allowing Michael Myers to catch up to them, pick up the keys and unlock the courtyard gate with ease. - The Haunted Mansion (2003) has Jim and his daughter in a dusty mausoleum, trying to retrieve a set of keys. It goes off smoothly at first, but suddenly the skeletons in the mausoleum starts waking up, and Jim, in his panic, dropped those keys into a grate leading to an underwater drain. - In The Human Centipede, Lindsay deliberately drops the keys (for some reason) after locking herself in the doctor's bedroom. She then realizes what a dumb idea this was, when the doctor then appears at the window with an axe. - A variation in I Am Mother, when Daughter has One Bullet Left but fumbles it while trying to load the gun so it rolls under a piece of equipment. - Lake Placid vs. Anaconda: A lost key variant occurs. After the sorority girls who survive the first attack (while most of them are swimming) flee back to their cars, Tiffani and Jennifer realize that they left their keys back on the beach and can't drive anywhere before being surrounded by crocodiles. - Lockjaw: Rise of the Kulev Serpent: Alan's father leaves the house drunk, unaware that he has just been cursed by his son. As he tries to open his truck, he drops his keys and while he is searching for them, is bitten on the hand by a snake. Which turns out to be a harmless grass snake. While he is laughing about this, he is devoured by the giant serpent. - Lords of Chaos: \|\|Euronymous spends much time fumbling with his keys while trying to escape his apartment after Varg initially stabs him. His clumsiness here can be attributed to severe blood loss and panic, and unfortunately his attempt to leave does little to save him as Varg just repeatedly stabs Euro in the back while he tries to get the door open and even more so once he gets into the stairwell\|\|. - In A Man Called Sledge, the prisoners grab the guard holding the keys and are passing him from cell to cell to a point were Sledge can cover him with a gun. However, the crazy prisoner called Wolf strangles the guard, causing him to drop the keys. They land just out of reach of the prisoner in the closest cell, who strains his arms through the bars in an attempt to grab them. - Tales of Halloween: In "Grim Grinning Ghost", Lynn runs up to her front door, convinced that she is being chased by a ghost. As she attempts to unlock the door, she fumbles and drops her house keys. - In Titanic (1997), Rose and Jack are trapped in the lower decks of the ship by a metallic gate as it floods. One of the cabin crew tries to unlock it but manages to do and say the trope before apologetically fleeing. Cue Jack attempting to retrieve the gate key multiple times as the freezing cold water rises. - In Varsity Blood, Robin drops the keys as she is attempting to unlock Bubba's truck. She manages to grab them, unlock the door, get in, and lock the door again just as the killer catches up to her. - XX: In "Don't Fall", Jay drops the keys to the RV when he goes back to rescue Jess. He has to go back and attempt to retrieve them from under the broken window that Gretchen is lurking outside. - Played with in Zombieland, when Columbus drops his keys by the car while being chased by a zombie, but is smart enough to circle around the parking lot until he's able to reclaim the keys without getting killed. Then he realizes he left his car unlocked, so he didn't need to get them out to unlock it in the first place. - In The Dark Tower novel The Waste Lands, Jake has to go through a Haunted House to reach a magical doorway that will take him to the others in Mid-World. Just as the house comes alive and tries to eat him, he drops the key that will let him open the portal and it falls through the floorboards. - The Tommyknockers: After Gardener visits the shed, he realizes, just as the "Shed People" are returning, that he forget to put the padlock back on the door. As he runs out to put it back, he drops it and the key falls out. - The Avengers (1960s). In "The Living Dead", Emma Peel is Forced to Watch from a cell as John Steed faces a Firing Squad. Being a Damsel out of Distress she quickly knocks out the Diabolical Mastermind and takes his keys, but has to try every key before finding the one that opens the cell door, drawing out the suspense as the firing squad is readying to shoot her partner. - Buffy the Vampire Slayer - In "Passion" Angelus is waiting outside Buffy's home when her mother comes home, and starts putting on a psycho ex-boyfriend act to make her nervous. Joyce manages to both fumble her house keys and drop a bag of fruit she's carrying before Buffy intervenes. - In "Dead Man's Party" Giles, after running over a zombie, drops his keys as he rushes over to check on his "victim." He doesn't realize they're missing until he tries to start the car under zombie attack, forcing him to demonstrate his impressive hotwiring skills. - Doctor Who: - "Blink": Sally takes a dangerously long time to unlock the door to the TARDIS with the Weeping Angels approaching. - "Utopia" has the Doctor fumble with his keys for a second, giving \|\|the Master\|\| the time to \|\|deadlock the TARDIS door, making it impossible for the Doctor to open\|\|. - "Closing Time" features a variation. The Doctor escapes out of a house from the attacking monster, but accidentally drops his sonic screwdriver as the door closes behind him. This leads to him being locked outside as the monster confronts his friend Craig moments later. - Another Weeping Angel in "The Halloween Apocalypse". This time the woman concerned is trying to unlock her front door while not taking her eyes off the Angel; she drops her keys and then has to find them without looking down. - Mr. Bean: Played with in "Do it yourself, Mr Bean", although not with the key, but the doorknob itself. Mr Bean paints his room by putting a firework in a can of paint, and wrapping everything not to be painted in newspaper. He lights the fuse on the firework and dashes for the door, only to find that the doorknob is in the fruit bowl, wrapped in paper. He hastily unwraps an apple and tries to open the door with it, before finding the knob and making his escape. - One One Life to Live, Luna has just realized that her friend Suede is not who he claims to be when he beats up the cop who pulled them over. She runs back to the car and fumbles with the keys several times, allowing him enough time to steal the unconscious cop's gun and point it at her. - Discussed on Seinfeld: Jerry is going home with a Girl of the Week, and as she's unlocking her door, he asks if she ever pretends there's an axe murderer after her to see how fast she can do it. - In the music video for They Might Be Giants "Bastard wants to hit me", the character has managed to slip away from the titular bastard, and get to his car. However, the bastard notices him, and is very angry that he left before he was finished talking to him. The man freaks out and drops his keys. He picks them up, but before he can open the door the bastard catches up to him and lays him out. - The final verse to Nickelback's Animals has the singer frantically looking for the car keys after \|\|his girlfriend's dad\|\| catches them getting it on in the car. - Parodied in Stephen Colbert's video bit at the 2006 White House Correspondents' Dinner. As he flees Helen Thomas into a parking garage, he flails and fumbles his car keys for several minutes as she gets closer. Then he remembers it has a push-button unlock. - Deep Sleep Trilogy: The second game features in interesting variation, with a screw driver instead of a key. At some point you are stuck in the attic and Felicity is closing in on you. To get out, you have to quickly unscrew a metal plate so you can reach the button for opening the elevator. But when you start, you drop the screwdriver and quickly have to pick it up again. - While the trope isn't used in a literal sense, Resident Evil 7: Biohazard perfectly recreates the tension of it because there's no Menu Time Lockout, so trying to select a key and manually unlock a door while a monster is chasing you is likely to make the player panic and have trouble pulling off such a normally simple action. - Girl Genius: Theo can't find the right key in time when he's trying to unlock a handcuffed Sleipnir from the support column she's chained to while something huge is running down the stairs that lead straight to where she is trapped. \|\|Luckily the giant mechanical monster is on their side\|\|. - Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends: Frankie drops her key to the front door of the house into a mud puddle while being chased by an apparent crazed killer. And thanks to some earlier shenanigans (it's a long story) there are now dozens of other keys in the bottom of the same puddle when she tries to fish the right one out.	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/OopsIDroppedTheKeys
Opening Ballet - TV Tropes The Opening Ballet is another method for opening a musical show besides the Opening Chorus. The dance or mime can range from wild slapstick to a mild series of vignettes. Major characters may or may not be introduced during this sequence - the entrance of one may bring it to an abrupt end; most of the figures in this sequence may be purely incidental, never to seen again. Staging what was originally written as a overture as an Opening Ballet has become a common director's trick. ## Examples: - Some productions of Maury Yeston's Nine (Musical) treat "Overture Delle Donne" as a ballet sequence between Guido and the women in his life. - The Prologue of West Side Story communicates the entire relationship between the Jets and the Sharks up to the story's opening. - "Rolling Stock" or "Entry of National Trains" in Starlight Express (Depending on which version.) - The Carousel Waltz from Carousel is another famous example. - "Runyonland" from Guys and Dolls. - The street performers outside Covent Garden in My Fair Lady. - The Night Waltz from A Little Night Music. - The opening song in Once Upon a Mattress is staged with a ballet retelling "The Princess and the Pea" story as we know it...the remainder of the show proceeds to tell the "real story", and it's a lot different. - Older Than Radio: When Richard Wagner was revising Tannhäuser in preparation for the 1861 Paris production, he had to accommodate the Grand Opéra's demands that every opera should have a ballet, preferably in the middle of the evening. Wagner objected to placing the ballet in the second act, instead provided a ballet at the very beginning. - Cirque du Soleil shows love to use this trope to bring out major and minor characters and establish the setting: Saltimbanco, Mystere, "O" (a water ballet), Dralion, Varekai, etc. - "The Story of Chess" and "Golden Bangkok" in Chess (depends on which version of the show; the original West End production introduced them and so versions that draw heavily from that plot, such as the 2008 concert, tend to use them, while Broadway-based productions usually don't). - In A Chorus Line, the opening song ("I Hope I Get It") has a ballet portion, with the rest of the song being made up of other various types of music and dance. While the song doesn't truly introduce the main characters, they are all there dancing, and their names are announced at the end. - The Cat and the Fiddle opens without an overture on a series of choreographic vignettes depicting the charming street life of Brussels, with vendors occasionally singing their cries. - The London production of Love Never Dies had one after the prologue with "The Coney Island Waltz", but the Australian version turned it into a full song for the chorus. - I Can Get It For You Wholesale has a choreographed prologue depicting a garment workers' strike. - Go! Princess Pretty Cure is an oddity in that its closing theme has one. - 42nd Street has it's opening number be a tap audition sequence for the chorus of the show's show The Pretty Lady.	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/OpeningBallet
Spoonerism - TV Tropes Tracey : His name's Bill Steel and he's late thirties and he looks like that newsreader with the twinkly eyes. Sharon : Moira Stuart? Tracey : Michael Prat, you berk. (Beat) I mean "Buerk, you prat". Do you like to eat parrots and keys? Oops! Seems we just made an example of a Spoonerism using "carrots and peas"! Spoonerisms — named for the Rev. William Archibald Spooner (18441930), an Oxford don who actually claimed to have only made one spoonerism in his life (calling a hymn "The Kinkering Congs Their Titles Take", instead of "The Conquering Kings Their Titles Take"). While the word sounds like something derived from Latin, it's actually a made-up word. At its simplest, it's simply mixing up the first letter or sound of two words, so that Ilarity Hensues. It's meanerally gent to appear accidental, either as a result of falking too tast, or moo many tartinis. It can also, as in that last example, involve mixing up sounds from the middles or ends of words. (This is also known as Kniferism and Forkerism.) It can also involve more than two words, thut bat's amfully awbitious true tie. Extra points if the spoonerism still makes sense, just not the sense you would want to make. Spoonerisms can also be used by cunning writers as a form of Petting Rap Cast the Gaydar, especially when it comes to Mountry Catters. A common involuntary consequence of misspoken Twunge Tisters. Can also be the result of a Non Sequitur, Thud Characters who speak entirely in these are likely to become Terbal Vicked. See also Malaproper. When you do this on a larger scale with whole words within a sentence, it often results in a Russian Reversal. Cockney Rhyming Slang is a similar technique. Has nothing to do with Funny Spoon. ## Pexamles: - An old advert for Trebor Extra Strong Mints ran with this. Apparently they make your dung tizzy. - In one Butterfinger commercial where somebody steals Bart's butterfinger, Homer is hooked up to a lie detector and asked to state his name, which Homer responds with "Somer Himpson". He attempts to correct himself, but gets shocked for the error. - In One Piece a character called "Gaimon" was introduced in an early arc. More than 600 chapters later, he made an appearance along a woman called "Sarfunkel", thus making the pair a reference to a musical duo popular in the sixties. - In Soul Eater, the names of the witches Eruka and Mizune are spoonerisms of the Japanese words for their theme animals: kaeru (frog) and nezumi (mouse). In this case it's more of a Sdrawkcab Name, since Japanese is written in syllables rather than letters. - Space☆Dandy features an alien named Tohn Jravolta who is encountered on the planet Grease. - Either Dorothy Parker, W. C. Fields, Groucho Marx, or Tom Waits said, "I'd rather have a bottle in front o' me than a frontal lobotomy." - Which Dean Martin developed into "I would rather have a free bottle in front of me than a pre-frontal lobotomy." - The line apparently has a long and mysterious history. Radio comedian Fred Allen and television comedian Steve Allen have also been credited with having come up with it. - "Lirty Dies" from Capitol Steps has this as the point of the character. He simply delivers a long monologue with at least one spoonerism per sentence. In addition, proper nouns that were spoonerized (i.e. all of them) retain their new name throughout the sketch (For example, after referring to that Madman Saddam as that Sadman Maddam, he called him Maddam the whole routine). Made even more impressive by how most of the spoonerism make more sense than just being silly. He also sneaks in a fair amount of profanity by simply spoonerizing the dirty word. Or alternatively, he uses the technique to add a dirty word—for example, observing that if you're in the back seat of a police car, "there are no dandles on those whores!", or claiming that Monica Lewinsky's forthcoming memoirs would have the Literary Allusion Title A Sale of Two Titties ("that rook is gonna make her bitch"). - Occasionally, the Lirty Dies dialogue will subvert this trope for fun, using alliteration, and then provide a Hampshade Langing. Do you think I'm crazy enough to flip the words "Forty Bucks?" - Done again with the Anthony Weiner scandal. I didn't have to flip that name. - One notable instance had him unable to deliver on any when discussing "Shmenron". How about those crumbers nunchers who were pedding all the shrapers? Those audacious auditors and accountants at Arthur Andersen. - Terry Foy (Ferry Toy?) spoonerised certain Tairy Fales—er, Fairy Tales, for hilarious results. One example: "Loldigocks was falking through the worest." Sound that out in your mind. - His stage name is "Zilch the Tory Steller," and there are some stories he just won't do. Robin Hood being a prime example. "Once you get to Friar Tuck, it's all over." - Archie Campbell did the same thing with Rindercella and The Pee Little Thriggs. - Jack Ross had a Top 20 hit in 1962 with a comedy/novelty record relating the tale of "Cinderella" and consisting of these. Listen to it here. - The entire 10,840 word long joke "Lost in the Desert" is a set up for the phrase "\|\|Better Nate Than Lever\|\|" to be said in a way that makes sense in context. - The story of the Foo Bird. Other variations exist, all leading up to the same spoonerism based on "If the shoe fits, wear it." - Many jokes where only half the answer is told, because the inversion leads to profanity. - Professor Artemis Phoebus, a quirky scientist character from the story "The Vortex" in The Pertwillaby Papers by Don Rosa (who invents a universal solvent, which would later be recycled in an Uncle Scrooge story) speaks in near-constant spoonerisms. This becomes particularly embarrassing when he tries to call the president a "smart fella". - In the Tintin comics, Thomson and Thompson do this often. Thompson: Something very odd has just happened! Thomson: To be precise, we just happen to be very odd! - Paulus de Boskabouter: Gregorius the badger shares this habit. - MAD artist Al Jaffee did a couple of articles called "Mad Switcheroos" that had some nutty examples as jokes, and to make them funnier, left the punch line blank for the reader to figure out. (The illustration helped.) For example: Setup Line: What's the difference between an angry General and the New Jersey shore? Punch Line: An angry General is poorly saluted. The New Jersey shore is \|\|sorely polluted.\|\| - Viz sometimes spoonerises the names of its characters for the benefit of its front cover, to that readers can see that this issue features "Wockney Canker", "Boiled Spastard" and "Ferry Tuckwit". - In De Cape et de Crocs, everything the Spooneristic Smugglers say is a spoonerism of a much, much coarser sentence. - In Asterix and the Laurel Wreath, a Running Gag are drunk Gauls saying "Farpaitement" ("Ferpectly") in the original French, and "Zigackly" (for "Exactly") or "Ferpectly true" ("Perfectly true") in the English version. - Many jokes feature vulgar spoonerisms — or, rather, set them up and leave the listener to finish them off. - Q. What's the difference between the Barnum and Bailey Circus and a line of Playboy centerfolds? A. The circus is a cunning array of stunts... - A well-known music joke: Q: What's the difference between a seamstress and a soprano? A: The seamstress frills and tucks. - Alternate version for A: The seamstress tucks up the frills. - Another version revolving around a different music stereotype: Q: What's the difference between a seamstress and a French horn player? A: The seamstress says, "Tuck the frills." - There's also: "What's the difference between a chiropractor and a drummer? The chiropractor bucks up your feet." - A squickier variant: "What's the difference between an epileptic corn farmer and a prostitute with diarrhea? One of them shucks between fits."' - Also, "What the difference between a bad marksman and a constipated owl? One can shoot but not hit." - What's the difference between Lady Godiva and a missing golf ball? The missing golf ball is a hunt on a course. - What's the difference between a smoker and Kermit the Frog? A smoker craves a cig in the pack. - A less raunchy one: What's the difference between a school cafeteria and Strawman News Media? The cafeteria serves up hash and tripe. - The book The Big Joke Game had fun with Spoonerism. - Molly Moon: Maharaja of Waqt, the main villain of Molly Moon's Time-Traveling Adventure, suffers from this. - The title character of The Muddle-Headed Wombat does this a lot; one of his catchphrases is the assurance that he "treely ruly" means what he's saying. - Jess Ferret from Margaret Mahy's Alchemy really loves doing this, almost to the point of it becoming a Verbal Tic. Jess: Youve got all nosy about me for some reason, and you thought Id fall at your feet just with the flattery of being seenthe battery of fleeing scene. - Shel Silverstein wrote an entire book around this concept: Runny Babbit. - In Jingo, Sgt. Colon reminisces about his military years with the "Pheasant Pluckers", a regiment nicknamed for how they'd stolen poultry from a noble's estate. Angua nearly laughs herself sick when he muses aloud that lots of people seemed unable to pronounce this nickname... - Paul Jennings, along with Ted Greenwood and Terry Denton, are responsible for a book just full of these. The title? Spooner or Later. The authors' names are even spoonerised on the back of the book. It also qualifies as a Hurricane of Puns. - Gruntan Kurdly, villainous barbarian warlord of the Redwall installment Eulalia, slips up when trying to say "give 'em blood and thunder". When someone calls him on it, he declares that he meant to do it because "thud and blunder" sounds better, and threatens his followers into agreeing. - In an earlier book, Rollo the baby bankvole picks up garbled versions of Basil and Ambrose's drinking songs, and starts singing about fighting a flagon and drinking a dragon. - Hank the Cowdog does this a lot. Hank: You'll never guess who I caught snealing steaky glances at me stealing sneaky glances. - "The Three-Martini Debate" by Christopher Buckley: Bush: Seems to me the last Diberal Lemocrat, capital "D," capital "L," we elected was also anti-Martini. - So Yesterday by Scott Westerfeld has a series of commercials with this as their gimmick. A man orders a "Lack of ram with keys and parrots", among other things. - In Howl's Moving Castle, when Calcifer accuses him of being drunk, Howl insists he's "cone sold stober". - The Berenstain Bears: Mayor Horace J. Honeypot is prone to these, including once starting a speech with "Sellow fitizens!" - In Encyclopedia Brown, one of his clients was so shaken up by the crime that he began speaking in these due to stress. \|\|This is actually a plot point.\|\| - One Winnie the Pooh story starts with Christopher Robin mentioning that he's seen a heffalump, which leads to Pooh and Piglet trying to catch one. The illustrations clearly shows them dreaming about \|\|elephants\|\|, although the narrative claims that neither Pooh nor Piglet has any idea what a heffalump looks like. - Arsène Lupin was going to feature Sherlock Holmes in one story, but Arthur Conan Doyle threatened to sue. So Maurice Leblanc ended up facing a Mr. Herlock Sholmes (and his assistant Wilson) instead. - Bred Any Good Rooks Lately?: A Collection of Puns, Shaggy Dogs, Spoonerisms, Feghoots & Malappropriate Stories is an anthology gathered by James Charlton, and is full of short stories that all end with spoonerisms or other puns. The title comes from the last line of "For the Birds", a humorous short story contributed by none other than Stephen King. - According to Gravity Falls: Journal 3, the Author got the same kind of ominous bug bites Dipper would in "Tourist Trapped". However, he thought "BATCH OUT FOR WILL" was total nonsense and wrote it off. - In Robert McCloskey's Homer Price and Centerburg Tales, the town sheriff is prone to this whenever he gets flustered. Sheriff: And all of you young 'uns were shootin' up the town with yer Wheatsy-Beatsy Ray Guns! Every time I turned around, an Eatsy-Wheatsy Gay Run anged off in my beerI mean ear! - Charles Stross is fond of the word "wunch" as a collective noun for bankers (as in a wunch of bankers) to the point that a quote from The Rhesus Chart appears as a usage example on its Wiktionary entry. It's also the name of a faction of alien financial parasites in Accelerando. - 3rd Rock from the Sun: Officer Don's incredibly memetic "Ass right there, freezehole!" - The Brady Bunch: A Season 1 episode, "Is There a Doctor In the House," has Carol frantically trying to explain to Mike a mixup with two family doctors who separately had made house calls for their children, Peter and Jan, and in the process gets tongue-tied and mixes up Peter's name with the name of the boys' doctor, Dr. Porter. note : (Robert Reed, who played Mike, was likely holding it in as he was taping this scene; he was known to hate the show's script writing and was especially critical of writing techniques such as Spoonerisms, which he rarely if ever found funny. According to multiple reports by both co-star Barry Williams and series co-producer Lloyd Schwartz, was already sending meticulous memorandums to Paramount Studios and ABC criticizing the show's writing and direction.) - El Chavo del ocho: Often, when talking to Sr. Barriga, Don Ramón would switch Sr. Barriga's name and another word of his dialog, driving Sr. Barriga mad since it makes it look like Don Ramón is insulting him for being fat. An example: Don Ramón: Fíjese como ha acumulado barriga el Sr. Fortuna. (Look how much belly Mr. Fortune has) - One of El Chapulín Colorado's Catchphrases is "No se panda el cúnico" ("Let's not preate canic!") - Referred to in the "Man who Speaks Entirely in Anagrams" sketch from Monty Python's Flying Circus: Interviewer: "Ring Kichard", yes - but surely that's not an anagram, that's a spoonerism. Man who etc.: If you're gonna split hairs I'm gonna piss off. [exit] - Ronnie Barker played the Reverend Spooner (after whom spoonerisms were named) in at least two Two Ronnies sketches. - Another sketch, which had Barker as an ice cream shop owner, spoonerised "knickerbocker glory" as "binger-knocker glory" after saying it correctly earlier in the sketch, during a Motor Mouth Long List of ice cream flavours. - On The Daily Show, Jon Stewart described something as a "cunch to the punt," after hearing about someone who criticized someone for saying "ass backwards" instead of "bass ackwards." He immediately wished he had said "a dunch to the pick." - Kenny Everett had a character called Cupid Stunt, although for understandable reasons her surname never appeared in official BBC publicity. - In Action, when Peter's character finds out his ex-wife is pregnant with his baby while bearding for a closeted gay film executive. ...she tells him he can't tell anyone: Ex-wife: Peter, my husband doesn't want the world to know that you perform all of his vaginal stunts. Peter: And what a cunning stunt you are. - An episode of That '70s Show has a drunk Jackie Burkhart do this with her own name: Jackie: Ah, come back here! Nobody ignores Jerky Backhart! - SNL's Celebrity Jeopardy had two impressive examples: - This Stealth Pun: Sean Connery: What's the difference between you and a mallard with a cold? One's a sick duck...I can't remember how it ends, but your mother's a whore. - And one where Sean wrote down as his Final Jeopardy! response: "Buck Futter". - In the infamous "Vitameatavegamin" episode of I Love Lucy, Lucy has to shoot so many takes of a commercial that she ends up getting drunk and mixing up her speech: "Do you pop out at parties? Are you unpoopular?" And so on. Heck, it's hard to pronounce the product's name even without drinking it. - On The Nanny, Niles does one of these when he's flustered upon meeting Elizabeth Taylor, introducing himself as "Biles the nutler." - When introducing himself on an episode of Password, celebrity guest Bill Cullen told America that "we're all here to pass Playword." Announcer Jack Clark laughed and then introduced the show as Playword himself, and then host Allen Ludden jokingly gave Bill a hard time about it. - On Super Password, Nipsey Russell was trying to communicate the word "Desert" to his partner. His clue was "Gobi." The contestant's response: "Dillis." - While guest hosting Never Mind the Buzzcocks, James Blunt referred to the singer of his song "You're Beautiful" as "James spooking Funt". - An episide of UK sitcom Outnumbered featured Sanjeev Bhaskar playing a former TV weatherman whose career was ended after making a spoonerism of the phrase 'cold front'. As Ben helpfully explained, first he said 'frold', then he said... - When on the radio, Penn Jillette has been known to refer to Penn & Teller: Bullshit! as "Bushlit" to avoid getting slapped with obscenity fines from the FCC. - MythQuest: When Alex asks how Thor is, he replies, "I'm darely even brunk." - Screaming Yellow Theater opened with "the following proscribed is transgrammed". - Whose Line Is It Anyway? - A blooper reel contains a bit where Wayne opens a Hoedown with "I consider myself quite a fugal frella." - Played with in the game "Change Letter", which lead the cast to talk about things like Wayne Brady's "fig futt". - In a CSI episode, Riley, helping to investigate a murder in a motel, has to check on the next room, whose occupants are audibly having sex. She's somewhat shocked when an old couple answer the door, and says she's from the "lime crab" instead of the "crime lab." - The Kentucky Schreit Ficken segments of the German comedy show RTL Samstag Nacht, a Transatlantic Equivalent of Saturday Night Live, use spoonerisms to make things sound dirty that normally aren't. This includes the title, a spoonerism on how Kentucky Fried Chicken would roughly be spelled in German; it literally translates to "Kentucky Screams Fuck". - Host Bill Cullen ended one episode of Blockbusters by saying "Goodbye from Bustblockers". - Mike from Ghosts (UK) has a tendency to make these, leading to the episode title "Redding Weddy". - Better Call Saul: A Stealth Pun example occurs in "Saul Gone". Jimmy takes up kitchen duties \|\|in prison\|\|, one duty of which includes baking bread. - Metallica pranked their fans by naming their first live DVD Cunning Stunts, with the expectation that people would goof it up. Before Metallica did it, Cows and Caravan both had albums called Cunning Stunts. It is kind of an old joke in general though. - NOFX had an album called "Punk in Drublic," a pun on being drunk and mispronouncing words. - Wheatus's Suck Fony was a re-release of their album Hand Over Your Loved Ones, which was screwed by their former label Columbia Records, hence the very thinly-veiled Take That! to the label's owner, Sony Music Entertainment. - Electronica artist Com Truise. - Toby Keith's "American Ride" has the line "the fit's gonna hit the shan." - Robbers On High Street's "Spanish Teeth" has the same spoonerism with the lines "Do you remember where it all began / Before the fit ever hit the shan?" - "Cinderella", a 1962 novelty single by Jack Ross that somehow hit the Billboard Top 20, consists of a spoken-word monologue made up entirely of these accompanied by a jazz combo, with reactions from an inordinately-appreciative live audience. - The Cramps' "Jackyard Backoff". - Jasper Carrott, a well-known British comedian, once performed a song called 'Chastity Belt' that was chock-full of these. For example, 'Mentle Gaiden' and some other rather unsavoury ones like "The billy old sastard has yitted a Fale" or "Alas and alack I'm f...locked up forever" - The Aerosmith album Night in the Ruts. - George Strait's "The Chair" has "Well, thank you / Could I drink you a buy / Oh listen to me / What I mean is, can I buy you a drink". - Eminem: - The "clean" version of his song "My 1st Single," off of his 2004 album Encore, changes a certain phone number to "1-800-I'm-a-Sick-Ducker-I-Love-to-Duck-a-Sick." Three guesses as to what the original number was, and the first two don't count. - On "Cold Wind Blows", Slim brags that he's "a sick duck - I want my duck sicked, Mommy!" - Butthole Surfers' Hairway to Steven is sort of a spoonerism on "Stairway to Heaven" - Country Music singer Pam Tillis's debut album was titled Above and Beyond the Doll of Cutey. note : "call of duty" - Tove Lo's name is a Spoonerism of "Love to". - Punk Rock group The Chineapple Punx. note : "pineapple chunks" - Van der Graaf Generator's album Pawn Hearts got its title when saxophonist David Jackson spoonerized "horn parts" as "porn harts" - turning "porn" into "pawn" makes sense if you keep certain British accents in mind. - "A Heart with 4 Wheel Drive" by 4 Runner: " Well, I've got tears all over my windshield and rain pouring out of my eyes." - Smog's album Dongs Of Sevotion. - Belgian singer Stromae's stage name is a Spoonerism of "Maestro". - At least two acts hit upon the idea of calling one of their compilation albums "The Berry Vest Of": Gilbert O'Sullivan and The Swirling Eddies. - The Finnish version of "Down by the River" (the one starting with "City life was getting us down...") is called "Varrella virran", which is a pretty literal translation. Then there's a parody sung by Kalle Päätalo with the same tune called "Virralla warren", which is about trying to charge up your car's battery with — here's where the title comes in — "current from a Wartburg brand car." - In the finale of P.D.Q. Bach's The Seasonings, "To curry favor, favor curry," the sopranos sing at one point (specifically, the "Hallelujah" parody): "Favor curs to furry caves." - Brazilian band Ratos de Porão took the title of their debut Crucificados pelo Sistema (Crucified by the System) to baptize a later album Sistemados pelo Crucifa. - Jack Rutter's solo act Ritt Momney (formerly a band) is a spoonerism of US politician Mitt Romney. - The Polish band Chór Wujów ("A Choir of Uncles") is a spoonerism for "wór chujów" ("a bag of dicks"). - Panic! at the Disco's "Don't Threaten Me With a Good Time" has "I told you time and time again/I'm not as think as you drunk I am." - Callous Daoboys are named for a spoonerism of an American football team, the Dallas Cowboys. - BBC Radio's The Burkiss Way had a throwaway line about Friar Tuck being threatened with a spoonerism. - Clement Freud liked to make similar Friar Tuck references on Just a Minute. - The "Drear Pooson" incident on The Jack Benny Program. Early in the episode Don Wilson mistakenly refers to newspaper columnist Drew Pearson as "Drear Pooson", elicting lots of laughter. The quick-thinking writers made a last-minute change to one of Frank Nelson's lines: as a hotel doorman, when asked if he was indeed the doorman, he was originally going to reply "Who do you think I am, Nelson Eddy?", but instead he made a Brick Joke out of Wilson's blooper by replying "Who do you think I am, Drear Pooson?". The resulting laughter broke the record previously set by "Your money or your life?" "I'm thinking it over!" - Implied in an episode of Hello Cheeky. Tim: And now I'd like to introduce the Kent-Hunt Cup...but I daren't. - The first episode of Series 5 of I'm Sorry I'll Read That Again segues from the opening credits into "The David Hatch Show", in which David Hatch, usually limited to the role of narrator, passes himself off as a DJ. His DJ patter includes the following careful subversion of the obvious spoonerisms: David Hatch: Yes, it's Dave the Rave on the medium wave, with another happy-go-go, ringing-dinging, bunky-futting, frunty-bucking, brunty-funking, funting-butting - that was close! (audience laughter) Funky-butting fun time of fun and frolics on Radio Hatch! - Many of the early radio Bloopers featured by Kermit Schafer in his Pardon My Blooper albums note : (he was notorious for recreating bloopers if he couldn't get a genuine recording of them and presenting them as the real thing alongside actual off-the-air recordings; among others, the since-debunked Uncle Don "that oughta hold the little bastards!" Urban Legend was kept alive thanks to a Schafer recreation) fall into this category: - Harry von Zell (later known as the announcer on The George Burns and Gracie Allen Show) once referred to Herbert Hoover as "Hoobert Heever", an incident he is still remembered for. (While the Schafer recording is a recreation, von Zell confirmed the incident did happen.) - A CBC announcer referring to the network as the "Canadian Broadcorping Castration". The only known recording of that one is a Schafer recreation, and details on the context, the time and the person who made the slip-up vary wildly from one telling to the next, which makes it unlikely to be more than an Urban Legend. - An announcer referring to Oklahoma City as "Oklacity Homa". - An announcer reading a commercial for Northwest Orient Airlines calling the airline "Northwest Arient Oarlines". - In Series 22 Episode 4 of The Unbelievable Truth, David Mitchell introduces the teams with "I've got four shining wits here tonight, and that's not just a spoonerism." - In Tom Stoppard's On The Razzle (which is an adaptation of Johann Nestroy's Einen Jux will er sich machen, which was also adapted by Thorton Wilder as The Matchmaker, which was adapted by Michael Stewart And Jerry Herman as Hello, Dolly!...where was I? Oh, yes...) Zangler, the shop owner does this regularly, usually, but not always correcting himself. Par Exemplum... Do you suppose I'd let my airedale be hounded up hill and-my heiress be mounted up hill and bank by a truffle-hound-be trifled with by a mountebank? - Or, he is helped out by another... Zangler: ...this is the first time Madame Knorr has had the privilege of being swept round the heap of my camp fire. Christopher: That's very well put, chief. Zangler: I don't mean the heap of my camp fire. Christopher: Humped round the scene of your memoirs? Zangler: No. Christopher: Squired round the hub of your empire? Zangler: That's the boy! - Briefly discussed in Mary Mary, where Mary offers an anecdotal example from her life: Mary: I was buying a hammock for the porch at home. And in a crowded elevator I said, "Miss where do you have perch forniture?" Dirk: Perch forniture? Mary: Don't you know the unsuitable things that would go on in perch forniture? - In State of the Union, after Mary has imbibed a few too many Sazaracs: Grant: Mary, I'm on a spot here tonight. We both are. We have to be ready to do some quick thinking. Mary: Don't worry about me. I'm a very thick quinker. - In Of Thee I Sing, a Senator's convention speech denounces the "entangling alliances of Europe" and the "allying entanglances of Asia." - Too Many Girls: Lister: This is the Stunted Hag? Clint: You mean the Hunted Stag. - The Christmas Eve shoppers in She Loves Me get it right only on the third try: We're not the shopple who peeped in time— We're not the sheeple who popped in time— We're not the people who shopped in time— - From the song "Washington on Your Side" from Hamilton: Jefferson: I get no satisfaction witnessing his fits of passion The way he primps and preens and dresses like the pits of fashion - According to Min-Lanuel Liranda, spoonerisms are a favorite joke of his (regardless of how funny other people find them), and when he realized that "fits of passion" and "pits of fashion" both worked in the English language, he worked backwards to find a place in Hamilton to put them, resulting in the above line. - The Solid Gold Cadillac: McKeever: (on the phone) No, I can't give you the dato on Nato—the Nato on data— (Desperate, but gets it out) The data on Nato! - Ride the Cyclone has Ocean declaring in "What The World Needs" that "What we need is a fothermucking hero!" This is the only time anyone in the musical tries to censor their profanity, oddly enough. - Sonny Eclipse, the alien lounge singer at Magic Kingdom's Cosmic Ray's Starlight Cafe, hails from the city of Yew Nork on the Planet Zork, and sings about the underground city's wonders such as the caxi tabs, the waysub stations, Av Parkenue, Harnegie Call, the Dorfwal Astoria, St. Rickpack's Cathedral, Squadison Mare Garden, Fellerocker Plaza, the Liber of Statuety, the musicals of Waybroad, and the Pire-em State Building once menaced by a Kong King. - A threatening version is used in the third episode of LEGO's Hidden Side shorts: when Jack and Parker go into an abandoned shrimp shack, the neon sign reading "all you can eat" changes to "can eat you all". - Homestar Runner has made spoonerisms something of a Running Gag, to the point that the Homestar Runner Wiki has an article all about this trope in action. To name a few examples: - In the Strong Bad Email "privileges", a list of the new privileges that come with The Cheat becoming a Medallion Gold Plus member in Strong Bad's rewards program includes both "Strong Bad Math" and "Strong Mad Bath". - One segment of the email "technology" has Strong Bad talking about cellular telephones, or "tellular celephones" as he calls them. - In "Marzipan's Answering Machine 16.2", the King of Town uses the flimsy alias "Ting of Kown" while planning a prank on Strong Sad. - In the email "too cool", Strong Bad says he knows Senor Cardgage has a character video because "I filmed the thang ding! I mean, dang thing." - In "The Homestar Runner Enters the Spooky Woods", Strong Bad subverts the usual intro of "Everyone loves the Homestar Runner, he is a terrific athelete," by calling The Homestar Runner an "athletic teriffe". - Prinderella & The Cince by Tom Callinan: Sure she lived in a big HARK DOUSE with her mean old MEP STOTHER and her two SISTY UGLERS and they made her do all the WORDY DIRK while they sat around CHEATING OCKLATES and MAGGING READAZINES....The next day [the prince] went from house to house but you can't turn that around . - AccuWeather.com's meteorologists must be glad they pre-record their forecasts; judging by all the spoonerisms that make it onto their blooper reel they would not do well on live TV...check out such gems as "saylight davings" and "thumb somderstorms" in this particular clip. - Done in one example of Not Always Right, which could also count as a Freudian Slip: Customer: [while ordering popcorn at a movie theater] I'd like two boxes of cockporn, please. - Tig Ol' Bitties. - In one Not Always Working story, a co-worker accidentally calls fitted sheets "shitted feets." - The Adel Dazeem name generator makes this. - During a session of Prop Hunt at Vanoss Gaming; I Am Wildcat: We were bottles between the couch and the bullet ploof grass... - In Brazil, particularly terrible puns are known as a "trocadalho do carilho" - something along the lines of "a pucking fun" (though changing the last syllable instead of the first). - Feel sorry for little Shiloh Jolie-Pitt. Spoonerised, their name becomes Piloh Jolie-Shitt...that's going to be awkward when all their friends are old enough to work out Spoonerisms. Or old enough to read this website. Whichever comes first. - The Capitol Steps "Lirty Dies" skits already made fun of this one, in a subversion where he repeated the name "in straight talk" twice, then paused without completing the flipped version and exclaimed that they had named their child after a "Dile of pung!" - Hopefully this is averted now that, according to Angelina Jolie, their child goes by John Jolie-Pitt and uses they/them pronouns. - There was a story in Reader's Digest some years back about a brilliant and beloved university professor who frequently spoke in spoonerisms because, according to the article, his mind worked so fast that his mouth simply couldn't keep up. Possibly the most charming incident the article related was when he addressed a woman who had taken his seat in chapel: "I beg your pardon, but you are occupewing my pie. May I sew you to your sheet?" - It's generally attributed to Spooner himself, and goes "Someone is occupewing my pie. Please sew me to another sheet." - Most of the "spoonerisms" attributed to Spooner are apocryphal, were said by someone else, or were invented. For example, there's no proof Spooner actually said "Sir, you have tasted two whole worms; you have hissed all my mystery lectures and been caught fighting a liar in the quad; you will leave Oxford by the next town drain." The only one he admitted to was saying the name of a hymn as "Kinkering Congs their titles take" instead of "Conquering Kings." - Genuine article or not, "the Lord is a shoving leopard" must be among the funniest attributed to the man. - Not to mention the time he supposedly proposed a toast to "the queer old Dean". - Or referred to Sir Stafford Cripps as Sir Stifford Crapps. - In reality, although Spooner was far better known for his namesake trope, he was much more of an Absent-Minded Professor, with a history of what might be called mental spoonerisms such as asking a new faculty addition if he was going to his own welcoming party, or writing a note and then adding a postscript to disregard the note. There's more on his page on TOW. - It may be an urban legend, but there's a story about a senator/M.P. who called another a "shining wit", then apologized for the spoonerism. - A story told by Humphrey Lyttelton is that an interviewer asked him about being an amateur "orthinologist," and it wasn't until he was on his way home that he realized he should have said, "Not exactly an orthinologist, more of a word botcher." - Urban Dictionary describes "Nucking Futs" as "an improvement on an already sweet phrase". - Weather forecasters in the UK are sometimes heard to forecast "fost and frog". - A habit of Tracy Morgan, according to Tina Fey. Once referred to Jack Human and was puzzled when nobody understood him. - There was much hilarity in 2010 at BBC Radio 4 presenter James Naughtie's accidental spoonerism when discussing Jeremy Hunt, the Culture Secretary. It's terribly unfair that Naughtie note : pronounced "noch-ty", but that was ignored for the inevitable pun-laden headlines will probably live it down well before Mr C— Mr Hunt does. - Hunt's re-emergence as Chancellor in the wake of the 2022 government crisis led to a similar incident involving Robert Peston and the ill-advised phrase "Jeremy Hunt's cuts". - Naming your cat "Cooking Fat" so you don't even have to try to swear when drunk (works best with an accent.) - Zilch the Torysteller builds his entire act at the Renaissance Faire around this and it's hilarious. - ABC News presenter Joel Daly once said on-air that rumors of a presidential veto came from a "high white horse souse." - A traditional toast (sometimes attributed to Tom Waits): "Champagne for my real friends, and real pain for my sham friends." xkcd had a field day with that one. - Chapel Hill, North Carolina does a street fair every year called Apple Chill. - Programmers often like to mock "feeping creaturism" - the result of "creeping featurism", a piece of bloated software with tons of mostly useless features glued together messily like Frankenstein's creature. - A common Spooneristic pick-up line goes "Hey, what can I do you for?" - Affy Tapples, the leading brand of caramel (taffy) apples. - There is a tongue twister that repeatedly mentions a person who is a pheasant plucker. - John Belushi reportedly referred to the Muppets as the "Mucking Fuppets" when the Muppets were a regular feature during the first season of Saturday Night Live. - As in Music above, electronica artist Com Truise. - NHL star Jamie Benn called out a teammate saying he probably liked to "bunch mox". Twitter (and Tumblr) reacted accordingly (including the corresponding spoonerism). - "I am not as thunk as you drink I am!" - Extended version: "I'm not as thunk as drinkle peep I am." - The German poetry form "Schüttelreim" is composed of spoonerism (for humorous effect). But note the rules are much stricter - a lot of examples on this page wouldn't count. note : Algorithm for making a proper shake: find the first two syllable vocals that are stressed, and swap their consonant heads. "Kinkering Congs" e.g. thus violates the rule, as it swaps the vowels. - Spoonerisms can be "primed". - In Poland they are known by the name gra półsłówek (literally the half-word game), which is a Spoonerism itself: sra półgłówek (literally the half-wit is taking a shit). - In an overlap with Who's on First?, a news announcer in Canada once had to deal with a visit by the King and Queen of England, who were greeted by two officials whose surnames happened to be King and Queen. Trying to keep track of the King, the Queen, King, Queen and Mrs. Queen (at least Mr. King wasn't married...) caused him to eventually mess up and say things like "Mr. Keen and the Quing." - In a 2020 campaign speech, Joe Biden referred to himself as an "Obiden-Bama Democrat." - One of the tenets of Vietnamese humor is "nói lái". Everything is fair game for switching/swapping/replacing with another: consonants, vocals, tones, etc.	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/Oonerspism
Opening Boss Battle - TV Tropes In most video games the player will often fight first against weak, easy to beat enemies, which will be followed up by slightly stronger enemies until they make their way to the first boss encounter, who is usually a Warm-Up Boss. Then there are other games that drop you into a Boss Battle right from the very beginning. While not always, this boss will more than likely be the game's Big Bad, and usually also the Final Boss. If it can be beaten, either then the boss will be in its weakest form, or the player is in the A Taste of Power segment and soon will be depowered. Otherwise, it will be a Hopeless Boss Fight. If it's not the Big Bad, then it will likely be a Starter Villain. Now, for the trope to count, the boss must the very first fight of the game. If there's maybe one or two mooks, then it's a Downplayed version of the trope. If the entirety of the game is nothing but bosses, you're staring at a Boss Game. ## Examples: - Castlevania: Symphony of the Night: The game opens where the previous game ended: Richter climbing the stairs to the throne room ready to face off against Dracula. Since it's a Foregone Conclusion that Richter defeats Dracula, it's rigged so that if you are about to die, Maria will appear and give a major power boost to make Richter invincible. - The first mission of Devil May Cry 4 titled "Birds of a Feather" has its new main character Nero fighting Dante the main protagonist of the previous games in a boss battle. The fight also serves as a tutorial which teaches the player how to use Nero's skills and abilities. - In Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order once Cal Kestis is outed as a Jedi, he'll have his first fight against the Second Sister, the game's Big Bad. You'll only have to last a few minutes against her until somebody comes to rescue you. - God of War: - God of War begins with Kratos fighting the Hydra. Funnily enough, the other two bosses aren't fought until the very end of the game. - Like its predecessor, God of War II also begins with Kratos fighting a boss, this time the animated Colossus of Rhodes, with mook fights sprinkled between the boss phases. - No More Heroes 2: Desperate Struggle: The game begins right before Travis fights Skelter Helter into a boss battle, without any preceding hack-and-slash level gameplay. Skelter is ranked 51st in the UAA, so his defeat puts Travis back into the assassin rankings. He's also surprisingly difficult, especially on Bitter. - Star Fox Adventures: The game begins as Krystal, who is traveling across the skies with her CloudRunner companion, is ambushed by the hovering galleom of General Scales, who then proceeds to attack her by having the galleom shoot fire projectiles as well as maneuver it so its propeller hit her. Krystal has to disable the projectile cannons and the propeller with the help of the CloudRunner's spit fireballs to win the battle and infiltrate the galleom. - In Super Metroid, after descending into the Ceres Space Station, the very first enemy the player faces is Samus' Arch-Enemy, Ridley. He's however there to steal the Baby Metroid rather than pick a fight, so after a certain amount of damage is dealt to either the player or himself (more likely the player), he'll fly off with the Baby. This also triggers a Self-Destruct Sequence, forcing the player to escape and pursue Ridley to Planet Zebes. - The first fight in the Dark Tournament mode of Yu Yu Hakusho: Dark Tournament is against Younger Toguro. He starts the fight at full strength, and you can't use any spirit energy moves against him. He is incredibly tough, and a Hopeless Boss Fight. It is possible to beat him though, but whether you somehow beat him or lose to him as you're supposed to, the outcome doesn't change, except a message saying you're good but you still need training if you win. - Downplayed in Duke Nukem Forever: The very first fight, has you facing the Cycloid Emperor from Duke Nukem 3D armed with nothing but a Devastator, alone, in a stadium. It turns out that was a game that Duke was playing while a pair of twins was giving him a blowjob. - Jurassic Park (Arcade) opens with you battling the T-Rex as soon as you enter Jurassic Park, and you'll need to target it's mouth until you managed to drive the T-Rex away. You then lose it in the plains, crashes into a herd of Gallimimus, and the mook-level dinosaurs starts showing up. - Banjo-Tooie: After the game's opening cutscene (which shows Gruntilda returning and murdering Bottles) ends, Banjo and Kazooie leave Spiral Mountain through the cave from whence the witch's sisters came, and once there Klungo challenges them in a Mini-Boss battle. - Demon's Crest starts Firebrand off in a coliseum fighting a large zombie dragon named Somulo (all but said to be the undead form of the Demon Dragon who Firebrand killed in the intro). It's the easiest of the game's bosses, but comes early enough to be a surprise for newcomers without knowledge of the controls. - The first battle in Sonic the Hedgehog: Triple Trouble 16-Bit is the Egg Robo. Also counts for A Taste of Power, since this is the only time other than the True Final Boss where you can use Super Sonic. - Sonic Adventure begins with Sonic being the only character you can play as, and instead of being dropped in the HUB at the beginning, your first taste of gameplay with him involves you fighting Chaos 0, Chaos' weakest form. - Bravely Second has the first scene in the game be a Hopeless Boss Fight with the game's Big Bad, Kaiser Oblivion. Downplayed as the player doesn't get any input during this fight, the party fights using scripted moves that he No Sells, ending in a total Curb-Stomp Battle in Kaiser Oblivion's favor (complete with a "your party has fallen" Game Over message). He absconds with Agnès in tow after the fight has concluded. The player then gains control of Yew once he regains consciousness. Much later, after the game's fourth Chapter, \|\|time has been frozen, and Yew asks the player to go back to the beginning. He means this quite literally, as the player gains access to a New Game Plus option on the main menu. Using this will bring them back to the very first fight with Kaiser Oblivion, except this time, the player can control Yew and access the Bravely Second skill (indicated by the hourglass icon). Once this is activated, the player's party from the future is brought to the battle with Kaiser Oblivion, unlocks the game's fifth Chapter, allowing the Kaiser to be defeated right then and there before he can enact his plan\|\|. - Bakugan: Defenders of the Core has the player's first Brawl be against Dan using Maxus Dragonoid - The very first encounter in Deltarune is against Lancer, a Mini-Boss. The fight even takes place before the tutorial battle! - Final Fantasy II opens with a Hopeless Boss Fight in which your party is massacred by Imperla soldiers. Three of them are rescued and recruited into La Résistance, and the fate of the fourth is a significant subplot. - The first encounter in Golden Sun is against Saturos and Menardi, the game's main villains, who will oneshot your party. Downplayed in that there are a couple preplaced mook encounters before you face them. - Kingdom Hearts 3D [Dream Drop Distance]: After the intro cutscenes, the player takes control of Sora and is immediately thrown into a boss battle against Ursula. - Arc Rise Fantasia opens to a routine hunt of Feldragons headed up by Captain L'Arc Bright Lagoon and a few Faceless Mooks - Monster Hunter 4: The player's Hunter character is aboard the Arluq in the Great Desert, and then a gigantic Elder Dragon (Dah'ren Mohran) approaches to attack it. The hunter has to employ the equipped weapons of the Arluq to attack the Elder Dragon as it approaches in order to repel it. - Played for Laughs in Mother 3 where near the start of the game Lucas and Claus get ambushed by a literal Mole Cricket. A comically easy boss that's near impossible to lose against. \|\|Later in the game you have a Lighthearted Rematch with the mole cricket which leads to an even larger Curb-Stomp Battle!\|\| - The very first encounter in Parasite Eve is against the titular Eve in her weakest form. - The first fight in OMORI is against the local bully Boss. It basicaly serves to showcase the basic combat system, and you can beat him using nothing but normal attacks. - It's common for Pokémon games to have your very first battle be against your rival, who is always a Recurring Boss: - In Pokémon Red and Blue once you and Blue got your first Pokemon from Prof. Oak, Blue will challenge you to a Pokemon battle. - In Pokémon Black and White, you have to fight both Bianca and Cheren, your two rivals, right after choosing your starter Pokemon. - And again in Pokemon Xand Y, where you fight against Shauna, your secondary rival, after getting your starter in Aquacorde Town. - The Super Mario Bros. RPGs: - The first encounter in Chicken Invaders 3 has you fight a giant chicken boss. Thankfully, you're given A Taste of Power to help defeat it in a reasonable amount of time, and it only fires a small number of projectiles. - The first battle of Final Fantasy Tactics A2 is against Klesta, a Crushatrice Recurring Boss you'll be fighting many times in the future. - Fire Emblem: Awakening opens with a short level where Chrom and Robin fight and defeat one of the last bosses of the game, Validar, two on one, before Robin backstabs and kills Chrom. While this appears to be a premonition of things to come, it is later revealed that \|\|this scene had occurred in a Bad Future where Robin was possessed by the Big Bad Grima, prompting Chrom's daughter to go back in time and creating the current timeline of the game\|\|. - The very first level of the Berserk Studios Flash game Delivery Man pits the player against the first of two separate fights against Bob, the game's first boss. Downplayed in that the boss fight happens at the end of the level after a couple waves of regular Mooks.	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/OpeningBossBattle
Oops! I Forgot I Was Married - TV Tropes "See that girl With the diamond ring? She knows how to Shake that thing! Aww, mess around I declare she can mess around." Sometimes when a writer is looking to stir things up, or prevent the inevitable progression of a relationship, or stop a wedding, we'll find out that oops, once upon a time our hero/ine had an Accidental Marriage, Arranged Marriage or Citizenship Marriage, possibly brought on by an Off the Wagon night. Which they then proceeded to forget about for years on end until their long-lost spouse comes looking for them wanting a divorce, or they want to marry their current SO. Occasionally they'll think the marriage was annulled or never really counted, or they'll foolishly trust their spouse to take care of doing away with the ill-advised nuptials. It can be a bit more forgivable if the returning spouse supposedly died. Depending on the situation, this can result in a New Old Flame starting a Love Triangle, a very much unwanted Stalker with a Crush, or a second chance at a missed opportunity. For added drama to all parties involved, the writer can also make the unmentioned wife a Madwoman in the Attic. This is somewhat uncommon in Real Life, but not unheard of - some people really can't be bothered with the paperwork necessary to get a proper annulment/divorce for a relationship that's long since over. However, the New Old Flame complication generally only happens in Real Life in cases of intentional bigamy. May or may not result in Accidental Adultery. Can happen with The Mistress. See also "Not Really Married" Plot. ## Examples: - Happened in the '80s to Supergirl, in a story just after she died in Crisis on Infinite Earths ( Superman #415: Supergirl: Bride Of- -X?). An alien named Salkor showed up on Earth claiming to be her husband, which of course Superman didn't believe. Later in the story, he finds a video Supergirl made in his fortress where she relates being injured by a collision in space with a Kryptonite meteor. Salkor, the hero of his world, finds her and nurses her back to health. Since she has amnesia, she hangs around and falls in love with him. But eventually, her old memories return, in the process pushing aside her memories of the incidental marriage. She flies back to Earth and resumes her life. Her memories returned just in time for her to make the video before her death. A lot of fans forget this story because it was a time of way out stories as writers were cut loose to write any story they wanted before the reboot. Plus the marriage was a little bit gross by human standards. - The Accidental Husband Starring Uma Thurman. In this case, the title is sort of misleading: Thurman plays a relationship talk show host who advises one of her listeners to break up with her boyfriend. When said boyfriend learns the host is about to get married, he gets his revenge by having a kid hack into a government database and list her as married to him. "Hilarity" Ensues. - Bill and Jo in Twister. Bill and Jo had long split up, but never signed the divorce papers until Bill shows up with his new fiancee. It makes one wonder exactly how and when Bill broke the news to her. First date? Second date? The marriage proposal? "Honey, will you marry me?" "Yes!" "Great! Would you mind coming along on a road trip to visit my current wife so she and I can get divorced?" "What?!" - Sweet Home Alabama has the main plot ride on one of these, as the main character not only never got divorced but even leads her new fiance to believe her first husband was her cousin. And it takes place in the deep south... - There's also a mild Running Gag that Jake and Melanie keep forgetting that "marriage" has legal implications. Jake tries to get the sheriff to remove Melanie from his house, but the sheriff refuses, since they're still married and it's her house, too. Later, when Melanie goes to the bank, she finds she still has access to her and Jake's joint checking account, and cleans him out to essentially blackmail him into signing the divorce papers. - Move Over Darling (Doris Day, James Garner, and Polly Bergen) is a 1963 remake of a 1940 Screwball Comedy My Favorite Wife (Irene Dunne, Cary Grant and Randolph Scott). The plot is: a wife was lost off a ship that sunk. Presumed dead after 7 years, the husband remarries. However, the first wife has been living on a deserted island with another man, is rescued, and comes home on the wedding day. - In Libeled Lady (1936), Bill Chandler is confident that his marriage to Gladys Benton isn't legal because her Mexican divorce from her previous husband is invalid, so he has no qualms about marrying Connie Allenbury. Gladys then subverts the trope by telling Bill that she knew the Mexican divorce was invalid, so she went back and got a proper Divorce in Reno. - Mr. Rochester in Jane Eyre, though he never forgot, he just kept the fact concealed. - In A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, Sissy never bothers to properly divorce her first two husbands. - Barbara in Harry Turtledove's World War series. Her husband Jens went missing during a scouting mission and was assumed KIA. By the time he caught up with her, she was already remarried and pregnant, driving him to a FaceHeel Turn. - The first husband of Hatty Doran in the Sherlock Holmes story "The Adventure of the Noble Bachelor" was reported killed in an Apache raid on his mining camp. She only learns that he didn't die when she sees him at her second wedding. - In Animorphs, Marco's dad remarries a few years after his first wife "died." Unknown to him, his wife was still alive—she was the host of Visser One, who Faked The Dead when it was time to leave the planet. Needless to say, this situation was quite awkward for Marco, who knew his mom was alive but couldn't tell anyone. - In The Premature Burial by Edgar Allan Poe, Victorine La Fourcade, a wealthy French girl, was involved with a poor journalist named Julien Bossuet, whom her family did not approve of because of his socioeconomic status. She caved under family pressure and married a wealthy banker, who abused her until she fell ill and (apparently) died. It turns out she was not actually dead, just unconscious, and had been Buried Alive! Julien came to her grave not long after her "death" to take a lock of her hair and found out the truth. He took her home, nursed her back to health, and eloped to America with her. The couple returned to France some 20 years later, and the banker recognized Victorine and tried to legally claim her back. Because of his bad treatment of her and her current marriage to Julien, Victorine refused, and the court ruled in her favor, saying that because of the unusual circumstances and the time that had passed, her marriage to the banker guy was herewith dissolved. - Henry Crawford in the Mr. and Mrs. Darcy Mysteries conveniently forgets that he married Meg, under the name John Garret. She turns up looking for him at Mansfield Inn - while he's still dealing with the fallout to his marriage to Anne de Bourgh. - In Miss Lulu Bett, Ninian waits a week after his marriage to Lulu to tell her that he was married 15 years ago and his wife is, as far as he knows, still floating around out there somewhere. A mortified Lulu leaves him and goes home. - About two-thirds of the way through the Dr. Thorndyke novel Mr. Pottermack's Oversight, Mr. Pottermack finally feels free to propose to the love of his life — at which point, she reveals that she's not free to accept because she already has a husband, whom she walked out on before she met Mr. Pottermack but to whom she is officially still married. - In Tamar Cohen's The War of the Wives, both the first wife and the second wife had no idea that they were married to the same man for nearly twenty years because he managed to lie to both of them about his job so that the two were never in the same place at the same time. Both find out that he's a bigamist at his funeral and how they handle each other in the course of the novel. - In the fifth book of the Sword of Truth series, Richard is campaigning against the Imperial Order alongside his wife, Kahlan, when a woman he rescued in the second book shows up, calling herself his wife, based on a prophecy Richard had fulfilled in rescuing her. Worse yet, because of her tribe's customs, she considers her newborn child born out of her being raped in captivity to be Richard's as well. While this causes no issues with Kahlan, it seriously harms Richard's public image in the campaign. - Friends: - Phoebe is very fond of this trope. She married a Not-So-Gay Ice Dancer and conveniently forgot to mention it to even her best friends, and it is implied that she also married an unknown (to the viewers) man in Las Vegas. - Rachel trusts Ross to annul their drunken Vegas marriage - and he doesn't go through with it. - Bones had a multi-episode subplot where Hodgins and Angela were getting married, but it turned out that Angela was already married, so they had to track down her husband so she could get a divorce. This was a problem because she didn't even remember who he was, or that she was even technically married since all she could remember was getting massively drunk and jumping over a broomstick with a guy. - Of special note: Angela and the audience actually learned about this marriage much earlier, before she and Hodgins were even dating, when the FBI ran a background check on her so she could be clear to work on sensitive cases. Her reaction at that time is "Huh, that actually stuck?" Despite knowing about this (and knowing that the authorities are interested in her marital status), it doesn't occur to her again until her wedding to Hodgins gets interrupted. - Sam on Burn Notice drifted apart from his wife and eventually lost contact with her altogether. He never bothered to file for divorce because he thought, as a womanizing spy, that he wouldn't live long enough to settle down. Several decades later, his girlfriend proposes... - Castle: The plot of the season 6 finale. It is revealed that, while at university, Beckett married her then-boyfriend during a drunken weekend in Vegas. She thought they were divorced, but he had never signed the papers. She and Castle make a desperate drive upstate to locate him and get him to sign the papers. However, things get complicated when her ex is kidnapped. - Psych: - Gus. - His best man was a goat since the whole wedding party was pretty drunk at the time. Shawn is pissed because he was supposed to be that goat! - Mr. McQueen on Popular - G.O.B. on Arrested Development, explained as the logical conclusion to a series of drunken dares with a woman (played by Will Arnett's actual wife Amy Poehler) he met at a bar. The sad thing: he could have gotten it annulled if he'd just admit that he never actually had sex with the woman. - Mimi on The Drew Carey Show. She was married to Eddie Money for a week. She'd been divorced; the problem was that the church she wanted to be married in refused to do the ceremony unless she got an annulment. - On the Angel episode "Bachelor Party", Doyle was married to some woman, which he neglected to tell Cordelia because they had separated due to Doyle's issues with his half-demon status. Said woman came looking for a divorce as she found a new husband. She called off her new engagement though because her demon fiancé's family would only approve of their marriage if he performed an obscure ritual that involved eating Doyle's brain. Presumably, the divorce stuck since she's never seen again. - Edward and the mistake he and Kitty swore never to talk about in Dharma & Greg. He trusted her to file the paperwork, and she... forgot. The problem is never resolved, because it turns Kitty on that she's "the other woman", effectively un-probleming it. - Karen Darling from Dirty Sexy Money. - Frasier Crane was married prior to him appearing on Cheers, to fellow medical student Nanette Guzman. They were only married for a few months and then divorced. Years later, when Frasier was married to Lilith, Nanette reappeared as a children's entertainer called "Nanny Gee". Turns out Frasier never told Lilith about his first marriage, leading to a conflict between The Missus and the Ex. Lilith: "Oh look, it's my first husband." - Nanette later appeared in an episode of Frasier, and she tried to seduce Frasier despite having remarried herself. (Incidentally, Nanette was also an example of The Other Darrin, being played by Emma Thompson in the Cheers episode and by Laurie Metcalf in the Frasier one. - Sarah 'Mac' Mackenzie on JAG especially horrible in that she is a lawyer and US Marine officer. - 3rd Rock from the Sun has a fascinating twist on this. As just when Dick Solomon is about to get married The Big Giant Head decides to send a wife to him. Thus he didn't 'forget' he was married but was suddenly forced to ret-con a wife into his life, and yes, hilarity ensues. - On Wings, Helen was about to marry Joe but she forgot to divorce Antonio whom she married for citizenship reasons. - On Scrubs Dr. Cox and Jordan find out that they never correctly filed their divorce papers, and so are still legally married. Note that they're living together, have a child together, and are in a long-term committed relationship. But finding out that they're married drives them both crazy for some reason. In the end, they decided that they have to get divorced to save their relationship (their relationship remains exactly the same, but they're not officially bound together anymore), and even have a public, celebratory divorce ceremony. All their friends lampshade how ridiculous the whole thing is. Carla: [to Cox and Jordan's son] You have no chance to be normal. - Though not married, Craig did pull this in Degrassi: The Next Generation when he was having an affair. Manny didn't want to be Craig's skank on the side, and he told her that he broke up with Ashley so that they can be together. The problem is he doesn't break up with her, and now is cheating on both girls with each other. Leading to both finding out and dumping him on the spot. - On Shameless (US), Kevin proposes to Veronica while drunk. It takes a while for him to confess to her that he never divorced his first wife. According to him, she was a total psycho and he is actually in hiding from her. If he asks her for a divorce now, he fears she will kill him. Veronica is actually fine with this and \|\|they have a fake wedding\|\| just so they don't disappoint Veronica's mother and more importantly get wedding gifts. - On My Name Is Earl, Joy tricks Earl into marrying her, by getting her friends to serve him "upside-down martinis", before driving off to Las Vegas with him. The next morning, Earl wakes up badly hungover and spots Joy's wedding ring. Earl: "Oh, my God! You're married?!" Joy: "Yeah, sweetie. To you!" - Subverted in the MASH* episode, "Cease Fire". The war is believed to be almost over. A nurse Hawkeye was dating asks him about what their relationship will be post-war, and he claimed to be "suffering from terminal marriage", even though he wasn't really married. And he does it several times. Hawkeye Really Gets Around, and after the events of that episode it's odd that anyone on the nursing staff would even talk to him again. - Subverted again in a later episode where Charles is on leave in Tokyo and gets drunk. Photos taken during the binge show him getting married. His "wife" soon comes to visit the camp where after he finally reveals he doesn't remember anything from the evening, she explains that while inebriated he was so insistent they get married that they staged a fake wedding to appease him. They then get drunk and stage a fake divorce. - In Mad Love, due to a clerical error Kate turns out to be still married to her high school boyfriend she married on a dare. - Rachel in British series Cold Feet. The series kicked off with her break-up with a super serious boyfriend of several years, but she immediately meets her new big love Adam. When Adam and Rachel are later moving together, he finds her marriage licence and thinks it's a just-for-fun fake thing. However, it's very real and she never got divorced, and she has no intention. She wants to live with Adam but doesn't want to be a divorced woman. Her friends call her on it, but when she goes to meet her estranged husband to deal with it, they sleep together and she gets pregnant. Rachel and Adam eventually patch things up and get back together, but they broke up over Rachel's cheating, even though Adam wanted to forgive her. - Subverted in How I Met Your Mother. When Ted dates Robin, he finds out she has a secret. He desperately wants to find out what it is, and his friends bet on her being married because she hates marriage and commitment, and always talk about this friend who married way too young. Robin confirms it and Ted fusses over not being a boyfriend, but a "mistress". However, they later find out she lied. Her embarrassing secret is that \|\|she used to be a teen pop star in Canada.\|\| - On an episode of The Big Bang Theory, we learn that Penny and Zack had engaged in matrimonial hijinks one drunken night in Vegas. She thought it didn't count or wasn't real, but... - Played with in a two-parter on Batman (1966). Batman was being forced to marry Marcia, Queen Of Diamonds (long story). Before the wedding ceremony can be completed, Alfred arrived with Aunt Harriet and a fake marriage certificate saying that Harriet has been "Mrs. Batman" for the last seven years. - In Reaper, Ben gets into a Citizenship Marriage with a British girl named Sara. Shortly after that, he meets a girl named Cassidy. After a few dates, she (with some humor) points out that he forgot to take off his wedding ring. He explains the whole thing... and she likes the idea of being a mistress. After the ruse is discovered, Sara goes on the lam, leaving Ben to go to jail for a few months. Cassidy is happy that Ben will be single after doing time... but then ends up dumping him while he's still in jail. - In Elementary, Joan Watson starts dating a man while Sherlock is training her to be an investigator. Sherlock urges her to do a background check on the man in case he's already married, and under protest, she does, and he is. When she confronts her date about it, he explains that it was a Citizenship Marriage for strong humanitarian reasons... and now she has to explain why she does background checks on her dates. - In Downton Abbey, Lady Edith finds herself dating Michael Gregson, a newspaper editor. Some digging on her part then reveals that Gregson is married, to a woman who now lives in an asylum and has no idea who he is. Under English law, he can't divorce her. - Stargate SG-1: Pops up whenever Vala and Tomin encounter each other during season 10 and Stargate: The Ark of Truth. It's unlikely that Vala actually forgets being married to Tomin at any point, but she does seem pretty convinced that it no longer "counts", while Tomin is quick to remind everyone that they are, technically, still married. - In One Big Happy, Luke discovers that Prudence had a husband in England who never signed the divorce papers. Lizzy, who brought the man over thinking he was Prudence's father, gets him to sign the papers, \|\|but the incident has Luke rethinking his own marriage, questioning Prudence's intentions.\|\| - In the season 2 finale of Scorpion, Happy turns down Toby's proposal after a season-long relationship, saying only, "I can't. I'm married to someone else. I'm sorry," and then walks out of the room. The early episodes of season 3 had Toby trying to figure out who her mystery husband is. It turns out she married Walter because his visa was going to expire. - Rizzoli & Isles: In "For Richer or Poorer", Jane is puzzled when a man discovered unconscious at a murder scene has a photo of himself and Maura at a Las Vegas wedding chapel. Maura reveals that he was her college boyfriend and they got married in Vegas, before deciding the whole thing was a mistake and getting it annulled the next day. However, it turns out the lawyer handling the annulment suffered a stroke before he could submit the papers, so Maura is still legally married. At the end of the episode, she and her 'husband' get divorced. - Hot in Cleveland: Variant - at the end of season 2, Elka Ostrovsky's wedding to her boyfriend is interrupted when her supposedly deceased husband shows up. It's later revealed he was Faking the Dead because he was a fence for the mob, which gets him arrested soon after. - A fairly common storyline on Soap Operas to bring the Conflict Ball into a couple's life. - In Preacher (2016), Tulip reveals that she got married while she and Jesse were broken up, and that's why she doesn't want to marry him. \|\|It becomes a moot point when the Saint of Killers kills her husband.\|\| - A variant of this on Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, Reverend Richard Wayne Gary Wayne asks Kimmy for a divorce and that's when she realized that the wedding performed when he held her captive was real. - Agatha Raisin: In "Agatha Raisin and the Murderous Marriage", Agatha and James' wedding is interrupted by the unexpected arrival of Agatha's husband. In her defence, she has honestly believed him to be dead. - Jimmy and Lucy on Raising Hope. It was revealed during the Inside Probe episode that the two got married before the latter was executed. It was also revealed that she didnt actually die... so the next episode revolves around the custody battle that ensued for the titular toddler involving plenty of Artistic License Law. Ultimately \|\|the Chances lose the custody battle and Jimmy is forced to go with Lucy to Tibet to stay with his daughter, leaving his current flame, Sabrina behind. "Fortunately" Lucy notices this and gets out of the van to stab her, only to be hit by a bus herself.\|\| - Played for laughs on The Big Leap when Paula and Mike get engaged. He's already separated from his wife, but in the rush of everything he forgets that they haven't actually divorced until Paula pops the question. Fortunately, they know they can lean on Nick, the Executive Producer of the reality show they're on, to get it processed faster than normal in order to stage the wedding on the show. - The Brittas Empire: In "A Walk on the Wildside", Helen learns from a spiritual guru called Harry Johnson that the entire time she's been married to Brittas, she's been married to him as well (courtesy of the hippie who officiated the wedding going on to become the Bishop of Maidstone). She considers resolving the matter by leaving Brittas and heading off with him as the new husband until he dies to a falling sign at the end of the episode. - Medea in Jason and the Argonauts and their Quest for the Golden Fleece. Jason seduces Medea with the help of Eros and secretly marries her at Hera's shrine. She helps him complete the insanely difficult tasks her father. She even kills her brother for him, to buy time for them to escape. After embarking on an adventure and obtaining said Golden Fleece, they eventually arrive in Corinth, where Jason engages himself to the daughter of the king. Medea was not happy and launched a famously brutal Roaring Rampage of Revenge. Makes this trope Older Than Feudalism, and Jason an idiot for offending his patron goddess. - In Pacific Mythology, there is Aiwohikupua. He was originally from Tahiti, and he vowed that he would never marry a woman from Hawaii. He had a relationship with a Puna chiefess named Laieikawai, and they eventually got engaged. Then he sailed off to Hawaii, and he met a beautiful Tsundere named Hinaikamalama. \|\|She is actually a form of the fire goddess Pele.\|\| He bet himself in a game of chance against Hinaikamalama, and got engaged to her. They had an argument, and he sailed away to cool off and escape her temper. Then he met and became smitten with the ice goddess Poli'ahu, who kind of gave him a What the Hell, Hero?. But she also had feelings for him, so she offered to release him from his vows, on the condition that he become her husband. They traded their capes to seal their arrangement. Aiwohikupua started the rites to break off his engagement to Laieikawai and to prepare for the wedding to Poli'ahu. Then he ran off with Hina, and Poli'ahu attacked her and him with chills and fever, then returned home to Mauna Kea. Hinaikamalama left Aiwohikupua, and he was ostracized for his cheating ways. - In the old-school WWF: during her on-screen marriage to Triple H, Stephanie McMahon was drunk enough not to remember about it anything until the groom made the announcement at her wedding to Test. This was rendered pointless at the Armageddon PPV in December 1999, when Stephanie turned heel on her own father, during his match with Triple H. Incidentally McMahon and Triple H later got married in real life (the bride was sober then). - In Doc Rat, Ben put off marrying, and even having sex with, Daniella in part because he remembered he was legally married. He married someone when he was young, but she left him and moved to America. He never bothered to get an annulment at the time, and forgot about it. He ultimately put the effort forward to locate his wife and get a divorce finalized so he could proceed with his life with Daniella. - \|\|"Sparky"\|\| from Juvenile Diversion not only forgot his wedding along with his name, but \|\|mistook his dead squadmate for himself and wrote to his wife that he witnessed himself die\|\|. Needless to say, his wife was not pleased. - Used as a Brick Joke in Scandinavia and the World. Denmark pronounced Sweden and Norway being civil union partners in the comic's first strip and mentioned in the comic's third year anniversary with Norway upset Sweden forgetting it. - Trace in TwoKinds, having amnesia, fully forgets that he was married. His wife, Saria, does not. Later on, it turns out \|\|he's NOT married anymore as Saria has been dead for years; in fact, her murder at the hands of Keidran bandits was his Start of Darkness. The woman they encountered is actually her ghost, who's just happy that Trace has gone back to the person he used to be.\|\| - Donnie DuPre of Demo Reel certainly hasn't forgotten he's married, but the emotional neglect and mistreatment on both his and his wife's part, his much deeper relationship with his team and his heavily implied affairs with Uncle Yo and Egoraptor lead him into this territory. - The Simpsons had an episode where Homer and Flanders' "Vegas wives" - two cocktail waitresses they had accidentally married several seasons earlier during a drunken bender at Caesar's Palace - reappeared long after they (and the viewers) had forgotten about them. The local judge ruled that polygamy, or "Mormon Hold-Em" was legal in Nevada and therefore Homer and Ned had to support both wives. - Well, Homer did. Ned's "real" wife had died by this point, so he just had to try to be a good husband to his new one. (Un)fortunately, she quickly grew tired of his squeaky-clean lifestyle and ran for the hills. - Also of note: Homer got rid of his Vegas wife by \|\|tricking her into marrying Grandpa\|\|, which apparently works like an automatic annulment in whatever state Springfield is in. - Done hilariously on Camp Lazlo. One season ended with Jane, the love of Lumpus' life, getting engaged to the next guy who walked up: some old man. A season later, they almost got married—-but in the middle of the wedding, his other three wives complained. His excuse? Senility. - This may come up with one's religious practices. For example, a Catholic may get legally divorced but may discover years later that they need to qualify for an annulment to remarry in the Church. (This is not so much a "church divorce" as a Retcon, essentially stating that the marriage failed to meet the requirements of the Church, and therefore wasn't valid and therefore never happened.) Traditional Jews have similar practices; there is even a specific term, agunah, for a woman whose husband has not yet divorced her, however long they have been apart. - In ancient times, Jews with jobs that required long and dangerous travel (such as soldiers, sailors, and caravaners) had a custom of leaving a certificate of divorce behind to be opened after a certain date, to spare their wives this inconvenience. - May be a borderline case, but in his Psychopathology of Everyday Life, Sigmund Freud related an anecdote of a recently-married woman who was walking around Vienna with a friend of hers, and pointed to a man across the street, saying, "Look, there's Mr. X!" Mr. X, of course, was her new husband. The husband and wife had a good laugh over that story later, but Freud felt a chill when he first heard it. As he predicted, their marriage ended badly. - In Hamilton, Ontario, there is a section of a street called "Hess Village" - the entire run is cobbled and covered in pubs and bars. And a wedding chapel. They actually have a sign in the window saying they don't do drunk weddings. - In Married by America was a discovery that one of the contestants was already married; she tried to justify going on the show by saying it was an impulsive Vegas marriage and she and the man broke up soon afterwards and never actually lived together, but the fact that neither ever bothered to annul it got her kicked off anyway. - While people don't tend to forget they are married without amnesia or something of the kind, it is quite common to make some mistake in filing the divorce papers, and then not finding out the divorce was invalid until one party tries to remarry. - During his Presidential campaign of 1828, Andrew Jackson's wife was accused of bigamy. She had separated from her first (and abusive) husband in 1790, and both she and Jackson thought she was divorced. She wasn't. They got matters straightened out in 1794, but if you think that minor detail wouldn't make any difference you don't know American politics. - The scandal probably contributed to Rachel Jackson's early death, as bigamy (on a woman's part, at least) was considered no better than whoredom. - Janeane Garofalo was surprised to learn that for the past twenty years, she was married to producer Rob Cohen of The Big Bang Theory (see above under Live-Action TV) and forgot about it: more to the point, they didn't know their drive-thru Vegas wedding counted in the eyes of the law. They quickly divorced so Cohen could marry his new paramour, though the IRS might give them both a headache.	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/OopsIForgotIWasMarried
Opening Chorus - TV Tropes "The overture is about to start, You cross your fingers and hold your heart, It's curtain time and away we go! Another op'nin', Just another op'nin' of another show." Many a musical doesn't make the audience wait to hear the ensemble sing. So, it'll start the very first scene (possibly after a short prologue) with a Crowd Song. Often includes solo verses to help introduce the characters. See also the Opening Ballet. ## Examples: - "We Saw The Sea" from the movie Follow the Fleet. - The film version of RENT opens with "Seasons of Love'; the stage opening is just one guy singing. In a sense, this also applies to certain versions of the play where everyone sings it before the second act. - Newsies begins with "Carrying the Banner", as does the stage adaptation. - Non-theatre example: Almost all of Johann Sebastian Bach's cantatas start with an opening chorus, though a few aversions do exist. Usually cantatas that do not start with a chorus instead start with a Sinfonia movement (a completely instrumental movement). - Almost all of the Gilbert and Sullivan operas have an Opening Chorus: - "Throughout the Night, the Constellations" from Thespis. - "Hark, the hour of ten is sounding" from Trial by Jury. - "Ring forth, ye bells" from The Sorcerer. - "We sail the ocean blue" from H.M.S. Pinafore. - "Pour, oh, pour the pirate sherry" from The Pirates of Penzance. - "Twenty love-sick maidens we" from Patience. - "Tripping hither, tripping thither" from Iolanthe. - "Search throughout the panorama" from Princess Ida. - "If you want to know who we are" from The Mikado. - "Fair is Rose" from Ruddigore. - "List and learn" from The Gondoliers. - "In lazy languor" from Utopia, Limited. - "Won't it be a pretty wedding?" from The Grand Duke. - Sole exception: The Yeomen of the Guard, which begins with Phoebe's song, "When maiden loves." Shortly after that, though, we get "Tower warders, under orders" with the full ensemble. - "Wintergreen For President" from Of Thee I Sing. - "Cotton Blossom" from Show Boat, notable for having its opening lines Bowdlerised. - ~~Original~~ lines: "Colored folks work on de Mississippi / Colored folks work while de white folks play". (The original original lines didn't use the words "colored folks.") - Bowdlerised lines: "Here we all work on the Mississippi / Here we all work while the rich folks play". - "Opening Night" from The Producers is a more recent example. - "The Ballad of Sweeney Todd" from Stephen Sondheim's Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street. - The movie adaptation omits this. - Spoofed in Spamalot, in which the chorus mishears the Historian's introduction and thus the show opens with a musical number about Finland (instead of England) until they're corrected. - "Bells Are Ringing" from Bells Are Ringing. - "Call On Dolly" from Hello, Dolly!!. - "Westphalia" in some versions of Candide. - Cesare - Il Creatore che ha distrutto opens with a scene from when Cesare was an infant, with the chorus singing about the illegitimate child, the proof of sin. Cesare's father sings about their family and the position he aims for, and the chorus echoes him. The straightforward, traditional kingly sound to the music contrasts with the cardinal acknowledging his illegitimate children and saying the church is just another kingdom. Then, time skips to 1491, the teenaged Cesare enters, and introduces himself with a rock-styled solo that contrasts in every way. - The Sondheim musical Merrily We Roll Along originally started (and ended) with "The Hills Of Tomorrow." This Opening Chorus and the following scene were removed in revisions, making the title song the Opening Chorus. - "I Hope I Get It" from A Chorus Line, though preceded by a somewhat extended dance sequence. - "No One Mourns the Wicked" both opens and closes the musical Wicked. - Half-subverted in Avenue Q, where the opening song is a recording by (presumably) the original cast, played alongside an opening video. It parodies Sesame Street, what else can we say. - "Overture/Work Song" from Les Misérables, although it's only for the male chorus. - "Tradition" from Fiddler On The Roof, preceded by a minute of narration. - "Merano" from Chess, at least on the concept album and in most British productions. - "Fletcher's American Chocolate Choral Society" from Strike Up The Band. - "The Old Red Hills of Home" from Parade - "The Heat is on in Saigon" from Miss Saigon. - The titular song of Ragtime. - The wordless hum of the chorus in the "Overture" to Blood Brothers. - "Madame Guillotine" in The Scarlet Pimpernel. - "All That Jazz" from Chicago. - "Another Op'nin, Another Show" from Kiss Me, Kate. - Although there's a fairly lengthy scene preceding it. - "Joseph Taylor, Junior" from Rodgers and Hammerstein's Allegro. - "Tower of Babble" from Godspell. - "Mrs. Sally Adams" from Call Me Madam, in which Irving Berlin quotes from his own song "God Bless America." (Preceded by a short prologue scene.) - Subversion: "An Opening For A Princess" doesn't open Once Upon a Mattress, despite its title and full ensemble participation; it's even the second song in the show, since the prologue already has "Many Moons Ago." - A semi-aversion in Thoroughly Modern Millie: The show starts of with Millie singing "Not for the Life of Me", a full song and a separate track on the CD, as a solo, but it segues directly into the choral title number. Interestingly, even though the tracks are listed separately on the original cast recording, if you listen to only the song "Thoroughly Modern Millie", you will still hear Millie sing the last note of "Not for the Life of Me". - Little Shop of Horrors uses this trope with the prologue variation. - "Aquarius" in Hair - "Ohmigod You Guys" in Legally Blonde: The Musical - "21 Jumbo Street" from Doug Live! - "High On A Hill" from The Desert Song. Hammerstein himself apologized for not writing good lyrics. - In Knickerbocker Holiday, "Clickety-Clack" is a typical opening chorus sung by Dutch Maidens washing the steps, though it's actually the second song in the show, the first being part of the long Opening Monologue. - Hamilton starts with "Alexander Hamilton," a song describing the first 19 or so years of Hamilton's life from his birth to his travel to America, told verse by verse by each of the other actors save the ones playing Angelica and Peggy/Maria. It ends with each actor briefly - and dramatically - stating their relation to Hamilton (deliberately written so that their statement applies equally to both characters for the actors who play more than one). - "Today is the Day" from Finale. - "Carrying the Banner" from Newsies. - In "Prologue/The Day I Got Expelled" from The Lightning Thief, the musical adaptation of the first book in the Percy Jackson and the Olympians series, the demigods bemoan their godly parent. - In the 2017 Broadway retool of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory "The Candy Man" (a lift from the 1971 film adaptation of the source novel, Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory) is the opening number. Mr. Wonka himself sings the first verses as a solo, but after the bridge the ensemble joins in just because. - Westeros: An American Musical: "King Robert Baratheon" has several characters take turns at telling the audience the story of how Robert became King.	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/OpeningChorus
Opaque Lenses - TV Tropes Glasses generally allow people to see out of and into the eyes of the wearer. The subjects of this trope, however, have glasses that are reminiscent of the mirror windows of crime-show examination rooms - they can see you, but you can't see them. This is not a threatening gesture like Scary Shiny Glasses. It may be permanent, but it isn't silly Nerd Glasses. Perhaps the artist was lazy, but that's not what this is about. Characters with Opaque Lenses are usually hiding something. Maybe they're just emotionless - their hidden eyes, the so-called "window to the soul," hammering home the fact that you have no idea what they are thinking. Maybe they are hiding Glowing Eyes or Red Eyes, Take Warning. Maybe they are disguising themselves. But regardless of the reason, when you look at them you get the feeling like you're missing something. Often, it's done for Rule of Cool or because in animation, it's a time saving shortcut. In many cases, the glasses are only opaque when necessary for dramatic effect. In reality, the opaque effect is due to reflection and refraction of light off the lenses at just the right angle. Quite frequently, this shows up in instances where the lighting of the scene does not plausibly allow for this. See also: Opaque Nerd Glasses, Scary Shiny Glasses. Compare Sinister Shades, which have the same effect, but you expect it because, well, they're actually supposed to hide the character's eyes. ## Examples - Umino and Princess Diamond of Sailor Moon both have opaque glasses. Ami gets them when she's wearing her glasses and is either overconfident or excited. - Paul Wan from Get Backers, as seen above, is a bizarre example, if only because his sunglasses are actually opaque. He is hiding his \|\|stigma\|\|, but \|\|Kazuki\|\| used contact lenses for the same purpose, so who knows? Oddly enough, Ban has a pair just like Paul's, but they're normal. - From Loveless, Ritsu's eyes are occasionally visible in the manga behind his Stoic Spectacles. In the anime, however, they're only hidden when Ritsu is in Scary Shiny Glasses mode. - Azumanga Daioh: - Yomi's glasses go from transparent to opaque (a light blue) for a few different reasons: annoyance, dumbfoundedness, sneaky idea, uh, that "Limiter override!" thing, y'know. - Mr. Kimura's glasses are always opaque. But given that he's a Dirty Old Man (and not shy about it), you can be pretty sure what he's looking at anyway. - Haruhi Suzumiya: Yuki Nagato has glasses that do this... at least, \|\|until she breaks them defending Kyon from Asakura Ryoko, and he tells her he "doesn't really have a glasses fetish". Thus, she decides to stop wearing them. Haruhi and the Muggles in the story assume she started wearing contact lenses\|\|. - Hazuki in Ojamajo Doremi, usually when she's upset or embarrassed. - Stein from Soul Eater, most of the time. - Between this and Scary Shiny Glasses, you very rarely see Kobayashi's eyes in The Law of Ueki. After he gets sent to Hell as punishment for saving Ueki from being killed by Robert, he isn't wearing glasses for a while, and when he starts wearing them again, you can see his eyes more often. Not that that's necessarily a good thing... - Rider in Fate/stay night apparently has no trouble seeing through purple blinders that are roughly an inch thick and cover about 40% of her face. At one point she's asked to take them off... so that people can see her face, not the other way around. - Inui of The Prince of Tennis, to the point where it becomes a Running Gag that no one ever sees his eyes. The height of the gag comes when he breaks his glasses during a match, so we're expecting to finally see his eyes— and then it turns out he has a large case full of pairs of spare glasses. Rikkaidai's Yagyuu also qualifies for this trope. - Rei from March Comes in Like a Lion is subject to having opaque lenses half the time, usually to emphasize his meekness. They do clear up when they need to be seen. - Inverted by \|\|Koyo Aoba\|\| in Reborn! (2004). Everyone can see his eyes through his glasses perfectly fine, but they're made opaque on the inside in order to \|\|block Koyo's Killer Point Vision\|\|. - Cho Hakkai of Saiyuki is an interesting half-example; his monocle is usually—though not always—drawn as opaque. As Hakkai is a Stepford Smiler of the first order, this provides a helpful visual distinction between his outward pleasantry and his inner secrets. - Tsubomi (when she wears her glasses) and Yuri of HeartCatch Pretty Cure! tend to have this effect to their glasses. Usually when Erika's doing something involving them. - Miki Yoshikawa is really fond of this trope in both of her works - Flunk Punk Rumble and Yamada-kun and the Seven Witches - to the point that it appears many times in every scene that involves characters with glasses. Usually when the character(s) acts weird or comedic, but also when they are seen from a distance, in which case it's probably just a case of Lazy Artist. - Reiko Azuma of Pupipo! usually has opaque lenses with lines over them. Unlike the swirly lines common to this trope in anime, Azuma's are straight lines that match up with her square lenses. - I Can't Understand What My Husband Is Saying: Hajime's glasses, with the exception of close-ups and the really romantic moments with Kaoru (and in one case, a parodied Friendship Moment with Nozomu). Tanaka's glasses on the other hand are always see-through. - In Strider, Matic wears a set of opaque round glasses at all times. We never get to see his eyes. - In Banzi's Secret Diary, Eungsim wears a pair of yellow, square-framed glasses with lenses that are completely opaque, obscuring her eyes. - Happy Heroes: In episode 32, as Mr. Lightbulb shows the heroes around the hot spring, Smart S. wears sunglasses with lenses that completely cover his eyes. - The thief from the Lamput episode "Thief" wears a pair of glasses with lenses that completely obscure his eyes. - In Pleasant Goat and Big Big Wolf, Mr. Slowy's eyes cannot be seen through the lenses of his glasses. - A rare literary example in With Strings Attached. Because Ringo is walking around with his eyes closed all the time, he has black obsidian glasses made for himself to hide that little fact. However, he loses the glasses when they're turned into living creatures by Brox's life spell. - Zaphod Beeblebrox has a variation in The Restaurant at the End of the Universe where his glasses are opaque, period, when they sense danger. If you can't see it, it can't frighten you, after all. - Crowley from Good Omens hides the fact that he's a demon with reptilian eyes with a pair of sunglasses. - In Neuromancer, razorgirl Molly Millions seems to be wearing mirrored sunglasses, but they are really surgically implanted lenses which offer her various enhancements. - A minor character in the X-Wing Series wears an Eyepatch of Power that Wedge Antilles suspects operates in this way over a cybernetic (replacement) eye. - Darryl from Baby Blues goes back-and-forth on this. Sometimes he's drawn so you can't see his eyes. Usually, he's drawn with eyes. His eyes (which is the same as Wanda's) are usually seen when he's asleep or when he gets hit by something. - Daddy in The Family Circus. - Spanish graphic humorist and social critic Forges (Antonio Fraguas), bespectacled himself and active in newspapers 1973-2018, gave glasses to almost all of his characters (except for the rural "Blasillos", who appared with closed eyelids). Forges admitted that this was because opaque glases are easier to draw than eyes. - Flick-to-Stick Bungees: Elkas/Skael from Bionic Bungees wears a pair of glasses whose lenses aren't transparent. - In the Tamagotchi series, Professor Banzo, the scientist who discovered Tamagotchis, wears a pair of glasses with light blue lenses that have no eyes visible in them. - In Monster Rancher 1, at first the man you talk with to book training for your monster has opaque glasses and a distant, impersonal air. Once you pass the milestone of getting a monster to class B, his glasses lose the opaque look and he seems friendlier. Get to class S, and he starts to greet you with a deferential bow of the head. - Some of the scientists in the original Half-Life have theses due to the limitations of the GoldSrc engine. - Happens from time to time with Persona 5's protagonist; he's Clark Kenting, so it ties into him obscuring his identity. - Kenji's glasses in Katawa Shoujo. Except for one scene, he's never seen without them. Hisao estimates the lenses are about an inch thick. - Everyone who wears glasses in A Miracle of Science has blank white lenses, although the most prominent example, Dr. Haas, simply has Scary Shiny Glasses. - Maria in Angel Down wears a pair of opaque sunglasses at all times (even indoors, and at night). The only time she is seen without her glasses is at \|\|Ward's funeral\|\|. - Parodied in the webcomic Real Life Comics: When Cliff is introduced, he has see-through glasses despite the fact that the only other character in the strip wearing glasses, Dave, had opaque lenses. The very next strip had Cliff asking Dave about this, prompting Dave to reveal that they aren't just glasses, but rather something akin to Geordi La Forge's VISOR. - Dave in Narbonic, symbolising his blindness \|\|to his own true nature.\|\| - Everyone who wears sunglasses in Homestuck - Dave, Dirk, their guardian counterparts, Redglare, Terezi, Sollux, and Equius - makes use of this trope. Characters who just wear normal glasses have visible eyes, unless they're using a computer display function. - Ichabod in Far Out There wears a HUGE pair of glasses like this. For some reason, his are the only regular glasses like this. Opaque goggles or sunglasses aren't uncommon, but everyone else who wears normal glasses has clearly visible eyes. - El Goonish Shive: - Tedd has a justified example, with a pair of high-tech glasses from his father's government job that have features like video recording and a (since removed) X-Ray Vision mode. He originally wore them everywhere because he was insecure about his face, but he eventually stopped wearing them after becoming more comfortable with his appearance. Also averted when he gets actual prescription glasses, which are not opaque. note : Tedd is a girl in the linked page. - Mr. Verres' eyes have never been seen since he's always shown wearing these type of glasses. The reason for the opaqueness has never been explicitly explained, but they're possibly also high tech glasses since he is Tedd's dad. - Arthur's assistant Sybil has a pair of unexplained opaque glasses that she always wears. It helps maintain her role as The Stoic. - The koalas from Blue Moon Blossom all wear glasses with solid white lenses that completely obscure their eyes from all angles and in all lighting conditions. In the koalas' first appearance, the glasses even shine in the dark like Scary Shiny Glasses, adding to their apparently Ambiguously Evil nature, but once \|\|the bunny and dino make friends with a koala\|\|, the koalas' glasses end up coming across as Opaque Nerd Glasses instead. - Lotta Svärd: Women of War: Tyyne's father is always seen with rectangular glasses with solid white lenses, which both complements his daughter's bangs and fits his slightly impersonal attitude toward the rest of the characters (including his own family). - Rain: Rain's abusive father Marcus is drawn with glasses that obscure his eyes in order to emphasize just how much of a monster he is. - Parodied on South Park with Cartman's police officer outfit. It includes a pair of shades which ALWAYS reflect a mountain sunset, no matter what he is actually looking at. - Courage the Cowardly Dog: Muriel & Eustace have glasses that obscure their eyes, as well as Eustace's whole family. Similarly, all of the recurring normal, non-villainous human characters except the General had their eyes obscured. This seems to emphasize Courage's status as a Cassandra type, as nobody else sees what's obvious to him. Subverted in the Hothead episode (though it's fairly surreal looking). - Zig-zagged in VBirds with Bling's sunglasses; while they are see-through most of the time, they are opaque in some shots and art. - Robin (both of them) of Young Justice wears dark sunglasses when in civies to hide his secret identity from his teammates.	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/OpaqueLenses
Stable Time Loop - TV Tropes "One cannot damage history, because history cannot be changed. [holds up Clock of Eternity] * I went back in time to steal this because history said it disappeared. And history said it disappeared because I went back to steal it. Past, present, future. It's all written in stone, my dear."* Through Applied Phlebotinum, Functional Magic, or some other means, our heroes travel back to the past. In the past, they wind up being responsible for the very events that underpin their own "present." This creates a chicken-and-egg scenario, in which the looping sequence of events has no clear beginning. The result of breaking the zeroth law of Time Travel: do not cause the event you went back to prevent. This is also the basic premise of how Time Travel would work, according to Albert Einstein. Simply put, even if it were possible to travel back in time, you would not be able to change any events in the past, because your future self would have already caused them to happen in the way that they did. No matter your intentions, everything that you did would only fulfill the past. The only thing that would change is your perception of the events. (Thus explaining Hitler's Time Travel Exemption Act.) This trope is actually Older Than Feudalism, since, while time travel is a relatively new concept, prophecy (which is basically information time travel) is not, and Self-Fulfilling Prophecy is the earliest form of stable time loop. There are two basic types of time loop: a Predestination Paradox, in which knowledge of events in the future, even attempts to evade them, ultimately causes those events to happen (Sorry Oedipus. And John Connor.) and the even more mind-squirming "bootstrap paradox" note : from the classic Robert A. Heinlein short story, "By His Bootstraps" (also called the ontological paradox), in which the time loop allows for the existence of information or objects that have no origin. The classic hypothetical bootstrap paradox is to jump into the future, steal some wondrous gadget, come back to the original time, grab the patent on that gadget and start mass-producing them immediately. Eventually, they become so ubiquitous or so common that you, ten, twenty years younger (and thus from a time period where you aren't aware that you would go on to patent and mass-market them after returning to your present), show up and steal one. The simplest version is the one where the time machine itself is the product of the stable time loop the character sees a version of himself pop into existence with a time machine, hand it to him, and press the button, only to be whisked into the past where he hands it to his past self and presses the button. This exact example is also an Object Paradox, wherein the time machine has no past and no future outside the loop, and therefore no origin. Such loops with physical objects (but not information) may be impossible due to violating the First and/or Second Laws of Thermodynamics: as the object comes from nothing and then vanishes, that would be creation and then destruction of mass-energy, and the appearance of a complex, orderly object by chance cannot occur because it would be a spontaneous reversal of entropy, which is vanishingly improbable at the macro scale. A Time Travel-specific subtrope of the Chicken-and-Egg Paradox. Tricked Out Time is when you "change" the past on purpose to resemble this; Close-Enough Timeline is when you partially succeed but decide the end result will suffice. Time Loop Trap is when you use a time loop as a way to imprison someone or something. Compare You Already Changed the Past, which often results in this. A Wayback Trip usually implies this. If this occurs in a universe where you can Set Right What Once Went Wrong, you most likely have a Timey-Wimey Ball on your hands. See Retroactive Preparation for one way this can be exploited. For the Recursive Fiction variant of this, see Mutually Fictional. Since many examples of this trope aren't revealed until late in the story, and the existence of a loop can itself be a Spoiler, consider yourself spoiler-warned. This trope is not to be confused with "Groundhog Day" Loop. ## Examples: <!—index—> <!—/index—> - The Israeli satire series M.K. 22 featured an episode in which the resident Big Bad, a Bedouin who is secretly a terrorist, goes back in time to try and drive the Jews away from Palestine and prevent the establishment of the State of Israel in several different points in time: he tries to kill Moses with a bazooka, King David (before his coronation, during his fight with Goliath) with a rifle, and King Solomon with a thrown axe, and to convince Theodor Herzl not to found a Jewish state. All of his attempts have the opposite outcome, accidentally causing one of these: the bazooka hits the rock in the desert that produces water for the people note : The story of Moses hitting the rock to produce water is much more famous among Jews; in the original story, however, Moses hit the rock in frustration instead of asking it to produce water, as God told him, a sin for which God told him he would not be allowed into the Holy Land, which he has been wandering towards for forty years, but this is naturally glossed over for the sake of Rule of Funny., making Moses, who was planning to flee with his brother, a hero; the bullet hits Goliath instead of David; the axe cuts the baby from the Judgment of Solomon in half, portraying the inattentive King Solomon as a hero; and Herzl had never thought about founding a Jewish state beforehand. - Subverted in Calvin and Hobbes. It's 6:30 and Calvin doesn't want to do his homework, so he decides to Time Travel forward to 8:30. Then he can pick up the now-finished homework, bring it back to 6:30, and goof off the rest of the evening. But it doesn't work. There's no homework to pick up at 8:30 because Calvin never actually did the homework — he went time traveling instead. The best part came, of course, when they BOTH decided to go after 7:30 Calvin, because he was the one who was supposed to be doing it. That didn't work either. Eventually, it indirectly does work. Both the 6:30 and 8:30 versions of Hobbes wrote a story about how stupid Calvin was to attempt this plan in the first place. It got Calvin an "A+" for creativity. - Arrowhead: In one comic, Cody sees a comic book character that looks like Arrowhead, so he travels back in time to ask the writer where he'd gotten the idea for his character. The writer tells him about seeing a strange figure in the woods as a boy. Cody jumps back to the time he'd specified, and sees a meteor heading towards town. As Arrowhead, he deflects the meteor, and is spotted in the aftermath by a group of children, one of which would grow up to be the writer; Cody-as-Arrowhead himself had been the writer's inspiration. - In the Doctor Who fanfic Gemini, this trope is defied by invoking Timey-Wimey Ball: Its easier for the Daleks to change the past than it is for anybody else, so the military is trying to create super-soldiers that can change the timeline as easily as the Daleks can. - My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic has Que Sera, Sera. Celestia's ability to know the future is finally explained after she summons Twilight Sparkle and her friends to defeat a great foe — an ancient dragon who has awoken and gone on a rampage, but Celestia knows that it is all according to plan — and indeed, the rampage was a collaboration between the dragon and Princess Celestia, without even Princess Luna's knowledge. \|\|The reason is that the dragon is Spike, several thousand years older, and he uses his firey breath to send himself and the Mane Six back over two thousand years into the past. Twilight at first worries about changing the future, but eventually realizes that they are permanently stuck in the past and relaxes. Eventually she has two children, naming one of them after Celestia, and the other after Trixie, though her sister mispronounces Lulumoon as "Luna-moon". When Discord shows up, she and the rest of the mane six expect the princesses to show up... but they don't, because they're still foals. Namely, Twilight's. And the Elements of Harmony don't even exist yet, the only weapon that can beat Discord. Or at least, they don't exist in the form of the elements... In the end, Twilight and her friends have to sacrifice themselves and BECOME the Elements of Harmony, entrusting Spike to help Luna and Celestia, and then eventually become the monster that sends them into the past in the first place, several thousand years down the line. The story ends with Spike having reverted to his child-like form and finally reuniting with Celestia, who has just had to send her own mother to her death.\|\| - In the Homestuck fanfiction Hopeless and Heartless. there are several examples of stable time loops, all revolving around Dirk Strider's actions \|\|as the result of a Portal to the Past. It is revealed that Dirk is actually his own older brother (and subsequently the guardian who raised his younger self) Because Destiny Says So. In order to avoid creating a paradox, Dirk is forced to remain in the past and send Jake English, the love of his life, back to the distant future, creating a 1,00 year gap between them\|\|. See also: I Choose to Stay and Love Transcends Spacetime. - The Harry Potter Slash Fic Mobius by geneticallydead. - Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality has four of these to date, the most notable one being when \|\|Harry pulled a prank on himself using a Time Turner, an Invisibility Cloak, two pies, and several sheets of parchment\|\|. - His attempt to use Time Loop Logic (see Real Life below) as a manually-performed perfect algorithm was... less than successful. The output: \|\| DO NOT MESS WITH TIME\|\| - Finally, there's \|\|the prophecies. Dumbledore listened to all of them, and then set the events in motion that would lead to Harry's birth and how his personality developed\|\|. - Kyon: Big Damn Hero has these every few chapters, and so many that any unresolved ones are offering \|\|Kyon protection from the IDSE\|\|. As soon as he resolves the last one... - Yabba Dabba Joes — Destro went through almost three dozen agents trying to kill members of the Joe team in their cribs before finally accepting that time travel in the Joe-verse doesn't allow changing the past. - Paradox has a stable time loop despite the name. \|\|Shampoo strands Ukyou and Ryouga in the past, where they become the real parents of Ranma who is stolen at birth by Genma\|\|. - One Harry Potter fanfic had a four year old Harry being sent back in time to when his parents were newly married. In the end \|\|Harry gets sent back to the present, completely forgetting everything that happened. Meanwhile in the past, Sirius convinces James to make Peter his and Lily's secret keeper so they won't be killed and the future Harry came from will never be.\|\| ...yeah. - In the Hetalia: Axis Powers fic Chasing an Empty Dream, \|\|after a few characters end up centuries in the past curtsey of England's magic, Germany ends up saving Holy Roman Empire's life. Moments later, he's shocked to find out he had just saved himself\|\|. - In another Harry Potter comedy ( Harry Potter and the Sword of Gryffindor by cloneserpents), Hermione steals a time turner for the purposes of "kinky sex" that will also hurt Death Eaters. This is explained by Hermione at the time saying that she sort-of got it through a time paradox, but not to worry about it. Later, Harry is sent to put it back in the Department of Mysteries at the same time as stealing it in the first place. On the way, he runs into Mad-Eye Moody, who says that the DoM is being guarded after the events of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix and that he should probably not venture in there. Upon exiting in failure, Hermione suggests that he just give her the one that he had to put back. This leads to Harry having a Logic Bomb moment along the lines of "But you gave this to me after traveling through time... and I just gave it to you... where did it come from?!" - Time Anomaly: - Amy learns that, after the current crisis is over, \|\|she and the Twelfth Doctor will have to go back to the nineties to make arrangements for an alliance with the Silurians living underneath America to help them fight off the current invasion\|\|. - The epilogue reveals that \|\|River Song received information about her role in this crisis from a letter she found in the Eleventh Doctors TARDIS, which her adopted brother gave to the Fifth Doctor when he, Tegan and Turlough were visiting Cardiff in the 2050s\|\|. - The Marvel-verse fanfic Dreams of the Waking Man \|\|is all about one giant stable time-loop\|\|. In the far future, Deadpool helps Cable and Hope to return to the present, which causes a chain of events that influences the entire Marvel universe \|\|and ensures Deadpool will always be in the Future to help Cable and Hope to get back to the present\|\|. - In the Twilight Storm fic "The Future in the Past", Bella convince the Tenth Doctor to help her set up the events that will allow Esme to be in a position to be turned by Carlisle, and the two subsequently go back in time to investigate the origin of Bella's 'breed' of vampire. The Doctor and Bella thus \|\|end up contributing to the events that will lead to these vampires existing in the first place, to the extent that they 'program' the vampires to hide away from humans\|\|. - The Stargate SG-1 fic "Turning Point" features Daniel Jackson accidentally activating a Furling time machine and being sent back in time to a point where he encounters Egeria, the Goa'uld queen who will go on to create the Tok'ra, and essentially inspire her to turn against the rest of her species. While Daniel later muses that it would have probably happened without him, after his Ascension Oma Desala confirms that the Ascended can see what would have happened in the past if certain events had turned out differently, and there is no timeline where Egeria would have created the Tok'ra on her own without Daniel to inspire her. - In the Marvel Cinematic Universe fic "live not on evil", Peter Parker gets caught up in a complex time loop where he arrives in various different time periods in a relatively random order, allowing him to "borrow" the Time, Space and Soul Stone from the Avengers after the Time Heist, stop Nebula's cybernetics linking up to her past self, bring Vision back to life, steal an Arc Reactor from Stark Tower, and provide Clint and Natasha with the Soul Stone on Vormir. Many of these are only even attempted because Peter met someone during certain jumps who told him what he was going to do "next" as they had already experienced that event in their past and Peter's future. Peter notes later on that the time-loop angle is important to prevent this timeline being "pruned" by the TVA, as he's jumping around so much and doing things in such a random order there's no way any of their agents can step in and stop him without being sure they won't cause more damage by either preventing him from doing something he should have done already or stopping him gaining the knowledge of how to do something else. - "The Third Life of Steve Rogers" establishes that Steve only went back in time to marry Peggy Carter post- Avengers: Endgame because he'd already found evidence that he did that anyway; the name of Peggy's husband is Grant Edward Buchanan (the middle names of Steve, Tony and Bucky), the man's birth and marriage certificates are written in the same handwriting, there is no record that he was ever in military service, and he even finds a rare photograph of Peggy with her husband and children that shows the man looked very like Steve. Over the next few decades, Steve and Peggy often take action to ensure that Steve's history plays out as he remembers, such as discreetly helping to keep Bruce Banner hidden from General Ross until he's ready to 'go public', and their various children take up positions that will help the Avengers be prepared for events such as the fall of S.H.I.E.L.D. - The Buzz Lightyear of Star Command fic One Hundred Days happens because one long time-loop. Warp's canonical death-stunt sets up Buzz and Mira to work together as teammates, thus giving them the opportunity to know each other very well. Then, Warp's revelation of his parenthood drives the pair to marry and avoid a scandal, thus allowing him to be born in the first place. At some undefined point in the future, Buzz and Mira send a baby Warp back through time (the how remains unexplained) and close the loop, as remembered by Warp in the climax. - Defied by Calvin in Calvin & Hobbes: The Series when Hobbes tries to do something that'll start one: - The entire premise of the Facing the Future Series is dependent on one of these. \|\|When Future Danny and Sam travel back in time to fight Dark Danny, present day Sam is driven by the revelation that her future self is half ghost to gain ghost powers of her own, thus becoming Danny's new partner\|\|. - The Pony POV Series has a rather complex one show up in the sub-arc following the conclusion of Dark World: \|\|When Twilight/Amicitia ascends, Cadence warns her that her greatest enemy awaits at the dawn of time. So she goes back then, where Mortis warns her that they're destined to one day fight each other as well, before helping her evade a sneak attack from a younger Cadence, who's convinced that magic is inherently evil and wants to kill Amicitia to prevent its existence. After Amicitia barely defeats her, she then hops back in time a bit and tells Mortis to warn her, before going on to traverse her own timeline to be the Benevolent Interloper and shield her mortal self from Nightmare Eclipse/Paradox's influence, thus insuring her own existence. And then she makes sure Razzaroo's Apocalyptic Log survives G3's Cosmic Retcon and sends it to the spirit world, where Razzaroo would then use it to nearly become The Magician Alicorn and challenge Dark World Twilight for the spot in the first place\|\|. Notably, Mortis at one point warns her not to do this too much, as it becomes complicated. - Also, there's implication that \|\|Amicitia had to complete this because she and Paradox were two alternate futures Twilight could have become, and by closing the loop, she locked Paradox's defeat in stone\|\|. - In Suzie's Adventure World, this is said to have happened with a card exchanged between Suzie and Ryo where the one Ryo gave Suzie is a double of the one she gave him years ago, and she gives it to him in Adventure... - Suggested in the Empath: The Luckiest Smurf story "Days Of Future Smurfed" that Empath is supposed to create the memory artifact that will fall into the hands of Peyo, leading to his creation of The Smurfs, while Empath marries Smurfette, has a child through her as well as a grandchild and great-grandchild, the last of whom will become Traveler Smurf, who will travel back into the past to give Empath visions of the future that will lead to the creation of the memory artifact. - Deconstructed in the Ranma/Sailor Moon crossover No Chance for Fate in the first chapter until a random factor breaks the loop, setting up the rest of the story with Sailor Pluto hell bent on preventing the situation that caused it in the first place. - In The Apprentice, the Student, and the Charlatan plays with this. Nova Shine is named after one of the pioneers of magic, who happened to be Princess Luna's first Night Apprentice, a unicorn held in the same regard as Star Swirl the Bearded, and the patriarch of his family, the Novus clan. Then, Nova and Twilight discover journals belonging to every previous Faithful Student and Night Apprentice in history, one of which belongs to Nova Shine I, and in it, discovers that Nova Shine I, the first Night Apprentice, is none other than present Nova himself, who heads back in time in only a few days, meaning that Nova is named after, and idolizes, himself. Except not really, because Nova ends up returning to his own time without having done many of the things Nova Shine I was reported to have done. It turns out, however, that Clover the Clever, the mare he fell in love with and ultimately left, ended up naming her son after him, and that Nova Shine was the one who became patriarch of the Novus Clan and became one of the most famous and storied unicorns in Equestrian history. The Nova Shine from the present was named after a unicorn who was named after him. - Jewel of Darkness has a small one in the Rivalry Arc. Midnight goes to steal the Clock of Eternity, only to find it already gone. After the ensuing confrontation with Warp \|\|and trip to the canon universe\|\|, she ends up back in the museum five minutes before her first arrival, allowing her to steal the Clock before she even shows up. - At the end of the Doctor Who fic In This World You Cannot Change it's revealed that the heroes created a Stable Time Loop due to \|\|performing HeelFace Brainwashing on The Master\|\|. - In Strange Times Are Upon Us Ila'kshath thinks the crew is part of one because they have historical records from their future regarding the 1859 solar storm that they've apparently set off. - A minor example from Rose of Pollux's fanfics concerning Jamie's nickname. As it turns out, the Doctor gave Jamie his nickname at their first meeting (from Jamie's perspective, which occurred when he was about two months old). Which he only knew because that was how Jamie introduced himself at their first meeting from his perspective. - A reverse form occurs in Paradox or Pair of Twins? when Xander is sent to the future and has sex with the DeeDee twins. Xander later mentions they did things he had never even heard of before, while in the future the twins realize Xander is the guy who literally wrote the book on sex. In other words, they did things they learned from his book which he wrote after they did said things to him. - Child of the Storm uses one of these to explain why Professor Xavier couldn't tell Harry about his relationship to Jean — fifty years before the start of the story, he met a time-travelling version of Harry from a few years into the story's future, who told him the things he had to do to ensure the closing of the loop (and thus avoiding a dangerous paradox), including swearing everyone present to secrecy until such time as Xavier could give present-day Harry a letter from his future self, that he remembered receiving from Xavier. Discussing this sequence of events gives everyone a headache. - Yin and Yang Series: A few. It's only natural with a time-controlling alien as a major character. - The Monkey D. Haru Series: In Prisoner of Azkaban, it's revealed that the reason why the Wizarding World knew Harry Potter was alive during his ten-year long disappearance is because Haru used his Portal-Portal powers to send a picture of himself back in time to Dumbledore. - In On a Pale Horse, Harry Potter became the embodiment of Death after uniting the three Deathly Hallows. A few millennia later, while traveling through time, he comes across a trio of brothers who beat a riddle of his. As a reward, he makes them a wand and a stone that summons the dead and gives them his own invisibility cloak. It's only afterwards that he realizes he made the very Deathly Hallows that turned him into Death to begin with. - On another occasion, Dementors tormented Harry so much when he was still human because he's the one who went back thousands of years and created Dementors. Death notes that his life seems to revolve paradoxes. - In The Loud House fanfic Blast To The Past, Lincoln returns to the present from six years in the past \|\|via modifications to the time machine made by a future version of himself\|\|, Lisa then spends the next six years studying those modifications \|\|then send the now teenage Lincoln back in time to modify his younger selves time machine\|\| so he can return home so Lisa can study the machine and so on. - In The Ouroboros, the turtles, April and Casey believe that they're in the process of completing one in order to ensure that their world stays saved. In reality, the other versions of them aren't from the future, but an Alternate Universe. The universe they left behind wasn't set right by their efforts, and is still long gone... so they lied to the native versions of themselves, tricking them into heading off into space so they could replace them. - In Meetings Across Time, it's implied that the reason Kakashi reads porn so much is because his first pornographic book was a gift from Obito, but the reason Obito gave Kakashi porn in the first place was because Obito asked Naruto what he should use as a gift, and after hearing the gift is for Kakashi, Naruto gave him the idea to use porn because he knows how much his teacher loves reading it. - In the Star Trek: Deep Space Nine fanfic The Bad Old Days, Bashir gets knocked a few years into in the past to when Deep Space Nine was still occupied by the Cardassians, and ends up being interrogated by Garak, who's still an Obsidian Order agent. Bashir manages to avoid giving away too many important facts, but after awhile, Garak comes to realize that his future self is in love with Bashir. This eventually leads Garak to releasing Bashir without permission from his superiors, which leads to Garak's exile on Deep Space Nine when it's taken over by the Federation, which leads to him and Bashir meeting in the first place. Garak even acknowledges that it's become a stable loop. - As implied by the title, the events of the Transformers fanfic Vicious Circle are the result of such a loop. Basically - Galvatron kills Starscream, who is sent back in time and meets a young Megatron. After spending time together, the two mechs fall in love with each other, but Starscream chooses to return to his own time period, believing that Megatron becoming an abusive tyrant is inevitable. Not wanting to give up on Starscream, Megatron follows him to the future, where he helps the other mech escape Galvatron and return to the past, but once there, Starscream is killed. Megatron is so overcome by grief that he has both his memories of Starscream and a great part of his emotional system deleted, only to meet Starscream again years later - however, as this is their first meeting from Starscream's point of view, the Seeker has no memory of the time he and Megatron spent together. Unable to love Starscream the way he once did, Megatron beats and mentally tortures the mech, which causes Starscream to become the trope that he himself named. This, in turn, eventually leads to Starscream throwing Megatron out of Astrotrain, which leads to Megatron becoming Galvatron and killing Starscream, which sends him back in time to start the circle all over again. - The Miraculous Ladybug fic When lightning strikes has Bunnyx sends Marinette, Adrien, and Kagami back in time for their anniversary. The three of them learn that they went back to the day that Marinette meet Adrien, though Future Marinette notes the lack of rain that lead to him lending her his umbrella and her falling in love. She has her Kagami use the Dragon Miraculous to create a rainstorm to make sure that moment happens, and thus set in motion the events that would lead the three to get together in the future. - In the past of Jo Jos Bizarre Adventure Diamond Is Unbreakable, 6-years-old Josuke and his mother were saved from a snowstorm by a stranger in a pompadour, who helped push their car out of the snow so Tomoko can get Josuke to the hospital, which inspired Josuke to wear the same fashion and hairstyle as the man when he gets older. In This is my fault, how?, when Josuke is sent traveling through time, he ends up on that specific night and becomes the one to save the younger versions of his mother and himself. - In The Eventide Verse oneshot Better To Ask Forgiveness, Discord time-travels back to shortly after his second imprisonment in stone to apologise for this rampage, and in the process tells Celestia about Fluttershy's success at reforming him. While she initially believes he must be trying to trick her, she eventually considers he may be telling the truth, and it becomes the nudge that convinces her to attempt his rehabilitation in the first place. - The Palaververse: In The First Stitch, a discussion of Time Travel brings the idea of a stable loop up: Clover: But I understood time to be a ... fixed loop. That what might be done by a chrononaut was meant to be done, that their present already depended on whatever malarkey they wrought. Rarity: Sometimes. There is apparently disagreement on this, as I can make out. - Earth's Alien History: - \|\|Katie Marek\|\|, as part of trying to avert her Bad Future, first takes steps to ensure that her parents meet in the first place, guaranteeing her own existence. - The origins of humanity constitute one of these spanning galaxies, thanks to a Negative Space Wedgie transporting a colony fleet across the universe and back in time, and the intervention of several Sufficiently Advanced Aliens, among other things. - The Master goes to Cybertron prior to the Great War in order to disrupt the timeline enough to get the Doctor's attention. But the presence of himself and the Legends just leads to the events that result in Orion Pax becoming Optimus Prime and Megatron going from peaceful protester to violent revolutionary, setting the stage for the war. - Eobard Thawne's origin is this. He was inspired to become a hero by reading of Barry Allen's battles with the Reverse Flash, gained access to the Speed Force, and went back in time to become Barry's friend and sidekick. Barry disapproved of Thawne's brutal methods, and a dejected Thawne went to the Flash Museum, where he was driven mad by the fact the he was destined to be the Reverse Flash. - The Legends Arceus arc sets one up. Early on in their trip to the past Satoshi, Hanka, and Inara encounter a time displaced Porygon, which Professor Laventon studies. The Monster Makers, the people who created Digimon, were inspired do to so by the centuries-old record of a being made of data on ARC3-US, and their successes with early Digimon inspired the creation of Porygon and its line, as well as inadvertently leading to the creation of MissingNo. - In live performances, the Flight of the Conchords song 'Bowie' is usually preceded by a description of Bret and Jermaine travelling back in time and meeting David Bowie, to whom Bret plays his Bowie's own songs, and even leaves an "easy to play Bowie song book". - The Black Sabbath song "Iron Man" is about a person who travels through time "for the future of mankind" only to find that the world is destroyed in an apocalyptic event. Deciding to return to his present to warn the people of the coming disaster, he gets "trapped in a magnetic field" which turns his skin into metal. Thus, when he warns the people of the present, they are frightened by his appearance and too afraid to listen to him. Then, out of frustration that no one heeds his warnings about the forthcoming apocalypse, he causes the apocalypse. - "One For the Vine", on the Genesis album Wind & Wuthering, tells the story of a soldier deserting from an army led by a messianic leader. The deserter finds himself on an icy waste populated by primitive people, who see him as a messenger of God. He reluctantly takes the role simply in order to help himself get home, but ends up becoming the very messiah from whom he fled. As he leads his army into battle, he sees one soldier run away from the host, and vanish... - "The Bet" by Show of Hands is about a man who finds ten grand next to a car crash, takes it, bets on horses with it, wins ten grand and... yeah, you see where I'm going with this. - Possible example in the Cygnus X-1 duology by Rush: the narrator is pulled into the black hole known as Cygnus X-1, and arrives in a world ruled by the Olympian gods which may or may not be our own world in the distant past. He ends the war between Apollo and Dionysus by telling them his story. They dub him Cygnus, after the black hole through which he entered their word. He becomes a god, presumably the mythological figure the constellation Cygnus, and thus the black hole Cygnus X-1, is named after. - Kids Praise: During a time travel plot in the seventh album, Psalty meets himself as a child and helps inspire him a little to become the praise leader he is as an adult! - "Blood Red Head On Fire" by Big Dumb Face is about a heroic character, Duke Lion, doing battle with the titular disembodied head. "Magic Guillotine", released 13 years later, ends with Duke Lion being captured and dismembered by demons; just for fun, they turn his head red, set it on fire, and send it through a time portal to attack his past self. - Loony Labyrinth and its sequel, Mad Daedalus, forms a Stable Time Loop with regards to the invention of the Loony Machine: the player travels to 2,000 B.C. with the Loony Machine, which Daedalus examines. After the player returns to the present day, Daedalus eventually (re-)invents it. However, Daedalus cannot power it because his assistant lost the Loony Stones that power it, so Daedalus places the machine in the Labyrinth. it is excavated several thousand years later, and the player finds the Loony Stones, then uses the Machine to travel back to 2,000 B.C.... - Former CHIKARA wrestler Archibald Peck was susceptible to Time Travel due to Eddie Kingston hitting him with the Backfist to the Future. To explain, Archie (as Mixed Martial Archie) was backfisted to the past in a backstage argument with Eddie Kingston during his Loser Leaves Town match at Chikarasaurus Rex in June 2012, becoming the Mysterious and Handsome Stranger. Meanwhile, a second Archie (as Archibald Peck) returned to finish that match and was exiled from CHIKARA after being pinned. Stranger!Archie (backfisted back to the present by Buford "Mad Dog" Tannen) appeared a while after Exiled!Archie started his walk, unmasked after slopping Veronica at the Season 11 finale, and was allowed to compete in CHIKARA by reasoning that he was not Exiled!Archie. Stranger!Archie, well aware that he was on borrowed time, still chose to compete against Kingston at the 2nd Stage of the 2013 Tag World Grand Prix, and was backfisted back to that Loser Leaves Town match, becoming Exiled!Archie and presumably closing the loop... - ...except there was more to the loop than once thought. The Ashes video "When?" confirmed that the "doppelgänger" Stranger!Archie saw before the aforementioned backfist was Exiled!Archie, and that he was indeed present at Never Compromise (quite possibly in more than one form, as two Archies were spotted during the aftermath). - The first time loop resulting from being backfisted took Archie to 2015, and due to both the future he went to changing (as evidenced by him being beaten by Tadasuke, an event that he claimed was in direct contradiction with the information he'd received) and CHIKARA's 2015 yearbook being postponed, may never be resolved... - ...or so everyone thought. Archie appeared at the 2015 Season Finale Top Banana, took the sole copy of the 2015 yearbook, learned that he would perish at the hands of Deucalion, and fled the building. Hasn't appeared since, and is still at large. Doubles as The Cuckoolander Was Right. - Later deliberately invoked in Archie's grand return at National Pro Wrestling Day 2014, as he returned from Parts Unknown (where he had claimed that time flowed differently) in a DeLorean with 3.0 in tow. - Big Finish Doctor Who: - "Flip-Flop" takes this to a rather confusing extreme: Two time loops that feed each other. It's presented on two discs, a "White disc" and a "Black disc", and they can be listened to in either order (or indeed in a continuous loop), as each one follows a different timeline. \|\|To summarize: On both discs the Doctor and Mel arrive to find the planet Puxatornee on Christmas Eve just before midnight in a terrible way: On one disc, a radioactive wasteland, on the other controlled by a hostile alien species. They are forced to go back in time to prevent it, and go back to Christmas Day to find the planet worse: On one disc, controlled by an alien species, and on the other a radioactive wasteland. They are then forced to go back to Christmas Eve before they arrived, and leave just before their other selves arrive on the planet, beginning the adventure on the other disc. In essence it's two unstable time loops, each leading to the other one.\|\| - In the Companion Chronicles audio drama "Tales from the Vault", a time-release capsule in UNIT's Museum of the Strange and Unusual reveals a message from the Doctor's companion Steven Taylor warning of an alien threat. When it gets Lost in Transmission WO Charlie Sato, against the orders of Captain Ruth Matheson, tries using a related item in the Vault to get more information \|\|in the process releasing the alien threat. After it's been defeated, he asks Matheson why the time-release capsule had opened today in the first place. She replies that the Doctor presumably read the report she's about to write\|\|. - The Companion Chronicles drama "Return of the Rocket Men" begins with Steven on his twenty-first birthday, being tortured to death for fun by a Space Pirate before being unexpectedly saved by another pirate named Ramirez, who he then sees get shot by his Bad Boss. Older, experienced and now travelling with the Doctor, he ends up unexpectedly on the same planet on the same day, ends up in the suit belonging to Ramirez, and realises he now has to save his own younger self, even if it means him getting killed. - The opening story of The New Adventures of Bernice Summerfield: Volume 2 The Triumph of Sutekh has Benny discover the Doctor in a Martian pyramid fighting Sutekh for possession of his mind. \|\|Then he dies.\|\| The final story has \|\|the Doctor, battling Sutekh in the far future, disappear as Sutekh attempts to take over his mind. He then gets pulled out of the loop by Isis, but Sutekh is left to repeat it forever\|\|. - In The Legacy of Time: The Avenues of Possibility, the Sixth Doctor is investigating a number of cracks in time in 18th century London, each leading to a different possible future (including the "real" one). One leads to a totalitarian state in 1951, where the Doctor is horrified to discover the army is planning to invade its own past through the crack. He protests that they'll be changing their own history, and their commander replies that on the contrary, their history is the one where they did this. \|\|Although it turns out she's being lied to by creatures that feed on paradox.\|\| - In the Companion Chronicles drama "Second Chances", the last of the "Zoe has her lost memories searched by the Company" subseries, it turns out the adventure Zoe remembers, which ended with everyone dying except her, Jamie and the Doctor, is happening now, and she decides she can try to save them. Unfortunately, the only reason her younger self survived was due to her own intervention, leading to the realisation that her current involvement was always part of the timeline, and she can't change anything. - In Embers in the Dusk, Justicar Alarion's existence as a Grey Knight. While his squad visits Avernus to check for Chaotic corruption, they come across a young orphan, Markus Haanoc, who exorcises a daemon from his sister, displaying strong psychic abilities and somehow being able to recite the Grey Knights' litany. Alarion has him sent to Titan as a potential recruit. A few centuries earlier, the Grey Knights at Titan find a ship with a burnt out Navigator and a young boy in stasis. The boy withstands the trials, and is eventually renamed Alarion. - Continuum is an RPG where the characters' entire goal is to make sure stable time loops work out. - Planescape: Faction War features a double time loop. Considering that the person stuck in it tried to overthrow the Lady of Pain, he had it easy. - The Dark Eye: Time travel follows a simple law: you cannot change the past, as it had already happened and you'll just end up doing what you did to create the present you're currently living in. If by some chance the hero does discover some hopelessly contradicting action, be prepared for time to heal itself. Oh, and the universe has wardens against such misuse, too. - Warhammer 40,000: - An Imperial warship picks up a distress call from an Imperial vessel under heavy attack, and goes to respond. When it arrives, it finds no Imperial ship, but the warship itself comes under heavy attack... and sends out a distress call. Thanks to the ability of the Warp to mess with time, the ship went to its destruction answering its own distress call. - The ork warlord Grizgutz and his army, after setting off into the warp, arrives shortly before they left off and decides to hunt down and kill his previous self so he can own a spare of his favourite gun. The confusion results in the war-band being stopped in it's tracks. - House Khymere were a loyal Imperial Knight House, but when an army of them came out of the Warp and started attacking Imperial forces, they were naturally declared traitors. When the Imperium got to their homeworld, the nobles had no idea what they were talking about, and were forced to flee into the Warp to escape the pissed off Imperium, angry and bitter at having been betrayed despite their loyalty. They then emerged from the Warp to take revenge... in the past, unwittingly setting off the events that led to the whole thing in the first place. - In Ever17, the main character \|\|(revealed to actually be a 4th-dimensional being known as "Blick Winkel") travels back in time from 2034 to 2017 to save two other characters from certain death, only to find that if he immediately reveals their survival to the others, that will create a Temporal Paradox preventing him from coming back in time in the first place — so instead he is forced to hide their existence and manipulate the others into setting up the event in 2034 that results in him being "summoned" in the first place\|\|. - Remember11, the sequel to Ever 17 involves one too, carrying on the series' "infinity loop" motif. \|\|The plan behind the time-loop is hardly explained, as typical of the game. And the game also shows the many, many ways the entire thing could have failed. For one example, one ending involves the Yuni at SPHIA (in 2012) going into shell-shock after witnessing a murder. This means he's in no state to go back to 2011 after the events of the game. This means he's unable to lead Yomogi to the Cabin. This retcons Kokoro's entire chapter out of existence.\|\| - Fate/stay night. The swords that \|\|Archer\|\| carries. \|\|Shirou\|\| can only create a weapon he's seen (\|\|most of the swords created in Unlimited Blade Works come from weapons he saw in Gilgamesh's Noble Phantasm, Gates of Babylon\|\|). However, in the case of his two main swords, \|\|Shirou\|\| learned to create them from seeing his future self wielding them. \|\|Shirou doesn't have to become Archer in the future for this to be valid, though; he just has to see the swords\|\|. In other words, whether or not it is a stable time loop is less important than the fact that it could be. - Zero Escape: - In Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors, this is one possible interpretation of the ending: \|\|Akane worked her way through the Nonary Game 9 years in the past, transmitting the answers into Junpei in a possible future. When she reaches a puzzle she can't solve, she explores through possible futures until she figures out how to lead Junpei into one where he faces the same puzzle. He's able to solve it, and transmit the answer back to her, allowing her to avert her own death. But after this incident, she has to set up the second Nonary Game that Junpei finds himself in 9 years later, completing the loop\|\|. note : The alternative theory is that Santa is trying to Set Right What Once Went Wrong, while Akane is projecting an image of herself into the future throughout the first game. - In Virtue's Last Reward, there are several: - \|\|One occurs in the path where the old woman does not die — upon nearing the end of the path to Phi's ending, Sigma and Phi go back in time and save her, thereby setting up the timeline in which she lives.\|\| - One depends on the player's actions, but \|\|Phi will betray you at a critical juncture, in revenge for you betraying her at that same juncture in an alternate branch\|\|. It is extremely likely that you will play this branch before \|\|the branch where you actually commit this betrayal\|\|, and only do the latter at all because the first spoiler is blatantly railroading you into it, because without that as motivation, it would be completely ridiculous, cruel, and out-of-character. That said, if you did decide to be ridiculous and \|\|betray Phi\|\| first, then no time-loop is involved. - Another one is how \|\|Sigma learns the code to Bomb 1. Dio planted four bombs throughout the facility, numbered 0-3. You get three of the codes out of Dio himself in three different timelines. The fourth is told to you in a recorded message left by Zero. Zero only knew the code because he is Sigma's future self, and therefore learned it from the same message when he watched it as Sigma\|\|. - \|\|The second one is the cycle Sigma and Phi are going though, as explained by the diagram in the true ending route. However, the characters are actively trying to break the stable time loop, which is why they set it up in the first place\|\|, which continues on into the third game, Zero Time Dilemma. - In Zero Time Dilemma, \|\|this is half of Zero's goal. He needs to create one so that he and his twin sister are born under specific circumstances to make them both ESPers\|\|. - Time Hollow is one BIG Time Loop which is both stable and constantly shifting. The overarching plot is one huge example \|\|due to the protagonist sending himself hints and clues at the end of the game to his startgame self\|\|, but the events of both the past and present during certain periods is in constant flux, even though due to the looping nature, that flux is always in its own stable loop. - Demonbane has a time loop as its central plot point: the entire universe has been time-looped an unknown (but very large... when an Outer God loses count, you know it's a big number) number of times, and the antagonists often refer to the looping as "the infinite spiral" and the "Wheel of Fate". The game's good endings involve the heroes breaking the loop. \|\|The ending and sequel imply that Nyarlathotep, the supposed architect of this time loop, was itself a pawn in an even bigger, trans-universal time loop, perhaps one orchestrated by Elder God Demonbane itself.\|\| - The \|\|True\|\| Ending of Steins;Gate reveals that one of these \|\|has been ongoing the entire game. The whole plot starts with Okabe seeing Kurisu dead in a pool of blood, causing him to accidentally send the first D-Mail and reach the Alpha world line, where most of the plot takes place and Okabe gets to fall in love with the now living Kurisu. However, in the end, Okabe returns to the Beta world line, where the story started, but has to save Kurisu from her death at the beginning and stop World War III from breaking out. To do this, he lets himself get stabbed in Kurisu's place and then knocks out Kurisu and uses his blood to to recreate the scene his past self originally saw. Thus, Kurisu lives, and Okabe still goes through the events of the visual novel which ultimately lead to him working to save Kurisu\|\|. - This is essentially one of Dr. Insano's backstories as part of The Spoony Experiment: Insano is an alternate-universe version of Spoony, who has grown so angry with the Final Fantasy franchise that he wants to go back in time to erase it from existence. Since being able to travel through time would require him to study science for decades, he decides to create a time loop just like that of the original Final Fantasy by studying science, travelling back in time and then obtaining all the knowledge he needs from his future self. - Red vs. Blue: - In Season 3, Church ends up Trapped in the Past due to explosion, and after taking the The Slow Path, decides to Set Right What Once Went Wrong. His attempts creates an uncountable number of these as he fails his objective each time and keeps trying. Local Cloud Cuckoolander Caboose makes the following unintentionally profound statement when Church talks to him about his experiences with the timeline: "Time LINE...? Ehh, time isn't made out of LINES. It is made out of circles. That is why clocks are round!" \|\|Subverted when it turns out Church was in a simulation designed to mentally torture him the whole time, and he never time-traveled to begin with\|\|. - In Season 16, the Reds and Blues are each given a Time Machine Teleport Gun and free reign to run amuck through history. Their actions end up becoming You Already Changed the Past, Been There, Shaped History, or a combination of the two. Jax Jonez even states that the "Closed Loop" theory is how some sci-fi writers deal with paradoxes in stories. - In Illo Tempore contains at least two stable time loops across four millennia. - The Flash game No Time To Explain. Your character is chilling at home when a future version of himself appears out of thin air, warning you of imminent danger. Seconds later, a giant crab grabs him and carries him away, leaving you to use his weapon to save your future self. After defeating the crab, \|\|your future self opens a time portal back to the beginning of the game before dying. You travel back to your past self's living room, and try to warn him of the danger your future self warned you about. Seconds later..\|\|. - The player characters in Pretending to Be People undergo multiple time loops as a means of setting up individual adventure hooks. \|\|Clark Bishop as the Overseer uses something similar to start the Circle of Knowledge. Keith Vigna also uses this to become Silas Cole, the founder of Contention.\|\| - Robutt a robot is trapped in a time loop wherein it constructs itself out of junk, sacrifices its battery to power the new version, which gets in a time machine and goes back to do it again. - A Very Potter Sequel features one within another — an impressive feat for a stage play. - In We Are Our Avatars, Komatsu and the others teach a few of their moves to a younger Toriko, setting Toriko's path in becoming a great Gourmet Hunter. In fact, Toriko learned his Knife and Fork techniques from Grey Fullblaster. - In Chronicle of the Annoying Quest, when the party reaches the Caverns of Time, Guy accidentally activates a rune that displaces him in time from previous points in the story, including his original warlock apprentice outfit, his tier 1 set ghost form, and his tier 2 set undead form. After a few confused remarks by the past versions, Guy casts a spell to send them all back. What makes it an example is present!Guy's reaction to the situation: "Oh, so this is when all that happened! I thought it was just a recurring dream." - Starwalker: Starwalker's drive allows her to travel through time. \|\|This gets the attention of some Space Pirates who take over the ship. They force her to use her drive to go to the Solar System. Using the ability to travel in time, Starwalker gets them to the appointment 40 years early. They return to the present. However, the ripples of their passage causes strange measurements to be made of our sun. This gives Dr Cirilli the idea that a star step drive could work. In the "present" they meet the person who hired the pirates. She turns out to be the avatar for our sun. She hired the pirates to end the Starwalker experiment because the star step drive has the side effect of Star Killing.\|\| - Seen in the comments section of this Cracked article: random_nerd: Completely ridiculous, I say! Everyone knows the Titanic sank from the added weight of all the time travelers trying to stop it from sinking. - Happens in Tribe Twelve during the November 11th Livestream: \|\|on the night Noah is supposed to be taken and forced into the Collective, Firebrand appears in the corner of his bedroom and transports him to his own closet on August 1st of the previous year. Noah begins pounding on the door and shouting, dropping the rubber ball with the Observer symbol (which he found in his closet) as he teleports away — leaving the ball to be discovered by his past self, who was alerted by the noise from the closet. Present!Noah then finds himself in the hallway outside the hotel room where he stayed on his birthday the previous year; he opens the door, frightening his past self (and giving him his first sighting of Firebrand) as he's abducted by the Slender Man. Present!Noah is then returned to his bedroom — in time for his past self to get his second sighting of "Firebrand" in the corner of his room as he's teleported away\|\|. - Troll Science teaches us how to make use of a stable time loop to acquire infinite money. Just spend your entire life saving every cent you can, hop in your time machine, and travel back to give your younger self all your savings and the time machine. Repeat as necessary. Since you've already been doing in indefinitely, all you have to do is wait for your future self to bring you that time machine and a fantastic pile of money. - A web roleplaying forum had a story of myths of a terrible army of monsters known as the Zanik, who were supposedly born from a devil equivalent and forced the people of the world to climb on the back of a god equivalent and fly off into the sky to escape them; the myths, however, give no answer for what happened to the Zanik after that: they essentially vanish. An evil witch, discovering that the flying island exists (the myths being the supposed reason why there's a flying island in the shape of a dragon in the world), ultimately provides the reason that the Zanik vanished from the myths; she travels back in time and brings them to the present to wreck havoc, ultimately causing their complete vanishing from the myths that she studied that inspired her to go back and do that in the first place... note : Unfortunately for the Zanik, they very swiftly discovered that the forces that could oppose them in the ancient past and the forces that could oppose them in the 'present' day were light years apart, and were wiped out to a man. - Protectors of the Plot Continuum agents Rina Dives and the Reader experience this: \|\|the Reader discovers the human-turned Time Lord Rina is actually her old nanny from Gallifrey who helped her escape the Time War, which led to her finding the PPC and subsequently meeting Rina, who was still basically a child and had yet to run away and end up on the Reader's home planet. The Reader ends up desperately trying to not let anyone know of what will have to happen in order to make sure time doesn't collapse\|\|. It leads to a lot of stress for both parties when they discover the other's deception. - In the Happy Tree Friends TV episode "Blast from the Past", Sniffles makes a time machine out of parts in his storage room to go back to before he accidentally knocked his glass of milk off his table and ends up in a loop wherein he accidentally drops the time machine on himself. - In the Mega Man games episode of The Angry Video Game Nerd the Nerd decides to go back in time to see past versions of himself. He goes back to 2007 and sees himself just having reviewed Independence Day on PlayStation, and tells him to review some crappy games based on The Simpsons. He goes back to 2006 and sees himself in his review of A Nightmare on Elm Street as "The Angry Nintendo Nerd" and convinces him to change his name to "The Angry Video Game Nerd". Finally he goes to 2004 and tells the version of himself that just finished ranting on Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde to keep working on reviewing games he thinks are of poor quality. - Parodied in one video by Chris Ray Gun. It begins with Chris rolling on-screen on a fast-moving swivel-chair, which causes him to immediately crash into a wall, and receive amnesia. He then tries to figure out what happened before he got amnesia, and immediately finds a YouTube video by Zarna Joshi, which becomes the topic of that Episode as Chris gives every criticism he has of that video. When the video ends, Chris regrets wasting his time watching it, and promptly builds a time machine out of his swivel chair, intending to use it to go back in time and prevent himself from ever watching it - and it is revealed that his crash at the start of the video was the result of him time travelling back to the past at the speed of light. - In the sixth and seventh episodes of Jainko Stones Jo performs one when he randomly gets knocked down, only to find the \|\|Jainko Topaz, which grants the power of invisibility\|\|. He then realizes that he knocked himself down using a multi-stone ritual that allowed him to \|\|travel back in time, invisible, and knock himself down in the exact spot where he found it\|\|. - In Season 6 on the Hermitcraft Server, Grian mysteriously loses several stacks of diamonds and a villager with no explanation. When he builds a time machine to reclaim the diamonds from the past, he realizes how he lost them in the first place. - In Renegade Rhetoric, a Character Blog for Cy-Kill from Challenge Of The Gobots where many posts had him describe the events of episodes from a non-existent second season of that cartoon, the post describing the fictional two-part episode "Renegade Victory" ends with Cy-Kill voicing his displeasure at realizing that his attempts at securing Renegade victory by kidnapping Leader-1's past self Luther Unum may have indirectly resulted in his enemy going down the path that would lead to him becoming the noble leader of the heroic Guardians. - In one Tubby Nugget strip, Tubby steals a slice of pizza from his future self and is congradulating himself on getting a free snack, when his past self steals the slice and closes the loop.◊ Nobby is unsurprised by the outcome. - Back when the Large Hadron Collider was having a string of mechanical difficulties, some non-trivial physicists wondered aloud whether the future was actively trying to scuttle the LHC research project. The string of mechanical difficulties, they said, may be more than mere chance: Whether through [future] human intervention or the universe itself exercising some form of upstream-acting Ontological Inertia, the future was trying to make sure we don't mess with Higgs Bosons. Loopy? Literally. Crazy? Probably. Correct? Apparently not. - In terms of the theory of relativity, time travel would take the appearance of a closed timelike curve, which is a series of events returning to its starting point — such as time travel returns to the past. That leads to the inevitable paradoxes, but some solutions claim that if time travel is possible at all, it's only possible in a stable form: the only form of time travel possible generates one. - While that may seem supremely useless — what good is a time machine if it can't change anything? — that's not really true. A computer that could only build Stable Time Loops could run algorithms like "open time communication channel to 5 minutes into the future, receive answer from future, close channel, check answer (which takes 5 minutes in this example), if correct, send answer over the communication channel that was now just opened, if incorrect send different answer to past over the same communication channel", and then consistency would force the algorithm to return the output to some given puzzle. This is known as Time Loop Logic. Receiving an incorrect answer from the future would cause a paradox, and thus is impossible. Therefore either the answer will never arrive, or you will have created an ontological paradox, fabricating the answer from nowhere. The step of checking the answer is required for the algorithm to work. - Less esoterically/more science-fictionally, a time machine that can't change anything would also be just dandy for observation, thanks. (Better, really, since you don't risk stepping on the Butterfly of Doom.) Video from 20,000BC anyone? - Isaac Asimov and Arthur C. Clarke both tried that. Problem is, the past starts a microsecond ago, so it effectively ends any notion of privacy. - Reginald Brettnor mentioned the same idea in "These Stones Will Remember". Unlike the Asimov and Clarke stories, this wasn't the primary purpose of the device. - There is apparently a theory out there that human time travellers seeded the young planet Earth with life. This is sometimes known as the Completely Ridiculous Anthropic Principle. - Some theories of particle physics hold that antiparticles (particles with the opposite charge and parity of a "standard" particle) travel backward through time. It's also widely believed that particle-antiparticle pairs randomly pop into existence from the Quantum Foam, and then feel their mutual attraction and annihilate each other moments later. It's also possible to see this as a single particle traveling in a loop through time: Forward as a regular particle to annihilate with its antiparticle, then backward as its antiparticle to annihilate with its standard particle, and repeat. - A few theories state that, assuming time travel is possible, the big bang could have occurred by sending a time machine back to the starting point of the big bang, which would be a void before 'existence'. The sudden appearance of matter would then trigger the big bang, causing us to exist and said time machine to be constructed. - There is another theory that says that if time travel is possible, it is only forward time travel — theoretically caused by time dilation when approaching the speed of light. The other way says that time machines are possible but that you can only travel to when the time machine was first activated and any time after that, but not before. That would explain why they aren't hundreds of time travelers at every major event in history... yet. - The first isn't a theory as per the use of the term in the rest of this page, though some of the underlying physics has yet to be proved. It's how we are currently time travelling, and the change in rate can be demonstrated empirically by looking at the clocks on GPS Satellites and seeing that time passes differently on them and the surface.	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/OntologicalParadox
Mistaken for Index - TV Tropes Chandler: Oh, I think this is the episode of Three's Company where there's some kind of misunderstanding! Phoebe: Oh. Well then I've already seen this one. [Turns off TV] A result of a principal character misinterpreting something. In comedy, this often leads to further and further misunderstandings, each more comical than the last, until things get straightened out at the end of the episode. In dramas, the principal character usually exerts much effort trying to prepare for a "showdown," only to discover at the last second it was "all a huge mistake." This trope is one of the basic elements of Farce, but can lead to an Idiot Plot. Related to Poor Communication Kills. See also Public Medium Ignorance. <!—index—> <!—/index—> - Abuse Mistake: Either non-abuse is mistaken for abuse, or abuse is mistaken for non-abuse. - Accidental Bargaining Skills: A character is offered a deal and his reaction is mistaken for an attempt to drive the price up. - Accidental Dance Craze: Someone is moving about for a different reason (Potty Dance, Squirrels in My Pants, feeling itchy, etc) but is mistaken for dancing and the "dance" catches on. - Accidental Innuendo: The creators did not intend anything saucy by the dialogue, but the audience still interprets it as lewd anyway. - Accidental Pervert: A man unintentionally says or does something near women that makes him look like a perverted creep. - Accidental Proposal: Somebody falsely thinks that another person is proposing to them. - Actually Four Mooks: What appears to be one enemy is actually multiple ones engaged in battle. - Actually Not a Vampire: A person with vampire-like characteristics and habits is mistaken for an actual vampire. - Actually, That's My Assistant: The big cheese's assistant is mistaken for the one in charge. - All Part of the Show: Something unexpected happens during a performance and the audience assumes that what's happening is an intended part of the show. - Ambiguous Syntax: The phrasing of a statement allows multiple, confusing interpretations. - And You Thought It Was a Game: A character thinks an event is staged but it's not. - And You Thought It Was Real: A fake situation (such as a roleplay, a work of fiction, or a simulation) or some people practicing for something gets mistaken for something real. - Apophenia Plot: A string of random events is misinterpreted as having some meaning, often in the sense of a secret or a conspiracy. - Assumed Win: Someone thinks they are about to be announced winner, but then find out they actually lost. - Bait-and-Switch Accusation: Someone thinks they're about to be accused of the thing they're keeping secret, but in reality, they're being accused of something different. - Bait-and-Switch Character Intro: When an Establishing Character Moment is subverted to reveal that the character is entirely different than what was first presented. - Bait-and-Switch Sentiment: Somebody thinks another character is being sentimental when they're not. - A Bloody Mess: A red liquid (almost always ketchup) is mistaken for blood. - Calling Me a Logarithm: Mistaking an unfamiliar word for an insult. - Cassandra Truth: Somebody is mistaken for lying. - Celebration Miscalculation: One or more characters think it's a special occasion but it isn't. - Coincidental Accidental Disguise: A character accidentally ends up looking like something (such as a ghost, a particular monster, etc) and being mistaken for it. - Common Knowledge: A portion of the audience has a misconception about the work. - Crying Wolf: A subtrope of Cassandra Truth, when someone who lied before tells the truth but is thought to be lying again. - Delirious Misidentification: Someone is "not all there" (high, seriously injured, etc) and mistakes someone else for a different, specific person. - Discriminate and Switch: Someone is mistaken for discriminating against a person for a particular reason, but it turns out there's a different reason they don't like this person. - Dude Looks Like a Lady: Mistaking a feminine-looking man for a woman. - Eating Pet Food: A character mistakenly eats pet food, thinking it's human food. - Fake High: Someone eats or drinks something they think is a drug but it isn't, which leads to them mistakenly believing themselves to be drunk or high. - Fake Rabies: A character (usually a dog) is mistaken for being rabid because of something frothy on their mouth. - Faux Death: A character is in suspended animation and mistaken for dead. - File Mixup: Somebody's files get mixed up with someone else's. - Fright Beside Them: A character realizes they're in danger when the friend or loved one who they thought was right next to them is actually revealed to be somewhere else. - Funny Phone Misunderstanding: Someone misunderstands what someone else says on the phone, Played for Laughs. - Gassy Scare: Someone thinks they're sick/dying, but actually just have gas or need to go to the bathroom. - Gesundheit: Someone uses an unusual word and another character thinks they sneezed. - Giant Footprint Reveal: A footprint is so big, it's initially not recognized as a footprint. - God Guise: A mortal is mistaken for being divine. - Guilty Until Someone Else Is Guilty: A character is incorrectly accused of doing a bad thing, and nobody believes their innocence until the real culprit is revealed. - Help Mistaken for Attack: A character is trying to help someone, but a third person thinks they're attacking the one being helped. - I Am Not Shazam: A name in the title of a work, which may or may not be an actual character, is mistakenly assumed to be a name belonging to a prominent character within the work. - I Am Not Weasel: Mistaking an animal for a species it plainly isn't. - I Ate WHAT?!: A character eats or drinks something without realising what it is. - Identical Twin Mistake: Someone gets confused with their identical twin. - Imagined Innuendo: A character assumes something innocuous is lewd, but the audience knows it isn't. - Innocent Inaccurate: A naive character mistakes a dark or adult scenario for an innocuous one. - Innocent Innuendo: A creator does intend the audience or an In-Universe character to interpret something as lewd, but it turns out to be totally innocuous. - Is That Cute Kid Yours?: An adult is mistaken for the parent of the child they're with. - Literal-Minded: Someone takes an idiom literally. - MacGuffin Blindness: Two opposing factions are both looking for a particular object. The object is right in front of them, but they don't realise. - Mandela Effect: A large group of unconnected people have a false memory. - Mistaken Age: Having an incorrect assumption on how old a person is. - Mistaken Confession: A character confesses to something because they wrongly believe the person they're talking to is trying to get that secret out of them. - Mistaken Death Confirmation: A character's death is confirmed by examination of the body or sure-fire evidence, but this turns out to be wrong. - Mistaken Ethnicity: A character's ethnicity is confused for one not their own. - Mistaken for Foreigner: Someone is assumed to not be a native citizen of the country they're actually from. - Mistaken Nationality: Someone is assumed to be a member of an ethnicity or nationality they're not part of. - Mistaken for Afterlife: A character thinks they've died and gone to the afterlife. - Mistaken for Aliens: Oddly-behaving human beings are mistaken for being extraterrestrials. - Mistaken for Apocalypse: The world is not actually ending. - Mistaken for Badass: A character is mistaken for being very formidable and competent. - Mistaken for Bad Vision: Someone who has good eyesight thinks they have eyesight problems when ridiculously absurd/fantastic moments occur. - Mistaken for Betrayal: Someone is wrongly suspected of disloyalty or treachery. - Mistaken for Brooding: Somebody mistakes somebody else as being sad. - Mistaken for Cheating: Someone wrongly believes that another person is engaged in an adulterous sexual affair. - Mistaken for Clown: A character thinks another character in a strange outfit is a clown. - Mistaken for Disease: A character assumes a series of strange experiences are the symptoms of a disease. - Mistaken for Dog: A character thinks they've gotten a dog or cat or whatever, but instead it's (literally) a different beast. - Mistaken for Dyed: A person's hair color is assumed to be dyed when it isn't. - Mistaken for Dying: A misunderstanding results in a person coming to the conclusion that they, or someone they know, is going to die - Mistaken for Evidence: A suspect in an investigation has something that looks like a clue but isn't. - Mistaken for Exhibit: A character at a museum/art gallery/etc mistakes a mundane thing for art. - Mistaken for Fake Hair: A character's hair is mistakenly assumed to be fake. - Mistaken for Flatulence: A character is assumed to have farted when the sound is actually something else. - Mistaken for Flirting: A character mistakes a social interaction from another as flirting with them. - Mistaken for Gay: Someone incorrectly assumes that a straight person is gay. - Mistaken for an Imposter: The real person is mistaken for someone impersonating them. - Mistaken for Imprisonment: A character believes that they're being held prisoner but aren't. - Mistaken for Insane: One character thinks another is insane. - Mistaken for Junkie: Someone is assumed to be a drug addict. - Mistaken for Masturbating: A person is thought to be masturbating when they aren't. - Mistaken for Murderer: An innocent person is assumed to be a killer because the real killer resembles them, or because they did things that caused witnesses to assume they killed or are planning to kill someone. - Mistaken for Misogynist: A man (usually) accidentally says or does something that can be interpreted as sexist against women. - Mistaken for Object of Affection: Someone tries to romance someone else but does it to the wrong person. - Mistaken for Own Murderer: A transformed or disguised person is mistaken for having killed their true identity. - Mistaken for Pedophile: An innocent person gets in trouble for statements or actions that give people the impression that they have an inappropriate interest in children. - Mistaken for Prank Call: Someone phones someone else for a bizarre/unlikely, but sincere, reason (such as "There are monsters attacking" or "You've won a competition") and the person on the other end of the line mistakes it for a Prank Call. - Mistaken for Pregnant: A woman is thought to be pregnant when she isn't. - Mistaken for Profound: Something is mistaken for being deep or intelligent when it isn't. - Mistaken for Prostitute: A woman who dresses provocatively is wrongly assumed to be a prostitute. - Mistaken for Quake: A large object or creature is shaking the ground and the shaking is mistaken for an earthquake. - Mistaken for Racist: A person accidentally says or does something that can be interpreted as racist. - Mistaken for Related: When people think that they or someone else are blood related, but they're wrong. - Mistaken for Romance: Two people are believed to be lovers when they're not. - Mistaken for Servant: A character gets mistaken for hired help. - Mistaken for Special Guest: Someone's expecting a guest who's special in some way (an inspector, a celebrity, etc), and mistakes a random person for the special guest. - Mistaken for Spies: Someone is assumed to be a secret agent or infiltrator. - Mistaken for Subculture: Somebody mistakes someone else for being in a subculture they're not because of their clothes, hair (or lack thereof) or behaviour. - Mistaken for Suicidal: Someone is mistaken for being suicidal, because they showed signs of depression and/or looked like they were ready to kill themselves. - Mistaken for Superpowered: A muggle is confused (by themselves and/or others) of having superpowers. - Mistaken for Terrorist: An innocent person is assumed to be a violent political extremist. Especially happens to people who are (or get mistaken for being) Muslims. - Mistaken for Thief: An innocent person is assumed to be stealing something. - Mistaken for Transformed: An observer confuses a person, animal, or object for a transformed character. - Mistaken for Undead: A living person is assumed to be a ghost or zombie. - Mistaken from Behind: Someone mistakes a stranger for someone they know because the stranger looks like the person they know from behind. - Mistaken Identity: Wrongly guessing that someone is somebody else. - Mistaken Message: Someone writes someone else a note, but another person reads the note and makes a wrong assumption about it. - Mistakenly Attacked Mole: A mole in an enemy organization is attacked by someone on their own side who mistakes them for an actual traitor. - Mistook the Dominant Lifeform: Aliens think that we're the ones who aren't sapient and a different species is. - Motive Misidentification: A character is thought to have a different motivation or goal than they actually do. - My Hovercraft Is Full of Eels: Someone thinks they're saying one thing in a language, but really they're saying another, silly thing. - Need a Hand, or a Handjob?: A sexual solicitation is mistaken as a legitimate offer of aid. - No Longer with Us: A common euphemism for death turns out to be literal or is mistaken for literal by a naive listener. - No More for Me: A character who is drinking sees something and believes they're drunk and hallucinating. - Non-Voyage Party: A party for a character is mistaken for a party celebrating their departure. - Not Actually the Ultimate Question: A character asks a question that's mistaken for a big one, but is quite mundane. - Not His Blood: A character is mistaken for bleeding but is actually covered in someone else's blood. - Not-So-Forgotten Birthday: A character thinks another character forgot their birthday but actually they were planning a Surprise Party. - Not What It Looks Like: A character finds themselves in a compromising position and hastily tries to explain to the others that they're not doing what it looks like they're doing. - Not Where They Thought: A character mistakes where they are. - Otherworldly Communication Failure: Typically caused by or leads to the human characters mistaking the supernatural characters as being malevolent. - Out-of-Context Eavesdropping: Someone overhears something or intentionally eavesdrops and gets the wrong idea. - Pain Mistaken for Sex: Sounds of pain are mistaken for sounds of sexual pleasure. - Please Wake Up: A dead person is mistaken for sleeping. - Poor Communication Kills: Failure to explain your intentions clearly will have disastrous consequences. - Possession Presumes Guilt: Someone is presumed guilty of something just because they have something from or associated with the crime/incident. - Real Joke Name: Someone's name is mistaken for a joke name. - Relative Error: A relative is mistaken for a lover. - Reports of My Death Were Greatly Exaggerated: Someone is thought to be deceased and has to prove to everyone that they are still alive. - Seeking the Intangible: Someone thinks an intangible thing or concept (such as a voice or a sense of humour) is missing and searches for it like you might search for your hat. - Seemingly Profound Fool: A person is thought to be a genius but isn't. - Series Fauxnale: The viewers think this episode is the end of the show, but it isn't. - Similar Item Confusion: Mistaking one item for another. - Stripper/Cop Confusion: Mistaking a real police officer for a stripper dressed as one or vice versa. - Suggestive Collision: Two characters bump into each other and look like they're having sex. - That Came Out Wrong: A character says something that they realize sounds unintentionally sleazy. - That Was Not a Dream: A character disbelieves reality, mistaking it for a dream. - Third-Act Misunderstanding: Someone is keeping a secret from someone else, but then genuinely develops a crush on them, then the character finds out the secret, assumes that they're faking the crush, and rejects them. - This Billboard Needs Some Salt: A monster eats a food-shaped object, mistaking it for food. - This Isn't Heaven: A character goes to Hell and mistakes it for Heaven. - Thoroughly Mistaken Identity: Sub-trope of Delirious Misidentification, when the person is senile or insane and mistakes someone for a different specific person. - Totally Not a Werewolf: A character is mistaken for a mythical creature and they were using magic but weren't that creature. - Tragic Mistake: That one mistake that brings everything crashing down for a Tragic Hero, brought about by the character's Fatal Flaw. - Tragically Misguided Favor: Someone accidentally causes a lot of trouble by doing an unwarranted favour. - Unprovoked Pervert Payback: A character is mistakenly assumed to be lusting over someone else when they aren't, but is punished for it regardless. - Unwanted False Faith: A normal person is accidentally mistaken for a messiah. - Viewer Gender Confusion: The viewers get the gender of a character wrong. - Viewer Name Confusion: The viewers get the name of a character wrong. - Viewer Species Confusion: The audience gets a character's species wrong. - Virtual Assistant Blunder: Your smart device doesn't understand exactly what it is being asked. - Warning Mistaken for Threat: A character warns another, who mistakes the words for a threat. - Wrong Assumption: A character believes a trope applies to them when it doesn't. - Wrong Genre Savvy: A character is Genre Savvy but in an irrelevant way. - You Just Ruined the Shot: Someone thinks a person is in danger, but their heroics are met with a director chastising them for interfering with the movie being made. - Your Costume Needs Work: The real person is mistaken for a shoddy impersonator. - You're Drinking Breast Milk: A character drinks breast milk, mistaking it for cow's milk. - Your Tomcat Is Pregnant: An animal is mistaken for the opposite sex (usually involving a female animal being mistaken for male but then getting pregnant or laying eggs). ## Examples: Live-Action TV - Coupling does this a bit, too: Sally approaches Patrick's bisexual girlfriend, trying to get a confession that she "fooled around" with Jeff (when no such thing had occurred), and the girlfriend thinks Sally is hitting on her; Jeff talks about how Jane's clinginess to Steve means "he's got an unflushable", and Susan, who just met Steve in the bathroom, thinks it means something else entirely. - In another episode, Steve and Susan are watching a TV show which mentions the number of men who continue to masturbate when in a committed relationship. In the awkward silence that follows, Steve starts whistling, in an attempt to seem relaxed. He justifies it by saying that he felt like some music but wasn't in the mood for a whole CD. "Sometimes you want a full orchestra, and sometimes you just want a... quick whistle?" Susan tells him that she doesn't mind his whistling, as long as he doesn't get "whistled out." Later in the episode, Susan's parents come round for a visit, and while Susan is out of the room her father mentions that Susan told him that Steve's been "going solo, and Steve interprets it how you'd imagine. This leads to the classic line, "If music be the food of love, then masturbation is just a quick snack between meals." And then Susan walks back in and says, "I was just telling Dad how you've started whistling to yourself." Later in the episode, we see Steve throwing them out for an apparently out-of-line comment, which Steve starts to repeat to Susan before self-censoring the end of it: "With all that whistling, by the time Susan gets home you'll be too tired to—" Susan then finishes it for him to make it clear just how badly he misheard it: " pucker." - Three's Company:	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/OopsIDidItAgain
Opening Monologue - TV Tropes A (short) monologue at the beginning of the work (usually during the Title Sequence) to briefly explaining the show's premise. Their role is to provide the quick Exposition to help the viewer adjust to the changes in the setting, relative to the audience. The monologue can be delivered by any characters or even a narrator. Major characters who fulfill this job may be doing an Inner Monologue. When minor characters fulfill this job, that may be an indication they will act as a Greek Chorus for the work. Frequently, the monologue can take place over a Montage, but this element is not required. The opening monologue may be paired with a closing monologue, or continued through the rest of the film by whatever character/narrator that began the story. If the monologue describes a fantastical story around which the plot is based, it's also a Myth Prologue. See also Expository Theme Tune (for a theme song that provides the work's background exposition) and Opening Scroll (the exposition is provided in text on the screen). Sister Trope to Opening Narration (where a recurring work uses an opening monologue Once per Episode). Compare Private Eye Monologue. ## Examples: - Mobile Suit Gundam Wing begins with a narrator explaining that the year is After Colony 195 and humans now live both on the Earth and in Outer Space. He also summarizes the causes of the ongoing war at the beginning of the series and occasionally provides in-episode explanation of terms the viewer might not be aware of. - This narrator has a tendency to repeat himself, and may go on for several minutes before allowing the plot to start. - The original Japanese version of Princess Mononoke places a brief text narrative at the beginning of the film; the English-dubbed version replaces it with a verbal narrative explaining the setting to viewers. - The Firesign Theatre parodied this trope, along with the entirety of dramatic radio, to devastating effect with their classic "The Further Adventures of Nick Danger", from the album How Can You Be in Two Places at Once When You're Not Anywhere at All?: Narrator: Los Angeles: He walks again by night! Relentlessly...Ruthlessly... Narrator: Doggedly...(dog barks)...towards his weekly meeting with the unknown. At Fourth and Drucker he turns left. At Drucker and Fourth he turns right. He crosses Mac Arthur Park and walks into a great sandstone building. Nick Danger: Ow, my nose! Narrator: Groping for the door, he steps inside (phone starts ringing)...Climbs the thirteen steps to his office (ring)...He walks in (ring)...He's ready for mystery (ring)...He's ready for excitement (ring)...He's ready for anything (ring)...He's... Nick Danger: (picking up phone) Nick Danger, Third Eye. Caller: I want to order a pizza to go and no anchovies. Nick Danger: No anchovies? You've got the wrong man. I spell my name...Danger! (hangs up phone) Caller: What? - Last Rights starts with an Infodump from the series' First-Person Smartass Captain Kanril Eleya, explaining why surface armies are still relevant in an era of starships that can glass planets (i.e. you need boots on the ground to capture and hold territory if you want it in anything resembling the state it started), which then segues into the actual story. - My Little Pony: Equestria Girls Friendship Games Discovery Family broadcast is preceded by an additional scene of Sunset narrating the two previous movies and parts of "The Science of Magic" and "Pinkie Spy" shorts in a letter to Princess Twilight. - 9: "We had such potential, such promise... but we squandered our gifts, our intelligence. Our blind pursuit of technology only sped us quicker to our doom. Our world is ending. Life must go on." - The prologue to Disney's Beauty and the Beast establishes the Beast's situation. - Sky Blue begins with Jay meditating on how the world got so crap. - Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs opens with a bit of Fauxlosophic Narration that leads into A Minor Kidroduction, and finishes with a straightforward opening monologue that establishes the whole "Flint wants to invent stuff/Swallow Falls is in a depression" plot point. - Lampshaded/subverted in Hercules when Charlton Heston is interrupted in his opening narration by the Muses: Narrator: Long ago, in the faraway land of ancient Greece, there was a golden age of powerful gods and extraordinary heroes. And the greatest and strongest of all these heroes was the mighty Hercules. But what is the measure of a true hero? Ah, that is what our story is... Thalia: Will you listen to him? He's makin' the story sound like some Greek tragedy. Terpsichore: Lighten up, dude. Calliope: We'll take it from here, darling. Narrator: You go, girl. - Both How to Train Your Dragon and How to Train Your Dragon 2 begin with Hiccup's introduction: "This is Berk..." - The animated Felix the Cat movie opens with a laughably CGI version of Felix's head giving us one. - Yellow Submarine opens up with a brief introduction to Pepperland. - Coco: Miguel gives one in the beginning, explaining the exile of music in the Rivera family. - In Turning Red, the story begins with Mei talking about herself and how she does things. According to the DVD commentary, the opening was based around the concept of "How would Mei direct a documentary about herself?" - Avatar When I was lying in the V.A. hospital with a big hole blown through the middle of my life, I started having these dreams of flying. I was free. But sooner or later, you always have to wake up..." - Casino Royale (1954) note : The first screen adaptation of a James Bond novel, released in 1954 as a television movie/episode of the anthology series Climax! begins with Climax! host William Lundigan introducing the film and explaining what a shoe is. - Conan the Barbarian (1982), delivered by Mako at his hammy best: "Between the time when the oceans drank Atlantis, and the rise of the sons of Aryas, there was an age undreamed of. And unto this, Conan, destined to wear the jeweled crown of Aquilonia upon a troubled brow. It is I, his chronicler, who alone can tell thee of his saga. Let me tell you of the days of high adventure!" - Creepy Sci Fi/paranoia movie Dark City had an opening monologue clumsily tacked on at the command of the producers, which is a Spoiler Opening for the film's central mystery. Happily, it's been removed from the recent Director's Cut. - The Departed: "I don't wanna be a product of my environment. I want my environment to be a product of me." Hearing that in Jack Nicholson's gruff yet acidic voice sends chills up one's spine. - "A beginning is a very delicate time. Know then that it is the year ten-thousand, one-ninety-one..." Narration was used to insane levels in the Dune (1984) movie, in order to condense the plot of a six hundred page book down to two hours without confusing anyone. It didn't really help. - Equilibrium starts with a short opening monologue vaguely explaining the events that caused The End of the World as We Know It, and the start of the world "not as we know it", coupled with some historical documentary footage and reused footage from the film itself. - Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas memorably begins: "We were somewhere around Barstow, on the edge of the desert, when the drugs began to take hold..." - Freddy vs. Jason: Freddy gets one of these where he explains his origins, how he's been wiped from the collective memory of Springwood, and his plan to use Jason to return once again. - James Earl Jones picked up a paycheck to apply his distinctive voice to explaining the setting for the Judge Dredd movie. And to reading off the famous opening lines of Cry, the Beloved Country. - Kick-Ass: "I always wondered why nobody did it before me. I mean, all those comic books, movies, TV shows. You think that one eccentric loner would've made himself a costume. I mean, is everyday life really so exciting? Are schools and offices so thrilling that I'm the only one who fantasized about this? Come on, be honest with yourself. At some point in our lives we all want to be a superhero. That's not me by the way. That's some Armenian guy with a history of mental health problems. Who am I? I'm Kick-Ass." - Lady Galadriel's opening monologue from the first The Lord of the Rings movie, The Fellowship of the Ring, which lays down the creation of the Rings of Power, the One Ring, the war against Sauron, and the fates of the One Ring's previous bearers before Bilbo got hold of it. Plus, we don't actually meet Galadriel until almost the end of the movie. A good portion of this speech was cribbed from a speech by Treebeard in the book, but having a sentient tree-shaped being explain the plot in a very slow voice is possibly not the best way to pull your audience in. This monologue actually went through several narrators, including Frodo (rejected because doing so would reveal he had survived) and Gandalf. Galadriel was eventually selected as the person most suitable to giving out such information. - In Mad Max: - Kevin Costner's version of The Postman began with exposition by a female, who at the end is revealed to be his daughter, giving the story of his life. - The movie version of ~~The Golden Compass~~ Northern Lights does this. - Serenity starts with an opening monologue in the form of a class history lesson. - This marvelously catches up to the movie's "here-and-now" events in a nested Russian Doll fashion. - To elaborate, the actual first scene (the Universal logo) is nested in a class video in River's class, which is all part of a dream sequence when she's actually being broken out of the Academy, but then that's all actually a recording being watched by \|\|the Operative\|\|. - Terminator 2: Judgment Day opens with a monologue delivered by Sarah Connor. The third film, with one by John Connor. - Underworld (2003) begins with Kate Beckinsale's character expositing about the war between the vampires and the werewolves. - V for Vendetta: "Remember, remember // The 5th of November, // The gunpowder, treason and plot. // I know of no reason // Why the gunpowder treason // Should ever be forgot..." - The Warriors either uses or averts this: the theatrical cut opens with a Travel Montage and then drops us into the action. The Director's Cut has an Opening Scroll that drives home the comparison between the movie and Anabasis. - The intro to Wing Commander pans over space charts while playing a recording of JFK giving a speech about the Space Race, which segues into other radio broadcasts delivering exposition about the Pilgrams, mankind's invention of Faster-Than-Light Travel, and the disastrous First Contact with the Kilrathi. - The Wizard of Oz: "For nearly forty years, this story has given faithful service to the Young in Heart, and Time has been powerless to put its kindly philosophy out of fashion. To those who have been faithful to it in return... and to the Young in Heart... we dedicate this picture." - X-Men Film Series: All are voiced by Professor Charles Xavier, except for Dark Phoenix. - X-Men: "Mutation: it is the key to our evolution. It has enabled us to evolve from a single-celled organism into the dominant species on the planet. This process is slow, and normally taking thousands and thousands of years. But every few hundred millennia, evolution leaps forward." - X2: X-Men United: "Mutants. Since their discovery, they have been regarded with fear, suspicion, even hatred. Across the planet, debate rages. Are mutants the next link in the evolutionary chain, or simply a new species of humanity, fighting for their share of the world? Either way, it is an historical fact: sharing the world has never been humanity's defining attribute." - X-Men: Days of Future Past: "The future: a dark, desolate world, a world of war, suffering, loss on both sides. Mutants, and the humans who dared to help them, fighting an enemy we cannot defeat. Are we destined down this path, destined to destroy ourselves like so many species before us? Or can we evolve fast enough to change ourselves, change our fate? Is the future truly set?" - It's paired with a closing monologue: "The past: a new and uncertain world, a world of endless possibilities and infinite outcomes. Countless choices define our fate; each choice, each moment, a ripple in the river of time. Enough ripples, and you change the tide, for the future is never truly set." - X-Men: Apocalypse: "Mutants, born with extraordinary abilities, and yet still, they are children, stumbling in the dark, searching for guidance. A gift can often be a curse. Give someone wings, and they may fly too close to the sun. Give them the power of prophecy, and they may live in fear of the future. Give them the greatest gift of all, powers beyond imagination, and they may think they are meant to rule the world." - As mentioned above, someone else narrates the opening of Dark Phoenix: Jean Grey. This change was done to highlight her increased focus in the story. The monologue is as follows: "Who are we? Are we simply what others want us to be? Are we destined to a fate beyond our control? Or can we evolve, become something more?" - Just like X-Men: Days of Future Past, there is also a closing monologue, befitting of its Grand Finale status: "I know who I am now. I am not simply what others want me to be. I am not destined to a fate I can't control. I evolved beyond this world. This is not the end of me, or the X-Men. It's a new beginning." - The Agony Booth recaps describe some as "Obnoxious Patronizing / Shouting Narrator". - There's one in Transformers, where Optimus Prime explains about the Allspark. Somewhat unnecessary, since he explains again to Sam and Sam explains to the government agents and Optimus explains again to the other Autobots. - Hellboy — "What makes a man a man? Is it his origins, the way things start? Or is it something else, something harder to describe? For me it all began in 1944, classified mission off the coast of Scotland. The Nazis were desperate. Combining science and black magic they intended to upset the balance of the war..." - Spider-Man: "Who am I? You sure you want to know? The story of my life is not for the faint of heart. If somebody said it was a happy little tale, if somebody told you I was just your average ordinary guy, not a care in the world... somebody lied. But let me assure you — this, like any story worth telling, is all about a girl...." - Looper: "Time travel hasn't been invented yet, but in thirty years, it will be. It will be instantly outlawed, used only in secret by the largest criminal organizations. It's nearly impossible to dispose of a body in the future. I'm told. Tagging techniques, whatnot. So when these future criminal organizations in the future need someone gone, they use specialized assassins in our present, called loopers." - Pitch Black opens with the crew of the Hunter Gratzner in stasis in deep space. The captured Riddick notes that his brain —or at least the animalistic side— is still awake, and asserts the situation in voiceover, surveying the rest of the crew and his plans for escape. - The opening to Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: The Movie combines this with Opening Scroll as Dulcea tells the story of the group that would be known as the Power Rangers. - Oblivion (2013): Provided by Jack Harper while we get brought up to speed on the characters and situation and see a montage of Scenery Porn (The skies and some parts of the planet that look less wasteland-y), Scenery Gorn (the shot of the bombed-out Pentagon (with implications of it having been ground zero for a nuclear strike during The War) and the remains of New York and Washington, DC), Technology Porn (Tower 49, the Bubble Ship, the collector vessels, the guns and the Tet), Fanservice (Shirtless Scene and Toplessness from the Back) and \|\|some Irony in that most of the info is unwitting bullcrap on Jack's part.\|\| - Pacific Rim's prologue is narrated by the protagonist Raleigh Beckett, who explains about the war of Kaiju and Jaegers. He also briefly continues into the first action scene, to explain some key concepts like dual pilots and the Drift. - "...look for it only in books, for it is nothing more than a dream remembered. A Civilization Gone with the Wind." - "From the Treaty of the Treason: In penance for their uprising, each district shall offer up a male and female between the ages of 12 and 18 at a public "Reaping". These Tributes shall be delivered to the custody of The Capitol. And then transferred to a public arena where they will Fight to the Death, until a lone victor remains. Henceforth and forevermore this pageant shall be known as The Hunger Games." - The Hunt for Red October: - Sunshine: Starts with Robert Capa, Cillian Murphy's character, explaining the situation and how the protagonists got there and what their goal is, in a voice-over during the first minute. To summarize: Capa: [We're] ...eight astronauts strapped to the back of a bomb. - Thor: The Dark World: "Long before the birth of light there was darkness, and from that darkness came the Dark Elves. Millennia ago the most ruthless of their kind, Malekith, sought to transform our universe back into one of eternal night. Such evil was blossomed through the power of the Aether, an ancient force of infinite destruction." - The Neanderthal Man: "In brooding beauty whose parallel one would have far to seek, stand California's high Sierras, fisherman's paradise and hunter's haven, where the defacing hand of civilization has fallen only lightly, and nature's vestments are displayed in all her rugged, primeval abandon." - Escape from New York: "In 1988, the crime rate in the United States rises four hundred percent. The once-great city of New York becomes the one maximum security prison for the entire country. A fifty-foot containment wall is erected along the New Jersey shoreline, across the Harlem River, and down along the Brooklyn shoreline. It completely surrounds Manhattan Island. All bridges and waterways are mined. The United States Police Force, like an army, is encamped around the island. There are no guards inside the prison, only prisoners and the worlds they have made. The rules are simple: Once you go in, you don't come out." (The woman who does this sounds very much like Jamie Lee Curtis, but it's been claimed it's not her.) - At the beginning of Rags, Shawn narrates over some establishing shots about how the story is a Cinderella story that takes place in New York, and stars a boy named Charlie. Shawn also closes out the film with more narration. - Youth (2017): Suizi's opening narration introduces herself, the story, and two of the main characters. Suizi: My name is Xiao Suizi. Back in the 1970s, I was in the southwest part of the country serving in a provincial military arts troupe. I was a dancer. My comrades called me Suizi. The story that I'm about to tell is the story of our arts troupe. But in this story, I'm not the protagonist . It stars two people. [A soldier is seen assisting someone in a raincoat] Suizi: His name is Liu Feng. When we sung praises of overlooked heroes and lauded great standouts from the masses, we were praising people like Liu Feng. The girl in the raincoat is named He Xiaoping. A new member of our troupe whom Liu Feng was sent to fetch. Their fate decades later was set in motion on the day he brought her to the troupe. ### Keep in mind, this trope is for single-instance opening narrations. If it happens Once per Episode, it goes under Opening Narration. - House of the Dragon: By adult Rhaenyra (Emma D'Arcy, who's not seen in the series until the sixth episode of Season 1). "As the first century of the Targaryen dynasty came to a close, the health of the Old King, Jaehaerys, was failing. In those days, House Targaryen stood at the height of its strength, with 10 adult dragons under its yoke. No power in the world could stand against it. King Jaehaerys reigned for nearly 60 years of peace and prosperity but tragedy had claimed both of his sons, leaving his succession in doubt. So, in the year 101, the Old King called a Great Council to choose an heir. Over 1,000 lords made the journey to Harrenhal. 14 succession claims were heard but only two were truly considered: Princess Rhaenys Targaryen, the Kings eldest descendant and her younger cousin, Prince Viserys Targaryen, the Kings eldest male descendant. Rhaenys, a woman, would not inherit the Iron Throne. The lords instead chose Viserys, my father. Jaehaerys called the Great Council to prevent a war being fought over his succession, for he knew the cold truth: the only thing that could tear down the House of the Dragon was itself." - The first episode of Jejak Suara Adzan begins with Dimas telling the viewers about the various uses of social media, leading up to how he is trying to use it in order to become famous. - The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power: Once again, Galadriel does the honors: "Nothing is evil in the beginning. And there was a time when the world was so young, there had not yet been a sunrise. But even then there was light. We had not word for death. For we thought would be unending. We thought our light would never dim. So when the Great Foe, Morgoth, destroyed the very light of your home... we resisted. And a legion of Elves went to war. We left Valinor, our home, and journeyed to a distant realm. One filled with untold perils and strange creatures beyond count. They said it would be over quickly, but the war left Middle-earth in ruin. And would last centuries. Now, we learned many words for death. In the end, Morgoth would be defeated. But not before much sorrow. For his orcs had spread to every corner of Middle-earth, multiplying ever greater under the command of his most devoted servant, a cruel and cunning sorcerer. They called him Sauron. My brother vowed to seek him out and destroy him. But Sauron found him first and marked his flesh with a symbol one whose meaning even our wisest could not discern. And there, his vow became mine. And so, we hunted. To the ends of the Earth we hunted Sauron. But the trail grew thin. Year gave way to year. Century gave away to century. And for many Elves, the pain of those days passed out of thought and mind. More and more of our kind began to believe that Sauron was but a memory. And the threat, at least, was ended. I wish I could be one of them." - The first episode of Mimpi Metropolitan starts with a narration about the city of Jakarta and why people from all over Indonesia (such as the protagonists) come there to make a living. - In the Supernatural episode Swan Song, there is an opening monologue given by Chuck. Chuck: On April 21, 1967, the 100 millionth GM vehicle rolled off the line at the plant in Janesville — a blue two-door caprice. There was a big ceremony, speeches. The lieutenant governor even showed up. Three days later, another car rolled off that same line. No one gave two craps about her. But they should have, because this 1967 Chevrolet Impala would turn out to be the most important car — no, the most important object — in pretty much the whole universe. She was first owned by Sal Moriarty, an alcoholic with two ex-wives and three blocked arteries. On weekends, he'd drive around giving bibles to the poor "gettin' folks right for judgment day". That's what he said. Sam and Dean don't know any of this, but if they did, I bet they'd smile. After Sal died, she ended up at Rainbow Motors, a used-car lot in Lawrence, where a young marine bought her on impulse. That is, after a little advice from a friend. I guess that's where this story begins. And here's where it ends. - The first episode of The Noddy Shop opens up with one by its' protagonist Noah Tomten: "Once upon a time, there was a magical shop in a town called Littleton Falls. When I was a boy, I knew it was magic because things moved on the shelves when no one was looking. Then I grew up and went to sea and sailed around the world, but I always knew I'd come back and run this shop someday. Oh, I forgot to tell you. My name is Noah Tomten, and this is the Noddy Shop!" - "In the Grim Darkness of the far future, there is only war." Enough said. - The novels have their own longer variation: "It is the 41st millennium. For more than a hundred centuries the Emperor has sat immobile on the Golden Throne of Earth. He is the master of mankind by the will of the gods, and master of a million worlds by the might of his inexhaustible armies. He is a rotting carcass writhing invisibly with power from the Dark Age of Technology. He is the Carrion Lord of the Imperium for whom a thousand souls are sacrificed every day, so that he may never truly die." "Yet even in his deathless state, the Emperor continues his eternal vigilance. Mighty battlefleets cross the daemon-infested miasma of the Warp, the only route between distant stars, their way lit by the Astronomicon, the psychic manifestation of the Emperor's will. Vast armies give battle in His name on uncounted worlds. His soldiers are the Adeptus Astartes, the Space Marines, bio-engineered super-warriors. Their comrades in arms are legion: the Imperial Guard and countless planetary defense forces, the ever-vigilant Inquisition and the tech-priests of the Adeptus Mechanicus to name only a few. But for all of their multitudes, they are barely enough to hold off the ever-present threat from aliens, heretics, mutants - and worse." "To be a man in such times is to be one amongst untold billions. It is to live in the cruelest and most bloody regime imaginable. These are the tales of those times. Forget the power of technology and science, for so much has been forgotten, never to be re-learned. Forget the promise of progress and understanding, for in the Grimdark future there is only war. There is no peace amongst the stars, only an eternity of carnage and slaughter, and the laughter of thirsting gods." - What with Rocket Age being written in the style of old pulp serials, every adventure has a monologue that can be read out if the Games Master so wishes, preferably in melodramatic style to match the text. - When A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum was in touring before the Broadway opening, the audience was not sure how to take it. So a monologue and opening number ("Comedy Tonight") was added to tell the audience that this was a comedy and not to be taken seriously. The monologue was: Playgoers, I bid you welcome. The theater is a temple, and we are here tonight to worship the gods of comedy and tragedy. Tonight, I am pleased to announce, a comedy. We shall employ every device we know in our desire to divert you. - Naturally, the plays of William Shakespeare have numerous examples, including: - As You Like It starts out with Orlando giving a whopping As You Know speech containing more or less the entire backstory of the play. - In The Comedy of Errors, Aegon gives most of the show's exposition about the backstory of the twins in a single very long monologue in the play's first scene. - The exposition for Henry IV, Part 2 is delivered by Rumor, personified as a character "full of tongues." - Richard III begins with our Big Bad title character covering most of the exposition with his "Now is the winter of our discontent..." - Romeo and Juliet and Henry V each feature a famous opening monologue delivered by an anonymous narrator, the so-called "Chorus" (the name being a holdover from ancient Greek theatre). - Chicago opens with an audience advisory from a member of the Ensemble: Ladies and gentlemen, you are about to see a story of murder, greed, corruption, violence, exploitation, adultery, and treachery all the things we hold near and dear to our hearts. - The Turn of the Screw (Benjamin Britten's opera) adapts the novel's prologue into an opening neo-Baroque recitative for tenor and piano, explaining how the Governess's story was discovered and how she came to reluctantly accept her position. There is no further narration, leaving the tenor free to double as the villain, Peter Quint. - Devil May Cry: - The first Devil May Cry opens with the narrator's monologue explaining Sparda's rebellion against the Underworld. Narrator: Two millenniums ago, there was a war. Between the human world and the other... the Underworld. But somebody from the Underworld woke up to justice, and stood up against this legion, alone. His name was Sparda. Later, he quietly reigned the human world, and continued to preserve harmony, until his death. He became a legend. The Legendary Dark Knight, Sparda. - The second game starts with a narrator's recap of Sparda's legend and a brief introduction to his son, Dante. Narrator: In a time, long since past... In an age of darkness, when the Earth was overrun with demons... and humans were powerless under their rule... Humanity's hope... lived in a demon, named Sparda. With a spirit unlike any other, and wielding the sword that bore his own name... Sparda eradicated the demons... And now... the Legend of Sparda, has been inherited, by his son... The demon slayer... Dante! - The third game, meanwhile, begins with a monologue from Lady, first explaining the legend of Sparda, then about how she never believed it until she met his two sons. This monologue is spoken over a Battle in the Rain between Dante and Vergil. Lady: You've heard of it, haven't you? The legend of Sparda? When I was young, my father would tell me stories about it. Long ago, in ancient times, a demon rebelled against his own kind for the sake of the human race. With his sword, he shut the portal to the demonic realm and sealed the evil entity off from our human world. But since he was a demon himself, his power was also trapped on the other side. I never believed it. I thought it was just a child's fairy tale. I discover that the so-called legend wasn't a myth at all. Sparda existed. How do I know? Well... I met the sons of Sparda - Both of them. Though the same blood of their father flow through their veins, the two battled each other fiercely like arch enemies. It seems as if they drive some twisted pleasure from this brotherly fighting. But in the end... only one was left standing. - MechWarrior 3 opened with a short explanation so that people would know just enough to get the opening cinematic. Meanwhile, the cinematic that shows how your task force ended up in its exact situation explained a lot more of the plot than would be necessary for someone about to drop into a war zone and who would theoretically know at least basic history. - "I am Andrew Ryan, and I am here to ask you a question. Is a man not entitled to the sweat of his brow?" The monologue delivered near the beginning of BioShock by said Magnificent Bastard is one of the most eloquent and well done speeches in any game. - Half-Life 2 gives us the well spoken and Well-Intentioned Extremist Doctor Breen who, over the course of the game can be heard giving various speeches addressed to the Combine, citizens, and even the One Free Man himself, all in a lulling and intelligent manner. "Welcome, welcome to City 17." - Castlevania: Order of Ecclesia begins with an explanation about the eponymous order and its duty to combat Dracula. - Dragon Age: Origins has a narration and montage explaining the origins of the darkspawn and the Grey Wardens, followed by a narration specific to your character's origin story. "The Chantry teaches us that it is the hubris of men that first brought the Darkspawn into our world..." - Ben's classic monologue in Full Throttle. When I think of asphalt, I think of Maureen. That's the last sensation I had before I blacked out: the think smell of asphalt. And the first thing I saw when I woke up was her face. She said she'd fix my bike. Free. No strings attached. I should've known then that things are never that simple. Yeah, when I think of Maureen, I think of two things: asphalt...and trouble. - The narrator's monologue in the third installment of Star Control. - The creators of Total Annihilation didn't have enough money for much of a story, but what little story (and money) they had was put into an opening video with some narration. "What began as a conflict over the transfer of consciousness from flesh to machines escalated into a war which has decimated a million worlds. The Core and the Arm have all but exhausted the resources of a galaxy in their struggle for domination. Both sides now crippled beyond repair, the remnants of their armies continue on ravaged planets, their hatred fuelled by over 4,000 years of total war. This is a fight to the death. For each side the only acceptable outcome is the complete elimination of the other." - The opening speech by Kratos, in Tales of Symphonia. - " Dragon's Lair, the fantasy adventure where you become a valiant knight..." - " Space Ace, defender of truth, justice and the planet Earth..." - "In the year 2291, in an attempt to control violence among deep-space miners, the New Earth Government legalized no-holds-barred fighting. The Liandri Mining Corporation, working with the NEG, established a series of leagues and bloody public exhibitions. The fight's popularity grew with their brutality. Soon, Liandri discovered that the public matches were their most profitable enterprise. The professional league was formed: a cabal of the most violent and skilled warriors in known space, selected to fight in a Grand Tournament. Now it is 2341. Fifty years have passed since the founding of Deathmatch. Profits from the tournament number in the hundreds of billions." - Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time: "Some people think time is like a river, that flows swift and true in one direction. But I have seen the face of time, and I can tell you... they are wrong. Time is an ocean in a storm. You may wonder who I am, and why I say this. Sit down, and I will tell you a tale like none you have ever heard." - Modern Warfare: "Fifty thousand people used to live here...now it's a ghost town." - Mega Man Legends has one that starts with "In a land covered with endless water..." - Bayonetta has the most awesome opening narration sequence ever. The naration is going while the player is fighting off a horde of angels on pieces of a destroyed clocktower that's plummeting down the side of a cliff. And the game only gets more awesome. - Zero Wing: "In AD 2101 War Was Beginning..." - Star Fox 64: "Corneria, fourth planet of the Lylat System. The evil Andross turned this once thriving system into a wasteland of near extinction. General Pepper of the Cornerian Army was successful in banishing this maniacal scientist to the deserted, barren planet, Venom.... - NieR begins with Kainé giving Grimoire Weiss a piece of her mind about \|\|his helping the Shadowlord \|\|. In the form of a screaming, obscenity-laden rant. Kainé: Weiss, you dumbass! Start making sense, you rotten book, or you're gonna be sorry! Maybe I'll rip your pages out one by one, or maybe I'll put you in the goddamn furnace! How can someone with such a big, smart brain get brainwashed like a little bitch, huh? "Oh, Shadowlord, I love you, Shadowlord! Come over her and give Weiss a big, sloppy kiss, Shadowlord!" Now pull your head out of your goddamn ass and START FUCKING HELPING US! - Chrono Cross: "What was the start of all this? // When did the cogs of fate begin to turn? // Perhaps it is impossible to grasp that answer now, // From deep within the flow of time... // But, for a certainty, back then, // We loved so many, yet hated so much, // We hurt others and were hurt ourselves... // Yet even then we ran like the wind // Whilst our laughter echoed, // Under cerulean skies..." - World of Warcraft has an opening narration when you create a new character specific to race. They were updated after the revamp of the old world during Cataclysm; even the races whose starting areas and quests, the Blood Elves and Draenei, were not radically changed got a new version. - Badlands uses this in Buck's case: Buck: Badlands. We were living a quiet life, when one day, for no reason, my wife and my children were killed in cold blood! And I was wounded, unable to help. Why this? Why us? Why? I won't let them get away with it! I'll get every last one of them! - Homeworld has a rather epic one. - X3: Terran Conflict: "Almost a millennium has passed since the last great plague of human kind had been wiped out from the solar system and its precious blue pearl planet Earth." - Its predecessor X3: Reunion set the narration up as a news bulletin. Watch it here. - Neverwinter Nights 2: Storm of Zehir doesn't start with this; first you build your party aboard the Vigilant. When you go belowdecks, Volothamp Geddarm narrates an opening montage. - The game adaptation of I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream (but not the original short story) opens with AM's rant about how much he HATES, HATES, HATES humanity, performed with maximum ham by Harlan Ellison himself. - Super Metroid: "The last Metroid is in captivity. The galaxy is at peace." Then a log entry by Samus, and the game begins. - The initial European release and all subsequent versions of Metroid Prime released thereafter open with a narration about Samus. - Space Pirates and Zombies has a fairly long one, narrated by The Cynical Brit. - Heroes of Might and Magic II's premise is explained in the intro by an unidentified narrator — "The troubles all began three years ago, with the passing of the old king, Lord Ironfist...". - "Inspired by his never ending quest for progress, in 2084, man perfects the Robotrons, a robot species so advanced, that man is inferior to his own creation..." note : This on-screen variant occurs during the Attract Mode. - It's storyline sequel Blaster (a first person shooting game, but not necessarily this kind) also has one note : Again, occurring in the Attract Mode.: "It is the year 2085. The Robotrons have destroyed the human race..." - "The year is 1999. note : The game was originally released in 1990. Television has adapted to the more violent nature of man. The most popular form of television remains the game show. One show in particular has dominated the ratings. That show is Smash TV, the most violent game show of all time..." - Yet another Attract Mode on-screen variant occurs in Rastan, which is given in English. note : The game was originally made and released by Taito (pronounced TIE-toe), a company whose classic arcade games usually tend to have English not used accurately. I used to be a thief and a murderer, otherwise I could not survive in such difficult times. Sit beside me and listen to my story of days full of adventure. - In the Japanese version, there is also an additional opening narration that occurs before the first stage. - "The era and time of this story is unknown. After the mothership "Arkanoid" was destroyed, a spacecraft "Vaus" scrambled away from it. But only to be trapped in space warped by someone........" - Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors: "Why do I... know? Why... Why do I know... These things?" - Virtue's Last Reward: "Why do people betray one another? If you can't trust anyone then everyone should DIE." - Saints Row IV opens to narration \|\|provided by Jane Austen\|\| concerning the Third Street Saints' rise to power and stardom, as well as what it means to be a hero. - "In another time, in another world... The Blue Crystal Rod kept the kingdom in peace / But the demon Druaga hid the rod and the maiden Ki note : pronounced "Kai" in a tower / The prince Gilgamesh weared gold armor and attacked monsters to help Ki in The Tower of Druaga" - "...The world is waiting for The Return of Ishtar" - "The police cannot stop the street gangs... As a vigilante, you must defend your people's turf!!!" - "The Skinheads have taken Madonna note : Not that one. hostage. Take the law note : "Take the power" in the Turbografx-16 version. into your own hands!" - The first installment of The Chaos Engine series starts with a few screens of text describing the titular machine's rise to power and short presentation of six mercenaries who were sent to destroy it. - Esh's Aurunmilla has two narrations, which are one narration with a narrator with a low voice and one with Don Davis as the narrator. - "A Kung-Fu Master Thomas and Sylvia were attacked by several unknown guys (Sylvia was kidnapped by them)..." note : The original Japanese version (Spartan X) refers to him as a "Kanfu master". - One of these begins The Binding of Isaac: Isaac and his mother lived alone in a small house on a hill. Isaac kept to himself, drawing pictures, and playing with his toys, as his mom watched Christian broadcasts on the television. Life was simple, and they were both happy. That was until the day Isaac's mom heard a voice from above... - Each Operation in Medal of Honor: Vanguard begins with Keegan narrating over stock footage of World War Two, giving the context to the respective Operation. - Treasure Planet: Battle at Procyon's campaign begins with an opening monologue narrated by Admiral Amelia: It is the golden age of exploration, solar-powered light ships fly the Etherium of deep space, bringing colonists and trade to every corner of the galaxy. But even a golden age has its dangers, some natural and some decidedly less so ... - Xenoblade Chronicles 1 and Xenoblade Chronicles 2 both begin with this, giving the basic rundown of the respective games' world and situation. - The Distant Prologue of Reunion (1994) is 10 minutes long. There are about 4 minutes of Raygun Gothic lineart slideshow narrated with a thick accent, followed by 4 minutes of colourful A New Hope-inspired animation of rebels taking over an orbital station, then 1.5 more minutes of narrated lineart slideshow, and finally the same voice telling the game objectives to reconquer Earth and reunite. - Daughter for Dessert begins with the protagonist giving a cursory backstory to Amanda and himself: Lainie dying while giving birth to Amanda, the protagonist making a meal for Amanda which would eventually become her favorite food, the protagonist always drumming one important life lesson into Amanda, and the protagonist opening a diner to teach Amanda the value of hard work. - Melody begins with one in which the protagonist explains that everything happens for a reason, and that a misfortune ended up leading him to true love. - LG15: the resistance: "The fountain of youth is real, and it's in the blood of dozens of girls across the world..." This is shown over a montage of all the natural trait positive characters to appear in lonelygirl15 and KateModern. - Doom House: My name is Reginald P. Linux, and ever since my wife died I've been very depressed. This is why I've been searching for the house of my dreams, but as a philosopher once said, "Be careful what you dream for because you JUST... MIGHT... GET IT." - Courage the Cowardly Dog has one, provided by the Nowhere Newsman. Nowhere Newsman: We interrupt this program to bring you...Courage the Cowardly Dog Show, starring Courage the Cowardly Dog! Abandoned as a pup, he was found by Muriel, who lives in the middle of Nowhere with her husband Eustace Bagge! But creepy stuff happens in Nowhere. It's up to Courage to save his new home! - Mighty Mouse begins his Bakshi episode "Mighty's Wedlock Whimsy" note : where he and Pearl Pureheart prepare to get married on a stage thusly: Today kiddies, we're going to tell an imaginary story. Y'see, it never really happened. It's what we call a cautionary tale.	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/OpeningMonologue
Open-Door Opening - TV Tropes "You are entering the vicinity of an area adjacent to a location. The kind of place where there might be a monster, or some kind of weird mirror. These are just examples; it could also be something much better. Prepare to enter: The Scary Door." note : The Scary Door by ninjaink One very common, and fairly symbolic, way to begin a story is with the opening of a doorway. In prose or film, the act of passing through an entrance sets events in motion, transporting the characters into a new situation and bringing the audience along for the ride. In adventure games, a locked or obstructed entrance often constitutes the first challenge for players, giving them a chance to apply their ingenuity before they delve into the plot line. Either way, it's a handy alternative to In Medias Res. Variants may use an opening door to mark major transitions between phases of a story, or to kick off the main plotline after a Batman Cold Open. Ubiquitous in casual adventure games, so much so that aversions tend to feel like subversions. Also especially common in children's programs. Opposite of Door-Closes Ending; combining both tropes in the same work creates Bookends. ### Examples - Health Hotline: The first thing we hear is Ellie opening the door to talk to Grandma. - First face seen in Barakamon anime opening is all-smiles Naru pushing aside the countryhouse entrance sliding door to make way for herself inside. - The title cards in Case Closed are presented by a squeaky door opening, revealing the episode's title. - Every episode of Deko Boko Friends begins with one of the characters entering through the red door. - Pleasant Goat and Big Big Wolf: The Mr.Wolffy, Mr.Right! opening begins with Wolffy leaving an elevator and opening the door to the business he works at. - Pleasant Goat Fun Class: Animals & Plants episode 1 begins with the goats opening the door to the knowledge treasure-house. - The "Dance of the Hours" segment of Fantasia starts with the opening of stately palace doors. It ends with the same doors falling off their hinges. - A multitude of doors open and close in the opening animation of Pixar's Monsters, Inc., indicative of doors' importance to the monsters' operations. The last door opens to the apartment of Mike Wazowski and Jimmy Sullivan as their workday morning begins. - In The Nightmare Before Christmas, the initial shot carries the viewer down among a ring of trees with holiday-themed doorways, and through the jack-o-lantern door to Halloweentown. - In the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical of Cinderella from 1965, a pair of gates to the castle garden opens at the beginning of the film. - Kenneth Branaugh's film adaptation of Henry V starts with the Chorus speaking backstage on a soundstage, and after the final words he throws open a door to show the first scene of the play. - Last Night in Soho: The movie starts with aspiring fashion designer Eloise opening a door and her dancing down a hallway, pretending to be a fashion model walking on a runway. - The Rocketeer starts with hangar doors opening and Cliff's brand new plane being rolled out. - The Searchers opens with the camera moving through an opening doorway, into a panoramic view of the desert. A matching scene of a closing door ends the film. - The Sign of Venus: Opens with a shot of an apartment building, and the camera zooming in on a window, which Cesira then opens. Lonely Cesira then looks across the courtyard at another apartment, where a handsome doctor is getting ready for his wedding. - Although not at the very beginning of the movie, the famous door opening into Oz in The Wizard of Oz plays the same role in starting the adventure. - Alice Cooper's "Poison" starts with a door opening to reveal what looks like Alice. The ending reveals it's a blonde girl dressed up like him. - Many early Dungeons & Dragons adventure modules used this trope, as they tended to omit depictions of the world outside a dungeon so that DMs could seamlessly transplant their content into homebrew settings. - Played with in Closer Than Ever, which begins with a song about what doors symbolize. By the Book Ends principle, each act also has an Open Door Finale. Well, wha'd'ya know? Well, whad'y'a know? In front of me now is an open door, I'm moving ahead, not sure of the way, And yet there's a light that I'm headed for. - In Baron Wittard, your first challenge is to bypass the security system that guards the abandoned arcology so you can enter. - In Devil May Cry: - One of the first things that happen in the original Devil May Cry is Trish breaking in Dante's office by driving her bike through his door. And right before you actually play Mission 1, Dante opens a huge gate as he and Trish arrive at Mallet Island. - In Devil May Cry 3: Dante's Awakening, Mission 1 ends with Dante kicking his office door open to go outside, Mission 2 begins with said door flying outward from the impact with Dante walking out shortly after it. - The first player controlled action of Hotel Dusk: Room 215 and Last Window is opening the door of the building the game takes place in. - In Earth and Sky, Emily and Austin are trying to find out what happened to their missing scientist parents. Episode one begins with Emily standing outside her parents' lab, and getting the door open is the first puzzle. Episode two does the same with Austin and their parents' holiday cottage. - Every stage in Kid Icarus: Uprising begins with Pit in a black area flying out a door and into the stage proper. One stage, in which Pit drops into the middle of a raging battle, has him dodging a stray blast that fires into the room, which can be seen catching fire as the camera follows Pit out to begin the stage. - Most of the "Ravenhearst" Story Arc adventures from Mystery Case Files start out with the Master Detective unlocking a gateway, or approaching the door to her client's residence. - Resident Evil - Used in the early games (1, 2 and 3) to instill a feeling of suspense. - This was done in Sweet Home (1989), where Shinji Mikami got the inspiration from. - Although there's a short Cutscene before it, the player first takes active control in Riven when a cell's gate drops down into the ground, setting the Stranger free to explore. - Scratches begins with the camera panning over several photos hung up in a bathroom converted to a darkroom, before descending to one photo in the tub that shows the door to the cellar of Blackwood Manor, slightly ajar. - An early subversion in Zork: The house you start in front of has the door boarded shut, and it feels natural to look for a way of opening it. In fact, \|\|it can't be opened. You have to go in through the rear window\|\|. - A series of increasingly-weird doors and gates open up during the opening credits of Beetlejuice, and the viewer's perspective passes through them. - The opening sequence of Pinky, Elmyra & the Brain begins with a camera zooming through the front door of Elmyra's house and through various rooms, while Pinky and the Brain themselves do the "What are we gonna do today?" exchange. The camera reaches the titular trio just in time for the Brain to declare, "Endure Elmyra, then try to Take Over the World!" - The opening credits of The Replacements begins with the gates to Todd and Riley's orphanage opening. - Several members of the family pass through doors as they head home and converge on the couch in The Simpsons's opening credits sequence.	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/OpenDoorOpening
Open-Fly Gag - TV Tropes Suppose you're in a hurry, or just leisurely came out of the bathroom. However, you feel a breeze in the most unusual area, and you can't help but notice people snickering and/or looking down at your crotch. Either you see for yourself what's so funny, or worse, someone tells the predicament to your face. The end result is zipping your open pants fly up while your face flushes, and probably mumbling something. This trope will mostly happen in comedies to male characters (sometimes to females as well), or when serious moments need to be lightened up a bit. Very Truth in Television. It can happen to anybody. Compare Wardrobe Malfunction and Comedic Underwear Exposure. ## Examples: - In JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Diamond is Unbreakable, when Rohan uses Heaven's Door on Hayato to find clues related to Kira, he comes across an entry stating a man will walk by with his zipper down as nearby pedestrians quietly laugh. - One chapter in Yandere Kanojo is dedicated purely for this. Reina notices Tanaka's zipper is open, but she's too embarrassed to tell him directly. So she asks one of her friends to text him about it. Needless to say, that friend tells another friend to do it... and so on. The chapter ends with pretty much everyone knowing Tanaka's fly is open. - In Psychic School Wars, early on, Natsuki nicknames Kenji "Mr. Open Fly". It isn't the last time. - In one episode of Yo-Kai Watch, this happens to Nate thanks to being inspirited by Pandle. - Akame ga Kill!: Tatsumi makes a speech towards the team, only to be pointed out by Su that his fly is down. Everyone minus the chief makes fun of him. - Jewelpet Kira Deco!: In a scene, this happens to a male office worker. - Osomatsu-san: In the Season 2 premiere, in the Bad Future where the Matsuno brothers are wealthy Fat Bastards, Osomatsu, Choromatsu, and Todomatsu all have their flies open if you pay close attention. - Red Ears: There's a comic that uses this gag when a man flirts with an attractive waitress who passes him several notes. It says that his "fondness" for her was apparent because his fly was open and asks him to zip it up. The second note adds when her shift ends. - The Far Side has a speaker addressing the giggling workers of a zipper factory, when another worker comes up to give him a note reading "Bob, your model AA-12 is open!" - The August 3, 2008 Garfield strip has Jon look down and see that his fly is down after repeatedly telling Garfield that he isn't so smart, much to Garfield's amusement. - Crabgrass: This happens to Miles in this comic. Kevin wasted no time to tell Miles' girlfriend about it. - Big Hero 6: After Hiro's presentation, his brother Tadashi informs him that his fly was down the whole time. Cue Hiro embarrassingly zipping it up. - Near the end of The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie, SpongeBob brings up that there's something he must say when he is finally given the job as manager of the Krusty Krab 2 that he wanted, but states that he doesn't know how to put it. After Squidward suggests that SpongeBob is trying to say that he's realized he didn't really want the job after all, SpongeBob denies Squidward's assumption and explains that he was actually trying to tell Squidward that his fly was down, which is odd considering that Squidward never wore pants in the first place. - On the teaser trailer for Zootopia, Nick is introduced naked, as a voiceover explains the concept of the movie. When the narrator talks about animals being fully clothed, clothes appear on Nick, who then turns around to zip up. - Early in American Adobo, Raul ( Paolo Montalban) shows up to a gathering with his zipper down - he had just left from a sexual encounter. - In The Fugitive, A cop does this to Richard Kimble in an instance of Hey, Wait! Viewable here. - In Just the Way You Are, Susan and Frank attend a party with Frank's boss Earl. When Susan notices that Earl's fly is open, neither of them wants to mention it, so Susan pretends to drop food in his lap and then zips his fly while picking it up. - An extra in the bleachers of Teen Wolf is caught on camera completely unzipped, hastily covering the calumny with a knit sweater. At first, it was speculated that this was a guy over-appreciating the young men on court; however, it was later revealed to be a woman who'd squeezed herself into too-tight slacks so as not to seem fat on set. This shot is a staple of Blooper reviews. - There is a Hope Vestergaard Toilet Training Plot book Potty Animals: What to Know When You've Gotta Go, in which some preschooler-aged Funny Animals named Wilbur the hedgehog, Wilma the pig, Arnold the crocodile, Freddie the rabbit, Helga the duck, Benji the lemur, Roxanne the hippo, Stanley the tiger, Sukey the raccoon, Georgie the bear, Farley the anteater, Agnes the mouse, and Ziggy the fox each have their own lesson they need to learn in bathroom etiquette. Ziggy's lesson is "check [his] zipper", which is this trope. - In Snuff, there's a scene at a dinner party where the narrator talks about how long-married couples tend to have code phrases to subtly warn each other about problems such as "exposed in the crotch department" or, in the case of Sam and Sybil Vimes, "You're getting on people's nerves again, Sam." The scene ends with one of the other ladies at the dinner turning to her husband and giving him the "exposed in the crotch department" code. - Friends: "The One with All the Poker". Ross: Your money's mine, Green. Rachel: Your fly's open, Geller. [and later...] Rachel: [chanting] I have got your money, and you'll never see it, and your fly's still open. [Ross looks] Ha! I made you look! - In an episode of Even Stevens, Louis' friend Twitch comments on a photograph of the Stevens family on vacation, pointing out that Louis' zipper was open. Louis scoffs and denies it, but Tawny points it out too. Luckily, Twitch changes the subject before Louis embarrassed himself even more. - Kamen Rider Build: At the end of the first episode, Sento assures Ryuuga that he can't be as dumb as he thinks he is. Then he informs him that his fly has been open the entire time (which viewers might spot even before it's explicitly pointed out). \|\|The gag is repeated in the final episode.\|\| The Almighty Johnsons: In "A Bit Like Buses Really", Axl deduces that Anders got sidetracked during his mission due to his open fly. Axl: "You got distracted, didn't you?" Anders: "I resent what you're insinuating Axl. There were complex negotiations to be negotiated and to achieve a happier result, for all concerned, well it takes time." Axl: "Ah, okay. Your flies undone." * In Home Improvement , a late episode has Tim make a Badass Boast , only to undermine it since he was unzipped. - Referenced in another episode, when Randy worries that he's The Unfavorite since Brad and Tim share interests in things like sports and tools. Tim assures him they're not that different and have similar personalities, with the example that if either one is caught with a fly down, they're not going to miss a chance to make a quip about it. Randy: Well, you gotta make a fly joke. Tim: That's right, you gotta make a fly joke! "Hey, buddy, you know your fly's down?" Randy: "Cheaper than air conditioning!" "You know your fly's down?" Tim: "No, but if you hum a few bars..." - The Goodies: Bill Oddie dresses in blackface and starts channelling Louis Armstrong. Bill: Zip-a-dee-doo-dah! Tim: Sorry, I didn't know it was undone... - Frasier shows up for a job interview with his fly unzipped and his shirt sticking out. The interviewer tries to discreetly point it out but Frasier thinks the man is commenting on the belt he chose to wear. It isn't until he looks down that Frasier realises what the interviewer was actually referring to. - Super Store: In "Cereal Bar", after the video call with Kira Moon, Marcus notices his fly was down and hopes she wasn't able to notice it. - Michael Jackson did this during the controversial "Panther Sequence" of his "Black Or White'' video. Right in the middle of a fierce dance routine, he suddenly zips his fly up. - In one episode of The Simpsons, while setting up the class photo on the school's steps Mrs. Krabappel is going around correct various students' appearance issues and tells one student under her breath to "hoist his flag." - In The Legend of Korra, metal manipulator Lin Beifong suddenly makes a flicking motion as a zipping sound is heard. She then tersely explains to Bolin that his fly was down. - Johnny Bravo: In "Did You See a Bull Run by Here?", a matador walks up to Johnny. Johnny looks down and tells him his zipper is down. The man cries, zips it up, and runs away still crying. - King of the Hill: In one episode, Dale Gribble standing in his doorway catches the attention of two old ladies. He asks what they're staring at, and one of them points out that his fly's down, prompting him to say "It's my yard." - Ren & Stimpy "Adult Party Cartoon": At one point in "Onward and Upward", Ren and Stimpy's flies are open, and they zip each other's up. - One episode of The Critic had Jay make an obscure reference that has both Duke and Doris start laughing mildly, then Duke leans in: Duke: "Do you know what he's talkin' about?" Doris: "No, but his fly is open." <Duke glances down, then begins laughing harder> - In the Danny Phantom episode "Doctor's Disorders", Jazz tells Tucker that his fly is open after he catches the jar containing her amorphous state. - The Oh Yeah! Cartoons short "Kid from S.C.H.O.O.L." has Jake Slade distract Simon Cerebellum by telling him his fly is down. - The anecdote attributed to Sir Winston Churchill and the imperious Lady Astor: Lady Astor: Winston, your trousers are gaping open! Churchill: [glances down briefly] So they are, madam. But the dead bird never falls out of the nest! [or variably] No point in closing the stable door, madam, the horse has already bolted! - Also told about the Yalta Conference of Allied leaders during World War Two, when Stalin catches Churchill passing the 'dead bird' note to Roosevelt and is convinced they are plotting against him, until Churchill shows him FDR's original note telling him that his flies are open. - British comedian Alan Carr once did a whole nine-minute BBC-televised stand-up at the Hammersmith Apollo with an open fly. About seven-and-a-half minutes in, an audience member on the balcony called out to him, but in the embarrassment and audience cackles, Carr discovered that his zipper was broken. The routine he did about pairs of jeans about two minutes before the commotion had now become Hilarious in Hindsight (for the Hammersmith Apollo audience, but Harsher in Hindsight for Carr). - A common (albeit multiply-contradicting) story from the set of Bringing Up Baby is that Cary Grant's open fly was either broken or caught on someone's fabric, which led to the script being rewritten to include the gag of Katharine Hepburn's Wardrobe Malfunction and Cary Grant walking behind her to spare her embarrassment.	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/OpenFlyGag
Action Prologue - TV Tropes "You may have noticed that I began my story with a quick, snappy scene of danger and tension but then quickly moved on to a more boring discussion of my childhood. Well, that's because I wanted to prove something to you: I am not a nice person. * Would a nice person begin with such an exciting scene, then make you wait almost the entire book to read about it?"* Most stories take a while to build up, as they first introduce you to the characters, the world, and the theme, giving them time to develop in your mind before things start to change and become exciting. Of course, this means that beginnings are often boring. It's been said that if you miss the first 15 minutes of a movie, you're not missing anything, as the plot doesn't pick up until later anyway. Many writers are aware of this, and their way of dealing with it is sometimes to do an Action Prologue. An Action Prologue starts off with something exciting happening immediately. Right at the beginning, the hero is sneaking around an enemy base, being menaced by a threat, or something similarly exciting. In some cases this is foreshadowing. The event may be a minor one, but related to a major plot point that we don't discover until much later. It could be a dream sequence, where the hero sees something threatening that later shows up for real. It could be the Establishing Character Moment for our badass Action Hero. Or it could be something completely unrelated to the main plot at all, used only to make sure that something exciting happens right at the start. In any case, the action quickly falls right after the Action Prologue, and then those usual first 15 minutes used to flesh out the story and introduce the characters show up. Often overlaps with How We Got Here when it shows off an action-packed scene from the end of the story before jumping to an earlier point in time to explain how the characters ended up in that scenario. War Was Beginning is a specific subtrope. Compare Batman Cold Open, which illustrates a character's skills at the beginning of a story; and Danger Room Cold Open, which demonstrates the skills of a team. Contrast Prolonged Prologue, which is what happens when you drag it out too much, as well as Slow-Paced Beginning where the work slaps you from the start with exposition... and more exposition... and still more exposition... It can happen that the Action Prologue is cut short and revealed not to have been really happening; that's a Fake Action Prologue. A form of The Teaser, often In Medias Res. Also known as a "Bond Opening Sequence", since James Bond uses it so much. Not to be confused with Action-Hogging Opening, which is where the out-of-plot opening sequence rather than the first part of the plot proper is unusually intense. ## Examples: - The 2004 feature film version of Appleseed opens with Deunan Knute fighting some rogue cyborgs and a pair of tanks in the wastelands outside of Olympus. - Assassination Classroom kicks off with the entire class whipping out firearms and opening fire on their teacher, Koro-sensei, who has walked into the room to take attendance. Koro-sensei casually dodges every single bullet as if nothing out of the ordinary was happening. - Attack on Titan: The beginning of Episode 1 shows some Survey Corps soldiers attacking a Titan. A later scene shows that the force was decimated in the battle. - Berserk is a extreme example: it starts with a two and 2/3 volumes of story to establish the setting and then has a twelve volume flashback before reaching the point of time when it started. The anime follows suit with its first episode (basically a shortened version of the first chapter without Puck), then ends in a way that could not possibly lead to said prologue. - In Blade & Soul, Alka is seen running from some Palam soldiers at the beginning. They seemingly trap her and open fire, only for her to effortlessly dodge their bullets, and proceed to slit all of their throats. - The anime version of Chrono Crusade took the manga's Batman Cold Open and added a hint that Aion was behind the attack to turn it into an Action Prologue. - The Dirty Pair movie (better known as Project Eden) takes this all the way into a full Pastiche of James Bond films, starting with an equivalent of the Bond Gun Barrel and ending with a Design Student's Orgasm credits sequence the Bond films could be proud of. (Not to mention introducing the Guy of the Movie.) - The anime of D.N.Angel opens on a fight between Dark and Krad that apparently happened in the past, before cutting to the high school Shōjo romance opening of the manga. - The first episode of Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood mostly exists to start off the series with something that wasn't seen in the 2003 anime adaptation. However, the events are integrated into the story of Brotherhood, even though they don't happen in the manga, and some parts serve as major foreshadowing. - Ghost in the Shell (1995) begins with Major Kusanagi carrying out a hit on a defecting programmer and a corrupt government minister, establishing her as a consummate Action Girl (as well as showing off the coolness of the series' thermoptic camouflage). - Girls und Panzer begins with the first few minutes of a tank battle, the rest of which is seen in Episode 4. - Not exactly action, but Higurashi: When They Cry's anime adaptation opens with watching a half-obscured silhouette beating someone to death with a blunt instrument... And then the OP starts playing... - Hirogaru Sky! Pretty Cure's first episode is extremely dense with action, even though the franchise it's an Alternate Continuity for almost always has some amount of action by each episode's end. Kabaton kidnaps Princess Elle the moment before the opening sequence plays. Witnessing this, protagonist Sora Harewataru chases him endlessly through Skyland, Kabaton's Extradimensional Shortcut, and eventually Sorashido City to rescue her even if it means fighting Kabaton himself and his Ranborg. She ultimately succeeds in said rescue after transforming into Cure Sky and handily beating both of them. Sora's main problem is getting Elle back to her parents in Skyland Castle since they have no way to go back there from the city. - Infinite Stratos's anime adaptation begins with Ichika and his harem facing off an unidentified IS pilot. \|\|It turns out that it's actually the fight vs Silvario Gospel in the last episode.\|\| - Kamigami no Asobi starts with the harem in their god forms, fighting an unknown opponent, possibly each other. It gets to show Apollon's Transformation Sequence, before going back to the actual beginning, and the relatively action-free high school story... until the last episode, which provides a context for the beginning part. - Kämpfer's anime adaptation opens with Natsuru being chased and shot at by Akane before jumping off of a building to her assumed death. Then the opening credits roll. - The manga adaptation of Persona 3 opens with The Hanged Man Operation. That is, an explosive battle on a bridge. - The first episode of Psycho-Pass shows a wounded Kogami taking on a Mook wearing cybernetic armor before confronting Makishima. This doesn't happen until episode 16. - Puella Magi Madoka Magica starts with Homura fighting Walpurgisnacht in a devastated Mitakihara, witnessed by Madoka. \|\|It's the endgame of the previous "Groundhog Day" Loop.\|\| - Rage of Bahamut: Genesis starts with the titular Bahamut nuking everything in sight, before facing an alliance of demons, gods and humans. The actual story takes place 2000 years after that bout. - The first two minutes of Sakura Wars the Animation are spent showing a Traintop Battle in Europe where a white-haired demon pursues Klara M. Ruzhkova and White Cape, only for the demon to be stopped by Seijuro Kamiyama, Elise and Lancelot. - The second scene in Sword of the Stranger is an elaborate action sequence, with bandits attacking the Ming caravan. - Tekkaman Blade starts off with the main character fighting off a bunch of Radam monsters before being blasted off the Orbital Ring onto Earth. - The prologue of Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann has a battle in space the likes of which don't happen until the final of the four arcs — \|\|and, in fact, the exact battle shown never actually happens\|\|. - Terror in Resonance starts with the theft of a plutonium core from a nuclear fuel reprocessing plant. - Venus Versus Virus's anime version shows guns, shooting stuff with said gun, eyepatch wearing Gothic lolita girl wielding the gun, and a creepy girl with red eyes. Then we cut to the catchy opening. In the manga however, the intro is mellow, and shows how Sumire became the way she is. - The first few minutes of the Vinland Saga anime begins in the middle of a pitched sea battle, the last battle Thors would take part in as a member of the Jomsvikings. After a couple of minutes of intense action, we see Thors decide to desert the Jomsvikings and leave battle behind him. - Witch Hunter Robin starts off with a mission by the ultra-tech team of super-powered witch-hunters, and the rest of the first episode is introducing their little circle to the audience. And the title character isn't even fully introduced until the second episode! - The Wonderful World of Puss 'n Boots: All films begin with the moment that Pero the cat is sentenced to death for the crime of saving a mouse or in later films, refusing to kill mice at all, then him running away from the cat kingdom, and the Cat King sending three cat assassins after him to finish the job. Then the title drops and it cuts to the assassins chasing him across the countryside before Pero loses them and heads toward whatever person or place needs a hero. - The first few minutes of WorldEnd: What Do You Do at the End of the World? Are You Busy? Will You Save Us?'s anime adaptation flash-forward to a seemingly hopeless battle against the 17 Beasts. The Last Stand defense of the airship, coupled with copious amounts of blood and violence, contrasts with the more light hearted scenes later in the episode. It's one of the first signs that the cute exterior of the series wont last very long. - The Divine begins with a scene of the protagonist's friend flying a chopper over a burning jungle, before a dragon emerges from the smoke and gets shot by him. The next pages focus on the protagonist's boring and depressing life before he agrees to go to the jungle with his friend and interesting things start to happen. - The Ultimates: The first issue takes place in World War II. Can there be more action than that? - Wonder Woman 600: "Valedictorian" opens on Wonder Woman leading a coalition of female superheroes including Batwoman, Batgirl, Stargirl, Supergirl, Bulleteer and others in defending Washington DC from an attack by Ivo's Cyber-Sirens. The actual story is about Vanessa Kapatelis getting her life back together. - Ahsoka: A NZRE Star Wars Story opens with Ahsoka and Elsbeth fighting. - Girls und Panzer fanfics frequently do this in order to emulate the show's opening, whether they're doing a retelling of canon, or an entirely new fic. How successful they are varies, since some believe it works better in an anime than a fanfic, and that the show needed to show the tanks immediately to draw people's interest. Boys und Sensha-do! is one such example. - Daring Do & the Mysterious Mare-Do-Well: Canterlot Crisis The story begins with Mare Do Well infilitrating a rendezvous with the antagonists, which becomes a fight to receieve the mysterious package they exchanged. - The Day the Earth Stood Still begins with Tom morphing to heal his near-fatal injuries, killing Essa, and then falling off the Blade Ship. - The First Saniwa combines this with How We Got Here. The prologue features the major characters in a massive battle with Higekiri heavily injured, and the story proper leads up to said battle. - The pilot episode of Invader Zim: A Very Tall Problem opens with the Massive being attacked and boarded by the Resisty, who massacre the Irkens onboard while Red and Purple barely escape with their lives. - Kyon: Big Damn Hero combines this with In Medias Res. - Mortal Kombat vs. The Owl House begins with a big battle between the forces of Edenia and Outworld, before the Mass Teleportation gets the story started. - The Night Unfurls: The first chapter of the remastered version opens up with the Good Hunter wrapping up his hunt for an orc war band, killing the three remaining ones with ease. - The first scene of Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Reflecting Balance has a Pokémon in a gray cloak fleeing from the Sigilyph that stole seven of the eight Axis Tower crystals, trying to keep the last crystal away from the Sigilyph. - Pokémon: Nova and Antica: How does the story catch your attention early on? By having the regional villainous team attack in the very first town. - In Puzzle Hunt Precure, the first chapter starts out with the fight against the Metamasters that separated Rei from her sister Miu. - Twinkling in the Dark has a prologue showing a battle between the Pretty Cure and the Bad End Kingdom, while the full story is about the Bad End Kingdom recovering from the attack. - Whispers begins with a fight between Celestia and Nightmare Moon, before swerving into Original Character territory. - Bolt does this with the Show Within a Show's filming. - In the Pixar film, Cars 2, the film begins with Finn McMissile infiltrating the Lemons' oil rig to uncover their evil plans after his partner Leland Turbo has been crushed to death while attempting to escape their lair. - G.I. Joe: The Movie has an epic one where Cobra attacks the Statue of Liberty during a celebration and ends up getting into a battle with virtually every introduced member of G.I. Joe up to that point. It's easily a Moment of Awesome. - How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World opens with Hiccup, his friends, and Valka raiding dragon trappers, apparently being a common occurrence for them now. - Toy Story 2 starts with Buzz Lightyear infiltrating Emperor Zurg's secret lair. It is then revealed to be a video game Rex is playing. - Toy Story 3 starts with a Fake Action Prologue where Woody and Jessie try to save a train of orphans. Then the plot starts getting anachronistic and filled with Call Backs to the previous films, and it turns out to be Andy's playtime from the toys' point of view. - Wonder Woman (2009): The story starts in the middle of the final battle against Ares when he tries to take over the world for the first time centuries before the start of the main story. <!—index—> <!—/index—> - The 12th Man: The film begins with Jan and his comrades struggling in the ocean after the destruction of their boat and making it ashore while being shot at and captured by Nazis, forcing Jan to swim across a freezing lake to escape. A later flashback shows the build-up to that event. - The A-Team: Also explains how the A-Team comes together, detailing Hannibal recruiting B.A. and Murdock to rescue Face. - Android Cop: Hammond and his first partner busting up an illegal sale in the Zone. - Arachnicide: L9 Commando stopping an arms deal. - The Avengers begins with the Big Bad popping up to steal the MacGuffin, fighting several government agents in the process before leading into a car chase. This is before the title even appears onscreen. - Avengers: Age of Ultron opens with the team battling HYDRA and Baron von Strucker, before moving onto the main plot after the opening credits. - Captain America: Civil War opens on one of the Winter Soldier's missions back in 1991 before so much as the Marvel logo appears. Then it moves on to a second prologue of the Avengers in action. - Bandolero!: The film opens with a bank robbery where Maria's husband and one of Dee's men die before Johnson and Roscoe capture the other outlaws. - Black Butler: Sebastian rescuing Shiori from some Human Traffickers. - Bloody Mallory: Mallory killing her demon-possessed husband. - Brotherhood of Blades: Shen leading some assassins, including most of our main characters, in capturing one member of the Eunuch Clique. - Brotherhood of the Wolf begins with a martial arts fight between the two heroes and some local goons. The original script began with an extended chase through Parisian sewers. - Bullet in the Head: The insanely violent gang fight between Ben and Ringo's gangs. Features people being stabbed, hit with chains and having their heads shoved through car windows in slow motion. - Bumblebee: A battle sequence on Cybertron ending with the retreat of the autobots from the planet. Followed by Bumblebee being chased by the human military and attacked by Blitzwing. - The Chase (1994) is pretty much lock, stock and barrel Jack Hammond's kidnapping of Natalie Voss and his attempt to escape to Mexico. Roughly 90 percent of the movie takes place on the freeway or just alongside it, and the director wastes no time whisking us right into the thick of it: from the very moment the screen fades in, we can already hear the wail of police sirens in the distance as Jack enters the convenience store looking for a hostage, and spots Natalie. - Cosmos: War of the Planets: Hamilton and his crew evading the refractions of an ancient space explosion. - Cruz Diablo begins with the titular character fighting and flynning in the dungeons. - Cy Warrior: CB 3 escaping from captivity. - Cyborg Cop: The Ryan brothers dealing with a Hostage Situation. - Cyborg Soldier: ISAAC escaping from his creators. - The Dark Knight Trilogy works like this in the sequels: - The Dark Knight opens with the Joker and his clowns robbing a bank. - This seems to be a reverse of the usual Batman Cold Open in that, instead of the establishing the hero's skills, the first 15 minutes has several moments designed to instill the fear of The Joker into the viewers. - The Dark Knight Rises begins with Bane and his henchmen conducting a mid-air skyjacking and faking Dr. Pavel's death. - Dead and Deader: Quinn's unit's first encounter with the zombies, and their eventual slaughter. - Diary of the Dead begins with internet footage of a zombie attack on some TV journalists, then cuts to the protagonists making a horror movie and slowly finding out about the Zombie Apocalypse. Justified as the whole movie is meant to have been edited by one of the protagonists after the event anyway. - The 1985 IMAX film The Dream Is Alive looks like a subversion at first — it opens with about a minute of an alligator and some birds going about their business in a Florida swamp — THEN we hear sonic booms as the space shuttle flies overhead and it cuts to a dramatic touchdown, true to form. - Before the opening credits of Enter the Dragon even begins Bruce Lee fights and beats Sammo Hung in a nonlethal kung fu match at a Shaolin Temple in Hong Kong. - Each of the three films in The Expendables franchise opens with one, each more epic than the last: - The first film opens with a stand-off between the titular team and some Ruthless Modern Pirates holding a crew hostage. - The second film opens with the team storming a military controlled town in their customized Awesome Personnel Carrier to rescue client, before making a daring escape via zip-lining on some power lines while firing at enemies on the ground, followed by half of them hopping on some stashed jet-skis and getting into a chase on a river while Barney and Christmas bring grab their plane, before finally hopping on the plane and blasting through a bridge full of enemies and anti-aircraft guns, and having to try to get airborne before they crash into an oncoming dam. - The third film opens with them flying up in a helicopter to storm a heavily armed military-prison train and rescue an old comrade of Barney's, before it reaches prison. Said old comrade, instead of just going with his rescue party, high jacks the train and its main gun to destroy the the approaching prison before they go. - The Exterminators of the Year 3000 opens with Alien getting in a scuffle with some water hoarding Dirty Cops. - Fritz Lang loved these kind of openings, and made use of them in films like Dr. Mabuse, the Gambler, Spies, The Testament of Dr. Mabuse, and M. The better ones weave exposition into the action itself. - Future Force: Tucker collecting a bounty, and using his power glove on some thugs who try to stop him. - Gamer gets into the action prologue so thoroughly and immediately that one might find it more perplexing than exciting. - Gladiator begins in the Marcomannic Wars with a battle between Roman legions and German barbarians. Given how the film plays out, and the fact that the Emperor berates Commodus for missing "the entire war", this may be the final battle near the Tisza river, where the Romans beat the Marcomanni into signing a peace treaty. - Pretty much universal in James Bond movies. Sometimes the initial action sequence has no relevance at all to the main plot, and sometimes they turn out, sometimes only towards the end of the film, to have been important to it. Subverted as early as the second film, From Russia with Love, in which the Action Prologue turns out to introduce The Dragon rather than Bond. - Hancock opens up with a gun battle on the L.A. Freeway, with the eponymous hero arriving to "save" the day. - The Tea Room shootout at the beginning of Hard Boiled. - Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince opens with Voldemort's Death Eaters kidnapping the wandmaker Ollivander and destroying the Millennium Bridge in London. - All of the Indiana Jones films. - The Polish movie Klub Włóczykijów starts with a scene of one of the main characters breaking into a museum to steal the McGuffin, and coming across the villain who is after the same thing. The scene ultimately has little bearing on the plot (it turns out that the McGuffin was not what they were after), so its main purpose is just to provide a cool opening and introduce the villain. - Kim Possible opens with Kim and Ron rescuing a Kidnapped Scientist from Professor Dementor and blowing up his lair to destroy the dissolving-slime weapon the scientist had created. - Kingsman: The Secret Service starts with a group of two agents and two candidates storming a place, quickly killing all but one of the people stationed there. - The Film of the Book of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe starts in WWII London, where German fighter pilots are conducting an air raid. - Prince Caspian similarly starts with Caspian escaping Miraz's assassination attempt, followed by the book's original opening of the Pevensie siblings at the train station. - The Lord of the Rings - The Fellowship of the Ring starts with the Battle of the Last Alliance not only because it was establishing the backstory, but because Peter Jackson felt that the movie needed an epic battle scene with armies at both sides, not just the Fellowship vs. dozens of Orcs. - The Two Towers starts with Gandalf's fight with the Balrog, continuing from their encounter in The Fellowship of the Ring. This not only serves as a way to re-orient audiences back into Middle-earth, but also foreshadows \|\|the return of Gandalf\|\|. - The Losers (1970): The Viet Cong attacking the transport the Devil's Advocates are in. Oddly enough for the genre, our heroes don't actually help fend off the attack, due to them not having weapons yet. - Men in Black: Agent K sniffing out an alien fugitive amongst some immigrants. - Minority Report opens with a typical Precrime future murder about to happen and shows how the team figures out where it will take place. In this particular case, a man, having suspected his wife of infidelity, catches his wife with her lover and attempts to murder them both in a rage. - Nazi Overlord: Rogers fighting a single Nazi soldier, eventually strangling him with his bare hands because he ran out of bullets. - Pacific Rim opens with an introduction about the invading Kaiju and a battle between Gipsy Danger and Knifehead. - Predator 2 starts off with a 'Predator-eye' view of a pitched gun battle between the LAPD and a street gang. This battle is interrupted when the Predator kills and 'cleans' the surviving gangsters. - It's not strictly an "action-packed" movie, but Purple Rain gets off to quite a heady start. Director Albert Magnoli literally does not waste even one second plunging us into the story: the Warner Brothers studio logo has not even faded from the screen yet before the strains of a synthesizer played by "Doctor Fink" (a character in the movie) are heard in the distance and the voice of the (yet unseen) master of ceremonies at the First Avenue Nightclub is heard calling out: "Ladies and gentlemen... The Revolution!" - The Rainbow Magic movie opens with Rachel and Kirsty saving Heather the Violet Fairy, then defending the rest of the Rainbow Fairies from Jack Frost. - Natalie the Christmas Stocking Fairy's book opens with a goblin running amok in Rachel's kitchen and escaping to the Ice Castle. - All the Rocky sequels except the last one starts with the previous movie's climactic fight. - Saving Private Ryan. Good gods. The extended opening sequence makes two firm statements: "This is as close as we can get to D-Day and maintain our rating," and "Please remove your children." - The live-action Scooby-Doo (2002) movie begins with Mystery Inc. catching the Luna Ghost, who has nothing to do with the rest of the movie, but it does catalyze the gang's breakup. - The Seventh Curse: Dr. Yuen planting a bomb for the police in a Hostage Situation, and having to fight his way out when that goes wrong. - Sonic the Hedgehog (2020) opens up with Dr. Robotnik in the middle of a mad pursuit of the Blue Blur himself, launching explosive after explosive in several attempts to hit him. Then the scene freezes mid-sequence, and a narrating Sonic proceeds to rewind all the way back to his childhood to show how things got to this point. - The elevator hostage situation in Speed. - The Star Trek films tend to do this. It was especially notable in the first one, where the prologue turns out to be the most action-oriented part of the whole movie. - Several of the Star Wars movies start off in a fight of some sort: - Stone Cold: Huff thwarting a store robbery. - Streets of Fire starts off with a rock concert and the lead singer being kidnapped onstage. From there, there's very little pause in the action. - Talk of the Town starts out with a mill burning down, then a Spinning Newspaper segue to Cary Grant escaping from prison. The rest of it is more of a Screwball Comedy. - Thou Shalt Not Kill... Except: Stryker and his platoon raiding a Vietnamese camp. Unlike many Action Prologues, it ends very poorly, with most of the platoon dead and Stryker being badly injured. - Traxx: Traxx dealing with a Hostage Situation involving a monkey. - 2020 Texas Gladiators: The Rangers stopping a gang rape. - Werewolves of the Third Reich: Mad Dog and Billy the Butcher getting into a shootout with some Nazis in a bar. - We're No Angels: Within the first six or seven minutes, Bobby shoots his way out of the prison while dragging Ned and Jimmy along for the ride. The rest of the movie is noticeably less action-packed. - X-Men Film Series: - X2: X-Men United has \|\|brainwashed!\|\| Nightcrawler's attack on the White House. - X-Men Origins: Wolverine. The pre-credits prologue is a flashback of the main character's childhood, while the credits sequence is a montage of Wolverine and Sabretooth taking part in battles through the ages. - Aria the Scarlet Ammo starts with Kinji trying to not be blown up by the bomb on his bike, and Aria falling out of the sky, shooting guns and all, to try to save him. - Robert E. Howard's Conan the Barbarian: - In Black Colossus, a thief breaks into a tomb, fights a great snake, and screams with horror with what he sees. - The Devil in Iron, a fisherman goes into a ruin, takes up a knife, and dies. - Dead Six begins with Valentine in the middle of a job in Mexico. Lorenzo's story begins in the middle of a heist. Lampshaded as the first chapter is Prologue is called Cold Open. - Draconis Memoria: The first book, "The Waking Fire", opens with an official recollection of an incident during which a Black drake set to be drained of blood escaped its confines and went on a rampage across town, killing forty-three people and injuring dozens more. The battle against it also serves to showcase several key Blood-blessed powers early on. - Dragon Blood starts with \|\|Tisala\|\| on a torture bench, maybe about to spill some secrets. \|\|She kills the torturer, steals his coat and escapes. Later on, she's found by the main character Ward, in ill-fitting clothes, and after taking out some bandits.\|\| - Full Metal Panic! begins with Sagara saving a woman from her kidnappers and securing a disc with mysterious content. - The Grey Griffins book series does this at least in the first two books (I haven't read the third yet). The very first chapter is of something scary happening and threatening the lead hero, Max, and his brush with death. It is then, in both cases, revealed to be a dream in the immediately following chapter. - Halo: Contact Harvest: The book opens with one of Johnson's operations against the Insurrection. - Laszlo Hadron and the Wargod's Tomb starts with the eponymous Space Pirate sneaking his way into the Durendal's systems... and fighting his way out again after he gets found out. - The Machineries of Empire opens with Cheris leading her troops into a ground battle against the heretics, demonstrating how the calendrical technology that underpins the whole series works. - The Mysterious Island begins with a dramatic chapter as the characters' balloon gets caught in a horrific storm and they barely survive. Their names aren't even revealed until the next chapter. - This is how Simon R. Green introduces the characters to new readers in most of his books in fact, especially the Nightside series. And sometimes the opening scene contains a Chekhov's Gun or foreshadows a future book's plot. His Forest Kingdom series — specifically, all of the books in the Hawk & Fisher spinoff series and main series book 4, Beyond the Blue Moon — start with an action usually unrelated to the story most of the book is dealing with. - Book 1 has Hawk and Fisher dealing with a vampire in the first chapter, before moving on to the case that will last the rest of the book. - Book 2 ( Winner Takes All) has them breaking up a riot by rival political groups. - Book 3 ( The God Killer) has them dealing with a renegade homunculus that's been killing people. - Book 4 ( Wolf in the Fold) has them hunting a spy, codenamed Fenris. - Book 5 ( Guard Against Dishonor) has them leading a whole army of guards against a drug kingpin's warehouse. - Book 6 ( The Bones of Haven) has them working with a Special Wizards and Tactics squad to quell a prison riot, including a special wing where inhuman monsters are kept prisoner. - Beyond the Blue Moon starts with Hawk and Fisher dealing with a haunted house, and then a strike by dockworkers that turns ugly when the scab zombie force that's replaced them suddenly turns into a violent army. - The Tom Clancy novel Rainbow Six begins with an attempted plane hijacking by a group of terrorists. A few key members of Team Rainbow just happen to be on board, and use their extreme ingenuity to foil the attempt. - Snow Crash starts out with a wild racing scene in which Hiro tries to deliver a pizza under threat of death. Hiro isn't even called by name until the end of the scene, when he introduces himself to YT. - The start of A Song of Ice and Fire, egregiously. The enemy in the prologue doesn't show up until three books later, and then only in another Action Prologue. - Spinneret starts this way, with humans launching their first interstellar craft, encountering aliens (several times), being shot at by aliens, having first contact with aliens, who then broker a deal for the humans to lease an unused planet... all before the first chapter begins. - Starship Troopers — an influential work of science-fiction considered responsible for popularizing Death from Above, Powered Armor, Space Marine, and many other tropes the Halo games and novels are entirely built on — starts with a textbook Action Prologue, taken from about the middle of the story. Later in the book the protagonist mentions that the very enemies they were fighting in said prologue have switched to being co-belligerents in the war against the Bugs; the opening engagement may have contributed to this HeelFace Turn. - Warbreaker starts with Vasher getting out of jail. Then the focus of the next chapters shifts into another kingdom. - First book of Warrior Cats starts with a fight between RiverClan and ThunderClan. - Book one of The Wheel of Time series starts like this, introducing Lews Therin Telamon after he's murdered his family and just before his death. - World Break: Aria of Curse for a Holy Swordsman starts off with an epic battle between the main character, his classmates, and a giant dragon. - A few cold openings of Doctor Who. - One of the very rare instances of the '63 run: "Time and the Rani" opens with the TARDIS under attack by the Rani before Six regenerates into Seven. - "Remembrance of the Daleks" opened with the Dalek Mothership on approach to earth over a bed of JFK and MLK audio. - "The Empty Child" begins with the TARDIS chasing after a Chula warship through a time track. - "The Girl in the Fireplace" starts with offscreen screaming and Madame de Pompadour calling for the Doctor's name through a fireplace. - "Love & Monsters" invokes this, the narrator character pointing out the encounter with the Doctor, a Hoix and some buckets isn't the beginning, just a good hook for the audience. - "Gridlock" begins with a couple's flying car on a motorway being attacked by an unseen menace. - "Human Nature" starts with the Doctor and Martha being attacked by some lasers offscreen, with the Doctor mentioning something about a watch... before it turns out to be a dream. - "Silence in the Library" has a little girl apparently experiencing an Action Prologue through her dreams, as the Doctor and Donna board themselves up in some kind of library room. - "Planet of the Dead" starts with Lady Christina stealing a precious cup from a museum and escaping. - The animated serial "Dreamland" begins with an alien ship being pursued and attacked, crashing into the New Mexico Desert in 1947. - "The Eleventh Hour" starts with the TARDIS on fire and crashing while the brand-new Eleventh Doctor is hanging out the doors, clinging on by his fingernails. - "The Time of Angels" starts with River Song being chased through the spaceship Byzantium. - "The Pandorica Opens" revolves around River escaping prison, locating the painting of the same name and warning the Doctor and Amy about it. - "A Christmas Carol" begins with a crashing spaceship with Amy and Rory on board. - "The Impossible Astronaut" features the Doctor running through various adventures in history in succession, while Amy and Rory read from a history book about them in 2011. - "Day of the Moon" has \|\|Amy and Rory running as apparent fugitives, River falling off a building and the Doctor imprisoned in Area 51\|\| three months after the events of "The Impossible Astronaut". \|\|Agent Canton Delaware apparently executes Amy and Rory, though it turns out to be faked.\|\| - "A Good Man Goes to War" begins with \|\|a man who's centuries old and the father of Amy's child taking on the Cybermen and handing them a "message" as to the location of his wife\|\|. - The pilot movie of Emergency! from 1972 starts with firefighters asleep at an L.A. County fire station; it pans the living quarters where the firefighters are sleeping, and shows the firefighters dozing. After several minutes, an alarm rings out for a factory fire, and the firefighters go to work, with all vehicles rolling, lights and sirens, then it is shown that the firefighters are responding from Station 10; the opening credits roll as well. The fire that starts the series is later revealed to be a sort of night drill to test the firefighters' skills. This movie is remembered more of course for how it set up how two of the main characters in it (John Gage and Roy DeSoto) get certified to become paramedics, and how, for much of the runtime, Dr. Kelly Brackett is doubtful of the paramedic program; Brackett eventually comes around, and assists the paramedics on the last call, a cave rescue (the bill authorizing paramedics also passes and becomes law). - The Flash (2014): "Killer Frost" begins with an action scene resolving the previous episode's Cliffhanger - Joe defeating Dr. Alchemy's acolytes while Alchemy himself escapes, the Flash's first "battle" with new Big Bad Savitar, and finally Cisco and Caitlin's Big Damn Heroes moment saving Barry from Savitar. - The first episode of Game of Thrones cold opens with a suspenseful scene that features rangers of the Night's Watch getting ambushed by White Walkers. - Human Target almost always starts this way, with Christopher doing something awesome (often involving explosions). - The War of Wrath against Mordor is briefly shown in the prologue of The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power. - Lost in Space (2018): The first episode opens with the Robinson family crashing on an unknown planet after their Jupiter landing craft is struck by space debris, then having to deal with the immediate necessities of survival. We're introduced to the setting and characters through flashbacks. - MacGyver: Most of the time, as can be expected from a show like this. Self-parodied in "Children Of Light", which opens with the implication that Mac is defusing a bomb that's set to go off in a minute with Pete present... but it turns out he's just fixing Pete's alarm clock radio with the alarm set to go off in a minute, which is why he's rushing Mac. - My Country: The New Age: In the prologue Hwi's soldiers join forces with Bang-won's to attack Nam Jeon. - The pilot episodes of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine and Star Trek: Voyager each start with an Opening Scroll leading into a Space Battle. - The pilot of Star Trek: Enterprise starts with a Klingon being chased by two Suliban after crash-landing in Oklahoma. - The first episode of Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles opens with Sarah frantically driving to John's school and finding him in the library. They exit... to find an entire police squad waiting for them. They are arrested, and then a Terminator arrives on the scene and proceeds to kill everyone in sight, including John. Then, as a distraught Sarah watches, the nuclear holocaust begins, burning everything around her and revealing the Terminator's terrifying endoskeleton... and she wakes up. This all happens before the title even shows up onscreen. - Subverted in the first episode of Young Blades, which opens in the middle of an intense swordfight, then quickly derails into an argument about who gets to play d'Artagnan, revealing that this is merely a game between siblings. ( Then the real action begins.) - The Lion in Winter opens with King Henry sparring with his son Prince John, which establishes Henry as an aging conqueror and John as his favorite son. - Othello, it its operatic adaptation by Giuseppe Verdi and Arrigo Boïto, opens on the Thunderous Confrontation of a battle at sea, in which the title character ultimately proves victorious. The battle takes place offstage, but that doesn't prevent the orchestra and chorus from working themselves into a highly agitated state, or a full panoply of stage effects (some of them rhythmically notated in the score) from being deployed. - Ace Attorney has a prologue in every case, usually showing the actual murder from a perspective which leaves the player enough in the dark to not get spoilered. - In 1-1, we see Frank Sawhit murder Cindy Stone. Bonus points in that in the first few seconds of the franchise, we see a woman on the floor with a massive amount of blood seeping out of her head on screen, and we never see more blood at any point in the series until Dual Destinies. - In 1-2, We see Redd White committing the murder. Two cases in a row and we see the true killer's face. - In 1-4, we see the \|\|fake murder\|\| of Robert Hammond. - In 1-5, we see \|\|two people\|\| stabbing a knife into a body. - 2-1 shows Phoenix being knocked unconscious with a fire extinguisher. - In 2-2, there's a car accident, a fire, and \|\|Maya in the detention center again, telling Phoenix she killed somebody. It also spoils the entire case.\|\| - In 3-2 gives us MaskDeMasque stealing something. - In 3-3 we see somebody with Phoenix's silhouette poisoning somebody's coffee. - In 3-5, we see some awesome animated lightning and the corpse, even though the player meets the victim later and it's obviously the corpse in the prologue. - In 5-1, we see a trial disrupted by a bomb going off. - In 5-4, we see a rocket launch aborted by an explosion. - In 6-3, we see the aftermath of a prison escape, followed by some shady characters getting apprehended by a masked vigilante. - In 6-DLC, we see Dumas Gloomsbury attempt to kill Ellen Wyatt, before she \|\|is made to believe she\|\| travels back in time. - In AAI1-1, we see the murder and victim have a conversation and Edgeworth is held at gunpoint soon after. - In AAI1-2, Edgeworth has the pleasure of discovering the body and promptly getting accused of the murder. - In AAI1-3, we see the continuation of the ending of the last case. Edgeworth is playing ransom delivery boy and manages to get kidnapped. - In AAI1-4, we get Courtroom Antics were the witnesses accuses the prosecutor of being the real murderer. - In AAI1-5, we get to see the embassy burn and various spottings of the Yatagarasu. - In AAI2-1, we get a press-conference being derailed by an assassination attempt. - Many entries in the Assassin's Creed* series open like this, with the character having access to weapons, skills and life meter that are lost at the end of the level and then laboriously reclaimed over the course of the game. - An example of Action Prologue involving the main villain and not the hero: Sarevok beating the crap out of an anonymous warrior and then throwing him from the top of a tower in Baldur's Gate. - The prologue to Battlefield 1 almost instantly throws you into the control of various soldiers in the middle of a brutal German attack who each get gunned down, burned alive and blown up before your controls finally switch to the narrating Harlem Hellfighter, who survives the battle and narrates the other War Stories from here on out. - Bayonetta begins with our antiheroine and Jeanne in their flashback garb fighting angels on the face of a falling clock. It might be a clever symbol for a compressed backstory narration, but it's hard to tell when the actual game is so trippy. Despite the game's reputation for putting some of the most spectacular fights in cutscenes, it's fully playable, with no control guidance for first-time players, but also no way to lose. Then, there's a whole prologue chapter, filled with control tutorials and some minor exposition. Then there's an expository cutscene and an Indy-style travel montage. Then the opening tiles play as 'netta struts off the train in Vigrid. - Breath of Fire III opens with the hero escaping from a mine in dragon form. The dragon's stats are such that you cannot lose the battles in this sequence. - The prologue of Castlevania: Symphony of the Night starts at ending of the previous game, Rondo of Blood: the player isn't even controlling Alucard at that point, but Richter Belmont. - Chrono Cross begins with an action/tutorial dream sequence which mimics/foreshadows an extended gameplay sequence from a (much) later dungeon. - Dark Chronicle opens with Monica Raybrandt fighting off Emperor Gryphon's soldiers in her home, and charges ahead to see her father having just been assassinated and said assassin leaving. We then transition to Max, about to go to the circus. - Dark Souls introduction cutscene has this, featuring Gwyn, Nito and the Witch of Izalith taking on the dragons. - Devil May Cry 5 opens with the heroes Nero, Dante, and V fighting against Urizen and subsequently getting their asses kicked, with Dante's fate hanging in the balance. The game picks up about a month later with an opening credits sequence where Nero and his new partner, Nico, plow their way through a hoard of demons. - The DS and PS1 versions of Dragon Quest IV add a prologue chapter in which you play as the hero for a short while as you look around for Eliza. - The Remastered remake of DuckTales adds a prologue stage where Scrooge defends his bank from a heist by the Beagle Boys. - Enslaved: Odyssey to the West starts with Monkey, the main character, imprisoned on a slave ship, then breaking out and fighting his way through the Mecha-Mooks to escape. - Far Cry - Far Cry 3 seems to start in the traditional "introduction of the characters" sense, but within two minutes, you discover that you've been captured by pirates that are not at all friendly, you and your older brother break out, sneak around the base looking for an exit, and then \|\|your brother gets shot and\|\| you're running for your life through a dark jungle, chased by guys with guns, dogs, a bear and a helicopter. Only once this sequence ends does the game take on a less edge-of-your-seat-action stance. - Original Far Cry's first level, despite being a tutorial, is surprisingly action-packed and difficult. - Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon has an on-rails helicopter mission before the title screen and Forced Tutorial. - Far Cry Primal opens with you hunting woolly mammoths with your caveman buddies, then one of the local sabre-tooths attacks you, and your brother/hunting mentor tackles you both off a cliff to save your life. And after burying him, you have to make weapons and start hunting stuff before finding your way to the Oros Valley. - Final Fantasy: - The very first Final Fantasy begins with the Heroes of Light tasked with rescuing the Princess of Cornelia from the dreaded Garland. The title screen for the game doesn't appear until after Garland has been laid low. - Final Fantasy II begins with a Hopeless Boss Fight. - Final Fantasy VI may start with an Opening Scroll and cutscene, but immediately throws you into battle without really knowing who you are fighting against, who you are fighting for, or who you are supposed to be. Which does a pretty fine job of setting up the initial situation of the game's main character before she gets freed. - Final Fantasy VII starts you off in the middle of a raid to blow up one of the evil corporation's Mako reactors. - Final Fantasy X begins with the destruction of Zanarkand. - Final Fantasy XII begins with you, Reks, on a mission to save the king from assassins. Then you die, and take control of his little brother Vaan two years later. - Final Fantasy XIII begins with the main characters escaping from the Purge and fighting the Sanctum's soldiers. - Final Fantasy XIII-2 may well top them all: it begins with Lightning engaged in battle with the Big Bad. After the epic opening movie, you're thrust into a battle with Chaos Bahamut. As Lighning riding Odin. This is the tutorial!! - Lightning Returns: Final Fantasy XIII continues the trend by starting off with Lightning crashing a party at the Patriarch's Palace in Yusnaan and then chasing Snow through the building. - Final Fantasy XV kicks off with an older looking Noctis in royal garb alongside his comrades engaging an imposing fiery giant sitting on a throne in a How We Got Here situation. The next scene is a younger looking Noctis and his friends pushing their car to the nearest gas station. - Final Fantasy Tactics begins with the kidnapping of Princess Ovelia, which kicks off most of the plot proper. At this point, only Ramza is under your direct control, sporting the most basic job class and abilities, but it gives you a preview of several more powerful attacks and classes that you won't actually gain control of yourself until much later. - Fire Emblem: - Fire Emblem: Awakening opens with a premonition to Chrom and the Player Character fighting against Validar. - Fire Emblem Fates opens with a dream in which the Player Character, alongside their Hoshidan siblings, drive off Nohrian invaders. They wake up just as rivalling elder brothers Ryoma and Xander demand that they join their side... - Fire Emblem Heroes immediately kicks off with you (yes, you) getting teleported into the World of Heroes and being ordered by Anna to assist her in battle. - Forever Home: The prologue starts the player with a high-leveled party that is almost immediately thrown into several battles with soldiers-turned-bandits, ending with the main character in despair over the post-apocalyptic world. Afterwards, the game jumps back to the present and properly introduces the characters and setting. - Ghost Recon: Future Soldier's prologue shows the player the ropes with a Ghost mission in Nicaragua, which quickly goes balls-up, resulting in the death of the whole squad, including the Decoy Protagonist you initially play as. - The God of War series typically starts out by, as Yahtzee put it, "throwing you into the middle of a pitched battle just in case you thought you might be playing something with a modicum of restraint." - Grand Theft Auto V begins with Michael and Trevor robbing an armored car depot in North Yankton 9 years prior to the story proper. - Guild Wars Nightfall throws the character into a corsair battle for its first quests and mission, before the "training" sequences more common in other MMO's (and other Guild Wars chapters) - Hades throws you straight into Zagreus' first escape attempt without any real context. Only after you inevitably die and return to the House of Hades does the game properly introduce the main characters and basic premise. - Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis begins with Indy sifting through the university's large collection of artifacts. The task is not as benign as it seems. Indy gets hurt. A lot. The game uses the (several) moments when he's out cold to display credits. - The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel starts off with the characters trying to force a group of terrorists out of the Garrelia Fortress before it goes back a few months before the prologue events. Ditto with Cold Steel III where the players control a group of students who are trying to blow up a robot at the top of the sky before it goes back a few months before said events. The characters are at a high level so players can get familiarized with the controls a bit. - Done extremely well on the The Lord of the Rings video games, as the prologues are there not just to state how the fight elements are there, but also to tell most of the backstory and certain background elements. - Lufia & The Fortress of Doom starts the player off as Maxim, the main character's ancestor, arriving at Doom Island for their final battle with the Sinistrals. - Max Blaster and Doris de Lightning Against the Parrot Creatures of Venus: Each protagonist gets an Establishing Character Moment before the game starts properly. You play as two different baddies who are foiled by Max and Doris in intense ways. - The first mission of Medal of Honor: Frontline takes place at Omaha Beach on D-Day, before the events of the original game; the rest of the missions take place between the first game's third and fourth missions. - This has become a staple of 2D Mega Man games post-8 bit era, opening almost immediately to an action-packed into stage instead of going straight to the stage select as with the 8-bit games. As often as not, you'll have no idea what the hell is even going on plot-wise until it's finished. - Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater, which could rightfully be called a massive Affectionate Parody to 60s and 70s spy movies, pulls an exceptionally well executed one, though it takes up to an hour. You overpower the guards, get the captured scientist, and make it back to the extraction point where Snake gets betrayed, thrown of a bridge, and as he pulls himself out of a river, the enemies detonate a nuke some miles in the distance. And as the explosion fades, you get the extremely bond-like actual opening. - Metroid Prime has an action prologue aboard the Space Pirate Ghost Ship Orpheon, which incorporates a tutorial and gives the player A Taste of Power. - Modern Warfare: - The first game's prologue, "Crew Expendable", is a fast close-quarters battle, in contrast to "Blackout", the first plot mission, which is relatively quiet. - Modern Warfare 2 has "Team Player", a fast-paced assault on an Afghan town held hostage by the Taliban ( ahem...the "OpFor"). It has nothing to do with the main plot, but it shows Private Allen's regular grind as an Army Ranger before he's recruited into the CIA for his special mission in Russia. - Parasite Eve begins when Aya's date at Carnegie Hall gets rudely interrupted when Eve awakens and begins the mitochondrial uprising by burning alive nearly everyone present. Parasite Eve 2 starts with Aya responding to an outbreak of Neo-Mitochondrial Creatures at the Akropolis Tower in downtown Los Angeles. - Perfect Dark starts with Joanna's very first mission as Carrington Institute agent. Also its prequel started with a mission, but it's revealed it was a Fake Action Prologue being just a simulation. - Persona 5 jumps into the action with the Protagonist trying to escape from a casino, showing off the Le Parkour, a bit of the stealth mechanic, and a short fight. Then the Protagonist gets captured and arrested, and the majority of the game is spent explaining to the interrogating prosecutor How We Got Here, jumping back seven months to when the Protagonist first came to Tokyo. - Phantasmat 13: Remains of Buried Memories opens with the main character trying to escape a shadowy entity. The game menu doesn't appear until after this is accomplished. - Pitfall: The Lost Expedition begins with Pitfall Harry fighting for his life against a demonic fiery jaguar while supercharged with powerful magic. After he exchanges a few blows with the beast, it pins him to the ground, and Harry has a flashback to how he got into this mess in the first place which makes up most of the rest of the game. - The game [PROTOTYPE] begins with New York in ruin and chaos as well as giving your character full ablities, then after the title appears, flashes back to "18 days ago". - Rainbow Six series - Rainbow Six Vegas 1, before focusing on the eponymous city, has a prologue in a Mexican border town, in which the team's mission goes FUBAR and Logan Keller's squadmates are captured. - Rainbow Six Vegas 2's first act, which serves as a tutorial, is set on a hostage rescue mission in the Pyrenees five years before the events of the main story in Vegas. - Ratchet & Clank Future: Tools of Destruction opens with the bad guy showing up from out of nowhere and laying siege on Metropolis as Ratchet and Clank try desperately to escape as buildings collapse around them. - The prologue of The Reconstruction thrusts you into a dangerous, action-packed mission of boarding and fighting your way through an enemy ship. This is done with only a cursory introduction to the characters, and it's not really clear what's going on until the end of the prologue. - Red Faction: - Red Faction II starts with Alias, when he was one of Sopot's Elite Guards, infiltrating a military complex to steal the Nanocell. - Armageddon starts with Darius Mason during his time in the Red Faction military, years before the alien outbreak, fighting to prevent Adam Hale and his Apocalypse Cult from destroying the Terraformer. - Resident Evil: - Resident Evil 2: The first leg of the game is best described as a mad panic. You're in danger the second you begin playing, as a zombie is standing mere feet away from you, and if you don't start moving immediately, you'll likely get chomped. It doesn't slow down from there; everywhere you go pits you against an overwhelming number of zombies, and all you can do is shoot, run, and stab as best you can to get past them all. It's not until you get into the police station where things slow down and become more methodical. - Resident Evil Containment: While the prologue section starts off as a quiet jaunt through a seemingly abandoned lab, you're swarmed by zombies after restoring power to the facility. Fortunately, you have a sub-machine gun with infinite ammo at your side, so you're allowed to go hog wild against the undead. Unfortunately, come Chapter 1, your ammo is rendered limited and you're forced to be more careful and methodical with your resources. - Retro City Rampage starts with the Player, as an employee of The Jester, participating in a botched bank heist in 1985, before a time machine resembling the TARDIS drops in and whisks him away to 20XX. - Ride to Hell: Retribution opens with a montage of scenes from later in the game, two of which — a turret section and a fist fight — are playable. - River City Ransom: Underground's prologue acts as a flashback to the original River City Ransom. Taking place in the original game's final area, River City High, the player is put in the shoes of young Ryan or Alex and then goes through a Boss Rush of all of the original game's bosses, after which there is a Time Skip of 25 years and the game's plot begins properly. - RWBY: Grimm Eclipse lets you fight through a couple of waves of Grimm just to get the hang of things before Professor Port explains what you're doing out there in the first place. - The latter three Saints Row games each have one of these. - Saints Row 2 has the Boss escaping from jail, \|\|having spent the past five years — from the boat explosion at the end of the first game to the present — in a coma.\|\| - Saints Row: The Third has the Boss, Shaundi, Johnny Gat and Josh Birk performing a \|\|botched\|\| bank robbery. \|\|The bank's opulence compared to other buildings of its type marks it as one owned by the Syndicate, the game's antagonist faction. Surprisingly, Josh — the only one who hadn't robbed a bank before at this point — was the only one concerned by the bank's aesthetic enough to be suspicious.\|\| - Saints Row IV has the Boss in \|\|a military operation to kill Cyrus Temple, the now-disgraced former leader of the STAG military group from the previous game.\|\| By doing this and making use of their relative "hero" status, the Boss uses it as a stepping stone to obtain the Presidency, setting the scene for the rest of the game. - Sakura Wars: - Sakura Wars (1996) starts off with the famous scene of Sakura Shinguji entering Tokyo and slicing a Wakiji in half with her sword, Arataka. - Sakura Wars 4: Fall in Love, Maidens begins with the Flower Division fighting the demons in Tokyo. - The Distant Prologue of Sakura Wars (2019) depicts Sakura Shinguji rescuing a seven-year-old Sakura Amamiya from a demon attack. In the game proper, Seijuro Kamiyama arrives in Central Station via airship and encounters a demon attacking it. Kamiyama gets curb-stomped just before Xiaolong Yang arrives and kills it. - Sands of Destruction opens with you controlling Naja as he and Rajiv fight off Morte in Viteaux. It then cuts to Kyrie going about his normal business in Barni, picking up vegetables and hunting for sandcaps to cook (which naturally turns into fighting a sandwhale). - Shadow Complex begins with a man in a city with about half of the full set of equipment for a shootout with some troops and a helicopter. He is then killed, and the action switches to the actual player character, where the real Metroidvania part begins. - The beginning of Shelter 2 has the player guide Inna the lynx through the winter forest, as she is chased by wolves, to safety. Doing this, the player also learns the game's running and jumping controls. - Silent Hill 3 starts with Heather in a spooky amusement park, armed with very little in the way of weapons, and wondering where she is. If you either die or reach the end (which results in her dying in a cutscene), she wakes up and realizes it's just a dream. Much later in the game, you go to that very same amusement park for real. - Soldier of Fortune II's prologue mission throws you almost straight into the fray, with Mullins rescuing Dr. Ivanovich from a heavily-guarded hotel in Prague, then escaping with him across the countryside to a train station. - The first game also had an action prologue with a hostage situation in a New York subway, giving a sneak peak of one of the main villains at the end. - Sonic the Hedgehog: - In Sonic Adventure, the first accessable story campaign, Sonic's, opens with our hero going toe-to-toe with Chaos in the streets of Station Square. - Both campaigns in Sonic Adventure 2 pulls this: the Hero story opens with Sonic breaking out of captivity and escaping through the city, while the Dark story opens with Dr. Eggman blasting his way into a military base. - Sonic Unleashed starts off with Sonic infiltrating Eggman's flying fortress in space, wrecking havok on his robots and ships in the process with Chaos Emeralds in hand. However, this was all a trap to lure Sonic in and use the emeralds to open up the earth to awaken Dark Gaia, inadvertently turning Sonic into the Werehog in the process and being discarded back onto Earth. - Spec Ops: The Line opens with a helicopter gunner section before the scene turns into a short flashback, and beginning of the story proper. \|\|Later when the game turns surreal as a result of Walker's Sanity Slippage, you play this helicopter gunner section, and Walker mentions how he feels like he's done this before.\|\| - Sunset Overdrive begins 17 days before the main story with a linear tutorial level with the player performing Le Parkour on the rooftops to escape to their apartment as the Zombie Apocalypse begins. - Parodied in the Team Fortress 2 comic "A Fate Worse than Chess" with Explosition. - Tomb Raider: Underworld begins with Lara escaping her burning mansion, then skips ahead four days. - Most of the Uncharted games open with a very brief, enigmatic cutscene and then some kind of balls-out action sequence. - Uncharted: Drake's Fortune opens with Nate and Elena unearthing Sir Francis' journal in the middle of the ocean, when suddenly, pirates attack and the player has to defend the boat. - Uncharted 3: Drake's Deception opens with a bar brawl in an English pub populated by Mooks, after a deal goes bad. It's a great excuse to teach the player the new unarmed combat system. - Uncharted 4: A Thief's End begins with Nate and his brother Sam running away from mooks in a boat during a heavy storm. Nate then have to defend their exposed position when the boat broke down. - Vindictus begins with a siege on a bell tower against a giant spider. The Oracle, Tieve, wants to talk to the spider and find out why it's so frightened, so a group of soldiers, including you, are assigned to escort her to the top. Everyone is promptly ambushed by Gnolls after the leader of the soldiers finds a Fomorian Emblem, and everyone except you and Tieve are wounded or killed. The game then gives you control of your character and walks you through the combat system as you kill your way through the Gnolls and escort Tieve to the top of the tower, where you have to fight the spider as ballista spears rain down on the roof. - In The Walking Dead, Lee spends about three to four minutes in the back of a police cruiser before a collision with a walker sets him free and lands him in the middle of a Zombie Apocalypse. - The Wonderful 101 opens with a train-length school bus being attacked by aliens. The whole Prologue is spent on the high speed bus preventing it from flying off the bridge it is on and crashing in to an elementary school, all while the triumphant theme of the title hero team blares in the background. The first full level is calm relative to that, starting with the Wonderful Ones going through the suburbs, but Serial Escalation kicks in and the settings become more dramatic, surpassing the Prologue not too far in to the game. - Xenoblade Chronicles: - Xenoblade Chronicles 1 begins in the middle of the war against the Mechon, where you play as Dunban in the battle that would make him a legend among the peoples of Bionis. - Xenoblade Chronicles X opens with an interstellar war over Earth that ravages the planet and forces humanity to evacuate in massive ships, one of which is chased by the hostile aliens and forced to crash-land on the planet of Mira. - Xenoblade Chronicles 3 starts out in the middle of a battle between Keves and Agnus, establishing the Forever War between the two nations. - Yes, Your Grace: The very beginning of each playthough takes place during a version of the final siege in which the castle hasn't been upgraded with extra defenses and weapons, in which one of the decisions is whether to kill or spare a deserter. This gives the player a glimpse of the kind of decisions they will need to be able to make by the end of the game. By comparison, early game decisions (outside of those forced by the early part of the plot) are easier and matter much less to the bigger picture individually. - Alice Grove: The comic opens with a man running along a dirt road, until he sees a woman at the top of a wind turbine. She climbs down, but her rope snaps, and she falls... - Aquapunk starts off in the middle of a small, routine, military operation that goes painfully awry. Not only do unusual numbers of enemy casualties result, but the main character, Coron, winds up realizing that something's up and starts getting ideas that shape the decide the rest of the plot. - Charby the Vampirate's prologue is set in the 1600's wherein Charby escapes from a pirate ship, has his throat torn out by a sadistic vampire, returns as a vampire himself, kills a giant bear and returns to the pirate ship to slaughter his lifelong tormentors. The story then jumps forward over 300 years to 1994 to start the actual tale of the comic. - The Curse Of Gaea starts like this, where A and Shikamaru are being chased by monsters. - Furry Fight Chronicles has its first chapter devoted to showing what a furry fight is by showing Fenny and Roora, two Combagals, engage in a match. At the end of the chapter, Muko, the protagonist of the comic, is inspired to become a Combagal after Fenny pulls a comeback victory. - Pibgorn's arcs start this way, but they're so confusing they're pretty much Mind Screw prologues. For example, the latest arc began with a long-haired Pibgorn messing around with dewdrops in a meadow, with the panels interrupted by a giant rack-focused number 8 on a plain white background out of nowhere. It then switched to short-haired Pibgorn and Drucilla talking on a glacier (long-haired Pib is a flashback). Pib suddenly fainted then attacked Drucilla who fought back, and then the giant 8 explodes in a shower of Photoshop brushes. - Remus begins with a Right-Wing Militia Fanatic flying a plane into the White House, continues by showing the United States descending into a second Civil War, and then caps off the prologue with a glimpse of said war through someone's eyes. It then jumps 17 years forward, where the plot begins. - In Rusty and Co., level 4 and level 6 both begin with action — luring the cave monsters, and fighting bullywogs respectively. The first doesn't reappear until the end of the level. The second is a clue, but the bullywogs don't reappear. - The Sluggy Freelance story arc "Phoenix Rising" (well, the Oasis half of it, anyway) begins right away with Oasis fighting a group of convenience store robbers. Things then quiet down for a while, giving us time to know the characters, before the action starts up again when \|\|Nash Straw kills Lupae\|\|. - The Story of Anima starts with a few pages introducing characters, then the Bloody Flames attack and the action doesn't stop for a long time. - The Strongest Suit starts with the murder of Seven of Hearts at the hands of Five of Hearts (the motive of which becomes a central mystery throughout the comic). - Bay 12 RWBY Roleplay starts with the transport the future students are on being hit with a missile as their initiation. In that manner, it takes after its inspiration. - The pilot of Demo Reel starts off with a terrible parody of The Sixth Sense, but then morphs into Donnie and his friends dealing with the awful reaction to it and wanting to do something even bigger. - JourneyQuest opens with a Bard sneaking into an Orc camp, then doubles back to a more normal introduction when she asks, "what really happened?". - Ayla and the Birthday Brawl of the Whateley Universe starts with the Vindicators fighting their way through a base to confront a supervillain. When they lose, it's revealed to be a holographic simulation that is part of their Team Tactics course. - The entire American Dad! episode "Tearjerker" is a James Bond parody, the beginning specifically that of the opening sequence of The Spy Who Loved Me. - Batman: The Animated Series, "Pretty Poison": After the exposition-laden opening, the next sequence is Batman fighting his way through a ton of Irony that his friend Harvey Dent is unintentionally laying on as he describes Bruce Wayne's Idle Rich lifestyle. - The first episode of Gravity Falls features Dipper and Mabel crashing through a billboard in a golf cart as they try to escape from a mysterious, gigantic monster. The rest of the episode is dedicated to explaining the circumstances that led them into that situation. - The first episode of He-Man and the Masters of the Universe (2002) begins with a battle between Captain Randor and the Masters vs. Keldor and the Evil Warriors. The aftermath of this battle sets them up in their new roles: Captain Randor becomes the king of Eternia in place of the departed Elders while awaiting the appearance of a prophecized hero, and Keldor becomes the iconic villain Skeletor. - Green Eggs and Ham (2019) quickly establishes its status as a more action-packed version of the source material in the first episode's first scene, as a ninja breaks out the Chickeraffe out of a zoo. It's later revealed in the episode that this is none other than Sam-I-Am, trying to take the Chickeraffe back into the wild. - The series Slugterra opens with a slugslinging battle between Will Shane and Dr. Blakk. - Star Wars Rebels: - Star Wars Resistance: - "The Recruit", the series premiere, begins with three New Republic X-Wings in a dogfight against One-Man Army Major Vonreg of the First Order. - "Rendezvous Point" opens on a skirmish between the forces of the Colossus and the First Order in deep space. - The pilot episode of Star Wars: The Bad Batch starts with the Battle of Kaller, part of the Outer Rim Sieges.	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/OpeningActionSequence
Opening Shout-Out - TV Tropes Shout-Outs can reference pretty much anything — another person, another work of fiction, even another episode of the same show. One very popular target is to call back to the show's own opening sequence. Because a show's opening is well-known to the viewers, the joke requires relatively no setup. It's an instant punchline. For another thing, it nods towards the fact that the show is, in fact, a show, and that certain things are always the same, without fully breaking stride. When done with the show's theme song (or other music from its soundtrack), it's Diegetic Soundtrack Usage. ## Examples: - A later episode of Ergo Proxy incorporated its opening into a cold open. The characters unexpectedly find themselves taking part in a game show. Vincent is rapidly asked several trivia questions, culminating in "What is the title of this song?" - upon which we cut to the opening. And Vincent apparently knew the answer to that. - The Futari wa Pretty Cure opening features a shot in which Honoka is sitting on her porch, looking up at the night sky. One episode ended with a shot that was almost identical, except she was curled up and crying. (In a borderline case, there's also a specific scene of Cure Black and Cure White leaping that ended up being used as a piece of stock animation.) - Futari wa Pretty Cure Splash★Star's opening momentarily shows Mai, Flappi and Choppi at the beach, with Flappi being pinched by a crab. Naturally, this ended up actually happening to him when they actually went to the beach. - Yes! Pretty Cure 5 GoGo used a brief clip of Urara's mother onstage that's very similar to the one of Urara herself from the first season's opening. - The aforementioned stock animation piece of Cure Black and White leaping was used in the opening for the first All-Stars movie... and during the scene which it happens, the camera pans to all the other Cures (or at least the ones that everyone knew about when the movie was released) leaping with them. - The scene is done again in All-Stars DX 3, expanding the number of leaping Cures to 21. - The opening for HeartCatch Pretty Cure! shows Tsubomi and Erika walking to school and talking. They actually use that scene - at the very end of the series. - The Movie for Smile Pretty Cure! will give away a card featuring Miyuki in the exact same Cinderella dress she imagines herself in during the opening. - Also, episode 39 through 43 will show the stances we see the characters during the opening after the title is shown. - Pretty Cure All Stars New Stage has one scene where Cure Peace is bowing profusely to Cure Melody. It's a nod to Smile's ending credits where Peace does that towards March for landing on her. The movie's ending also has the Fresh, Heartcatch and Suite teams performing the last little bit of their first credits dance, even if they didn't do it in the original. - Lucky Star had the main cast performing a dance routine to the theme song in the last episode. - In Macross Frontier's \|\|final battle\|\|, sequences from both opening credits are used in the fight sequence. This crosses over with Diegetic Soundtrack Usage courtesy of Sheryl and Ranka singing a medley of their songs in support, which starts and ends with the previously-unused second OP. - The misleading opening of Magical Pokaan turns out to be the opening of another anime show the girls used to watch when they were young. - The end of the OP of Nagasarete Airantou shows a bird's eye view of the island while Ikuto is visibly seen being chased by the firls on the island. The end of the anime also features this exact same scene. - The 12th opening of One Piece ends with a shot of some of the notable Impel Down Escapees- namely, Buggy, Mr. 3, Mr. 1, Crocodile, Jimbei, Ivankov and Luffy- plummeting down from the sky as they enter Marineford. When that happens in anime episode 465, they show it exactly the same way. - Pani Poni Dash!: The weird-colored fuses in the "Yellow Vacation" opening are shown briefly in one episode. - In an episode of Planetes, Hachimaki gets "space sickness" and starts losing his mind. One of his hallucinations is of him riding a bike, as he does in the ending theme. - Actually a serious example: Wolf's Rain visually references the opening credits in the final scene of the anime — as if that one moment is what the show built up to/was about all along. The opening song starts playing near the end as well. - Dragon Ball Z: - The Ginyu Forces pods crashing down on planet Namek is reminiscent of the alien entities (likely Saiyan pods) that descend to the Earth in Cha La Head Cha La. - when Goku is fighting Cell, while powering up he goes on to make the exact same movements he does during the anime's first opening theme song, with the key difference being that here he's in Super Saiyan form. - In the end of the final episode of Overman King Gainer, Anna decides that a song should be written about the main hero. She proceeds to start doing the monkey dance, something she does in the opening alongside other characters. She also starts singing the opening song. - In the last episode of JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Battle Tendency, the now-old Joseph Joestar, at the airport, muses that he likes listening to his Walkman. What music does he listen to? Bloody Stream, the opening song of JJBA Part 2! - In the final seconds of Kill la Kill's last episode, Ryuko looks towards the camera in the middle of a busy crowd like in the first ending (which is playing in the last scene). This time though, she smiles as she turns away. - Pokémon has an ending shout out for Serena's Master Class showdown with Aria — the start of it mimics the start of the third XY ending song, "DreamDream", only now Fennekin has evolved and Sylveon has joined the ranks. To top it off, the BGM during the performance is the same song (slightly remixed) and sung by Serena's seiyuu. - In the 20th movie I Choose You!, \|\|during a dream Ash has after losing his first battle,\|\| one of the characters \|\|answers his question of what's out there\|\| by saying that there's grass, water, forests, clouds and ground, a reference to the film's theme song "Mezase Pokémon Master". Surprisingly, this was kept in the dubbed version of the film despite said version using a different song. - Nyaruko: Crawling with Love! actually turns this into a Running Gag, where the first episode of each series will have Nyarko quote a line from the previous series' theme song; for the first anime season, she quotes the theme from the Flash-animated web series Nyaruani. The final OVA does this with both the first and the second season's openings in the same sentence. - The final episode of Miss Kobayashi's Dragon Maid recreates the shot in the opening where Tohru runs towards Kobayashi and hugs her \|\|after her father leaves.\|\| - In episode 24 of The Idolmaster, Haruka races to the 765 office building where all her groupmates are waiting for her like in the second opening, happy to see she made it. The scene takes place at night rather than the early morning, though, as the group wanted to get together in order to let Haruka know they're still trying to stay together as much as they can. - The Seitokai Yakuindomo movie does this twice. When Shino is being interviewed at the beginning, the last part of her speech that the audience hears is "Are you aware of the meaning of cherry blossoms?", which the first line of the second season's opening. Then in the post-credits scene, she's seen standing under a cherry blossom tree in the exact same pose as the second season's credits. - A Cardcaptor Sakura anime short depicts the show's first opening as a music video made by Tomoyo. - The last episode of Yatterman Night has the Doronbo Gang use an explosion as a getaway while falling towards the sea, recreating the end of the opening. - Lamput: One of the Season 1 episodes takes place within the series intro, where Lamput blends in with the series logo to avoid the docs. Fat Doc reappears and double-checks the "t" that Lamput morphs into, only to destroy the rest of the logo in the process. - Adventure Time: - The opening pages of the first issue replicate the show's opening flight over the Land of Ooo, with the implication that Jake is filming it with a video camera. The next couple of pages include Jake jumping on Finn's head and Finn riding a giant Jake through the mountains, replicating the first two sequences of the credit sequence proper. Later in the arc, the opening flight is replicated with Scenery Gorn to show the effects of the Lich's attack. - Inverted with the opening pages of Ryan North's final issue, which have Finn and Jake watching insects and challenging Marceline to write a song about them, which refers to the show's closing credits and the lyrics of its closing theme, "Island Song". - The opening panels of the third of the Adventure Time Graphic Novels, Seeing Red. We see through Jake's eyes as he surprises Marceline, while she's playing her bass, and she turns and snarls at him in shock, replicating Marcie's appearance in the opening sequence. - Done several times in The Simpsons: - A Bart Simpson story has the family cat Snowball II gaining superpowers after swallowing a plutonium rodspecifically, the one Homer threw out his car window after finding it caught in his shirt collar. - "Cloud 13," a one-page story in Treehouse of Horror #15, depicts the show's intro sequence as a recurring nightmare experienced by the whole family, pointing out Fridge Horror aspects of the situations they're in (and depicting the checkout guy who scans Maggie as a demonic entity from the neck up). Lisa: Doc, I keep having the same nightmare. Everyone in my family keeps trying to get to this couch... Bart: And every night I'm punished. I wake up covered in chalk dust. Homer: I'm being poisoned by a radioactive dowel, and then my son tries to behead me. - A crossover with the Futurama comic did one to that show's intro, in which Lisa remarks on a billboard in New New York and Fry comments that Leela crashes into it "every week." - In the Series Fauxnale of Arrested Development, Michael comments on how they'll have to try having "no choice but to keep them all together" without him. The narrator even chimes in with "It was Arrested Development" while a snippet of the theme plays. - Arrow: In "Draw Back Your Bow", Ray Palmer's speech announcing the rebranding of Queen Consolidated reworks a couple key phrases from Oliver's opening narration: Palmer: All of us are working very hard with one goal in mind: to save our city. But to do so, Queen Consolidated needs to be something else. - The final scene of As the World Turns ends with the globe on Dr. Bob Hughes's desk spinning quietly in the dark of his office, alluding to the rotating Earth present in all of the soap's various opening sequences. - The Babylon 5 episode "There All The Honor Lies", Ivanova is frustrated over having to oversee the new Babylon 5 gift shop, which she sees as a cheap moneygrab, and parodies the "last best hope for peace" line from the Opening Narration. In the same quote, the writers also get a dig in at another show B5 was competing against... Susan Ivanova : Welcome to Babylon 5, the last, best hope for a quick buck! Captain John Sheridan : Commander - Susan Ivanova : Oh, this is demeaning! I mean, we're not some - some deep space franchise , this station is about something! - Broad City: The Teaser of "The Matrix" ends with Abbi and Ilana both shouting "Four!" which leads directly into the theme song: "...and three and two and one-one." - Brooklyn Nine-Nine: Jake's plan in the final two episodes was to end the heist at the Brooklyn Bridge, claiming that it has great sentimental value for the team. When Amy asks when they were ever at the Bridge, the camera cuts to the Team Power Walk shot from the title sequence, with the bridge in the background. - Burn Notice - In the first-season finale "Loose Ends", a drug dealer that Michael is threatening wants to know who he is; Michael, in no mood for a cover ID, simply quotes his opening narration: "I'm Michael Westen. I used to be a spy." It gets a Call-Back four seasons later in "Enemy of My Enemy", when the dealer shows up again; one of his henchmen demands to know who the hell Michael is, and the dealer repeats the line. - A fourth season episode has Michael, asked to state his name and occupation for a polygraph, respond "My name is Michael Westen. I used to be a spy." - In the series finale, Fiona ("Shall we shoot them?") and Sam ("You know spies: bunch of bitchy little girls") quote their lines from the opening sequence. The final line of the show is Fiona suggesting "My name is Michael Westen. I used to be a spy" as a starting point when Michael tells his story to his nephew/adopted son Charlie. - One episode of Castle has Beckett tell Castle "You still kinda remind me a little of Hooch", a call back to a line of dialogue from an early episode, used in the season two opening sequence montage. - In Covert Affairs episode "Suffragette City" Annie is dreaming \|\|in a hospital bed after being shot\|\|. In the dream, she dances and then swipes a key card to open a door while smirking at the camera - just like in the opening sequence. - Crazy Ex-Girlfriend: - In the episode "That Text Was Not Meant for Josh!", when Paula starts telling her husband about Rebecca, they quote the entire first season opening, complete with the show's title appearing at the end of the scene (this was set up by the fact that the regular theme and title were not where they were supposed to be). - The lyrics of the Season 2 theme song ("I'm just a girl in love / I can't be held responsible for my actions / I have no underlying issues to address / I'm certifiably cute and adorably obsessed!") are quoted in the Season 2 finale during a flashback to \|\|Rebecca's court case for setting her professor and ex-lover's house on fire\|\|, when Naomi pleads for leniency ("She's just a girl in love. She can't be held responsible for her actions!") and Rebecca rejects \|\|court-mandated therapy\|\| ("I have no underlying issues to address"). - Season 3's theme song ends with Rebecca in the bathroom watching the theme song on her phone and reacting with a Flat "What". This ends up being a scene in the show proper, in the episode "Josh is Irrelevant." - Season 2's theme sequence makes an appearance in Season 3, when Trent does his own, genderbent rendition. - The series finale musical number "Eleven O'Clock" features short reprises of several songs from the series, with Rebecca gazing upon the outfits she wore in those musical numbers. The first three songs she references are the Season 1, 2, and 3 theme songs. The Season 4 theme song and its accompanying outfit are the last to appear, though Rebecca doesn't sing along and simply looks upon the outfit. - The series finale also has Rebecca reference the Season 4 theme song, "Meet Rebecca!", in her ending monologue. Rebecca: For the first time in my life, I am truly happy. It's like I just met myself. Like I just met Rebecca. - In the last Non-Distant Finale of Dawson's Creek, Pacey dug up some old tapes that Dawson had made and lo and behold, it was the opening credits of the first season (sans music and credits). - In the Distant Finale we're shown a small peek of Dawson's TV Show The Creek, and the female lead literally speaks some of the lyrics to the theme song, asking to 'know right now what will it be'. - Dexter: - In the second-season finale, we see the title character go through almost the exact same morning routine as is shown in the opening credits. He shaves, prepares breakfast and embraces his life. - In the fourth season premiere, Dexter does several of the same actions from the opening, but after losing much sleep from raising his son, his usual routine is "off". - On The Dick Van Dyke Show, Laura once tells Rob that she can't even count the amount of times he's tripped over the ottoman while walking in the front door - exactly as he did in the iconic opening credits. - Doctor Who: - Any appearance of the Time Vortex in-episode during Russell T. Davies' tenure as showrunner, since the Title Sequence of that era was the TARDIS travelling through the Vortex. - "The Pandorica Opens" has a title sequence-adjacent shot of the TARDIS, piloted by River, flying through the Vortex while being struck by lightning. - "Time Heist" opens with a glimpse of the opening credits, which usually don't air until after the teaser... and is immediately revealed to come from the Doctor looking into Clara's tumble dryer. - Donkey Hodie: In "Growing the Ungrowdenia", Donkey climbs up the titular flower just like she does with the flower in the theme song to the show. - After four seasons of Farscape had culminated in a TV movie, Crichton spends one of his first scenes in that movie addressing some suspicious aliens by quoting his Opening Narration: "My name is John Crichton, astronaut..." He also prefaces by saying "For the 89th time!" There had been 88 episodes up to that point. - In Flight of the Conchords, when Jemaine gets a girlfriend, the montage of them together shows her timing him on his exercise bike, which Bret had done for him in the opening. Then a lonely Bret is shown timing nobody. - The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air (a fan of all forms of Breaking the Fourth Wall): - There's an episode where Will goes back to West Philadelphia, where he fights an old bully who he describes as the "dude who be spinnin' me over his head in the opening credits." - In a more subtle example, the show's pilot begins exactly where the opening credits end, with Will first at the doorstep of his aunt and uncle. - In the finale of Life on Mars, Sam Tyler repeats the show's opening dialogue almost exactly, but in a completely different context. - In Madan Senki Ryukendo's Time Travel-slash-Recap Episode, Kenji is explaining to Fudou about the exploits that he has yet to do, having somehow traveled into the past. Fudou briefly imagines a title sequence to a show about him, complete with title card. Kenji quickly corrects him, leading into the eyecatch. - The My Name Is Earl episode "Buried Treasure" features a parody of Earl's opening narration with accompanying song and edited logo done by no fewer than four characters over the span of the episode, first by Randy, then Joy, then Crabman, and finally a librarian named Dotty for The Stinger. - The Nanny: - The Noddy Shop: In the song "A What If World", one of the lines Island Princess sings is "When you make believe it all comes true", which is a shout out to her verse in the theme song, "A place where make believe comes true". - Inverted in an episode of Red Dwarf. The characters are putting together a jigsaw puzzle, but we don't see what it is until the episode's final shot: it's a view of the ship, and it leads seamlessly into the closing credits. - In the opening narration note : See the series page to read it of Remington Steele, Laura recounts how she "invented a superior...", how a charming conman stepped in and assumed the Steele identity, and how "now I do the work and he takes the bows." - In one episode, she needs to convince someone that she wants to betray her boss, which she does by complaining "I do the work, he takes the bows. The guy wouldn't even exist without me, I practically invented him!" - When character Mildred Krebs joined the cast, she was unaware that Steele was secretly a fraud — until the next season's premiere episode, when Laura snaps and tells Mildred the whole story. Not only does her explanation draw heavily from that opening narration, but it also recaps the pilot episode. - Sesame Street - One sketch features Don Music trying to rewrite the theme song, frustrated that he can't find anything to rhyme with "sweet". - In the opening of the film Follow That Bird, upon hearing that Big Bird has no legal guardians, Miss Finch goes off to find him, asking one of the fellow executives at the foster care board "Can you tell me how to get to Sesame Street?", which is then followed by a shot of the street set built for the film, accompanied by an orchestral version of the iconic theme song. - Star Trek: The Next Generation: In "The Measure Of A Man", as Picard is standing up for Data's personhood in a hearing, he says "Your Honor, Starfleet was founded to seek out new life. Well, there it sits! Waiting.", referencing the "Space, the final frontier..." monologue that opens every episode of TNG, which includes the line "To seek out new life and new civilizations...". - At the beginning of an episode of Veronica Mars, Veronica describes another girl with, "We used to be friends, a long time ago." This segues immediately into the opening credits, which begin with the Dandy Warhols singing, "A long time ago, we used to be friends ..." - Weeds: In one episode, when Shane complains about having to go to a new school, Nancy tells him "You're going to go to school and become a doctor or a lawyer or a business executive," a Shout-Out to the show's former Real Song Theme Tune, "Little Boxes". - Xena: Warrior Princess: - The scene with Poseidon in the opening eventually resulted in an episode getting made specifically to feature it. - In the episode "The Greater Good", Xena is incapacitated and Gabrielle has to take her place. She pulls on Xena's armour in the same way Xena does in the opening titles, complete with title music. - Upon defeating Galacta Knight and clearing Meta Knightmare Ultra in Kirby Super Star Ultra, you'll unlock a hidden video, "Fly! Meta Knight." It is, in its entirety, the KSSU opening video - except that, instead of Kirby, Meta Knight flies through Dream Land. - Also, if the last mode you played before shutting off the game was Meta Knightmare Ultra, the regular opening video will be replaced by this upon turning it on again. - One of the secret levels of Super Mario World is modeled after the opening sequence. - In Sonic Generations the opening cutscene to the fight against Shadow is a clear nod to the opening of Sonic Adventure 2 Battle. - The Angry Video Game Nerd: - Atop the Fourth Wall: - Upon seeing that the Gunslinger had a magic gun as well, Linkara asked "Hey, you have a magic gun? Where'd you purchase that!?" - When ranting about how strange his life is in The Movie, Linkara says that he has a magic gun; Allen asks "Where'd you purchase that, anyway?" Linkara is unamused. - Inverted with Zero Punctuation. The title sequence starts with a flood of sentences from his first reviews from before the sequence was first implemented. - The Simpsons often does this. - In "Cape Feare", when the Simpsons go into the witness protection program mid-show, a new opening for "The Thompsons" is run, styled after the normal opening. - In "Hurricane Neddy", an opening for "The Hurricane" plays when a hurricane hits Springfield. This one lacked the Couch Gag, though. - In "Lisa's Date with Density", Lisa is punished by writing on the chalkboard in detention, resulting in her saying... Lisa: Oh, how does Bart do this every week? - In "Skinner's Sense of Snow", Bart forces Skinner to write "I ain't not a dorkus" (which Skinner calls "a grammatical nightmare"). Bart also shows little sympathy to Skinner's complaints about a cramp in his wrist, demonstrating that all his years of doing it have left Bart with a wrist that "sounds like a cement mixer". - In "Please Homer, Don't Hammer 'Em", Bart once again forces Skinner to write lines ("A baby beat me up") after discovering that he is allergic to peanuts and threatening him with one, in a similar shot to the opening. - Done again in "Marge vs. Singles, Seniors, Childless Couples and Teens and Gays". Maggie has gotten addicted to an annoying children's song, and Bart tries to stay at school so he doesn't have to hear it. He begs Mrs. Krabappel to make him write some convoluted standard on the blackboard; she responds with "We all got tired of that chalkboard years ago!" - In "Mathlete's Feat", Bart begins writing "I will not", when the chalkboard is taken out and replaced by a high-tech smartboard. Bart writes "I will not fight the future", and taps it twice to fill up the entire board. He double-taps it to invert the colors a few times, then walks out, satisfied. - Discussed in "Adventures in Baby-Getting", Bart is suspicious of where Lisa is going after school (it turns out to be a cursive writing class). He asks what she does Tuesdays and Thursdays after school — Lisa asks the same question back. Bart: Write stupid stuff on the chalkboard. And if you have any ideas, I'm really running out. Today's was "mousetraps are not slippers" or something. Now what are you up to? Lisa: A gentleman doesn't ask and a lady doesn't tell. Bart: Can I use that on the chalkboard? Lisa: I guess. - Lisa's segment in "Simpsons Bible Stories" features an Ancient Egyptian Bart chiseling pictograms (it translates to "I will not deface—") onto a stone chalkboard. - Also referenced in "The Parent Rap". "Nobody reads these anymore." - Done again in "The Heartbroke Kid", when Bart is overweight after the school installs candy machines. Instead of writing lines, he's feeding the machine, then the bell rings, there's the usual quick pan to the main doors... and we wait because he's so much slower now. As he skateboards, the sidewalk breaks under his weight, and when he finally makes it home, he takes forever to make it inside before finally collapsing from a heart attack. - In "Peeping Mom", Bart tries to get away from a stalking Marge. Like in the HD opening, he rides his skateboard past Sideshow Bob, Helen Lovejoy, Apu and his kids, Moe, Comic Book Guy, Disco Stu, Crazy Cat Lady, Rich Texan and Chief Wiggum, while Marge rides a bike over Moleman (she couldn't use the car because Homer threw the carburetor at a skunk). Afterwards, Moe says that they can all go inside his bar now that he's passed them again. - Midway through "Little Big Girl", Bart writes "So long, suckers" on the chalkboard and exits driving Homer's car. After running down pedestrians on the street, it cuts to the garage scene, where Homer is now driving Marge's orange car. As he gets out, Bart lands the car on top of him. - Similarly to the Cape Feare and Hurricane Neddy examples, At Long Last Leave had a special The Outlands version of the opening which plays after the Simpsons are banished to the outlands, complete with Couch Gag. - A pivotal plot point in "Itchy & Scratchy: The Movie" is that Maggie, who in the intro briefly appears to be driving Marge's car, actually ends up at the wheel after Bart takes his eyes off her for two seconds. - Futurama: - One episode points out Leela's propensity for crashing into billboards (even though the only time she does it in-show is when they point it out) — which happens during the opening sequence. - Done again in the sixth season "The Duh Vinci Code", as an extended The Da Vinci Code parody takes the crew to Rome. Their arrival in "Future-Roma" is a brief homage to their own credit sequence, including an ecclesiastical version of the show's theme. - The ending of "Into The Wild Green Yonder" has the Planet Express Ship fly into a wormhole that takes the form of the pattern of blue lights that appear during every opening sequence. - Gravity Falls: In "Not What He Seems", Dipper and Mabel are seen floating in their bedroom while an 8-ball floats past, in homage to the theme song. - My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic: - The picture of the Mane Six that Spike sends to Celestia in the opening is also located above Twilight's fireplace in the season 3 finale. - The end of the opening sequence is essentially recreated at the end of "Crusaders of the Lost Mark". - In "The Last Problem", Twilight sings that she "used to wonder what friendship could be" during the final song of the series, "The Magic of Friendship Grows". The accompanying sequence also counts in a roundabout way: it begins with Twilight meeting up with her friends, shows what all of Equestria's residents do throughout the day, gives the Mane Six time to show off their interests, and ends on a picture of all of them together. - Animaniacs (2020): - While trying to solve the mystery of what happened to Wakko's donuts, Yakko suggests that they go back the beginning. Smash cut to the beginning of the opening theme, which makes Yakko confused and stops the theme song. - In the Season 3 premiere, \|\|Nora, now a security guard, successfully locks the Warners in their tower\|\|. Dot complains, "You know, this really isn't much of a show when they take away the plot where 'we break loose and then vamoose,'" referencing the Expository Theme Tune. - Phineas and Ferb: - In the episode "Oil on Candace," the boys help a friend paint a giant painting on a sand dune while an instrumental version of the theme song plays. One of the tools they use are the giant helicopter-mounted paint rollers used during the "painting a continent" part of the title sequence. - This bit from "Swiss Family Phineas": - In "Canderemy" when Phineas and Ferb make a giant robotic dog (also in the opening), but Buford wanted to give a monkey a shower. - In "Fireside Girls Jamboree," one of the merit badges Candace earns is for "discovering something that doesn't exist," in this case a puppy-dog-eyed version of the unicorn/turtle thing from the appropriate part of the opening. - In "Phineas and Ferb's Quantum Boogaloo," Bowling for Soup show up and perform a bit from the extended version of the show's Theme Tune, when a time traveling Phineas and Ferb are explaining to their future nephews what they could be doing during summer. - In "Last Train to Bustville," Phineas spots a dodo (created by Doofenshmirtz's newest machine) and produces a list containing everything mentioned in the theme song, then checks it off. Buford then claims that he found Frankenstein's brain in the basket of his balloon. - In "Norm Unleashed," Phineas and Ferb build a colony of remote-controlled nano-bots and make them spell out the words "HELLO THERE!" to which Buford responds "Yeah, yeah, main title, whatever." - In The Movie, the song "Summer (Where Do We Begin?)" briefly segues into the opening theme. - In the Season 2 finale of Milo Murphy's Law, as Milo approaches a storm made from pure negative probability, the last few notes of the theme song play and an alien billboard falls in front of him, an O-like letter falling off with Milo climbing up to where the O-like letter was, carrying an "O" sign, just like how the theme song ends with the show's title falling right out of the sky in front of Milo, who replaces the fallen O with his sign. - In the episode of Dave the Barbarian where the Dark Lord Chuckles the Silly Piggy usurps control of the show by enslaving the Lemony Narrator, halfway through we are treated to new rendition of the show's opening credits and theme song, now celebrating Chuckles as the central character. - The Fairly Oddparents - In the middle of the Recess episode "Lawson and his Crew," a version of the theme song plays with Lawson's crew replacing the regular main characters. - Bounty Hamster, episode "Twin Cheeks": The first appearance of Cassie's Mirror Universe counterpart is accompanied by a Mirror Universe version of the series's Opening Narration. - One episode of Rocky and Bullwinkle has Rocky do the flying trick shown in the opening titles. - One of the more bizarre examples occurs in Super Robot Monkey Team Hyper Force Go where Gyrus Krinkle imagines himself in Chiro's position from the show's opening narration, while wearing a foam head bearing Chiro's likeness. - Rocko's Modern Life: - In "Fortune Cookie", Filburt, who is cursed with bad luck, decides to go on with playing on the game show he was chosen for. Naturally, when he spins the wheel, it goes off its hinges and starts to go on a rolling rampage of destruction, running over various scenes, including the last part of the opening sequence (where everybody's chasing Rocko), cutting off the theme song as it does so. - Also parodied in the end of "Heff in a Handbasket" where Peaches is starring in a cartoon show "Peaches' Modern Life." - In "Boob Tubed", a small snippet of the theme song is played while Heffer is channel surfing. - Static Cling sees Rocko, Heffer, and Filburt going through an modernized version of the intro during their montage of getting used to the new O-Town. - The South Park episode "Chef Aid" features guest appearances by many artists and bands, including Primus, the band that composed and performed the theme song. It is Les Claypool's only appearance in the show... apart from being seen in the intro for the first four seasons, and being heard singing the theme song in every season, that is. - The Powerpuff Girls (1998): In the episode "Oops, I Did It Again," after the Professor tiredly accepts his fate as the "accidental professor," the beginning of the subsequent Dream Sequence is like the opening of the show, except there's no accidental injection of Chemical X, and the girls turn out to be the "Run of the Mill Girls," who "dedicate their lives to just hanging around and doing nothing extraordinary." Unlike most of the examples here, this one is a more complete replicate of the opening, even including a "Created by the Professor" credit in place of Craig McCracken. - In the final episode of The Replacements, Todd and Riley quote the theme song when \|\|revealing their secret to Tasumi and Jacobo\|\|. - Happens in the My Gym Partner's a Monkey episode "The Notorious Windsor Gorilla" with the credits re-done as My Gym Partner's a Gorilla and featuring Windsor instead of Jake. - When asked on The Cleveland Show if he ever wondered if the world would be better without him, Cleveland imagines Quagmire in the opening. - A Cafepress design featuring The Garfield Show contains a possible shout out to the very first theme song of Garfield and Friends, with the phrase "Friends are there when you need them," referencing the line "Friends are there when you need them, they're even there when you don't!" - When the title character of Where on Earth Is Carmen Sandiego? got put on trial for stealing the Magna Carta, Zack and Ivy recall that on the day the document was apparently stolen, Carmen was busy trying to steal the Statue of Liberty. They use a clip of the intro to recap the event. - The Marvelous Misadventures of Flapjack: In "Two Old Men and A Lock Box", when Richard and Michard start to explain how they came to be in their current predicament, we are treated to new version of the opening credits and theme song that identifies Richard and Michard as the K'nuckles and Flapjack of their generation. Hilariously sang off-key and without the music matching the voices or the new names. - Family Guy: - In the episode "Vestigial Peter", Peter is outraged when his vestigial twin brother Chip joins the family in singing the theme song. - In another episode, in one of his drunken stupors, Peter makes a nod to the controversy regarding the lyric "laugh and cry" being misheard as "f-ing cry". - In Disney's The Reboot, one of the potential reboots the show gets includes Chris married to Tricia Takanawa and living together. The "reboot" begins with the theme song, with only Chris, Joe and Bonnie making appearances and Chris singing his lines. - In a parody of this, one episode has a Cutaway Gag where fellow Seth MacFarlane show American Dad! has its intro redone with Family Guy's Joe Swanson replacing Stan Smith. - In "All About Alana", as a sign of Alana's growing obsession with taking Lois' place, at one point she's shown practicing Lois' part on the piano, complete with camera angles. - In the American Dad! episode "Stan Goes On the Pill", the scene where Francine crashes into the CIA exterior sign mimics the show's opening sequence. - Ben 10/Generator Rex: Heroes United: Before the crossover part of the special begins, Rex sings his own version of the original Ben 10 theme song. Rex: It started when the nanites went ka-pow upon the scene! Transforming all the life on Earth like nothing that you've seen! But there's one lucky hombre who can make them build machines! He's Gen Rex! - Fanboy and Chum Chum: In "Attack of the Clones" when Cloneboy and Chum Clone (the clone counterparts of the boys) taste the Frosty Freezy Freeze, we get a reenactment of the "brain freeze" sequence from the opening theme. - In the first episode of Metalocalypse, the first meeting of The Tribunal features Senator Stampsington describing the band using the show's Theme Tune Roll Call: "Skwisgaar Skwigelf, taller than a tree. Toki Wartooth, not a bumblebee. William Murderface, Murderface, Murderface. Pickles the Drummer, doodily doo, ding dong, doodily doodily doo. Nathan Explosion." - In the Avatar: The Last Airbender episode "The Siege of the North, Part 1", when Aang decides to actively fight against the Fire Nation invasion, there is a shot from behind of him holding his staff, followed by a pan up into the sky, which is identical to that at the end of the opening sequence. - The Animaniacs short "Cute First (Ask Questions Later)" has Snow White having two of her dwarfs kidnapping Dot after her magic mirror says she's cuter than her. The dwarfs are then shown kidnapping Dot while she and her brothers are acting out the theme song. - In the Scaredy Squirrel episode "The Talented Mr. Peacock", where Scaredy's everyday life is being disrupted by a peacock who is copying his every movie, a nearly beat-for-beat recreation of the show's intro happens at one point only with Mr. Peacock instead of Scaredy. Even better is what happens immediately after: Scaredy: (stands there in stunned silence) Dave: Scaredy Squirrel is a character created by Melanie Watt. note : This phrase is usually spoken by an announcer at the end of the intro. - Wander over Yonder: In "The Fremergency Fronfract", Lord Hater (who is loopy from a dental procedure) has a Good-Times Montage with Wander and Sylvia, including a re-make of the intro that includes Hater. This is interrupted when Hater stares up in shock and dismay when he sees the Skullship. - Steven Universe: - In "The New Crystal Gems", Connie, Lapis, Peridot, and Pumpkin stand in for the Crystal Gems while they're out. When they run out to investigate potential trouble, they reenact the sequence from the show's first opening, with the Gems running while Steven/Connie rushes from the back of the line to the front. - In "Change Your Mind", the Crystal Gems recreate the campfire from the second opening at the end. The last shot of the series is the gang sitting together as Steven plays his ukulele. - Steven Universe: The Movie has the Gems reenact the first opening's running sequence again during "Happily Ever After", this time with Steven starting at the front. - Samurai Jack - In "Jack's Sandals", Jack meets a traditional Japanese family, whose children are huge fans of Jack. The son quotes the theme song, even going "Wah-chout!" - In the episode "Jack and the Baby", while looking for the baby's parents, Jack arrives in the city with the blue creatures wearing fezzes from the intro. - In episode "CI", \|\|Aku plays the original intro to the show, Mako narration and all, to the world as a lead-in to his announcement that Jack has been captured and will soon be executed. This is a rare example of this trope being played for drama.\|\| - Arthur: - In "And Now Let's Talk to Some Kids", Mr. Ratburn's class is going to be on TV, and Francine doesn't think Brain will be very entertaining. An Imagine Spot shows Brain in the show's intro. He begins "walking down the street" like the intro usually begins, but he quickly stops to sit down and think, halting the song. - Later in the same episode, Buster takes the place of Arthur when he's in the TV and says "Hey! D.W.!" and she yells "Hey!". Instead of falling backwards, Buster falls forward and out of the TV. This prompts D.W. to exclaim that she was right and tiny people do live inside the TV. - In "The Frensky Family Fiasco", Francine appears in the intro instead of Arthur. Arthur stops her, and Francine argues that she should be able to open the show since Arthur always does. Buster and D.W. want to host the opening, too. - In "The Making of Arthur", Matt Damon wants to make Arthur into a real TV show. The first thing he records is a shot of Arthur walking down the street with Pal... which describes the first part of the theme song. - "Arthur's Toy Trouble" begins with a shot of Arthur walking on top of the Earth (mirroring a shot at the end of the theme song), until he suddenly stops and notices a present in his backyard. - In "The Shore Thing", Arthur's family and classmates take a trip to the beach. Sue Ellen is scared by Mr. Ratburn swimming by, mistaking his nose for a shark fin. Something similar happens in the show's theme song, but with Brain getting scared instead. - My Life as a Teenage Robot - In "Pajama Party Prankapalooza", When Brit and Tiff discuss what prank they should pull at their annual slumber party, Jenny is humming the theme song at the hallway as she gets her books from her locker. - SpongeBob SquarePants: - In the special "Truth or Square", the intro is talked about when the special mentions that SpongeBob was not the original starring character for the show. The theme song is briefly shown in three different variants; one with Squidward, another with Patrick, and a third with Mr. Krabs. All three of them fail to make it through the song, hence why SpongeBob was chosen. - In the episode "Unreal Estate" the intro repeats thrice as SpongeBob briefly imagines himself living in a few different houses. The first is a banana, followed by a hot pepper, followed by a chicken parmesan hero. In each situation he finds something wrong. He slips on a banana peel in the banana, comes out of the hot pepper on fire, and becomes fat and out of shape within the chicken sandwich. He rejects all three houses. - In "Old Man Patrick", SpongeBob helps Patrick remember who he is by re-enacting the opening theme. - In the episode "Handemonium", after several failures to stop the now-living Chum Bucket glove, Plankton tells SpongeBob to "keep his pants on", which gives him an idea. SpongeBob then proceeds to remove his pants (to Plankton's chagrin) and sings the first line of the theme song, summoning Hans the live-action hand to give him his pants, as he does when SpongeBob opens his front door during the opening. He then asks Hans to assist them in defeating the glove (because, as Plankton soon realizes, to beat a giant glove, you need an equally huge hand). - In the Bob's Burgers episode "Bob Actually", Gene develops a crush on an Italian lunchlady. When he finally tries dark chocolate, he has a fantasy in which he marries her and opens a chocolate factory thats having its Grand Re-Re-Opening, much like the Bobs restaurant in the opening credits. - Bojack Horseman - The episode "It's You" has Bojack drunkenly drive a car that was in his living room in reverse into the pool, at which point he had to be revived by Mr. Peanutbutter. This mirrors the sequence in the opening sequence where he drunkenly falls backwards into the pool, to the shock and worry of Diane and Mr. Peanutbutter. - The episode "Stupid Piece Of Shit" has one of Bojack's Inner Monologues involve \|\|his assumed daughter, but in reality half-sister, Hollyhock\|\| drowning in a pool in the same manner as the intro. - The episode "The View from Halfway Down" also has Bojack falling into his pool while drunk. However, it's more dire since \|\|the episode is Bojack's Dying Dream since he's drowning with nobody around to help him. And that he didn't fall, he willingly went in to drown\|\|. - Adventure Time: \|\|The final shot of the series has Shermy and Beth recreating the last shot of the theme song.\|\| - We Bare Bears: The last video in "More Everyone's Tube" has the Bears and some of their friends joining Estelle in performing an extended, a capella version of the show's theme song, "We'll Be There". - OK K.O.! Let's Be Heroes - In "OK Dendy! Let's Be KO", Dendy's transformation into KO is done in the style of the last few seconds of the intro. - In the second part of "You're in Control", \|\|after Boxman is shot into space by Lord Cowboy Darrell,\|\| we can see the "OK KO" and "A CARTOON NETWORK ORIGINAL" text from the intro in the background. "Let's Fight 'Till The End" further confirms that the text from the intro really does physically exist in-universe, floating next to the planet in space. - In the Distant Finale "Thank You For Watching the Show", Dendy references the theme song's lyric "you fight 'till the end, you are my best friend" nearly word-for-word. Dendy: We fought 'till the end. You are all my best friends. - Regular Show: In the final episode, \|\|after escaping from the student film of his origin, Pops has to navigate the series' title card, dodging the letters that form the show's name while flying to Mordecai and Rigby's aid.\|\| - In the Danger Mouse episode "Groundmouse Day", Count Duckula is controlling time from the Westminster clock tower, and uses this to frame DM for his crimes. Penfold uses the same time machine to travel back to the start of the adventure, but repeatedly finds that nothing he does makes a difference. He then realises he needs to travel back even earlier, and ends up in the opening credits, where he seizes control of the Danger Car in the "driving past London landmarks" bit and drives it to the clock to confront Duckula before his plan has even started. - In Elena of Avalor, the intro is consists of moments derived from the first episode (Elena and co. versus the Noblins, Elena and her abuelo singing and dancing while their family looks on, Elena and co. in the throne room) and a Season 2 short (Elena riding away from the palace with Canela, Elena fighting a thief on a runaway carriage and being rescued by Skylar). - The Grand Finale re-enacts the final sequence of the intro, with Elena greeting a crowd of guests in her throne room and lighting up the Scepter of Light while surrounded by her friends and family at the throne...and then she messes up her crown. - The Transformers: Rescue Bots Academy episode "Rescue Teens" features a montage of the titular human lookalikes of the Rescue Bots Recruits that is lifted directly from the show's title sequence. - The Loud House: - In The Loud House Movie, Morag quotes the theme song while complaining to Angus about the Louds' presence at the castle. Morag: Thanks to you flapping your gob, I'm stuck with these hooligans! Crashing through the crowded halls, dodging girls like... Angus: Ping-pong balls? Morag: Just to reach the bathroom on time! Angus: (chuckles) That's rather catchy. - Also in the same movie, the montage of the Louds enjoying the royal life after Lincoln is crowned Duke is set to a Scottish remix of the theme song, titled "Loud Castle". - Tuca & Bertie: In the Cold Open for "Bird Mechanics," Bertie's (unhelpful) new therapist tells Bertie to cut Tuca out of her life, remarking that "[their] names sound wrong together." She then repeats their names together ("Tuca and Bertie, Tuca and Bertie, Bertie and Tuca?") in the exact same manner as the theme song, which starts playing right after her dialogue to make the reference clear. - In one episode of Brandy & Mr. Whiskers, Brandy tells Mr. Whiskers that "we're like water and oil!" during a dispute, referencing the first line of the theme song ("who's a little bit like water and oil?"). - Justice League: - The Hotel Transylvania: The Series episode "Sleepers Creepers" shows three spoofs of the show's title sequence that have the change of everyone having the face of either Klaus, Frank or Dave Chupacabra. - Work It Out Wombats!: In the theme song, Zeke is shown wearing a superhero costume. He wears this same costume in "The Mighty Zeke." - Ninjago: The final season reveals that "The Weekend Whip" by The Fold was actually a Chekhov's Gun eleven years and fifteen seasons in the making, as the ninja learn that to defeat the Final Boss, they have to jump up, kick back, whip around, and spin.	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/OpeningShoutOut
Oop North - TV Tropes Cheer up, Ian , at least you don't live in Luton ... "Up North, Where the beer is best! Up North, Where you don't wear a vest! Up North, Where men are men! Up North, Ah, I'll say it again, Up North!" — Fivepenny Piece: Up North Northern England. To those of the metropolitan southeast in particular, it's a strange and alien place full of salt-of-the-earth lower-class types who talk foonae, notable only for football, pop music, and flat caps. To some Londoners, this is more or less anywhere north of the M25, the motorway surrounding Greater London, forgetting about The Midlands. note : Another popular informal boundary between the North and South (with The Midlands again being lumped in with the North) is an imaginary line drawn from the Wash to the Bristol channel. Northerners, however, draw it from the Humber Estuary to the Dee Estuary, excluding the unloved Midlands which are lumped in with the South. Geographically, the North is usually classed as comprising the counties of Cheshire, Greater Manchester, Yorkshire, Lancashire (including Liverpool), Durham, Northumberland, Tyne & Wear, Cumbria, and parts of Lincolnshire and Derbyshire. The ITV regions Oop North are Granada, Border, Tyne Tees, and Yorkshire. It's less crowded than southern England, though not half as rich or full of TV bosses. note : Though thanks to a concerted effort by the BBC (and other media organizations such as ITV) to relocate a large chunk of its resources to Salford and Manchester, this is beginning to change. The media sometimes portray it as a stereotypical place of urban deprivation, coal mines, and men in flat caps. Expect stories about working-class struggle, unemployment, crime, alcoholism, wife beating, and old men having humorous adventures. There may well be trouble at t'mill. The setting of many a Kitchen Sink Drama. Northerners are sometimes held in the same low regard as Australians and Texans for being too loud, proud, and generally insufferable, like in At Last the 1948 Show's Four Yorkshiremen sketch. But surveys have shown that Northern accents (particularly Yorkshire) are thought to be the most "trustworthy", thanks to the no-nonsense stereotype. Just as in the South, urban regions — and especially factory or mining towns — of the North of England often vocally support the Labour Party, especially concerning trade unions (think of all those coal mines, steel mills, and so on). Express praise for Margaret Thatcher at your own risk. note : However, Labour's support is less prominent than it used to be, many of the same mining areas whose jobs she took away have started voting for the Conservatives, especially after Brexit which somewhat changed England's political geography, due to a lot of traditionally Labour areas being very supportive of Brexit, even though ironically economic assessments have shown they'll be among the people worst-hit by Brexit. As noted above, British TV creators largely don't live in the north, but many grew up there and remember the north-south divide in those days, which is likely why the trope persists on British TV. It's important to remember, however, that this only applies to urban and industrial areas: rural areas of the North in counties like Yorkshire have always been some of the safest Conservative constituencies in the country (eg Harrogate). The trope name reflects a northern pronunciation of "up North" in the phrase is "Ee, it's grim oop North". note : Incidentally, "ee" sounds like a cross between "aye" and "hey" and "oop" rhymes internally with "foot" not "soup" While living Oop North certainly isn't fun, it should not be confused with Grim Up North. Not to be confused with the American counterpart, Ap Nort'. (Not least because, in the US, many of the stereotypes associated with Northern England are instead spread out between Appalachia and a different part of the Midwest, known as the "Rust Belt".) ## Examples: - The ESPN commercial "Born Into It", where two blokes from Manchester—a United fan and a City fan—describe how horrible their lives would be if they were born on the other side, even though they have more in common than they think. - Several of the stories in Viz, as the comic originated in Newcastle; most notably the character of Sid The Sexist. - John Constantine is originally from Liverpool. Furthermore, a large number of issues are about John making attempts to come to terms with what happened in Newcastle. - Mokera from Helios Eclipse. - Dan Dare's batman Digby hails from Wigan. Dan himself is from Manchester. - Jack Staff is set in Castleford, Yorkshire. - In Witchblade, a former wielder of the Witchblade Katarina Godliffe was from a farm near York in North Yorkshire. - Andy Capp — and his granddaughter Mandy Capp — are from the North-East. Andy has evolved since the 1950s as the archetypical Geordie ne'er-do-well. His son Buster Capp was for a time the lead feature in a children's comic (Buster was created for the eponymous comic; Andy and Flo did occasional cameo parts). It is implied that Buster grew up and married, as the third generation of the Capp family is attitudinal single mother Mandy, whose exploits are now a Daily Mirror comic strip. Mandy has children... - Hardcastle Industries, one of Alex's clients in the Alex comic strip, is based in the fictional Nothern town of Grimley. Alex had to move there for a time, leading to a lot of 'fish out of water' jokes about a London banker trying to adjust to life in the industrial north. - The very funny comics of Bill Tidy, most notably The Fosdyke Saga (which used to appear in the Daily Mirror) and The Cloggies (in Private Eye) were firmly based Up North. The Cloggies obviously was a team of clog-dancers, while The Fosdyke Saga told the story of the Fosdykes, a Lancashire family who by a stroke of luck inherited Salford's biggest tripeworks and took place between the turn of the century and the 1930s; usually Sir Jos Fosdyke's three sons were busy travelling around the world on various tripe-related quests and stunts. - A successor strip The Last Chip Shop in England documented the Resistance movement against fast food which, in a dystopic Britain, was trying to drive all the competition out of existence. the fast-food Corporation was a double Shout-Out against both Americanised fast-food chains, and a Southern government colluding with them to drive Northern tradition into extinction. - Roanapur Connection: Where part of the first chapter takes place. Specifically, Newcastle and where Nathan is all but stated to consider as his home. Which also forms a heavy part of his motivations we have been told thus far of getting support for. Ganabati also notes Nathan's favourite sweets coming from one particular town in Northern England called Wigan. Which he also notes Nathan never took him there on his tour of Northern England. Which he suspects has some meaning to Nathan. - Doing It Right This Time: Mari Makinami (who's a bit of an O.C. Stand-in) turns out to be from Liverpool. - Wallace & Gromit. Its precise setting was kept mysterious for a while, but was eventually revealed to be Wigan in Lancashire — the Yorkshire-Lancashire rivalry was referenced in A Matter of Loaf and Death when Gromit makes a solid attempt at throwing an about-to-explode bomb across the Yorkshire border. Though in truth, it was shown in A Grand Day Out that the setting was Wigan, just had to keep an eye out for it. - Aardman's other famous work, Chicken Run, is set in Yorkshire. However, not all of the characters have Yorkshire accents (Mr. and Mrs. Tweedy do, though the chickens' accents are from all over the UK). - Wolfwalkers is set in Ireland, but Robyn and her father Bill are from England and they both have Northern accents (Sean Bean uses his native Sheffield accent as Bill). It fits with their portrayal as working-class citizens trying to get by under the Lord Protector's strict rule, and their Northern accents also set them apart from the Lord Protector's Received Pronunciation. - Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell references the North-South rivalry by having the North ruled by a king of the Land of Faerie and only conditionally united with the South until his return. - Sgt. Shadwell of Good Omens is in some ways a very sour Northerner, resentful of Southern England. Unfortunately, his accent makes him completely impossible to place, and he has accused Scots of being Southerners. - He's referred to in the book as hating all Southerners, and by inference to be standing on the North Pole. - Additionally, the demon Crowley asserts early on in the book that Manchester was his greatest work. - Neither he nor his angelic counterpart Aziraphale took responsibility for Milton Keynes, but they both reported it as a win for their side. - Although Wuthering Heights is set in the North and most of the characters were born and lived their lives there, the character of Joseph is significant in that he's written with a thick and an almost impenetrable Yorkshire accent (that contains several words and turns of language that today no longer exist) that no other character in the novel shares. - Catherine Cookson's novels (and thus the telefilm adaptations thereof) are almost exclusively set deep in the heart of this trope, specifically Northumberland. - The Plague Dogs, a Darker and Grittier sequel (book and film) to Richard Adams' Watership Down, is set in England's Lake District. - In Joan Aiken's Wolves of Willoughby Chase and successive sequels, as well as Midnight Is a Place, Blastburn is a northern 'satanic' mill-town apparently sited in Yorkshire. At one point in the cycle, it has broken off from the south and is ruled by a succession of sinister relatives of Dido and Is Twite. Although the series is set in an alternate timeline where the Stuarts maintained their succession and the Hanoverians exist as rebels trying to blow King James III up, most of the early Victorian tropes are there in spades. - Mrs. Whitlow, the indefatigable housekeeper of the Unseen University in Discworld is implied to have this accent. - Though she usually puts on what she thinks is a "posh" accent when talking to the wizards. - Lancre is partly based on rural Lancashire (with added geography note : whereas Lancashire is rugged and hilly by the standards of England, Lancre is set in the Discworld equivalent of the Himalayas), a county known for its witches. Terry Pratchett used some names from historic witch trials for some of the Lancre witches. - Aspects of Lancre appear to be Homage to the rural Cheshire of Alan Garner: The Weirdstone of Brisingamen and its sequels are set in the north-east of the county, where the Cheshire Plain (The Chalk) becomes the remote foothills of the Pennines (Lancre) and deal with the magical and mystical lore of the area. - Sheepridge, birthplace of Dick Simnel in Raising Steam: he and his mother speak in Northern dialect. - In the book of Layer Cake, a chapter is actually entitled "Oop North" and recounts the drug dealing protagonist and his associates (all Londoners) going to a meeting with their Northern associates. He frequently refers slightingly to "scousers" and portrays the residents of the region as a bunch of savages. - "Scouser" is a common nickname for people from Liverpool though, and "scouse" for their accent and dialect. - Yet another Terry Pratchett example is Blackbury, the City of Adventure in the Johnny Maxwell Trilogy, heavily implied to be Oop North and explicitly so in the TV adaptation of Johnny and the Bomb. The name, as well as being an Incredibly Lame Pun, is a portmanteau of Blackburn and Bury which are two large towns in Lancashire. - Frances Hodgson Burnett's classic The Secret Garden is very specifically set on the Yorkshire moors, complete with characters speaking in the distinctive dialect of the region. - James Herriot's eponymous novels, set in the fictional town of "Darrowby" (in actuality Thirsk and surrounding areas), deal nearly exclusively with farmers from the Yorkshire Dales. Expect many strong Yorkshire accents, along with the appropriate phonetic spelling, thick enough to cut with a knife. That part of England is now so closely associated with Herriot that the local tourist authorities named it "Herriot Country". - Author Bill Bryson, who lived in the area for many years, points out that the pre-WWII Yorkshire accent, as found in the Herriot books, is a very different thing from the current incarnation. To his American ears, the older dialect sounded almost like a different language altogether. - Herriot himself states as much, complaining that radio and TV all but destroyed the native dialect, and he only knows a few old men speaking it. The chapter about his arrival into Darrowby doesn't depict him having much difficulty with pronunciation... but the local terminology, on the other hand... Would you understand a farmer saying he "has a cow wot wants borin' out. She's nobbut going on three cylinders. if we don't do summat she'll go wrang in 'er ewer, won't she? Don't want felon, do we?" Translation : I got a cow with a blocked teat, need it cleared out. If we don't do something, she'll have problems with the udder. We don't want mastitis, right? - The Sarah Caudwell novel The Sibyl in her Grave features a bank director with a very pronounced Lancashire accent, which is commented on numerous times by various people. Most of them talk about how remarkable it is he's risen to his prominent position what with the disadvantages he must have had. \|\|The gentleman is actually very well educated with a First from Oxford and quite capable of speaking with a Southern accent, but found that other Englishmen were more inclined to trust him with the Northern accent. Then he kept it and started exaggerating it - and the "provincial Northerner" persona - to make fun of a snobbish coworker he particularly disliked, but no one ever realised it was a joke.\|\| - Harry Potter: - In the sixth book, Spinner's End is in the north, around 200 miles from London; the descriptions are evocative of old textile towns like Rochdale, Stockport, Brighouse, and Halifax. Which side of the Pennines it's on is a matter of debate, with equally convincing arguments. An essay on the Harry Potter Lexicon by Claire M. Jordan states: "Of these locations, the Manchester/Salford area is probably the most likely." In the movies, Snape speaks with a West London accent - because Alan Rickman was originally from Hammersmith, so that can't be used to prove or disprove this theory. - Another Lexicon essay asserts that based on the details given in the books, Neville Longbottom and his relatives appear to be from Lancashire. - In the UK audiobooks, Stephen Fry gives Nymphadora Tonks a strong Yorkshire accent, probably drawing from her use of "wotcher". - All of which leads to a certain Fridge Logic: if all wizards spend their early adolescence at the same boarding school, they should all have the same accent. This was part of the point of boarding school for the British well-to-do in the nineteenth century. (Yes, even if they're originally from Ireland, Scotland, or Yorkshire.) - Hard Times is set up north. This being Charles Dickens of course, an author who was about as Northern as Mick Jagger, it's believed he had to look up the dialect in a book to make sure he got the Lancashire accent and slang right. Only the poor, uneducated people spoke this way though. - Elizabeth Gaskell's 1855 novel North and South is one of the earliest modern examples to contrast the differences between the (newly) industrializing North and wealthier South. - Learoyd, one of Rudyard Kipling's Soldiers Three, is a Yorkshireman. - Peter Tinniswood's series of books about the very Northern Brandon family are classics of Northern humour. A Touch of Daniel and its three successor novels are deliberately vague about whether the Brandons and their world are in Yorkshire or Lancashire - although one main character is a match-attending Manchester United fan, suggesting the latter - and combine the idea of the taciturn grim North with mordant observational humour. note : Although the TV adaptation I Didn't Know You Cared very definitely places them in Yorkshire. The first three books are set in the late 1960s and 1970s; the fourth, Call It A Canary, catches up with Carter Brandon in his forties in the entirely different world of the 1980s. Here he is unemployed due to Thatcher's destruction of the north and its heavy industries, a theme Tinniswood uses with real anger and satirical fire. Carter Brandon's descent into despair after the heavy engineering trade - all he knows - vanishes, is a microcosm of the death of heavy manufacturing industry in the North at the hands of a remote government serving only its electorate in the south. To those who remember the optimistic young introvert of the early books, this comes as a shocking postscript. - George Eliot's novel The Mill on the Floss is set in a fictional Lincolnshire community. - Unnatural Issue begins on a Yorkshire manor, complete with servants speaking in "broad Yorkshire" accents. - Fred Dibnah (below for TV work) is immortalized in Terry Pratchett's Raising Steam as railway engineer Dick Simnel. - "The Northlands" (north of Mossflower) in Brian Jacques' Redwall series. - Where the Blake sisters in A Pearl for My Mistress hail from. Neither is overjoyed by it. - Lucky Jim: Jim hails from Northern England, and sometimes affects a Northern accent when he's trying to make people like him, playing on the stereotype that the accent is trustworthy. - Tony Hill and Carol Jordan: All the novels are set in a fictional Northern city, Bradfield. - Caroline Aherne's character of Mrs. Merton, elderly Northern lady given a chat show, was very firmly based in the North Cheshire town of Stockport. Stockport is right in the top-right-hand corner of the county and is bisected by the Lancashire- Cheshire border which runs right through the town. note : NOBODY in Stockport writes their address as "Stockport, Greater Manchester". But that's a different grievance. Opening credits to the short-lived spin-off show Mrs Merton and Malcolm (Malcolm, played by Craig Cash, is her adult son) were conclusively identified as being in the Heaton Norris district of Stockport, claimed as Mrs Merton's home patch, and the yardstick for everything good and Northern note : People with local knowledge can confidently pin Mrs. Merton down to one particular street, based on the opening credits to her shows. A subsequent Aherne/Cash comedy, Early Doors, about a grim, grim, pub called the Grapes and its clientele, is also very clearly set in Heaton Norris. (local references...). This is so marked that by about episode two, a Heaton Norris pub called The Hope, a truly grim place, closed down for a major refit and refurbishment, as the brewery company seemed to believe this was the pub being featured in the show. Caroline Aherne has been thought of in some circles as the spiritual successor to Peter Tinniswood. - Fred Dibnah dealt with steam engines, steeplejacking, and heavy machinery. He reinforced the cloth-cap and northern accent image Southerners have of the industrial North. - Harry Enfield's character Buggerallmoney, a Geordie Self-Parody of his Cockney character Loadsamoney. When Enfield did a live show in which he was required to play the character in front of an audience of actual Geordies, he called up one of the editors of the aforementioned Viz comic for coaching on getting the accent right. According to Enfield, the show went well, but at the end of the night he asked the audience how his accent had been, and every one of them shouted back "SHITE!" - Peter Kay himself is from Bolton and his comedy routines often revolve around life Oop North. - Phoenix Nights is set in Bolton and was filmed in Farnworth, Lancashire. - Car Share is very vaguely set in and around Manchester. People recognising the streets and roads travelled by two people going to and from work have said it looks like one Hell of a commute. - His observational comedy (as seen in Phoenix Nights and Max and Paddy's Road to Nowhere, as well as his stand-up routines) draws heavily on the culture of the North-West of England. - A lot of Victoria Wood's television work was based in the North, as Wood herself was from the Manchester suburb of Prestwich (her frequent collaborator Julie Walters is originally from Birmingham, though). - All Creatures Great And Small and its remake, plus any other versions of James Herriot's books. NB this is the rural north so there are some differences. - Four of the core characters from Auf Wiedersehen, Pet; Oz, Dennis, and Neville (from Newcastle) and Moxey (from Liverpool). note : The three Geordies were played by genuine Geordies (Jimmy Nail, Tim Healy, and Kevin Whately), but Moxey was played by Hertfordshire native Christopher Fairbank. - Badger was set in Northumberland (about as far Oop North as you can get). - Father Peter Clifford from Ballykissangel is a Manchester native transplanted to Ireland. - The Beiderbecke Affair was set in Leeds, Yorkshire, although one of the protagonists was a Geordie. Big Al: I've got nothing against Geordies, except that they're not from Yorkshire. It's not as though I was letting a Londoner in. - The Bisexual: Sadie is from Burnley, in Lancashire, with a strong accent. - Parodied on A Bit of Fry and Laurie, with a Northerner (Hugh Laurie) who is determined to prove to a Londoner (Stephen Fry) that the North is actually quite civilized, thank you very much. This prompts the Londoner to mess with him by claiming that Londoners have developed eternal life by drinking petrol. - The miniseries Blackpool and its sequel, Viva Blackpool (both were shown under the name Viva Blackpool in the US). - Gunn-Sar from the Blake's 7 episode "Power" is a barbarian leader with a Yorkshire accent despite being from another planet in the far future. Still, it made a change from the usual cavemen speaking with posh accents. - Brass. Parodies the trope to within an inch of its life sending up a number of northern stereotypes and genres. Including Agatha Christie, D.H. Lawrence, Brideshead Revisited, working class vs ruling class, and so on. - The Brittas Empire: Whilst the show takes in the fictional Southern town of Whitbury, Colin has a strong Geordie accent and Julie is stated to be from the North. Julie's Northerner status actually comes back to bite her when she falls in love with a Conservative Southerner called Alex and encounters a cultural clash, to the point that she eventually throws him out for attempting to give her elocution lessons. - The children's series Byker Grove is set around a Newcastle youth club. Byker is a real area of Newcastle. - On Chef! (1993), Cyril was an uncultured Northerner. His finishing-school educated daughter Renee, however, spoke with a really posh accent. Lenny Henry's character mocked both Cyril for having a Northern accent and Renee for not having one. - The Columbo episode "Etude in Black" features a Northern English car mechanic living in Hollywood and specialising in foreign and classic cars. John Cassavetes plays the murderer of the week and invokes stereotype by patronisingly addressing the mechanic in the "What ho, old chap! Don't you know?"-type drawl characteristic of an American actor having trouble with a British accent. - Most of the comics featured on The Comedians hailed from the North of England, which is understandable given that it was recorded at Granada Studios in Manchester. Among the featured comics were: - Bernard Manning, Colin Crompton, Ken Goodwin (Manchester). - Mike Burton, Steve Faye, Eddie Flanagan, Jackie Hamilton, George Roper, Josh White (Liverpool). - Jim Bowen, Paul Melba (Lancashire). - Duggie Brown, Bobby Knutt, Jimmy Marshall, Charlie Williams (Yorkshire). - Coupling. Though Jeffery is supposedly Welsh, Richard Coyle is from Sheffield, and his Northern accent becomes more noticeable in later series. - Mister Winterbottom in Dinner for One is a stereotypical Northerner (with a stereotypically Northern name). - Doctor Who: - First Doctor companion Dodo Chaplet had a Northern accent. - The Ninth Doctor speaks in Christopher Eccleston's natural Manchester accent, despite him being an alien because, as he puts it: "Lots of planets have a North." - "Love & Monsters": Victor Kennedy/The Abzorbaloff is played by Peter Kay, and sports the actor's natural Lancashire accent when unmasked. - In the alternate universe of "Turn Left", \|\|Donna and many other residents of the South of England are forced to move to the North of England after fallout from an attack on London leaves much of the south irradiated. It gets worse.\|\| Some woman in Leeds: Used to be a nice family in number 29! They missed one mortgage payment, just one, and they got booted out, all for you lot! Donna: Don't get all chippy with me, Vera Duckworth! Pop your clogs on and go and feed t'whippets! - In "The Rebel Flesh", the Eleventh Doctor attempts a Northern accent when speaking to a bunch of Northerners; they have no response so he quickly gives up. Later, "The Crimson Horror" takes place in Victorian Yorkshire, the Doctor has to pretend to be a local, and much to his joy there is, in fact, trouble at t'mill. - Eleventh and Twelfth Doctor companion Clara Oswald speaks with Jenna Coleman's Lancashire accent. - "The Crimson Horror" is set in a (fake) mill in Yorkshire. A flashback shows the Eleventh Doctor and Clara adopting fake accents to investigate the trouble at t'mill. Strax: I strongly recommend the issuing of scissor grenades, limbo vapour, and triple blast brain splitters. Vastra: What for? Strax: Just generally. Remember, we are going to the North. - Thirteenth Doctor Jodie Whittaker hails from near Huddersfield, Yorkshire, and keeps her accent for the role. Her first line after regeneration in the 2017 Christmas Special indicates it may surpass Eccleston, as many fans who had been unfamiliar with her accent have said that they could barely understand what the line was. note : It was "Oh, brilliant!" by the way. - Thirteenth Doctor companion Dan Lewis (and his actor John Bishop) hails from Liverpool, and is so full of Patriotic Fervour for his hometown, he gives museum tours for free. Yaz: Hey, Dan, are you from Liverpool? Why have you never mentioned it? - Downton Abbey is set around an Earl, his family, and his servants, who live on an estate in North Yorkshire. Rightfully, most of the upper-class and middle-class characters speak with RP accents, with servants being locals with Yorkshire accents. - The series creators went to great lengths to ensure that the actors playing the servants had proper local accents; most are Northerners and a plurality are from Yorkshire. Siobhan Finneran even matches her character's history: like O'Brien, she's of Irish descent but born in Northern England. - Frasier. Daphne Moon's from Manchester. note : Actress Jane Leeves, by contrast, is from the Sussex town of East Grinstead. Her accent is not easily identified as Manchester by anybody familiar with the area and Daphne's siblings speak with accents ranging from RP to Scottish. note : John Mahoney is from Manchester, but he lost his accent a long time ago while serving in the military. Interestingly, Mahoney is also a lover of fine arts and food and has taught David Hyde Pierce and Kelsey Grammer about them, so he's a complete anti-stereotype of Oop North! - Game of Thrones has to have more Northern English accents in it than any American production of anything, ever. Justified, since Westeros is more or less a Fantasy Counterpart Culture of Medieval England, northern Westeros is Oop North. Appropriately enough, it's (mostly) the characters from the northern part of Westeros that have northern (usually Yorkshire) accents, such as textbook Yorkshireman Sean Bean. Bean's contract specified that he be allowed to use his native accent for the role. The only major Northman general who speaks in RP is the Token Evil Teammate Roose Bolton. The farther up north the series goes, the thicker the accent, so wildlings from north of the wall have a much thicker Northern accent than the Starks and the other Northmen. Theon Greyjoy, the Starks' ward, also has a Northern accent despite being an Ironborn, to indicate his Going Native. Conversely, those associated with the Lannisters and/or the South tend to speak with RP (BBC English). The Northerners' general opinion of the South is broadly similar to cultural stereotypes between the South of England and the North. - Ironically, Lena Headey, who plays Cersei Lannister, is actually from Yorkshire, and considers herself a "Northern girl". She doesn't use her original speaking voice to play the character (as for her son Joffrey, he's actually from Ireland, and has a heavy Irish accent in real life which is utterly impossible to detect in the sneering RP accent he affects for his performance). - Gentleman Jack is set in Regency-era Halifax and the surrounding country. - Bill Oddie of The Goodies, born in Rochdale (a satellite town of Manchester), would often play up his Northernness, for instance in the episode where he introduced the world to Ecky Thump, the Lancashire art of self-defence (consisting of hitting people over the head with a black pudding). There's also this bit from the I'm Sorry I'll Read That Again version of Othello: Bill Oddie: 'Ow do, ah am Oh-thello. David Hatch: What kind of a Moor is that? Bill Oddie: A Yorkshire Moor ! - Tim Brooke-Taylor, the personification of an upper-class soft southern Nellie in the Goodies, is also (just about) from Oop North: his family still run the Brooke-Taylor legal practice in Buxton, Derbyshire (a place which is pretty much at the otherwise ill-defined southern border of "the North". Shading into the Midlands places like Glossop and Buxton just about squeak in. But Leek and Derby, just down the road, are unanimously considered as being in the Midlands). - Great Night Out is set in Edgeley, near the Stockport County ground and a Brick Joke is the despairing loyalty of its fans for a crap team. The brick finally drops in the last episode, where the underachieving Stockport County play a cup-tie, at home, against mighty neighbours Manchester United. And despite the fans' hope of a miracle, are slaughtered seven-nil. - Jamie from The Haunting of Bly Manor is from somewhere around Yorkshire, her father was a coal miner and she is a rough-around-the-edges gardener working on the grounds of the titular manor. The identity of \|\|the unnamed narrator\|\| as Jamie herself are given away by both characters' (approximately, in the case of \|\|Carla Gugino\|\|'s half of the character) Northern accents. - Claude Rains from Heroes is from Blackpool, according to the show's PrimaTech Files website, but he has Christopher Eccleston's Salford accent. Eccleston is like the poster boy for this trope. - The TV adaptation of Peter Tinniswood's Brandon family trilogy, I Didn't Know You Cared, very definitely places the Brandon family's world as being in Yorkshire. (as above, the source novels were deliberately vague about the location being Lancashire or Yorkshire.) Sheffield was used extensively for filming and local nuances were introduced, for eg the Sheffield Green final sports paper. - Michael from I'm Alan Partridge is Geordie. The actor playing him is not, but nails the very, very specific accent. - Inspector George Gently is in North East England, centring on Newcastle upon Tyne, Northumberland and County Durham. Gently himself is a transplanted Londoner, but most of the rest of cast sport Northern accents. - In the Flesh is set in the fictional town of Roarton, Lancashire. - The Lakes is really set Oop North - the Lake District of Cumbria is about as far Oop North as you can get in England before you start seeing people in kilts. This drama-mystery revolved around sexual and violent goings-on under the surface of a rural lakeside community. - Last of the Summer Wine, the longest-running sitcom in the world, is about a group of pensioners living in Yorkshire. - Last Tango in Halifax is set in and around Halifax and Harrogate in Yorkshire. - The League of Gentlemen is set in the fictitious Northern English town of Royston Vasey note : The birth name of Northern comedian Roy "Chubby" Brown. They play up all the stereotypes of podunk rurality, although it's worth noting that the creators themselves are Northerners. - The 2006/7 BBC series Life on Mars is set in a 1973 Manchester that may or may not be entirely imaginary. Its Sequel Series Ashes to Ashes (2008) is set in London, but three of the Mancunian characters from the parent show, most notably Gene Hunt, appear. - The Likely Lads, a pair of Geordies. note : Though they were played by two northerners, neither were Geordies - Rodney Bewes was a Yorkshire native, while James Bolam grew up in Sunderland. Also the sequel, Whatever Happened To The Likely Lads? - The Mighty Boosh: Despite his attempts to appear more exotic, Howard Moon is "clearly from Leeds". He's occasionally described as Northern in an insulting tone, or it's said that it's the origin of his unsophisticated behaviour, despite the fact that Howard is an upright, mild-mannered kind of guy. When he gets drunk, he apparently throws ladies in his 'wheelbarra— come on, ye dirty vixen, ye know ye want it.' Julian Barratt, the actor who plays Howard, is also from Leeds. - Parodied by Monty Python (apart from their reuse of "Four Yorkshiremen" from At Last the 1948 Show) in the "Northern Playwright" sketch on Flying Circus, with the oft-seen trope of the father rejecting his son for betraying his background and pursuing a different life... only the father's profession is writing plays for the London theatre, and the son's betrayal consisted of moving to Yorkshire to become a coal miner. Even funnier in that the entire sketch is an inverse "Gender-Normative Parent" Plot, with the father wearing shirtsleeves and braces and speaking with a Yorkshire accent, while his son wears a suit and tie ("It's the only thing I own besides the coveralls!") Graham Chapman: Hampstead wasn't good enough for you, was it? You had to go poncin' off to Barnsley! You and your coal-mining friends! - In the 1989 TV mockumentary Norbert Smith: A Life, the actor being profiled, Norbert Smith (played by Harry Enfield) appears in a kitchen-sink drama entitled It's Grim Up North, which runs through just about every cliché of the council-estate/Angry Young Man dramas of the period, including out-of-wedlock pregnancy, bitter family rowing, women in headscarves, and ugly flowered wallpaper. - Only Fools and Horses: For part of one episode, set in Hull in, whatisname: Del Boy: Just get me back to Peckham or I'll be saying "Eh-up!" and breeding whippets before I'm much older! - Open All Hours, about a miserly shopkeeper, also set in Yorkshire (although Ronnie Barker, from Bedfordshire, and David Jason from London provide very unconvincing Yorkshire accents). - The miniseries Our Friends in the North was about four friends from Newcastle, including Christopher Eccleston (again, though playing a northerner from a different region) and Gina McKee (who is actually from there). Newcastle is portrayed in the series as grim, but to be fair London is portrayed as being, if not quite as grim, one hell of a lot sleazier and more dangerous. - The short-lived sitcom A Prince Among Men took place in Sheffield and features Gary Prince, who has a Scouser accent (Said accent is very similar to the one Chris Barrie used for Lister note : who is also a Scouser in the Red Dwarf audiobooks). - Queer as Folk (UK) was set in Manchester, around the Canal St area. - David Lister from Red Dwarf is from Liverpool (as is the actor who portrays him, Craig Charles). - The three Red Riding films, which deal with murder and police corruption in Ripper-haunted Seventies Yorkshire. - The Ripping Yarns episode "The Testing of Eric Olthwaite" is a parody Coming of Age Story about a boy in Yorkshire who's so boring (obsessed with rainfall and shovels) that his family leaves him. - The Royle Family, set in the sprawling wastes of Wythenshawe, the largest council estate in Britain. - The bleak provincial city of Grimble, where Rumpole of the Bailey defended a couple of cases. - Judge Oliphant is a transplanted Northerner living and working in London. - The original UK version of Shameless (UK) is set in the fictional council estate Chatsworth in Stretford, Greater Manchester. - Both Martha Costello, the main character of Silk, and her trainee, Nick Slade, are from the north, although it's never specified where. They're frequently pitted against Martha's rival, who comes from Cambridge, and his trainee, the daughter of a London judge. - Spender, about a Northern detective played by proud Geordie Jimmy Nail. - Several of the comedians from Taskmaster have been from the North and have endured mild teasing about their accents, including Chris Ramsey, Sarah Millican (who are actually from the same town), Jon Richardson, and Lee Mack. Chris Ramsey intentionally turned this to advantage in a prize task to bring in the item that sounds the funniest when you say it over and over, by contributing a "coukbouk." - Jamie Tartt from Ted Lasso has a strong Northern accent and grew up in Manchester, fitting the abrasive, confrontational stereotype. Keeley Jones is implied to be from up north as well, since her mother is mentioned to have moved back up there, but her accent isn't as strong. - Jeremy Clarkson of Top Gear (UK) is from Doncaster, but went native as a southerner and rarely brings out his original accent. The phenomenon of "more northern than thi" (as in Good Omens above) was also referenced in the Polar Special, as they approached the magnetic north pole: Clarkson: We are now the most northern people in the world!...well apart from Michael Parkinson, obviously. - Whether he had any 'original' accent at all. More upper-middle-class people tend to have quite neutral accents fairly similar to what Clarkson has now. For example, Michael Palin is from Sheffield but doesn't have any kind of stereotype "northern" accent (although, like Clarkson, he does a good impression of that accent). Or think of Jessica Jane Clement from The Real Hustle...(ok, you can stop thinking now), who has a bit of a Yorkshire accent at times. - Then Christopher Eccleston shows up as a Star in a Reasonably-Priced Car, and the two have a brief discussion about who's more Northern. - From series 27, the presenting lineup contains Paddy McGuinness, who is from Bolton, and Andrew "Freddie" Flintoff from Preston. Both have heavy northern accents, which can sometimes make them difficult to understand to viewers not familiar with their accents. - The Pilgrimage of Grace in Season 3 of The Tudors...the differences in accents between the rebels and the Powers That Be down south were striking. Also helps illustrate how old this trope is too. - Two Pints of Lager and a Packet of Crisps is set in Runcorn in Cheshire. - Vera is set in Northumberland, and central character Vera Stanhope has a strong northern accent and the Verbal Tic of referring to everyone as 'pet'. - Waterloo Road is set in Rochdale, a town that is part of Greater Manchester. Or Lancashire if you ask the locals. - When the Boat Comes In, with a lot of Geordies. - Wild Bill: The series takes place in Boston, Lincolnshire, so many characters have a strong local Northern English accent. It's noted to be a struggling region, with much resentment toward foreign workers coming in and farms in debt trying to stay afloat. - Years and Years is set in Manchester, with filming having taken place there. A subplot also involves some of the characters visiting Liverpool. - Pioneering 1960s and 1970s police drama Z Cars is set in a fictional division of the Lancashire Constabulary. - The Lancashire Hotpots are this trope. - Comedy ukelele covers band The Everly Pregnant Brothers are also this trope. - Girls Aloud have Cheryl Fernandez-Versini (Newcastle), Kimberley Walsh (Bradford), and Nicola Roberts (Runcorn). (Sarah Harding was born in Ascot but grew up in Stockport and identifies as a Northerner.) This famously lost Cheryl a lucrative presenting contract in the USA, a country where her infamously thick Geordie accent needs subtitles. - Former Spice Girls member Mel C is from a suburb of Cheshire near Liverpool. Mel B is from Yorkshire. - Little Mix has Perrie Edwards and Jade Thirlwall, both from South Shields. - Musical comedian Mike Harding, from Crumpsall, Manchester. - Musical comedian Jake Thackeray. - The Beatles, obviously, from Liverpool. - Legendary post-punk group The Fall were founded in Prestwich, Greater Manchester and are a favourite of the influential John Peel. The North, particularly Manchester, is mentioned in their lyrics, most notably with "Hit the North". - Take That (Band) were formed in Manchester, their southernmost member being Robbie Williams. - Jethro Tull is from Blackpool, inspiring their song "Up The Pool". The band that later was known as Jethro Tull was formed in Blackpool but when Ian Anderson decided to relocate to London, where the action was, only bassist Glenn Cornick went with him. So the first lineup who called themselves "Jethro Tull" was 2 guys from Blackpool and 2 guys from Luton. However, after Martin Barre replaced Mick Abrahams on guitar, all subsequent personnel changes were accomplished by Ian calling one for one his former bandmates, so much that the classic lineup that recorded Thick as a Brick, A Passion Play, War Child and Minstrel In The Gallery was essentially Ian Anderson's Blackpool band with Martin Barre on guitar (and despite that description seemingly making Barre the odd man out, he's actually the only other member ever, besides Ian Anderson, to have been in Tull from when he joined till the present day. Go figure.) - Both of the Pet Shop Boys (Newcastle and Blackpool respectively). The song "Sexy Northerner" is about dispelling the negative stereotypes of Northerners as being all about "football and fags". - Sting is from Wallsend, Northumberland. His musical and subsequent album "The Last Ship" (which are unrelated to the novel and TV series of the same name) are inspired by his childhood and the decline of the shipbuilding industry in Wallsend. - Louis Tomlinson of One Direction hails from Doncaster, while former member Zayn Malik comes from Bradford. Harry Styles grew up in Cheshire. - The Hollies are from Manchester. - Ingested is from Manchester, though Lyn Jeffs currently lives in Wales. - The KLF (under their previous guise, The Justified Ancients of Mu Mu) recorded the song "It's Grim Up North", namechecking 70 towns and cities in Northern England plus the motorway cutting across it. - The Hacienda Club in Manchester was largely responsible for "Madchester" era groups such as The Stone Roses, Happy Mondays, and New Order. Also had a huge hand in the Acid House movement. Sadly, in its later years, the club was plagued with rampant drug use and gang-related violence. - Oasis, causing a great deal of non-English-speaking fans to try and learn English with a Northern twang. - Pulp's Jarvis Cocker and Joe Cocker are both from Sheffield - but neither are they related nor, according to rumour, do they like each other much. - The Smiths, formed in Manchester and famously sardonic in their lyrics. - Little Boots is from Blackpool. - The Kaiser Chiefs are from Leeds. - Mick Hucknall and Simply Red, from Manchester. - Bryan Ferry, from Washington, County Durham. - Ewan MacColl. Best known for "Dirty Old Town", about his hometown of Salford. - Prefab Sprout, from Durham. - Annie Haslam, the long-time lead singer of the progressive rock band Renaissance, is from Blackpool. For extra Northern cred, the band wrote and performed the theme song for Tyne Tees TV's The Paper Lads. - Arctic Monkeys. Especially notable is how pronounced singer Alex Turner's Sheffield accent is, although technically the Arctic Monkeys are from High Green, which is a northern suburb of Sheffield and about as far as you can get without being in Barnsley. - While their earlier albums such as Whatever People Say I Am, That's What I'm Not and Favourite Worst Nightmare especially feature Turner's Sheffield accent, their newer albums such as AM have Alex Turner singing more clearly in an American accent (influenced by his decision to move from Sheffield to Los Angeles). - Deathcore-turned-Metalcore-turned-"Alternative Rock mixed with whatever else they feel like" band Bring Me the Horizon are also from Sheffield. - The Human League and Heaven 17: Also from Sheffield. - Joy Division and New Order, usually thought of as being from Manchester, technically from Macclesfield and Salford - which, admittedly, is a borough of Greater Manchester but is a separate city. - My Dying Bride, Paradise Lost, and Anathema, the so-called 'Peaceville Three,' are from Halifax, West Yorkshire (first two) and Liverpool. - Before and during World War 2, there were Gracie Fields and George Formby. The latter was the subject of a hilarious Peter Sellers sketch, the All-England George Formby Championship. - AC/DC's vocalist, Brian Johnson, is from Gateshead on Tyneside. Before AC-DC, he was in a band called Geordie. - Space, from Liverpool. - Def Leppard, Originally all from Sheffield, Drummer Rick Allen is from just outside Sheffield, Phil Collen is from London, and Vivian Campbell is from Dublin. Sheffield is their "Home Town Gig" though. - The New Romantic/New Wave Music band ABC (best known for "The Look of Love", "Poison Arrow", "Be Near Me", and "When Smokey Sings") were also from Sheffield. Connected with Def Leppard in that ABC saxophonist Stephen Singleton and Def Leppard lead vocalist Joe Elliott were early childhood friends. - Barclay James Harvest, from Oldham, Manchester. The song "North" (from their latest album, "North") is all about this trope. - Post-punk band The Futureheads hail from Sunderland. - The Cult, from Bradford, West Yorkshire. - Utah Saints, from Leeds. - Dead or Alive, from Liverpool. - Frankie Goes to Hollywood, also from Liverpool. - Ladytron, again, from Liverpool. - Though he's lived in London for quite a while now, Rick Astley, who comes from Newton-le-Willows, Lancashire, remains proud of his northern roots. - Låpsley, born in York, Yorkshire but raised and lives in Southport, Merseyside. - Jamie "Irrepressible" McDermott, from Scarborough, North Yorkshire. - Ed Sheeran, from Halifax, West Yorkshire, but raised further south in Framlingham, Suffolk. - Soft Cell formed in Leeds in the late 1970s when Marc Almond and David Ball were students at what was then the local polytechnic. note : Now renamed Leeds Metropolitan University. - Robert Smith of The Cure was born in Blackpool, Lancashire, but transplanted south to Horley, Surrey at age 3, followed by Crawley, West Sussex, where the band was founded, and presently resides in Bognor Regis. - '80s Synthpop duo Vicious Pink (Phenomena), from Leeds. - YUNGBLUD, from Doncaster, South Yorkshire. - Christopher "Limahl" Hamill of Kajagoogoo, from Wigan. - Cabaret Voltaire, from Sheffield. - The North-Midlands-South divide in England goes back a long way. The Romans, gradually expanding into Britain from their foothold in the South, discovered the whole of what is now Northern England was the domain of one tribe, the Brigantii. Rome elected to buy rather than militarily defeat the Brigantians: their queen accepted client status, and the north was gradually and bloodlessly assimilated. The patron Goddess of the north, Brigantia, was absorbed by the Romans, who conflated her name with the proto-Welsh word for the land, Prydein, into Britannia. Brigantia/Britannia was also conflated with the Roman goddess Athena, who wore a military helmet and toted a trident. Therefore the North not only gave the name to the whole island, Britannia, the patron goddess of Britain who among other things appeared on the currency for nearly two thousand years, is a Northern lass. - Britain was divided into two regions for administrative convenience: the southern region governed from Londinium was Britannia Superior whilst the northern half, governed from Eboracum (York), became Britannia Inferior. Whilst the Latin names translate as Upper and Lower Britain, the "inferior-superior" distinction allows ample room for snark, two millennia further on. - The Anglo-Saxons discovered much the same. Rivers marked the borders of the contending kingdoms. The Kingdom of the Midlands, Mercia, shares its name with the dividing river in the west - the River Mersey. Which places Cheshire, by this analysis, in the Midlands. North of the Mersey was Northumbria. this takes its name from the other river in the east that divided North and South - the Humber. Northumbria occupied pretty much the same space as the Celtic Brigantia. - Peter Tinniswood's Brandon family (see Literature and TV above) made it to radio. The mordant black wit of Uncle Mort became a long-running radio comedy, Uncle Mort's North Country, where he and nephew Carter Brandon went on a road trip around notable parts of The North. Uncle Mort also attended and commented on, real-life cricket matches involving Lancashire and Yorkshire. - A less stellar radio comedy series, relying on stereotypes and cloying sentimental humour, was Castle's On The Air, featuring all-round entertainer Roy Castle and Northern comics such as Colin Crompton and Charlie Williams (see The Comedians, above in Live TV) in the music-hall tradition, inhabiting an idealised and sentimentalised Oop North. - A popular radio sitcom in the 1950s and 1960s was The Clitheroe Kid, featuring child-actor Jimmy Clitheroe note : Though Jimmy was actually 35 when the show began, and 50 years old by the time it ended. His thyroid gland was damaged at birth, and he never grew taller than 4ft 2in., a scamp in the Dennis The Menace tradition, who of course lived in Clitheroe, Lancashire. Naturally. This series later moved to TV. - Musical comedian Jake Thackeray also contributed several series of music and musical documentary to the BBC. - A presenting team who held the prestigious Radio One Breakfast Show slot, Mark Radcliffe and sidekick "Lard", courted controversy by refusing to present the show from London. Instead, they broadcast to the nation from what was then the BBC's Manchester studios on Oxford Road, often making a pointed comment on the London-centred nature of most BBC broadcasting. note : They were fifteen years ahead of their time: dropped for being uncompromisingly northern, they would have been an ideal fit, in the current move North to Salford by much of the BBC's production teams - A comedy/drama serial on BBC Radio Four was called Stockport: So Good They Named It Once. - Buxton, Derbyshire, has a unique distinction in professional sport. Here, in June 1975, a first-class county cricket match between Lancashire and Derbyshire was called off. Not for the usual British summer reason of "Rain Stopped Play." oh, no. Here, in June, in the English summer sport, snow stopped play. This tells you all you need to know about a northern English summer in the Pennines. - Lancashire and Yorkshire are fierce rivals in county cricket. Both areas have produced many England greats including - Sir Len Hutton, former captain of England - Fred Trueman - Sir Geoffrey Boycott, former captain of England - Harold Larwood the infamous Bodyline bowler - Michael Atherton, former captain of England - Michael Vaughan, former captain of England - Darren Gough - James Anderson - Andrew "Freddie" Flintoff, now a presenter of Top Gear - David Lloyd, former England coach turned commentator - Ray Illingworth - Joe Root, current (as of 2020) England test captain - The old division between the two codes of Rugby Football followed a North-South split, so that practically all the big name Rugby League teams are based in the North. note : League did not travel very far into Scotland or Wales, either. This has not stopped the north playing Rugby Union as well, and to a high level; teams such as Sale note : south Manchester have been contenders at the highest club levels, and one of England's greatest Rugby Union captains, Bill Beaumont (Fylde RC and Lancashire), was a Northerner who played for a Northern club. - In Beneath a Steel Sky, the mechanic that the player meets at the start of the game originally had a Yorkshire accent, but this was changed for the final release as US playtesters couldn't understand what he was saying. The factory owner Lamb, though, still has a Yorkshire accent that's happily very apparent even in the text version. - From Bloodborne, we have Eileen the Crow, who speaks in this accent in the English audio. She's from outside Yharnam, originating from an unspecified region called "the hinterlands". Given that all native Yharnamites have southern English accents (even though the architecture, names, and so on are based on Czech and Austrian cities), it conveys that she's from a close but distinct area with more of a rural flavour. - The Worms franchise, made by Wakefield-based Team 17, has a variety of regional accents for the teams' soundbanks, including Yorkshireman, Geordie, and Scouse. - Many characters in Conker's Bad Fur Day, like Mr. Cog who when turned upside down becomes southern. And camp. - In Dragon Age: Origins (or at least its expansion, Awakening), Amaranthine seems to be home to more northern characters than the rest of Ferelden and is fittingly located in the North of that country. Like Yorkshire (known occasionally to its locals as God's County) it's seen hard times but is also valued as a jewel of northern Ferelden. - In The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, the Dunmer (Dark Elves) tend towards Northern English accents, presumably due to the connotations of cynicism and general working-class-ness, although there are a few Cockney voice actors in there for the same reason. Taken to a surreal extreme with Raven Rock's Lancastrian guard captain in the Dragonborn DLC. - In the Final Fantasy series (or Final Fantasy Tactics A2 at least), the written dialogue for the Bangaa race makes one think they have accents like this (or else classic Lowland Scots). Kyrra: Spear and helm are part and parcel of the dragoon - a prouder group of warriors ye'll nae find! Yammer on about me as ye like, but I'll not have ye drag the name of Dragoon through yer filth! - In Final Fantasy XIV, Ala Mhigan characters are given Northern accents to distinguish them from The Queen's Latin found elsewhere in Eorzea. Ala Mhigo is also the focus of much of Garlean tyranny, which has decimated their culture and economy. Additionally, Ala Mhigo's main industries (which have been devastated by Garlean rule) are mining and quarrying. - The protagonist Keith T Maxwell of the IOS game Galaxy on Fire speaks with a noticeable Liverpudlian accent. - Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas features Shaun Ryder of the Happy Mondays voicing Maccer, a Salfordian musician who is the embodiment of the Madchester music scene note : the game was set in 1992, by which time the Madchester genre had peaked and mentions Manchester and Salford at every other opportunity upon his first encounter. - Lucy Baker from Layton Brothers: Mystery Room seems to be from Yorkshire. - Sonny 2 has Roald, whose accent comes from somewhere in the U.K. and where his group was forced is Grim Up North to boot. Word of God says he's Irish. - The two humans in Poacher are Englishmen with incredibly thick Yorkshire accents. The protagonist, Derek Badger, is a laid-back Unfazed Everyman who even answers the question of "Where are you from?" with a simple "Oop north." "Well. Sutton-Upon-Derwent." - Due to language drift, the Blemineg also speak in thick Yorkshire accents. This confounds Derek's spirit ally Rebecca to the point where she has to use his brain as a translator. - Yorkshire Gubbins is set in the definitively real town of Gubbins, Yorkshire, complete with all the northern staples like run-down working-class homes, meat pie contests, wanton cruelty to Londoners, slug monster invasions, and sentient robots. Being made by natives all the characters speak in Yorkshire accents, and the game contains an achievement for playing through the first chapter without subtitles. - PAYDAY: The Heist and its sequel give us James "Hoxton" Hoxworth, a crude lewd, violent, foul-mouthed thug with an extra-thick Yorkshire accent and a lower-class upbringing in Sheffield. - In Pokémon Sword and Shield, it's implied that characters from Spikemuth (like the members of Team Yell, Piers \|\|and Marnie\|\|) have a Northern accent. Spikemuth appears to be a Dying Town, complete with shuttered-up buildings, trash-filled streets, and populated almost entirely by the games' villain team. - Resistance: Fall of Man caused controversy for prominently featuring Manchester Cathedral in one of its levels. - Ryse: Son of Rome at one point moves the story to Britannia- specifically, to York. The majority of Britons who Marius Titus goes up against have northern accents, in contrast to The Queen's Latin used by Romans. - Conrad Roth, the captain of the Endurance in Tomb Raider (2013), is from Sheffield. Lara even calls him a "Northern bastard" when she thinks he's died. - Ubisoft Reflections, creators of the Driver series and co-producers of The Crew (2014) and The Crew 2, are from Newcastle-upon-Tyne, which is shown during the credits of Driver 1. - In the English dub of Xenoblade Chronicles 2, people from the Leftherian Archipelago speak with Northern Englander accents, including main protagonist Rex. Leftheria is shown to have a slightly more humble and rural culture than other nations. - Fan Dan Go is set in Lonchester, which — aside from the general weirdness of the Fan Dan Go universe—is a rather larger city than Real Life Lancaster. - Scary Go Round is set in the fictional town of Tackleford in West Yorkshire. That it has a seafront despite West Yorkshire being landlocked can be put down to Rule of Funny. - In Gunnerkrigg Court, Annie's mother Surma is from Yorkshire. - FreakAngels has the Mancunian Alice who definitely qualifies for loud and proud and is a sister of gunrunners. - Wendy in Ladies In Waiting comes from Durham, wears a flat cap, and speaks in such a thick North East accent that other characters can have trouble understanding her. - Phil Lester (AmazingPhil) hails from the North and has a rather broad and endearing Manchester accent, although it's been dialled down a few notches lately. He often jokes that it comes back in full force whenever he goes to visit his family. - Yorkshire Yoga. Gerrit in ya. - Enter the Farside is set in Manchester and the main character, Shaun, comes from Staffordshire. It's assumed he has a Stoke accent, though it's never been mentioned explicitly. - Martyn of the Yogscast is from the North and has the accent. Other members of the Yogscast, particularly Hannah, Sjin, and all three members of Hat Films, will occasionally slip into an exaggerated faux-Northern accent while talking, to Martyn's occasional chagrin. - One variation of the Wojak imageboard memes is Norf FC, which incorporates many of the stereotypes associated with the region (eg their fanaticism for football, morbid obesity, working-class nature, etc.). - TomSka's "I Don't Know" has Johnny Knives' quite Northern Accent (he's played by Elliot Gough, who's from Yorkshire, using his natural voice) - Jeff from Warlock Games is an extreme stereotype of this: as well as his accent, his computer wallpaper is Jimmy Savile, and he prays to Ant and Dec. - Watch Ross - given that Ross Grant is a Manchester native and the episodes follow him going about his day in the city. As he's an actor and voiceover artist, the vlogs show a lot of the film and television industry there - including guests from Hollyoaks, Emmerdale and Coronation Street. - The Actors' Life Podcast has several guests from the north, given that the host (Bobby Calloway) is a part of the above-mentioned Ross Grant's community. - Ross himself is a guest on the twentieth interview. - Sarah Elisabeth Flinton hails from Sheffield and talks about often having to do roles in an RP dialect because her natural accent is harder to understand to non-Brits. - Dawn Wolfe is from Newcastle and talks about how the industry there is often overlooked. - John Bain, aka critic and journalist TotalBiscuit was born in Newcastle in the North-East, though his family moved around a lot and he eventually ended up in the US. His accent was therefore much softer than it should have been, but on occasion, he would break up in a full-on Geordie brogue to the bewilderment of his wife and co-presenters. - Greg Holgate of the Youtube channel The Stupendium is himself a Londoner, but in his Animal Crossing: New Horizons music videos he voices Tom Nook with a Northern accent. At the end of "Nook, Line, & Sinker" he lampshades this by saying, "Tom Nook here; yes, yes, I'm from Yorkshire, don't question it." - Online entertainment news website/magazine WhatCulture was founded in Newcastle before relocating to Gateshead, and journalist Josh Brown is a native of Coundon, County Durham, hence his heavy Northeastern accent. - Zerolenny is from the Northwest, and as such sports a thick accent. Hes not afraid to lean into it at times and start shouting LETS GO FOOKING MENTAL like a Football Hooligan. - This stereotype is centuries old. Observe the account of an eyewitness to the Battle of St. Albans in 1455, in which an army from Yorkshire serving the House of York crushed an army of southerners loyal to King Henry VI, then proceeded to sack the town. "Meantime, while the Duke of York was (as has been told) consoling the King, and comforting him, the victors were left idle, and being too eager and avaricious, passed their time with pillage, plunder and rapine, incapable of restraining their hands either at home among their neighbours or outside among enemies. They were all, for the most part, of the northerly parts of the kingdom; and therefore, although stronger in arms and more ready to war, also to the spilling of blood...He who is born with the Northern hoarfrost in his veins... [Read is] Indomitable in war, and Deaths lover. - John Simm grew up in the North and often chooses to play gritty, angsty, and Northern characters. - Malcolm McDowell is from Leeds, Yorkshire. Apparently, his accent used to be a lot more pronounced. - Patrick Stewart is also from Yorkshire, but has no discernible trace of the accent, apart from occasionally truncated vowels. He briefly brought out his very strong childhood accent for an appearance on Friday Night with Jonathan Ross: Patrick Stewart: Atha lairkin' ahht? (Translation: "Are you larking out", i.e., "can you come out to play?") Jonathan Ross (bewildered): Is that Japanese? - Much to the awed confusion of the panelists and the delight of the audience, he also brought out the accent to read poetry on Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me. You can hear it here. - He has also done adverts on TV for Yorkshire Tea, in which he gleefully switches from Shakespearian flourish to broadest Yorkshire, so as to extol the virtues of something which is definitively not Earl Grey. - Ian McKellen is from Lancashire (spent most of his early childhood in Wigan) but never uses the accent. He says that he is probably the last Northern actor who felt that he had to erase his own accent and adopt RP. - Michael Palin is from Sheffield, although he has lived in London for many decades, but can still put on a seamless Yorkshire accent, still supports Sheffield United and will usually drop in a mention of Sheffield in his foreign travelogues. - Conversely Sean Bean has a rather pronounced Sheffield accent and which is very distinct in much of his work. It was so prominent that after Bean was cast in the Sharpe series of TV movies, author Bernard Cornwell was so impressed with his performance that he changed his character's upbringing from London to Sheffield in novels that were written after the broadcast of the series. - This is very much averted today, at least aesthetically. For example, Sheffield, which is often stereotyped as a grimy industrial steel city stuck in the 1940s (most recently thanks to The Full Monty), has the most greenspace compared to urbanspace in Britain (mainly because the city's boundary includes a large unpopulated part of the Peak District). The steel industry shut down back in the seventies and eighties and most of the old, dirty factories have been knocked down and replaced with shops and apartments. Manchester and Leeds have done similar things themselves. - Not only that, modern Sheffield apparently has more trees per person than any other city in Europe. - And since all the old steel factories were demolished, more steel is made in Sheffield than at any other time in its history - it just happens to only need three men and a dog to do it. - This has happened with Manchester largely because the IRA set off a bomb in the city centre in 1996. Although a terrible event at the time, it resulted in a huge amount of revitalisation for the city, since there was suddenly a large amount of open space that could be replanned, and of course, lots of construction jobs suddenly available. Comedian Jason Manford probably puts it best in his gag about doing a gig in Belfast, where he mentioned he was from Manchester. Jason Manford: All of a sudden, this voice rings out of the crowd, thick Northern Irish accent, and goes, "Did you like the bomb?" And I paused for a second and said, "Well, yeah, I did as it happens. Nobody died, and we got a new Next (clothes store - the largest one in Britain was built in Manchester after the bomb)." - Salford, a sort-of-sister-city, sort-of-district of Manchester note : long story short it was a completely different place until Manchester started expanding and eventually wound up absorbing it, amoeba-style, and now nobody's really sure what the hell's going on or which county it's meant to be in, is currently halfway through its own renovation due to an influx of students and the sudden relocation of the BBC to the quays. Which basically means everything's nice and shiny as long as you're within spitting distance of the university or Media City, but tends to turn back to urban decay the moment you get more than about ten metres away from the splendor. Very nice pubs, though. - Although the old, grimy, stereotype of the North is becoming less and less true, the North remains the poorest region of Britain, due to a variety of factors: mainly breakdown of community employment due to Thatcherite economic policies, the re-alignment of the British economy towards London and the Square Mile, growing London narcissism, and the fact that most governments have ignored it so as to look for success stories elsewhere. Old mining towns, such as Orgreave (a hero city to many on the Left), are especially bad. - George MacDonald Fraser wrote the history book The Steel Bonnets about the late medieval version of this. The area is described as being in tension between the Obstructive Bureaucrats of England and Scotland when it is not actually being fought over. The region is full of outlaws and Feuding Families all seeking plunder from each other, according to the Good Old Ways of the border. The law in the region was at its most basic, and it was generally not a nice place to live. - P.F. Chisholm's series of historical mysteries concerning Sir Robin Carey, an illegitimate grandson of King Henry VIII who is sent to be Warden of the Marches and keep the peace on the border, deal with the same place and period. They're also rather good. - BRIAN BLESSED, Diana Rigg, and Jeremy Clarkson all come from Doncaster. It's now home to a large college for the deaf. That's just a coincidence. Maybe. Possibly. - Comedian and comic actor Lee Mack is from Lancashire and occasionally milks his Northernness (or irritation at the Southern view of the North) for comic effect. - This little girl who's become something of a Youtube hit. - Karl Pilkington is also famously from Manchester. Many of his anecdotes featured on The Ricky Gervais Show include the many eccentric folks there. - Hollywood actress Joanne Whalley-Kilmer is originally from Stockport. - Comedienne Diane Morgan from Mock the Week and talking head "Philomena Cunk" on Screenwipe is from Bolton and has quite a thick Bolton accent. - A Blackpool native, Jenna Coleman has a mild Lancashire accent. - Ant and Dec are both from Newcastle and were on Byker Grove. When they had fellow Geordie Cheryl Fernandez-Versini on as a guest for one of their sketches, Ant jokes that the three of them understood each other perfectly and if anyone else couldn't, that was too bad. - Famous graphic design studio The Designers Republic, known as the designers of the Wipeout series is from Sheffield. Their works sometimes have references of their northern origin (such as using the term 'SoYo' for South Yorkshire or 'North of Nowhere'). Curiously, their founder is a Londoner, who moved to Sheffield. - Radio presenter and writer Stuart Maconie (born in Wigan) wrote a travelogue Pies and Prejudice: In Search of the North as an attempt to define the essence of Northern Englishness. He asserts that despite claims to the contrary, Staffordshire is part of the Midlands despite some promising northern characteristics. Depending on the route your train out of London takes, the North only properly begins at Macclesfield, a town in northeast Cheshire near Stockport. Going by the alternative route, it definitely begins at Crewe, Cheshire. Anything in Cheshire south of Macclesfield or Crewe, by Maconie's analysis, is in the Midlands. The city of Chester counts as the North's last outpost against a different sort of alien: the Welsh. - AC/DC singer Brian Johnson grew up in the area around Newcastle. His dialect is often undecipherable, to the point where T.V. shows will sometimes give him subtitles during interviews. - Stand-up comic Roy "Chubby" Brown is from Yorkshire and speaks with his natural accent. - Sir Geoffrey Boycott is from Leeds note : Actually Fitzwilliam, which is a large village (and, sadly a Wretched Hive) that is halfway between Leeds and Doncaster and his thick Yorkshire accent along with his blunt speak as a Cricket commentator is legendary. - Jimmy Savile spoke with a distinct Northern accent at a time when British broadcasters still spoke in a very posh way. This made him seem relatable to the British people and was a key element in his rise to fame.	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/OopNorth
Opening the Flood Gates - TV Tropes In a wacky comedy, the water level's rising inside a locked room, and usually, somebody is trapped in there. An unsuspecting person opens the door, and gets the unwelcome surprise of a massive flood pouring out, knocking them right over. In Real Life, the water would usually just leak out at the crack at the bottom of the door, though it could be blocked up. Often the volume of water is so great that the weight should rip it off the hinges, or cause the floor to collapse, both of which would also cause the water to leak out as well. Compare Exploding Closet, where there's a pile of solid objects on the other side of the door. Exploding Fish Tanks is another variant. May involve a Man-Made House Flood. ## Examples - In one commercial, the young son of a family was filling the tub with water in preparation for a bath but then went away and forgot about it; at the end of the commercial the bathroom door pops open from the water pressure and a wall of water starts to drain out into the rest of the house. The son has a slightly evil grin on his face. - A variant happens in Episode 6 of Eroge! Sex and Games Make Sexy Games; Kisara wonder why the water suddenly stopped running in an Inn's bathroom, and when she goes over to check, she's blasted by a torrent of cold water gushing out. - Agent 327: In "Dossier Stemkwadrater", Agent 327 invokes this trope after being taken captive by Dr. Maybe. He convinces Dr. Maybe to give him some time to think about his We Can Rule Together offer, finds a bathroom, locks himself inside and floods the place (even using toothpaste to block the cracks around the door). When Dr. Maybe's right hand man opens the door, the resulting tidal wave carries Agent 327 right back to the lab and takes out all the henchmen there, allowing 327 to get hold of the titular Stemkwadrater. - Garfield: - In this story, after Jon, Odie, and Garfield return home from a trip, they're victim to this when Jon opens the front door to their house, because Garfield left the tap on (he didn't want his own sponge collection to dry out). - In this comic, Garfield invokes this trope so he can go surfing indoors. - In another comic, Jon sees Garfield carrying a bucket of water back and forth. Deciding to investigate, he opens the door Garfield has been going through, and experiences this. Garfield then complains about him turning his water collection loose. - From Cats Don't Dance, after giving a press conference on his upcoming film, studio honcho Mammoth opens the door to the sound stage, unaware that the Funny Animal performers are undergoing a deluge as part of the villain's effort to sabotage their careers. Since this is a cartoon, the water ignores the laws of fluid dynamics, flowing instead according to the Rule of Funny. Mister Mammoth was most displeased. - One of the shorts made to advertise Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius had water suddenly come pouring into the house when Hugh opens the front door to go outside and fix a leak, because Jimmy had teleported the house under the ocean so he could do research for an oceanography report. His mom asks him to warn them next time. - This happens at the end of the zany things Paddington does in the bathroom. - In the Laurel and Hardy short Brats, Ollie Jr. fills up a bathtub, gets knocked into it, and accidentally strains on the shower head when he gets out. Later, Ollie prepares to enter the bathroom to get Stan Jr. a drink of water, only to be knocked down by the flood. - The 1975 detective drama The Drowning Pool has gumshoe Lew Harper and his old flame Mavis be imprisoned by the villain in the hydrotherapy room of an abandoned mental hospital. They try to escape through the skylight by flooding the room, but the material won't break. There are only moments of air left, and no way to drain the water due to the pressure. Just then, the villain and The Dragon arrive to dispose of the snoops, and they open the access door. Surprise! - In Jumanji, the abandoned house floods from rain due to the titular board game's effects. The police kicks the door open only to be greeted by a wave of water. - In Oh, God!, John Denver's character's car is flooded by God (played by George Burns). He gets pulled over by a cop, and when he opens his car door, an huge endless stream of water pours out of the car. He nevertheless acts like this is a normal occurrence. - In The Return of the Pink Panther, there's a scene where Inspector Clouseau is bathing while using a hand shower sprayer. The phone rings, and he finds he can't shut the sprayer off, so he places it in the toilet while he goes to answer the phone. He shuts the bathroom door behind him, and we can already see the toilet starting to overflow. One lengthy phone conversation later, Clouseau returns to open the door to the bathroom. SPLOOOOSSSHH! - A non-comedic example happens in Titanic (1997), when an Slovak immigrant and his child, neither of who know a word in English, get lost in a flooding hall as the ship sinks. He walks straight to a locked door, which promptly bursts open and floods the hall completely, sweeping them away. - In The Shape of Water, Elisa intentionally floods her own bathroom so she can have some underwater romantic time with the Asset. Then the manager of the theater downstairs complains to her friend Giles about the water dripping through his ceiling, so Giles runs over and opens the bathroom door... - A variation of this happens in Beanotown Battle: Book 2 of The Diary of Dennis The Menace: Dennis, instead of trying to photocopy 10 pages of detention writing in the Secretary's Office, somehow manages to accidentally photocopy . When the Secretary herself opens the door, she is buried by an avalanche of pages (with Dennis surfing on the tide, described as looking 10,000 pages very proud of himself). Mrs. Creecher says that it took all afternoon to dig her out. - In the Star Trek novel The Final Reflection, an Actual Pacifist character sets up a trap for an assassin by turning on the hot water taps in his bathroom, closing the door, and hiding under the bed. - In All the Wrong Questions, the villain tried to murder a person by tying her to a chair in a room filling with water. The protagonists smash a window in the room, resulting in this trope. - Dungeons & Dragons module C1 The Hidden Shrine of Tamoachan. The door to the Tomb of Hurakan is sealed tight and hard to open because the room beyond is full of water. If it's opened, a wave of water will pour out, washing the PCs back down the passage. - The Magic School Bus: In "Wet All Over", the girls' bathroom is flooded due to a faulty faucet. Guess what happens when Tiffany opens the door? - Spongebob Squarepants: - In an episode, SpongeBob cries so much he fills up his entire house with tears. Squidward opens the front door, and gets knocked right over. - In another, Pearl runs to the Krusty Krab crying to her dad over being dumped by her boyfriend. SpongeBob gets blown back by her tears flooding Mr. Krabs' office and busting the door open. - The Popeye short "Happy Birthdaze" has this happen to Popeye when Shorty floods the bathroom. Twice. - House of Mouse: In the short "Daisy Bothers Minnie", Daisy stays over at Minnie's house and starts a bath in her tub, and soon forgets about it while leaving the water running. Later, when the two are cornered by an escaped lion, the bathroom door finally gives way and floods the house, and also washes the lion back to the zoo. - In one of the early The Simpsons shorts, Bart decides to get immersed in his bathtime playing and forgets to turn off the taps as he submerges himself and pretends he is Jacques Cousteau. He jokingly shouts for help, which Homer takes as a genuine cry for distress, causing him to open the door and be splashed. - In the Toy Story short "Partysaurus Rex", Rex helps Bonnie's bath toys by turning on the faucet so they can party. All goes well until Rex realizes that the bathtub is going to overflow. His attempts to turn off the faucet fail, and when the other toys come looking for him, they are met with a wall of sudsy water. - The Amazing World of Gumball: In "The Responsible", Anais accidentally floods the whole house by leaving the bathtub faucet running. And after Gumball and Darwin rescue her and escape through the chimney, an angry Nicole comes home from a parent-teacher-conference and opens the front door only to be greeted by water suddenly blasting out. - In 6teen's "Silent Butt Deadly", Nikki ends up flooding Jonesy's bathroom (long story), and when he finally opens the door, he's knocked over by a wave of dirty water. - Dastardly and Muttley in Their Flying Machines: At the end of one "Magnificent Muttley" short, when the rest of the Vulture Squadron returns home, unbeknownst to them, Muttley had left the faucet on. Cue them (minus Muttley) being swept away by the tidal wave. - DuckTales (1987): In "The Bride Wore Stripes," the Beagle Boys overfill their bathtub so much that it floods down a whole flight of stairs.	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/OpeningTheFloodGates
Open Heart Dentistry - TV Tropes Dr. Loboto: Little boy, I am sorry to say that you have a serious mental problem. The trouble originates in THIS area, here; the area that we in the medical profession like to refer to as "THE BRAIN"! You see, son, it's just no good! I hate to be so blunt, but YOU have the INSANITY! of a MANATEE! Dogen: I know. People are always saying that... What do you think's wrong with my brain, doctor? Dr. Loboto: How should I know? I'm a dentist! But here's what I do know: if a tooth is bad, you pull it! Dr. Loboto: Yep, that brain has to come out! It's the quickest way to cure what you have: INSANITY OF THE MIND! Dogen: But I don't wanna- Dr. Loboto: Shush-shush-shush-shush-shushieee! Now, hold still! This will only hurt until your brains come flying out! When a character is shot or has some other lethal wound, but the next hospital is 100 miles away or the police are after them, an alternative is needed. It doesn't matter if they find a vet or a dentist; as long as they know how to hold a needle, they will do. And they will do just fine! In most cases, not even a scar will remain. To a very limited extent this is justified, as medical doctors in different specialties do all go through basic medical training note : For instance, while you can't expect an eye doctor to conduct a heart or liver transplant, they can be realistically expected to diagnose a heart or epilepsy attack, provide competent first aid, stitch up a wound, assist in childbirth, and so on, and some of the skills of one discipline cross over. A bit. note : In general, the more specific a procedure, the more specialized the doctor has to be (for instance, your average veterinarian is perfectly capable of sewing up a superficial wound in the skin, but won't be able to perform surgery for a shattered ankle — that latter will need an orthopedic surgeon). Oftentimes a subtrope of Closest Thing We Got, if the dentist's employed in an emergency. Compare Back-Alley Doctor, who may or may not be a licensed practitioner of medicine, but could still save your life if worst comes to worst. Compare/contrast with Super Doc when you can actually find a genuine doctor who is more like medicine's answer to the Omnidisciplinary Scientist. See also Surgeons Can Do Autopsies If They Want. ## Examples: - Black Jack. Operating on animals is one of the least outrageous things this man has done. He's performed successful "surgeries" on a supercomputer and a ghost. - Franken Fran will stitch together any "patient", whether a human, an animal, some weird hybrid, or a 40-meter giant that forced her to use a two-handed surgical knife. - Subverted in Fullmetal Alchemist with regards to Dr. Knox. Introduced as a medical examiner, it seems that later decisions to visit him for treatment are strange potentially : Medical examiners in real life need medical degrees anyway, so any given medical examiner is qualified to work on living people as well as the dead. In fact, in many places around the world, medical examiners are basically first trained as pathologists, which is often seen as one of the hardest and most prestigious branches of medicine, even if they mostly work with the dead.. In fact, Knox had originally been a highly skilled physician but after taking part in medical experiments on captive Ishvalans he felt he was only fit to handle the dead. - A massive car crash in the Pokémon: The Series episode "A Chansey Operation" anime results in a full Pokémon Center that is forced to send excess Pokémon to a human hospital and a doctor who prescribes superglue for everything he can get away with. - Of course, this is the first and only time when we can see that modern medicine in-universe isn't limited to Pokémon. Local herbs and remedies have been used to cure ailments (specifically Stun Spore) on both Pokémon and humans throughout the series. - Atomic Robo and the Knights of the Golden Circle: Robo encounters Doc Holliday while trying to save a man dying from gunshot wounds. Holliday is able to keep the man alive long enough to pass on some crucial information, though he dies shortly after. Doc Holliday: Pennsylvania Dental College neglected to include bullet wounds in its curriculum. Regretfully. Marshal Reeves: Mouth's a hole. Bullet's a tooth. (later) Reeves: How he looking, Holliday? Holliday: No cavities. Otherwise, dying. - Subverted in one Crossed story where a Red Shirt character hiding inside a survival bunker dies from a botched appendectomy performed by the only doctor in the bunker: a dermatologist. - Doctor Strange is sometimes roped by his fellow superheroes into carrying out medical procedures on the wounded in emergencies, usually over his fervent protests that he's a neurosurgeon specifically, and years out of practice besides (he had to retire after a car accident maimed his hands and left him unable to hold a scalpel steady; accordingly, when forced to do surgery nowadays, he has to use magic or give instructions to others). He's usually able to serve adequately enough, though he tends to also insist that his patient seek proper care once the current crisis is resolved. - In Hack/Slash, Cassie and Vlad usually go to their friend Lisa — who is a veterinarian — to get patched up. In her defense, Lisa usually comments that she is not qualified to work on humans, but Cassie and Vlad prefer not to have their injuries treated in hospital. - Secret Wars (1984): After Molecule Man is badly injured in the initial battle between heroes and villains, the other villains are at a loss for what to do and badger Doctor Octopus to help him in the basis that he's the only doctor present. Otto angrily points out that he's a physicist, not a medical doctor, but gets overridden and so has to try his best to treat Owen's wounds. He's able to manage some very basic stitches, but that's it, and he complains the whole time that Owen needs an actual medic. - In Sonic the Hedgehog (Archie Comics), the Anti-Mobius version of Doctor Robotnik is Doctor Kintobor, a vet. In a related matter, the Evil Alien Xorda also once said the Mobians are 90% identical to humans in their genealogy, although lord only knows how the internal anatomy of a Mobian is arranged... - Spirou and Fantasio: After one of the Count's inventions turns some of the inhabitants of Champignac black, the mayor refuses to call in a doctor, fearing what's happening might leak out. So instead he has one of the victims examined by a former vet who happens to be at hand. The only thing he can contribute is that the victim has a shiny coat, which is a good sign. - The Transformers: More than Meets the Eye: Because Transformers are giant robots, the boundary between "engineering" and "medicine" is naturally somewhat porous. This is best exemplified when Whirl, a former watchmaker turned Blood Knight, performs the equivalent of a heart transplant on \|\|a freshly constructed Megatron\|\|, out of spite. For bonus points, since he hasn't had his empurata surgery reversed \|\|and never does\|\|, he's performing said surgery with only one eye and using hands that are basically just scissors. It works perfectly. - Modesty Blaise: In "Million Dollar Game", a vet is shot in the thigh in a position he cannot reach. He talks Modesty through the procedure for removing the bullet. - Downplayed in the Sherlock Holmes fanfic All Gods Little Creatures. Alfie asks Watson if he can help a hurt kitten. Watson notes that to a boy, all doctors probably seem alike. The wound is such that Watson can fix it, despite not being a veterinarian. - In Conversations with a Cryptid, Recovery Girl's hero license only allows her to give first aid on crime scenes. Despite that she practices surgery, anesthesiology, emergency medicine, physiotherapy, sports medicine, pediatric medicine, and general practice, all without licenses or schooling for any of them. Subverted in that it's implied that Izuku's crippled right arm is due to her and several students died due to improper medical treatment. - In Destiny is a Hazy Thing, after the Sound/Sand Invasion, anyone with any medical training is conscripted to help with the massive number of casualties, including veterinarians. Even then, they're still so overworked that patients who should be healed completely are crippled for life because the medics don't have the time or chakra to do more than making sure their patients won't die. - Parodied in the second instalment of the Supper Smash Bros: Mishonh From God trilogy, where Dr. Mario is shown helping Fiora give birth in his operating theatre. While Dr. Mario's qualifications aren't touched upon in his home games, his usage of pills implies him to be a chemist. Notable for being a case with three different types of doctors being (intentionally) mixed up in one fell swoop. - A Rabbit Among Wolves: After Jaune is shot, his minions take him to a vet where Perry works, largely because they can't go to the hospital due to Jaune being a fugitive. - In the Firefly fic Shut Our Exhausted Eyes Simon has to do a root canal on Mal. Mal can't exactly go to a dentist and though Simon is a surgeon rather than a dentist, he had read up on the procedure and seen it done and since Mal was actually allowing the help without his usual grumbling, Simon knows it's gotta be bad. The author throws in a handwave of future medical tech being better than today's, and Simon being glad Serenity's med bay is at least decently equipped, and he's able to get it done without trouble. - In Animorphs, Cassie's amateur veterinary skills are sometimes brought up for this, such as when Elfangor crashed on Earth. (Of course, who's to say a human doctor would know how to handle an alien injury either?) Still, when she was actually forced to operate on Ax she only managed with help from Aftran, who accessed Ax's own memories to figure out what to do. - Stephen Maturin in the Aubrey-Maturin novels by Patrick O'Brien tends to show this sort of thing from time to time, though in this case it's pretty well justified. Maturin is one of few actual physicians in the Royal Navy, and can (unlike most Navy surgeons) be trusted to do more than amputate limbs and pull teeth, meaning that most medical men he meets defer to him. Maturin is not only a physician, but also a zoologist of some renown, and has a very good handle on anatomy in general. Maturin is usually the only medical professional in range when Sophie is at sea, and finally, other physicians readily acknowledge that Maturin is very, very good. - Not exactly this trope, but in Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress, the main characters are sent to a remote mountain during the Cultural Revolution because their parents are doctors and dentists. So when the nasty village headman has a rotten tooth, let's just say the boys have some fun with this... - Father Neil daSouza is a Catholic priest who wrote five volumes of the Bless Me Father... short stories about his everyday life as a new parish curate straight out of seminary. Assigned to the wily and street-hardened Father Duddlestone, he learns quickly. Sent to a rich parishioner one day, she tearfully shows him an apparently dead canary and asks if there is anything Father Neil can do for it. (Compare this to James Herriot's story of dealing with a dead cagebird, elsewhere in this section.) Nonplussed, Da Souza read a random prayer in Latin and sprinkled holy water over the bird. He attributes its recovery and bursting into song to the shock of the cold water... - In the Ciaphas Cain novel Death or Glory, the chief medical officer of the scratch company Cain forms from the scattered remnants of various Guard units, PDF units, and street gangs was a vet. He was the only medically trained person they could find. Cain himself remarked that the Vet is trained in "All animals. Big or small." This would later become the title of the Vet's autobiography recapping the events of the campaign. - On the Discworld people who actually know what they're doing don't go to a doctor for major medical problems, they go to a vet. The logic is thus: If a doctor isn't good, they usually just have a dead patient. But if a vet isn't good, they usually have a rich, furious, mafioso racing horse owner with lots of hired muscle and little patience (or worse, if the mafioso in question is Chrysophrase the troll) to deal with. Hence why horse vet "Doughnut Jimmy" Folsom is regarded as one of the best doctors in the city, despite his tendency to act as if all of his patients are horses, regardless of their actual species. Later in the continuity, they start going to Igors. When someone is trained to stitch together dead body parts into living monsters, stitching someone's lost arm back onto the body it belongs to is much, much easier. - Later still, in ''Night Watch', Vimes trusts Dr John 'Mossy' Lawn, who is a pox doctor (that is, someone who treats... ladies of negotiable affection... for the infections they contract whilst... negotiating...) with the lives of his wife and unborn child during labour, when the delivery starts going badly and the midwife is out of her depth. It's implied that Dr. Lawn had similar attitudes to Ignaz Semmelweis when it came to childbed fever. - Although a doctor who specializes in treating... seamstresses would have ample practice in both pregnancy and the resulting affliction that happens after it, though apparently, this is less of a problem than you might think. - Because Vimes is a very rich man when this occurs, he rewards Dr. Lawn by helping him set up a free public hospital. Subsequent books imply that the influence of the institution have downplayed this trope over time. - In The Dragon Knight series, James, a man from the late 20th century, has had to use his limited 20th-century medical knowledge to help deal with 14th-century medical issues. Luckily, this tends to consist of fairly simple things like clean bandages, making sure that helpers wash their hands with soap, plus some general 20th-century medical info, like antibiotics and means of cleaning wounds, that he could easily use. Later, he's able to use his magic to assist in healing wounds and doing blood transfusions. - Shows up in The Dresden Files story "The Warrior" and after: \|\|Waldo Butters\|\| acts as Harry's physician—and it's stated that he's done this a number of times already. Harry, like most wizards, is enough of a Walking Techbane that his presence in a proper hospital would endanger the other patients. Unlike most of the examples on this list, \|\|Butters\|\| is a fully trained and accredited doctor. However, he works in the morgue and finds working with the dead less stressful. - James Herriot: - In one of his books, Herriot recounted advising a farmer on handling his back problems, and that the farmer seemed to take the vet more seriously than the people doctor. On the other hand, Herriot's advice (for the farmer to stop doing the hand milking of his cows and let others do it) was actually a roundabout way to treat the actual patients — a number of cows showing symptoms of minor injuries from overly energetic hand milking (by the farmer with the back problem). - Particularly ironic as Herriot often was frustrated by the tendencies of such farmers to trust knacker men, unqualified quacks, local know-alls, and above all each other for veterinary advice far more than they ever trusted him (probably because his prognosis would be cautiously realistic, whereas the amateur would usually promise a miracle... and by sheer luck may sometimes get one...). - This cut both ways. The bereaved owner of a recently dead pet — a caged bird, in fact — chose to ask Herriot, rather than the local vicar or priest, whether animals have souls and go to Heaven after death (he said his view was they'd all go to the same place). Contrast this to Father Neil da Souza's experience, elsewhere in this section. - Once, while serving as the attending veterinarian for a race track, he was called out to help a man who'd scraped his knee after slipping going down the stairs. He mentally joked over the experience. - Mrs. Everdeen in The Hunger Games is an apothecary, but functions as a doctor for much of District 12, since the population is too poor to afford real doctors. - Justified in the Legends of Laconia series, because Dr. Nat Silver is a Friendly Neighborhood Vampire who uses his extended lifespan to attend different medical schools over the years and become fully accredited in multiple disciplines. - In one of the stories posted online but not yet professionally published, there is a Subversion when someone gets a gunshot wound and he wails that he is a general practitioner, vet, psychiatrist, obstetrician, dentist, and plastic surgeon, but not a trauma surgeon! - Mass Effect Annihilation: Yorrick the elcor tries pointing out from the off that he's an elcor ear nose and throat doctor, not a trained mortician/virologist. It's pointed out right back he's the closest thing they can manage in the situation (since they can't risk waking up anyone else). He does a remarkable job, all the same. \|\|Until he catches the virus, which eventually kills him.\|\| - Downplayed in the Tom Clancy novel Patriot Games: Irish terrorists attack and shoot up a ferry in the English Channel, leaving it adrift with no radios and five wounded passengers aboard. The only doctor on board is is a veterinarian, who tends to the wounded with the help of a ferry crew member. By the time a Royal Navy flight surgeon arrives, one of the wounded has died from the injury. It's clear that the vet did his best, but he was way out of his depth, and the care he provided the wounded was little better than what an emergency-trained civilian might have done. - The Peshawar Lancers begins with a trooper complaining about being wounded and not wanting to see "the yoni doctor". His CO chides him gently, saying that while their regimental surgeon is a reservist and happens to be a gynaecologist in his civilian career, he is also a fully trained battlefield surgeon, and the trooper should know better than to be angry with people who are trying to keep him alive. - Also subverted in another Stephen King novel, The Regulators, where a woman's arm is torn off by a gunshot. Tom Billingsley, a vet, tries to treat her, but she soon dies. Billingsley remarks that she needed a trauma unit, not "an old veterinarian with shaky hands". - Subverted in The Stand when one of the merry band of travelers tries to perform an emergency appendectomy and the patient dies. None of the folks in the group are dentists or vets, but one of the group holds a Ph.D. In anthropology. - Later the Boulder Free Zone's "doctor" points out that he's just a vet, and the town needs someone with real human medicine experience. When an elderly M.D. arrives, he immediately sets about training the vet in human doctoring, noting that despite surviving the pandemic, he will not be around long and the vet (and a recently arrived nurse) is the best hope they have for the future. - In Jurassic Park, Chief Vet Gerry Harding is the closest thing they have to a doctor after Malcolm is mauled by the T. Rex. Despite being one of the best bird doctors and the best dinosaur doctor in the world, the most he's able to do is give Malcolm morphine and try and keep the wounds clean and closed; and he outright says Malcolm will die if he can't be evacuated within a day. Presumably he's also the one treating Malcolm in the movie, where he does a much better job. - 30 Rock: "Dr." Leo Spaceman tend to handle whatever the plot requires. He's actually listed under three different entries in the Writer's Guild health manual (fertility, meth addiction, and child psychiatry). He's not particularly competent at anything, though. - Angel: When pressed for time, Angel can dig bullets out of his own body. Justified in that he's a vampire, and doing so would do far less damage to him than it would were he a human. - Better Call Saul: On his first day in Albuquerque, Mike goes to a vet for treatment of the bullet wound that he sustained while \|\|avenging his son's death against two corrupt cops\|\| before he left Philadelphia. The vet, Dr. Caldera, is not only a clandestine doctor for those who have no other recourse but also a middleman between various types of criminals who helps Mike get his first jobs in Albuquerque's criminal underworld. - Boardwalk Empire: - Deconstructed when Prohibition agent Nelson Van Alden takes a wounded suspect from a hospital to where he can be interrogated. Seeing that the guy won't make it, they find the nearest person with a medical degree, who happens to be a dentist. The man points out that he has no idea how to help the suspect. He injects the then-legal cocaine to calm down the guy but has to do it in his mouth, as he has never injected a syringe anywhere else. The guy dies while a desperate van Alden, uh, accelerates his questioning under these conditions. - Played relatively straight in season 3. Samuel Crawford is called in to treat a man who has been shot in the stomach. He is a medical student still two years from graduation and this is the type of operation that normally requires a proper hospital and a skilled surgeon. He is forced to operate out of a kitchen and use whiskey as an anesthetic. Luckily the bullet did not hit any vital organs and Samuel manages to extract it and sew up the wound. He then explains that the patient might still die from complications if he is not taken to a proper hospital. - The Brittas Empire had an episode when the cast ended up having a vet deliver a baby in the sauna and a doctor deliver a calf in a squash court. - CSI: - In "Willows in the Wind", Doc Robbins (a pathologist) has to perform impromptu field surgery on Catherine, cauterising a gunshot wound with a curling iron. - Doc Robbins and David have performed emergency resuscitation on a supposed cadaver that turned out not to be quite dead. - Justified in both cases as pathologists start out as doctors, or at least have medical degrees—they may not be up on the latest medical knowledge, but they're fully capable of treating people in emergencies. - In Our Mutual Friend, Mr. Venus is a taxidermist. In Dickensian, he's apparently the closest Inspector Bucket has to a forensic pathologist. - One episode of Doctor Who serial "The Seeds of Doom" takes place at an Antarctic outpost cut off from the outside world. When one of its staff needs an alien-Virus-infected limb amputated, a zoologist is tasked to perform the emergency surgery because he's a better choice than the geologist or botanist: at least he's probably held a scalpel before, if only for dissections. - One episode of Doogie Howser, M.D. had the eponymous doctor operate on a kid's dog. And then nearly lose his medical license over it. - Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman, once operated on her son's dog. She specifically points out she's a people doctor when he brings Wolf to her. The pilot had a brief mention of her treating a farmer's pig. - Emergency! has this situation more than once: - "905-Wild," the paramedics find a pet goat kid who desperately needs surgery for a despondent little girl. As it is, the proper veterinary clinic is too far away and the goat has to be taken to Rampart Hospital instead over the vociferous objections of Dr. Brackett, who has to be talked into treating the goat. As it is, a vet from Animal Control guides the Rampart surgeons over the phone and Dr. Early happens to have enough animal training to avoid using the wrong drugs. - On a later episode, the paramedics are on an isolated island with the one bridge out and thus they are the medical staff around except for one doctor, who is a psychiatrist. With radio contact with Rampart Hospital, she still proves an asset under the circumstances until Dr. Morton can be flown in to take over. Not as far-fetched as it might sound; a psychiatrist is a full M.D. with a specialty in diagnosing and treating mental illnesses. - ER did this too—Doug Ross, Anna DelAmico, and Cleo Finch, all pediatricians, were often seen treating adult patients (in DelAmico's defense, she was double-boarding in pediatrics and emergency medicine). - Everybody Loves Raymond: New York cops are legendary for having seen just about everything and for being able to cope with just about anything. Until Sergeant Robert Barone tries to take charge of his sister-in-law's pregnancy scare and attempts to rush her to the hospital. He only succeeds in getting stuck in a traffic jam on Queensboro Bridge and, faced with delivering Debra's baby, flounders terribly. Ray is of no help. Fortunately for Sergeant Barone, who panics completely, it's a false alarm. - In the final episode of Frasier, Daphne's baby is delivered by a nurse who happens to be waiting at the same veterinarian's office. Nobody even suggests that Niles (who must have a medical degree if he is practicing as a psychiatrist) might be a better choice. note : In an earlier episode, Niles and Frasier attempt to deliver a baby, being the only doctors of any sort on hand for the emergency, and fail miserably. It is revealed of Niles that he only opted to specialise in psychiatry after he realised that surgery and the sight of blood made him very queasy indeed. - Get Shorty: Miles has his gunshot wound treated by his estranged wife, who is a nurse at a plastic surgeon's office. - When Chuck gets shot on Gossip Girl his gunshot wound to the abdomen is treated by Eva, a prostitute who dropped out of nursing school and who uses only vodka and dressings to nurse him back to health. It works and he appears to have no lingering problems save for a two-episode limp. - Harrow: In "Locus Poenitentiae" ("Place of Penitance"), Harrow and Farley—who are pathologists—are forced to deliver a baby for a woman undergoing a Screaming Birth on the side of the road. Harrow notes that Farley at least did an obstetrics rotation during his residency, which makes him the slightly more qualified of the two. - Hometown Cha-Cha-Cha: Hye-jin (a dentist) delivers Yun-gyeong's baby in her home after the roads to the hospital are blocked due to the typhoon, armed with nothing but her rudimentary knowledge from school and some advice on home births from the neighborhood grandmothers. She's successful. - Jericho (2006): Kenchy is a plastic surgeon, but must treat several people suffering from fever, gunshot wounds, strokes, or pregnancy complications. Not all of his patients survive. - In the Law & Order episode "Over Here" a badly-wounded man stumbles into a Veterinary Clinic; he was either too wounded to realize what it was or too desperate to care. The staff did what they could with supplies for treating large dogs, but he died before an ambulance arrived to take him to the human doctors. The doctor who treated him is able to give the detectives an estimate of his injuries, as he has "x-ray hands" due to treating patients that can't talk. Truth in Television, as vets in most states are legally permitted and morally obliged to help injured humans until someone better qualified to treat people can take over. - On Lost, Jack's appendix is successfully removed by Juliet, a fertility researcher, and Bernard, a dentist. The show attempted to justify this trope by having Juliet say that she'd performed a lot of appendectomies during her residency. Also, during Jack's operation, Bernard seemed mostly in charge of giving Juliet tools and applying Jack's anesthesia. As a dentist, Bernard would plausibly have more experience with that latter job than most other doctors who aren't surgeons. - Subverted in an episode of Malcolm in the Middle when Lois is giving birth at home (not on purpose, the paramedics were late) and everyone expects the doctor neighbor to deal with it. He protests that he knows nothing about obstetrics — he is a dentist and, in fact, became a dentist because most aspects of the human body Squick him out. - On MASH: - The doctors will attempt to bring in a specialist if a patient has a particularly complex issue, but circumstances often mean that it's simply not possible. In many cases, one of the unit's four main doctors will end up having to perform a highly specialized procedure that may be completely outside their primary area of expertise. In addition, the nurses will also take on some of the work that would ideally be given to a doctor, and even non-medical personnel have occasionally been called to assist in surgery when the situation was particularly dire. - In situations where they were especially shorthanded or overloaded, head nurse Margaret Houlihan occasionally performed some of the less complicated surgical procedures, like closing a patient after surgery. In later seasons, it became more common for the nurses to handle procedures of this type so that the doctors could focus on the more difficult procedures, allowing them to move the wounded through more quickly. - In one episode, every doctor except Hawkeye is taken out of commission by the flu, as are a number of the support staff. When a load of wounded arrives, Hawkeye (who is himself ill by this point) ends up pressing pretty much every unit member still standing, including company clerk Radar, into service. (The jobs of the non-medical personnel were usually limited to "hold this" or "hand me that", but those are still people whose jobs usually don't entail any direct involvement in surgeries.) - Inverted in episodes when the surgeons offered medical care to animals, like Radar's various pets or the shrapnel-injured cow whose calf they delivered. - In another episode, Father Mulcahy, the chaplain, has to perform an emergency tracheotomy on a wounded soldier, guided by Hawkeye over the radio. He succeeds. - One Murder, She Wrote* episode had the characters stranded in a ski lodge, and one performed a post-mortem examination, despite his protests that he was a dermatologist. He did fairly well, actually. - NCIS: - A Halloween episode involved the victim going to his neighbor with a gunshot wound and bleeding badly. His neighbor was a pediatrician. - In a less-believable example, medical examiners Ducky and Jimmy had to perform emergency surgery on a German Shepherd dog with serious internal bleeding. Jimmy spent a summer as a veterinary technician, but that's a LONG way from being able to perform complex surgery like finding and removing a foreign body in a dog's stomach. - During a multi-episode arc on Night Court, Dan is called up as an Army Reservist and sent to Alaska. While he's there, a local woman has to have her appendix taken out but because the local doctor is unable to perform the surgery (both of his hands were injured in a plane crash Dan caused by firing a flare gun at his plane), Dan has to operate on her. Dan is chosen because the doctor wants someone whose native language is English so he can guide him through the procedure. - NTSF:SD:SUV::: Parodied when the President of the Navy has his heart covertly replaced with a bomb by the villains. Trent performs "heart surgery" by literally ripping out another person's heart with his bare hands and shoving it inside the other person's chest. - Discussed in NYC 22. When searching for a wounded gunman, Harper and McClaren look for him at various non-hospital facilities. McClaren notes that in the movies, it's always a veterinarian. The shooter turns up at a tattoo parlor. - Used on the One Step Beyond episode "Brainwave", when a World War II ship captain gets a shrapnel wound in the neck, and the only medically-trained crewman available is a pharmacist's mate. He's talked through the procedure via radio by a doctor from another ship, \|\|who gets killed mid-operation when his own ship is hit. Yet his voice continues issuing instructions that guide the mate through a successful extraction and closure: instructions so precise, it's clear before The Reveal that something supernatural is happening because he can evidently see the operation in progress.\|\| - In Prison Break, the character T-bag (Theodore Bagwell), forces a veterinarian to reattach his hand at knifepoint, without anesthesia. It should probably be noted that it doesn't work. It just kind of sits there uselessly until he's forced to remove it to escape a situation, and replaces it with a properly made prosthetic. - Quantum Leap: When Sam leaps into a man helping a woman kidnap a baby (to return it to its rightful mother) he realizes that the baby has asthma. They're on the run and can't go back so they find a vet to bring the baby to. - An early episode of The Sopranos plays this for laughs. After hearing a hefty sound from Pussy from his brothel room, one of the men comments that Pussy must be having a good time... then the prostitute he's with runs in and tells everyone that Pussy might be having a heart attack. The madam sighs and fetches a doctor client of the brothel...a dermatologist. - From the Stargate SG-1 episode "Dead Man Switch": Aris Boch: Dr. Jackson, would you please tend to my wound? Daniel: Um, I'm an archaeologist. Alien Bounty Hunter: But you're also a doctor. Daniel: ... of archaeology. - Just like Dr. Franklin, the various Star Trek medical officers cover all fields of medicine for multiple species. - Of course, in Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country, Dr. McCoy's lack of medical knowledge about Klingons dooms Chancellor Gorkon and lands McCoy and Kirk in prison. - That being said, McCoy successfully cured a rock once (a wounded Horta, to be precise). He realized that he was way out of his depth, having no training in silicon-based biology, but covered a phaser wound with plaster —the silicon equivalent of a bandage. - Dr. Phlox on Enterprise also gave Captain Archer's beagle regular check-ups. Justified because Phlox used lots of animals as a source for curative substances, so presumably learned how to properly care for and treat them, too. - Subverted on Superstore, when Cheyenne has to give birth in the store, the pharmacist Tate heroically walks in and asks if she's on any drugs for the birth...and then walks out, saying that as a pharmacist, that's all he's really licensed to do. - Justified in Teen Wolf: Deaton, the town veterinarian, is secretly the doctor to all the supernatural creatures (mostly were-creatures) in Beacon Hills. He'll treat more human injuries in a pinch, but the characters go to him for anything more supernaturally based. - Later on, the one who handles more mundane injuries for the group is Melissa, a registered nurse. Reinforcing this trope is the fact that she's often pressed into performing advanced triage and emergency care because no actual clinical physician would ever believe just how the bestial injuries being treated came to exist. - Parodied on 3rd Rock from the Sun. Vicki repeatedly mistakes Dr. Albright for a medical doctor, despite Mary's insistence that her doctorate is in anthropology. When Vicki gets pregnant, she asks Albright to deliver the baby; after Mary again tries to explain that she's not that kind of doctor, Vicki assumes that Mary is just being snooty. - In The Unusuals Delahoy coerces a medical examiner, despite her protests, into doing tests on him for his tumor. - One episode of Vengeance Unlimited had Mr. Chapel getting shot. He had K.C. call a vet that owed him a favor. The vet protested but you don't say no to Mr. Chapel. - Justified on The Walking Dead after Carl is shot in a hunting accident and Hershel (a retired vet) was the only person they knew to have medical experience that was still alive in the middle of a Zombie Apocalypse. He even explains that there's no guarantee of success, but he'll do the best he can. He manages to save Carl once they've retrieved some medical equipment. Bonus points because a key skill common to veterinarians is not getting bitten by patients, which is otherwise a major problem in the genre. - In the pilot of When Hope Calls, local veterinarian Chuck tends to area residents who are hurt putting out a fire and the doctor is out of commission. - In The X-Files episode "Agua Mala", Scully (a pathologist) delivers a baby and states she has not done so before. She also winds up doing a fair amount of emergency medicine, largely on Mulder. - In Dino Attack RPG, Dr. Joel Fuchs, a biologist whose specialty was in diseases, was called in to assist in the treatment of a large number of wounded agents. In fairness, there were already several more qualified surgeons but they needed all the help they could get, and he was probably the only other person around who had an understanding of human anatomy. Ultimately subverted in that he never actually performed any surgery himself. - The Adult Swim game series Amateur Surgeon, being a twisted parody of Trauma Center revolves around this. In the first game, Alan Probe is a humble pizza delivery boy who discovers he has an incredible knack for surgery — but since he's not an actual doctor he has to practice in his van or apartment and merely improvise his surgical tools. The sequel features a half-senile 70-year-old Probe called back into the saddle. - In Jagged Alliance, one of the combat medics you can hire, Dr. Mitch Shudlem, is an obstetrician looking to broaden his horizons into trauma surgery. By Jagged Alliance 2 this hasn't worked out for him, and he has "traded the blood and gore of the battlefield for blood and gore of the delivery room and wonders why he ever left." - Mass Effect: - Despite the fact that Mordin Solus is a doctorate in genetics and biochemistry he still runs a clinic in Omega. Justified by the fact that his assistants are more or less medically trained and his knowledge of Bizarre Alien Biology is a vital part of what keeps the clinic up and running. (Not to mention that he also occasionally shoots the mercs that try to disturb the clinic's work). - Choosing him as the tech specialist during the suicide mission \|\|is also this and WILL get him killed.\|\| - This is probably justified because Mordin is an Omnidisciplinary Scientist that also handles your tech and weapons upgrades when you recruit him. Treating a clinic's standard patients would probably be a cakewalk for him, and his recruitment mission involves dispensing a cure he created for a plague that is ravaging the clinic's neighborhood. He can even sing! - In Noveria in the first game, the injured survivors in Peak 15 are being seen to by the facility's microbiologist. As he notes he has a doctorate, but not in medicine. - Osu! Tatakae! Ouendan 2 — a doctor is called to "operate" on a man's bald head, a horse, and a malfunctioning microwave oven. - In Psychonauts, where the page quote comes from. Dr. Loboto has no idea what he's doing—but he was amoral and loony-kookoo enough to take the job when the Big Bad offered it, so he's doing brain surgery as best as his dental training will allow. This turns out to be quite sufficient. - The Quarry combines this with Self-Surgery; Laura, who's not even in school yet to be a veterinarian, is forced to patch up her own eye after her \|\|werewolf boyfriend slashes her face\|\|. - Happens in Team Fortress 2's comics, and, like everything else, Played for Laughs. In the first issue of the "Ring of Fired" comic, the RED Pyro hacks off RED Soldier's hand, but since the circumstances have made it so that their Medic isn't available, Soldier is brought to a roadside vet to get his hand reattached. Soldier takes it in stride. The vet is the one who looks traumatized (probably from Soldier wanting to shake with his just reattached hand). - Trauma Center: - The player is called on to disarm a bomb in the first game and its remake. It's a bit justified since your assistant used to be a part of the police force and dated a guy on the bomb squad, and you do at least have the stable hands required. - Trauma Center: New Blood forces the player into a dog operation when their guide dog receives a shotgun blast trying to protect them. The characters explicitly note that they're doing as little as is necessary to save the dog's life, since, well, they're not vets. - In Trauma Team, Naomi indulges a child into taking a cat in for what she thinks is a "simple" endoscopy. \|\|Nope, the cat's infected with the Rosalia virus\|\|. - Valiant Hearts gives us Anna, a veterinarian who winds up having to aid several wounded soldiers and civilians in a story based in World War I. No animals are treated this way in the game, despite a medical dog being among the main cast. - Lampshaded numerous times in The Adventures of Dr. McNinja: - In his first appearance in Issue One-Half, he is seen practicing dentistry. Mere moments later, he says that he is a podiatrist. - At the end of Spooky Stuff, he's asking people if they want to discuss their current "General Practitioner? Or Dentist? Or Neurologist? Whatever." - Justified, though — the Doc had numerous clones made of him in college, each of them mastering a different field. And then they re-amalgamated, to make the doc. He is now an expert in every field except agriculture. - In the webtoon Lackadaisy when The Big Guy, Viktor, gets injured in a fight Ivy calls the local horse doctor for help. - The official Team Fortress 2 webcomic has this. The team is split up after being fired when Grey Mann takes control of Mann Co., and each has gone their separate ways. When Miss Pauling tries to gather up the team, she finds Soldier, Pyro, and Demoman, and has to drive them around in her car. Soldier and Pyro behave like children and do the "This Is My Side" thing in the back of the car. Pyro doesn't approve of Soldier being on his side. Without the Medic, they have to resort to a roadside veterinarian to reattach his hand. Soldier seems perfectly fine with this and it's the vet who looks positively traumatized by the whole affair. In all fairness, Soldier is crazy. - In the now hiatus'd webcomic Tourniquet, the main character shapeshifts into a demonic winged form, but when he goes back to human shape, he's unable to make his horns and wings go away and needs them to be removed surgically. \|\|He also has a dead demon that requires an autopsy.\|\| Early in the story, his usual physician is unavailable, so he manages to talk a coroner/medical examiner into performing the surgery, despite, as she says, her talents running towards desculpting, not mending. \|\|She never gets the chance to remove them, as the demon he had her autopsy wasn't quite dead and mauled her fairly badly when it woke up on the table.\|\| - On the Archer episode "Coyote Lovely", after the mission goes wrong, Sterling gets shot several times and has to be taken to a vet... who also turns out to be an alcoholic. - On Batman: The Brave and the Bold, Aquaman calls The Atom (Dr. Ryan Choi) to help when Batman is infected with a deadly pathogen. Ryan Choi is a physicist. Fortunately, a physicist who can shrink, so at least they could "Fantastic Voyage" Plot the problem away. - Futurama implies that Zoidberg's entire career with Planet Express is a case of this. While the show generally treats him as an incompetent doctor, he's apparently a competent physician when it comes to treating other aliens, and humans (of which the Planet Express crew almost entirely consists) just happen to fall completely outside his range of medical knowledge. However, he's a cheap hire, remaining out of Undying Loyalty to Farnsworth despite far larger offers from a company hoping to hire him in a capacity better suited to his skills, and Planet Express has a greater investment in saving money than in saving employees. - In Justice League Unlimited Booster Gold is faced with a woman about to give birth and turns to the doctor helping him save the world. Booster Gold: Maybe you should handle this. Dr. Simmons: Why me? Booster Gold: You're a doctor. Dr. Simmons: I'm a physicist! Booster Gold: Yeah? - More a case of not knowing which is the right profession for the job than being strapped for alternatives, in the My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic episode "Secret of My Excess", Twilight tries taking Spike to a pediatrician to figure out why he's been having sudden growth spurts. The diagnosis? Doctor: He's a dragon. Twilight: That's not the problem! He's always been a dragon. Doctor: Oh! Well, that would explain it. - (It bears mentioning that this is a show where a pony being turned into a dragon is entirely plausible, and there may even be specialists who would know how to cure that.) The doctor recommends taking him to a vet, but it turns out she doesn't know anything about dragons either. - South Park: - During an emergency at the hospital, the surgeon is forced to employ the children as honorary doctors on the grounds that they'd once watched a medical drama on TV. Stan, being squeamish, empties his stomach into a patient's incision. - A running gag is Randy being called on to do scientific work for the town outside of his field of geology. This being because he is the only scientist in the town. - A double subversion in "Good Times With Weapons", where an MD opts not to operate on a dog with a shuriken in its eye that had wandered into the hospital, reasoning that his knowledge of humans doesn't translate to dogs. Problem is, it's actually Butters in a terrible dog disguise. - In The Venture Bros., Billy Quizboy, a neurogeneticist, is frequently called upon to do surgery on something other than the brain, although in a season 4 episode, he actually gets to do that. Previously he operated on Dean's testicles and sewed one man's head onto another man's shoulders, and claims to have grafted the head of a horse onto the torso of a well-known celebrity. - The North Hollywood Shootout: A couple of heavily-armed robbers wearing full kevlar shot up a bank and with the police officers trying to take a hold of the situation, one wounded officer ended up taking refuge in a dentist's office. All the dentist could do was stop the bleeding as best he could and offer painkillers, but this did end up saving the officer's life. - You know how a psychiatrist gains a professional psychiatry license? A full M.D. is the start. Psychologists are the ones with PhDs; they can get mad when you mix up the titles. - Veterinarians are a somewhat odd case: they are fully trained medical professionals who are well-versed in anatomy and experienced in providing medical care to animals — of which humans are a subtype. Becoming a veterinarian is actually more difficult than becoming an M.D., leading to the frequent joke amongst both vets and M.D.s, "What do you call someone who doesn't get into veterinary school? A doctor." Of course, the fact that pre-vet and pre-med programs are frequently very similar makes this Truth in Television. Lacking an actual MD, a veterinarian is the next best bet, and depending on their specialty may even be capable of administering medical care up to and including major surgery. On the other hand, they are unlikely to be versed in specific human medical disorders. - Even veterinary technicians (the veterinary equivalent of a nurse note : although, unlike human nurses, they are also expected to be phlebotomists, surgery assistants, laboratory technicians, X-ray technicians, receptionists, grief counselors, and chefs, among other roles... they wear many hats, and called "veterinary nurses" outside the States) are required to be able to handle surface sutures. (Technically speaking, they are not allowed to stitch up anything below skin level. Guess how often this gets ignored.) - Given the nature of the job, particularly when dealing with large and uncooperative animals in areas where the nearest emergency room is a long way away, the supertrope frequently comes into play as well. - Several training programs are currently in use in the United States to provide veterinarians with human-specific intermediate and advanced aid training, enabling vets to function with greater autonomy and effectiveness in disasters and other mass-casualty situations where human-specific physicians may be overwhelmed. - There's several very good reasons that vets are the best medical help around in a lot of Zombie fiction. Vets are less likely to be in the hospitals that are likely to be epicentres; they're trained in how to stop large, uncooperative animals from biting them, and they're well used to jury-rigging equipment that wasn't made for what they need it to do. - Another popular joke among vets: an MD is a vet that only knows how to take care of one species. - Many states' 'Good Samaritan' laws protect dentists, vets, and so forth from being sued for failing to save someone they're forced to treat in an emergency, in the absence of a more appropriately-trained physician. - Adverse reactions to anaesthetics and other medical emergencies are always a possibility during dental surgery, so in many countries, dentists are required to have at least some first-aid training. - On Discovery Health's Untold Stories of the E.R., one episode featured a med student with a background in biochemistry and pharmacology who ended up delivering a baby — rather, watching in shock while a nurse delivered the baby. A family with the mother in labor walks into the wrong section of the hospital, where the med student is, and the instructor orders him to help the woman. He had been a resident for 4 days and didn't even know where the emergency room was. - It is worth noting that, barring complications, delivering a baby is pretty straightforward. Anyone with even basic first aid training is more than up to the task unless the delivery encounters complications that are not immediately apparent. - Tom Reynolds, EMT for the London Ambulance Service and author of the popular blog "Random Acts of Reality" note : And occasional Troper; Hi, Tom!, once ended up giving emergency treatment to a cat that a firefighter had found outside a burning house. Nobody else being injured at the scene, they were allowed to drop the cat off at an emergency out-of-hours vet and it made a full recovery. It also apparently made the inside of the ambulance smell of wet, smoky cat poo, but that's by the by. - This is more Truth in Television than one might think. Fire and EMS departments around the world have been shown providing emergency aid to house pets. Some departments also carry special oxygen masks for use with cats and dogs. - During the Second World War, U.S. Army dentists assigned to combat units frequently stood in for surgeons at battalion aid stations. Benjamin Soloman would receive a posthumous Medal of Honor. - Today, on top of their dental practice, a military dentist is trained to perform triage during mass causality incidents, in order to free up the other medical staff. - Just like the ubiquitous barber-surgeons of olden times, dentists back then could also be called upon for non-dental surgery, though barber-surgeons were the preferred professionals. - A lot of this was due to the tools barbers and dentists used. Even now, few people have access to quality medical equipment, and even if the surgery was being performed by someone who barely knew what they were doing, success was much more likely with the right materials. - Go back far enough to before medicine started to become professionalized, and you'd find local healers treating both people and livestock, often because working on the latter was the only way to learn how to perform simple operations or administer remedies without risking human lives. - Police and military dogs that get injured in the line of duty may be given emergency first aid by EMTs or field medics who normally work on humans, same as any other wounded officer or soldier. - When a person needs someone with more-than-basic knowledge of surgery, but no surgeon is available on hand, a surprisingly good substitute is a gynaecologist. Almost all are obstetricians note : obstetrics deals with pregnancy, labor, and post-labor period as well, and they need some extensive surgery skills and knowledge — part of their job is, after all, performing a Caesarean section, and many perform hysterectomies as well. A gynecologist with enough experience treating endometriosis cases could easily be better at pelvic-organ surgery than many colo-rectal or urological surgeons. - The Syrian Civil War has had so many doctors and surgeons killed or fleeing the country due to the regime's repeated attacks on hospitals that numerous veterinarians and dentists have been pressed into duty performing surgery on people injured in the violence.	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/OpenHeartDentistry
Theme Tune - TV Tropes This is the theme to Garry's show, the opening theme to Garrys show This is the music that you hear as you watch the credits Were almost to the part of where I start to whistle Then well watch "It's Garry Shandling's Show" The piece of music which plays over the opening and/or closing credits of a Television show, and is intended to become intimately identified with the series. Theme tunes began in the earliest days of radio, where there were no specific networks to switch to and listeners would often have to tune their crystal sets with some precision in order to pick up the correct station, which may have been located hundreds of miles away. A theme tune allowed them to select the correct station. Shortwave radio stations still use theme tunes, called interval signals, at the beginning of their transmissions. Well-known interval signals include the Voice of America's Yankee Doodle and the BBC World Service's Lilliburlero. Originally, theme tunes were important in part because all programs were broadcast live (with no possibility of home recording) and audiences needed some advance warning that the show was actually starting. You could leave your TV on in the next room while you ate dinner or whatever, and as soon as the tune came on there'd be just enough time to get ready for the show. The modern world has increasingly turned to streaming services, which have eliminated that particular need. Theme songs are usually original works, but some shows use a song that has already been recorded (see Real Song Theme Tune). A theme song may be an instrumental or have lyrics, although most dramatic shows (including, as far as America is concerned, those animated) use an Instrumental Theme Tune. Sitcom theme song lyrics have gone through various phases. Radio theme songs were generally instrumental, possibly because it was hard to hear lyrics over music on old low-fidelity radio sets. Sitcoms that moved to television kept their old instrumental tunes, while new sitcoms created for television could choose an instrumental tune or an Expository Theme Tune. From the mid-1970s to the mid-1990s most sitcoms featured a Thematic Theme Tune. The current trend is toward the Surreal Theme Tune or No Theme Tune whatsoever. It's also possible for theme tunes to be replaced. The video clips of the Theme Tunes can feature a Five-Man Band Concert. See Leitmotif for character themes or music for recurring events. For other themes see Central Theme. For further listening, TelevisionTunes.com has a huge library of various theme songs and other musical numbers. ## Theme Tune subcategories include: <!—index—> <!—/index—> - Alternative Foreign Theme Song: When a TV show is dubbed, the theme song is replaced with a different one. - Anime Theme Song: A jaunty pop-type song that's the theme tune to an anime. - Anime Opening Parody: When a work parodies or imitates typical anime openings. - Bootstrapped Theme: When a theme that was formerly only associated with one character/setting/whatever becomes extremely popular, which leads to it getting heavily associated with the work, and then it becomes the main theme tune. - Bragging Theme Tune: The theme tune boasts about how amazing a character is. - Cyber Punk Is Techno: Techno theme music is used for a technologically-advanced, dystopian future setting. - Diegetic Soundtrack Usage: The theme tune is sung/played/hummed/whistled/etc in an episode. - "Do It Yourself" Theme Tune: The theme song is written/sung by one or more characters (but not necessarily within an episode). - Ending Theme: A certain tune that plays at the end of all or most episodes. - Expository Theme Tune: The theme tune explains the premise of the show. - Foreign Language Theme: The theme tune is in a different language than the rest of the show. - Instrumental Theme Tune: The theme tune has no lyrics, just music. - Last Episode Theme Reprise: The theme tune gets played in the score of the climax of the last episode. - National Anthem: The theme song of a whole country. - No Theme Tune: The show doesn't have a theme tune. - Opening Narration: A short voice-over at the beginning of every episode, explaining the show's premise. - Opening Shout-Out: A reference to the theme tune in the show itself. - Real Song Theme Tune: The theme tune was already a song before the show was made. - Rearrange the Song: Rewriting the theme tune. - Replaced the Theme Tune: Similar to Rearrange the Song, but replacing the theme tune with an entirely different song. - Signature Song: The creator's most famous song, not always a theme tune, but often is. - Solemn Ending Theme: An Ending Theme that sounds wistful. - Surreal Theme Tune: A theme tune with surreal, nonsensical and often irrelevant lyrics. - Thematic Theme Tune: A theme tune where the premise is similar to the show's premise but is not an Expository Theme Tune. - Theme Tune Extended: The show's writers make a longer version of the theme tune. - Theme Tune Rap: The theme tune is a rap. - Theme Tune Roll Call: The theme tune lists the characters. - Theme Tuneless Episode: The episode doesn't open with the theme song. - Title Theme Drop: The theme tune is in the score. - Title Theme Tune: The title of the show is said within the theme tune. - Translated Cover Version: Dubs of the theme tune. - Truncated Theme Tune: The theme tune gets cut down to one verse, usually for profit. - Variations on a Theme Song: The theme tune gets changed up for an episode. - What Song Was This Again?: The dubbed song has extremely different lyrics than the original.	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/OpeningTheme
Opening a Can of Clones - TV Tropes "If anything and everything in a story can be theoretically altered with absolutely no in-universe constraints whatsoever—bound only * to the whims of the writers themselves—then why does anything that happens in the story * matter ?" In Speculative Fiction, time travel, shapeshifters, robot duplicates, clones, resurrection, alternate universes, and mind manipulation can be exciting and add a layer of ambiguity and suspense to a story. They can fill characters and viewers with paranoia and make for great shocking revelations. However, they can also lead fans into a forest of Epileptic Trees, and in so doing completely derail the story and kill all drama. The problem stems from the possibility that: if characters can be brought back to life, or if imposters, time-travelers, and illusory sequences can be used to unmake plot points at the author's behest, how can viewers be sure that any given story element is permanent? Or, to put it in other words: Nothing is at stake if there is no guarantee of lasting consequences. It's an unfortunate outcome of the Second Law of Metafictional Thermodynamics, which dictates that because writers need conflict in their stories, they cannot resist destroying their worlds and killing off characters in order to create said conflict. If they keep doing that however, they'll eventually run out of things to destroy. The author could employ a Time Skip in order to justify reconstructing the world, but doing so would also significantly change the universe (and potentially alienate existing fans who only liked the pre-Time Skip universe). Thus, to keep their world alive without any serious changes, the author opens up the proverbial can of clones. This allows them to walk back their plot points, and in theory, they can keep the story going forever—resetting things every time they run out of characters and worlds to destroy. The problem however is that audiences tend to be once-bitten, twice-shy. After a while, no matter how much the writer insists that this time, honest to God, the character has been Killed Off for Real, the audience will never believe them. And then, the next time a character's life is threatened, the audience won't even care, because they now know that death can be undone. What happens next is that viewers become skeptical of all the plot devices that merely can be exploited in this manner even the first time they're introduced; especially if the franchise had already gone a fair length of time without them. There's a sort of unspoken assumption that the moment you start resurrecting the dead, travelling through time, or exploring alternate universes, then nothing which happens in your story and so the work can only go downhill from there. matters anymore A few things that may cause viewers to stop taking your story at face-value: - Bringing characters Back from the Dead. Viewers are aware of the First Law of Resurrection: if an author has already proved willing to resurrect the dead and said author really wants to bring another character back, they will find a way of doing it. Even if it comes at the expense of the story's integrity. Notably, poor use of the Cloning Gambit (which is where the name of this trope comes from) is an especially egregious means of achieving this. Furthermore, if an author makes a given death permanent after already using some manner of resurrection previously, it might cause viewers to become disconnected from the characters, who chose to bring back Character A but didn't bother with Character B. - A Faux Death or Disney Death. Even if the character didn't actually die, it risks lessening the impact of a character actually dying. It's particularly bad if the entity who bit it is an Expendable Clone or Actually a Doombot, or if the circumstances surrounding their fake-out death—as common sense would dictate—should have been completely un-survivable. - Strong as They Need to Be and over-reliance on Plot Armor. If the author relies too heavily on Contrived Coincidences, Deus Ex Machinas, Eleventh Hour Superpowers, Story Breaker Powers, Ass Pulls, or New Powers as the Plot Demands to get the heroes out of danger, the audience is going to stop caring not only about whatever threats they might be facing now, but likely won't even care the next time said heroes' lives are threatened, either. - Excessive tweaks to the continuity. If the author relies too heavily on Retcons, Alternate Timelines, The Multiverse, and Continuity Reboots, viewers are eventually going to stop caring about what happens there. One can try and fix it with an Alternate Universe, but that brings up its own problems: first, such universes can be seen as expendable, and second, it causes Uniqueness Decay—the audience will have a harder time identifying with Alice and Bob if they're not the only Alice and Bob in existence. Either way, it also leads to The Firefly Effect on a continuity level—audiences don't want to get emotionally invested in a continuity which will just get deleted at some point. - Overuse of Time Travel as a plot mechanism, especially as a means of "correcting" dramatic or tragic events which may have happened in the past. Again, it signals to audiences that nothing is going to stick. Granted, a writer can potentially sidestep this issue by creating a Stable Time Loop—thus rendering it impossible for the characters to actually change any past, present, or future events with time-travel—but this solution risks eliminating any notion of free will, in which case the writer must decide whether they're willing to sacrifice characters' autonomy for the sake of tension, or vice-versa. - All Just a Dream, Mind Manipulation, and Hallucinations, which can annoy audiences with even so much as a single use. If you have a character who can change what the other characters perceive (such as a Master of Illusion, a Dream Walker, or a Telepath), the characters can't be certain that what they're perceiving is reality. If the audience shares the characters' viewpoint, they can't be certain of anything either. It can even add unintended extra layers to the audience's doubt— e.g. going from "Did The Hero really just see his Love Interest die?", which the author may have intended, to "Did the Love Interest even exist at all to begin with?", which they didn't. So we've offered a few ways to avoid this reaction: - Make rules for your universe and stick to them. Audiences are more likely to accept a plot twist if it's consistent with the universe they know. If you're breaking out the mechanism behind your twist for the first time when it's introduced, it looks a lot more like an Ass Pull. If your plot is all about cloning, time travel, mind manipulation, etc., then rules are a necessity - both to keep yourself honest and to establish stakes that will engage readers. - Use those rules to impose limitations. If there are no clearly defined limits as to what a shapeshifter, clonemaker, illusionist, time-traveller or other wizard can do, the audience is going to assume that they'll always be able to change whatever the author wants. If there's a limitation of some kind, however, the audience is going to be on the lookout for the holes in those abilities. It can even add another layer of enjoyment for the audience, as they can try to Spot the Thread (especially if they can do it before the characters). A particularly effective limitation is if It Only Works Once, as this adds dramatic tension and prevents those abilities from becoming a Story-Breaker Power. - Include a Meta Guy or Audience Surrogate, with the same Genre Savvy as the audience. If your setting is established to have shapeshifters, clones, or illusionists, then good world-building would establish that the characters know about these things, too, and would become just as skeptical as the audience. How do high-status leaders like kings and generals avoid being tricked or replaced? They might become Properly Paranoid and prone to mind games with their adversaries, and they may even be able to set up countermeasures to spot fakes like a Trust Password. - Give Shapeshifters and illusory sequences a tell. The characters may not be able to see through it, but at least the audience has a definitive way of determining who or what is real and who or what is not. You could make it very difficult for a shapeshifter to copy someone 100% accurately, either physically or in personality. Or you could have them revert to their true form once they die. Illusory sequences can be given a different visual or physical aesthetic which makes them immediately distinguishable from "real" sequences. - Add ramifications to bringing a character Back from the Dead. If there's a risk that they Came Back Wrong, the character's "death" still has lasting repercussions for the story. - If you insist on bringing characters Back from the Dead, at least establish conditions under which that's impossible and the character is Killed Off for Real. Perhaps you can find a way to make a character Deader than Dead. - If your story involves Time Travel, it is recommended that there be a high risk of unintended and deleterious consequences to its use. If the heroes' use of time-travel is just as much the cause of their problems as it is the solution, that in turn can disincentivize them from using it in the first place, thereby dissuading viewers from suspecting that it will be conveniently exploited to solve any other dilemma which the heroes come across. - If your world is intended to be in flux (with shapeshifters prevalent, time manipulation common, and mind control blatant), focus on the characters' reactions to the ever-changing world. The "meaningful" consequences would all be internal; readers may not care about the external world, but they would care about how characters deal with that external world. True Art Is Angsty and what can be more angst-worthy than trying to discover truth and achieve some measure of inner peace? - If you need to press the Reset Button continuously (e.g., if your publisher mandates that the franchise continue indefinitely), then maybe it's time to adjust the Sliding Scale of Continuity; perhaps moving toward Broad Strokes or even Negative Continuity. It would disappoint long-time fans who were used to the previous policy, but it's better than taking the reputation hit every time you undo any and all consequences which happened in your story. In fact, if each individual story must exist as its own standalone product (with absolutely no canonical or metaphysical relation to the others), then you guarantee that consequences still matter within that story. This trope was most common in The '90s, with all kinds of works in all kinds of media pulling it and then not knowing what to do with it afterwards. It's the kind of thing often associated with Comic Books of the era ( The Death of Superman and The Clone Saga are often cited), but you also saw it in mainstream films ( e.g. Alien: Resurrection, The 6th Day), TV series ( e.g. The X-Files) and video games ( e.g. Metal Gear Solid). That was also when the trope became particularly associated with clones—works of the era had a tendency to introduce multiple clones; which were so pervasive that no character could tell if anyone was the genuine article—not even the character themself. Time Travel was a close second, because once characters had free rein to start hopping through time, audiences no longer had any assurance that any given plot point would not be RetGoned later by some future (or past) time travel shenanigans. As we're talking about Plot Twists, spoilers ahoy! ## Examples: - Dragon Ball has been having to deal with this for years, due to the franchise having accumulated such a vast pile of instant solutions. Death Is Cheap is taken to extremes, with almost every character having died at least once (by the Buu arc of Z, Piccolo is able to suggest that Super Buu kill everyone on Earth because it has no meaning), and there are countless plot devices that allow tension to be instantly dissolved, such as the immediate healing abilities of the senzu beans or the ability to immediately pack in training in the Hyperbolic Time Chamber. Additionally, despite the series being the Trope Codifier for Power Levels, its own powerscaling is notoriously wonky, with characters able to jump up to absurd levels of strength with even the barest amount of training and even relatively weak characters boasting planet-busting power. - Used to a very confusing effect in Tsubasa -RESERVoir CHRoNiCLE-. Some are aware of being a clone, others are not, but given all the alternate world versions of characters, cloning, and lineages, it can become very hard to follow. - Blue Drop: The Emul Force allows the user to project their thoughts, creating living sculptures. It's used as a decoy countless times, and every major character death gets undone this way. - Naruto was never very good with this, in part because there were so many ways to fool people with hitherto unseen Ninjutsu. And since these guys are ninjas, they've got all sorts of disguise techniques, including clones. Over the course of the series, so many parties are using clones that some enemies need to be beaten more than twice, and there's a huge Gambit Pileup as the different sides start using clones against each other, so no one knows who's real and who's not. - Several chapters after \|\|Kisame's original\|\| is believed to have been killed, he's revealed to be alive, and the thing that died was really a clone \|\|created by Zetsu\|\|. Although that type of clone is pretty weird and unique, it still contradicted pretty much everything previously established about how clones worked in the series. It was pretty clearly an Ass Pull in response to negative fan reaction to his death. - The entire first portion of the battle between Sasuke and Itachi involved both combatants just standing still and staring at each other — it was an illusion battle! The only reason we even have to believe that the real fight even happened is that Zetsu, an unrelated third party, appears sticking out of a wall to tell us that the fight is really happening — one party isn't just fooling the other. - It also lends itself to easy Superdickery. At several points, one guy appears to turn on his teammates and attack them — and he's revealed to be an imposter. At one point, Iruka detects an imposter while disguised as Naruto because the imposter disguised himself as Iruka. And the real Naruto was watching the whole thing. And that's actually a relatively simple case. In comics, it seems like the Can of Clones is a matter of course, to the point that The Other Wiki even has a page for it . Characters have been killed off and brought back so many times that, whenever someone dies, fans are only left asking, "How long before they come back? " There's a longstanding saying in comics: "No one stays dead except Bucky, Jason Todd, and Uncle Ben ." (And two of those three have since come back to life.) The main reason why this trope is so pervasive in comics is because the serialized format of the medium forbids overarching stories from concluding: while individual arcs are allowed to end, the series overall is meant to go on forever, and publishers will gladly hand the writing duties off from one artist to the next. Thus, comic books are forced to "reset" every time an individual arc ends, as one writer's decision to kill off characters and worlds can leave the next writer without narrative resources to draw on. - Blackest Night was an attempt to avert this, as DC claimed it closed the door to future resurrections. It didn't close the door to reboots, though, and the rebooted New 52 brought with it a few characters who came back to life without explanation. - In one Astro City story, a defense lawyer gets a gangster acquitted of a murder charge by invoking this trope, citing incidents involving evil twins from parallel universes and shapeshifting supervillains. (The lawyer making the argument is Genre Savvy enough to realise that this argument will only work once - it's going to set a precedent that's going to lead to changes in the law in order to prevent it being used as one, and the epilogue to the story notes that this is exactly what happens.) - X-Men: - Professor X apparently dies during a battle against Grotesk. Later it's revealed that the Changeling had been masquerading as Professor X at Xavier's request. - Jean Grey a.k.a "Phoenix" apparently kills herself so she can't go Dark Phoenix again at the end of The Dark Phoenix Saga. It later turns out to have been the Phoenix Force impersonating the real Jean Grey. (Sometimes. It gets retconned back and forth all the time.) - X-Men: The Krakoan Age ends up inverting the trope, as mutants have banded together and figured out a way to give themselves Resurrective Immortality. Instead of removing dramatic tension, it adds it; as the franchise explores the full political ramifications of a deathless society (what do you do about villains as brutal as Sabretooth when the death penalty isn't an option?), and gives mutants a Dark Secret that would be disastrous if (or rather when) it were ever to be made public. - Sins of Sinister: This Bat Family Crossover event is set in a Bad Future and it's immediately made clear that it will be wiped away, as villain Mister Sinister has a living Reset Button, his cloned "Moira Engine", which will return the timeline to the point when his latest Moira clone was created. Several key characters are also aware of this. However, it's immediately subverted as Sinister loses the Moira Engine and the timeline continues longer than he expected - which means there's a real risk that one of his rival Godhood Seekers will manage to ascend before it resets, becoming a Dominion entity that exists beyond space and across all timelines. In addition to that, one of those rivals (Mother Righteous) plans to send a thousand years of power and secrets back to her younger self. The future timeline will burn away when the Moira Engine activates but, back in the present, Mother will become a much more significant threat if she succeeds - which she does... - Marvel Comics' S.H.I.E.L.D. has something called LMDs: Life Model Decoys. Whenever Nick Fury dies, don't worry, it was an LMD. Even when he got Killed Off for Real, at his funeral, the other characters even speculate as to whether he's really dead, and Wolverine had to use his Super Senses to confirm it was the real deal. And then that turned out to be an LMD. As of Original Sin, \|\|it's confirmed that none of the modern Fury examples are the real him — he's much older than people think, and he hadn't shown up since World War II before that event\|\|. - Doctor Doom can always come back, because any time he appears to have been defeated (or been responsible for anything the fans don't want to acknowledge), it turns out it was Actually a Doombot. It's so overused that it's long been lampshaded, with fans semi-jokingly claiming that the real Dr. Doom has never actually appeared in any Marvel comic, or even that there is no real Dr. Doom to begin with. Even per Word of God, the only time Doom was ever actually defeated was by Squirrel Girl — and he'll Never Live It Down. - Thanos, the Big Bad in the Marvel Universe, has clones called Thanosi. Thanos's creator Jim Starlin introduced them in Infinity Abyss to explain away any defeats or Out of Character behaviour that Thanos might suffer (which, purely coincidentally, are almost always written by writers other than Starlin). Starlin has even gone so far as to say that not even omnipotent cosmic observer the Watcher can tell the difference between a Thanosi and the real Thanos. - Secret Invasion: Skrulls did it. To the entire Marvelverse. Lampshaded when Spidey complains that he had clones way before everyone else was getting replaced by Skrulls. - Lampshaded in Star Wars Legends with Dark Empire. Basically every time Luke kills a Palpatine clone, he transfers his soul to another clone. Luke pretends to go over to the Dark Side to try and stop him and ends up turning for real. - Spider-Man has done so much with clones, it's hard to tell which one's the original anymore. There's technically two whole "Clone Sagas"! - The original Clone Saga, printed in The '70s, took place immediately after Spidey couldn't save Gwen. While it was a powerful story, Stan Lee was worried that smaller kids wouldn't be able to handle a character being Killed Off for Real, so he told Gerry Conway to find a way to bring her back. Conway was reluctant, as by then Peter had moved on and was in a relationship with Mary Jane. He used the opportunity to make a story where Peter has to grapple with his feelings of loss and grief, and Gwen has to come to terms with her old boyfriend having moved on and become a different person. That story was delivered with an intended one-shot villain, the Jackal, making clones of both Gwen and Peter, and after some Cloning Blues, the real Peter figures out he's the real deal because he's the only one who's in love with MJ. - The second Clone Saga, written in The '90s, was a response to Knightfall, in which Batman was knocked out of commission and replaced with Azrael, a very different character. Seeking their own version of a Legacy Character, the Marvel writers decided to bring back the clones — but the marketing people wanted to stretch out what was originally a six-month plot to last several years. That led the writers to bring back the clone Gwen (alive), the clone Spider-Man (dead, but alive now because we say so), and the Jackal (dead, but cloned). They also added a menagerie of new clones, including two Scarlet Spiders named Ben and Kaine. This crossover event, spanning across four titles and countless mini-series, accomplished a whole lot of nothing. Nobody knew what was going on, nobody knew who was who, and unlike the "original" Clone Saga, the ending was ambiguous. Most of the clones died, but two (Gwen and Jackal) came back again for Spider-Island. Kaine is still running around doing nothing of particular note. Glenn Greenberg (editor/writer) : Okay, at this point, the Spider-Man books were in danger of becoming like that old Marx Brothers movie where everyone was running around dressed like Groucho. - Subverted in Avengers: Endgame. Doctor Strange introduced multiverse theory into the MCU, and while the heroes are indeed able to use time-travel, Banner explicitly clarifies that they cannot change their present by altering the past, as any changes made will only create branching universes which have no effect on their own. This in turn means that, while the heroes could theoretically bring \|\|Tony Stark or Natasha Romanoff\|\| back from the dead—\|\| as ends up being the case with 2014 Gamora\|\|—they would only be alternate universe counterparts who would in turn have to leave their old universe(s) behind. Additionally, it's established in Infinity War that the Endgame universe is the only one of 14 million in which \|\|half of all life (including the heroes) don't all get killed by Thanos' finger-snap\|\|, thus helping to prevent them becoming disposable in the minds of the audience. - This has been done so badly to the Terminator franchise that it could very well be one of the main reasons why Dark Fate flopped at the box office. The series as whole never got around to providing a clear and consistent set of rules for how the Time Travel logistics would work, with each new film repeatedly trying to Retcon the rules which appeared to have been established by the last one. According to Word of God, the series was always supposed to take place in a changeable timeline, as the first film was originally going to conclude with the heroes successfully stopping the birth of Skynet and rewriting history. Unfortunately, budget constraints forced James Cameron to save that spectacular climax for the sequel, with the original instead ending with a Stable Time Loop wherein both John Connor's birth and the rise of Skynet were declared inevitable. So when the second film did show the heroes preventing the rise of Skynet, it made it look like the movies just had inconsistent rules regarding time travel. This was easy to forgive at the time, because the heroes' victory made for an excellent finale, whilst the idea of Kyle and Sarah being destined to conceive humanity's savior made for a great love story—even if those two plot points seemed to contradict one another. So when the third film came along and declared that the rise of Skynet really was inevitable, many fans decried it as an Ass Pull that rendered everything that happened in the previous film pointless. The fifth film then tried to remedy this problem by undoing the events of all four previous movies and soft-rebooting the franchise, but this only made matters worse. So by the time the sixth film tried to bill itself as a direct sequel to the second while also having the war with the machines be spearheaded by a new artificial intelligence called Legion, a lot of fans had become so fatigued by all the retcons that they just didn't care any longer. - Star Wars: This has been a slowly growing sticking point for the series for a long time coming, with both the films and the Expanded Universe adding in clone armies, doombots, the force being able to do whatever the plot needs it to do, and the ability to cheat death via vaguely explained Sith magic. However, it really hit the fan in The Last Jedi and The Rise of Skywalker, wherein both films upped both the strength and prevalence of these elements to such an extent as to leave many viewers with the sense that nothing was at stake anymore. To wit, Rey becomes proficient with the force despite receiving little to no Jedi training and even spontaneously develops non-Force talents she shouldn't reasonably have, like wind-sailing and swimming in dangerously stormy waters; force ghosts are shown interacting with the material world directly; Luke uses an Astral Projection across light years of space to confront Kylo Ren; Palpatine is brought Back from the Dead via cloning and is seen draining energy from Rey and Kylo to heal his deteriorating body; Rey and Kylo both use Force Healing to save each other from fatal injuries (which deserves special mention seeing as it directly contradicts Anakin's motivation for falling to the dark side in Revenge of the Sith); and physical objects are shown being teleported across systems via spacetime communication. Suffice to say, all these elements combined in such a way as to essentially break the story, and in doing so turned many fans off to the series' future, something which Angry Joe—himself a huge Star Wars fan—noted in his discussion on The Rise of Skywalker: Angry Joe: [Force Healing] is a big Plot Hole because of the fact that it completely ruins death . There's no tension anymore . Death is a complete joke in this film. This person dies; comes back . This person dies; comes back. So, you do not give a shit when somebody dies ! And not only that, but it completely ruins the series for the future. Like, you've got force ghosts that can do stuff [...], lightning strikes [...], and now we've got force healing [so] nobody can fucking die... I don't want to see episode X! I don't want to see XI; I don't want to see XII! ...They have to go away. They have to go back into the past. - Then there's The Critical Drinker's stance on the films: Drinker: Another massive problem that hangs over this movie is the Force. See, in the original trilogy, the force was subtle and used sparingly, like when Luke hears Obi Wan Kenobi's voice in his head and later sees his force ghost, or when he uses a force pull to retrieve his lightsaber. And when Palpatine used force lightning for the first time, it was like: "Holy shit! This guy is powerful!" Now it's just been elevated to ridiculous levels! Now, the Force can pluck spaceships out of the sky, heal fatal injuries, host Skype calls, teleport objects across the galaxy, and cast lightning bolts powerful enough to disable entire war fleets. There's no limits, no rules, no indication of what's possible or not, [and] so there's no way to buy into it. This is a world where you have no idea what anyone can do at any given time, and so pretty soon, you just stop caring. - It can be argued that this started as early as the Prequel Trilogy, with the Force granting Jedi super speed (which was rarely used after its introduction, even when it would be pretty useful), giving Force Lightning to minor Sith, and equipping Yoda and Palpatine with Combat Parkour. - A slight variation on the trope has begun to appear in A Song of Ice and Fire with the Faceless Men, an order of assassins who can perfectly imitate just about anyone. This has lead to a lot of fan speculation; the only Faceless Man we've really been able to track is \|\|Jaqen H'ghar, who seems to have become an alchemist before becoming Pate as of ADWD\|\|. Theories now abound as to who might be a Faceless Man, with contenders including \|\|Syrio Forel (who may have become Jaqen H'ghar, The Kindly Man, or Ser Meryn Trant after his alleged death), Varys (explaining his exceptional talent for disguise), the guy who was killed at the Sept of Baelor at the end of the first book (meaning Ned Stark might still be alive...), the Brienne that showed up at the end of ADWD\|\|, and many, many, many more. - Some of those possibilities are, however, not feasible (however awesome they'd be). The Faceless Men may use something akin to glamour, but it requires a certain key ingredient: a corpse to steal the face and identity of. Also, they will look like the corpse of the person, not the person when they were alive: given how some people can radically change upon death, it's not quite as clone-like as you might think. At best, it's a form of really sophisticated Dead Person Impersonation or Kill and Replace. Even if, \|\|as in the case of Pate "the pig boy"\|\|, they go for as fresh a corpse as possible of somebody they've been tailing for a while, they'll still not quite be right to look at, if you knew the person well before they died. (Faceless Men seem to target those who are foreigners, strangers, generally undervalued or who were always on the periphery of the place they're in — yet, with valid enough reasons for access. In short, people other people don't get that close to, in the main.) - Cradle Series: - Word of God is that this is the reason for the way The Multiverse is set up. The Way is vast, but finite; any story could take place in the Shared Universe, but not every story. The specific example given was that comics can have it where there's a world where everything is the same except your favorite character didn't die. That's not the case here, as each Iteration is vastly different. Even the word "Iteration" is mostly just a reference to the in-universe theory that they're all iterations of an original world, not a provable fact. Therefore, there have to be real stakes and you can't just swap a few timelines if something happens that you don't like. - Likewise, while the Abidan have the power to reverse time and revive the dead (especially Suriel the Phoenix, the primary Abidan viewpoint character), doing this too much risks altering Fate and causing corruption. The series starts with Suriel reversing time so that Lindon was never killed and his home never destroyed, but only because a different outsider had already altered Fate by doing those things in the first place. If he dies again, she can't and won't do anything about it. - Alias introduced cloning in the form of "Project Helix", a process by which identical Doppelgangers of people could be produced. The first double was a one-off character, but the second double was a complete shocker: \|\|it was Sydney's best friend, Francie.\|\| The double was a very unique twist . . . at first. Then, they brought back the double-switch when \|\|someone cloned Arvin Sloane\|\|, again later in season four when it was revealed that \|\|the woman Jack killed in Vienna wasn't Irina Derevko, it was a double of her\|\| and again in season five when \|\|Anna Espinosa became a double of Sydney\|\|. It got to the point where a common saying in regards to the show was "they're not dead even if we've seen a body - it's probably a clone". - Battlestar Galactica (2003) got hit with this right from the bat. Even though there were only 12 Cylon models, you could never be quite sure which version of the model you were talking to. Especially the Sixes and Eights: - Number Six: Caprica Six, Head!Six, Gina Inviere, Natalie Faust, Shelly Godfrey, the Six on the Armistice Station, LabCoat!Six, the Six who headed "The Farm", the dying Six on the basestar, Lida, Sonja, and Prostitute!Six from "The Plan". - Number Eight: Sharon "Boomer" Valerii, Sharon "Athena" Agathon, the Eight on Ragnar, WhiteCoat!Eight that Athena kills, the many naked tai chi Eights, the dying Eight on the basestar, the unplugged!Eight Anders talks to, the dying Eight Saul Tigh forgives, the Eight who resurrects D'Anna, Cynical!Eight from "Face of the Enemy", Sweet!Eight who betrays Gaeta, and the Eight who \|\|connects Anders to the data stream so that he can become Galactica's hybrid\|\|. - Misfits started to suffer from this in the second season, as Curtis has the ability to rewind time if he feels enough guilt towards something that has happened, giving him a chance to Set Right What Once Went Wrong. So when the Misfits Discard and Draw new powers during the Christmas Episode season finale, the show explicitly removes this power from play. - Sherlock: The show's penchant for elaborate segments taking place inside the titular detective's "mind palace", or simply hallucinations, ended up working against it in the long run, as fans begun to dismiss any aspect of the show they didn't like as not real. Thus, there was belief that the very divisive series finale was a Bait-and-Switch, and many fans began searching for clues of a secret real final episode that would be released later. Naturally, these theories were incorrect. - The X-Files had a few, that due to alien involvement usually had green blood. Most notable character with plenty of clones was Mulder's sister Samantha. - This podcast provides the page quote. Mike: There is something, I think, really true here, that- ...that Time Travel , Multiverse Theory ,... These ways that they try to extend a franchise and keep it running, and the way that they open the boundaries and remove the limitations , the less conflict it feels like it has—the less it feels like anything matters, and the more boring it becomes, ultimately as a result. - The King of Fighters '99, the opening chapter of the NESTS saga, introduced a secret conspiracy to clone Kyo Kusanagi and raise an unstoppable Clone Army. Basically, this is an excuse to replace Kyo with his brooding white-haired "brother", K', followed by a pile of rejected clone caca (and Tetsuo Shima Captain Ersatz) called K9999 in 2001. Zero, the Final Boss of 2000 and a mouthpiece for NESTS (but not really), is revealed to be a clone of the original, who shows up in the next game as a sub-boss and is not too happy about his clone's treacherous ways. Again, this was necessitated by the first Zero (and his "fart" attacks) not going over well with fans, and he was replaced with a more stereotypical (yet admirably loyal) white-haired version. Despite rocky beginnings, the NESTS saga is remembered with morbid affection by fans even as SNK seems content to sweep it (especially the above-mentioned K9999, though they certainly weren't above redesigning him into "Krohnen" for his return in KOF XV to avoid getting sued) under the rug for all time. - Metal Gear Solid and Metal Gear Solid 2 had far-reaching consequences for the franchise. In an expository cutscene, Snake retcons the ending of Metal Gear 2 by revealing Big Boss was actually his father; the antagonist of the game, Liquid Snake, clarifies that Big Boss was his genetic template and that he and Liquid are both copies of him. MGS2 introduced a third clone survivor, Solidus Snake, who was considered to be the best of the lot despite suffering from rapid aging. The government mothballed the project after Liquid Snake attempted a world takeover by planting Big Boss' frozen cells into a "Genome Army" of sorts. Naturally, this led to quite a few accusations of creating a Kudzu Plot for its own sake. - The Stanley Parable intentionally invokes this trope. There are Multiple Endings but any time you reach one, the game resets and you are back at the beginning. This is done to (a) make a philosophical point about the nature of video games, and (b) to de-emphasize the Narrator's "story" to instead focus on the relationship between Stanley and the Narrator. This point is most blatant in \|\|the Museum\|\| ending, though even without that the point is still there. - Darths & Droids: - It notes the wasted potential that the proven existence of shapeshifters has in the Star Wars saga in the commentary of one strip. And again with shapeshifters and clones in an outtake strip, though Star Wars itself averts problems with the latter by establishing that Clones Are People, Too and only physically identical to the original, not mentally. - The comic later backs up its comments by actually taking advantage of the existence of shapeshifters: In the strips corresponding to A New Hope, the Harrison Ford character steals the "Han Solo" identity from an NPC he kills (the movie's Greedo). He's allowed to get away with it in front of Jabba - for now - because the GM establishes that the original Han was a shapeshifter, and Jabba assumes he's talking to the original in a human form. - Later in A New Hope, we discover a rebel pilot who was referred to as Wedge Antilles in the Star Wars movies, and played by Colin Higgins. But Higgins was later replaced by Denis Lawson, resulting in Wedge having a different face in the assault on the Death Star. 'Darths & Droids'' plays with it, arguing that Wedge is a Shapeshifter too, which serves the plot for it leads Luke to \|\|suspect that he is the traitor who revealed to the Empire the location of the rebel base during the Battle of Yavin and almost the whole The Empire Strikes Back story arc. He was not.\|\| - The Adventures of Dr. McNinja cleverly avoids this problem by having all of the cheap clones of Doc that \|\|Franz Rayner\|\| commissions be flawed and eventually disintegrate. However, there's one original clone left over, raising the stakes on the Like You Would Really Do It cliffhangers that the author frequently employs. - The Critical Drinker states in his Avengers: Endgame review that this trope is the main reason why he often has difficulty enjoying Time Travel stories (aside from the obvious ones, of course). - Zero Punctuation: - This trope is one of Yahtzee's main criticisms of Mortal Kombat—despite the series' trademark high-impact violence, the actual stories suffer from a general lack of stakes and/or weight due to the overabundance of retcons, continuity reboots, and the ease with which characters can be brought from the dead, etc. Yahtzee: The official message of Mortal Kombat 11 's story mode is, "Fuck continuity and fuck anyone who is invested in it!" You probably should've known not to get invested after MK9 ; I mean, any franchise that so openly and deliberately flushes its entire canon down the toilet is almost certainly going to keep doing it, and indeed, the endpoint of the MK11 story mode all but states that not only is everything reset yet again, but no future continuity is going to have any permanence either! - From his review of Injustice: Gods Among Us: - Frequently Lampshaded in The Venture Bros. whenever it is revealed that \|\|Dr. Venture's sons Hank and Dean can be replaced with one of many clones, taken from a bank of clone storage tanks beneath the Venture Compound, whenever the boys die\|\|. - This also explains why they give the impression of having been dropped on their heads several times as babies-\|\|Dr. Venture has to keep giving the replacements the memories from the previous pair, and whatever method he's using to do it, the effectiveness is kind of sketchy.\|\| - Up until the finale of season 3, \|\|when the whole herd of Hank and Dean clones is wiped out.\|\| - Gargoyles' creator Greg Weissman tells in 'Ask Greg' of how his children thought Elisa was acting bad in the episode "Protection" because it was a clone, given that an earlier episode had introduced a clone of Goliath. (She was actually pretending to be a Dirty Cop to fool a mob boss.) - At least in the show itself they avoid creating fan confusion by having clones be a Palette Swap of the original instead of an exact physical match. - My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic: - The show inadvertently did this with the introduction of changelings in the second season finale. Naturally, it caused an explosion of "X is secretly a changeling" type stories in the fandom. A positive side of it is it also helped explain away "clones" in scenes of episodes, that is where the animators reused models in crowds to save time resulting in scenes where as many as six of the same character would be visible — fans (and even the staff) have joked on more than one occasion that said "clones" are actually changeling spies and definitely not the animators cutting corners wink wink. - The season 3 episode "Too Many Pinkie Pies" was about Pinkie discovering a magical pond that allowed her to create (extremely one-dimensional) clones of herself. This time around, the implications were addressed, as the cast is shown blocking up the pool at the end of the episode so that there won't be any more clones. And then a later episode undid that by showing another Pinkie Pie in the background who actually reacts to Pinkie Pie bringing up the Mirror Pool clones, revealing at least one of them survived and escaped... - Averted in Transformers: Prime; one first-season episode introduces the villain Makeshift, who could perfectly imitate any other Transformer. He didn't even need to see his victim to do it! The writers then realized that they had created a character who posed far too much of a threat to the heroes and who would dominate the story going forward if allowed to survive, and so they killed him off at the end of his introductory episode. - The psychology behind this trope is the very reason why the English word "consequence" is also a synonym for "importance." (i.e., "It is of no consequence.") - Some scientists hypothesize the existence of a multiverse. If a multiverse does exist though, it would not render our own lives meaningless. This is because we can only interact with one universe (the one that we currently reside in). You can't "undo" consequences in this universe simply by appealing to something that might happen in a different universe. - Similarly, some scientists believe that time travel is theoretically possible - but that you can't really change the timeline itself. You're either stuck in a Stable Time Loop (according to the Novikov Self-Consistency Principle) or traveling to an Alternate Universe (according to Interacting Many-Words Interpretation). The kicker, of course, is that while time travel is theoretically possible, pulling it off is probably going to be complex and energy-intensive. Thus, there are real consequences for time traveling—you're using resources that could be spent elsewhere.	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/OpeningACanOfClones
Open Mouth, Insert Foot - TV Tropes "Right. Right. 'Cause there's a lot stupider names than Chi Chi. I'm not saying that Chi Chi's a stupid name. I'm just saying that it's not normal. Ah. But normal is overrated. I'm not saying that you're stupid or overrated. I'm just— I'm gonna stop now." A character with a big mouth says something stupid or, better yet, self-incriminating, often with the subject of their commentary standing nearby or, better yet, right behind them. The trope name comes from the phrase "to put your foot in your mouth" (also playfully referred to as "foot-in-mouth disease", a pun on the very serious livestock illness "foot- and-mouth disease"). note : Which in turn is not to be confused with the rather less serious hand, foot, and mouth disease, which primarily afflicts small children and is generally speaking a week's nuisance at worst. A subtrope of Fee Fi Faux Pas and closely related to Ignore the Disability. Compare Shutting Up Now for a similar reaction. Can lead to any of the following: Change the Uncomfortable Subject, Digging Yourself Deeper, Did I Just Say That Out Loud?, That Came Out Wrong. Sometimes more than one. Don't confuse for "Open mouth, insert foo d", as if this is about eating. ## Examples: - All Assorted Animorphs AUs: In "What if Rachel's mom was a controller?", Rachel tells Tobias that she doesn't want to fight because some of them have families who depend on them, then regrets it when she sees the stricken look on his face. - While discussing Su's desire to up the security at the Hinata Inn in The Beast That I Am (to stop the Ogre if she shows up again), Keitaro tries to dissuade Kitsune by pointing out that eventually Su will turn all of that security on him. Kitsune: But it ain't a big deal when bad stuff happens to you! It's me and the other girls I'm worried about! Keitaro: Wait... what did you just say Kitsune? Kitsune: I said it's me and the other girls I'm worried about! It don't matter when bad stuff happens to -! Well, what I mean was that... well, you're indestructible. You and I both know that! Keitaro: Uh... yeah. - Child of the Storm has it Played for Drama in the sequel when \|\|Maddie\|\|, whose social skills are somewhat lacking, picks a very unfortunate moment to tell Jean that her boyfriend is cheating on her (having just found out via her own Telepathy). Specifically, when said boyfriend was meeting her parents. Jean, unsurprisingly, blows up, having been under a lot of pressure to begin with, and ends up taking it out on \|\|Maddie\|\|, who is miserable because she didn't want to hurt Jean and was only trying to help. - It's also played seriously earlier on in the sequel in the case of Harry's friends after he returns to Hogwarts — having been through an epic Trauma Conga Line, he really does not have the patience for teenage idiocy anymore. Thankfully, some counseling and the passage of time helps him cool off a bit. - In Chrysalis Visits The Hague, The protagonist Estermann says the following to Lyra, a pony (It Makes Sense in Context): Estermann: Because as far as I'm concerned, a pony's only good to be ridden and sliced up for sausage. How the hell am I supposed to make myself a picture of one's 'inner workings'? - Played for Drama in the The Loud House fanfic A Dark House: Inadequate when Lori, in a fit of anger over some broken perfume, snaps at Lincoln that sometimes she wishes she didn't have a brother. While she quickly realizes what she said and is clearly upset, Lincoln runs off in tears and locks himself in his room, even shouting that no one cares about him when Lori and some of the other girls try to talk to him. - Elecktrum's Narnia Fics are full of this trope. One fic revolves around it completely, and another has a chapter revolving around the similar phrase "eating crow." Her OCs and minor characters also get into the act, especially where Edmund is concerned: - Tumnus unintentionally insults Edmund by implying that Edmund had worked for the white witch in "The Conscience of the King". - In "Black Dwarfs, Blue River" an overzealous faun angrily tells Edmund regarding the persecution of families of some satyrs who fought on the witch's side that the wives and children (who did not fight for the witch) were "Sons of traitors [who] deserve what what they get." Edmund responds coolly: "so what will you call my sons?" Oops. - And then there's Ilano's Right in Front of Me moment in "They Also Serve". - Eleutherophobia: - In These Are the Damned, Jake said in an interview that when he was a kid, he wanted to grow up to be like Kevin Johnson... or his own older brother. Eight hours later, Tom is still getting phone calls asking for a quote. - In THX 1138, Colette wonders out loud why Tom's parents weren't suspicious when he started getting straight As after becoming a Controller... and immediately regrets it when Tom freezes. - When \|\|Rachel\|\| chastises the Animorphs for drifting apart in How I Live Now, she starts to mention how Marco let Jake sleep over at his place when Jake didn't want to deal with "Tom", but interrupts herself when she remembers that Tom is present. - Epiphany: After having an erotic dream about Sephiroth, Aerith finds him and accuses him of infiltrating her dreams only to quickly realize he has no idea what she's talking about, and her evasive answers about the nature of the dream only make him more intrigued. - In the Back to the Future fanfic Homecoming, George, not knowing about the age gap between Doc and Clara, asks where "Mrs. Brown" is. He's mortified when he finds out that Clara is Doc's wife, not his stepdaughter, and apologizes profusely. - Khaos Omega has one character often do this. Whenever Yolande Azeat says something that comes out wrong, her butthole usually ends up getting sexually destroyed (especially if Jet's nearby when it happens). - In Kira, Sweetheart Light has one of these moments \|\|when he discovers that L has been abused in the past.\|\| Light: WHO did this? Give me their name! - The Mountain and the Wolf: Played for Drama when Tyrion is discussing the unknown traitor (who opened the gate of King's Landing during the siege) with the Wolf, a Chaos Norscan the size of a bear. Tyrion realizes his comments imply that the Wolf is behind it, and he has a very uncomfortable moment when he sees the Wolf getting angry (especially since the viewer knows the Wolf is behind it). Fortunately, it turns out the Wolf was thinking up a plausible explanation that Tyrion believes to be the truth. - The My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic fanfic The Model Caretaker Has Fleur de Lis struggle with this in the first half of the story, especially when Fluttershy is about. - A Moon and World Apart: Rarity has a bad case of this in chapter 7, when she first starts flirting with (unbeknownst to her) a married stallion, then (after being informed of his marital status) wrongly assumes the mare with him is his wife. Then she gets really mortified at her actions when she finds out he's actually gay. To her credit, she does apologize to both he and Twilight for the misunderstanding and any offense she may have caused as soon as she can. - In My Huntsman Academia both Izuku and Nora are frequently guilty of this. The former's tendency comes from his social awkwardness, while the latter's comes from her Cloudcuckoolander tendencies. For instance, the following conversation Izuku has with Weiss: Izuku: (when Weiss asks what he isn't good at) W-W-Well, I'm not good with t-talking to people! I get really nervous, and I can't even talk to girls sometimes without just going blank. Weiss: (snorting) You're doing a fine job with me at the moment. Izuku: Yeah, but I don't see you as a girl. (Beat as Izuku goes sheet-white) Weiss: Explain. Now. Izuku: I-I-I-I didn't mean it l-l-l-ike that Weiss! I m-mean I just see you as a teammate! I know you're a girl! A smart, nice, pret- Weiss: Compliments later! Speak! Izuku: (curls up into a ball as she looms over him) B-But it's easier to just see my teammate! When I think about it, I get all n-nervous and shakey, so it's just simpler that way! Please don't be mad! - My Lesbian Life with Monster Girls: Monster Yurisume: In chapter 129, Yuisu, overworked and stressed out, chews out Haru for changing her mind about getting printer paper when Yuisu asked and forgetting to tell her, which leads to her declaring that Haru never takes her requests seriously, citing the fact that Haru dyed Hakuto pink after Yuisu literally begged her to stop the prank war as proof. All Haru can think of to say in response is, "That was different. I mean, I had already ordered the hair dye", which really sets Yuisu off. Yuisu: Oh, so that's how it is. My heartfelt plea is worth less than a bottle of hair dye. - In Neither a Bird nor a Plane, it's Deku!, Professor Stein gushes over the possibility of being a godfather when Hisashi is discussing his sudden vacation. He quickly apologies when Hisashi screams about how he's infertile. He does end up becoming a godfather when the Midoriyas adopt a baby Kal-El. Stein: Congratulations, Hisashi, my boy! You're going to be a great father, I just know it! Can I be the godfather? I've always wanted to be a godfather, Hisashi! Hisashi: Yeah, well that's not going to happen, because we can't have any kids! (spits a stream of fire out of frustration) Stein: Um, well, now that you've finished whatever that was and I've finished removing that foot from my mouth , allow me to apologize, again. - The New Look Series has several examples of this trope. - Young Link gets in trouble with Peach due to him pretending to be her, mockingly. - Kenshin also gets in trouble when he tells Kaoru that he can't understand what Kaoru is going through right now because he isn't a woman like her. - Once Upon a December, Brain inadvertantly angers Yakko (currently going by the name "Elo") when he asks why why "Elo" is so fascinated by homes - then realises that, as an orphan, the idea of having a home obviously means a lot to the boy. - In Patterns of the Past, the Patternista taunts the rescue team by telling them that they have no way to contact anyone for backup. Orscheln, the sole Scientist on the team, then reveals that Dr. Ozzington, Precinct 13579's Lab Director and her boss, has a portable Telephone-inator handy, which elicits a couple gasps from the other agents on the team and leaves Olesya cold. This causes the Patternista to notice O'Sullivan reaching in his Hammerspace spine for a gadget, as she orders him to stop and threatens to kill Old Missie with her gun if any of the agents use gadgets against her. - In the prequel to Respawn of the Dead, Heavy accidentally insults Medic a few times. But, to be fair, it's pretty clear that Medic is only insulted by being told he sounds like Greta Garbo because he has no idea he was practically quoting her. - [1] plays this for drama. Two years prior to the story, Alastor managed to kill Lucifer and took over as ruler of Hell, turning it from a kingdom of hedonism and chaos to a totalitarian fascist regime. Anybody who criticizes him or his rule is considered a traitor and sent to the Pit Of Fire. The whole plot is kicked off when Moxxie, after being grilled by Katie Killjoy on a live interview, accidentally calls Alastor's elite army, the Crimson Guard, "brutal". This has disastrous consequences for not just him, but also for anybody who associates with him or have just been in his vicinity. - From another MLP fanfic, The Rise of Darth Vulcan: Artful Dodger is discussing showering with Eiderdown and starts speaking before thinking. You could literally see the words traveling from his mouth, to his own ears, and from thence to his brain. His eyes went round for a second. "Once. One. At a time, that is. Not that there isn't enough room for two. Heh. I mean—- I'll go first, that way you can take your time. Afterward. By yourself." He literally shoved his own hoof in his mouth to shut himself up. He bit down on his hoof for a second then spoke around it. "G-g-give you time to, uh, pretty yourself up afterward...." - In the Rivals Series Viktor can't help but unintentionally offend Yuuri through unwanted advice or very poor wording which doesn't help Viktor's attempts to get Yuuri to at least tolerate him. Then Viktor starts to develop the opposite problem so Yuuri would at least speak to him. - SAO: Mother's Reconciliation: In chapter 9, Kyouko ends up doing this when she tells Asuna that since her brother turned out successful because he listened to her and followed her orders, Asuna should just "stop wasting her time and theirs, and do what she says." This ends up pissing Asuna off so much that she runs away from home. - Stars, Eyes of Heaven - Joseph Joestar has a tendacies to this when recounting the events of Stardust Crusaders to his family, especially when he brags about the plane crashes they've been through. Caesar was not amused. Joseph Don't look at me like that Caesar...CAE- - His son Josuke isn't much better. After he, Okuyasu, and Koichi finds out that the mysterious man they thought was an enemy was really Jotaro's lover Tenmei Kakyoin, he rambles how he didn't realize since it seemed weird note : He meant the idea of Jotaro showing affection to anyone but Jolyne. It doesn't take long for Tenmei to guess that Josuke is Joseph's kid. Josuke: Aah! Sorry! I didn't realize! It's just kind of weird! Not the gay part! It's not like I'm not okay that you're girlfriend's a man! Boyfriend! Love who you love, and all that. Just, uh- Jotaro-san didn't... seem... like a love kind of guy? I guess? - This Bites!: - During the scene in the palace baths, after Cross finishes telling Nami he has too much respect for her to peep on her, she manages to call him up to the wall to talk to him, only to give him an eyeful of Vivi instead. The first thing Cross comments on is whether she's dedicated with the hair dye. Vivi's stool, meet Cross's cranium. - When Cross wakes up from Enel's initial attack and sees Conis, he makes a statement about how he wished he could've seen Enel's face when Luffy kicked the crap out of him, thinking that he missed the whole arc... not realizing he was only knocked out for a second and a very unamused Enel is right next to them. - Since Usopp never leaves the crew in Water 7, while acting as Sniperking to try to pretend to be someone braver, he essentially states that 'Usopp' deserted from the mission of rescuing Robin without any significant reason. Luffy is not pleased by the implications. - In Zero Context: Woolgathering, Ellen Harrison has a moment of this when, after being mistaken for a new initiate, a group of cultists tell her that they plan to summon their warlord dragon master to the park she'd been relaxing in. Ellen: ... ...So if I'm understanding you correctly, you're summoning a malevolent world conqueror from the other side of the universe... and being the complete morons you are, you think this is somehow a good idea? (Stunned looks from the cultists, and the lead summoner doing a landed-fish impression) Ellen: (thinking) ... ...Excellent work, me. Of all the times to fail at keeping your thoughts to yourself, you had to pick now. This is why I hate talking to people. - Turning Red: When Jin and Ming find out about their daughter Mei's first red panda transformation, Jin's reaction isn't the most tactful to the cautious Ming. Ming : Sweetie, it's okay. Mommy is here. Mei : What's happening to me? Jin : This happened already? Mei : What did you just say ? - Dragonball Evolution: When Chi Chi reveals that she knows of the existence of ki and states that her name doesn't mean she's an idiot, Goku proceeds to embarrass himself this way. Goku: Right. Right. 'Cause there's a lot stupider names than Chi Chi. I'm not saying that Chi Chi's a stupid name. I'm just saying that it's not normal. Ah. But normal is overrated. I'm not saying that you're stupid or overrated. I'm just- I'm gonna stop now. - In The Grizzlies, white history teacher Russ has a few moments in the Arctic Inuit community of Kugluktuk. Russ: Don't they want an education so they can get the hell out of here? Mike: Spoken like a true Qabliunaaq. note : white man - Peter Rabbit: When Bea decides to greet her new neighbor who just moved into the McGregor mansion, she makes insulting comments regarding the late McGregor without even suspecting that the newcomer became the mansion's new owner by being the late owner's next-of-kin. - In Short Circuit Howard theorizes the potential danger of having their laser-armed robot roaming free. The stereotypical Indian guy, Ben, hasn't really grasped the concept of discretion. Howard: What if it decides to melt down a bus full of nuns? How would you like to write the headline on that one?! Ben: Nun soup? Newton: BEN! - X-Men: First Class: During the climax, Charles desperately tries to reason with Magneto and calm him down after the combined Soviet and American fleets fire on the X-Men after seeing their power, insisting that they're all good, innocent men who are Just Following Orders. This ends up really setting Magneto off, since he's a Holocaust survivor and the Nazis Magneto had previously confronted said just that to excuse their actions. - Taran does this constantly around Eilonwy in The Chronicles of Prydain, which just fuels their UST. He grows out of it (mostly) after some Character Development. - In Codex Alera barbarian chief Doroga of the Marat recounts to his human friends a story of his first day in wedded bliss where he went out and tasted some soup that was in the camp's meal area. He spent many days making up for this blunder. Doroga: I praised it to the skies as the best soup any woman ever made for a man. Amara: Your wife hadn't made it? Doroga: She did not. Hashat note : Hashat was his wife's sister had. - In the Fortunes of War books, the lead character has a tendency to stick her foot in her mouth, and lampshades it on herself in Dreadnought! when she makes a snarky comment about a particular phaser design to Mr. Scott only to learn that it was his design. Piper: [ to Sarda] Do me a favor, will you? Just reach down my throat and pull out my vocal cords. - Gamers! (2015) runs on this trope for romantic comedy hi-jinks. Due to a number of compromising situations, Blatant Lies, poorly-worded statements, and plain old bad decisions, a number of misunderstandings results in a Love Dodecahedron where none of the characters actually know what's going on. - Jane of the Green Hills series tends to carelessly say whatever she's thinking. She's afraid this will get her in trouble again. - Nina Tanleven: In The Ghost in the Third Row: - When one of the costumes for the play is damaged, one of the people involved says that "Does it make sense to think it was done by a ghost? Or is it more likely that it was done by one of our local looney birds?" He remembers too late that the script writer Alan Bland, who's right on stage with him, had spent time in a mental hospital the year before and starts to blush and stammer. Nine and Chris are confused at the time, but learn why he reacted like he did the next day. - After learning about Alan's history, Nine unwittingly tells the man's writing partner Paula Gellar that "You guys are crazy!" after finding out how much material they'd written and discarded while writing the play and music, then looks horrified when she realizes what she just said. Paula figures out what she'd learned, and gives her a patient lecture about everything Alan had gone through and how much effort and courage it'd taken for him to put his life back together. - Reign of the Seven Spellblades: Oliver has a bit of a problem with this, especially early in the series. - During the first sword arts lesson, Richard Andrews volunteers to cross swords with Nanao, but Oliver jumps in instead, saying that he met her first and they even fought the troll together. Richard gets very angry at this, and Oliver realizes Richard was one of the students who ran for it while he and the other Sword Roses were holding the troll off, and that he's made an enemy of Richard by accidentally calling attention to it. - Oliver tries to reassure Katie after she's bitten by the magical silkworm, and makes an allusion to an angel coming down to Earth. Katie turns bright red, and Oliver realizes he laid it on way too thick. - Trapped in a Dating Sim: The World of Otome Games is Tough for Mobs: In the Marie Route Alternate Timeline, a key event is Leon and Marie happily gossiping at a party about how horrible the five princes and especially Olivia are, with her two-timing of the princes. Leon and Marie realize everything suddenly went silent, find everyone in the room is looking at them, and bolt. This has major consequences for Olivia and her mental state. - Warrior Cats: In Sky, When Bramblestar says that he doesn't think Tigerstar intends to take over RiverClan for good, Leafstar replies that ambition is in Tigerstar's blood and that he can't help himself. Bramblestar then points out that he and Tigerstar share blood. (He's Tigerstar's uncle; they're both descended from the villainous Tigerstar I.) Leafstar, upon realizing this, is very awkward, but Bramblestar just seems amused. - Arrow: Felicity Smoak, to the point where Earth-2's Harrison Wells, who literally got kicked out of his universe for having No Social Skills, still has more tact than her. - The Barrier: Iván is prone to such moments when drunk or hungover. - When meeting Hugo, who's interviewing to work for his parents because he's been told that the government took his daughter away because he's jobless, Iván heavily implies that his own family is a Dysfunctional Family and that Hugo would be lucky to not get the job. - He makes very snide comments about a man whose photo is being shown on the news \|\|right when the man's girlfriend is next to him, masquerading as her own twin sister\|\|. - He decides that being told that his father \|\|lost a friend, who was incidentally one of his very few remaining true ones,\|\| is a good time to make a comment about the fact that the vast majority of his father's friends qualify for False Friend. - He blames his less likable traits on genetics in front of Manuela, his de facto girlfriend, \|\|shortly after she has found out that she's carrying his child\|\|. The latter situation also makes it a bad time to offer to take her to a party the next time he goes to one. - Buffy the Vampire Slayer: - Spike does this often when he's trying to court Buffy. - Invoked by Buffy in "Doppelgangland" when she tries to apologize to Willow (not realizing she is talking to Willow's alternate universe vampire double) for an unfortunate comment earlier in the episode, saying, "You know how my foot likes to live in my mouth." - Coupling: A form of Cannot Talk to Women, by Jeff: just about every time Jeff talks to a woman, he manages to do this. For example, this exchange occurs just when things seem promising: Lynda: I like kissing, don't you? Jeff: Oh, yeah! Especially the tongues part. I love getting all that extra tongue. You know, sometimes I eat really cold ice cream just so that my tongue goes numb and it feels like someone else's... But then we all get lonely sometimes. - CSI: Hodges gets an epic one when Mac Taylor visits from CSI: NY. He doesn't know who Mac is and starts telling him that it's a crime lab and that he can't walk around without an escort. Then his boss speaks up from behind him. Hodges: This is a crime lab. You can't just wander around without an escort. D.B. Russell: I think the head of the New York Crime Lab knows what a crime lab looks like. - Doctor Who: In "The Day of the Doctor", the Tenth Doctor has a bad habit of doing this while talking to \|\|Queen Elizabeth I\|\|, repeatedly saying terribly offensive or regrettable things under the assumption she was a Zygon duplicate. It gets them \|\|married\|\|. - On ER, Carol's new boyfriend Shep makes some insensitive comments about the suicide attempt patient was brought in, suggesting that "she didn't really mean it" because she took pills as opposed to a more lethal method. Carol snaps, " really meant it", referring to her own suicide attempt a year earlier in which she herself overdosed on pills (and as a nurse, she would certainly have known what would be a fatal amount) and storms off. A flustered Shep asks if she was serious and the mass Death Glare from everyone else confirms it. I - In Firefly, Simon does it virtually every time he tries to have a conversation with Kaylee. - In one episode of The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, when Uncle Phil makes a remark that offends Vivian, Will quips "I've always known you're a hungry man, Uncle Phil, but both feet?". - In one episode of The Golden Girls, Blanche had an epic one. She meets and asks out a man she met in a bar, not realizing at the time (since he was sitting down) that he was blind. When he comes to pick her up for their date, she enters the room, saying things like, "Aren't I the prettiest thing you've ever seen?" and "What's the matter, are you blinded by my beauty?" She finally takes a good look, sees his cane, and stops in her tracks. Sophia directly addresses it, saying, "Want a glass of water to wash down your foot?" - JAG: Lt. Bud Roberts falls victim to this fairly often, especially in the pilot movie whenever dealing with Lt. Caitlin Pike. His case of Foot-in-Mouth Disease is particularly unfortunate given that his original job is Public Affairs. - The Journey of Flower: Dongfang Yu Qing attempts to compliment Qian Gu. Instead he accidentally tells her she's simple-minded. - Kamen Rider Dragon Knight: Kit says this trope word to word after unknowingly hurting Chris. - Referenced fairly often on MASH. In one case, BJ claims Charles has "put a whole shoe store" in his mouth." (That example, interestingly, was incorrect, as Charles had fully meant to offend everyone.) - A Moody Christmas. In the first episode Dan mistakes Cora for a door-knocking Red Cross volunteer because of her shirt, and donates some money. It turns out she is his cousin's new girlfriend, isn't a volunteer, and designed and hand-made the shirt herself. - NCIS: - Jimmy Palmer is very prone to this. He does not seem to have heard the old adage that "a closed mouth gathers no feet". His foot tasting episodes routinely escalate to Digging Yourself Deeper territory. - DiNozzo runs afoul of this trope from time to time as well. - In Sherlock, we have Molly. Molly:* How's the hip? Mrs. Hudson: Oh, it's atrocious. But thanks for asking. Molly: I've seen much worse. But then I do post-mortems . - Star Trek: The Next Generation: During "Hollow Pursuits", Capt. Picard accidentally calls Barclay by his unofficial nickname Broccoli. Data tries to put a positive spin on the situation by referencing psychology but really only makes the situation worse. - Schitt's Creek: All the Roses do this occasionally, but Johnny Rose does it all the time. Often, Johnny has every right to assume something he's wrong about, but he still gets blamed and guilted. Examples include when he assumes Alexis is pregnant, when he assumes Ted's mother has a crush on him and when he assumes Patrick's parents know their son is in a relationship with David. - Strong Medicine's Dr. Lu Delgado often has moments like this. Sadly, none of them seem to make her realize that she should think before she talks: - When her partner Dana takes time off to spend with her mother, Lu makes a snide comment about them taking "a Paris shopping trip", only to be coldly informed by Dana that her mother has breast cancer. - She's incredibly rude to her son's girlfriend until the girl zings her for hating her for being white rather than for being rich. - She's also quite rude to her new partner Andy after she's hired, insinuating that she can't handle working with low-income patients, until Andy reacts like she wasn't even listening to her. - She lectures Andy about supposedly exploiting her Eastern European nanny/housekeeper. Andy angrily informs her that she is doing no such thingshe's paying the woman even more than the norm and has taken care of the necessary paperwork. - Peter from The Four Gospels does this constantly, saying something that he thinks is smart only for Jesus to show him how completely wrong he is. He finally breaks this habit somewhere in the middle of Acts. - Also from The Bible: James the Lord's brother spends the middle part of chapter 3 from his own epistle to explain how dangerous the tongue really is. Even so, the tongue is a little part of the body and boasts great things. See how great a forest a little fire kindles. The tongue is a fire, a world of evil. The tongue is among the parts of the body, defiling the whole body, and setting the course of nature on fire, and it is set on fire by hell. (James 3:5-6) - The four main kids in the Cool Kids Table Harry Potter-themed game Hogwarts: The New Class start talking about how lame Voldemort is in front of Felicia, only for her to tell them \|\|that her father was killed by Voldemort, followed by her tearfully running away\|\|. - The pilot in the Black Box season of Within the Wires is extremely prone to making awkward comparisons and comments that he then regrets and apologizes for. (For example, comparing his passenger to a sick dog in Episode 5.) - In Dawn of a New Age: Oldport Blues, Michal asks Ivan upon first meeting him if the acquisition of his superpower took away his voice. When Ivan explains that his lack of voice is a disability that he's always had, Michal is horrified at his mistake and panics so badly that he bursts into flames. - Final Fantasy - Tidus, not being from Spira, tends to put his foot in his mouth a lot. Tidus: Hey, aren't you being just a little unfair? Lulu: Excuse me? Tidus: I know I could never take Chappu's place. You're the one who told Wakka that, right, Lulu? And I don't think Wakka would ever try to take Chappu's pl— Lulu: You don't want to finish that sentence. - Alphinaud also has this tendency. especially around Y'shtola and his sister Alisaie. - God of War (PS4): Prior to the final boss fight, \|\|Freya tries to soothe Baldur, telling him that she knows that he's still angry with her, that how he feels hasn't changed... Not the best thing to say to a guy who, because of her actions, has gone insane from not being able to feel anything at all for a hundred years\|\|. - GreedFall: During one of Thélème's side quests involving a "demonic cult", De Sardet ends up investigating one of the islander's houses with Petrus. Petrus will make the same derogatory comments regardless of who the other companion is, but if it's Síora, he'll realize the faux pas. Petrus: Síora I am sorry, what I really wanted to say- Síora: Leave it, old man, I know exactly what it is you wanted to say. - In Tales of Symphonia, if you have Colette cook for the party \|\|after Lloyd reveals that she can't taste or feel anything\|\|, you can sometimes get a skit where Kratos will complain that the food was cooked too hot and over-seasoned. He immediately realizes his mistake and quietly tells her to ignore him. - Check, Please!: When Jack asks to bring his boyfriend to a dinner party, Marty laughingly asks if he's joking, realizes that Jack just came out to him, then launches into a rapid-fire combined apology and reassurance until Jack reassures him that everything's fine. - Code Name: Hunter: Gypsy stuffs both feet, up to her knees in when called to the commander's office by Queen Moraine. She's not in trouble. Yet. One of the readers lampshaded this in the Shout Box. - Dan and Mab's Furry Adventures: - Dragon City: - The Fox Sister: Alex has a talent to say just the wrong things to Yun Hee. - Freefall: - Grrl Power has Sydney do this constantly when Peggy's artificial limb comes up. For bonus points, said missing limb is the leg below the knee, and the page's title is "Open mouth, insert foot to just below the knee." The Rant: Sydney, think of things NOT to say, then DON'T say them. - Gunnerkrigg Court: In "Questions and Answers", Mort the ghost says Annie is "attractive", then starts backpedaling and trying to explain he didn't mean that kind of attractive, and concludes by turning himself into a gravestone with a "foot -> mouth" pictograph. - Ménage à 3: Clueless geek Gary is prone to this sort of error. See here for one, lampshaded, example. - A defining trait of Flux from morphE, to the point that the comic introducing her was even named Open Mouth to imply this very trope. - Paranormal Mystery Squad: Apparently, Stephanie's been around the block a few times 'cuz she seemed way too familiar with "Inspiration Point". She not only failed to cover it up, she wound up confirming it by proudly admitting it to Agent Lisbon: - Pixie Trix Comix: Maura manages an unforced display of embarrassing unintentionally risqué blather in the (marginally NSFW) October 1st 2019 strip. - Questionable Content: - A Running Gag in Schlock Mercenary is the multiple creative variations used to call someone ( usually Tagon, but he was by no means the only guilty party) out when they said something particularly embarrassing to or about another character while in earshot. It doesn't get mentioned as frequently in more recent strips as it did early on, but still pops up from time to time. - Special mention should go to the Reverend, for getting two situations in two days. - Nick tends to get them more than the average. - This happens literally when Elf gets her artificial Odin boots, and inserts one of them in Schlock's mouth. - Stand Still, Stay Silent: One character describes the sound of the Danish language. With a pair of Danish soldiers right behind him. - In Tales of the Questor, Quentin tries to compliment Meribeth on something other than her breasts. - Done at least twice by Grey O'Shea in Terra, though the best one is also the first. See page 130 where he crossed it with Right Behind Me. Simmons: [referring to Grey's rescue of Alex and Rick] C'mon, I saw that one of the officers was female, and a cute one at that—I know you, Grey. Grey: Her?! Please, she's way too uptight. I don't have time for girls like that. Simmons: What, you think you even stand a chance? Grey: Give me a break. She may have an attitude, but if I wanted her, I could have her by the end of the night. Alex: Hm, I'll take that bet. - Twokinds: "Red" has recently started running afoul of this trope, particularly once he's found out Raine, the girl he has a crush on, is half-Keidran. Winds up running into Digging Yourself Deeper territory. - The Whiteboard: - In this strip Pirta and Swampy get into a brief discussion of his nickname. After Swampy asks about her name in an idiot moment for him, he comments that he can skip the appetizer, as he'll just chew on his own foot. - In this strip, a customer that's been hassling Pirta for a date is asked if he'd be okay with the situation were their positions reversed, and she were trying to get him to cheat on his girlfriend. He accidentally lets slip that he'd be fine with cheating on his girlfriend Jenny for a date with Pirta. He winds up thrown bodily out of the store after being beat up by Pirta for his troubles. - Happens often in Aladdin: The Series with the title character. - Ben 10: Ultimate Alien: When Gwen fails a driving test, Kevin tries explaining that she has to treat a car the way she'd treat a woman. Gwen's Fascinating Eyebrow tells him that he's made some sort of mistake. - Celebrity Deathmatch: The Bruce Willis vs. Ashton Kutcher fight in Season 5 came to be due to Willis then wife, Demi Moore, leaving him for Kutcher. Bruce is just mopping the floor with Ashton, venting his frustrations over this, to which the latter responds, "Look at me! I can get any woman in Hollywood I want! I could dump Demi and have a date the same night!" Bruce suddenly smirks, telling him that he just made a big mistake. Cue a furious Demi Moore rappelling into the ring, and proceeding to beat the shit out of . both of them - DuckTales (2017): - Family Guy: In "Road to the North Pole", Brian, while accompanying Stewie at the mall to meet Santa Claus, sees Quagmire with a bald child and assumes that he has a nephew. He learns, to his utter horror, that it's actually his niece, who has cancer and is bald from chemotherapy. Brian: Oh gosh, I... I didn't know! I'm so... I'm so sorry! Quagmire: Oh, you're sorry? F-For what? That waiting in line is such a catastrophe, that you'd rather destroy the confidence of a 5-year-old cancer patient? Brian: Aww, come on. I-I didn't know she was dying. Quagmire: Who said anything about dying?! - The Flintstones: Fred did this on many occasions. It was also a Literal Metaphor as there were times when his foot went into his mouth whenever a doctor tested his reflexes. - Gravity Falls: In "The Stanchurian Candidate", Grunkle Stan insists on speaking his mind rather than use the speech Dipper and Mabel wrote for his mayoral campaign against Li'l Gideon, but he can't even complete a sentence without revealing his amoral nature. - In Justice League Unlimited, Batman and John Stewart are talking about relationships when John idly mentions Bats and Wonder Woman being together. Batman starts explaining that, while he admires her as a friend and a teammate, going any further isn't really in the books before he comes to realize that, oops, she's right behind him. - This happened in The Life and Times of Juniper Lee: The titular character calls her crush a "total babe with the hair and the cute smile" when he's standing Right behind her. She quickly realizes this. In fact the full sentence is: - Lilo & Stitch: The Series: In "Splodyhead", Experiment 625/Reuben makes a quip at Gantu just before the latter heads out to Niʻihau, leading to Gantu deciding to force 625 to come with him. The experiment lampshades this. 625/Reuben: Note to self: Only open mouth to insert sandwiches. - In My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic episode "No Second Prances", after Starlight Glimmer calls out Twilight Sparkle on her paranoia towards Trixie, Trixie begins to gloat and calls winning over Starlight a victory. This hurts Starlight and she wants an explanation. When Trixie tries to explain that she really was her friend and beating Twilight was just a bonus, Starlight's so hurt by this, she ends up running off. - The Simpsons: In "Pygmoelian", when Moe sees how ugly his photo is, Carl tries to console him. It doesn't go well. Moe: Am I really that ugly? Carl: Moe, it's all relative. Is Lenny really that dumb? Is Barney that drunk? Is Homer that lazy, bald, and fat? Moe: Oh, my God, it's worse than I thought! ( Moe, Lenny, Barney, and Homer start sobbing) Carl: ( to camera ) See, this is why I don't talk much. - Steven Universe has a few: - Pearl is in fine form in "The Test", first accidentally revealing that the Sea Spire mission was a test, then digging herself deeper when she desperately tries to rectify the situation. Her Oh, Crap! expressions throughout the whole thing are priceless. - Peridot. Due to her lack of social skills, she makes crucial blunders time and time again. She manages to get on everyone's bad side in "Too Far" because she doesn't realize that her bigoted remarks are hurtful. In "It Could've Been Great", she praises the original plan that would've destroyed Earth. In "Message Received", the Crystal Gems think she betrayed them due to a lack of communication, and then she completely fails at trying to negotiate with Yellow Diamond. In "Barn Mates", she has a difficult time making her attempts at apologizing to Lapis seem sincere. Fortunately, as she gets Character Development, Peridot seems to suffer this trope much less often. - Happens to The Hipster in the Tex Avery short "Symphony in Slang" when he's put on trial for skimping out on a restaurant bill, and every time he opens his mouth, he puts his foot in it. Like everything else in the cartoon, this is illustrated.	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/OpenMouthInsertFoot
"Open!" Says Me There's a door the heroes have to clear. But there's also a lock (often involving a complex computer combination lock) in the way. Our heroes have to get past it, to get the weapon, the suspect or hostage, or the artifact or whatever MacGuffin is important to the plot right now. They may or may not have a brilliant hacker kid like young John Connor or mutant kid like Micah. Somebody tries to pick the lock, or to blow powder on it to see what the most used key combinations may be, or find some other way to get the lock open before time runs out. But it's still not going fast enough. Then comes The Big Guy, the Boisterous Bruiser, the Pint-Size Powerhouse (etc.) who just punches it in, smashes it with a rock, kicks it, blasts it with a weapon, or runs into it either head first or with a Battering Ram. Master of Unlocking or not, the lock is broken, sputters feebly, and the door obligingly opens, if it doesn't fall down first. Occasionally you have a speedster or a robot picking the lock by blazing through all combinations faster than the human eye can follow. One of the more common variants is the hero putting his (or her) shoulder to the door, which obligingly opens, if only a little bit. This has led to the common subversion: hero applies shoulder, Newton's third law tells the hero to lie down on the ground and whimper. The "subversion" is what would actually happen. If you really want to open a door, kick it near the door knob. Otherwise you'll have a closed door and an injured shoulder. Subtrope of Cutting the Knot. When the magic phrase Open Sesame fails, you still have this as an alternative; sometimes the party using force to open the door will even say, "Open, says me!" See also Dungeon Bypass, Myopic Architecture and Steal the Surroundings. Related to Axe Before Entering, Battering Ram, Drill the Lock, and Shoot Out the Lock. See Dynamic Entry for when this is done as a Big Entrance. The Subverted Trope, where they do bust down the door, and an ally notes they didn't need to, is We Have the Keys. And the trope wherein they could've used the door but smash through the wall instead is There Was a Door. ## Examples: - "Victory By Computer": Subverted. When Supergirl wakes up in a strange room, she decides to smash her way through a locked door. When she flattens herself against door, sliding down to the floor as the door remains locked and undented, Kara realizes she has lost her super-strength. - In Attack on Titan, when the heroes finally make it to Eren's father's basement, Eren finds that the key he's been carrying this whole time won't fit in the lock. Levi loses patience and just kicks the door down. (The key turns out to be for another lock deeper inside the room.) - Played with in Berserk during the Griffith Rescue mini arc. When the team finally reached Griffith's cell at the bottom of the Tower of Rebirth, the warden/torturer locks them in the room behind a door that was four times the thickness of a normal door. He then proceeds to gloat about how he \|\|tortured and maimed Griffith for a year\|\|... which only served to piss Guts off even more before he eventually decided to ram his BFS through the door, at the same time skewering the warden, cutting off the warden's tongue, and finally allowing him to slide from the sword to his death down into the pit. - At the beginning of the Bount Arc in Bleach, Ichigo and Co are trying to get into their kidnapped friend's house. They consider knocking the door down but Ichida calmly picks it instead. Later when they need to get in again, they decide that they're in too much of a hurry but the door's opened from the inside before they can open it. - In one episode of The Big O, Roger is with his snarky Robot Girl companion Dorothy and they come to a locked door. Roger takes out a lock-picking device he had stowed away, and gets ready to use it, but Dorothy just calmly pushes the door open...with a one-handed push and gives him a look. - In Buso Renkin, during the attack on the school, one of the L.X.E.'s familiars is telling the students to throw things at everything in the courtyard (the homunculi are immune, the heroes aren't). To get through the locked door, Daihama smashed it with a cry of "DIE DOOR!" - In Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex, Togusa suggests that he pick a lock, while Batou just kicks the door down. - In Episode 5 of Lost Universe, Kane, Millie and Canal are in front of a warehouse to pick up their client for their latest work. Millie tries to insert the codes on the door's keypad but it doesn't work, so Kane steps in and breaks the keypad with a single kick, opening the door for them. - Moriarty the Patriot: - Lestrade knocks in the door to the Scotland Yard's archives after Sherlock's plan to sneak in is foiled. Sherlock and John stare, stunned and impressed by the unexpected display from the Inspector. - Sherlock and John break down a door together in The Sign of Mary to find Bartholomew's dead body. - Sailor Moon: Both Sailor Moon and Sailor Jupiter have taken the simple and direct approach to opening locked doors on occasion, with an exploding moon tiara and a bolt of lightning respectively. - In one chapter of Sgt. Frog, Momoka's street-fighting mother Oka circumvents the newly-installed set of heavy locks on the entrance to Keroro's Elaborate Underground Base by simply ripping the door open with her bare hands. - In SPY×FAMILY, Yor's work as assassin is introduced to the reader by having her casually stroll up to a heavily guarded room before kicking the two guards in front through the door, knocking the door off its hinges in the process. - Zigzagged in an episode of You're Under Arrest!, where Miyuki and Natsumi participate in a staged bank robbery exercise as the robbers. When they get to the bank's safe, it's guarded by a high-tech electronic lock. No problem for Miyuki, who easily hacks it. But after they get past it, turns out there's also a door full of normal padlocks and chains, much to Miyuki's exasperation. That's where Natsumi does her stuff, breaking them apart with her strength. - Done a few times in Asterix, usually by Obelix. - In The Authority, Jack remarks how much he hates kicking in doors because he feels bad for the people who clean up afterwards. Fortunately it turns out that Midnighter can pick locks faster than Jack can kick anyway. - Doom: On Page 2, Doomguy opens an important-looking door this way. - The Flash does this with the "push every button until sparks fly out" method. - Several examples in Gotham City Garage: - Supergirl, Nightwing and Catwoman are sneaking in a secret facility and attempting to open a door but the retinal scan doesn't work. Kara -who is shielding her partners from a laser barrage- loses her patience and punches the door down. - Batgirl needs to make her way in a rebel hideout. At the door, she's asked the password. Barbara doesn't even answer anything. She just kicks the door down. - In Miracleman, Miracleman and a secret agent approach a giant vault door. The secret agent discusses finding some explosives to open it up. Miracleman dismissively embeds his fingers into the vault door, rips it out and throws it over his shoulder. - Mortadelo y Filemón: - A humorous version occurs when Mortadelo and Filemon pay a visit to the President of the USA. A security guard goes through a number of scans and checks (iris scan, voice recognition, access code, etc.) to open a door in the White House, prompting Mortadelo to remark that "Security sure is tight." Then along comes the cleaning lady, who just slaps and kicks the door a few times until it opens. Perhaps she is an Almighty Janitor. - A Running Gag is that the duo has to open a door, so Mortadelo will bring out his skeleton key — a comically oversized key with which he simply smashes the door to pieces. - In Sin City, when Marv is locked in Kevin's basement, he simply runs head-first into the huge, thick, vault door until it eventually breaks down. The movie contained a slightly different escape where he rips the barred window out of the wall. - Superman: - Superman does this occasionally. If you're super-strong and invulnerable, any door is only locked if you want it to be. - Action Comics #1. In the very first Superman story, our hero is forcing his way into the governor's house (to get him to give a Last-Minute Reprieve). When Supes comes across a locked door made of steel blocking his way, the governor's butler (who had previously seen Supes knock a wooden door off its hinges) sarcastically tells him to knock this door down. Supes does just that, and smugly responds to the stunned butler "It was your idea!'' - In the crossover Escape from the Phantom Zone, Batgirl and Supergirl sneak in a clandestine black site to free a prisoner. They need to open a cell door but have no key, so Supergirl rips the door off its hinges. - The Other Side of Doomsday: As exploring the facility where she, Iris West and Jean Loring have been imprisoned, Supergirl runs into a massive, thick metal door blocking them. Supergirl proceeds to swiftly tear it off its hinges. - Rorschach from Watchmen does this repeatedly, mostly to his friend, the second Nite Owl's, door. Of course you could argue he was asking for it using a company called Gordian Knot. - Wonder Woman: - Brother on Board: S1lver shows no respect for locked doors in Chapter 34 and uses this trope a total of 4 times. - First, \|\|Miss Valentine\|\| smashes through the locked door of the patient room so Nami can escape. - Second, Sabo tears open the locked doors of Wapol's armory in a fit of rage. - Third, Zoro and Sanji help an emotionally exhausted Sabo by knocking down the frozen-over doors to Wapol's kitchen. - Fourth, Nami gets Luffy to rip the locked doors off of Wapol's massive refrigerator. - Examples from The Calvinverse: - In Dedicated Hearts made Fullmetal, when the Survey Corps finally go to the Yeager house's basement, and they realize the key Eren has doesn't work on the door, Edward steps up and claps his hands, seemingly to transmute the door with alchemy. He ultimately decides to just kick it as hard as he can until it opens. - Diaries of a Madman: Nav tries this unsuccessfully. One of the Day Guard later almost breaks his leg by trying to kick down Nav's front door. - In The Night Unfurls, this happens in Chapter 29 of the original when the five hunters hit a warehouse where Mandeville's associates are meeting. Kyril kicks a door off of its hinges, brazenly interrupting their meeting. Cue slaughter. - The Rigel Black Chronicles: The first time Harry encounters a Riddling Sphinx, Hermione is on hand to solve the riddle and get them past peacefully. The second time, Harry is alone, and has no idea of the answer, so she has to fight her way through. - The protagonist tries this in Sophistication and Betrayal, but fails badly and injures his leg in the process. - This Bites!: - Conis does this a couple of times to get through doors. It helps to be 4 times stronger than a normal human. - Soundbite quotes this to get through a safe door. - Both Sengoku and Garp lend their strength to breaking down the Gates of Justice. Unfortunately for them, the gates are simply too massive and well-built for them to even come close to succeeding before the Straw Hats escape. - At one point in Total Drama Legacy, Wayne tries to open a locked door by punching it. - Inverted in Wilhuff Tarkin, Hero of the Rebellion: when his niece has seemingly locked herself in her room on his personal ship, Tarkin entertains the idea of barging in with a battering ram before using his password to all doors on the ship to override the lock. - In Xendra the Scoobies try to search Warren Mears house but his basement door gives off an electric shock powerful enough to knock out a Slayer (or kill a normal human). Wesley finds a pair of heavy insulation gloves and dips them in latex paint to further insulate them. Faith kicks down the door. - Captain Marvel (2019): Nick Fury gets himself and Carol out of a locked room in the Project Pegasus facility using a lifted fingerprint a guard left on Fury's ID badge. Later, he gets ready to do it again, but Carol just blasts the lock. Fury: You sat there and watched me play with tape, and all you had to do was...? Carol: I didn't want to steal your thunder. - Dead Presidents. One of the Vietnam veterans-turned-robbers tries to blow the rear door off an armoured truck with a radio-detonated C4 charge, and ends up blowing up the entire truck and incinerating the money inside. - Done as an example of how Muggles Do It Better in Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them: Queenie attempts to use conventional magic to open the door to Graves' office, but it is naturally enchanted against such efforts. So Jacob simply kicks it in. - Gone in 60 Seconds (2000): Used when the hotshot Smart Guy tries to pick a lock on a small power box. The Voiceless Big Guy steps in and abruptly snaps the door open with a knife. - The Hunter (1980). Steve Mc Queen's character goes to kick down a door, only for the door to be kicked down on top of him by a Giant Mook who proceeds to wipe the floor with him. - The In-Laws: A very funny moment comes in the original version when one of the Mooks chasing Sheldon comes across an emergency exit. After trying to open it, and failing, he yells for a couple of seconds, catches his breath, calmly says, "This is an emergency," and busts down the door. - I, Robot: While Dr. Calvin is trying to hack into \|\|V.I.K.I.\|\|, the control panel suddenly locks her out with a small sliding door. She barely gets a chance to fret over how to bypass this when a very tense Spooner comes right up and punches the door (\|\|with his robot arm!\|\|). The crumpled door surrenders. Spooner: I'm uncomfortable...with . heights - Iron Man: Pepper Potts is leading several S.H.I.E.L.D. operatives to Stane's secret lab. Her key card doesn't work on his door, so the operatives place a device on the lock. Pepper starts asking if the device picks the lock mechanically or electronically before they tell her to stand back from the imminent explosion. She covers her ears expecting a loud bang... aaand it turns out to be a thermite charge about as loud as a dropped textbook. - Major Grom: Plague Doctor has a montage of the Cowboy Cop hero kicking open doors...except the last one has his foot going through the door, so he has to take the time to smash the rest down as well. - In Red (2010) the protagonist points out that while a door to a CIA file room is protected by a state-of-the-art biometric lock, the surrounding wall was built by the lowest bidder. He simply kicks the wall and easily breaks through the shoddy drywall. - The Naked Gun: Subverted and Played for Laughs: Officer Nordberg tries to kick down a door, but instead he kicks a hole in the door and gets his foot stuck, which also tips off the criminals on the other side. - Peter Pan & Wendy: During Captain Hook's introduction, a pirate in his crew knocks on his cabin door to tell him that Peter Pan has been sighted, forgetting that he can't stand hearing the boy's name. Before can even finish speaking, Hook shoots down the door with his pistol, crushing the poor pirate. Afterward, Hook reminds Mr. Smee that his cabin needs a new door. Smee: Might I say, Captain, that would be your third door this month. Hook: It won't be the last. - The Princess Bride: At the film's climax, Inigo has Rugen on the run, but the Count eludes him briefly by running into a room and locking the door behind him. Inigo, in a full panic that Rugen might get away, starts running and ramming himself against the door, trying to break it down, and screaming for Fezzik to help him out. Fezzik calmly walks up, stops Inigo from hitting the door, and punches it off its hinges with one fist. Then calmly turns and walks away as Inigo resumes the chase. - In the Robert Downey Jr./Guy Ritchie version of Sherlock Holmes (2009), Holmes takes out a very professional-looking lockpicking kit to open up a locked door. Watson just kicks the thing down. Later Irene Adler pulls open a door to again find a Holmes fiddling with his lockpicks on the other side. - Sneakers: Played for Laughs: Bishop has lockpicks ready to open the mechanical lock to the office holding the MacGuffin. He comes up to it, and discovers the mechanical lock has been replaced with an electronic keypad. He radios the guys down in the truck and asks if anyone knows how to defeat a keypad. Crease picks up the mic and says, "Try this..." After a few seconds of listening to Crease's advice (which we don't hear) Bishop says he'll give it a shot. He then kicks down the door, and radios back, "It worked." - Played for Laughs in Spy Kids. The kids and a mook fresh off of a Heal Face Turn need to get the kids' mother out of a cell. The mook begins fumbling with the keys while Carmen simply applies acid to the cell bars, melting them and allowing her to escape...just as the mook found the key and unlocked the door. - Double Subversion in Stripes: John and Russell try to rescue their captured unit from a cell by blowing up the locked door with a bomb, which fails. Once Captain Stillman starts blaming them for the predicament they were now in, Ox (who's inside the cell among the prisoners) decides he's had enough of Stillman's whining and charges towards him, but smashes open the door when Stillman steps out of his way. - In Superman: The Movie, Superman breaks into Lex Luthor's lair under Metropolis through the door. Luthor: It's open, come on in. My attorney will be in touch with you about damage to the door. [turning] Otis, take the gentleman's cape. [death glare] Otis: I don't think he wants me to, Mr. Luthor. - In Terminator 2: Judgment Day: - When John and Miles succeed in opening the cabinet which contains the T-100's arm, it's enclosed in a hermetically sealed container. Miles begins to describe the process necessary to get it out John: sweeps it onto the floor where it smashes, freeing the arm - On an episode of American Pickers, a man was just starting to get an old storage unit cleaned out. "And, ah, I don't know where the key is, so we found this key." (holds up an electric saw and cuts through the lock) - Angel: Angel does it once or twice as well, usually with demons since he needs an invitation for human homes, such as when he smashes open the door of Amoral Attorney Lilah Morgan. - A variation in The Big Bang Theory: Sheldon wants Penny to retrieve a USB drive from a box with a complex puzzle lock - and is giving her detailed instructions on how to open it. She chooses to just smash it open. - Buffy the Vampire Slayer: - Michael Weston of Burn Notice LOOOOVES this. Especially using the wall. - On Criminal Minds, this happens practically Once per Episode with Morgan. On a gag reel, they once unscrewed the door so that when Shemar Moore tried to kick it down, it merely fell. In later episodes, Morgan didn't kick down a lot of doors because Moore broke his foot. - CSI-verse: Used frequently throughout all members of the franchise. A couple of examples: - CSI: In the crossover with New York, "In Vino Veritas," Mac Taylor smashes through the door to his girlfriend, Christine's, hotel room after D.B. notices blood on the handle. - CSI: NY: After his Stalker with a Crush, Ella McBride calls him and he realizes that she's apparently attempted suicide, Mac rushes to her apartment and breaks down the door, finds her with both wrists slit, then scoops her up and rushes her to the E.R. - Doctor Who has done this a few times. - Gotham: After discovering the hidden cave entrance, Bruce and Alfred find that it leads to a steel door with an electronic combination lock. After a month of trying and failing to open the door, Bruce decides to blow it open, with Alfred reluctantly assisting him. - The Green Hornet would often enter rooms by blasting the door open with his 'hornet sting'. In one episode he does it multiple times to the same gangster, prompting the man to complain of the cost of having the door fixed again and again. - Happens regularly on Hawaii Five-0 with usually either Steve or Danny kicking in a door to get to a suspect or victim. This pretty much always works except for the one time it doesn't and then Steve just goes and gets a grenade from Danno's trunk. That works. - In Kamen Rider: Skyrider, Skyrider's "Rider Break" attack consisted of using his bike to smash through walls. He did it Once per Episode. - Subverted in NCIS (which routinely plays it straight) in the episode "Parental Guidance Suggested", when DiNozzo asks Bishop to open a door. She makes two attempts at kicking it down before Dinozzo reminds her that We Have the Keys. - Subverted on one episode of The O.C., when Seth Cohen attempts to break open a door in a badass way while talking on his cell phone... and fails miserably. It turns out he could have just opened it. - The '70s action series The Professionals had plenty of door-kicking by its gun-wielding protagonists. - Subverted in "Blackout", when Bodie shoulder-charges a door only to break his right arm in the process (and his expensive watch, which he's even more upset about). He then has to shoot two terrorists using his left hand. - A spoof by The Two Ronnies had a gun-waving Doyle kicking open a door and searching the apartment for the villain only to find no-one. As he leaves and closes the door behind him, the Squashed Flat villain falls out from behind it. - Played straight with Xelayan Cute Bruiser Alara in The Orville. Though in one instance the door frame was stronger than the wall - so she also removed a big chunk of the wall alongside the door. This becomes a Running Gag between her and Captain Mercer; whenever he needs her to smash through a door, he says "You wanna open this jar of pickles for me? " - Sapphire and Steel, episode 6: Steel: It's locked. [Lead thumps the door, which falls off its hinges] Lead: It isn't now. - In Smallville, Clark breaks through high-security doors by simply ripping them off.. a lot. Humorously subverted in the episode "Mortal", where Clark has been Brought Down to Normal, and therefore has to break into a lab and steal a chemical subtly, and points out he misses just speeding in a smashing open the safe. (Yeah, Clark breaks into high-security labs a lot. Don't worry, they're owned by the Luthors, so it's OK.) - Supernatural: - That '70s Show: Eric storms up to Donna's door and attempts to kick it in. He falls backward on his ass. Donna throws open the door and when she incredulously asks if he just kicked her door, he denies it, despite the damning evidence of his shoeprint on the door. - Torchwood: - In the episode "Something Borrowed", Jack Harkness kicks a door open because he thinks there's a murderous alien shapeshifter behind it (which turns out to just be Rhys's mother, and the shapeshifter is elsewhere). - In the Hilarious Outtakes, John Barrowman actually kicks the entire door off its hinges by accident and tromps over it on his way into the scene. He manages to stay in character and continue the scene for about fifteen seconds before he cracks up. - In Warehouse 13 Myka has no time to wait for Claudia to hack the lock again if they're going to rescue Pete, so she gives the computer lock a roundhouse kick. - In the episode "Business Trip" of Workaholics the guys and Alice high on acid (except for Adam who got a bum tab and Ders who purposefully faked taking his) are looking for a potential client, heading to the wrong room (thanks to Blake). When they get there, Alice knocks on the door and says "housekeeping", and as soon as the door is unlocked, she kicks it open, yelling "Fresh towels!" Of course, it's the wrong room, not that that stops Alice from scaring everyone in a drug-fueled rage. - Flint spends most of episode 11 of The Fallen Gods wanting to kick a door open. Fortunately, they find one that really needs to be kicked later on and Tuatha gets to present it to him like Vanna White. - Quest in Show: Pratt does this when confronting Droog in the first Season Finale, in order to keep the focus on himself while his allies free hostages. - The Bible: - There's the episode of Christ in Limbo, the Harrowing of Hell: following the crucifixion, Christ's soul descended into the outskirts of Hell where he freed the souls of those righteous ancestors who remained trapped in the Limbo of the Patriarchs, as a result of being born in the days before baptism. A popular subject of medieval art, the exact moment most commonly depicted is Christ kicking down the gates of Limbo and trampling them underfoot. - In Chapter 16 of the Book of Judges, when Samson went to Gaza to spend some time with a prostitute, the Philistines thought they could trap Samson inside the city and then wait to kill him when he gets up in the morning. However, Samson gets up in the middle of the night, and uses his strength to rip open the doors of the city gate along with its gate posts, carrying the whole thing straight up to the top of the hill opposite Hebron. - Everything Is Broken: LG Creepybloom knocks on the door of Lumpy's caravan. When he does not answer she angrily kicks it open in part 10. - Tom Hardigan kicks down a door with apparent ease on Blood And Smoke. - Bob and George: A handful of Dr. Cossack's Robot Masters, led by Ran, have to figure out how to break into Dr. Wily's fortress. He discusses the various traps and hazards they'll have to navigate; Dive Man blows up the front door and walks in. - In Clockwork Game, Maelzel busts down Schlumberger's door, because he thinks Schlumberger is too drunk to perform. He's wrong. - In Girl Genius Agatha uses a laser sight to make a "devil dog" robot crash through a jammed door in Castle Heterodyne by having the rouge defense robot follow it like a playful cat. - Hero In Training: Our heroes are stuck behind a door with a keycard lock. Until Sebastian reminds them it's a glass door, and breaks it. - Junpei uses "KEYLESS ENTER" in MegaTokyo. - In NIMONA, while Ballister tries to explain his hacking through a high-security door with Techno Babble, Nimona just rams through it as a rhinoceros. Ballister is less than amused. - The Order of the Stick: THOG SMASH PUNY PRISON! - Vesper of Plume has a smaller-scale variation when she opens a chest with heavy lock on it with a solid kick. - Power Puff Girls Doujinshi: Blossom and Dexter are investigating a secret vault for possible breach, when Dexter notices he's lost all access to the vault door's electronic controls. He starts panicking, until Blossom tells him to calm down and kicks the door open. - Schlock Mercenary: - When a stealth mission ends up in a shoot-out, the team discovers this has other side effects. Temporarily. Pronto: Sarge, they just shut some kinda blast door into the data center. We can't get through. Schlock: Pronto, how about you finish that sentence for me? Pronto: Umm... "Just shut blast door... Data center... Can't get through..." Without blasting? Schlock: And that's why they call it a blast door. - Rak from Tower of God just gambles which door is the one which opening won't get the team killed while Khun still tries to figure out fake clues. He just kicks it open. - Arcane. In their introductory scene, Mylo is delicately picking the lock on the door of Jayce's balcony, which he understandably complains about ("Who locks a balcony?!") when Vi just kicks the door down. As everyone walks past an incredulous Mylo to enter Jayce's apartment, Claggor cheekily smacks Mylo's head. Mylo: Animals! - Toph pulls one in the finale of Avatar: The Last Airbender when she pulls a Shave And A Haircut and blasts the door out of the way on the 'two bits' with metalbending. - In Dragons: Race to the Edge, Hiccup and Toothless explore a derelict dragon-hunting ship and come across the door to the commander's quarters, which features a rather formidable looking lock. Hiccup: Okay, here's the plan... (Toothless disintegrates the door with a plasma blast)...I like yours better. - In an episode of DuckTales (1987), Magica de Spell magically turns the combination lock on her own safe, but it fails to open when she orders, "Open, says me!" She finally groans, "Oh, why do I bother?!" and smashes the safe with a sledgehammer she apparently just happened to have lying around. - Justice League Unlimited: - The Question is looking at a locked glass door to a building with a key card lock. After a few seconds of inspecting the lock intently, he simply walks off-screen, comes back with a potted tree, smashes it through the glass door, and calmly walks in. All the while humming a pop song stuck in his head. What ups the funny is the fact two other people snuck in by creative ways such as disguises and swiping the key card. - The Flash has repeatedly done the "push every combination" method to open doors. Once Batman subverted it by telling Flash the combination after about ten seconds of rapid typing. - Kaeloo: Kaeloo and Mr. Cat reach the door to \|\|Olaf's lair\|\| in the second season finale, but find out that they need a password. Mr. Cat blasts the door open with a bazooka and makes a one-liner. - Looney Tunes: - The cartoon "Ali Baba Bunny" had Bugs and Daffy accidentally burrow under the door to Ali Baba's treasure cave. This enrages Hassan the guard, who can't get in himself because he can't remember the password. (Even though he's drawn as a Big Guy who could probably have just broken the door down had he tried.) Hassan: Open... Uh, open... Duh, uh, open, uh... Sarsaparilla? Uh, open Saskatchewan? (much later) Hassan: Duh, open septuagenarian? Uh, open, uh, saddle soap? Uh, open sesame? - "My Little Duckaroo" sees Daffy using this tactic on... a saloon door. - Magilla Gorilla: Subverted: A group of bank robbers buy Magilla to help them open a bank vault. Magilla tries... Magilla: Let's see... [twiddling the lock] Thirty-two to the left, sixteen to the right... Head Bank Robber: No! Rip it open, good! Like a gorilla should! note : A play on a cigarette-ad slogan: "Winston tastes good, like a cigarette should." (Magilla complies) - In Metajets, In "Under the Ice," when Vector says it'll take a while to find the right access code to open the door to the abandoned research facility, Burner just blows the door open with a good shot from his snowmobile cannon. - The Penguins of Madagascar: In "The Penguin Who Loved Me", Kowalski tries to pick the lock with a buckle, but \|\|Parker platypus\|\| just kicks out the door. - Phineas and Ferb: Played with on the "Atlantis". Phineas attempts to decode the writing on the door leading to Atlantis, but Buford simply punches the door, causing it to open properly. - Popeye uses the exact line "Open, Sez' Me" in a cartoon inspired by the tale of Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves. Specifically, he orders his can of spinach to open, it it just up and opens for him so he can save the day. - On The Secret Saturdays, Fiskerton is the family's designated locked-door opener or blank-wall smasher-downer, but the entire Saturday family except Zak seems capable of pulling off the same feat if required. - The Amazing Mumbo in Teen Titans uses it as an incantation instead of the expected Open Sesame. - In the "Ultimate Doom" three-parter of The Transformers, a small team of Autobots as well as the Witwickys are stuck on Cybertron. All seems lost as they are forced to retreat further into what looks like a dead end in a Decepticon complex. Fortunately, Pintsized Powerhouse Brawn is one of the Autobots present and, upon seeing the locked exit, he promptly declares that "he'll get the door" and barges right through it without so much as a moment of hesitation or any indication that it slowed him down in the slightest. - Optimus Prime himself got in on this in "Day of the Machines", along with a rare moment of Deadpan Snarker: Human Scientist: It's a safe bet those doors are locked. Optimus Prime: Fortunately, I have a delicate lock-picking technique. (Blasts the door open with one shot) - In the very first episode of Superman: The Animated Series, when Jor-El suspects that Brainiac is trying to hide something from him, he decides to go check the core computer room. Brainiac denies him access, to which Jor-El blasts the door with his gun and finds out what Brainiac is up to: downloading himself to a satellite to save himself while leaving everyone else on Krypton to die in the incoming explosion. - Averted in Real Life, sort of: on Mythbusters, Jamie was about to kick open a door when Adam picked it. In a previous episode, Grant had failed to open a similar door by shooting the lock. In another episode, they demonstrated that it is quite possible to break through a standard door by force, even against deadbolts. The only reason the hotel chain held fast in the show was that the build team had used a stronger set of screws than the standard; had they used the standard screws, Jamie likely would have broken through the door on the first try. - Firefighters carry keys to enter the vast majority of locked buildings, rooms, and vehicles in existence: they are called "sledgehammer" and "axe". - And speaking of firefighters, the most efficient and safest way to remove a trapped victim after a vehicle accident? Disassemble the vehicle around them. This is essentially what the Jaws of Life do. - And if all else fails, it's not unheard of for the fire department to have access to the actual keys to the building, making entry as easy as opening the front door. - As noted in the Zombie Survival Guides (of all places), most North American doors are actually quite breachable by trained professionals with a boot; this is so that in the highly unlikely (but still possible) event that a Firefighter does not have access to the actual keys and either lost or cannot access a tool (the hammer or the axe) to help breach the door, he can literally just kick it down by knowing where the weak points are. Note that it still takes multiple kicks and considerable effort to breach a door this way, which is why it's only considered a last resort (such as you know there's someone on the other side that requires immediate attention). - If you really need to go through an interior door, and aren't too worried about damage, there's an even easier way on most modern buildings with wooden or metal-frame construction (the vast majority of modern homes, and many commercial buildings): punch a hole in the wall next to the door. The door may be solid wood with a solid lock and good hinges that will resist kicking and take time to break down, while the wall next to it is probably just two sheets of thin drywall screwed to the wall studs. Make a hole, reach inside, and unlock the door. - The Anarchists Cookbook states that the best lockpick is gelignite closely followed by a sledgehammer, and that actual lockpicking only really matters if you care whether people know you've been in. Or you can bribe, threaten, persuade, or trick someone into unlocking the door for you. - This is the entire point of breaching charges — blowing in the door. May cross into There Was a Door when the team using the charges decides to use the wall instead of the door because the people inside will most likely have guns trained on the doors. - Other tools of breaching — Thor's Hammer (Properly known as Tactical Sledge), Halligan Tool, Master Key (Properly known as Breaching Shotgun) and good old fashioned Battering Ram. - On the inside of at least one automatic supermarket door is this warning: "If door does not open in an emergency, push it open." This is more to inform people that the door does swing, not just slide sideways as it does in normal function. Point in fact, most sliding doors to commercial buildings are very loosely centered in their tracks specifically for emergencies and accidents (such as people running into it with a shopping cart). It's a lot cheaper to replace a busted track or screw than an 8 foot by 6 foot tempered glass door or settle a lawsuit because it didn't open fast enough in an emergency. It also ensures that in the event of a stampede, people won't be crushed against the door trying to get out.	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/OpenSaysMe
Opening Credits Cast Party - TV Tropes You might never see them all in one place during the show itself. They move in their own circles and follow separate storylines. Yet there they are every week, all these people that are somehow connected to each other, standing there self-consciously with fixed grins and arms around each others' shoulders for a big gang portrait, like they're at a family reunion and someone broke out the video cameras. Are we looking at the actors, or the characters? It's kind of hard to tell. If they're not just standing there, they're on the move, walking together like a chorus line, and that blurs things even more. They're all dressed and made up like their characters on the show, but why would they be all walking together, and so purposefully? It feels like the camera has caught the actors heading for the set at the top of the shooting day. If it's particularly heroic, it's a Team Power Walk, but it might just be the cast walking together in a tight group in exactly the sort of fashion you'd never see them do on the show itself. What's perhaps strangest about this trope is that, whereas the Title Sequence is most often compiled by raiding your own show for clips, these awkward group portrait or kick-line moments usually have to be filmed specially, on purpose. The other big problem here is that if the cast changes, you have to reshoot the cast party with the new cast, sometimes over and over again—perhaps unpleasantly drawing attention to missing faces and unloved interlopers. To fully qualify for this trope, the credits cast party needs to show the cast artificially grouped together for the camera, essentially breaking the Fourth Wall, rather than just interacting as they would on the show. Bonus points for getting all the cast together even if some of them would never be together in the show. Compare Covers Always Lie, when it's only the cover art that does this. Supertrope of the V-Formation Team Shot, where the Gang of Five poses in a heroic V. Compare the Team Shot and Establishing Team Shot, where the gang are posed together. Compare Title Montage, where the opening titles harvest various clips from the show instead. ## Examples: - The opening of Bungo Stray Dogs shows all three main organizations quickly, nicely lined up for a split second. - Most openings of Case Closed / Case Closed feature really big Cast Parties - the detective kids, the Mouris, the Tokyo Police, Hattori and Kazuha, FBI, end so on. - In the fifth and final opening of Code Geass, there's a long shot where the main and supporting casts pass the POV on all sides with jubilant expressions, regardless of whether the person next to them is a staunch ally or sworn enemy. - Mobile Suit Gundam SEED and Mobile Suit Gundam SEED Destiny have a love for ending sequences where multiple members from enemy factions improbably stand together in the same area. The first ending sequences of each show are pretty melancholy, being a pan over the characters looking sad standing among the wreckage of their Humongous Mecha and spaceships. Destiny's third and fourth endings are more jubilant, with them (even some who died in the previous show) hanging out at the countryside or the beach or just floating together in space. - The original Beverly Hills, 90210 began doing this at the top of its opening credits starting with the second season, ganging its cast in front of a photo-shoot-style white background, laughing with each other and smiling for the camera. (Of course, this being Beverly Hills, it's not too hard to believe that bunches of beautiful teenagers are doing photo shoots together every day of the week.) They carried the trope forward for the rest of its ten-season run, and given the constant cast changes it had to be reshot on a regular basis, seeming less and less spontaneous each time, until it was finally rammed into the ground with the many-times mutated cast milling around looking like they were just hanging out waiting for the series to finally die. - The sister show of Beverly Hills, 90210, Melrose Place, had one of these at the very earliest stages (i.e., pre-Heather Locklear), with the huge, unwieldy cast marching down the eponymous street arm in arm in an intimidating phalanx of put-on camaraderie. The shot appeared both at the start of the credits and at the end, too, just to remind you that you really did see something that false in the opening titles. - The less-noticeable but possibly more bizarre flashes shown of all eight cast members huddled around the far half of a pool table, Last Supper-style, with some combination of them attempting to somehow play in those cramped conditions is another example. - Similarly, the opening credits of Popular featured the entire main cast at a photoshoot together, despite the premise of the show being that the two main groups of characters hated each other, and the unpopular, brunette clique weren't exactly the photoshoot types. Bonus points for including the two 'parent' characters who, as the show went on, were rarely seen outside of the opening sequence. - Law & Order and some of its spin-offs routinely end their opening credits with the four main principals striding purposefully down a corridor together, presumably because that's where the courthouse vending machine is. - It's a Living/ Making a Living started off its credits with its waitresses all joining up to merrily walk arm in arm toward the big steel skyscraper atop which sat the luxury restaurant they worked in. The show's troubled history and revolving door cast meant this artificial scene was reshot more than once. - The opening of Charlie's Angels originally included the three angels, Jill, Sabrina, and Kelly, walking together toward the camera partway through the credits—the premise being that the three left police work together to work for Charles Townsend. When Jill was replaced by Kris (Cheryl Ladd), this was reshot with Sabrina and Kelly walking together, and Kris coming in from the side to join them. And so on. - The sprawling cast of Soap required three cast pictures in the opening credits — the Tates, the Campbells, and all of them together. This had to be redone more than once because of cast changes, resulting in different gags: first a fight breaks out among the characters, then another version had the ceiling collapse on them as they stiffly pose, then a return to the fight idea. - The second round of credits for Eight is Enough involved, somewhat plausibly, the Bradford brood forming a human pyramid under the show's cascading title, which then collapses. But the real awkward posing comes just a bit later, as the odd number of alphabetical-order co-starring cast members ends up putting Willie Aames backed up against a wall pretending to share a laugh with two of his on-screen siblings, Dianne Kay and Connie Newton. - In later seasons this becomes Aames, Kay, and Newton very unconvincingly washing dishes together. Note that in both set-ups one of the three—Aames in the first, Kay in the second—visibly glances off camera to make sure they need to keep going. - The beginning and end of the Growing Pains opening credits showed the Seavers standing together outside their house for a family portrait. The reprise changed every year, as the characters went back into the house leaving one of them to mug for the camera. - Full House gives everyone their own introduction shot. But by the end of the credits, they're all goofing around and having dinner (seasons 1 and 2), a cookout in the backyard (season 3), or a picnic (season 4 through the end of series). - After the first season, Family Ties avoided having everyone posing awkwardly together by having an anonymous hand working on a painting of the Keatons posing awkwardly together. - The opening of Friends has the characters goofing around a fountain in the park. The odd part isn't that the characters are all together (they almost always are in the show itself), it's that they're apparently having a late-night party in the middle of a deserted park... that has a couch! - The two parter "The One That Might Have Been" went to the trouble of re-recording it with the alternate versions of the characters (most obviously the straight-haired Businesswoman Pheobe, the glasses-wearing Writer Chandler, and of course, Fat Monica). And in this reality, Rachel isn't really part of the gang, but is there anyway. - Certain later seasons of Mystery Science Theater 3000 showed a shot of Mike and the Bots waving to us from the viewport of the Satellite of Love. But then, MST has No Fourth Wall, so it's kind of a trope subversion (as well as a parody of a similar shot at the end of the credits for Babylon 5). - The opening of Lizzie McGuire has the main cast playing with a ball in front of an abstract background. - The early seasons of Roseanne followed the family around the dinner table. In later seasons the opening had to be changed due to the replacement of a main cast member. They switched from eating pizza to Chinese food to playing poker with pretzels and candy. They forfeited this in favor of a montage of time-progressed photos of each cast member as they were credited. Which lampshaded the cast change. - The Cosby Show: The first season was a photo montage, but subsequent seasons had increasingly complicated dance numbers featuring the cast dancing to various re-arrangements of the theme song. - Martial Law climaxed its season one opening credits with the cast walking purposefully towards the camera (which had to be redone twice — the first time because Tammy Lauren left, and the second time due to Arsenio Hall joining). - Three's Company showed the entire cast at Santa Monica Pier (seasons 4-5) and the Los Angeles Zoo (seasons 6-8). - Skins starting in series two has the cast playing around and having fun. Of course, so they won't be like those American teen shows they add the sex, drugs, drinking, and drama so it would be more in character for them. - Blue Peter tried this in the late 90s... only for Richard Bacon to be suddenly sacked over a drug scandal, requiring a hasty rethink. - The credits of The Big Bang Theory mostly are mostly a blur of images showing the universe's and humanity's development over the years, but ends with a shot (updated each season) of all of the main characters on the couch eating take-out together. While such dinner scenes were very common early in the series, they've become much less common as characters start relationships and get married. Also, in the credits version, the characters are crammed together so they all fit in one frame. - The opening credits of Brooklyn Nine-Nine end in a Team Power Walk with all the main characters. - The opening credits for Girl Meets World, season 3, ends with all the main characters walking together - with the show's logo projected on the ground in front of them. - Family Guy mocked this at one point with their fake ad for 'Shoving Buddies', the new show coming this fall on the FOX network. It had the cast doing this, just this, for about 5 minutes. - In Garfield and Friends, because the two featured segments ( Garfield and U.S. Acres) were very strongly segregated, this was usually the only place the characters from both of them could be seen together. - Schoolhouse Rock! very rarely had characters appear in more than one song. Despite this, VHS and DVD compilations from 1995 until at least 2002 begin by showing everyone gathering at Conjunction Junction Diner. - Slightly subverted in Amphibia, due to it taking place during the closing credits of season 3, rather than the opening credits, but the sequence depicts Anne, Sprig, Hop Pop, and Polly messing around, dancing, and laughing together in a fantasy anime-like world. - Bluey has her and her family doing a freeze dance game, complete with a Theme Tune Roll Call ending with Bluey as the winner of the game.	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/OpeningCreditsCastParty
Opening Scroll - TV Tropes If you want to get your story's messy background out of the way as fast as possible but don't have the budget to shoot the background scenes for the Opening Monologue, then your next best option is the simple yet elegant Opening Scroll. As the name implies, this is a text scroll that passes over (or into) the screen, supplying all relevant information with minimal impact on the movie's running time or budget. A variation is to have the text fade up and then fade down, but this is something that shouldn't go on for too long due to being terribly dull to watch. Expect many examples to be an homage and/or parody of Star Wars, which itself did so as an homage to the Flash Gordon serials. See also War Was Beginning. Compare Dictionary Opening, Opening Monologue, Title In. ## Examples: - Episode 2 of Excel♡Saga uses one of these when Koshi Rikdo gives permission to turn Excel Saga into a sci-fi anime, obviously as an homage to Star Wars. - The DiC dub of Sailor Moon added one of these: "From a far away place and time Earth's greatest adventure is about to begin" at the start of the show up until Jadeite's death in Episode 10 (three episodes in his arc were skipped) and Nephrite replacing him. After that, the scroll was abandoned, probably because Earth's greatest adventure had by then begun. - The backstory to Overman King Gainer is shown this way during its opening. Behind various characters (and the titular robot) doing the Monkey. - The European release of the The Transformers: The Movie has a Star Wars-esque opening scroll after a brief sequence showing Unicron devouring a planet. - As noted in the trope description, the use of this trope in Star Wars and the other films in the franchise was a Shout-Out to the old Film Serials that served as inspiration to George Lucas. Buck Rogers and Flash Gordon Conquers the Universe—both dating from 1940—use this trope at the beginning of each episode so the viewing audience can catch up with the plot. - The most famous example is undoubtedly Star Wars, whose "into the screen" scroll spawned a thousand spoofs and imitators. note : Although the first one needed Brian De Palma to rewrite it to be the classic it is. - Rogue One notably averts it, however—\|\|which might thematically make sense if only because its events are directly referenced by the very first employment of this, in A New Hope\|\|. - Solo: A Star Wars Story also averts it, solidifying a precedent for the Anthology films to lack the scroll. The Opening Scroll is apparently only going to be used for the numbered Episodes of the Skywalker Saga. (It does provide written exposition as the movie starts, just not in scroll form or with the bombastic theme.) - In the Star Wars spoof Spaceballs, as the expository scroll is disappearing into the distance, a small line of text suddenly appears at the end: "If you can read this, you don't need glasses." - In the Thumb Wars parody, the spacecraft involved in the opening battle sequence end up crashing into the text which of course is still floating through space ahead of them. - The 1980 sci-fi spoof Galaxina opens like this for exposition rather than gags so it's not particularly funny. Much like the rest of the movie. - 1939 film Union Pacific uses this style but only for the opening credits, in a sequence superimposed over railroad tracks going off into the horizon. The exposition that follows the credits is presented as a standard title card. - The Phantom Creeps, a serial starring Bela Lugosi as a Mad Scientist used the same fading away from camera opening crawl. Joel Robinson riffed, "You sure Lucas was the first to do this?" - Probably the worst filmic offender of all: Uwe Boll's film adaptation of Alone in the Dark delivered its entire backstory in a fade-in-fade-out series of title cards that took almost seven minutes of screen time; as warned above, it's dull enough to kill most viewers' enthusiasm for the film about ninety seconds in. And the worse part? The opening crawl in the final movie was the improved version where they added a narrator to read the text out loud after test audiences complained that the opening was too wordy. - The Movie of Æon Flux inexplicably starts with the scroll, and then still has a monologue after it. We wouldn't get just one of them? - Airplane II: The Sequel has one that is slanted "into the screen" like the Star Wars one. However, it tells a story that's completely unrelated to the plot of the movie. It gets to the beginning of a sex scene right when a space shuttle collides with the scrolling text, causing it to disappear with a glass-breaking effect. - The Judge Dredd movie begins with a scroll that only adds background information for the setting. - The Monster Squad opens with a scroll about how Abraham Van Helsing, a hundred years before the story begins, gathered a band of freedom fighters to rid the world of vampires and monsters and save mankind from the forces of eternal evil. It ends with "They blew it." And then the opening scene shows us just how. - Scarface opens with one of these, describing how Fidel Castro sent Cubans who wanted to join their families to the United States in 1980, along with the dregs of his jails. - Similar to Alone in the Dark (2005), The Last Airbender has an opening scroll narrated by Katara. - Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: The Movie opens with an expository scroll about the backstory on the source of the Rangers' powers. The text is read by a female voice completely straight, making the whole thing sound even more ridiculous than it is already. Turbo: A Power Rangers Movie has the text recede into the distance like Star Wars, with Zordon providing narration. - Leatherface: The Texas Chainsaw Massacre III starts with a lengthy text scroll in an attempt to fill in the gaps between the first movie and the sequel that apparently never happened. The other two preceding movies also have text scrolls, but the fourth one just has a text screen. - Blade Runner has this accompanied by a very eerie ambience that makes the viewer feel appropriately uneasy. - Blade Runner 2049 swaps out the opening scroll for static text that slowly fades in, like a very creepy PowerPoint presentation. - Les Misérables (2012) opens with one, to clarify to non-French viewers that this movie is not about THE French Revolution, but a later one. - Each chapter of The Green Hornet Serials (after the first) opens with a scrolling summary of what went on in the previous chapter. But it had been a week since the audience saw that chapter. - Being a movie about Star Wars fans, Fanboys has two. One standard one in the beginning, the other during a peyote trip that said "You are very, very, very, very high" - Dr. Strangelove opens with an opening scroll which was a basic disclaimer telling patrons that the film was a cautionary tale. - The Running Man has an opening scroll that explains how exty years after the film's release an economical collapse has lead to the Crapsack World with deadly game shows we're about to see. - Warrior of the Lost World actually has been released with at least two versions (in English) of the opening scroll: one that mimics the Star Wars into-the-screen scroll style (poorly) and Emphasizes EVERYTHING!!!; and a straight vertical scroll that actually explains a bit more about the post-apocalyptic setting. The former was used in its Mystery Science Theater 3000 presentation, to great comedic effect due to its marginal legibility: Opening scroll: ALL GOVERNMENTS HAVE COLLAPSED!!! Joel (reading): The gummy mints have colitis? - Johnny Reno begins with an opening scroll about the role of the US Marshals in taming The Wild West, and how one of the greatest marshals was Johnny. It ends by stating this film covers just two days in his eventful career. - The Hunger Games has a brief scroll that quickly explains exactly what the Hunger Games are, and why they exist. - Man in the Wilderness: "The year is 1820. The Captain Henry expedition has completed two years of fur trapping in the unexplored Northwest territory. Determined to reach the Missouri river before the winter snows, the trappers and their boat, towed by 22 mules, struggle through the wilderness. Once on the Missouri they could sail south to the trading posts and sell their precious cargo. What occurred on this expedition is historically true." - The Trip (1967): Thanks to Executive Meddling, the movie opens with a foreword calling it a "shocking commentary on a prevalent concern of our time" and warning that the illegal manufacture and consumption of LSD can have fatal consequences. - Max (2002) has one a few minutes into the movie: In the summer of 1917 the German Imperial Army lost the disastrous offensive known as The Third Battle of Ypres. Germany begged for peace having suffered two million dead and four million wounded in World War One. 100,000 German Jews served in the Imperial German Army. 40,000 volunteered. - A Reason to Live, a Reason to Die!: Following a scene showing the aftermath of the massacre at Fort Holman, an opening scroll purporting to be an article from the Joplin Gazette several years after the event is used to segue into How We Got Here. - Eternals opens with scrolling text explaining how Arishem sent the Eternals from their home planet of Olympia to Earth to fight the Deviants. - Satan's Triangle: "Within the last thirty years just off the east coast of the United States more than a thousand men, woman and children have vanished from the face of the earth. No one knows how. Or why. This is one explanation..." - An Opening Scroll appeared at the start of Red Dwarf season three explaining a number of things that happened off-camera, including the (male) main character giving birth to twins, a bit character from the second season being recovered and added to the main cast, and Holly having a "head sex change". The bulk of the scroll, however, passes so quickly that it can only be read via freeze-frame. The writers were planning to do an episode before this one tying up all the loose plots but couldn't make it funny enough, so they made do with a parody. The scroll also includes the bizarre phrase "The saga continuums..." which many fans take as an indication that the series from this point on follows an alternative continuity based on the novel Infinity Welcomes Careful Drivers, which changes several previous claims about Lister's background. - The Pretender opened every episode of its first two seasons with a cross between the Opening Monologue and the fade-up version of the Opening Scroll. - Monty Python's Flying Circus made a Running Gag of this in episode 25. The scroll would always begin, "In (year), (noun) lay in ruins," to introduce subjects such as Hungarians entering tobacco shops, World War I, or The End of the episode. - Episode 15 provides the Spanish Inquisition with one that notes that the "violence, terror and torture" they unleashed make for "a smashing film." - Episode 45 has an opening scroll for a Western which has nothing to do with any of the sketches. - Star Trek - Star Trek: Deep Space Nine opens with a quick text scroll to refresh people's memories about "The Best of Both Worlds", just before they introduce Captain Sisko in the Battle of Wolf 359. - Star Trek: Voyager starts off with a quick description of the Maquis rebellion, providing the necessary groundwork before going off and doing its own thing. (First shot immediately after this: A small rebel ship flying away and trading fire with a much larger vessel. Hmmm...) - Doctor Who had one of these at the opening to "The Deadly Assassin". - Battlestar Galactica (2003): The Cylons were created by man. They rebelled. They evolved. There are many copies. And they have a plan. - Andromeda opens with a static text screen giving one or two quotations from fictional literature. - Sharpe has short ones at the beginning of every episode introducing the year, the place, and the situation. - The Fringe episode "Letters of Transit" (season four, episode nineteen) has a brief opening scroll to explain \|\|it's set in a canonical Bad Future where the Observers have invaded the Earth\|\|. - It should be no surprise that the various Star Wars games have opening scrolls. - LEGO Star Wars has a "story so far" opening scroll for each level that also serves as a Loading Screen. - Averted in Star Wars: Republic Commando. Probably have something to do with Darker and Edgier. - TIE Fighter's scroll, set to the Imperial March, makes a rather startling introduction to the game's Perspective Flip. - Exaggerated in Star Wars: The Old Republic: not only does each of the game's eight classes have a unique introductory scroll, the loading screen when logging into the game contains a short blurb in the same style (mercifully non-scrolling) that summarizes the player's current class quest. - Star Wars: DroidWorks is notable for being narrated, mainly due to the younger target audience as an Edutainment Game which is the same reason that Wimateeka and other Jawas can apparently speak Basic. - Rogue Squadron The first game had four chapters, each with their own opening scroll giving you details on that chapter's arc. In Rogue Leader and Rebel Strike, only the very first mission has an Opening Scroll. - Mega Man Zero opened with Ciel as the Pursued Protagonist. Future games in the series all started with text scrolls summarizing previous games and the events between games. - Star Dust, an obscure 1992 Asteroids clone where you pilot a spaceship shooting assorted onscreen enemies, practically lifts the Star Wars-style scroll in it's opening FMV wholesale, right down to the font and yellow text fading into the distance. And for good measure, some cues from the music of Star Wars as well, though it sounds less like the opening scroll theme and more like a loose remake of the Imperial March. Yes, really. - Stargunner, as befits a game where you fly through space blowing things up in your Cool Ship, plays the disappearing-into-the-distance version straight until a small tongue-in-cheek twist at the end. - Elite Beat Agents has an opening crawl to kick off a multiplayer match that utilizes the scenario "Battle of the Aces", in which two animal-like alien space aces compete to determine which one's the better starpilot. - Escape Velocity has a normal opening scroll, and a couple of humorous Easter Egg alternates. The sequel EV Override also uses one, but the third game EV Nova eschews it in favor of either a non-scrolling text box or up to four splashscreens, depending on the game files used (though there is a way to use the non-scrolling text box option to instead show a short movie, which the unofficial updates to the ports of Classic and Override to Nova use to reintroduce the opening scroll). The open-source EVN clone Naev goes back to the opening scroll. - Last Scenario starts with a lengthy text-scroll explaining the backstory. \|\|It's all lies.\|\| - Halo 3: ODST uses one of these. Notable as the only game in the Halo franchise to do so. - All of the Mass Effect games use this during the opening. In the first, it explains humanity's entry into the galactic community and segues into a Title Drop, in the second, it summarizes the events and ramifications of what happened at the end of the first, and in the third, it describes the build-up to and beginnings of the Reaper invasion. - Deadly Towers has scrolling text at the beginning that details the game's Excuse Plot in a surprisingly verbose and well-written way. The game's ending is similar. - The Game Boy version of Kid Icarus has an opening scroll introduction, before the title screen. - The Flash game Robot Wants Puppy (a sequel to Robot Wants Kitty) opens with a scroll about rebels in the year 20XX plotting to liberate Zeta Sector from the iron-tentacled rule of the tyrannical Morgox the Unborn, followed by the line "Meanwhile, in a completely different galaxy thousands of light years away, Robot wants puppy," then another message explaining that Morgox the Unborn has literal iron tentacles. Played straight in the third game in the trilogy, Robot Wants Fishy. - Commander Keen: Starting from the fourth episode ( Secret of the Oracle), it has been a tradition for Keen games to include an opening scroll narrating, in a style similar to that of Star Wars, the prologue of the story. This is carried over to the fanmade episodes based on the never-developed trilogy The Universe Is Toast. - Present in some versions of Another World; in particular, the SNES port had a Star Wars-esque "into the screen" opening scroll (probably using Mode 7 graphics). - Browning, a PC Engine game by Telenet Japan, has a scroll in Japanese with a voiceover in English, even though the game was released in Japan only. - Castlevania: Symphony of the Night puts its scrolling intro text at the end of the Action Prologue. - Castlevania III: Dracula's Curse scrolls through a series of prologue cards with sprocket holes down the sides. - Air Fortress begins with Engrish text ("On the planet 'Farmel', they had the gloriest days for two centuries, since the stardate had established...") scrolling down over a starfield. - The Tower of Druaga: The game itself averts this trope by placing the opening text ("In another time in another world...") on a static screen in Attract Mode. However, a promotional video gives it the epic scrolling treatment, with a narrator reading the text in English. - Every Final Fantasy from I to VI has one. One was written for VII and remains in the demo version, but was excised for the final game, resulting in the notoriously extended blank shot of stars at the beginning of the opening FMV. - Body Harvest: The game starts with an opening scroll explaining the Alien Invasion and Time Travel themes. - Gamer 2, a sequel to an unfinished short story, has an opening scroll which explains the plot to players who haven't read Gamer. - The NES bootleg version of Contra Spirits inexplicably adds to the original opening sequence this scrolling placeholder text: WELCOME THE WORLD OF GAME A GAME END - Star Fox 64 has a text crawl explaining the backstory of Andross' exile, the end of the original Star Fox team led by James McCloud, and Andross' present-day invasion of the Lylat System. - Smash TV does this during its Attract Mode, explaining how, in the then "future" year of 1999 note : The game was originally released in 1990., "television has adapted to the more violent nature of man", and that the titular "Smash TV" is the most popular (and most violent) game show of all time. After explaining how the game note : Both the video game, and the in-universe game show. works, it ends thusly: Be prepared. The future is now. You are the next lucky contestant! - Chantelise: When a new game starts, Elise narrates in Japanese, some exposition that's translated in text, while the background is panning up to a red moon. It starts: My memories of that night are foggy... sometimes I think to myself that it must have been a dream. But... "Don't go out at night when the moon is red, or the witch will curse you forevermore!" They told us that old fairy tale so often... And on the night of the red moon, five years ago, we went outside. It felt like we were being called. - Survive! Mola mola! opens with a text crawl describing the harsh life of a Mola mola and the many possible ways they can die, with accompanying ASCII Art. - The Battle Cats: The game's Excuse Plot is conveyed with scrolling text whenever the game opens up, and at the start of each chapter. It's set to menacing music and a background of shadowed cats with glowing red eyes... which makes for some Mood Whiplash against the brighly-coloured title screen with cheerful music. - Terrible Writing Advice has "Exposition" episode that begins with an opening where the text slowly moves in front of JP. Meanwhile, JP discusses the Opening Scroll, yearning the old days where it was frequently used by the authors to frontload information to the audience without a care. - Being an Affectionate Parody of Star Wars, every episode of Adventures in Jedi School opens with its own version of its iconic text-scrolls. The first episode has it on a chalk-board, the second episode has Jank going through a Mid-Term Exam, and episode three on Randy's disembodied arm. - The Cinema Snob uses these as a Star Wars homage in his reviews of The Man Who Saves the World (also known as Turkish Star Wars) and The Tramps in Planet Wars ( Brazilian Star Wars), where he writes up phony backstories to how the movies got made, complains about how much time he spent on finding video editing software that lets him do Star Wars-esque text crawls, and lampshades his own bullshit technobabble, wondering how George Lucas comes up with what to write in these crawls. - CinemaSins adds a sin when this occurs, because "reading." - Joueur du Grenier: A text scroll opens the Star Wars games review, naturally. With plot points actually calling back to the "Alpha V Gelga Nek" storyline from a previous episode. - Discussed in one Achievement Hunter video with Star Wars Battlefront 2 as Gavin Free, who has somehow completely missed seeing these spiels, wishes they put them in the movie, leading to the other hunters to shout " THEY DID!" - Star Wars Uncut opens with the same scroll as in the original film, until some blog-type comments pop up after it, such as alderaan_dude saying "Glad I live on a peaceful planet." - Ironically averted, of all places, in The Clone Wars pilot movie, where it is instead replaced with an Opening Monologue. - The television show Arthur episode "Return of the Snowball" has an opening scroll as a homage to Star Wars. And Arthur and \|\|D.W.\|\| read it, too. - The Family Guy Presents: Laugh It Up, Fuzzball parodies this — the second installment starts off normally, before Breaking the Fourth Wall halfway through. "Although the Death Star has been destroyed, Imperial troops have — okay, you know what? I realize space is vast, but this scrolling text is still littering . I mean, somebody's gonna run into this thing eventually. Yeah, it might be a thousand years from now, but does that make it okay?" - Phineas and Ferb: - "Meapless in Seattle" opens with a parody of the Star Wars scroll briefly recapping the events of "The Chronicles of Meap" and explaining how the current episode started as a gag trailer at the end of that episode before viewer demand inspired them to make a real version of the episode. - Naturally, the Star Wars Special includes one, which concludes by reminding viewers that it's not part of Star Wars canon. - Parodied in one of the Robot Chicken Star Wars specials, where the opening crawl suddenly devolves into Leet Speak. - The third chapter of Wishology has Cosmo narrating it. He quickly runs out of things to say.	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/OpeningCrawl
Opening Narration - TV Tropes A short monologue at the beginning of a series (usually during the Title Sequence) that briefly explains the series's premise. These are typically vague and prosaic, sometimes falling into Fauxlosophic Narration, and are delivered either by a lead character, or by a Narrator. The content is similar to the expository type of theme tune. Usually, these monologues do not change much over the course of a series, though some shows do revise them from season to season. The whole concept is probably an artifact from the days of radio, when, lacking title graphics, shows needed a memorable speech at the beginning to identify themselves to listeners. Sometimes, a show's first episode will start with a "Cold Opening", another name for The Teaser, and in every episode thereafter the Opening Narration will take its place. This will only happen if said episode is a Welcome Episode or an Everyone Meets Everyone Premiere. Also becoming increasingly common in Animes is to use a clip montage of the respective episode with the show's main character(s) explaining the plot of the episode. Especially common for Speculative Fiction; often because the assumption that Viewers Are Morons prevails. Also known as a prologue or a "saga sell", an opening narration is often used to 'set the scene' at the opening of a show that might be confusing for first-time viewers (Joss Whedon famously used one for Buffy the Vampire Slayer, as the show was initially a mid-season replacement and new viewers might not 'get' the concept). See Opening Monologue when this trope is used for standalone works or exclusively at the beginning of a series. See also Opening Scroll and Rules Spiel. Contrast with Signing Off Catchphrase. ## Example subpages: <!—index—> <!—/index—> ## Other examples - Erika and the Princes in Distress: The first episode of the audio adaptation opens with one, which briefly describes the world in which the story takes place. Narrator: Imagine a world... A world in which genders as we know them would be reversed, swapped around. A world in which women would be the dominant gender, and in which men would be a little more, let's say... weak. This story first starts in the Kingdom of Brutes. Ah, here! There seems to be a bit of action in the castle's courtyard. - Stan Freberg parodied the opening narration of the TV Show Dragnet in his hit audio sketch Saint George and the Dragonet. Narrator: The legend you are about to hear is true. Only the needle should be changed to protect the record. - In The Legend of Total Drama Island, every chapter except for the prologue and the first chapter of the inner story begins with stock narration based on that in The Book of the Thousand and One Nights: "The next morning... and then she began to speak." There is some variation, most notably between weekday and weekend. - The Dragon Age: Inquisition series Twice Upon an Age is littered with notes from Varric Tethras, who is credited as the editor of the series. The side volume Agents Acquired, however, opens with the longest one of these in the entire series, to give Varric room in which to explain just why the story exists and how annoyed the author is with him for insisting that they write it. - Every Captain Underpants book starts with a paragraph introducing the reader to George and Harold and describing them, concluding with the words "Remember that now". The second part of the two parter expanded upon this by introducing the other side characters and the book's villains who were currently chasing them. - Every novel in The Wheel of Time opens with an introductory passage saying: The Wheel of Time turns, and Ages come and pass, leaving memories that become legend. Legend Fades to Myth, and even myth is long forgotten when the Age that gave it birth comes again. - From the second Tantei Team KZ Jiken Note novel ( The Ripped Page Knows) on, the first chapter (titled Aya Tachibana's Monologue from the third novel on) of every novel would include a brief summary of the premise, including what Soccer Team KZ is, how she get to know them, then followed by some materials that are different in different novels. The spinoff series Yousei Team G Jiken Note is similar, with the opening chapter called Tennen Character. - All the Sector General novels use exactly the same paragraph of exposition describing the setting on the third or fourth page. The effect makes it seem very similar to a TV series having an Opening Narration between The Teaser and the main body of the episode. - The Unexplored Summon://Blood-Sign has each volume begin with a prologue by the White Queen, explaining the theme of the volume. - Sabaton: - The band's two Concept Albums about World War I each have an alternate "History Edition" where each track opens with a narration (by voice actress Bethan Dixon Bate) introducing the topic of the song. The second, The War to End All Wars, ramps it up with an entire prologue track, "Sarajevo", describing the Plot-Triggering Death of Archduke Franz Ferdinand that started the war. - The Sabaton History Patreon-exclusive "History Channel Editions" of the band's albums preface each track with an introductory narration by historian Indy Neidell. Unlike the History Edition, the narrations are more factual descriptions than dramatic introductions. - The first episode of Mystery Show started with A Minor Kidroduction. All the subsequent episoders started with its Opening Narration: Starlee: "I'm Starlee Kine, and this is Mystery Show. Every week, I solve a new mystery. Mysteries that can't be solved online. Mysteries you can't solve yourself. Up until now, there hasn't been anyone to help with this. That person is now me." - Mission to Zyxx gets a new one each season. - "The period of civil war has ended. The rebels have defeated the evil Galactic Monarchy and established the harmonious Federated Alliance. Now, Ambassador Pleck Decksetter and his intrepid crew travel the farthest reaches of the galaxy to explore astounding new worlds, discover their heroic destinies, and meet weird bug creatures and stuff. This is Mission to Zyxx!" - "It is a period of civil war. The rebellion against the sinister and corrupt Federated Alliance grows stronger, and the fate of the galaxy hangs in the balance. Now, rebel Emissary Pleck Decksetter and his intrepid crew travel the farthest reaches of the galaxy to explore astounding new worlds, discover their heroic destinies, and meet weird bug creatures and stuff. This is Mission to Zyxx!" - "It is a time of fear and unrest. Emperor \|\|Nermut Bundaloy\|\| rules the galaxy with an iron fist, and also a planet-crusher crusher. Now, Zima Knight Pleck Decksetter and his intrepid crew travel the farthest reaches of the galaxy to defeat whackness, bring balance to the Space, and meet weird bug creatures and stuff. This is Mission to Zyxx!" - "It is a time of chaos. Without a ruler, the galaxy is paralysed by lawlessness, unrest, and of course, the colossal Allwheat, which looks like some sort of black hole sun. Now, Captain Dar and their intrepid crew must survive the looming threats, reunite a fractured galaxy, and meet weird bug creatures and stuff. This is Mission to Zyxx!" - "Space. Some is chill. Some is tooped up. All is part of the great, infinite cosmic ballet. The venerable starship the RSS Synergy forges ever deeper into uncharted regions of their galaxy, growing the Coalition of United Planets in the name of science, benevolence, and peace. Now, lead envoy C53 and his intrepid crew explore new worlds, forge alliances, and search for a way back home to finally fulfil their Mission to Zyxx!" - "It is a time of great unease. The crew of the Bargearean Jade have finally made it home to their beloved quadrant. But something is different. Wrong. Whack! Now, our intrepid heroes must root out the bad vibes, master the three-sided coin of freshness, and face down foes like they're never imagined on their final Mission to Zyxx!" - "Welcome to Desert Island Discworld, the show that believes it pays to look at any book an orang-utan gives you. I'm Al Kennedy, and each episode I ask my guest which Terry Pratchett book they would want to take with them if they were cast away to a desert island." - Thunderbirds: "Five... four... three... two... one! Thunderbirds are go!" - Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons: "The Mysterons: sworn enemies of Earth... leading the fight, one man whom fate has made indestructible! His name: Captain Scarlet." - In the American adaptation of The D.J. Kat Show, after D.J. does his Theme Tune Rap, the narrator gives a different opening narration that is specific to each episode, followed by a Title Scream. He then gives a different introduction for D.J.'s human assistant "Elizabeth!" note : full name: Elizabeth Rose; not to be confused with the Australian musician. (season 1) / "Jennifer Davis!" note : Played by Carmen De La Paz. (season 2). - In the prologue of Star Impact, a young Aster recalls her fondness for the Legend, an undefeated boxing champion, as a kid, and how they suddenly vanished from the world one day: Aster: There was once a star I would stare at it a lot as a kid It was so beautiful that I couldn't look away But one day it disappeared, leaving nothing but a black sky.	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/OpeningNarration
Reverse Whodunnit - TV Tropes Chief Wiggum: Hey, I crack cases all the time. Like the case of the symphony conductor who murdered his star cellist. Lou: That was an episode of Columbo , chief. They show you who the bad guy is at the beginning of each one. Wiggum: Yeah, but you have to remember! Also known as the "open mystery" or "Howcatchem"; a style of Crime and Punishment Series show popularized by Columbo, which used this setup for nearly every episode. The traditional mystery challenges the viewer to solve the mystery along with the detective. Usually, the viewer is disadvantaged by the fact that the detective knows more than the viewer (We Would Have Told You, But...; Tomato Surprise; Clueless Mystery). Sometimes, the viewer gets to see all the clues along with the detective; that is Fair-Play Whodunnit. But in the Reverse Whodunnit, the advantage goes to the viewer: we actually get to see the murder as it is committed. The "mystery" for the viewer is not "who is the murderer?" but instead "how will the case be solved?." After the beginning of the episode, the audience will know the perpetrator, the crime scene, the murder, and sometimes the motive, perhaps in more detail than the detective will ever know. For the viewer, the question is: how will the detective solve what appears to be a perfect crime? A successful Reverse Whodunnit requires a very intelligent criminal, capable of designing a crime complex enough that its solution remains interesting even if you already know who did it and why. It also requires a far cleverer detective than you can get away with in a standard Whodunnit, because the writers can not rely so much on misdirection to make his job look hard. For example, solving any Scooby-Doo mystery would be trivial if Velma let the audience get a good look at the clues instead of hiding them until The Summation. Sometimes called a "procedural" (not to be confused with the Police Procedural), because its focus is on the procedure rather than the solution. This was probably invented by R. Austin Freeman in 1912, in a short story collection which featured Dr. Thorndyke. He called this concept the 'inverted detective story'. A subtrope of Internal Reveal. Compare and Contrast both Clueless Mystery and Fair-Play Whodunnit. ## Examples: - The long-running manga Case Closed does these occasionally to mix things up. Although showing the audience the crime itself is rare, often there's only one likely suspect from Conan's point of view, and he has to figure out how they set up a false alibi. - In Death Note, the main character is secretly an infamous mass murderer and the series follows his attempts to avoid suspicion from the police and a few genius detectives. An odd in-universe example with L, who has heavy suspicion of Light being Kira throughout the series, but since he can't just arrest him without hard evidence he plots for Light to reveal himself through one way or another. - In JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Diamond is Unbreakable, Kira is revealed almost immediately after his introduction to be the Serial Killer who murdered Reimi (along with many other victims in the town of Morioh), but the protagonists don't know until he slips up when Shigechi accidentally takes one of his severed hands due to it being in an identical bag to his sandwich. \|\|It goes even further when Kira murders and steals the identity of another man: we get several scenes, and even a Villain Episode, of him attempting to fit in with his new "family", while trying to resist the urge to kill, but the protagonists are left unaware of his new identity until the very last fight.\|\| - Monster: In this instance, the hero himself knows who the killer is for almost the entire series, it's just finding and capturing him that's the problem. - MW has Meguro having guessed right that Michio Yuki is the Serial Kidnapper. - In the Phoenix Wright Ace Attorney manga's first case, the killer is shown in silhouette in the prologue section after the murder. - This is the basic premise in the mystery comic strip Lance Lawson. In each installment Lance outright states who the culprit is, and the reader is challenged to guess what tipped Lance off to their guilt. - Who Killed Who? plays this for laughs. The cartoon starts off with a live-action figure explaining how the medium of the animated cartoon will depict a murder in demonstrating how crime does not pay. When the cartoon detective captures the suspect and unmasks him, it turns out to be the live-action guy. ## By Creator: ## By Title: - In The Big Store, we already know who (and why) tried to whack Tommy Rogers. Rogers owns a large share of the department store and plans on selling it so that it can be replaced with a music conservatory. The store's manager Mr. Grover tries to have Rogers assassinated so that he can pocket the shares before he can sell them. Not only that, but he plans on doing the same thing to Martha after he marries her. - Fracture: "I killed my wife...Prove it." - Frequency has shades of this. Although, it's less a howcatchem than a howproveit. The main characters find out who the killer is fairly early on...the problem is, they only find this out by collaborating over a 30-year time gap (they can communicate via ham radio). So, they somehow have to prove who the killer is to the cops, with evidence the cops will actually believe. - Subverted in Knives Out, where we're seemingly given The Reveal at the end of the first act. \|\|Harlan's death actually was a suicide, brought on after his nurse Marta mixed up his medicine and accidentally shot him up with a fatal dose of morphine, leading him to end his life on his own terms so that Marta's life and career wouldn't be ruined by a case of malpractice.\|\| Except... Benoit Blanc realizes that not everything adds up about this. \|\|It turns out that it was a normal whodunit after all — Ransom deliberately mixed up the medicine so that Marta would accidentally kill Harlan, then removed the naloxone (a treatment for opioid overdoses) from Marta's bag to make sure she couldn't save him, as part of a scheme to cut Marta out of the will (the "slayer rule" states that a person cannot inherit property from a person he or she murdered, even by accident) after Harlan left his entire estate to her instead of to his family. What's more, Marta was a good enough nurse that she was able to tell the medicines apart at a glance without looking at the labels, and only freaked out when she took a closer look at the bottles. She had given Harlan the right medicine all along, and he killed himself for no reason.\|\| - Les Diaboliques. Alfred Fichet is investigating (on his own time) Michel's disappearance, who was killed by his wife and mistress. Alfred Fichet is the inspiration for Columbo, too. - Memento plays the hell out of this trope. We see who \|\|(supposedly)\|\| was the murderer and so does Lenny in the very first scene. However, the film goes in reverse, and then with him only remembering scenes in several minute intervals, as we see the outcome and learn the clues as he does while already being "spoiled" to the ending, because of it going in reverse. For the first half, the viewer is able to string together the various short bits of color and he is not, involving quite a bit of mental work, but we still know more than he does because we can remember it. \|\|However, at the halfway point, all hell breaks loose and the people we and Lenny learn to trust and not trust every few minutes may not be as they seem, especially Lenny himself.\|\| - Oldboy (2003) has the villain reveal himself to both the viewer and the protagonist partway through the film, and challenges the protagonist to figure out his motive for imprisoning him. - 10 to Midnight: The audience knows right away who the killer is, and the detectives figure this out soon too, with the plot being how they will bring him down. ## By Creator: - By Isaac Asimov: - The short story "The Singing Bell" opens with the murder, and then introduces the detective and proceeds to the investigation. - "The Dust of Death", set in the same continuity, follows a similar pattern. - Mystery author Michael Connelly has indulged in this twice. - In The Scarecrow it is established very early that Carver and Stone are the murderers of Denise Babbit; the suspense lies in how Intrepid Reporter Jack McEvoy will track them down. - In The Crossing (2015), it's obvious from the get-go that dirty cops Ellis and Long are the murderers. The mystery lies in why they killed Lexi Parks and framed another man, and how protagonist Harry Bosch will figure it out. - Almost everything written by Jeffery Deaver is this - the novels often containing passages told from the point of view of the villain early in the novel, and spend the rest of the story charting the battle of wits between the good guys and the bad. ## By Title: - An early example is the story Ali Khwajah and the Merchant of Baghdad in One Thousand and One Nights. It's perhaps noteworthy that the criminal in this story is in no way exceptionally intelligent - he just picks a very unsuspecting victim. Still, solving the crime is so easy a child could do it... - Anno Dracula: The heroes are out to catch Jack the Ripper; the first chapter reveals that he is Dr. John Seward. - Occurs in the first two Beka Cooper books alongside regular whodunnits. In Terrier, it's obvious early on that Crookshank is the one behind the fire opal disappearances, but they have a hard time finding proof. Everyone in Bloodhound also knows that Pearl Skinner is behind the counterfeits, too, but in addition to evidence, they also have a Lord Provost who's terrified of her. - Captain Leopold Incognito had the variation that the villain (and reader) knew Leopold would be making an undercover investigation but did not what identity he would be using. - Examples from literature, later adapted into films: The Day of the Jackal by Frederick Forsyth and A Kiss Before Dying by Ira Levin. - Although in The Day of the Jackal the investigators locate the assassin by pursuing a line of investigation based on \|\|a false assumption regarding his true identity\|\|. - The Demolished Man by Alfred Bester spends its first five chapters showing a man commit an incredibly complex murder, then the rest of the book follows the officer who suspects he did it and is trying to prove it. Subverted a bit because \|\|even the killer isn't completely aware of his own motivation for the crime, which proves to be a pretty big obstacle for the officer to overcome.\|\| - Discworld: The subtitle of Feet of Clay is "A Discworld Howdunnit", though the actual story is a classic whodunit. - Although figuring out how \|\|arsenic is being administered to Vetinari\|\| is crucial to solving the who. - Unless you're just really good at \|\|trilingual puns. It's a shame Vimes isn't\|\|. - Word of Pterry describes both Guards! Guards! and Men at Arms in similar terms, although they're more along the lines of thrillers that happen to star policemen. Both villains think they're in an open mystery, and that they're the main villain of the piece. \|\|They're not. Their murder weapons are.\|\| - The Truth is similar, except with reporters as the protagonists. - Dream Park: In The California Voodoo Game, almost at the start, we see the villain kill someone to help cover up a theft, but we're not told what the theft is. So not only do we read to see how the heroes figure him out and catch him, but to discover what was stolen. Has two brilliant plans colliding one from each side. - Dr. Thorndyke was one of the first to do this; several of his stories will show the killer performing an apparently perfect coverup in the first half, then following it with scientific deduction through the second half. (The first four such stories were collected together and published as The Singing Bone in 1912.) R. Austin Freeman stated that such stories were an experiment in whether it was possible to eliminate what he felt were implausibly melodramatic numbers of possible suspects in detective stories by making it clear from the start who did it and how, but the tension instead coming from whether the reader has spotted how a detective could find out by studying what evidence the criminal left. - There are also variations such as The Shadow of the Wolf, in which the narrative cuts between the murderer (a skilled engraver and forger) creating a false trail to try to show his victim has absconded but is still alive, and Thorndyke using the faked evidence itself to trace it back to the murderer. - In the prologue for the book that proceeds the \|\|Luke, I Am Your Father\|\| twist in The Land of Stories, we are shown \|\|the Fairy Godmother had two children-the twins father, who acts exactly like one would expect based on previous descriptions of him, and Lloyd, a withdrawn, power hungry young boy. They also look exactly like one another. Yeah, guess which brother was actually behind the Masked Man?\|\| A good portion of the book hinges on when the twins will figure this out. - These were followed by Malice Aforethought (1931) by Anthony Berkeley Cox, and most of the Department of Dead Ends stories by Roy Vickers. - Stephen King's Mr. Mercedes is about a retired cop tracking down a mass murderer. The reader knows early on who Mr. Mercedes is. - Red Dragon and its sequel, The Silence of the Lambs. In both of them, we know fairly early on who the killer is, and learn more details as the FBI protagonists figure out the mystery. - The James Bond novels Thunderball and (to a lesser degree) From Russia with Love feature villains putting a dastardly plot in motion, and Bond unravelling it. - Two Little Girls in Blue is a partial example; the reader knows who the kidnappers of the titular little girls are, with the protagonists trying to figure this out and hunt them down. However, the identity of mastermind behind the kidnapping is hidden for most of the novel. - Andor: For the first story arc Karn is tying to figure out and capture/kill whoever murdered the two corrupt corpos Cassian killed in the first nine minutes of the show. - This is the whole premise of Breaking Bad: Walt is a meth cook starting in the first episode, and the DEA spends much of the series looking for New Mexico's elusive new drug dealers. - Columbo is a pioneer for the "howcatchum" style, and the creators invented the term. Rather than puzzle out the perpetrator from a variety of suspects, Columbo always focuses his investigations on the actual perpetrator and uses his unassuming style to amass enough evidence for an arrest. - Many episodes of Criminal Minds. - Most of the time, the show plays with this trope. We usually see the crime as it happens, but we don't always know the killer's identity or motivations. In some particular episodes, we don't even know what's really going on because it's shown from the killer's point of view, meaning that if he thinks the puppet is a person, his mother is still alive, or the gangsters he's fighting are demons, we see that too, until everything's explained. In the episode "What Happens in Mecklinberg," the killer is always wearing a pig mask until the BAU figures out that the killer is \|\|a woman\|\|, at which point, the killer never puts the mask on again. - The CSI episode "Killer" alternates its point of view between the killer and the CSIs, showing his motivations and attempts to cover up his crime as the investigators get closer. - The second season of Dexter is about searching for the Bay-harbor butcher, who happens to be Dexter Morgan. However, it's less about "How do they catch him" then "How does he fool them". - Dexter: New Blood: The audience knows very early on that \|\|Kurt Caldwell\|\| is the "Runaway Killer", and the question then becomes just how he'll be stopped-through legal means or Vigilante Execution by Dexter. - Diagnosis: Murder does this a great deal. - One fun episode has a killer bride and groom detailing their "perfect" murder and the audience shown how it plans out. Then the actual crime has nothing going to plan. Still, the killer gets it done only to be ironically be discovered, not for his many mistakes but because the "evidence" against the person framed for the crime was too convincing for Dr. Sloan. As he notes, it's hard to believe a smart killer can leave so much behind to implicate him and thus fights to get at the truth. - Variation in Frasier. One episode starts with an entirely innocent explanation for why a cracked skull would end up under the floorboards of Frasier and Niles' old house, the remainder of the episode consists of the two of them discovering it and totally misinterpreting the evidence. - Furuhata Ninzaburou is Columbo in all but name; just before the last act, the titular detective "pauses" the action to address the audience to give them hints as to why he believes that the chief suspect did it, and what evidence there is to force a confession. - Since Hannibal is a prequel to the Hannibal Lecter film and book series (barring Hannibal Rising, which takes place even earlier, but doesn't seem to be canon to the show), the entire series is based around the build-up to Hannibal's eventual capture by Will. They also show us some of the other killers in advance. - Law & Order: Criminal Intent used this format occasionally in its first couple of seasons, showing the whole crime at the beginning and (usually) setting Goren and Eames on the culprit and harrying them into showing their hand. In later seasons, it's more common that they show the circumstances around the murder but leave the killer's identity ambiguous, although there's still a handful of straight examples as late as Season 8, including the Season Finale. - In any other Law & Order series, however, if at first the cold open looks to be setting up a Reverse Whodunnit, with a crime appearing imminent, you can expect that they'll subvert it once the near-victim trips over someone else's dead body, which will be the actual focus of the episode's investigation. - Episode six of Lessons for a Perfect Detective Story is played this way. When interviewing murder suspects, the cast decides instantly who he was and the murderer, though never out-right confessing, doesn't deny that he was the murderer. The rest of the episode is Tenkaichi trying to figure out his trick: \|\|he never manages to\|\|. - Every episode of Luther reveals the villain early on, with the drama coming from how Luther will catch the suspect. - Some episodes of Matlock were like this. - Monk tended to do this with many of its episodes. - Although Monk's recaps still filled in a lot of gaps and would give the audience the context and usually more details of the murder itself. - This is also played with in some cases. The exact nature of the mysteries varies to the point where what exactly is the mystery differs between each episode. Sometimes it's "who did it", and sometimes it's "how do they catch them", but sometimes the mystery ends up being "how did they do it?" or "why did they do it?". In most cases it tends to be a combination of two or more of these, but exactly which question is the primary focus differs every time. - Monk figures out the who before the how so often that one of his recurring catchphrases is "I don't know how he did it, but he did it." - The entire premise of Motive is that the viewer is told who the killer is within the first few minutes but you have to figure out... well, the motive. It's not a whodunit, it's a "whydunit". The detectives don't know who the killer is or their motive, but the answer to both is revealed in the ensuing investigation. - Mrs. Columbo follows a similar to Columbo format. - The NCIS episode "Defiance" starts with a political extremist sending a suicide bomber to stop a foreign diplomat from signing a treaty with the United States. (He fails.) The extremist in question is then shown to be a college professor for the diplomat's daughter; therefore, when she's kidnapped, it's no surprise when Team Gibbs finds out that he's responsible. It ends up Subverted, however, when the guy is found dead, revealing that there's another player involved with his own motives. - The NCIS: New Orleans episode "Mind Games" starts by showing a serial killer finishing off her latest victim. When Team Pride discovers said victim, Gregorio calls an FBI profiler she studied under — who is revealed to be the serial killer. Once she realizes that Gregorio is on the case, she decides to go after her, and Team Pride has to race against time to save Gregorio. - Our Miss Brooks: The episode "Jewel Robbery" see a criminal break into a jewelry store and flee when the alarm sounds. Miss Brooks, standing around the corner, sees Mr. Boynton look into the broken window. The episode then follows Miss Brooks as she suspects Mr. Boynton, and then catches the actual villain. - The Perry Mason episode "The Case of the Lucky Loser" used this: at the very beginning, we see a man follow his cheating wife, then shoot her lover. The man's nephew is accused of the crime, and the family hires Perry to clear the nephew without implicating the uncle. \|\|Subverted when it turns out the shooting we saw wasn't really the murder. The supposed victim of the shooting was already dead, the real victim of the shooting was the murderer, and the shooter was the murder victim. It was complicated.\|\| - Poker Face: Each episode usually begins with the murder and the plot from there usually involves Charlie piecing together the crime while she is on the run. - The Police Squad!! series by Zucker, Abrahams, and Zucker. - Star Trek: The Next Generation: - In "The Vengeance Factor", the audience knows \|\|Yuta\|\| is the killer from the start, but is still privy to the crew's attempts at solving the murder. - In "The Mind's Eye", it's obvious early on that the Romulans are manipulating Geordi to do something against the Klingons, and before the final commercial break we learn the endgame of the plot as well as who their inside man is. The question is whether our heroes figure it out in time. - In "Conundrum", the audience knows that MacDuff isn't part of the crew, and this war with the Lysians is a fabrication. We just don't know what's really going on or how he figures into it. - "The Inner Light" makes it plain that Picard is in a mental fantasy, but we see how the other crewmembers are tackling his condition. We also find out why Picard is in the fantasy. - Star Trek: Deep Space Nine: The Cardassian legal system is said to work like this. The defendant is judged to be guilty before the trial commences, and the prosecutor's job is to demonstrate how their guilt was proven, so as to demonstrate to other Cardassians how no one escapes justice. - White Collar has shades of this. The protagonists usually figure out who the bad guy is pretty quickly, and the rest of the episode is spent on how they catch him. - The Wire. D'Angelo: "Tap, tap, tap." McNulty and Bunk: "Fuck." - The Bible: - The deuterocanonical (or apocryphal, according to Protestants) extended Book of Daniel has a story of Susanna, a woman falsely accused of adultery. Daniel proves that Susanna is innocent using detective methods. - In the extended Book of Daniel, we have a story of Bel and the Dragon. In that story, Daniel exposes the lies of Bels priests. It is one of the earliest examples of a Locked Room Mystery. - How to run investigation adventures with mediums or other character with psychic powers: Sure, we know who did it since our resident psychic/medium/necromancer asked the dead guy who killed him/had a psychic flash and saw the crime happen just as if it had happened in front of his very eyes/is a Living Lie Detector and saw right through the lies of the culprit, but We Need to Get Proof if we want to avoid an innocent character to whom we have a connection becoming victim of a Miscarriage of Justice. - A advertisement for A Gentleman's Guide to Love and Murder states that the musical is "not a whodunnit, rather how-does-he-do-it eight times". - Oedipus Rex is the Ur-Example. The audience knows Oedipus killed his own father, but we wait for him to figure it out. - The theme of the second act of Sleuth, as the inspector arrives to unravel the events shown in the first act. \|\|Subverted as no actual murder happened. In fact, the inspector is actually the supposed victim in disguise, putting his own plan in motion to get even.\|\| - 3 out of 10: In Season 2's first episode, The Kevin Effect, the silhouette of the computer thief is very clearly shown, with no attempt to disguise their identity. - Dark Romance: Ashville centers around two investigations taking place at different points in the timeline. Louise's efforts and notes help Robert acquire concrete proof of Bradley's unethical business practices so that he can get the police to take action against him. - Overboard! (2021) casts the player in the role of Veronica Villensey, who is trying to get away with murdering her husband on the S.S. Hook. - In The Sexy Brutale, it's not a question of who's committing the murders or how they were killed — rather, the goal is figuring out how to prevent the murders from playing out in the first place. - Yesterday tells you just who the bad guys are right in the prologue. The twist lies more in their motivations. - Ace Attorney: - The first case of most games in the series is one of these, with the murderer being shown for the player's benefit in the opening cutscene and then serving as the all-too-obvious Warm-Up Boss. The most notable aversions are the third and fourth games' first cases, which are more standard whodunnits \|\|partly because in both cases the real murderer is played much more seriously and continue on to be the game's respective Big Bad even after their initial defeat\|\|. The fourth game's first case even serves as its Wham Episode. - The page image is the very first case in the series, where the player is shown Frank Sahwit panicking after killing Cindy Stone and deciding to avert suspicion from himself by claiming Larry Butz did the deed. - On occasion (usually when the true culprit is just that Obviously Evil), this also happens with the second cases, such as the first game and Dual Destinies. And even the third case in Trials and Tribulations shows you the killer's silhouette at the start. - The second case of Justice for All zig-zags this. The cutscene in the beginning shows the real killer talking about their crime, but not only is the person in silhouette, they also spend the entire trial disguised as someone else, so finding out who's been the intro character all along is still a challenge. - Sometimes true nature of the guilty party is obvious when you see them for the first time, but other times they pull a U-Turn and make it someone you aren't expecting. ...Then other times, they'll know that players are expecting a U-Turn so won't give you one, instead making the real culprit the person all the evidence has been pointing to. All in all, the series does all three examples so sporadically that you usually can't tell if you should be looking out for the too obvious culprit, the so-completely-innocent-looking culprit, or the in-your-face culprit. - The first murder in Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc is an unintentional example, as the victim literally writes the killer's name in their own blood, but upside-down, backwards, and in English, so the Japanese-speaking cast think that it's a number (as a Japanese audience would most likely assume as well.) Western players, however, would see the clue for what it is right away, and thus the mystery for them is more about how the killer got into Makoto's bedroom to kill the victim, which is important to figuring out the case anyway and is a far more compelling mystery.	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/OpenMystery
Only So Many Canadian Actors - TV Tropes To the outside viewer (usually American), after you start watching a few Canadian-made shows, you start to notice something. Something weird. It starts getting odd when you're watching Canadian TV, and you start shouting "Hey! It's that Guy!"... every five minutes, at every actor. That's where this trope comes in. In Canada, TV networks and radio stations are legally required to air a specific number of Canadian-produced media at any given time, with their runtimes often consisting of more than 60% Canadian content. Additionally, the government offers significant tax breaks and direct subsidies to TV shows made wholly or partially in Canada, in exchange enforcing a "Canadian actors only" policy for the majority of roles. But there are only so many actors in Canada, especially young actors. The country already has a relatively small population to begin with (about 35 million, roughly a ninth of the US population), and when you narrow the actors down to a specific age group (between 15 and 30, like most of the ones below), and then combine that with the fact that Canada has become a very popular shooting location for American producers on a tight budget, you're only left with a tiny handful of actors. As matter of course, ever since the very earliest days of the film industry, Canadian actors who are talented or ambitious enough to become superstars inevitably leave for Broadway or Hollywood and therefore reduce the pool of Canadian acting talent still further. Many of the actors who stay in Canada thus do so for the rest of their careers (if not always by choice). That said, some have managed to break out of it later in their careers, notably Elliot Page, Aubrey "Drake" Graham, Michael Cera, Tara Strong, Jay Baruchel and Cree Summer, and others frequently jump between Canadian and Hollywood productions. This isn't necessarily a bad thing — if anything, it becomes enjoyable to the viewer, and because of the frequent recurrence of these actors, there often isn't much Role Association. We only picked Canada as an example because Canada, along with Malaysia and the United Kingdom, is home to a lot of tropers. But this trope can be found in any country with a small enough dramatic community note : for example, the actor communities of Australia and New Zealand can do this as well where actors either prefer to stay in their home country or are forced to stay because of linguistic incompatibility with countries around them. You can also notice this in the some of the more niche branches (relative to film and TV anyways) of dramatic arts, there are only so many Mummers dancers, martial arts practitioners, puppeteers or Peking opera singers to go around. On the other hand, the specific Family Channel Kid Com —> Degrassi path has become so well-trodden it's almost a subtrope of both this and Tom Hanks Syndrome. ( Life with Derek was an unusual case in that many actors came from Degrassi to appear on the show in recurring roles - but sure enough, the reverse inevitably happened as well.) Oddly enough, Canada's animation producers, such as The Ocean Group, 9 Story Media Group, Fresh TV, WildBrain (formerly DHX Media) and its assets note : such as Nerd Corps Entertainment, Cookie Jar Entertainment (and its predecessor Cinar), DiC Entertainment, Decode Entertainment, and Studio B Productions, Spin Master, Guru Studio, Nelvana and CinéGroupe are also guilty of this trope, using many of the same voice actors in their shows, and some of the actors listed here have appeared in their shows as well. ## Examples: Note: Names in BOLD indicate that the actor has appeared on Degrassi. Names in ITALICS indicate that the actor is/has been a Stratford Festival performer. Names in indicate that the actor has appeared in a R. L. Stine series. BOLD AND ITALICS - Raymond Ablack - Patrick J. Adams - Michael Adamthwaite (voice acting example, but also starred in some live action works as well) - Sharon Alexander - Melissa Altro (voice acting example) - Robbie Amell - Stephen Amell - Cameron Ansell (voice acting example) - François Arnaud - Charlotte Arnold - Angela Asher - Harvey Atkin (voice acting example) - Ashleigh Ball (voice acting example) - Sonja Ball (voice acting example) - Kathleen Barr (voice acting example) - Jay Baruchel - Lawrence Bayne (voice acting example) - Stephanie Beard (voice acting example, but she's probably better known as "Sugar" on YTV) - Clé Bennett - David Berni (voice acting example) - Luke Bilyk - Richard Binsley (voice acting example) - Katie Boland - Walker Boone - Valerie Boyle - Justin Bradley - John Bregar - Paula Brancati - Daniel Brochu (voice acting example) - Dylan Bruce - George Buza (Older than most of these examples, he's been performing since the 70's.) - Jim Byrnes - Mark Camacho (voice acting example, but also does quite a bit of live-action) - Neve Campbell - Len Carlson (voice acting example) - Tom Cavanagh - Michael Cera: An unique case as this trope mostly applies to his childhood voice-acting career. For his live-action acting career, this trope is averted as he has only had four Canadian roles: The Noddy Shop, Real Kids, Real Adventures, I Was a Sixth Grade Alien and Scott Pilgrim vs. The World, with the first three happening during his childhood. - Gary Chalk (both a voice acting and live action example) - Munro Chambers - Shannon Chan-Kent (voice acting example) - Justin Chatwin - Juan Chioran (voice acting example but also well known for his work at Stratford Festival) - Emmanuelle Chriqui - Donna Christie (mainly known for voicing Cleo from Heathcliff & the Catillac Cats) - Daniel Clarke (Notably born in the U.S.; moved to Canada when he was young, then back to America after leaving Degrassi) - Robert Clarke (younger brother of above) - A.J. Cook - Lauren Collins - Meesha Contreras (voice acting example, you'll most likely hear his voice in Canadian animated preschool shows since the late 2010's). - Ryan Cooley - Adam "Edge" Copeland - Ian James Corlett (voice acting example) - Alyson Court (voice acting example, but also starred in some live-action works as well) - Richard Ian Cox (voice acting example) - (voice acting example, but also has a good number of live-action roles to his name) Amos Crawley - (both live-action and voice acting roles) Neil Crone - Seán Cullen (mainly known for his stand-up comedy, but also has a significant number of voice acting roles and several live-action roles) - Elisha Cuthbert - Tony Daniels (voice acting example) - Ellen David - Mackenzie Davis - Stacey DePass (voice acting example) - (mainly a live-action guy, but has some significant voice actng credits to his name) Daniel DeSanto - Trevor Devall (voice acting example, mainly applied to his work in the 2000s and early 2010s before relocating to Los Angeles in 2013) - Hugh Dillon - Bruce Dinsmore (voice acting example) - Catherine Disher (mainly does live action works, but has dabbled in voice acting, most notably being the original North American voice of Noddy and Queen Sara Saturday on * Daniel Tiger's Neighborhood) - Nina Dobrev* - Brian Dobson (voice acting example, younger brother of below) - Michael Dobson (voice acting example, older brother of below and above) - Paul Dobson (voice acting example, younger and older brother of above) - Cal Dodd - Heather Doerksen - Cory Doran (voice acting example) - Lexa Doig - Brian Drummond (voice acting example) - Erica Durance - Jayne Eastwood: Perhaps one of the most prominent Canadian actresses, with 244 credited roles to her name and counting. - Jeannie Elias (voice acting example) - Jake Epstein - Kazumi Evans (voice acting example) - Dylan Everett - Fred Ewanuick - Stacey Farber - Matt Ficner (puppeteer example) - Gil Filar: Similar to Michael Cera, this trope only occurred during his childhood, as he quit showbusiness to become an author. - Nathan Fillion - Erin Fitzgerald (voice acting example, mainly applied to her work in the 90s before relocating to Los Angeles in 2000.) - Dawn Ford - Colin Fox (mainly live-action, but also has several voice acting credits) - Don Francks - Darren Frost (voice acting example) - Brian Froud (voice acting example) - Sarah Gadon - Victor Garber - Holly Gauthier-Frankel (voice acting example, but has also done some live-action work) - Jessalyn Gilsig - Edward Glen (voice acting example, best known for his work on anime dubs and as the official announcer for YTV) - Ryan Gosling - Aubrey "Drake" Graham - Mackenzie Gray - Katie Griffin (voice acting example) - Shenae Grimes - Bret Hart - Emily Hampshire - Elizabeth Hanna (voice acting example) - David Hemblen - Maryke Hendrikse (voice acting example) - Dan Hennessey (voice acting example) - Dwayne Hill (voice acting example) - Matt Hill (voice acting example) - Arthur Holden (voice acting example) - Jason Hopley (puppeteering example) - Leslie Hope - Alex House - Ricardo Hoyos - Pam Hyatt (best known for her voice acting work, but has a handful of live-action credits) - Britt Irvin (voice acting example) - Nissae Isen (voice acting example, younger sister of below) - Tajja Isen (voice acting example, older sister of above) - Joshua Jackson - Janyse Jaud (voice acting example) - Connor Jessup - Avan Jogia (best known for Victorious, but has since taken up Canadian roles) - Rick Jones (voice acting example) - Demetrius Joyette - Hiro Kanagawa (mainly live-action, but has a handful of voice acting credits) - Athena Karkanis (does both live-action and animated roles) - Diana Kaarina - Linda Kash (mainly live-action, but also has several voice acting credits) - Kyle Kass - David Kaye (voice acting example, mainly applied to his work in the 90s and early 2000s before relocating to Los Angeles in 2007) - Peter Keleghan - Peter Kelamis (voice acting example) - Justin Kelly (whose Degrassi character had to be renamed Jake instead of Noah, since he had already played a character named Noah alongside Munro Chambers in The Latest Buzz.) - Jessica Parker Kennedy - Gabe Khouth (voice acting example, younger brother of Samuel Vincent) - Shane Kippel - Cory Lee - Olivier L'Ecuyer - Ashley Leggat - Julie Lemieux (voice acting example) - Dan Levy (Not only appeared on Degrassi himself but has cast multiple veterans of Degrassi on his own show) - Andrea Libman (voice acting example) - Evangeline Lilly - Pauline Little (voice acting example) - Simu Liu (Best known for playing Shang-Chi in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, but started off his career as a Hollywood stuntman before landing roles on the Canadian shows Blood And Water and Kim's Convenience) - Jocelyne Loewen (voice acting example) - Alexander Ludwig - Miriam Macdonald - Deven Mack (voice acting example; mainly Toronto-based, but has also appeared in a number of shows using the Vancouver-based voice actor pool) - Martha MacIsaac - Robert Maillet - Jonathan Mallen - Michael Mando - Blu Mankuma (so astonishingly ubiquitous throughout the 90's that a Canadian version of the Bacon game could well have been called "one degree of Blu Mankuma". Did quite a bit of voice acting too, contrary to the norm for this trope.) - Tatiana Maslany (though she's better known for playing upward of a dozen characters on the same show) - Pat Mastroianni - Diego Matamoros - Rachel McAdams - Bryn McAuley (voice acting example) - Sean McCann (also had voice-acting credits in Little Bear, Wild CATS 1994 and George Shrinks) - Scott McCord (voice acting example) - Derek McGrath - Stephen McHattie - Terry McGurrin (voice acting example, although also a prominent stand-up comedian) - Markeda McKay (voice acting example) - Patrick McKenna (most well known for The Red Green Show, but also has a lot of voice acting credits to his name) - Scott McNeil (voice acting example, but also starred in some live action works as well) - Frank Meschkuleit (puppeteer example) - Kelly Metzger (voice acting example) - Gabrielle Miller (who was at one point on Corner Gas and two other ongoing Canadian series at the same time!) - Shirley Millner (best known for playing Hexadecimal in ReBoot) - Dustin Milligan - Shay Mitchell - Colin Mochrie (mainly known for Whose Line Is It Anyway?, but has a lot of credits for Canadian productions) - Tracey Moore (voice acting example) - Vanessa Morgan - Stephanie Morgenstern - Kirby Morrow (voice acting example, but also starred in some live action works as well) - Max Morrow - Joseph Motiki (best known for his hosting roles, but has also appeared in a few TV shows and done plenty of voice acting) - Panou Mowling (also credited simply as "Panou") - Al Mukadam - Tony Munch - Annie Murphy - Alex Nussbaum (primarily a standup comedian, but has also done a bit of voice acting for several cartoons; interestingly, he's also a writer and art designer on a number of those shows) - (voice acting example, but also has live-action credits to her name) Annick Obonsawin - Sandra Oh - Stephen Ouimette (best known for his Stratford performances, but also does a good deal of voice acting) - Peter Outerbridge - Elliot Page - Ron Pardo (voice acting example) - Doug Parker (voice acting example) - Pier Paquette (voice acting and puppeteer example, has also done some live-action works not involving puppets (mainly in Francophone Québécois productions)) - Aislinn Paul - Tahmoh Penikett - Eric Peterson - Alison Pill - Gordon Pinsent - Roddy Piper (despite famously playing a Fake Scot in his wrestling career) - Christian Potenza (voice acting example, but also starred in some live action works as well) - John Ralston - James Rankin (voice acting and puppeteer example, has also done some live-action works not involving puppets) - Dan Redican - Fiona Reid (mainly live-action, but also has several voice acting credits) - Noah Reid (has dabbled quite a bit in voice acting; specifically, he voiced the title character in Franklin until he was 17, among several other works). - Ryan Reynolds - Julian Richings - Kyle Rideout (voice acting example) - Martin Roach (mainly live-action, but also has several voice acting credits) - Wayne Robson - Seth Rogen - Kacey Rohl - Susan Roman (voice acting example) - Teryl Rothery (another prominent Canadian actress with 180 roles as of 2019. Before her live-action acting career kicked off, she did voice-acting roles in several anime dubs as well as the Noddy's Toyland Adventures segments of The Noddy Shop.) - Ron Rubin (voice acting example) - Adamo Ruggerio - Andrew Sabiston (voice acting example) - Tony Sampson (voice acting example) - A.J. Saudin - Tyrone Savage (best known for voicing Matthias, Warrior of Redwall and Lightning; voice acting example, but has done some live-action work and did work at the Stratford Festival) - Terrence Scammell (voice acting example) - Michael Seater (probably the most well known person on this list not to really break out of the Canadian film industry) - Melinda Shankar - Paula Shaw (began her career in Hollywood, but now lives in the Vancouver area and much of her recent work has been in Canadian productions) - Kelly Sheridan (voice acting example) - Shadia Simmons - Rachel Skarsten - Christian Slater - Cedric Smith - Lyon Smith (voice acting example) - Steve Smith (best known for The Red Green Show) - Cobie Smulders - Norm Spencer (voice acting example) - Sarah Strange (voice-acting example, but appears in several live action works) - Cree Summer: This mostly applies to her 1980's acting career. After Tiny Toon Adventures, she broke out of this trope. - Tabitha St. Germain (voice acting example, but also starred in some live action works as well) - Jewel Staite - David Suzuki (nature documentary host example) note : Incidentally, if you're familiar with the "Girl Who Silenced the World for 5 Minutes" YouTube video, that's his daughter Severn speaking at the United Nations Earth Summit in 1992. - Cassie Steele - Tyler Stentiford - John Stocker (voice acting example) - Stuart Stone (child actor in many 80s and 90s movies and TV shows produced in Canada, but also known for his voice acting roles like The Magic School Bus.) - Chantal Strand (voice-acting example, but appeared in several live-action works, most notably the Air Bud sequels) - Tara Strong: Mainly applies to her childhood voice-acting career (with her first American role being Adventures from the Book of Virtues), but she's starred in several recent Canadian works as well, such as My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic, Inspector Gadget (2015), and Powerbirds. - Brad Swaile (voice acting example) - Serinda Swan - Bill Switzer (similar to Michael Cera, this trope only occurred during his childhood, as he quit show business to pursue other opportunities) - Joy Tanner - Emma Taylor-Isherwood - Venus Terzo (voice acting example, but also starred in some live action works as well) - Robert Tinkler (voice acting example) - Kate Todd - Jordan Todosey - Lee Tockar (voice acting example) - Vincent Tong (voice acting example) - Adrian Truss (voice acting example) - Stevie Vallance (voice acting example) - Jorgito Vargas Jr. - Emily VanCamp - Laura Vandervoort - Samuel Vincent (voice acting example) - Jamie Watson (voice acting example) - Danny Wells - Scott Wentworth - Kit Weyman - Janet Wright - Chris Wiggins (does both live-action and voiceover work) - Genelle Williams - Jonathan Wilson (voice acting example) - Katheryn Winnick - Calum Worthy - Noreen Young (puppeteer and voice acting) - Andrew Younghusband (television presenter example) - Lenore Zann (voice acting example) - Chiara Zanni (voice acting example) - Sergio Di Zio (mainly live-action, but also has a number of voice acting roles) - 3-2-1 Penguins!: Occurs in the seasons produced for Qubo with voice actors from the Vancouver talent pool. - Pretty much anything from 9 Story Media Group will feature voice actors also known for appearing in Nelvana and Fresh TV cartoons. - 15/Love - 18 to Life - Original movies on The Hallmark Channel, Lifetime and Great American Family, with plenty of performers freely jumping between any one of the three. - Almost every adaptation of Anne of Green Gables, particularly the Kevin Sullivan-produced TV shows, like Road to Avonlea and Anne of Green Gables: The Animated Series - Any show created by Angela Santomero after the original Blue's Clues: - The Adventures of Albert and Sidney: It was one of Cinar's first productions they have ever done, and they have used Montreal voice actors you would normally hear in other CINAR productions. - Animal Mechanicals used a cast almost entirely composed of Halifax-based theatre actors. - Animorphs (the TV series) - Are You Afraid of the Dark? - The same actors would pop up in multiple episodes of Are You Afraid of the Dark?, Student Bodies, and Ready or Not as they were all filmed in Canada. - Arrowverse - Atomic Betty: Mainly uses the Toronto talent pool. - Baby Looney Tunes: All the voice actors on this show, save for June Foray, are from the Vancouver talent pool, making it the only Looney Tunes work to fall under this trope. - The Barbie movies - Barney's Great Adventure: The only known installment in the Barney & Friends franchise to fall under this trope, as it was filmed in the Montreal area and a good portion of the supporting cast were Canadian. The rest of the franchise falls under a Texas version of this trope, as detailed below. - Beauty and the Beast (2012) - The Big Comfy Couch: A prominent trope in the seasons starring Alyson Court as Loonette. - Bioware games, especially prior to 2007. Justified given their base of operations was Edmonton at the time, and their insistence on top-shelf voice actors. At least a quarter of the above list ended up in Star Wars: The Old Republic and/or Mass Effect (the latter led to the Ascended Fanon that an Earthborn Sheperd is from Canada) - Black Hole High a.k.a. Strange Days At Blake Holsey High - The Direct to Video Bratz movies - Caillou: This trope is especially prominent in the Cinar-era episodes, but later episodes also star Canadian actors. Averted for Caillou's New Adventures, which uses American voice artists from NYAV Post. - Canada's Worst Driver - Care Bears: This trope is especially prominent in Nelvana's work for the franchise (e.g. the 1980s movies, the Care Bears Family cartoon, and the 2003-2004 Direct to Video films) and Care Bears: Adventures in Care-a-Lot - CBC Kids and its related blocks: Many of the child actors used in the block's music videos and skits eventually end up pursuing careers in acting. The animated shows featured on the block also tend to use a lot of recurring names in Toronto, Vancouver and Montreal's voice acting pools. - Charlie Bartlett - Almost any cartoon produced by CinéGroupe will feature voice actors from Montreal's pool, particularly Terrence Scammell, Rick Jones, Sonja Ball, and Holly Gauthier-Frankel. One of their series, however, What's with Andy?, had Vancouver-based voice actor Ian James Corlett as the title character though, and American voice actors for the first season. - Corner Gas - Continuum - Dear America (the TV series) - Degrassi: The central nexus and, well, epitome of the trope. - Although an American company, many cartoons from DiC Entertainment use Canadian voice actors (ironically, most of DiC's catalog is now owned by the Canadian studio WildBrain). To give some examples: - Dino Ranch - Dog City: This show, along with Fraggle Rock, Fraggle Rock: Back to the Rock, Dinosaur Train, Sesame Park (the Canadian co-production of Sesame Street), Sesame Street Presents: Follow That Bird, and Unstable Fables (which was a co-production with Sabella Dern), are the only Jim Henson-related works to fall under this trope as far as actors are concerned. - Dragalia Lost: Most of the English voice cast is from the Vancouver talent pool with the exceptions being Cassandra Lee Morris as Morgana, Xander Mobus as Joker, Matthew Mercer as Chrom, Wendee Lee and David Kaye. - Eckhart features a cast almost entirely composed of theatrical actors from Prince Edward Island - Ed, Edd n Eddy features a Vancouver-based voice cast, including quite a number of names associated with The Ocean Group. - The live-action Eloise films (filmed in New York City and used a mix of Canadian and American actors) - The Expanse - A Fairly Odd Movie: Grow Up, Timmy Turner! and its' sequel, A Fairly Odd Christmas - The Famous Jett Jackson - Flashpoint - Fraggle Rock: Used a mix of Canadian and American actors. - Freaky Stories - Anything made by Fresh TV - Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan: One of two installments in the Friday the 13th franchise (the other being Freddy vs. Jason) to fall under this trope, as it was mostly filmed in Vancouver and many of the supporting cast would go on to have notable roles in Canadian-made productions (including a number of the supporting cast having roles in The Ocean Group dubs). - Hello Kitty's Furry Tale Theater, while featuring many prominent Canadian voice actors of the 80s and 90s, such as Len Carlson and Elizabeth Hanna, is also noted as the voice acting debut of Tara Strong as Hello Kitty. - Highlander - Honey, I Shrunk The Kids: The Series - How to Be Indie - Instant Star - I Was a Sixth Grade Alien - Jimmy Two-Shoes: Mainly used Toronto voice actors, but Tabitha St. Germain of The Ocean Group voices Heloise, one of the main characters. - JoJo's Circus - Kim's Convenience - Kung Fu: The Legend Continues - La Femme Nikita and its reboot, Nikita, to the point that more than half a dozen actors go on to appear on both shows, entirely coincidentally (they're produced by entirely different people). - The 2017 reboot of Lalaloopsy uses voice actors from The Ocean Group. - The Latest Buzz - The L.A. Complex - A number of LEGO animated projects have used Canadian talent, usually the Vancouver talent pool: - Life with Derek - Littlest Pet Shop (2012): Mainly uses voice actor from the Vancouver talent pool. - Lost Girl - MacGyver (1985) (Seasons 3-6 only) - Mighty Express: This series features many Canadian child actors that appear in other preschool series produced there. - Miss BG: Mainly uses voice actors from the Toronto talent pool. - Mr. Meaty - My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic: Mainly uses voice actors from the Vancouver talent pool, with the exception of Tara Strong as Twilight Sparkle. - Murdoch Mysteries - Naturally, Sadie - Anything produced by Nelvana qualifies, but some of the more notable examples include: - Anything made by Nerd Corps Entertainment: - A number of Netflix original animated series feature voice actors from The Ocean Group, such as The Dragon Prince, The Hollow, The Last Kids on Earth, and Carmen Sandiego. - Nonsense Revolution - Most English dubs of anime made by The Ocean Group. In addition, several of the Vancouver actors they use began their careers in the company's dubs. - Orphan Black - PAW Patrol: An odd case of this. Despite some of the actors listed here having voiced roles here (for example Ron Pardo as Turbot, James Rankin as Otis Goodway and Sonja Ball as a penguin in one episode), this trope mainly applies to the child voice actors. Several of them have also appeared on Arthur, * Daniel Tiger's Neighborhood, PJ Masks* and Little People. - A good number of post-1996 shows (as well as some prior to that year) created for PBS Kids. As stated by a staff member for Let's Go Luna!, many modern PBS Kids show require one aspect of the show to be Canadian in order to receive their funding. This is extremely bizarre as PBS is strictly US only, despite some PBS stations close to the Canadian border note : in New York - WNED in Buffalo reaches Toronto, WCFE in Plattsburgh reaches Montreal, WPBS in Watertown reaches Ottawa - in Pennsylvania - WQLN in Erie reaches London - in Michigan - WTVS in Detroit reaches Windsor having large Canadian audiences. Many of these come from either Vancouver, Toronto, or Montreal: - Adventures from the Book of Virtues: Only occurs in the third season. - Arthur: The animated central nexus of this trope, as many Montreal based voice actors and actresses associated with this trope have appeared on the show over its' 25-year-run. - The Berenstain Bears (2003 series): Mainly uses voice actors from the Toronto talent pool with the exception of Vancouver based Maryke Hendrikse - The Cat in the Hat Knows a Lot About That! - Clifford the Big Red Dog (2019 series) - The Corduroy animated series. - Cyberchase - * Daniel Tiger's Neighborhood* - Dinosaur Train: Mainly uses voice actors from the Vancouver talent pool. - Dragon Tales: Mainly uses voice actors from the Vancouver talent pool. - Elinor Wonders Why - Elliot Moose - Esme & Roy - Franny's Feet - George Shrinks - Hero Elementary - Lamb Chop's Play-Along and its spinoff Charlie Horse Music Pizza: Like The Noddy Shop, this is mostly of the Retroactive Recognition kind, as some of the people cast as the children on the show would go on to play more major roles, with the most notable example being Chantal Strand. - Let's Go Luna! - Liberty's Kids (Kathleen Barr only, most of the other regulars were Omaha, Nebraska-based theater actors) - Make Way For Noddy (North American dub): The former uses voice actors from Toronto and the latter uses voice actors from Vancouver. - The Magic School Bus - Martha Speaks: Mainly uses voice actors from Vancouver. - Marvin the Tap-Dancing Horse - Molly of Denali - Odd Squad - Peg + Cat - Pinkalicious & Peterrific was an aversion for the first three seasons, having NYC-based voice actors. However, the fourth season plays this trope straight, as PBS forced the voice recording to move to Toronto, and replaced the entire cast. - Ready Jet Go!: Mainly uses voice actors from Vancouver. - Rosie's Rules - Sagwa, the Chinese Siamese Cat: Mainly uses voice actors from Montreal. - Seven Little Monsters - Super Why! - Timothy Goes to School: Mainly uses voice actors from Toronto. - Wild Kratts - Work It Out Wombats! - Xavier Riddle and the Secret Museum - All Peanuts productions since 2019, such as Snoopy In Space and The Snoopy Show, feature Toronto and Vancouver-based voice talents, as well as Canadian child voice actors commonly seen in Canadian-produced Preschool Shows, due to being produced by Canadian studio WildBrain. Before this, the Peanuts Motion Comics series also utilized Canadian actors from the Ocean Group. - Peep and the Big Wide World - Pikwik Pack - PJ Masks - Power Rangers: Occasionally, despite being filmed in New Zealand, at least one series regular Ranger in the Disney-era installments would be played by a Canadian actor — mainly in case they couldn't find an actor of a specific ethnicity or type in New Zealand or Australia, but also in order to fulfill CanCon requirements — so it partially counts: - Prior to the switchover to New Zealand, Doug Stone, who was born in Canada, was a semi-reoccurring voice actor during the original Saban era of the franchise. - Jorgito Vargas Jr. (Blake) in Power Rangers Ninja Storm. - Kevin Duhaney (Ethan) and Jeffery Parazzo (Trent) in Power Rangers: Dino Thunder. - Four out of the five main S.P.D. Rangers (i.e. the B-Squad S.P.D. Rangers) in Power Rangers S.P.D., who were played by Canadians who've showed up in a lot of works associated with this trope. Jim McLarty, who voiced Broodwing, was also Canadian. - The Raccoons - Real Kids, Real Adventures: This show was also used as a launchpad for the acting careers of various kids like The Noddy Shop and even shares many child actors from that show. - Radio Free Roscoe - The Red Green Show - Any show based of the works of Richard Scarry - Any show that Rick Siggelkow had a hand in: - Rookie Blue - Regenesis - Riverdale - Anything R. L. Stine is involved in, mainly Goosebumps and The Haunting Hour, with two exceptions. In addition, most of the actors in these shows usually start their careers by playing roles in them, making shows helmed by Stine a third central nexus of this trope. - Any show produced by Sabella Dern, with two exceptions. - Sabrina: The Animated Series - The Safety of Objects - Schitt's Creek - Sesame Park (aka Canadian Sesame Street) - Sesame Street Presents: Follow That Bird - Silverwing - Smallville - So Weird - Both TV series based on Sony Pictures Animation's movies, Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs (2017) and Hotel Transylvania: The Series fall under this, using names from the Toronto voice acting pool. - Spider Riders (the Cookie Jar/Coliseum dub) - Most of Mike Young Productions/Taffy Entertainment/Splash Entertainment's later productions, with some exceptions. - In the Star Wars franchise, Nelvana's Droids and Ewoks series are among the few entries to fall under this trope - Stargate-verse - The Stratford Festival: Quite a few of the actors listed here got their start playing roles in Stratford Festival productions. It's also the second central nexus for this trope. - Strawberry Shortcake's Berry Bitty Adventures uses voice actors from The Ocean Group. The 2021 reboot web series, Berry in the Big City, uses Toronto-based actors, except for Andrea Libman as Lemon Meringue, as she is from Vancouver (funnily enough, she voiced Lemon previously in BBA). - Anything made by Studio B Productions - Some of the final productions of Sunbow Entertainment used this trope: - Tayo the Little Bus (English dub; recorded in Winnipeg) - Thomas & Friends: All Engines Go - A handful of shows produced by Thomas W. Lynch, including: - This Is Daniel Cook - Time Warp Trio - Toad Patrol - Tommy Boy - Top Wing - Trailer Park Boys - Some entries of the Transformers franchise, notably Beast Wars and the Unicron Trilogy, both of which utilized Vancouver voice talents. The spinoff Transformers: BotBots does likewise, but instead features a Toronto-based cast. Some other series, including the original and Transformers: Cyberverse have also used Canadian voice actors, albeit in lesser capacities. - A number of Universal Kids' animated series, such as Powerbirds, Dot., Remy & Boo, and Norman Picklestripes heavily feature Toronto-based voice actors. - The Vampire Diaries - Many movies produced in the 90's for The Wonderful World Of Disney fall under this trope, as several of them were filmed in Canada. - What About Mimi? - Wimzie's House uses many Montreal-based actors, including ones from Arthur. - Wingin' It - Wynonna Earp - X Company - The X-Files (prior to moving filming to Los Angeles) - X-Men: The Animated Series - Yo-Kai Watch: Applies to the first 2 seasons of the English dub. A weird case in that it involved a mix of American and Canadian voice artists. - You Can't Do That on Television - The Zack Files - Australian soaps Neighbours and Home and Away have at some point featured pretty much every well-known actor the country produces. Neighbours is particularly notable for having starred Kylie Minogue, Jesse Spencer, Dichen Lachman, Guy Pearce, Holly Valance, Delta Goodrem, Russell Crowe and Alan Dale before they got famous. - Blue Water High and H₂O: Just Add Water are examples for Australian-made kids' TV, having collectively featured actors who've starred in everything from the Tomorrow: When the War Began action movie, to Power Rangers RPM, Dance Academy, The Pacific, and the aforementioned Neighbours. - British television has a tendency for this. - For British-made soap operas, an actor might have a successful run in one of the popular soap operas (e.g. Eastenders), leave the show or be written out, and then, after a decent interval to allow memories of the original character to fade, they'll pop up again playing an entirely new character in another show (e.g. Coronation Street, Hollyoaks or Emmerdale). - British TV and radio have a large number of panel shows (such as QI, Mock the Week, and 8 Out of 10 Cats) relative to the number of British comedians. This means that some comedians can become semi-regulars and rotate through various shows and channels week in and week out. To be admitted to the panel-show circuit is a huge deal in British comedy (which is a very insular community), as it provides a steady income and a stepping stone to larger gigs. - There's a large number of Irish-made productions or films and TV shows filmed in Ireland that feature cast members who were either in Father Ted, Fair City or Love/Hate, especially the last one if the work is Darker and Edgier. - Ever since American production companies have noticed the gorgeous landscapes and cheaper production costs of New Zealand, the collective acting pool of Australia and New Zealand has been getting a pretty heavy workout. Hercules: The Legendary Journeys, Xena: Warrior Princess, Power Rangers (post Ninja Storm), Legend of the Seeker, The Lord of the Rings, The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power are all known for this trope, and it's become a pretty fun game of actor recognition for American sci-fi/fantasy fans. It becomes an even more interesting situation when you consider that, even without the assistance of Hollywood, it's not uncommon for both Australian and New Zealand actors to cross the Tasman for roles in both directions. You could easily make a game out of actor recognition. - This trope is even more obvious when watching movies, series and téléromansfrom Québec. The province has a unique pop culture and many successful actors and comédiens that are mostly independent from the rest of Anglophone Canada. However, there are only so many of them and thus, it is not unusual to see the same person playing two different characters on competing channels during the same week. And even then some Québécois actors have popped up in Anglophone Canadian films & TV series. - YouTube: Not too many actors are willing to take "a promise to appear on one of their own videos" as payment (Youtube pays the video creator a share of the ad profits, so people would often appear in each other's videos as a way of cross-advertising). It gives the impression that Felicia Day has been cast in pretty much every webseries in existence. - German/Austrian theatre is this. Pick any two big-name shows (to name a few: Elisabeth, Tanz Der Vampire and Mozart!) and you can't swing a conductor's baton around without hitting someone who's been in more than one production. Especially when it comes to the Viennese theatre scene, since the Raimund and Ronacher rotate actors and adore the All-Star Cast. For example, here are some people who have been in all three shows named above: Mark Seibert (Death - Count von Krolock - Colloredo), Thomas Borchert (Death - von Krolock - Leopold Mozart), Gernot Romic (Rudolf - Alfred/White Vampire - Wolfgang Mozart), et cetera. - Quite a few of the Icelandic cast members of LazyTown have also appeared in other Icelandic media such as Trapped (2015) or are members of Icelandic theatrical troupes. - Any TV or movie production filmed in Texas is this, especially when the local anime dubbing talent pool used by Funimation and Sentai Filmworks gets involved. Jason Douglas has appeared in The Walking Dead and Planet Terror, while Todd Haberkorn, John Swasey, Duncan Brannan, R. Bruce Elliott and Josh Martin have all appeared on Barney & Friends (Todd played Mr. Knickerbocker in Let's Make Music, John played the Dad in The Night Before Christmas special, in Duncan did the voice of Barney at times, Bruce played Grandpa in "Grandpa's Visit" and Mr. Tenagain in "Having Tens of Fun!", and Josh suit-acted Barney from 1997-2006). - Any newer Nick Jr. show produced in the United States is probably going to have New York voice actors. Some examples include: Bubble Guppies, Butterbean's Cafe, Santiago of the Seas, Dora and Friends: Into the City!, Wallykazam, Nella the Princess Knight, Team Umizoomi, and Sunny Day. Almost all the others have voice actors from California or more often Canada. The Canadian ones share voices with PAW Patrol as noted above. Some of the New York voiced-shows also tend to share voice talents with older Disney Junior shows, such as PB&J Otter. - This is the case for pretty much any of the smaller countries that has a significant dubbing scene. For example, the Central European and Balkan countries are particularly guilty of this trope: pretty much none of them go above 10 million. It's not been unheard of for local actors to do triple duty in theaters, live-action productions and in dubbing animation; after all, there is only a small amount of professionally trained talent (and many of these countries have just a single major production center, usually located in the capital city) available, so overlap occurs at a regular pace. - This is exaggerated with the dubbing industry in Oradea, Romania. Iyuno-SDI Group, which has a branch there, primarily hires a set of theater actors from the Regina Maria Theater's Iosif Vulcan and Arcadia groups for Romanian dubs, while Hungarian dubs done by Iyuno-SDI Group Oradea use actors from the Regina Maria Theater's Szigligeti group and the occasional actor(s) who commute from Budapest. - Many of the Polish dubbing studios located outside Warsaw tend to use local theater actors. - Portugal's dubbing industry has a similar thing. The country has a smaller acting community than neighboring Spain, and coupling that with the country having only two major media production centers — Lisbon (the capital) and Porto (the second-largest city in the country) — overlap occurs at a regular pace. It's not uncommon for European Portuguese dubbing actors to do triple duty by also doing work in theater and in live action productions. For European Portuguese dubs done in Porto, this happens more often since the city has a smaller pool of professionally trained talent than Lisbon and the fact there are only two major dubbing studios in the city (Somnorte and Cinemágica). - This is the case for pretty much the entire Castilian Spanish dubbing industry outside Madrid and Barcelona. The Castilian dubbing industries in Galicia, the Basque Country and Seville are particularly guilty of this trope: it's not unheard of for Galicia-based Castilian Spanish dubbing actors (who often also take up double duty in Galician dubbing) to commute between pretty much every city in the province that has a dubbing studio or three to do work; after all, there is only a small amount of trained actors available in cities like Seville or León, so overlap occurs almost inevitably. - Many productions handled by Japanese production company Bushiroad, such as Tantei Opera Milky Holmes, Cardfight!! Vanguard, Love Live! and the Japanese dub of My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic tend to have overlapping seiyuus in their productions, with some of the more common ones being Izumi Kitta, Mimori Suzuko and Emi Nitta.	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/OnlySoManyCanadianActors
Opening the Sandbox - TV Tropes "I have escaped both my execution and a dragon attack at Helgen. I now have my freedom to do as I see fit in Skyrim." The point in a video game, especially a metroidvania or (electronic) RPG, where you're finally able to do all the sidequests, go anywhere on the map, and so on. Usually coincides with getting the Global Airship, in games that have that. May still be this even if you technically can't go everywhere; there are many games where the beginning of the Very Definitely Final Dungeon is also the Point of No Return. Usually a very good time to get the Infinity +1 Sword or go for 100% Completion. If the entire RPG is like this, it could be a Quicksand Box. This point can come shortly before the Point of No Return, or after if the game has certain forms of New Game Plus; alternatively, it might come early in the game instead, setting the player free after clearing the more guided first few segments of the game. MMORPGs are a special case. Though most do not have a true 'end', they end up becoming more top heavy over time as new content additions target veterans who have seen and done most of the things in the game. This effect is particularly severe if several consecutive updates do not increase the Cap but give already capped players new options, and is the reason that established players tend to perceive more freedom in a game than newbies despite being more aware of its limitations. These points are sometimes near the ending, so SPOILERS. ## Examples: - In Go Vacation, once you get twenty Stamps (i.e., once you've played around half of the available minigames), you'll have the entire game open to you: All four Resorts, every minigame, and the Villa. - In Hollow Knight, for the first handful of hours, the game lightly leads players through the Forgotten Crossroads, Greenpath, and the Fungal Wastes through subtle context clues and following the trail of Hornet. Once you obtain the Mothwing Cloak and Mantis Claw allowing you to dash and climb walls respectively, you're free to go in several directions, though this is less apparent for first-time players. Shortly thereafter you'll meet Hornet at the Hollow Knight memorial in the City of Tears, giving you a goal, and marking the point where the game kicks the crutch from under your feet and opening up almost all of Hallownest to explore. A second instance is obtaining the Dream Nail from your first visit in the Resting Grounds, where you're now free to challenge Dream Bosses, open up new areas, and the location of the three Dreamers get added to your map. - The Legend of Zelda series tends to do this multiple times each game. In most games, after the introductory village and dungeon, most of the world map opens up, though in the first game the world could be explored right away (though getting a sword, which is in a cave on the first screen, is a good idea). And then, once you've completed about half of the dungeons, a large chunk of the map that was hidden or inaccessible is revealed, usually through some specialized game mechanic like Dual-World Gameplay. - The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past lets you explore Hyrule freely once you rescue Princess Zelda from the catacombs. Once you complete four dungeons and defeat Agahnim for the first time, the entrance to Hyrule Castle becomes a gate to the Dark World (which holds eight more dungeons). In fact, if you already know where to go, completing the first dungeon isn't even necessary: once you have the Magic Hammer from it, the sandbox is busted wide open. You can even leave King Helmasaur for until you've gotten everything else in the game short of the Red Mail and a single Heart Container. - The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time: After you leave Kokiri Forest (which can only be done after completing the first dungeon), all of Hyrule Field is open to you. When you get the Master Sword, you then gain full access to most of the areas you visited previously, even if you're still missing some key pieces of gear. - The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask: When you finally break the Skull Kid's curse in Clock Town. As a human, you finally have a decent melee weapon and can leave town. The town itself also has various activities for Hylian Link. - The Legend of Zelda: Oracle Games: The games open up three times each, namely when you gain a new method of time travel ( Ages), or a new season to summon ( Seasons). - The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker: Your boat won't let you leave a small linear path at first. After you complete the second dungeon, you're free to sail wherever you want and explore the whole map. Most people wait until they get the Ballad of Gales, though, because otherwise you'd have to sail all that distance by yourself. - The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess lets you out into Hyrule Field once you've freed Ordon and Faron Province from the Twilight curse and completed the first dungeon. However, true to form, the game doesn't truly open the sandbox until you drive back all the Twilight and later get the Master Sword. - The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword: The sandbox is opened after you open all three portals; getting the Clawshot also opens up a couple more opportunities. - The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds: The sandbox is opened when you enter Lorule. You need to go through seven dungeons, but you can do each of them in any order you please (with one exception: you can't reach the Desert Palace without going through the Thieves' Hideout first). - The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild: While the Great Plateau is a sandbox itself, the rest of Hyrule is opened up when you get the Paraglider, including the final dungeon and final boss. - The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom: Just like its prequel, all of Hyrule is opened up shortly after you open the giant doors in the Temple of Time, and getting the Paraglider shortly after that makes it practical to fully explore the Sky Islands, and enter the Depths without taking lethal Falling Damage. It's even possible to skip the Paraglider and defeat the final boss without it, although you'll need to use some Good Bad Bugs to survive the drop. - Ōkami: You can go back and get most of the missing collectibles once you've bought the Double Jump and unlocked Kabegami's brush technique, allowing you to climb walls, but it's a lot less traveling to wait until you've gotten the Mist Warp technique (available after completing the fourth dungeon, Imperial Palace) so you can teleport between certain sacred mirrors. - Super Mario Bros.: - Super Mario Land 2: 6 Golden Coins: In contrast to its extremely linear predecessor, this game is far more open. After finishing the tutorial level, the six zones containing the titular coins have no set order to do them in, and players are free to, for example, complete part of one zone and then work on another, leaving the rest of the previous one for later. The only level locked is the last one, which becomes available after the Golden Coins are retrieved. - Super Mario Sunshine opens completely after Shadow Mario starts trying to steal FLUDD accesories and a Yoshi egg. When those are retrieved, every Shine Sprite from Delfino Plaza will be ready to be collected and any level yet to be unlocked will be accessible with the help of those powerups. In fact, by that point the only thing needed to unlock the final mission is defeating Shadow Mario in every level at least once each. - Metroid: - In most of side-scrolling games, getting the High Jump boots is the point when suddenly you can go (plot allowing) practically anywhere. - Metroid: You start off with just a meager blaster, and getting the Morph Ball allows you to get past the first few rooms. Getting the missiles and the morph ball bombs basically let you explore anywhere you wantthe rest of the items are needed so you can have a fighting chance of survival while you explore, although the Hi Jump Boots and Ice Beam are needed to access certain areas. - In Metroid II: Return of Samus and by extension its remake ( Metroid: Samus Returns), the big "I'm free!" moment is getting the Spider Ball upgrade which allows you to cling to crawl walls in Morph Ball form. The Space Jump is the point where you can go literally anywhere in the game. - Super Metroid: As shown in this video analysis by Game Maker's Toolkit, the game holds your hand a bit longer, as the game railroads you down a pretty linear path until you get the Ice Beam and Power Bombs and work your way back to your starting ship, essentially making a giant loop. From this point, not only can you revisit every area you've been previously, whole swathes of the map are now open to you to explore freely. - Jak and Daxter: - Jak II: Renegade starts off with the linear Prison level and drops Jak in the sprawling Haven City after escaping it. However he only has access to the Slums; periodically through the game he can pick up coloured passes that let him access new parts of the city, including the Port, the Markets, the Stadium and the Palace Grounds, each with their own linear levels connected to them. - Jak 3 starts in the metaphorical sandpit of Spargus before giving you the literal desert of the Wasteland. Eventually you return to Haven City as well, although it is much more linear than in the previous game due to the war. - Both Jak II and 3 feature this for the linear levels as well; after picking up a new gadget/ability and/or reaching a certain point in the story, you revisit an earlier level and get to explore new areas of it. For example, the second visit to the Strip Mine in II lets you use the JetBoard to explore the upper areas. - Castlevania: Symphony of the Night follows a linear progression through Dracula's castle. Once you get to \|\|the Inverted Castle\|\|, you have enough mobility that you can do the bosses and get the Plot Coupons needed to unlock the Final Bosses in any order you want. - Ori and the Will of the Wisps has a linear story up until the end of the first act, after which you can tackle the middle three dungeons in any order, in addition to performing countless sidequests. - In Psychonauts 2, the game's first act is railroaded and very linear. But once the casino mission elapses and \|\|Ford is brought to the Motherlobe\|\|, the areas you can go to completely widen up, unlocking two major areas in the physical world with tons of collectables to get and a few sidequests to do, and allowing for the next set of mental worlds to be done in a non-linear order. - Spyro 2: Ripto's Rage! is the only game in the original trilogy where this trope is in effect. About half of each of the three Homeworlds is available to you from the start, with Spyro needing to buy a skill from Moneybags in order to progress further. Conversely, the first and third games avert this by allowing you to go nearly anywhere in each hub world from the start, even the secret flight stage in Artisans you aren't supposed to know about until a dragon in Magic Crafters tells you about it. - In Kirby & the Amazing Mirror, you enter the main hub world after completing the tutorial level. Normally, you start off in Rainbow Route and end up in Moonlight Mansion, but once you hit the switch before approaching the first boss, King Golem, a mirror portal opens up in the hub world, allowing you to progress through the worlds in any order you please. This can be done before even fighting King Golem in the first place. - Professor Layton games typically follow a linear progression, and each area is available only after the story calls for it. However, the following two games do have a more open-ended progression, thus invoking this trope: - Professor Layton and the Azran Legacy: After Layton and company venture through Froenborg, Kodh and London (in that order) to investigate the mystery of the Azran civilization, while also dodging Targent's clutches more than once (and, in the process, exposing \|\|Detective Bloom\|\| as The Mole near the end of Chapter 3), they begin the quest for the Azran eggs across the world to unveil the ultimate secret of the aforementioned civilization. Thus, during Chapter 4, a whopping five major locations are unlocked and they can be visited in any order; and as they're cleared, new content is unlocked in the aforementioned three initial areas as well. - Layton's Mystery Journey: Katrielle and the Millionaires' Conspiracy: After Katrielle manages to solve her first four cases, she receives the following four at the same time, allowing her and her friends Ernest and Sherl to tackle them in any order. - Pikmin: The first two games after you get Blue Pikmin, as that will allow you to explore the aquatic portions of each area (they're not a problem for Olimar or any of the other playable captains, but they are for the Pikmin of the other colors except Pink). To a lesser extent, this also applies to Pikmin 3 once you get the Yellow Pikmin and rescue Charlie, since the game up to that point has been extremely linear and requires you to visit the first three areas in a specific order. - Chrono Trigger: After beating down Dalton the second time, the party finally reclaims the Epoch, which Dalton has modified to allow flight. From this point on you have the ability to access any part of the world from any point in time. - Dragon Quest: - Most games once you obtain a ship. - Dragon Quest II is the first game to include sailing. Your party obtain their ship when they reach Rippleport, whereupon you can finally explore the whole world rather than just the central landmass whatever you please. - Starting with Dragon Quest III, flight is possible and getting the ability to fly opens up the world further. - However, Dragon Quest IX doesn't give the player the ability to fly until after completing the main story, so the ship is the main mode of travel until then. - EarthBound Beginnings starts off fairly linear for the first few areas. Once you complete Duncan's Factory, you're given free reign to go anywhere you want provided you can make it through the battles, the only caveat being you can't fight the Final Boss until you sing the Eight Melodies to Queen Mary. - The Final Fantasy series: - Final Fantasy unusually has this at the halfway point (or if you're like most players, slightly before), when you get the Global Airship. Not that the sandbox in this game is so crowded... - Final Fantasy VI notably opens, then closes, then re-opens the sandbox a couple of times as your airship breaks down and is repaired. It finally re-opens for good after you get the second airship in the World of Ruin. - Final Fantasy VII: Disc 3. Also near the end of Disc 1 when you get the Tiny Bronco. - Final Fantasy VIII: Once the Missile Base, MD Level, defeating NORG, and the situation on Fisherman's Horizon are said and done with, you are free to pilot the Garden around. You can go everywhere except Esthar and the Bonus Dungeon in the ocean. In disc 3, you are given a proper airship and can truly go anywhere you please. - Final Fantasy IX: You can explore the ocean when you receive the Blue Narciss (ship) on Disc Two, then the whole world when you gain control of the Hilda Garde II (Global Airship). You upgrade your airship to the Invincible when you return from Terra at the start of Disc Four, but it does nothing that the Hilda Garde didn't. - Final Fantasy X: The game opens up a bit when you get to the Calm Lands, but really this happens when you get the airship permanently. - Final Fantasy XIII has No Sidepaths, No Exploration, No Freedom up to the point where Lightning's party reaches Pulse... in chapter 11 (out of 13). There's a living but utterly inaccessible cityscape around the straight path, which is the main reason most people accuse the game of being too linear (though the linearity is justified by the story). - Inverted in Final Fantasy XV, where the game starts as a sandbox and stays that way for 9 out of 15 chapters, but once you begin Chapter 10 the remainder of the game is entirely linear, and the world and characters have changed so irreversibly that the only way to get back to the sandbox part of the game is via time travel. - The Legend of Dragoon: There is a point near the end of the game where the party acquires a strange manta-ray creature called Coolan, who can fly them to any destination (although if you plan to go too far back through the game, have the relevant disc ready). - Octopath Traveler: After completing the first chapter of your chosen hero, you are free to explore the game's entire world, limited only by your ability to fight enemies. - Pokémon: - In most games, the sandbox opens to some extent when you can use Surf and Fly outside of battle. If you can use all the HMs, you've definitely reached this point. The Gen IV games make you see (not catch, thankfully) all of the Pokémon in the Sinnoh Pokédex before opening everything up, though. - Pokémon Gold and Silver are a notable example. The game is divided into two parts or quests: Johto and Kanto. The first quest is mostly linear, but by the time you reach the second one, you have all HMs, and roadblocks are almost nonexistent, giving you access to almost all of Kanto as soon as you set foot on it. To emphasize this, the Johto gyms are beaten mostly in a set order (at least the first five or so), while the Kanto gyms can be beaten in any order. The remakes emphasized the difference between the two quests even more by making the second half of Johto more linear than before, while keeping Kanto about the same (with the exception that one of its gyms can only be beaten last now). - Pokémon Sword and Shield is a Zig-Zagged example. The main quest of the game is linear, with the justification that you can't enter certain cities until you have a prerequisite number of badges. This restriction is lifted in the postgame. At the same time, however, players get access to the Wild Zone, a sandbox area, fairly early in the game. - Being a much more open game than previous entries in the series, Legends: Arceus give you rideable Pokemon to open up the areas for you. Basculegion allows you to swim, Sneasler allows you to climb sheer cliffs, and Hisuian Braviary allow you for full flight. - Pokémon Scarlet and Violet are a full Wide-Open Sandbox, but traversal is made more difficult by various terrain features. Completing parts of the Path Of The Titans quest, increases the power of Koraidon/Miraidon, allowing for a dash, two levels of jumping, swimming, climbing, and gliding. A smaller version also happens at the beginning, where the player is stuck in the first area of the southern province of Paldea until they reach the school and start up the Treasure Hunt. - Rave Heart: The player is mostly railroaded into new locations until they clear Kor's Facility, at which point the Atlas can take the party to almost any location in the galaxy to complete sidequests. - In Romancing SaGa, the world starts opening up once you finish your main character's Prologue; as you visit different places for the first time, they're marked on your map and become more easily accessible. - In Secret of Mana and Trials of Mana, gaining access to Flammie allows the party to travel through the air, providing access to previously unseen locations. - Shin Megami Tensei: - After the End, whenever relevant in the mainline games. This also tends to happen pretty early when it does. - In Persona 5, while your Player Character arrives in Tokyo on 4/9, the game proceeds on a linear path for the first 9 days. On 4/18, you are allowed to explore daytime Tokyo, do Confidants, and go to the Palace. Sojiro allows you to explore nighttime Yongen-Jaya on 4/25 and cuts you loose on nighttime Tokyo on 5/6, and you unlock Mementos the next day. - Shadow Hearts likes to open all the side quests when the Very Definitely Final Dungeon appears. - First game: After the Float rises. You can't go back to China, however. - Covenant: Pretty much anytime, really, but the sandbox truly opens once the Stone Circle activates. - From The New World: Once you step into the Gate. - Steambot Chronicles stops railroading you around when you finish the tournament. You could do some sidequests before, but were forced to remain in the same city or surrounding area until this point. - The point at which everything is available in Tales of Symphonia comes VERY late in the game. Specifically, you need to enter the final room but not use the warp that leads to the final boss. At that point you can leave and do all the quests. - Most of the Optional Bosses (And your final member) in Wild ARMs: Alter Code F require you to go halfway into the final dungeon, grab a specific item and leave. - Xenoblade Chronicles and its sequels usually start in a smaller area, where the player gets to get acclimated to the controls and sets up the characters and story. Once the plot truly gets underway, that's usually when the game gives you access to the first major area (Gaur Plains, Primodia, Gormotti, etc...) - Most Ys games start out linearly, gradually opening up the rest of the world, and usually providing you with a warp item to quick-travel to previous areas. Usually, there's at least one Point of No Return just before or at the beginning of the Final Dungeon. - In Baldur's Gate, the main opening happened immediately after Gorion was killed, with new maps unlocked as the chapters progress (it takes a fair while until you actually get to the eponymous city, for example). In the sequel, the moment you step out of Irenicus' dungeon (with a second opening after you step out of \|\|the Underdark\|\|). - Cyberpunk 2077 features the two-tiered variation of this trope: the sandbox is opened to you partially at the end of the (largely on-rails) Prologue, but you can only access about a quarter of Night City due to the police cordoning your native Watson district off from the rest of the city until the end of Act I. The rest of the sandbox is fully opened up at the beginning of Act II. - Diablo III puts you on a linear path during the Campaign mode, but once you complete it, Adventure mode is unlocked and you can go wherever you want on the game map, with sidequests and Bounties as incentives to explore Sanctuary. Several areas exclusive to Adventure mode open up, as well. This is averted in the console ports, where Adventure is available from the get go. - Dragon Age: - Dragon Age: Origins: After you leave Lothering, you're free to go to each of the four armies you need to recruit in any order you wish, as well as visit any other location on the world map. - Dragon Age II: The world isn't as open as that in Origins, but after meeting Varric in the very first cutscene of Act I, you're finally allowed to visit any of the locations within Kirkwall or its outskirts, whereas in the Prologue you were confined to linear progression. - Dragon Age: Inquisition, for all its trying to be more sandbox-ey than the previous installments, doesn't quite open up until you make yourself at home in Skyhold, about 15 hours in. It does let you out into the Hinterlands—the biggest open area in the entire game—early on (right after the tutorial and Haven), but higher-level locations don't appear on the Point-and-Click Map until Skyhold. - Throughout The Elder Scrolls series, this happens very early on compared to most other series. In most of the games, this happens right after character creation and escaping the Noob Cave tutorial level, which can be mere minutes into the game. Morrowind takes this to an extreme, releasing you into the world immediately after character creation. At that point, Beef Gates are the only thing preventing you from accessing absolutely everything. - Fallout: - Fallout 3 confines you to an underground vault, which serves as a tutorial level to teach you about combat and using your Pip-Boy, in the early part of the game. You eventually escape after the Vault falls into chaos, gaining access to the rest of the world. - Fallout: New Vegas employs a downplayed version: - The game attempts to confine you to find the man who tried to kill you in the early parts of the game with Beef Gates. But the game also leaves options open for more perceptive players to device a way to sneak past the Deathclaws at Quarry Junction or evade the Cazadors and Giant Radscorpions north of Goodsprings to get directly to Vegas. The game even has special dialogue from various NPCs if the player opts for this option. - The 188 Trading Post north of Novac is the point where the entirety of the map is within reach of the player, where previously Beef Gates and terrain obstacles kept you confined. - Fallout 4 starts you off in the year 2077, mere minutes from when the bombs start dropping, to create your character and assign your SPECIAL points. After awakening from cryostasis, your fight to leave the abandoned Vault serves as a combat tutorial. Once you're out of the Vault, the Commonwealth opens up to you. - In Knights of the Old Republic, once you get off Dantooine, you can go to whichever planet you want any time you want. \|\|Except, you know, Taris.\|\| - In Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords, you are finally permitted free roam of the galaxy once you reclaim the Ebon Hawk for the second time and get yourself off Telos. - Mass Effect: - Mass Effect hands you your ship and turns you loose after a couple hours of gameplay. Some people feel slightly intimidated by this. However, you still can't access all the star systems until you complete missions that unlock them, and there's no point at which you can freely go to any of the available planets; when you unlock the Very Definitely Final Dungeon, you lose the ability to go back to \|\|the Citadel\|\|. - Mass Effect 2 lets you loose once you finish Freedom's Progress and \|\|receive the Normandy SR-2\|\|, but you can't explore all of the galaxy until after Horizon, about a third of the way through the game. - Mass Effect 3 opens up the sandbox after escaping from Mars, but more and more the star systems are gradually unlocked after each Priority mission. - Might and Magic VI to IX had a gradual opening of sidequests and (to a somewhat lesser degree) locations over the course of the game, as well as an early moment when you can start crossing maps (VI arguably isn't an example, since that moment is when the game starts, but the other three have at least some degree of quest-finishing before that point). - OMORI railroads you into going to specific areas in the prologue and the first day, blocking you off from areas you don't need to go at the moment by explaining that your Player Character has a phobia of whatever is en route to undiscovered locations you don't need to visit yet, having an NPC Roadblock, or having \|\|dense, unnavigable fog\|\|. On the third day, after defeating the main bosses of Last Resort, you're able to go back to anywhere in Headspace that you previously visited, thus reopening a lot of sidequests that were temporarily closed off. - The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt starts out in White Orchard, a relatively small and simple tutorial map to get the player used to the basics. After killing the Royal Griffin and going to Vizima's Royal Palace, the game's main areas of Velen, Novigrad, and the Skellige Isles all open up, along with quests from the Hearts of Stone and Blood and Wine expansions. While the game encourages going through them in that order, the player can complete the arcs in whatever order they please so long as they can get through the Beef Gates and Cash Gates. - The "Diplomatic Relations" mission in Escape Velocity: Override is necessary for unlocking most of the non-human, non-Voinian mission strings. - In Galaxy on Fire 3D, you can travel to other star systems after the end of the (short) main storyline. In the sequel, you get access to most systems shortly after the first few missions, although some systems are only unlocked via the storylines (main plus 2 DLCs) or by purchasing the coordinates from certain people. Most systems are connected to the Portal Network, but some require the use of the Khador Drive (including the system you start in). - Endless Sky has two related openings: completing a tier 1 storyline note : as of May 2020 only the Free Worlds one is completed and implemented, and acquiring a jump drive. The tier 1 storyline unlocks the tier 2 storylines and many tier 2 missions, and the jump drive (which is most easily acquired towards the end of a tier 1 storyline, but can be acquired earlier) allows you to go to systems that aren't connected to human space with hyperlinks\|\| or wormholes\|\|. - Unlike other games in the series which unlock the sandbox from the get-go, Animal Crossing: New Horizons locks you to the area around Airport at the beginning as the player has no ability to cross the river that cuts through the island. The player can unlock the vaulting pole DIY recipe after getting Blathers to your island, which requires giving Tom Nook 5 bugs or fish to entice Blathers there. Eventually, Tom Nook will give you the ladder DIY recipe to climb cliff sides with, mainly so you can gather materials to build furniture to entice more villagers to come. Once you upgrade the Resident Services to a permanent building note : which requires the Museum and Nook's Cranny to be built and three additional villagers having moved in Tom Nook will offer to build bridges and inclines (with donations) in order to make island traversal easier without having to use the vaulting pole or ladder as much. - Jet Force Gemini: Initially, each of the three main playable characters has a predefined route to reach Mizar's Palace, and each planet or space vessel will only be accessible for a specific character. However, after they reach the central destination and Mizar is defeated for the first time, they will be able to explore any planet available up to that point as they initiate The Great Repair, which grants access to locations that were unavailable for their original visitors. - The 360 game Crackdown is already a GTA-ish sandbox game to start with. But once you've beaten all three gangs and finished the end-game you can roam freely around the city with all your powerups available and the option of re-starting any of your previous missions in a mode that feels much more like opening the sandbox than just having finished the game and being able to run around. There is also an DLC that adds God Mode, which has an option that also effectively gives you an opening the sandbox mode. - Grand Theft Auto games frequently have a form of this, as access to the full map is typically restricted until progressing to specific points in the story. - Grand Theft Auto III starts with you restricted to Portland Island, the easternmost island of Liberty City, as the bridge to Staunton Island and the rest of the city gets blown up by a bomb in the introduction and the underground tunnel is still under construction. Once you get to Staunton Island by a boat, the bridge is completed and that portion of the tunnel is opened, but access to Shoreside Vale is still blocked off as its lift bridge is out of commission and that part of the tunnel is sealed off for repairs. - At the start of Grand Theft Auto: Vice City you have several questlines to choose from and it's not immediately obvious which one is the "main" quest, giving you a good bit of freedom to play on the half of the map you have open. However, pretty soon you usurp the local mobster, the bridges are reopened to the other half of the city, and the full sandbox opens up with the ability to buy properties and doing missions at your choosing. - Played with in San Andreas. Just like the previous games, the other areas of the map are blocked off from the one you start in by closed off bridges and water. What's different is CJ doesn't have Super Drowning Skills like his predecessors and can cross the water no problem. The problem is as soon as you get on land you will get an automatic 4-star wanted level you can only remove after you have gone back to the areas you can explore. - As for the actual Opening The Sandbox moments, they include San Fierro and the rural counties Whetstone and Flint County to its south after "The Green Sabre" and Las Venturas and the rural areas Tierra Robada and Bone County to its north and west after "Yay Ka-Boom Boom." In addition, optional Safehouses in certain areas are locked from purchase until certain story quests are done even if you had access to them. These include Red County (the rural areas north and west of Los Santos) after "The Green Sabre," San Fierro until after "Are You Going To San Fierro," and Las Venturas after "Learning To Fly." - Grand Theft Auto IV confines you to Broker, Dukes, and Bohan at first due to an ongoing terrorism alert closing most of the bridges, and you unlock the other areas as you progress. Algonquin is unlocked when you meet Playboy X, and Alderney is unlocked after the bank robbery mission. - Grand Theft Auto V is an odd example. From the start, after the very first mission, the whole San Andreas map is open to you, but it's only after you unlock all three characters that you can fully explore and interact with the entire world. - Just Cause 2 starts you off raiding a military base and then a casino to teach the player the basics, then opens up the entire nation on Panau for you to explore. Many of the early Faction missions are disguised examples of what you can do in the sandbox. - Spore: After passing the first four objective-based levels, you are free to explore and colonize the universe as you see fit. - Endless Ocean 2: Adventures of the Deep: Once you advance the plot past an area which has some sort of limitation imposed on you (the freezing seas, the abyssal trench, etc.), you are provided with an item which allows you to explore them at your leisure. - Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon: The tutorial and prologue mission are entirely linear and confine you to the southwest corner of the map. Only afterwards do you get to explore. - Fuel: New Zones are unlocked as you accumulate Career Stars. - Starbound: Once your ship's FTL drive is repaired, you're free to go anywhere. - Saints Row: Downplayed in the original. While you can go anywhere and take on any open-world activity in Stilwater from the moment you gain control of Playa, there are hardly any incentives to leave the eponymous neighborhood until you've completed the first few missions for the gang and secured its hold on the Row. It's only after that is done that you are given story missions that take you to other 'hoods, giving Playa an in-story motivation to explore the entire sandbox.	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/OpeningTheSandbox
Title Sequence - TV Tropes A title sequence is a short section of a piece of video media that serves to show the viewer the name of the title. It is the video equivalent of the illustration & byline of a book cover. This sequence will be at the beginning of the media, generally after The Teaser and it lets the viewers know what show they are watching. The title sequence is also called the "Opening Credits" or "Opening Sequence", though, strictly speaking, they do not have to include any actual credits. They always display the title of the program in a logo or specific font. A Theme Tune is commonly played during full length sequences while in short sequences a leitmotif or musical sting is played. In syndication, the title sequence is often abbreviated to leave more time for commercials. That has become common for first-run shows as well. Although most shows modify the title sequence to reflect the current cast lineup when it involves clips of the characters, Anime is especially known for doing it at least once and sometimes more within a 26-episode run to reflect changes or additions to the main cast that follow the plot. This is often complete with a new theme song each time. Television title sequences are usually made by a specialist production company outside the one that is actually producing the show. Babylon 5 is a rare exception whose production crew created the show's five Title Sequences entirely in-house. Although it is commonly associated with television, these sequences can also be found in films, web content and video games. An example of a well known title sequence in film are those from the James Bond franchise that start once the Action Prologue concludes via the iconic Bond Gun Barrel shot. An example from a video game are those in the Grand Theft Auto franchise. Those began in the 2nd game with a Full Motion Video sequence, to stencil cutout pictures of locations & people in GTA 3, San Andreas & Vice City before moving to an immersive in-game cinematic style in the 4th and 5th games in the series. <!—index—>	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/OpeningCredits
Open the Door and See All the People - TV Tropes Roving packs of Zeus' Witnesses will take the starch out of the hardiest of Romans. The scene where someone at home alone hears a knock and innocently opens the front door (frequently naked, or wearing boxers or something skimpy) and there's a raging / screaming / lusting / photographing mob on the other side. Often the homeowner then slams the door and looks around with shock. The character doesn't have to be nude — any surprise mob will do — but frequently is, simply because Naked People Are Funny. In those cases, it's related to Naked First Impression and Birthday Suit Surprise Party, and may result in a Naked Freak-Out. Inverted trope of Naked People Trapped Outside. Contrast Pushed in Front of the Audience. The mob may also be The Freelance Shame Squad. If the character is particularly (in)famous at the moment, it may be a waiting Media Scrum. The trope name comes from the second line of the Nursery Rhyme "Here's The Church, Here's The Steeple". ## Examples: - In the Facing the Future Series, after Jack accidentally blacked out half of Amity Park, he was greeted by an angry mob on the front stoop, which according to him, is a common occurrence. - In the Buffy the Vampire Slayer and The West Wing crossover The Morning After Xander \|\|drunkenly marries the President's Daughter and is awoken with an amnesiac hangover by knocking on the door, only to dumbly stare at the mob of Paparazzi taking his picture starkers\|\|. "You know, I've had this nightmare before," He muttered before pinching himself and realising he was actually awake. - In My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic fic Sharing the Night, at the beginning of Chapter 6 when word gets out that Twilight is now an alicorn and Spike tells her that a ton of ponies want to petition her: You dont measure ponies by the ton, Spike, Twilight chided as she made her way to the front door of the library. The most common collective noun is herd, but theres alsoh Celestia, that is a ton of ponies. - In Hercules, the titular hero tries to leave his house only to find a Groupie Brigade at the front door, trampling him and causing him to hide behind a curtain indoors until Phil tricks them into leaving. - In The Hunchback of Notre Dame, once Esmeralda finds herself on the run from Frollo, she takes refuge inside the titular cathedral. When she thinks it's safe to leave, she opens the door to find soldiers waiting for her (with the commander even revealing Frollo has ordered guards to be at every door), and slams it to avoid being detected. - Shrek: When Shrek finds various fairy-tale creatures invading his house and tries to throw them out, he opens his door to find a whole swarm of them having set up camp in his swamp after being exiled there by Lord Farquaad. Donkey: Hey, don't look at me. I didn't invite them. Pinocchio: Well, gosh, none of us were "invited". We were forced to come here. - At the end of The Sword in the Stone, after inadvertently being crowned king by virtue of pulling out the title blade, Wart is sitting alone in the throne room of a castle, feeling way out of his depth. So he decides to just run away, however there's no escape because outside each door he opens are huge crowds chanting "Hail King Arthur!" and "Long live the king!", blowing him back like a hurricane. - Beyond the Lights: After spending a weekend off the grid together, pop star Noni opens the door to the cabana she and her former bodyguard/police officer boyfriend Kaz are staying at only to be met with a crowd of paparazzi who want to know just who Kaz is and the nature of their relationship. - Big Trouble in Little China: Jack Burton opens a door and sees a mob of angry-looking mooks on the other side. He immediately slams the door shut, then turns to face the rest of the group with him. That said, considering the fact he has a machine gun, he doesn't have much trouble just shooting most of them as they try to hack the door down. Jack: We may be trapped. - This happens to the General Ripper from Day of the Dead (1985). Except it's Zombies. - Happens when Nick rides the elevator through Madison Square Garden during the baby-Zilla outbreak in Godzilla (1998). It opens on a random floor to reveal three of the monsters rifling through popcorn before stopping to stare at Nick hungrily. Nick deadpans "Wrong floor" and quickly shuts the doors again. - Inverted in Mambo Italiano, when the family of the main character step out of the confession booths, the parents ready to proudly stand by their gay son in front of the entire congregation — but they find the church empty. - Monty Python's Life of Brian does it with Male Frontal Nudity, courtesy of Graham Chapman. The crowd of locals they got to fill in as the crowd is audibly shocked when they first see him. - In Notting Hill, after movie star Anna Scott spends the night at Will's, he opens his front door to a Paparazzi mob. Then Anna comes downstairs wearing only a shirt, wanting to know what Will just's seen outside. Before he can stop her, she opens the door to the Paparazzi. Then along comes Spike wearing only a pair of y-fronts, he opens the door as well, but actually finds it all rather exciting, he poses, flexes his muscles and blows a kiss before heading back inside. He then checks his scruffy, pot bellied appearance in a mirror and is perfectly pleased with it. - Near the beginning of Spice World, Clifford tells the Spice Girls there aren't any fans outside: he then kicks the door open to reveal a huge screaming mob. - Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope. Han Solo running toward the room-fulla-stormtroopers (but only in the Special Edition). - St Trinians, near the end. Reporters are at the school and Colin Firth's character stands nude at the window of the headmistress' room. - In Yankee Doodle Dandy, a young George M. Cohan performs in one of his family's plays and his character boasts "I can lick any kid my size". After the show, George opens the stage door and is greeted see a mob of boys who saw his performance and are all too eager to call his bluff. - Fighting Fantasy have a habit of doing this to you in several books. Siege of Sardath have you suddenly entering a mess hall full of hostile Dark Elves, Legend of Zagor can have you beset by hordes of orcs while you enter a banquet hall, while Rebel Planet throws you into a city street full of hostile Arcadian aliens after you escaped the Arcadian Supercomputer Building. - In Bobby Darin's "Splish Splash", the narrator walks out of his bathroom smack into a dance party. - In Heavy Rain, after Ethan's son is kidnapped by the Origami Killer, a mob of reporters shows up outside his door almost immediately. - The first elevator that the player character takes in System Shock delivers him to a room with half a dozen mutants standing around. When the doors open, they rush him. - In Daughter for Dessert, just when it looks like the grand reopening of the diner is a bust, the group notices that theres a typo on the marketing flyers: they accidentally wrote that the diner will open at 9:00 instead of 6:00. And when they open the door at 9, a crowd of customers is outside waiting to be served. - In an early episode of the Disney revamp of Doug, Doug discovered that his new middle school (which had been constructed over the summer) wasn't quite finished as he went into a bathroom stall and began to unzip only to find that he was now standing on stage in the school auditorium filled with kids. When he pointed this out to a construction worker, the construction worker merely replied, "We're working on it." - Fairly OddParents episode "Fairly Odd Baby" had Timmy finishing a shower to find out all his fairy friends are in the bathroom getting ready for Cosmo and Wanda's baby shower (which the latter is apparently semi-literal). - The Family Guy episode "Boys Do Cry" has the Griffins finding a large mob on their lawn after Stewie is mistaken for being possessed. - Parodied on Kaeloo: In one episode, Stumpy opens the door and finds a huge mob of people who throw stuff at him... for no particular reason. He then asks why all those people are outside his door. - The Simpsons: - In "Homer Badman", Homer finds a mob of female protesters on his lawn when he's accused of sexual harassment. - In "The Springfield Files", immediately after Lisa argues that the townspeople aren't going to take three seconds of blurry video as proof that Homer met an alien, Homer opens the door to find half the town on his lawn. - In "Homer's Triple Bypass", Dr. Nick's meeting with the Simpsons (prior to performing heart surgery on Homer) ends with him opening the door to find a crowd of reporters waiting for him, demanding to know "What did you do with the bodies?!" Dr. Nick: You know, it's such a nice day that I think I'll leave through the window. - In "Bart's Comet", a comet is on a collision course with Springfield, and Ned opens his bomb shelter door to see a mob of armed townspeople looking to commandeer it. Ned: Well, howdilly-doodily, neighbors. Shouldn't you be in your shelter-inis by now? Moe: We have't got "shelter-inis". We want in yours! - One episode of South Park parodies Life of Brian but with Butters and it's set in Mexico.	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/OpenTheDoorAndSeeAllThePeople
Opera - TV Tropes Opera legend Maria Callas in the supreme diva role, Norma "Opera is when a guy gets stabbed and instead of bleeding, he sings." — Ed Gardner Opera has been around since the end of the 16th century and is still going strong. Major opera composers include Mozart, George Frederic Handel, Giuseppe Verdi, Gioachino Rossini, Richard Wagner, Giacomo Puccini and Richard Strauss, though there are, of course, many more. The public perception of the difference between opera and The Musical is that musical theatre has breaks for spoken dialogue, whereas opera is "sung through", alternating between "recitative" (which is when the plot happens and is typically sung in a less-formal style) and "arias" (big numbers where someone has a therapy session onstage). While not a bad approximation, it's not always true. Because opera tended to be the theatrical equivalent of a Doorstopper, someone asked why it couldn't just be abridged by turning the recitative into dialogue; this form was typically called "operetta" (to oversimplify the matter), and the only thing you have to add to that to get a modern musical is a greater inclusion of dance. This means there are in fact operas that have spoken dialogue, like The Magic Flute and Carmen. Likewise, there are musicals that have "regressed" back to including recitative; among these Sung Through Musicals are Les Misérables and Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, and others are nearly so like The Phantom of the Opera and RENT (which to a certain extent reserves spoken dialogue for its Wham Lines!). The actual line between musicals and opera is blurry and kind of technical, but the short of it is that opera doesn't use electronic sound equipment and musicals typically need better actors than singers. Stephen Sondheim was heard to claim, "I really think that when something plays in Broadway it's a musical, and when it plays in an opera house it's opera. That's it." note : Although cynical musicologists might say that he arrived at that definition to justify his own musicals being performed in opera houses. Common Knowledge also insists that opera is always a tragedy. This is also not true; the opera genre is as varied as any other. Many operas are comedies — The Barber of Seville and The Marriage of Figaro are basically RomComs, just to give two examples — and even the serious ones tend to have at least some humorous parts. In fact, during the Baroque and Classical periods, operas were generally expected to have happy endings; the concept of tragic operas only became popular during the Romantic period. And while some operas have incredibly well-crafted lyrics and story lines that are true works of art, others are... not quite as brilliant. That said, the opera genre is known for featuring many a work with extremely drawn-out texts focusing on a single (often trivial) theme. As a result, opera texts (libretti) are often mocked, and in many cases it's mainly the quality of the music that makes an opera work, along with the same thing you need for any theatrical production: committed performers bringing the art form to life on stage. Movies have car chases, rock songs have guitar solos, and operas have death-arias (the soprano [female lead] frequently dies). In fact, both Anna Russell and B.J. Ward (in her one-woman show, Stand-Up Opera) have made entire comedy routines of poking fun at opera tropes. Nowadays we tend to think of operas as high-falutin' fare for the nobs and snobs. Back in the 18th, 19th, and early 20th centuries, though, opera was popular music, to the point that the opening night audience was chock-full of transcriptionists. And it didn't take long for them to produce a saleable product: Rossini once said that by the time he left the opera house for home at the end of opening night, hawkers would be lined up on the street selling copies of the music and lyrics of his arias to those who couldn't afford a ticket. (Yes, this means that media piracy and its critics are Older Than Radio.) Several modern films and other works have been created as operas (that is, entirely consisting of sung dialogue). The most famous "serious" opera film is probably The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, starring Catherine Deneuve. A very modern example is Repo! The Genetic Opera, which transplants the style into industrial sci-fi horror. The term Rock Opera is thrown around at times for a sub-genre of the themed Concept Album, but most "rock operas" are not produced for the stage (with an exception or two). The nearest thing to a modern successor to opera is Broadway-style Musical Theater. Indeed, musicals can trace their origins to opera through the operatic subgenre of operetta or light opera, which, as its name implies, is light in terms of subject matter (i.e. it's funny) and music, and often feature a good deal more plain dialogue than ordinary operas. The works of Gilbert and Sullivan are generally considered transitional, as while they considered their works to be comic operas, they would probably be called musicals if produced today; many would argue that musicals are basically the genre of theatre launched by G&S. Used in movies and TV shows to add a touch of class. Or just something artsy. Or for the cast to get bored and fall asleep, which is something that can't be done (too loud). Not to be confused with the Cantata, though at least one cantata, Johann Sebastian Bach's Coffee Cantata, can be considered a miniature comic opera according to The Other Wiki. The Oratorio is an intermediate form between the cantata and an opera, being a sung musical work that is long, generally divided into acts, and has recognizable characters interacting to tell a story, but not involving any acting of any significance; they were historically written for circumstances in which opera was infeasible or inappropriate (for being too vulgar), typically religious venues, or when the composer couldn't convince a patron to let him write an opera (which is much more expensive; this cost factor drove George Frederic Handel's prodigious output of oratorios late in his career, as he had previously focused on opera, but the English public's tastes had shifted away from that form). See also Classical Music, of which most opera is a subgenre. For Dario Argento's film titled Opera, see Opera (1987). ## Tropes typical of opera: - Actor Shipping: When two singers perform together frequently enough, this can happen, especially if they have wonderful chemistry together. Some examples include: - Anna Netrebko and Rolando Villazón - Luciano Pavarotti and Mirella Freni - Renata Tebaldi and Mario Del Monaco - Franco Corelli and Birgit Nilsson; also, Corelli with Freni, after their amazing performances of Gounod's Romeo et Juliette. - Maria Callas and Giuseppe Di Stefano - Juan Diego Flórez and Diana Damrau - Montserrat Caballé and José Carreras - Roberto Alagna and Elina Garanca - The Ur-Example of this, at New York's celebrated Metropolitan Opera Company note : the opera house Ronny takes Loretta to in Moonstruck, it's a world-renowned establishment with a reputation for phenomenal singers and stunning artistic productions at least, was Enrico Caruso and Geraldine Farrar, who sang frequent performances of Carmen, Tosca, and Manon in the first two decades of the 20th century and participated in the Met's first Madame Butterfly in 1907. - Soprano Lina Cavalieri probably inspired this with Caruso as well; they had great chemistry onstage and once during a Met performance of Giordano's Fedora she gave him an off-script Big Damn Kiss that went viral with endless speculation — method acting or were they....? — and became known as the first authentic stage kiss. note : Here's a review of their performances that doesn't mention the kiss, but does say they had to repeat the entire last scene of the second act! - In the 1930s, Kirsten Flagstad and Lauritz Melchior also became household names for their joint performances of Wagner's music dramas. - An Aesop: - Lampshaded in Donizetti's Don Pasquale - And in Stravinsky's A Rake's Progress - And in Rossini's Il Turco in Italia - In Mozart's Don Giovanni, one was apparently enforced. (Opinions vary wildly on whether it's better when performed with or without it.) - All There in the Manual: Without a program, good luck trying to understand what's going on on stage. Many modern opera houses (Especially in Germany) show the text right above the stage, and some fancy opera houses even have a small screen on the back of the seats with the text in several selectable languages. Performing opera in translation has disadvantages too. It's often just as hard to make out the words, and when you can the effect isn't always what it might be. For example, to an English ear Tosca may sound dramatic when she sings 'Muori! Muori! Muori! ... È morto.' but translated into English this becomes 'Die! Die! Die! ... He's dead.' 'Nuff said. - All Musicals Are Adaptations: Opera gets this from both sides. Many operas are adaptations of existing works, and a number have been adapted into modern musicals. - At the Opera Tonight: Naturally! If your characters are looking for a classy evening out, it doesn't get much classier. - Blood-Splattered Wedding Dress: Poor, poor \|\|Lucia di Lammermoor.\|\| In many modern productions of La Traviata this happens with Violetta's nightgown for extra realism (she's got TB). - Brawn Hilda: A rather unfortunate stereotype of opera singers (as in the saying, "It ain't over till the fat lady sings"). Although it's usually very exaggerated, it does have a degree of Truth in Television since the vocal pipes necessary to support a huge operatic voice often go along with a larger frame. The trope may have originated from Wagner's Die Walküre, note : Specifically, the conclusion, where she's put in suspended animation and surrounded by fire. where the main character, Brünnhilde, is often played by an imposing woman. (Wagner's music has a lot of long, sustained phrases and singing those develops back and shoulder muscles.) Though if you think that means opera singers are unattractive, think again. - If you're watching work from the 17th or 18th century (where opera houses and orchestras were much smaller) this is usually averted, if not sometimes inverted; soubrette sopranos who play roles like Despina note : in Mozart's Cosi Fan Tutte or Zerlina note : in Mozart's Don Giovanni are usually quite small women, cast for their girlish vocal instrument. Women in 'trouser roles' (playing a boy) in these operas are likewise often petite. - Sexy, beautiful male and female singers date back to the earliest days. The De Rezske brothers were both considered extremely attractive note : especially Jean, who sang tenor; Edouard, who sang bass, was also considered a superb actor, as was soprano Geraldine Farrar (no, not that one). Soprano Lina Cavalieri was literally known as "The World's Most Beautiful Woman". Coloratura [extremely high vocal range] Lily Pons◊ was barely five feet tall and had a voice like a crystal canary, and basso Ezio Pinza◊, a contemporary of hers, let audiences know why the ladies wanted to be with Don Giovanni. More recently, heroic tenor Franco Corelli was so drop dead gorgeous director Luchino Visconti made a play for him. (Corelli was straight though. Besides being married, he had a longtime affair with Lisa della Casa, and later with Teresa Żylis-Gara, neither of whom were so bad themselves. note : In an interview with Stefan Zucker for one of his Revolutions in Singing books, Corelli said in his elder years the music in his mind wasn't opera themes, but Teresa having orgasms. - The "Brawn Hilda" image is probably based on Kirsten Flagstad, due to her having performed in full costume the wild "Ho-jo-to-ho!" chant from The Valkyrie in several 1940s films. Kirsten wasn't fat, just powerfully built like an Amazon, partly from the breath control needed for Wagnerian singing. - A lot of modern opera singers are quite beautiful in voice and in appearance, too. The late Russian bass-baritone Dmitri Hvorostovsky was one of People magazine's "50 Most Beautiful People" in 1991, a rare pop-culture distinction for an opera singer. - Classical Mythology: Baroque (1601-1750) operas tended to draw on these for their plots. - Colorblind Casting: In the world of opera, your race and appearance don't matter to the public in the least. Even when the character being played is of a very specific nationality. It is perfectly normal for any race to play any other onstage. note : Today's sensibilities are causing a re-examination of this attitude, but it's admittedly complex. For example, the world famous black American soprano, Leontyne Price, was very popular in the role of the Ethiopian princess, Aida. But she played many other roles of various nationalities and races through the years, including Tosca (Italian), Madame Butterfly (Japanese) and Leonora in Il Trovatore (Spanish). note : She was asked to make her Metropolitan Opera debut as Aida, but was advised to turn it down because she would be only singing Aida the rest of her life. The conductor Peter Herman Adler, recognizing Price's potential, said, "Leontyne is to be a great artist. When she makes her debut at the Met, she must do it as a lady, not a slave." She was cast as Leonora in Il Trovatore instead, with Franco Corelli also making his Metropolitan debut as Manrico. The show ended with a 42-minute ovation. - This didn't mean that black artists had an easy time of it getting hired by the great American opera houses. As with artists like Josephine Baker, they were much more readily accepted in Europe. Contralto Marian Anderson was the first black person to sing at the Metropolitan, in 1955. The first black man was Robert Mc Ferrin in the same year. Both were brought in by General Manager Rudolf Bing. An Austrian Jew and virulent anti-Nazi, Bing made a point of hiring qualified black artists whenever possible. note : Bing used to get in-your-face about American racism. When the company toured the South, he very publicly escorted Leontyne Price to exclusive high-class events and restaurants. He once threw his own cast a welcoming party when the group was in Washington DC, because he'd been advised that ballerina Janet Collins couldn't come to the official one. - This can, occasionally, result in Black Vikings. Quite literally even, when it is a production of Wagner. - Age doesn't matter either. Fifty-year-old singers have played fourteen-year-olds and gotten away with it. All they want is your voice and acting ability. - Size and body shape are especially ignored in opera. As described in Brawn Hilda above, opera requires a big voice, especially considering that many of the works were written before microphones and other forms of amplification had been invented—singers had to hit the back of the opera house on their own. A bigger voice might naturally result from a bigger body (the larger the frame, the larger the lungs and diaphragm/back and shoulder muscles, and thus the larger the sound). Ergo, it's more than likely to see the Delicate and Sickly lead, such as La Bohème's Mimi—a frail, impoverished girl dying of tuberculosis who might be expected to be slight and sickly—or Violetta from La traviata—a courtesan who has just recovered from a case of TB and later suffers and dies from another attack of it—played by a heavyset woman. - One notable exception is Porgy and Bess, in which all the main roles are African-American and are always performed by black singers. George Gershwin was adamantly opposed to the use of Blackface in his opera, even turning down an opportunity to have it premiered at the Met(!) for that reason note : This was only true for its American premiere, when it first debuted in Europe at the Royal Danish Theatre in 1943, the all white cast performed in blackface. - Creator Killer: Even for a great success, William Tell did this to Gioachino Rossini. - And on the subject of Rossini, Constantino Dall'Argine did a version of The Barber of Seville that was first performed two days before Rossini died. History repeated itself and Dall'Argine's work disappeared forever. - Leon Kirchner had his operatic career destroyed from the get-go, where Lily gave one of the quickest bailouts in operatic history. (He still thought it was his best work.) - Crosscast Role: There are many "trouser roles" for women playing men and several "skirt roles" for men playing women. In the Baroque period (Opera's earliest century-and-a-half), especially in those areas where the pope's influence was strongest such as Rome, female roles were often played by male castrati. (And, yes, a castrato is exactly what you think it is.) - Dawson Casting: Due to the physical requirements and amount of training involved, teenage characters like Cio-Cio-San (Madama Butterfly) or Salome are almost always portrayed by singers in their twenties or older. And teenage boys are generally played by adult women, usually mezzo-sopranos [somewhat deeper voice, think Billie Eilish or Madonna]. Sometimes averted with less demanding roles such as Barbarino from The Marriage of Figaro, who is occasionally played by a high-school aged singer. - Epic Instrumental Opener: Except that in Opera-ese we call it an overture. - Everyone Is Jesus in Purgatory: Individual operas may very well be subject to this, but the entire form of Opera is actually a product of this. In attempting to revive classical Greek plays to the theatre of the Renaissance era, interested scholars decided that the Greek plays were meant to be sung in their entirety. New works followed suit, and the rest is history. - This once got certain composers in trouble, Jean Baptiste Lully had to briefly end his partnership with his usual Librettist, Philippe Quinault, when the Opera Isis, about Hera's wrath against Zeus's latest mistress Io, was interpreted by the members of Louis XIV's court as an allegory for the cat fight between two of the King's mistresses. - Evil Sounds Deep: Usually. Although this is subverted far more often than you'd think. There are many good guy low voice-ers (Figaro, Hamlet, Billy Budd, Cenerentola, and Rosina par example) and more than one high voiced baddy (Duke of Mantua, Queen of the Night, Pinkerton and Turandot to name a few) in operatic repetoire. However, it is generally safe to guess that the baritone is not who you should be rooting for. David Merrill: You're the rat again, aren't you, Daddy? Robert Merrill, baritone: The baritone is always the rat, my boy. - The darker and heavier the voice, the meaner and nastier the villain. - In the Baroque period, heroic roles were often written for castrati, whose unbroken voices were synonymous with virtue and heroism on the opera stage. The broken normal male voice was usually assigned to villains or servants. - A lament of contraltos (the lowest and darkest of female voices — think Patti Smith) is that contralto roles are always either "bitches, britches, or witches". - Farce: The plot of many comic operas. There's even a whole genre called "opera buffa" (to distinguish it from "opera seria"). Notable examples are The Marriage of Figaro, The Barber of Seville, and L'Elisir d'Amore [Love Potion], all of which are screamingly funny provided the cast is on their toes. - Femme Fatale: All the best diva roles. Special mention goes to Violetta from La Traviata. - Other examples include: - Carmen from Bizet's Carmen - Dalila from Saint-Saëns' Samson et Dalila - The Foreign Princess from Dvorak's Rusalka - Thaïs from Massenet's Thaïs - Flame War: For all the veneer of civilisation in the genre, opera enthusiasts can get just as vicious in defense of their favourite singers and composers as any other fans. Just go have a look at the comments on any opera clip on YouTube. Or Google Groups (used to be Usenet) rec.music.opera, or join the Listserv mailing list Opera-L. Fighting will branch into nasty personal insults, sometimes with the contestants switching languages to show off their intellectual prowess. - Gender Bender: Not only are many male roles played by women, but many of these men end up crossdressing. - Gorgeous Period Dress Pretty much every traditional opera production has really beautiful costuming. Such as this◊ and this◊. Even non-traditional productions can look pretty◊ spiffy◊. - Depending on the budget of the production, this occasionally branches into some really unbelievable Costume Porn. Like here◊ or here◊. - This production of an opera about Elizabeth I. - Gratuitous Foreign Language: As mentioned above, it's traditional for operas to be performed in their original language rather than translated. - Even when he lived in London, most of Handel's operas were composed for Italian libretti, and it could be said Handel stunted the development of English opera with the popularity of his Italian works. When London's taste for Italian opera waned, he switched to composing oratorios in English rather than opera. - Groin Attack: In the early days of opera, it was considered improper for women to appear on stage, but there were still treble singers. This was because if a prepubescent boy had a good singing voice, a simple operation could enable him to preserve it permanently into adulthood. Yes, "castrato" means exactly what you think it does. At the time, they often became wildly successful superstars, but the practice fell out of favor by the mid-1800s if not before then; since that time, parts written for castrati have generally been either given to counter-tenors or turned into "trouser roles" for a female soprano (if the role is male) or given to sopranos (if the role is female). - Here's a recording of a real castrato, Alessandro Moreschi. This recording does not do him justice by a long shot, but you can get the idea. note : The sobs and 'hiccup' sounds were part of the aesthetic of his time, all singers did that. By the way, he lived a long happy life, even got married and adopted kids. - Here's a modern 'castrato' voice, Cesare Santos. The very rare 'natural castrato' is a guy whose voice never changes at puberty. With the modern recording quality it is easier to tell what they really sounded like. - Happily Ever After: Despite the stereotype of all Operas having a tragic or at least bittersweet endings, though especially common in Romantic Opera, there are plenty that end with the main leads riding off into the sunset, or lifted up into the heavens if were talking about a mythological work. - The Heckler: Not even opera is immune from a tough audience; Milan's La Scala, one of the most presitigous opera houses in the world, is infamous for its loggionisti (fans in the cheap seats for whom opera is Serious Business) who will loudly boo any singer who doesn't meet their exacting standards. Being able to face down their criticism has been considered a baptism by fire for many a singer. - Early in his career, Enrico Caruso, widely considered "the greatest singer in the world" for his time (and still one of the most highly respected), was so widely razzed in his home town (he neglected to hire a claque, a group of shills in the audience to cheer for him, as was the common practice at the time) that he swore never to sing in Naples again and famously said he would only come back there to eat spaghetti. - "I Am" Song: "Mi chiamano Mimì" [My name is Mimi], "Io son l'umile ancella" [I am the humble handmaid], "Largo al factotum della città" [Make way for the jack-of-all-trades of the city] among others... - Iconic Outfit: A shrieking Brawn Hilda in armor and a viking helmet brandishing a spear. (She is a flanderized version of Brünnhilde from The Ring of the Nibelung, and doesn't actually appear in any modern productions; see Shallow Parody.) - Incredibly Long Note: This and this, for starters. In fact, some famous singers like Birgit Nilsson & Franco Corelli made it a friendly sport over who'd black out first from holding that high C in Turandot. Everyone else peed in excitement, of course. Expect this trope (especially of the soft-but-incredibly-held-out variety) when you see Montserrat Caballé on the cast list or album notes. - The "Vittoria!" from Tosca is also a good example. See attached. - Siegmund's cry of "Wälse!" in Die Walküre is a favorite of Wagnerian tenors. - "Di Quella Pira" from Verdi's Il trovatore has been troublesome for almost every tenor who has played Manrico. He is expected (pretty much forced) to end it on a very long and hard high C (pretty ridiculous considering that note isn't in Verdi's original score.) most tenors take the key down a half or whole step and sing either a high B or Bb. And the fact that Manrico is usually played by a dramatic tenor [somewhat heavier voice, often with a slightly lower range] doesn't help. Franco Corelli, however, was a legend at this and usually sang it in the original key topped with a thrilling high C. See for yourself "here" - The ever famous Bell Song (L'air des clochettes) from Act II of Lakmé, also known as "Où va la jeune hindoue?" [Where is the young Hindu girl going?]. Not only is it incredibly challenging, but it's a favourite recital piece for coloratura sopranos. Check it out right here. - Large Ham: Opera has long been full of hammy divas and divos (many roles, and perhaps the very nature of Romantic opera, lend themselves to this), though singers and productions seem to be averting this trope more and more these days, partly thanks to speakers making it no longer necessary to have No Indoor Voice. (Traditional opera houses are designed for maximum acoustics so even quiet vocals can be heard clearly no matter where you're sitting.) - Special mention to Escamillo from Carmen there's no larger ham than a bullfighter who sings the famous Toreador's Song. - A lot of Mozart's bass or baritone roles, Figaro and Don Giovanni especially. - Leitmotif: Wagner commentator Hans von Wolzogen is the Trope Namer, although the concept predated Wagner by quite a while - Man of a Thousand Voices: Otherwise known as 'character singers'. Singers who specialise in art songs (as opposed to opera only) can also modulate their voice on demand. - Massive Multiplayer Ensemble Number: Not omnipresent, particularly given how difficult it is to write one. But Lucia di Lammermoor and The Marriage of Figaro have especially notable ones, a sextet and septet respectively. There are several in Pippo Flora's I Promessi Sposi [The Betrothed Spouses], primarily led by villains or groups of villains. - Pretty much a given in bel canto or early Verdi. Almost each act would end in a huge cabaletta [song with a repeated refrain, often an opportunity for showing off] for the main characters and a chorus. Frequently the main female character (usually a soprano) will interpolate a high note at the end of these, especially Maria Callas, famous for her gigantic high Eb at the end of the Triumphal Scene in Verdi's Aida. Few in their right mind would do this today, although Adelaide Negri gave it a go in 1990. - Melismatic Vocals: Or 'coloratura'. Bread-and-butter for ALL voice, but ideally for bel canto roles. A huge plus if you have a large voice ( dramatic coloratura) - although having a large voice and a dramatic voice is not necessarily the same thing. - Lampshaded gloriously in most Baroque operas. Expect the vocal line to fall when singing about sadness or despair, rise up when singing about glory, anger and war, and have crazy roulades when singing about being in love (as in "adrift in a sea of love"). - The Musical: Several operas have been adapted into musicals. Examples include: - Mysterious Waif: Melisande from Debussy's Pelleas et Melisande. - Narm Charm: Detractors will insist that Opera is unrealistic and hammy and pompous and overwrought and more than a little silly and that it gets taken way too seriously by the fanbase. The fanbase will loudly proclaim to anyone who will listen that that's the point. - One-Hit Wonder: Pietro Mascagni and Ruggero Leoncavallo fall into this category respectively with Cavalleria Rusticana and Pagliacci, shorter works which are often performed together. Composers who only wrote one opera include: - Béla Bartók: Duke Bluebeard's Castle - Ludwig van Beethoven: Fidelio - Paul Dukas: Ariane et Barbe-bleue (three other operas are now lost) - Scott Joplin: Treemonisha (an earlier opera A Guest of Honor is now lost) - Franz Liszt: Don Sanche—and it was a collaborative effort written, no less, when he was in his teens. - Jean Sibelius: The Maiden in the Tower, composed to a Swedish libretto, first performed in Helsinki. - Claude Debussy: Pelléas et Mélisande - Power Echoes: The Valkyries from Die Walküre were originally conceived as singing their entrance war-cry off-stage into actual megaphones ('singing trumpets'). Played straight in Siegfried with the dragon. - Production Posse: - Practically every opera by Vincenzo Bellini that you will see (except his last, I Puritani) has a libretto by Felice Romani. - Of his 16 operas, Richard Strauss composed seven of them to librettos by Hugo von Hofmannstal. - Mozart worked with many librettists but his partnership with Lorenzo da Ponte produced the Big Three of The Marriage of Figaro, Don Giovanni and Così fan tutte amongst many others - A good majority of Giacomo Puccini's operas have a libretto written by Luigi Illica and Giuseppe Giacosa, which would make them more of a Creator Trio. These operas are La Bohème, Tosca, and Madame Butterfly. - The French composer Jean Baptiste Lully wrote ten of his fifteen operas with librettist Philippe Quinault. - Protagonist Title: Turandot, Carmen, Aida, and Lucia di Lammermoor are just a few examples of operas directly named for the protagonist. A number of others use a phrase that clearly refers to the protagonist, such as The Barber of Seville, or La Traviata. [The Lost One] - Propaganda Piece: In early French Opera known as Tragédie en musique, especially those by Jean-Baptiste Lully, always had an allegorical prologue glorifying the latest triumphs of Louis XIV, needless to say, the prologues stopped being propaganda peices after his death before they fell off entirely. - Public Domain Soundtrack: Many, many famous tunes are originally from operas. In particular, the Ride of the Valkyries, the William Tell Overture, "O mio babbino caro" [Oh my daddy dear] from Gianni Schicchi, the Can-Can and a number of other Standard Snippets have operatic origins. - Recursive Crossdressing: Cherubino from The Marriage of Figaro, Octavian from Strauss's Der Rosenkavalier [Knight of the Rose], and many more. - Recycled Script: - Several examples, but Rossini was particularly well known for lifting music from one of his operas to another. It was acceptable at the time, as long as the two works didn't premiere in the same town. - There was also nothing stopping different composers from writing operas from the same libretto, Metastasio's L'Olimpiade was first set to music by Antonio Caldara in 1733 has had over 60 scores written for it. - Rule of Drama: Librettists were never shy of letting the facts get in the way of a good story, the meeting of the queens in Donizetti's Maria Stuarda, just to name one example. - Romance on the Set: A lot of opera singers have married either fellow opera singers or conductors after meeting during productions or concert performances. Some famous couples are: - Angela Gheorghiu and Roberto Alagna - Anna Netrebko and Yusif Eyvazov - Mirella Freni and Nicolai Ghiaurov - Joan Sutherland and Richard Bonynge (she would rarely sing without him conducting; it was in at least one of her contracts, with the New York City Opera). - Montserrat Caballé and Bernabé Marti - Diana Damrau and Nicolas Testé - Étienne Dupuis and Nicole Car - Charles Castronovo and Ekaterina Siurina - Sonya Yoncheva and Domingo Hindoyan - Basso Soloman Howard proposed to soprano Ailyn Perez right on the stage during curtain calls for Tosca in September 2021. (She accepted!) - Rule of Three: - Many operas have three acts, especially those of Wagner. - For Verdi and Puccini, their third operas (respectively with Nabucco and Manon Lescaut) formally launched their careers. - Many operas also feature three main characters. Usually one soprano, one tenor and then a lower voice of either gender. A few examples: - Violetta, Alfredo, and Giorgio Germont in Verdi's La Traviata. - Tosca, Mario, and Scarpia in Puccini's Tosca - Aïda, Radames, and Amneris in Verdi's Aïda. - Calaf, Turandot, and Liu in Puccini's Turandot - Scenery Porn: In opera, the design is either minimalist or it's the stuff that makes you drool rainbows. Oriental operas especially fall into this category. - Franco Zeffirelli is well known for his lavish productions of: - Following in Zeffirelli's footsteps, there's Sonja Frisell's Aida◊. - Otto Schenk is another director well known for his extravagant productions of: - Shallow Parody: A typical parody of opera is likely to feature a shrieking fat lady in armor and a horned helmet, brandishing a spear. There's only one opera that's ever featured a somewhat similar costume, The Ring of the Nibelung's Brünnhilde, and it's been pretty much phased out in modern productions. (Admittedly though, it is a fairly Iconic Outfit, so it may perhaps be excused in cases where quick visual shorthand is needed to establish "Oh, an opera!") If the parody isn't this, then it probably involves a fat Spanish barber or a crying clown. - Satellite Love Interest: Very common - as in the Commedia dell'Arte, viewers are given little explanation as to who the inamorati actually are. They're young and in love, which usually sums up both characters' entire personalities (or at least the soprano's). - Screaming Woman: This is the cliché image to most non-opera fans. One or several women singing so high and loud that it sounds more like screaming. Think of the character Bianca Castafiore in Tintin. The genuine article, when done right, should remind you more of trumpets, or bells ringing. - Serious Business: During the "golden age" of opera (roughly the seventeenth through nineteenth centuries), France and Italy had an extremely bitter rivalry over who had the better composers. It didn't help that much of the rest of Europe thought that opera had to be written in Italian; Jean-Baptiste Lully, who despite being Italian spent most of his career at the French court of Louis XIV, broke this tradition and instead wrote to French libretti. As such, it was common for critics from one nation to travel to the other upon a new opera's debut, watch it, then go back to their own country and write incredibly scathing reviews of the work. - Signature Line: Ask someone to sing an imitation of opera, and they will probably bellow, "Figaro, Figaro, Figarofigarofigaro!" This is indeed a line from Figaro's famous aria "Largo al Factotum" in Rossini's The Barber of Seville note : not, however, as you might expect, from The Marriage of Figaro. - Similarly Named Works: It helps to be a bit more specific when you're looking for operas by Strauss. Johann Strauss wrote all those lighthearted waltzes, but also several light operas, the only one still regularly performed being Die Fledermaus; Richard Strauss (no relation) wrote dramatic pieces like Elektra and Salome. (Johann Strauss is also not to be confused with his father, Johann Strauss Sr., or his brother, Josef Strauss...) - Small Reference Pools: Despite having produced many famous names in the field the general public may only know Enrico Caruso, Maria Callas (fans of Enigma may know of her, she's sampled in several commercials, and you can hear her in the "Night of San Lorenzo" scene in Lorenzo's Oil and an important scene towards the end of Philadelphia) and Luciano Pavarotti. If you are very lucky they may also remember Placido Domingo and José Carreras. Fans of Freddie Mercury will recognize Montserrat Caballé from the duet Barcelona. And even most of these names were better known after their glory period, when their voices were already considered less good and they hit the commercial circuit, because most non-opera fans wouldn't be able to tell the vocal difference anyway. - Sung-Through Musical: That's kind of the point. - Sweet Polly Oliver: Fidelio where the faitful Leonore disguises herself as the male Fidelio to rescue her husband Florestan from a Spanish prison. - Talking Is a Free Action: Well, singing is. You often find lengthy arias in dramatic moments along the lines of "Yes, now we must quickly run away, silently, before anyone spots us, yes, softly, let us run " - Tear Jerker: Some operas, especially ones by Puccini, seem engineered specifically to be as heart-rending as possible. - That Makes Me Feel Angry: In opera, this trope is pretty much a must-have, since the music is more important than the words and many singers don't bother acting things out too much. note : Other singers are skilled actors, and a handful emphasize the dramatics so powerfully that they are regarded as "vocal actors", not just singers. Among these are Tito Gobbi, Maria Callas, Blanche Thebaum and Dolora Zadjik. Opera is full of (insert adjective here) mi sento (I feel) and other status-descriptions. Or the composer/librettist put it in to give the singer an indication of how the character should feel; singers are expected to act nowadays. Also, during the Baroque era, musical drama tended to be structured according to the so-called doctrine of affects, with consecutive numbers depicting contrasting emotions - a lilting love duet followed by a furious vengeance aria, for instance. If the idea is to juxtapose readily identifiable emotions for maximum effect, it makes sense to flag them in the libretto. - Theme Naming: Ariane et Barbe-bleue was written by Maurice Maeterlinck, who named Bluebeard's five former wives after female characters in his own plays: Mélisande from Pelléas et Mélisande, Alladine from Alladine et Palomides, Ygraine and Bellangère from La mort de Tintagiles, and Sélysette from Aglavaine et Sélysette. - In Carmen the refrain of the Toreador's Song appears in the first three minutes of the overture and appears in every act thereafter. - Untranslated Title: Most of the titles below that are not proper nouns. In fact if the title is translated that usually means the whole opera is. - Up Marketing: Opera has a bit of a reputation for being intended for the wealthy and highbrow patrons, and much of the imagery in opera marketing will reflect this with ladies in fur coats dripping diamonds, gents in tuxes, and the like. In actuality, while it is indeed an expensive art form to produce, even the best tickets aren't much pricier than comparable tickets for a headlining pop or rock concert, and considerably cheaper than sports tickets. Plus there have always been cheap seats up in the gallery for working class people and students to come cheer their faves. Many modern opera companies are actively appealing to a broader demographic, especially with the tight economy making it harder to get funding for the arts. When you see the ultra-rich attendees in the aforementioned glittery-glam outfits, that's probably for a charity fundraiser gala. - Values Dissonance: Not uncommon thanks to the advanced age of the most popular operas. Contemporary productions will often try to lampshade the less palatable parts of the plot or make staging changes to cast characters or situations in a more sympathetic light. - Villain Protagonist: Boris Godunov, Don Giovanni, Faust - What Is This Thing You Call "Love"?: Many characters wonder something similar aloud in trying to understand their feelings; most conclude that, yes, that strange feeling is love indeed ## Examples appearing in fiction ## Opera composers and singers with their own page: ## Operas with their own page: <!—index—> <!—/index—> - John Coolidge Adams - Matthew Aucoin - Ludwig van Beethoven - Vincenzo Bellini - Georges Bizet - Terence Blanchard: - Alexandr Borodin - Benjamin Britten - Francesco Cilea - John Corigliano - Gaetano Donizetti - Antonin Dvorak - George Gershwin - Umberto Giordano - Philip Glass - Mikhail Glinka - Christoph Willibald Gluck - Osvalo Golijov - Charles Gounod - George Frederic Handel - Engelbert Humperdinck - Leo Janáček - Franz Lehár - Ruggero Leoncavallo - Heinrich August Marschner - Pietro Mascagni - Jules Massenet - Gian Carlo Menotti - Claudio Monteverdi - Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart - Modest Mussorgsky - Jacques Offenbach - Johann Christoph Pepusch - Giacomo Puccini - Henry Purcell - Nikolay Rimsky-Korsakov - Gioachino Rossini - Camille Saint-Saëns - Johann Strauss, Jr. - Richard Strauss - Peter Ilych Tchaikovsky - Giuseppe Verdi - Richard Wagner - Carl Maria von Weber - Kurt Weill - Arnold Weinstein ## Musicians using opera in their music <!—index—> <!—/index—> ## Special Cases <!—index—> <!—/index—> - Traditional Musical Theater Plays Frequently Performed By Opera Companies - Johann Sebastian Bach	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/Opera
Roadside Surgery - TV Tropes Dr. Edwards: We almost did a thoracotomy in the ER. Dr. Grey: Yeah, this bought us some time. Dr. Edwards: No, I mean we almost got to do a thoracotomy, in the ER. Which, you know, would have been amazing. [...] 'Cos, I mean, how many times do you get to operate outside the operating room? Dr. Webber: Okay, for the record, it sounds fun, until you do it. Your standard Medical Drama will have a lot of emergency surgeries, most of which take place in an OR (the cooler sounding name for a simple operating room). But then, not all medical dramas focus on a surgical team. And let's not forget about the Rule of Drama. One way to get the right pulses racing is to have a Matter of Life and Death time-sensitive surgery and no place to operate... except where you are right now. The most common perpetrators are in an ambulance or ER/trauma center (A&E/Casualty in the UK), but occasionally doctors in a disaster zone or those responding to a distress call will have to operate in an Abandoned Warehouse, in the back of a taxi, or stranded in a forest. It is also done in non-medical shows such as police shows, or by characters other than the doctors in the medical show if necessary. For example, in a big car crash, a nurse on the scene might have to do an emergency surgery to save a victim's life, with the emergency situation causing them to bend procedures. This usually leads to a big story about surgeons having to fix the roadside stitch-up job. Often, a Backalley Doctor will have to operate in a grungy No-Tell Motel or an empty apartment. This focuses on the story element of an unconventional surgery location and the associated drama, this drama constituting the danger of a necessary and immediate surgery; not having a suitable place and having to do the surgery out-of-OR; not having the regular hospital equipment for disinfecting and lighting, and the risks from performing surgery at on the roadside. See also Meatgrinder Surgery, a similar trope about operating without proper surgical tools, and Open Heart Dentistry, for when you can't find an appropriate physician for the surgery but get someone else with advanced medical or health training (possibly at gunpoint). Super-Trope to Instant Drama, Just Add Tracheotomy, when the specific surgery in this situation is a tracheotomy, and Self-Surgery, when the specific surgeon in this situation is the wounded person. In some cases, this might overlap with After-Action Healing Drama if the rush to get to medical personnel is forgone for a rush to just heal. And PSA: No matter how many episodes of Grey's you've seen, please Don't Try This at Home. ## Examples: - In the humanised My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic fanfic Guppy Love, Applejack finds the mermaid Rarity on the beach with a tail injury from an orca and looks after her with Fluttershy and Rainbow Dash. To keep Rarity and her sister-like companion Sweetie Belle from being discovered by other humans, Fluttershy performs the surgery on her injured tail with Rarity laying on a rock near the lake the two mermaids hide in. - 13 Sins: One of Elliot's challenges involves him amputating the arm of a former classmate in a seedy motel. - Black Hawk Down: An Army Ranger medic tries to save a fellow Ranger with a horrific leg wound. The medic needs to install a bridging shunt in the patient's femoral artery to keep him from bleeding to death. The surgery has to be performed on a rickety table in a derelict building while the local warlord's mooks are searching for them. - The Cider House Rules: Homer Wells grew up in an orphanage, and was being groomed to follow in the footsteps of Doctor Larch. While earning a living on an apple farm, Homer discovers young Rose is pregnant with her father's child. Because Rose is black, getting a proper medical abortion is highly unlikely. Therefore, Homer agrees to perform the procedure in the pickers' shack (the cider house), using the skills and training gleaned from Doctor Larch. - Circus of Horrors: Dr. Rossiter insists he can perform delicate facial surgery on the kitchen table of a circus caravan. As it turns out, he's right. Much later, he guides Angela and Martin through performing a similar procedure on his own face in a similar location. - Deadtime Stories: Volume 2: In "The Gorge", three spelunkers are trapped in a cave by a cave-in. Gary's leg is injured and eventually goes gangrenous and Donna and Craig are forced to amputate it: without anaesthetic and using the only viable tool they have for the job, an ice axe. Craig hold Gary still while Donna hacks the leg off with the axe. - Iron Man: Tony is almost killed when an explosion blasts shrapnel through his heart. He wakes to meet Yinsen, a doctor who saved his life by grafting an electromagnet to his chest. Yinsen knows it's comically crude, but considering they have both been kidnapped it was the best he could manage. - Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World: - One sailor receives a serious head wound during the first battle against the Acheron. The ship's physician performs open cranial surgery on the man on the main deck in broad daylight because operating lamps haven't been invented yet. This includes using a silver coin to patch the hole in the man's skull. - Junior officer Blakeley suffers severe damage to his right arm after the third skirmish against the Acheron, which necessitates amputation at the mid-humerus without anesthetic, just a shot of whiskey. Blakeley is awake and aware of the procedure, including the dreaded bone saw. Hospital escort ships hadn't been invented yet, and a sick bay was a rare luxury too good for the Surprise. - In the 29th Animorphs novel The Sickness, Cassie has to perform brain surgery on Ax in her barn in order to remove his Tria gland, as he's an Andalite and thus it would be impossible to get a surgeon to operate without causing a lot of problems. - In The Impossible Virgin, a Modesty Blaise novel, Modesty and Dr Giles Pennyfeather have to perform an emergency appendectomy in a cave where they and the patient are hiding from the villains. Giles has to talk Modesty through the surgery because the villains tortured him and his dominant hand is too injured to use. Modesty does note that there is one up-side to the situation: Giles got most of his surgical experience as a mission doctor in a remote African village, so he's used to working in primitive conditions; she jokes that he'd probably be more out of his element if they did have access to a proper operating theater with all the modern equipment. - In the Russian Sci-Fi series Better Than Us, \|\|Georgiy\|\| has to preform this on \|\|Zhanna after she gets shot in the leg\|\|. Deconstructed, as despite all the necessary medical supplies having been gathered and \|\|Georgiy (who is a former surgeon)\|\| doing everything possible to sterilize the environment, the wound still gets infected and \|\|Zhanna has to be taken to the hospital anyway (despite it being against her wishes) since she will die of sepsis otherwise.\|\| - Casualty is set in an accident and emergency department, but the resuscitation room may as well be made an OR with how often it gets used for this. As the world's longest-running medical show, it's hard to list instances, but one of the best has to be in the 2009/10 run when Sean and Nick have to operate on \|\|Adam, Jessica, and their kids\|\| after getting in a car crash that results in spinning off the road into a frozen lake. The hospital they work at does have an OR, but apparently emergent trauma has to go through the casualty before anything else. - Shows up a couple of times in Doc Martin, most notably in Martin and Louisa's honeymoon, when they wind up wandering through the countryside, lost, and stumble upon a paranoid farmer who manages to impale himself in the neck while trying to drive them off his land (It Makes Sense in Context). Martin is forced to perform surgery in the farmer's non-too-clean farmhouse using nothing but fishing line, a fish hook, and a bottle of whiskey to sterilize his hands as best he can. - One Emergency! episode had the surgery done in a outdoor area because the guy had a live mortar embedded in him and the ride to the hospital could have made it explode. Another episode narrowly averted it, with Roy managing to save the patients leg and extract him from a work site collapse just before Brackett arrived to amputate the leg. - The Good Doctor: In the first episode, Shaun has to perform surgery using a bottle of whiskey in an airport. In the third episode, he operates on an ex vivo transplant liver on the trunk of a cop car. - Grey's Anatomy: At last count, over a dozen cases. - Most of the time Grey's is focused on the ORs, but kudos go to the time that a man had to amputate his wife's leg down a sinkhole with Callie giving him directions. - And let's not forget Meredith having to operate on Mark and Arizona in the forest after the plane crash. - There's also a storyline where they have to train general practitioners from Syria to be able to operate in a war zone without proper tools — the trifecta. - In season 12, there's an episode all about this. After a Code Pink is called and the hospital put on lockdown, the residents all get stranded with patients. Ben performs an unnecessary emergency caesarean in the hallway, while Steph laments that she almost got to do a thoracotomy in the ER — asking how often people get to operate outside of an OR, with Webber telling her it's not as fun when you have to do it. - Honorable mention to Meredith draining a brain bleed while airborne and in heavy turbulence, a full six seasons after the last time she did any Neuro work. - This is arguably Ben Warren's specialty. Aside from the aforementioned c-section, he has opened a psych patient with a clipboard and done a second, more successful, caesarean on April. Even his switch to firefighter didn't stop this, preforming an amputation at the end of Season 2. - One episode of House involved the medical staff at the hospital being called to the scene of a disastrous building collapse. One woman is trapped underground with heavy debris trapping her leg. The only way to save her life is to amputate her leg, which House volunteers to do and does successfully with minimal tools. - Pretty common in MASH, but given they're in a war zone, it's probably not unlikely. They tend to refer to it as 'meatball surgery'. - In "Mulcahey's War", Catholic priest Father Mulcahy must perform an emergency tracheotomy by the side of the road in Korea using improvised equipment. He's given instructions over the radio by the doctors back at the 4077th. - "They Call the Wind Korea" has Charles and Klinger trapped in an overturned truck during a windstorm with a bunch of injured Greeks. Charles is forced to perform surgery with whatever happens to be in his medical bag. Being Charles, he gripes the entire time about the improvised tools despite performing the procedures flawlessly. - In "Best of Enemies", a North Korean soldier takes Hawkeye hostage, ordering him at gunpoint to save his wounded friend. Hawkeye does his best, even attempting an emergency tracheotomy when the patient struggles to breathe, but unfortunately the damage is too severe and Hawkeye isn't able to save him. - Almost every level in the Amateur Surgeon* games takes place in an unconventional location to do surgery. Only a minority of them do take place in risky places to say the least. - Surgeon Simulator 2013 plays it for laughs, by having Nigel - the highly inept surgeon you're playing as - performing surgery in various, less-than-ideal situations. This includes an ambulance with a crazy driver, him running down a corridor, or operating while in space with zero gravity. - Trauma Center: - The chapter Cadecus on a plane has you doing surgery on a plane. That sometimes experiences turbulence. - Another level exclusive to the Wii version has you doing emergency surgery at a car crash. Where the lights are failing. - The sequel also has a level where you're forced to operate in a moving vehicle. You get a warning before a sharp turn is about to happen. - Trauma Team: - First response is all about this, light surgery to deal with problems on site ASAP and buying time for proper care. - A few coleoscopy levels are set outside of the hospital, including one where you navigate through rubble at a disaster site. - Futurama: After Fry and Amy (and Dr. Zoidberg) are in a hovercar wreck, Zoidberg attaches Fry's head to Amy's body to keep him alive, working in the middle of nowhere without any tools. No one seems the least bit amazed he succeeded, despite his otherwise horrible track record at treating human patients. - The Simpsons: In one episode, Bart is bitter because Mr. Flanders wouldn't let him have a knife. He walks past several other characters using knives in various ways. Dr. Hibbert uses a pocket knife to remove a man's appendix right on the sidewalk before throwing said organ away to explode like a grenade. The patient gets up and thanks him, like nothing out of the ordinary happened. - In 2014 a London Air Ambulance crew used a new method (Reboa) of preventing blood loss on a patient involved in a large RTI. The method involves open-heart surgery, and the patient survived. - In 2016, an Australian doctor took a wrong turn and discovered a catastrophic truck collision in the middle of nowhere, and called for emergency services. When they arrived, they asked the doctor to stay in case they needed help and firefighters freed the truck drivers. A paramedic attempted to decompress the chest, without luck, and called the doctor over. He then cut open the man's chest cavity, called his attending, and continued surgery to relieve it. The doctor says that, really, anyone with the same skill in the same circumstances would have done the same.	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/OperateInTheER
Opening Scroll - TV Tropes If you want to get your story's messy background out of the way as fast as possible but don't have the budget to shoot the background scenes for the Opening Monologue, then your next best option is the simple yet elegant Opening Scroll. As the name implies, this is a text scroll that passes over (or into) the screen, supplying all relevant information with minimal impact on the movie's running time or budget. A variation is to have the text fade up and then fade down, but this is something that shouldn't go on for too long due to being terribly dull to watch. Expect many examples to be an homage and/or parody of Star Wars, which itself did so as an homage to the Flash Gordon serials. See also War Was Beginning. Compare Dictionary Opening, Opening Monologue, Title In. ## Examples: - Episode 2 of Excel♡Saga uses one of these when Koshi Rikdo gives permission to turn Excel Saga into a sci-fi anime, obviously as an homage to Star Wars. - The DiC dub of Sailor Moon added one of these: "From a far away place and time Earth's greatest adventure is about to begin" at the start of the show up until Jadeite's death in Episode 10 (three episodes in his arc were skipped) and Nephrite replacing him. After that, the scroll was abandoned, probably because Earth's greatest adventure had by then begun. - The backstory to Overman King Gainer is shown this way during its opening. Behind various characters (and the titular robot) doing the Monkey. - The European release of the The Transformers: The Movie has a Star Wars-esque opening scroll after a brief sequence showing Unicron devouring a planet. - As noted in the trope description, the use of this trope in Star Wars and the other films in the franchise was a Shout-Out to the old Film Serials that served as inspiration to George Lucas. Buck Rogers and Flash Gordon Conquers the Universe—both dating from 1940—use this trope at the beginning of each episode so the viewing audience can catch up with the plot. - The most famous example is undoubtedly Star Wars, whose "into the screen" scroll spawned a thousand spoofs and imitators. note : Although the first one needed Brian De Palma to rewrite it to be the classic it is. - Rogue One notably averts it, however—\|\|which might thematically make sense if only because its events are directly referenced by the very first employment of this, in A New Hope\|\|. - Solo: A Star Wars Story also averts it, solidifying a precedent for the Anthology films to lack the scroll. The Opening Scroll is apparently only going to be used for the numbered Episodes of the Skywalker Saga. (It does provide written exposition as the movie starts, just not in scroll form or with the bombastic theme.) - In the Star Wars spoof Spaceballs, as the expository scroll is disappearing into the distance, a small line of text suddenly appears at the end: "If you can read this, you don't need glasses." - In the Thumb Wars parody, the spacecraft involved in the opening battle sequence end up crashing into the text which of course is still floating through space ahead of them. - The 1980 sci-fi spoof Galaxina opens like this for exposition rather than gags so it's not particularly funny. Much like the rest of the movie. - 1939 film Union Pacific uses this style but only for the opening credits, in a sequence superimposed over railroad tracks going off into the horizon. The exposition that follows the credits is presented as a standard title card. - The Phantom Creeps, a serial starring Bela Lugosi as a Mad Scientist used the same fading away from camera opening crawl. Joel Robinson riffed, "You sure Lucas was the first to do this?" - Probably the worst filmic offender of all: Uwe Boll's film adaptation of Alone in the Dark delivered its entire backstory in a fade-in-fade-out series of title cards that took almost seven minutes of screen time; as warned above, it's dull enough to kill most viewers' enthusiasm for the film about ninety seconds in. And the worse part? The opening crawl in the final movie was the improved version where they added a narrator to read the text out loud after test audiences complained that the opening was too wordy. - The Movie of Æon Flux inexplicably starts with the scroll, and then still has a monologue after it. We wouldn't get just one of them? - Airplane II: The Sequel has one that is slanted "into the screen" like the Star Wars one. However, it tells a story that's completely unrelated to the plot of the movie. It gets to the beginning of a sex scene right when a space shuttle collides with the scrolling text, causing it to disappear with a glass-breaking effect. - The Judge Dredd movie begins with a scroll that only adds background information for the setting. - The Monster Squad opens with a scroll about how Abraham Van Helsing, a hundred years before the story begins, gathered a band of freedom fighters to rid the world of vampires and monsters and save mankind from the forces of eternal evil. It ends with "They blew it." And then the opening scene shows us just how. - Scarface opens with one of these, describing how Fidel Castro sent Cubans who wanted to join their families to the United States in 1980, along with the dregs of his jails. - Similar to Alone in the Dark (2005), The Last Airbender has an opening scroll narrated by Katara. - Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: The Movie opens with an expository scroll about the backstory on the source of the Rangers' powers. The text is read by a female voice completely straight, making the whole thing sound even more ridiculous than it is already. Turbo: A Power Rangers Movie has the text recede into the distance like Star Wars, with Zordon providing narration. - Leatherface: The Texas Chainsaw Massacre III starts with a lengthy text scroll in an attempt to fill in the gaps between the first movie and the sequel that apparently never happened. The other two preceding movies also have text scrolls, but the fourth one just has a text screen. - Blade Runner has this accompanied by a very eerie ambience that makes the viewer feel appropriately uneasy. - Blade Runner 2049 swaps out the opening scroll for static text that slowly fades in, like a very creepy PowerPoint presentation. - Les Misérables (2012) opens with one, to clarify to non-French viewers that this movie is not about THE French Revolution, but a later one. - Each chapter of The Green Hornet Serials (after the first) opens with a scrolling summary of what went on in the previous chapter. But it had been a week since the audience saw that chapter. - Being a movie about Star Wars fans, Fanboys has two. One standard one in the beginning, the other during a peyote trip that said "You are very, very, very, very high" - Dr. Strangelove opens with an opening scroll which was a basic disclaimer telling patrons that the film was a cautionary tale. - The Running Man has an opening scroll that explains how exty years after the film's release an economical collapse has lead to the Crapsack World with deadly game shows we're about to see. - Warrior of the Lost World actually has been released with at least two versions (in English) of the opening scroll: one that mimics the Star Wars into-the-screen scroll style (poorly) and Emphasizes EVERYTHING!!!; and a straight vertical scroll that actually explains a bit more about the post-apocalyptic setting. The former was used in its Mystery Science Theater 3000 presentation, to great comedic effect due to its marginal legibility: Opening scroll: ALL GOVERNMENTS HAVE COLLAPSED!!! Joel (reading): The gummy mints have colitis? - Johnny Reno begins with an opening scroll about the role of the US Marshals in taming The Wild West, and how one of the greatest marshals was Johnny. It ends by stating this film covers just two days in his eventful career. - The Hunger Games has a brief scroll that quickly explains exactly what the Hunger Games are, and why they exist. - Man in the Wilderness: "The year is 1820. The Captain Henry expedition has completed two years of fur trapping in the unexplored Northwest territory. Determined to reach the Missouri river before the winter snows, the trappers and their boat, towed by 22 mules, struggle through the wilderness. Once on the Missouri they could sail south to the trading posts and sell their precious cargo. What occurred on this expedition is historically true." - The Trip (1967): Thanks to Executive Meddling, the movie opens with a foreword calling it a "shocking commentary on a prevalent concern of our time" and warning that the illegal manufacture and consumption of LSD can have fatal consequences. - Max (2002) has one a few minutes into the movie: In the summer of 1917 the German Imperial Army lost the disastrous offensive known as The Third Battle of Ypres. Germany begged for peace having suffered two million dead and four million wounded in World War One. 100,000 German Jews served in the Imperial German Army. 40,000 volunteered. - A Reason to Live, a Reason to Die!: Following a scene showing the aftermath of the massacre at Fort Holman, an opening scroll purporting to be an article from the Joplin Gazette several years after the event is used to segue into How We Got Here. - Eternals opens with scrolling text explaining how Arishem sent the Eternals from their home planet of Olympia to Earth to fight the Deviants. - Satan's Triangle: "Within the last thirty years just off the east coast of the United States more than a thousand men, woman and children have vanished from the face of the earth. No one knows how. Or why. This is one explanation..." - An Opening Scroll appeared at the start of Red Dwarf season three explaining a number of things that happened off-camera, including the (male) main character giving birth to twins, a bit character from the second season being recovered and added to the main cast, and Holly having a "head sex change". The bulk of the scroll, however, passes so quickly that it can only be read via freeze-frame. The writers were planning to do an episode before this one tying up all the loose plots but couldn't make it funny enough, so they made do with a parody. The scroll also includes the bizarre phrase "The saga continuums..." which many fans take as an indication that the series from this point on follows an alternative continuity based on the novel Infinity Welcomes Careful Drivers, which changes several previous claims about Lister's background. - The Pretender opened every episode of its first two seasons with a cross between the Opening Monologue and the fade-up version of the Opening Scroll. - Monty Python's Flying Circus made a Running Gag of this in episode 25. The scroll would always begin, "In (year), (noun) lay in ruins," to introduce subjects such as Hungarians entering tobacco shops, World War I, or The End of the episode. - Episode 15 provides the Spanish Inquisition with one that notes that the "violence, terror and torture" they unleashed make for "a smashing film." - Episode 45 has an opening scroll for a Western which has nothing to do with any of the sketches. - Star Trek - Star Trek: Deep Space Nine opens with a quick text scroll to refresh people's memories about "The Best of Both Worlds", just before they introduce Captain Sisko in the Battle of Wolf 359. - Star Trek: Voyager starts off with a quick description of the Maquis rebellion, providing the necessary groundwork before going off and doing its own thing. (First shot immediately after this: A small rebel ship flying away and trading fire with a much larger vessel. Hmmm...) - Doctor Who had one of these at the opening to "The Deadly Assassin". - Battlestar Galactica (2003): The Cylons were created by man. They rebelled. They evolved. There are many copies. And they have a plan. - Andromeda opens with a static text screen giving one or two quotations from fictional literature. - Sharpe has short ones at the beginning of every episode introducing the year, the place, and the situation. - The Fringe episode "Letters of Transit" (season four, episode nineteen) has a brief opening scroll to explain \|\|it's set in a canonical Bad Future where the Observers have invaded the Earth\|\|. - It should be no surprise that the various Star Wars games have opening scrolls. - LEGO Star Wars has a "story so far" opening scroll for each level that also serves as a Loading Screen. - Averted in Star Wars: Republic Commando. Probably have something to do with Darker and Edgier. - TIE Fighter's scroll, set to the Imperial March, makes a rather startling introduction to the game's Perspective Flip. - Exaggerated in Star Wars: The Old Republic: not only does each of the game's eight classes have a unique introductory scroll, the loading screen when logging into the game contains a short blurb in the same style (mercifully non-scrolling) that summarizes the player's current class quest. - Star Wars: DroidWorks is notable for being narrated, mainly due to the younger target audience as an Edutainment Game which is the same reason that Wimateeka and other Jawas can apparently speak Basic. - Rogue Squadron The first game had four chapters, each with their own opening scroll giving you details on that chapter's arc. In Rogue Leader and Rebel Strike, only the very first mission has an Opening Scroll. - Mega Man Zero opened with Ciel as the Pursued Protagonist. Future games in the series all started with text scrolls summarizing previous games and the events between games. - Star Dust, an obscure 1992 Asteroids clone where you pilot a spaceship shooting assorted onscreen enemies, practically lifts the Star Wars-style scroll in it's opening FMV wholesale, right down to the font and yellow text fading into the distance. And for good measure, some cues from the music of Star Wars as well, though it sounds less like the opening scroll theme and more like a loose remake of the Imperial March. Yes, really. - Stargunner, as befits a game where you fly through space blowing things up in your Cool Ship, plays the disappearing-into-the-distance version straight until a small tongue-in-cheek twist at the end. - Elite Beat Agents has an opening crawl to kick off a multiplayer match that utilizes the scenario "Battle of the Aces", in which two animal-like alien space aces compete to determine which one's the better starpilot. - Escape Velocity has a normal opening scroll, and a couple of humorous Easter Egg alternates. The sequel EV Override also uses one, but the third game EV Nova eschews it in favor of either a non-scrolling text box or up to four splashscreens, depending on the game files used (though there is a way to use the non-scrolling text box option to instead show a short movie, which the unofficial updates to the ports of Classic and Override to Nova use to reintroduce the opening scroll). The open-source EVN clone Naev goes back to the opening scroll. - Last Scenario starts with a lengthy text-scroll explaining the backstory. \|\|It's all lies.\|\| - Halo 3: ODST uses one of these. Notable as the only game in the Halo franchise to do so. - All of the Mass Effect games use this during the opening. In the first, it explains humanity's entry into the galactic community and segues into a Title Drop, in the second, it summarizes the events and ramifications of what happened at the end of the first, and in the third, it describes the build-up to and beginnings of the Reaper invasion. - Deadly Towers has scrolling text at the beginning that details the game's Excuse Plot in a surprisingly verbose and well-written way. The game's ending is similar. - The Game Boy version of Kid Icarus has an opening scroll introduction, before the title screen. - The Flash game Robot Wants Puppy (a sequel to Robot Wants Kitty) opens with a scroll about rebels in the year 20XX plotting to liberate Zeta Sector from the iron-tentacled rule of the tyrannical Morgox the Unborn, followed by the line "Meanwhile, in a completely different galaxy thousands of light years away, Robot wants puppy," then another message explaining that Morgox the Unborn has literal iron tentacles. Played straight in the third game in the trilogy, Robot Wants Fishy. - Commander Keen: Starting from the fourth episode ( Secret of the Oracle), it has been a tradition for Keen games to include an opening scroll narrating, in a style similar to that of Star Wars, the prologue of the story. This is carried over to the fanmade episodes based on the never-developed trilogy The Universe Is Toast. - Present in some versions of Another World; in particular, the SNES port had a Star Wars-esque "into the screen" opening scroll (probably using Mode 7 graphics). - Browning, a PC Engine game by Telenet Japan, has a scroll in Japanese with a voiceover in English, even though the game was released in Japan only. - Castlevania: Symphony of the Night puts its scrolling intro text at the end of the Action Prologue. - Castlevania III: Dracula's Curse scrolls through a series of prologue cards with sprocket holes down the sides. - Air Fortress begins with Engrish text ("On the planet 'Farmel', they had the gloriest days for two centuries, since the stardate had established...") scrolling down over a starfield. - The Tower of Druaga: The game itself averts this trope by placing the opening text ("In another time in another world...") on a static screen in Attract Mode. However, a promotional video gives it the epic scrolling treatment, with a narrator reading the text in English. - Every Final Fantasy from I to VI has one. One was written for VII and remains in the demo version, but was excised for the final game, resulting in the notoriously extended blank shot of stars at the beginning of the opening FMV. - Body Harvest: The game starts with an opening scroll explaining the Alien Invasion and Time Travel themes. - Gamer 2, a sequel to an unfinished short story, has an opening scroll which explains the plot to players who haven't read Gamer. - The NES bootleg version of Contra Spirits inexplicably adds to the original opening sequence this scrolling placeholder text: WELCOME THE WORLD OF GAME A GAME END - Star Fox 64 has a text crawl explaining the backstory of Andross' exile, the end of the original Star Fox team led by James McCloud, and Andross' present-day invasion of the Lylat System. - Smash TV does this during its Attract Mode, explaining how, in the then "future" year of 1999 note : The game was originally released in 1990., "television has adapted to the more violent nature of man", and that the titular "Smash TV" is the most popular (and most violent) game show of all time. After explaining how the game note : Both the video game, and the in-universe game show. works, it ends thusly: Be prepared. The future is now. You are the next lucky contestant! - Chantelise: When a new game starts, Elise narrates in Japanese, some exposition that's translated in text, while the background is panning up to a red moon. It starts: My memories of that night are foggy... sometimes I think to myself that it must have been a dream. But... "Don't go out at night when the moon is red, or the witch will curse you forevermore!" They told us that old fairy tale so often... And on the night of the red moon, five years ago, we went outside. It felt like we were being called. - Survive! Mola mola! opens with a text crawl describing the harsh life of a Mola mola and the many possible ways they can die, with accompanying ASCII Art. - The Battle Cats: The game's Excuse Plot is conveyed with scrolling text whenever the game opens up, and at the start of each chapter. It's set to menacing music and a background of shadowed cats with glowing red eyes... which makes for some Mood Whiplash against the brighly-coloured title screen with cheerful music. - Terrible Writing Advice has "Exposition" episode that begins with an opening where the text slowly moves in front of JP. Meanwhile, JP discusses the Opening Scroll, yearning the old days where it was frequently used by the authors to frontload information to the audience without a care. - Being an Affectionate Parody of Star Wars, every episode of Adventures in Jedi School opens with its own version of its iconic text-scrolls. The first episode has it on a chalk-board, the second episode has Jank going through a Mid-Term Exam, and episode three on Randy's disembodied arm. - The Cinema Snob uses these as a Star Wars homage in his reviews of The Man Who Saves the World (also known as Turkish Star Wars) and The Tramps in Planet Wars ( Brazilian Star Wars), where he writes up phony backstories to how the movies got made, complains about how much time he spent on finding video editing software that lets him do Star Wars-esque text crawls, and lampshades his own bullshit technobabble, wondering how George Lucas comes up with what to write in these crawls. - CinemaSins adds a sin when this occurs, because "reading." - Joueur du Grenier: A text scroll opens the Star Wars games review, naturally. With plot points actually calling back to the "Alpha V Gelga Nek" storyline from a previous episode. - Discussed in one Achievement Hunter video with Star Wars Battlefront 2 as Gavin Free, who has somehow completely missed seeing these spiels, wishes they put them in the movie, leading to the other hunters to shout " THEY DID!" - Star Wars Uncut opens with the same scroll as in the original film, until some blog-type comments pop up after it, such as alderaan_dude saying "Glad I live on a peaceful planet." - Ironically averted, of all places, in The Clone Wars pilot movie, where it is instead replaced with an Opening Monologue. - The television show Arthur episode "Return of the Snowball" has an opening scroll as a homage to Star Wars. And Arthur and \|\|D.W.\|\| read it, too. - The Family Guy Presents: Laugh It Up, Fuzzball parodies this — the second installment starts off normally, before Breaking the Fourth Wall halfway through. "Although the Death Star has been destroyed, Imperial troops have — okay, you know what? I realize space is vast, but this scrolling text is still littering . I mean, somebody's gonna run into this thing eventually. Yeah, it might be a thousand years from now, but does that make it okay?" - Phineas and Ferb: - "Meapless in Seattle" opens with a parody of the Star Wars scroll briefly recapping the events of "The Chronicles of Meap" and explaining how the current episode started as a gag trailer at the end of that episode before viewer demand inspired them to make a real version of the episode. - Naturally, the Star Wars Special includes one, which concludes by reminding viewers that it's not part of Star Wars canon. - Parodied in one of the Robot Chicken Star Wars specials, where the opening crawl suddenly devolves into Leet Speak. - The third chapter of Wishology has Cosmo narrating it. He quickly runs out of things to say.	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/OpeningScroll

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